Here’s a revolutionary idea for a post-Covid-19 America: neighbors helping neighbors, delivering meals to shut-ins, and strengthening common bonds. According to Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, this voluntarism—called “mutual aid”—would represent a stunning break from American tradition. “There are two ways this can go for us,” Ocasio-Cortez recently told The New Yorker’s Jia Tolentino. “We can buy into the old frameworks of, when a disaster hits, it’s every person for themselves. Or we can affirmatively choose a different path. And we can build a different world, even if it’s just in our neighborhood, even if it’s just on our block.”
Though it may come as news to Ocasio-Cortez—an avowed democratic socialist—and her progressive supporters, “the old frameworks” in America included precisely the kinds of assistance she’s touting. The tradition of American mutual aid long predates the welfare state championed by the Left. The choice that she maps out reflects the decidedly nonsocialist views of none other than Alexis de Tocqueville, who celebrated America’s capacity for spontaneous association to address local problems nearly 200 years ago. Any progressive celebration of mutual-aid networks is a welcome, if ironic, acknowledgement of America’s self-help muscle memory.
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