Are there any historical examples of collective self-help?
Yes, in all societies we see working people joining together to practice mutual aid and solidarity. These take many forms, such as trade and industrial unions, credit unions and friendly societies, co-operatives and so on, but the natural response of working class people to the injustices of capitalism was to practice collective “self-help” in order to improve their lives and protect their friends, communities and fellow workers. Unfortunately, this “great tradition of working class self-help and mutual aid was written off, not just as irrelevant, but as an actual impediment, by the political and professional architects of the welfare state. . . The contribution that the recipients had to make to all this theoretical bounty was ignored as a mere embarrassment – apart, of course, for paying for it. . . The socialist ideal was rewritten as a world in which everyone was entitled to everything, but where nobody except the providers had any actual say about anything. We have been learning f
