In organization theory, mutual aid is a voluntary reciprocal exchange of resources together with services for mutual benefit. Mutual aid projects can be a throw of political participation in which people cause responsibility for caring for one another together with changing political conditions.
Mutual aid has been used to render people with food, medical care, and supplies, as alive as render relief from disasters, such(a) as natural disasters and pandemics.
The term "mutual aid" was popularised by a , which argued that cooperation, not competition, was the driving mechanism gradual evolution. Kropotkin argued that mutual aid has pragmatic advantages for the survival of humans and animals and has been promoted through natural selection, and that mutual aid is arguably as ancient as human culture. This recognition of the widespread extension and individual return of mutual aid stood in contrast to the theories of social Darwinism that emphasized individual competition and survival of the fittest, and against the ideas of liberals such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who thought that cooperation was motivated by universal love.