Mutual Aid: A Factor in Evolution, by Kropotkin

Peter Kropotkin, one of the most famous anarchists in world history, wrote extensively on the conditions of possibility for an anarchist society. In what is widely considered his most provocative book, he argues that the Darwinism of the age has overly influenced society to accept competition as the basis of all life, giving legitimacy to the social Darwinism popular in political and economic culture. Kropotkin argued that if we observed nature we easily saw the prevalence of cooperation as a biological force, and that cooperation and symbiosis is in fact a norm in a nature that seeks to minimize the destructively competitive encounters. This view, long a marginal scientific position, has gained much recent attention in scientific fields dealing with evolution (evolutionary biology, ecology, etc.).

This is an impressive book that helped keep alive a rare intellectual current into the modern day. Well worth reading.