By Musa T. Bey

Introduction: Beyond Charity, Toward Collective Survival

Mutual aid is not a trend, a nonprofit model, or an emergency stopgap—it is an ancient, revolutionary practice rooted in solidarity, care, and collective power. Long before the term became popularized in response to crisis—from hurricanes and pandemics to mass evictions and state abandonment—mutual aid was central to how oppressed communities survived, resisted, and built dual power outside the state. It emerges wherever people realize that no one is coming to save us, and that we must depend on one another to meet our needs, protect our dignity, and fight for a better world.

In the context of a socialist economy, mutual aid is not merely a set of services or projects; it is a foundational principle. It embodies the ethos of “from each according to their ability, to each according to their need.” It dissolves the artificial separation between the economic and the social, between production and care, between survival and resistance. Mutual aid becomes the connective tissue of a socialist society—a structure through which collective well-being, democratic control, and solidarity economies can flourish.

This essay explores the vital role of mutual aid in a socialist economy—both as a transitional practice under capitalism and as a permanent pillar of post-capitalist society. We will look at mutual aid’s historical roots, its material logic, and its transformative power to build working-class autonomy, decommodify care, and create resilient, cooperative infrastructures that embody the future we are fighting for.

Mutual Aid Is Not Charity: A Revolutionary Distinction

One of the most important distinctions to make is between mutual aid and charity. Charity operates within a hierarchical, capitalist logic. It assumes that some people have wealth and power, while others are needy and dependent. It is a top-down distribution of resources that maintains existing power relations, often serving as a public-relations strategy for corporations, churches, or NGOs. It conditions access to support on moral worth, compliance, or bureaucratic gatekeeping, reinforcing shame and surveillance.

Mutual aid, by contrast, is horizontal. It is rooted in solidarity, not pity. It recognizes that the crises we face—poverty, houselessness, hunger, sickness—are not personal failures but systemic injustices. It is based on the understanding that our struggles are interconnected, and that we must support each other not out of charity, but out of a shared commitment to collective survival and transformation. As organizer and scholar Dean Spade puts it, mutual aid is “where people take responsibility for caring for one another and changing political conditions.”

In a socialist economy, this distinction is essential. Socialist mutual aid is not an act of benevolence—it is the infrastructure of solidarity. It enables people to meet their needs without dependence on profit-driven systems or bureaucratic state apparatuses. It cultivates autonomy and power from below.

Historical Lineage: Mutual Aid in Black, Indigenous, and Radical Traditions

The modern mutual aid framework draws deep inspiration from the revolutionary traditions of the oppressed. Black freedom struggles, Indigenous governance systems, anarchist communes, feminist cooperatives, tenant unions, and internationalist solidarity movements all offer rich examples of mutual aid in practice.

Black mutual aid societies in the 19th and early 20th centuries provided everything from burial insurance to education, food, and legal defense. These were not just survival programs—they were expressions of self-determination in the face of racial capitalism and state violence. Organizations like the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense operationalized mutual aid in the form of free breakfast programs, health clinics, transportation for elders, and sickle cell anemia testing. These were direct responses to state abandonment and capitalist neglect, but also political statements: “We take care of us.”

Similarly, Indigenous nations have long practiced forms of mutual aid grounded in communal land use, kinship-based redistribution, and non-capitalist governance structures. These systems are based on reciprocal relations with the land, the people, and the cosmos—not extraction and accumulation.

The Zapatistas in Chiapas, the Kurdish freedom movement in Rojava, and countless grassroots formations globally have built alternative economies based on mutual care, democratic planning, and ecological stewardship. These are not utopian dreams—they are blueprints for socialist transition.

The Material Logic of Mutual Aid in a Socialist Economy

A socialist economy is one that centers the needs of people and planet over the profits of capital. It reorients production around use-value rather than exchange-value. In such an economy, mutual aid plays several critical roles:

1. Decommodification of Basic Needs

Capitalism commodifies everything—housing, food, health, education, even water and air. Under socialism, these needs are treated as universal rights, not market opportunities. Mutual aid helps us build alternative systems for distributing resources—through community gardens, cooperative housing, radical clinics, solidarity kitchens, and tool shares—that do not rely on money or market competition. This is not just about redistribution; it is about non-capitalist modes of provisioning.

2. Democratization of Care

Care work—emotional labor, elder support, child-rearing, health maintenance—has been historically gendered, racialized, and undervalued. Mutual aid reclaims care as collective responsibility, not private burden. In a socialist economy, mutual aid ensures that the labor of care is respected, resourced, and democratically organized. It challenges the idea that care should be performed for free by women in the home or extracted for profit in underpaid service jobs.

3. Resilience in the Face of Crisis

Climate change, pandemics, fascist violence—these are not future threats but present realities. Mutual aid prepares communities to survive and adapt outside of market and state dependence. It strengthens social bonds, builds local capacity, and fosters self-determination. In a socialist context, mutual aid becomes the infrastructure of climate resilience, communal health, and defense against state repression.

4. Prefiguration and Political Education

Mutual aid is not just a survival tool; it is a prefigurative practice. It models the kind of society we want to live in: one based on cooperation, shared abundance, and horizontal power. It also serves as political education in action. Through mutual aid, people learn about systemic oppression, build organizing skills, and become radicalized through practice. It transforms recipients into co-creators and builds revolutionary consciousness from below.

Mutual Aid as Dual Power: Building the Infrastructure of Liberation

One of the most radical aspects of mutual aid is its capacity to build dual power—institutions that meet people’s needs independently of the capitalist state and lay the groundwork for a new society. Mutual aid kitchens, free stores, radical childcare collectives, copwatch patrols, and street medic networks are not just stopgaps—they are pieces of a parallel economy.

In a socialist transition, mutual aid projects must be scaled and federated—linked through democratic councils, neighborhood assemblies, and worker cooperatives. These formations allow us to collectively control our labor, land, and lives. They become counter-institutions to the capitalist state—not to mirror its bureaucracy, but to replace its violence with direct democracy, autonomy, and care.

As revolutionaries, we must resist the tendency to treat mutual aid as apolitical or non-confrontational. It is political. It is insurgent. It is about reclaiming our capacity to meet our needs without permission from the ruling class. In this sense, mutual aid is not just a supplement to socialism—it is one of its most important organs.

Conclusion: Mutual Aid Is the Future—If We Fight for It

To build a socialist economy is to commit to the abolition of exploitation, dispossession, and domination in all forms. Mutual aid helps us do just that. It teaches us to trust one another, to build power from the bottom up, and to embody the future in the present. It is where love meets labor, where care becomes resistance, and where community becomes revolutionary.

Mutual aid will not save us on its own. But without it, there can be no socialism worth fighting for. It is how we survive the present—and how we begin to build the world we deserve.

Let me know if you’d like a pamphlet version, quotes added from historical figures, or expanded examples of mutual aid projects tied to socialist transition.