Mutual Aid. Pablo Servigne

      Originally published in French as L’entraide. L’autre loi de la jungle © Les Liens qui Libèrent, 2017. This edition is published by arrangement with Les Liens qui Libèrent in conjunction with its duly appointed agent Books and More Agency #BAM, Paris, France. All rights reserved.

      This English edition © Polity Press, 2022

      Excerpt from Dans la lumière et les ombres by Jean Claude Ameisen reproduced with kind permission of Librairie Arthème Fayard. © Librairie Arthème Fayard, 2008

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      ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-4793-7

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      Library of Congress Control Number: 2021938636

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Dedication

       To all you who share this enthusiasm, but who sometimes have doubts.

       To Marine Simon, so passionate about group dynamics, who interconnected us in 2011.

       To Albert Jacquard and Jean-Marie Pelt, who inspired us so much; we had dreamed of getting you to read this book …

      Nothing is solitary, everything is solidary.

      Man is solidary with the planet, the planet is solidary with the sun, the sun is solidary with the star, the star is solidary with the nebula, the nebula, a stellar group, is solidary with the infinite. Take one term out of this formula and the polynomial becomes disorganized, the equation falters, creation no longer makes sense in the cosmos, and democracy no longer makes sense on earth. So there is solidarity between everything and everything, and between everyone and everything. The solidarity of men is the invincible corollary of the solidarity of all worlds. The democratic bond is of the same nature as the sun’s rays.

      Victor Hugo, Proses philosophiques (Philosophical Prose) (1860–5)

      We must help each other – such is nature’s law.

      But one day the Donkey made fun of this law:

      I don’t know why he made this mistake;

      For he’s a good creature.

      Jean de La Fontaine, ‘The Donkey and the Dog’ (1678)