Mutual aid societies have been around as long as monasteries. In Roman times, they were called Colleges, in medieval times they were called Guilds, in China they were called Tongs
Medieval guilds were an early basis for many Western mutual benefit societies. A guild charter document from 1200 states:
“To become a Guildsman it was necessary to pay certain initiation fees,..(and to take) an oath of fealty to the fraternity, swearing to observe its laws, to uphold its privileges, not to divulge its counsels, to obey its officers, and not to aid any non-guildsman under cover of the newly-acquired ‘freedom.'” C Gross, The Gild Merchant, 1927
During the last couple of centuries, mutual aid societies were known as Benevolent Societies, Fraternal Lodges, and Service Clubs.
While communes tended to be established in rural areas and focused on agrarian production, Mutual Aid societies tended to be urban and focused on trades and industries.
Before the modern era, governments did not provide social services to the poor, working, and middle classes during either personal or national emergencies. Communities organized to provide such services themselves through the formation of Mutual Aid Societies. Members of these organizations paid a small monthly membership fee and in return received such services as medical care, disability funds, emergency food and shelter, retirement and funeral costs, and even business loans.
Mutual aid was one of the cornerstones of social welfare in the United States until the early 20th century. The fraternal or friendly societies played a leading role in providing the social services we expect from governments and insurance companies today.
It is estimated that one-third of adult American males belonged to lodges in 1910. There was a fraternal organization that provided for virtually every major service of the modern welfare state including orphanages, hospitals, job exchanges, homes for the elderly, unemployment insurance, health insurance, pensions and scholarship programs.
But societies also gave benefits that were much less quantifiable. By joining a lodge, an initiate adopted, at least implicitly, a set of survival values.
In the 1902 book: Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution, author Peter Kropotkin[i] aptly summarizes the history and importance of these associations, as follows.
“Mutual aid societies predate most functions of the modern state. They’re at least as old as armies, but their mission is life, not death. For millennia, people have banded together to provide each other with health care, pensions, unemployment aid, investment capital, buying power, aid to the poor, disaster relief, old age care, child care, culture, entertainment, political efficacy, education, food, shelter and livelihoods.
Benefits are not necessarily monetary and may include services and social activities. Members of mutual aid societies have a democratic voice in the organization and have an equal opportunity to receive benefits, depending on their needs and the needs of others.”
The fraternal societies of the 18th to early 20th centuries called themselves by such funny names as: The Odd Fellows, the Fraternal Order of Eagles, the Knights of Pythias, the Loyal Order of Moose, the Household of Ruth, and the International Order of Twelve Knights.
They observed quasi-mystical rituals and customs, greeted each other with secret handshakes and were often known for their bizarre headgear that included antlers, fezzes, and pseudo-Native American headdresses.
Their defining features were “an autonomous system of lodges, a democratic form of internal government, a ritual, and the provision of mutual aid for members and their families. Fraternal orders were astonishingly diverse, self-selecting their members by geography, ethnicity, religion, or, like the Odd Fellows, nearly no criteria at all except “good character.”
Unlike the religious and hippie communes, the members of the fraternal orders were not anarchists. The orders tended to be organized in a rigidly hierarchical way, and their leaders loved to boast of their capitalist idealism and denounce radicals and revolutionaries.
Anarchists have always projected mutual aid as the basic organizing principle of a non-hierarchical, non-authoritarian society. By contrast the fraternal orders embraced the capitalist structure that cut across classes and gave immigrants and people of color a tool for advancing themselves when government and the capitalist system were both geared to keep them in their place.
Contrary to the major problems of fraud encountered in contemporary government-based welfare programs, the early American versions of mutual aid societies maintained an ethical organization by policing their own members to ensure benefits went to those who were legitimately in need. Such societies were also strict in their membership, permitting admittance not only by character but also by sex and race. However, this did not stop people of all demographics from starting mutual aid societies. There were societies for men, women, African Americans, Hispanics, Polish, German, Jewish, and others.
Historians tend to point to the Depression as the era of decline of the fraternal orders, although some continued to provide the same set of benefits to a dwindling number of members into the 1960s. Many were forced to raise their dues, leaving jobless members unable to pay—even though all the biggest orders found ways not to cut benefits.
Government-run social programs, especially Social Security, unemployment insurance and Aid to Families with Dependent Children, diminished the need for independent mutual aid societies. And when the government started providing tax credits for employers to create pension and health benefit plans for their workers, many companies jumped at the offer since it meant they could effectively defer a portion of workers’ wages until after they retired.
With the rise of big government and the welfare state, these old societies were effectively legislated out of existence. However, we currently face an undeniable decline in social and medical services, emergency services that quickly become overwhelmed by even minor natural disasters, an increasing financial depression, and the very real possibility of a social breakdown.
Unless we are somehow able to reverse the
decline of western civilization, the only remaining solution to these threats
is to resurrect the concept of the mutual aid societies wherein we rely on one
another for emergency assistance rather than an impersonal and uncaring
government bureaucracy that is increasingly unable to provide such assistance.
[i] Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution (1955 paperback (reprinted 2005), includes Kropotkin’s 1914 preface,