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T

Ted

October 27 2013

Anarchism: The name given to a principle or theory of life and conduct under which society is conceived without government – harmony in such a society being obtained, not by submission to law, or by obedience to any authority, but by free agreements concluded between the various groups, territorial and professional, freely constituted for the sake of production and consumption, as also for the satisfying of the infinite variety of needs and aspirations of a civilized being. This is how Kropotkin defined anarchism in 1905, for the 11th edition of the Encyclopedia Britanica. <img src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/hostedimages/1512181434i/24581149.jpg" class="gr-hostedUserImg" loading="lazy"> biography and introduction Peter Kropotkin. Russian prince, geographer, and outstanding anarcho-Communist writer. Raised as Imperial Cadet, later a cavalry officer; studied mathematics and geography. In 1872 visited Switzerland and joined the anarchist International Workers Association. Imprisoned for agitation in Russia in 1874. Escaped from jail and moved through England, Switzerland, and France (where he was imprisoned for five years). Then settled in England, where he wrote <a href="https://goodreads.com/book/show/802268.Memoirs_Of_A_Revolutionist" title="Memoirs Of A Revolutionist by Pyotr Kropotkin" rel="noopener">Memoirs of a Revolutionist</a> and <a href="https://goodreads.com/book/show/8200737.The_Great_French_Revolution_1789_1793" title="The Great French Revolution 1789-1793 by Pyotr Kropotkin" rel="noopener">The Great French Revolution 1789-1793</a>. Returned to Russia after the February Revolution. (Adapted from glossary entry for Kropotkin in Victor Serge's <a href="https://goodreads.com/book/show/189954.Memoirs_of_a_Revolutionary" title="Memoirs of a Revolutionary by Victor Serge" rel="noopener">Memoirs of a Revolutionary</a>) When I looked through several books I have that deal with anarchism directly or indirectly, I found The Conquest of Bread (CoB) mentioned more often than any of Kropotkin's other writings. As an example, in Colin Ward's book <a href="https://goodreads.com/book/show/61002.Anarchism_A_Very_Short_Introduction" title="Anarchism A Very Short Introduction by Colin Ward" rel="noopener">Anarchism: A Very Short Introduction</a> he notes that the Mexican peasant revolutionary Emiliano Zapata was "made literate" by the anarchist Ricardo Flores Magon, through reading and discussing this book with him. Before getting into the book, here's a list of some of Kropotkin's works, taken from Rudolf Rocker's bibliography in <a href="https://goodreads.com/book/show/51353.Anarcho_Syndicalism_Theory_and_Practice" title="Anarcho-Syndicalism Theory and Practice by Rudolf Rocker" rel="noopener">Anarcho-Syndicalism Theory and Practice</a>. 1. Anarchist Communism: Its Basis and Principles (1891) 2. The Conquest of Bread (1892) 3. The State: Its Role in History (1898) 4. Fields, Factories, and Workshops (1899) 5. Memoirs of a Revolutionist (1899) 6. Modern Science and Anarchism (1900) 7. Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution (1902) 8. The Modern State (1912) 9. Ethics: Origin and Development (1924) Of these, all but #8 can be easily obtained even today, a century and more after Kropotkin wrote them. Here on Goodreads, Conquest of Bread has been rated by over 1800 readers; #7 by over 1300; #5 by about 400; a couple not on the list by about 300. All others are near 100, or fewer. Thus I would venture to say that the book here reviewed is Kropotkin's most widely read book, at least in the 21st century. organization and main ideas A list of chapters, with a few comments. I Our Riches. - Introduces the idea that the immense riches of the contemporary world are the result of the labor of countless workers in the past, and that they thus belong to all people now living, not to simply those who hold title to them. II Well-Being for All III Anarchist Communism - What is meant by this, and how it differs from Communalism IV Expropriation - Why an anarchist revolution must expropriate things from those who claim "ownership" of things. V Food VI Dwellings VII Clothing - These three chapters lay out the reasons, methods, and justifications by which the common people may, on their own initiative and action, provide the essentials of food, dwellings, and clothing to all VIII Ways and Means - Why the current system will not and cannot supply for all IX The Need for Luxury - By no means will items of "luxury" be no longer available in an anarchist society. There will be ample opportunity for workers to engage in production and distribution of such items for all who want them. X Agreeable Work - How it can come about, because of great increases in productivity in modern times, that no one will be forced to work as wage-slaves now do. Women will benefit as they will no longer be forced to work only in the home, as even less than a wage-slave. XI Free Agreement - Arguments for, and examples of, the way in which free agreements among groups of people can effect the benefits which, some claim, can only be provided with a State which dictates. The State is not needed. XII Objections - How the objections urged against an anarchist society can be met XIII The Collectivist Wages System - Why it must come to pass that people in an anarchist society no longer be subject to different wages, depending on the type of work they do. XIV Consumption and Production - The correct way to analyze Political Economy. Rather than a description of "facts", it should be a science: "The study of the needs of mankind, and the means of satisfying them with the least possible waste of human energy." XV The Division of Labor - With modern methods of agriculture and production, each citizen need contribute a modest number of hours each week to work shared by all, to produce the essentials. Beyond that, each can choose to devote effort to what interests them, be it art, science, the production of luxuries, or nothing at all. XVI The Decentralization of Industry - The concentration of particular industries as the specialization of certain peoples, countries, areas, is unnecessary and counterproductive in the modern world. XVII Agriculture - This chapter is a detailed accounting of the acreage and human hours required, using modern agricultural methods, to allow the three and one-half million citizens of the two departments (Seine, Seine-et-Oise) round Paris, with their 1,507,300 acres, to produce all the corn and cereals, milk, cattle, vegetables and fruit that the population requires. Chiefly interesting for the way that Kropotkin argues foe the self-sufficiency of such a population, and the amount of the land left over for houses, roads, parks, and forests. Anarchist Communism & common inheritance Kropotkin's use of "Communism" is not to be confused with what we think of when we consider the Soviet and Chinese systems of the twentieth century; rather, he is using the term in the manner coined by the French philosopher Victor d'Hupay in 1777. d'Hupay defines this lifestyle as a "commune" and envisions that its members "share all economic and material products among themselves, so that all may benefit from everybody's work". That is, "Communism" for Kropotkin is organization and living by the principles of the commune. Or, as Kropotkin himself says, it is "Communism without government – the Communism of the Free. It is the synthesis of the two ideals pursued by humanity throughout the ages – Economic and Political Liberty." Kropotkin returned to Russia after the Revolution. He was not particularly happy with what he observed, but was of an age that he felt precluded him from attempting to actively engage in what was going on. Here is a link to a first-hand account of a meeting that he had in 1919 with Lenin. <a target="_blank" rel="noopener nofollow" href="https://www.bolshevik.info/meeting-lenin-kropotkin-bonc-brujevic1919.htm">https://www.bolshevik.info/meeting-le...