Memes

Sure, humanity's cooperation has been a key factor for how we've evolved. So has the part played by labor in the transition from ape to man. I wasn't really denying Mutual Aid as important, more trying to provide a multi-sided understanding of it as its role in human development even today, and how it might play a role in the future.

Crack open a copy of Howard Zinn's "A People's History" and find out. He quotes the original Columbian explorers in how they found the native population. The conditions were downright utopian according to the Spanish. Their response to this paradise was to rape and plunder it.

And the raping and plundering never stopped, even 500 years later.

What came before capitalism was even uglier

No one is disputing that, in fact the communist manifesto praises capitalism for massively developing the productive forces at one point in time, it's just time to move on from it as it started to hinder the development of production.

yet reflects our nature as a species just the same

This is straight up a wrong, if our nature was being greedy, selfish, or an asshole everyone would have to conform to law, without exceptions, just like we all have to eat, shit and breathe. Those 3 things are actually part of our nature, everyone has to conform to these laws without exception.

It's more that what is "human nature" is malleable, and is ultimately determined by the systems humans find themselves in, and ultimately propels change to new modes of production. Feudalism gave birth to Capitalism.