I was gonna make a purely theory-focused response to this outlining how this conception of mutual aid is deeply flawed and counterproductive, having witnessed multiple times how this understanding of mutual aid actually leads to a very dysfunctional and frankly kinda dangerous method of revolutionary praxis. But I'm gonna try a different angle and talk about how this notion of mutual aid affects me. Me being a trans woman with extreme mental issues who is unable to find any stable work and cannot rely on family for financial support or even just shelter. Me being someone who is literally dependent on donations from friends and strangers on the internet to survive.
Many times over the years, I've had people who've donated to me leave notes or send me messages saying that their donation is an act of "mutual aid" or "solidarity". I don't take offense to it. I am grateful for people being considerate enough to donate in the first place. And I understand the message they're trying to convey by telling me that; that they consider their donation unconditional, that they want to support a fellow comrade, that they feel an obligation to poor people or trans women in particular and so on. But it doesn't matter if you say that the money you're sending me is "mutual aid". It's not mutual aid. It's money. You're giving me money. Nothing else.
Mutual aid is not you sending me $50 on venmo every now and again as an act of "solidarity". That's generosity. That's being kind and compassionate. But it's not mutual aid. Sending me money does not fundamentally change my situation. Mutual aid is not you sending me money. It's me not needing money. It's not you giving things to me out of the goodness of your heart, it's me taking things for myself.
If your mutual aid is just you sending me money once a month or whenever I'm in a fix, then who holds the power in that relationship? If my survival is dependent on your continued feeling of "solidarity", then who has the upper hand? I am dependent on all of my close friends, my close friends and my ex-girlfriend in particular all keep the lights on and try their best to keep me stable. But here's the thing: They are not dependent on me. They do not require me for their survival. At any point, if they're angry or fed up with me for whatever reason, they can stop donating to me. They can stop whenever they want. Do you know how awful that feels? Do you know how terrifying that is?
You become a burden. You feel like a burden. You have no power at all in your closest relationships. My best friend was in the same situation as me. She was completely dependent on her friends and family for basic survival. If her friends or her family members decided they had enough and didn't want to support her, she was shit out of luck. And sometimes, friends did turn on her and cut support for her. That hurt her bad. She felt like a burden. She once told me that she felt like a rodent. When she eventually took her life, there were many factors involved, but her deep feeling of helplessness, of feeling like a burden to everyone around her, was a major contributing factor. Sometimes I want to kill myself for exactly the same reason. I feel those thoughts intensely when it comes time to make another donation post.
There's no dignity to this "mutual aid". There is no empowerment. Being able to donate to someone in large sums or on a regular basis implies holding a degree of economic power over that person, and from then on, your relationship with that person is inherently centered on a power imbalance, no matter how much you genuinely love and care for that person. Capitalism is a cold place to live in. Even sincere, intimate relationships are distorted by the presence of money.
If you want to bring me genuine mutual aid, it isn't gonna be in the form of payment. Mutual aid is a communal network, not acts of selfless giving. In order for a communal network to function, there needs to be no power imbalances or power struggles within the network. That proscribes from the get go the utilization of benevolent donorship for purposes of building mutual aid. It could play an early role in mutual aid, but it cannot be the sole driver of the program. A much more serious model would focus on combatting insecurity on the field of production, not the field of distribution. In a word, it would mean creating interconnected and self-reliant marginalized communities that can assess its own needs, plan it's own initiatives, and essentially, feed itself and not have to ask other people to feed them instead. Already we are talking about something more complicated than two friends or two people on the internet. This is something that requires the active participation of large sections of marginalized communities in a given locale.
Mutual aid for me would mean me not having to beg on the internet for rent money anymore. It would mean poor people and trans women in my neighborhood including me in a web of housing security where I'm an active participant and organizer, where marginalized people in my neighborhood collectively guarantee that rent will always be paid, that I'll never have to ask about rent being paid, and that as a voice within this community, I have as much a say in this process as anyone else. And I do this by playing an active role in the mutual aid process in whatever form that may take, even if it's just organization and supervision of the mutual aid effort itself. But even this must be combatted with militant coordinated tenant organizing to ultimately expel landlords from the community so that rent won't need to be paid in the first place. Not "when the rev comes", but right now.
This post is now much longer than I intended it to be, and for lack of a good closing argument, let me say that I'm tired of being reliant on donations. I'm tired of asking my ex-gf for $600 every month when she has her own bills to worry about. This shit isn't solidarity to me. It's humiliation and destitution. At the heart of this is a leftist rebranding of the humiliation that I and countless other poor people have to go through every day, and I just do not have time for it anymore.
