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Pëtr Kropotkin and Mutual Aid

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Re: Pëtr Kropotkin and Mutual Aid

#41

Interesting. While reading this, I wondered idly if solidarity might be more acceptable phrasing than mutual aid in the US?

In French you would translate solidarité and entre-aide respectively each term, so they worth having each a dedicated word.

Actually I was surprised when I wanted to find a straight forward equivalent to "entre aide". It seems that "interhelp" is sufficiently obvious for having an organization taking this name, but this apparently not an idiomatic word per se.

Re: Pëtr Kropotkin and Mutual Aid

#42
post #28
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nestor Makhno considered himself a student of Kropotkin.

If anyone's unaware: famous Ukrainian anti-anti-semitist/anarchist revolutionary who lead a peasant revolt that supported farmer communes in much of Ukraine before getting crushed by both the White and Red Army pro-russian tankies hate him

fwiw, even Lyube has a song memorialising Makhno, Батька Махно, and I don't know if they're considered tankies, but they're definitely tankie-adjacent (they sang at the pro-"Z" concert at the start of the invasion, ffs).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRMfa6MSAaY

Re: Pëtr Kropotkin and Mutual Aid

#43
post #19

I produced a free ebook edition of Mutual Aid for Standard Ebooks last year: https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/peter-kropotkin/mutual-aid It's very readable and quite interesting. It aimed to have a veneer of science, when the science of animals and nature was still fairly undeveloped; and it succeeded in a sense, because its observations are still held in regard, but I think it succeeded much better as a work of phi…

> mankind has demonstrated through thousands of years of history that tribes of men can't really cooperate in any grand sense

I'd argue the fact that humans can live in reasonably stable polities of more than a billion people proves, and in an economic space of practically the entire planet (globalisation!) proves we absolutely can cooperate at grand, epic scales.Whether or not that means Kropotkin is right is another thing, but we're built for cooperation.

Re: Pëtr Kropotkin and Mutual Aid

#44
post #25
post #19

I produced a free ebook edition of Mutual Aid for Standard Ebooks last year: https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/peter-kropotkin/mutual-aid It's very readable and quite interesting. It aimed to have a veneer of science, when the science of animals and nature was still fairly undeveloped; and it succeeded in a sense, because its observations are still held in regard, but I think it succeeded much better as a work of phi…

In what ways has mankind demonstrated that "tribes of men" can't cooperate? Humans have been able to live in large decentralized polities for millennia and modern archeology strongly backs this up. Göbekli Tepe (~11kya), the still-standing mammoth houses of North Eastern Europe (~15kya), or perhaps best exemplified by "the new archaic" or "monuments without kings"[^0] which is a term used by archeologists to describe…

Mutual Aid Among Animals mentions the existence of Defectors. I would argue both that the existence of the internet in particular and civilisation in general is a sign that great numbers of people can cooperate effectively, and that the woeful Covid response is a sign that small numbers of people defecting can be ruinous.

The best laid plans of mice and men, therefore, would seem to be those that (a) allow Cooperators to combine with at least linear effect, and (b) are resistant to sizeable Defecting populations.

Re: Pëtr Kropotkin and Mutual Aid

#45

It's really weird seeing letter ё in English language title. I'd rather spell his name as "Pyotr Kropotkin" or even "Peter Kropotkin", following a commong convention to spell Russian tzar Pyotr Romanov's as Peter.

Fully agree with the view that ё seems out of place and looks like TETЯIS of atari days. Never the less I think you should be careful when generalizing monarch's name conventions more widely. For example King Charles III is called Karl in Russia according to tradition of using german names for monarchs. I never saw this convention applied to common folk names, and any other Charles would be called Charles e.g. Charle…

When it comes to English kings, Charles becoming Karl is not that bad, comparing to James, which somehow becomes Яков (Iakov?!). It is also a mostly one way effect, as Russian names are usually transliterated into English without some special weirdness, even royal names.

Anyway, it is very common to transliterate Пётр as Peter, though Pyotr seems even more common.

Re: Pëtr Kropotkin and Mutual Aid

#46

Interesting. While reading this, I wondered idly if solidarity might be more acceptable phrasing than mutual aid in the US?

In French you would translate solidarité and entre-aide respectively each term, so they worth having each a dedicated word. Actually I was surprised when I wanted to find a straight forward equivalent to "entre aide". It seems that "interhelp" is sufficiently obvious for having an organization taking this name, but this apparently not an idiomatic word per se.

After 5 minutes L1 reflection, my most idiomatic translation for « entre-aide » would be not a word but the phrase "one hand washes the other".

Re: Pëtr Kropotkin and Mutual Aid

#47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fully agree with the view that ё seems out of place and looks like TETЯIS of atari days. Never the less I think you should be careful when generalizing monarch's name conventions more widely. For example King Charles III is called Karl in Russia according to tradition of using german names for monarchs. I never saw this convention applied to common folk names, and any other Charles would be called Charles e.g. Charle…

When it comes to English kings, Charles becoming Karl is not that bad, comparing to James, which somehow becomes Яков (Iakov?!). It is also a mostly one way effect, as Russian names are usually transliterated into English without some special weirdness, even royal names. Anyway, it is very common to transliterate Пётр as Peter, though Pyotr seems even more common.

>James, which somehow becomes Яков (Iakov?!)

Quoting Wikipedia: "It is a modern descendant, through Old French James, of Vulgar Latin Iacomus, a derivative version of Latin Iacobus, Latin form of the Hebrew name Jacob"

Re: Pëtr Kropotkin and Mutual Aid

#48
post #19

I produced a free ebook edition of Mutual Aid for Standard Ebooks last year: https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/peter-kropotkin/mutual-aid It's very readable and quite interesting. It aimed to have a veneer of science, when the science of animals and nature was still fairly undeveloped; and it succeeded in a sense, because its observations are still held in regard, but I think it succeeded much better as a work of phi…

What was your experience like producing the book? Have you done it before? Did you previously read the book before producing?

If you already have a blog post or something I'd love to read it :)

Re: Pëtr Kropotkin and Mutual Aid

#50

It's really weird seeing letter ё in English language title. I'd rather spell his name as "Pyotr Kropotkin" or even "Peter Kropotkin", following a commong convention to spell Russian tzar Pyotr Romanov's as Peter.

Diaeresis is used in English as well. The New Yorker writes “coordinate” as “coördinate”. It has the same meaning as in many European writing systems — “pronounce independently”. So it’s like “co ore” not like “core”. It’s also common to see it in loan words and proper names, even with a different meaning.

In Russian ë is a completely separate letter pronounced "yo". This is non-intuitive to English speakers, which is why the name in question is almost always anglicized as Pyotr, not "Pëtr".
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