Darwin and the Anarchist Prince

About five years after Charles Darwin published his book On the Origin of Species, a young Russian army officer, Prince Peter Kropotkin, became involved in geographic and biological research in Siberia and Manchuria.

Kropotkin resigned from the Army in 1867, continuing to work as a scientist and also as a revolutionary. Even after arrest and incarceration in St. Petersburg's Peter and Paul Fortress, Kropotkin continued writing important scientific papers.

Later exiled in Western Europe, Kropotkin became prominent as an anarchist, though not of the bomb-throwing kind.

In addition to his activities in anarchist circles, Kropotkin continued writing on scientific subjects.

In 1902, Kropotkin published the book, Mutual Aid: a Factor in Evolution, based on his scientific research of four decades earlier. The conclusion of his book took direct aim at Social Darwinism's claims:

"In the animal world we have seen that the vast majority of species live in societies, and that they find in association the best arms for the struggle for life: understood, of course, in its wide Darwinian sense – not as a struggle for the sheer means of existence, but as a struggle against all natural conditions unfavourable to the species. The animal species, in which individual struggle has been reduced to its narrowest limits, and the practice of mutual aid has attained the greatest development, are invariably the most numerous, the most prosperous, and the most open to further progress. The mutual protection which is obtained in this case, the possibility of attaining old age and of accumulating experience, the higher intellectual development, and the further growth of sociable habits, secure the maintenance of the species, its extension, and its further progressive evolution. The unsociable species, on the contrary, are doomed to decay."
– Peter Kropotkin, Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution (1902), Conclusion


In other words, Kropotkin suggests that altruism, so denigrated by Ayn Rand and her followers, plays an important role in the success of the human species.

Interestingly, recent scientific research lends weight to Kropotkin's views. A recent book, Supercooperators: Altruism, Evolution and Why We Need Each Other To Succeed , by Martin A. Nowak, examines the issues. Here is an interesting review of the book.

Even conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks has reported in a recent column about research substantiating the importance of collective achievement as opposed to individual efforts.