Okay so I’m showing off a bit here because my husband gave me the coolest book ever for Christmas. It’s illustrated by N O Bonzo, and every illustration is something beautiful.

Of course, the full text is always free online, and it’s one of my favorite books to recommend. An audiobook version is also free on YouTube. I used to listen to it when I was walking or longboarding. Just a warning though: Some of the verbiage he uses to describe indigenous groups is dated and offensive to most readers now. It’s obvious that his intent is to combat the notion that was pervasive amongst his contemporaries that these were “lesser evolved” societies, but … it’s been a hot minute since I’ve read this, and the offending language has really stood out to me this time.

With that being said, I still feel like recommending this to people, and especially to those who still cling to the idea that anarchism or communism could never work due to “human nature,” which is something that I’ve heard a lot. That’s why I chose the quotation I did as the post title – it really sums up the most important point of the entire text, in my opinion.

The foreward to this edition is excellent and provides some further context, and if there’s enough interest maybe I can share some excerpts in the future.

Anyway, this book also has illustrations like this:

With little blurbs describing examples of mutual aid in action.

And the margins of the text are also illustrated:

I want to get some colored pencils so I can color while I’m sitting on the bus lol

Anyway, I’m done showing off. Thank you for indulging me.

The concept of mutual aid is so important to understand, and once we start to grasp how it looks, I feel like we can recognize examples even in our own neighborhoods and communities – in spite of the fact that we live in systems that encourage competition! Just think what we could accomplish without these oppressive systems in place!

This knowledge should give us hope.