</a> "Anarchist Communism" is the title of the third chapter of CoB. Kropotkin contrasts this idea with that of "the Collectivists". These are the followers of the other major anarchist theoretician of the second half of the nineteenth century, Mikail Bakunin (1814-1876), who is taken as the founder of "collectivist anarchism". The aspect of Bakunin's system that disturbs Kropotkin here is "that payment proportional to the hours of labor rendered by each would be an ideal arrangement… suffice it to say here, leaving ourselves free to return to the subject later [which he does, particularly in XIII The Collectivist Wages System], that the Collectivist ideal appears to us untenable in a society which considers the instruments of labor as a common inheritance. Starting from this principle, such a society would find itself forced from the very outset to abandon all forms of wages." And what of "common inheritance"? This is an idea that Kropotkin brings up again and again. Introduced in chapter I Our Riches, he returns to it in chapter III: <blockquote>In the present state of industry, when everything is interdependent, when each branch of production is knit up with all the rest, the attempt to claim an Individualist origin for the products of industry is absolutely untenable. The astonishing perfection attained by the textile or mining industries in civilized countries is due to the simultaneous development of a thousand other industries, great and small, to the extension of the railroad system, to inter-oceanic navigation, to the manual skill of thousands of workers, to a certain standard of culture reached by the working class as a whole – to the labours, in short, of men in every corner of the globe. The Italians who died of cholera while making the Suez Canal, or of anchyloses in the St. Gothard Tunnel, and the Americans who were mowed down by shot and shell while fighting for the abolition of slavery, have helped to develop the cotton industry of France and England, as well as the work-girls who languish in the factories of Manchester and Rouen, and the inventor who (following the suggestion of some worker) succeeds in improving the looms. How, then, shall we estimate the share of each in the riches which ALL contribute to amass?</blockquote>The property, factories, machines, farmland, roads, railways, buildings, housing, which have been financed, developed, manufactured, built by the toil and efforts of countless workers, inventors – many compensated richly for their capital contributions, vast numbers of others, particularly those who actually did the work, expended the effort given a pittance (even nothing) by which they could barely sustain themselves and their families … all these things must be looked up as the common inheritance of those alive today, not as the property of the descendants of those who have already been compensated to an unjust extent. No need for government Men do not need to be told by social or political higher ups how to live, how to solve problems that require more than simply personal attention – there are ample examples of free associations of men and groups of men that have made significant decisions on how an important enterprise can be organized, and this has always been done simply through discussion, bargaining, and coming to an agreement on what would in fact benefit everyone concerned to the best extent. This idea is explored most fully in XI Free Agreement. Kropotkin tells how the European railway network came into being through free agreements between the scores of separate companies that had developed small pieces of the system, then connected them together, established routes and schedules, figured out how to allow freight to move over the entire network without having to unload and reload at company "boundaries" – all without the intervention of any Central authority or State Agency. He goes through many other examples of things that have been organized by free agreement of people who simply saw a need for something to be done, and did it: the way that the Dutch settled questions of canal access; the similar way that shipowners settled question of boat access along the Rhine; the establishment of the British Lifeboat Association, manned and financed by volunteer seamen; and the founding, staffing, organization, and activities of the Red Cross. On revolutionary failures 1871 the Paris Commune In this instance, which is discussed in both the Preface which Kropotkin wrote in 1913, and in different chapters of the original book, the beginning of the end occurred when groups of the revolutionaries separated off to make decisions which they deemed needed to be made FOR THE PEOPLE. Kropotkin insists that THE PEOPLE do not need this, that they will make the correct decisions for themselves. The "decision makers" begin to argue about what needs to be done, what rules and regulations need to be effected and put into place, and meanwhile … the people STARVE because their immediate daily NEEDS (which are of course provided for the decision makers in their own privileged ways) are completely disregarded. These self-appointed decision makers will provide the people, not with the food, clothing, and shelter that they need, but with EDICTS THEY MUST OBEY. And so goes another failed revolution. something that occurred to me Despite the fact that we in the 21st century live in a world very different from that of the late 18th century, there is much that Kropotkin urges that seems to have application today. Particularly, with various contemporary movements (such as the Transition movement), which emphasize localized aspects of society, more support for local businesses, local food production, CSAs (Community Supported Agriculture), local banking, and so forth ... and then with the possibilities of society coming apart at the seams at some future point ... Much of what Kropotkin says may be extremely applicable in some future. A book to be passed on into that future. Very highly recommended. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Previous review: <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1290143859" rel="nofollow noopener">Freedom From Fear</a> Next review: <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/248919300" rel="nofollow noopener">The Fall</a> sorry to say, ... Earlier review: <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1205265070" rel="nofollow noopener">Greek Mathematics</a> classic history, Thomas Heath Previous library review: <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/248927231" rel="nofollow noopener">Anarchism</a> VSI Next library review: <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/335715570" rel="nofollow noopener">Nations and Nationalism</a> Hobsbawm

