Plants, insects, birds and mammals all regularly ‘beneficially associate’ (a non-human natural form of co-operation) much more than is realised by popularised notions of nature ‘red in tooth and claw’. Instances of parasitism and predation are undoubtedly there but nowhere near the quantity and scope of beneficial associations. Herds, flocks, colonies, shoals and bands all provide evidence among animal life of mutual and beneficial association of the same species. But a prolific type of beneficial association (termed symbiosis) also takes place between different species. Thus R. Weeson notes:

Species of fish, crabs, shrimps and birds clean other species, picking out parasites and getting a free meal in return. Antelopes and baboons keep close together because one has better hearing, the other better defence. Trees and fungi symbiotically associate below ground level. In fact the whole planet, when not disturbed by unshackled industrial production, consumption and pollution, is bound together in a symbiotic interdependence. As biologist Lynn Margulis prompts us to consider:

Our own bodies, made up of millions of bacteria, gut flora, mitochondria – all living, co-operating individual cells which associate beneficially and symbiotically – are vivid evidence of this phenomena in all forms of natural life. The human species is also a complex product of nature and so it is not surprising that in our species evolution we replicated beneficial associations, but on a more conscious level. Ethnological evidence suggests that early groups of Homo sapiens were also classless, beneficial associations, in the form of hunter-gatherer groups, pastoralists or cultivators. For over four million years, our human ancestors produced and re-produced themselves as groups, to survive, and as a species interacting with other groups to share, trade and celebrate. True, there were tribal rivalries, skirmishes and even heated battles, but apart from a few peoples, these instances were usually short-lived and infrequent. Those who would have us believe that early humans were predominantly engaged in aggression need to explain how facial muscles developed and how languages and technologies spread, if the predominant mode of interaction was warlike. Our species would not have needed to develop the many facial muscles required to smile, raise eyebrows, grimace and frown, if all our ancestors were bent on doing was hitting and killing each other. For permanent war-like purposes a scream and a big stick would suffice. Specialised throat muscles, talking and languages, particularly regional ones, could have only really developed their complexity in an atmosphere of sustained co-operation. Evidence suggests that the patterns of behaviour we call beneficial association, symbiosis and reciprocity have served nature and the human species well for these millions of years. Only in the last ten thousand years have ‘civilisations’ based upon military might and forced labour progressively interrupted and subordinated this pattern of symbiosis and reciprocity. Yet even in modern exploitative societies such as capitalist inspired ones, reciprocity and fairness have not been entirely obliterated. Most of us dislike the competition, the aggression, the ecological and human exploitation, the indifference and the injustice upon which capitalism is built. Most of us hate to be disrespected, ripped-off, exploited, degraded, humiliated or betrayed, even though capitalist society has made these its cultural, social, political and economic norms. So even thousands of years of oppressive ‘civilisations’ have not entirely destroyed our ‘natural’, four million year-old human and humane inclinations. Beneficial association, symbiosis and reciprocity have not only assured our past as a species, but will also assure our future, and that of the planet's other inhabitants, if we develop and return to these patterns of behaviour in a post-capitalist society.