T

Tinea

February 02 2012

Uplifting, light, and truly enjoyable! While I stand by an earlier assertion that best way to learn about anarchism nowadays is through <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/129868.Eric_Holt_Gimenez" rel="nofollow noopener">radical</a> <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5086406.H_C_Flores" rel="nofollow noopener">permaculture</a> <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12964373-the-transition-companion" rel="nofollow noopener">ecologists</a> and <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/10697.bell_hooks" rel="nofollow noopener">intersectional</a> <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/230721.Incite_Women_of_Color_Against_Violence" rel="nofollow noopener">women</a> of <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/516921.Gloria_E_Anzald_a" rel="nofollow noopener">color</a> <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/116764.Barbara_Ransby" rel="nofollow noopener">feminists</a>, I was surprised to find The Conquest of Bread is really worth reading, too. In terms of your old white European male anarcho-communists, Kropotkin is the go-to guy; I'd put him ahead of Emma Goldman for timid students of anarchist theory, since he focuses more on practicalities and vision of the future while she brings instead critique of the present and passionate calls to arms. Feel free to skim the pages of statistics and outdated examples Kropotkin uses to support his hypotheses. According to Kropotkin, the means to conquer bread is permaculture: intensive, small-scale, urban, soil-building, ecologically efficient agriculture based on an scientific assessment of "what are the needs of all, and what are the means of satisfying them"-- steps one and two an ecological design process. He calls for doing the least amount of work necessary to meet material needs (echoed in the present by both <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10998908-work" rel="nofollow noopener">anarchists</a> and <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/976905.The_One_Straw_Revolution" rel="nofollow noopener">permaculturalists</a>), with all participating in labor so that that everyone may have free time and energy to pursue passions like science, art, music, writing, etc etc etc, the enjoyable productivity that Kropotkin reminds us so many people take up when they have time freed from draining work weeks. The aim, in his words, is to "Produce the greatest amount of goods necessary to the well-being of all, with the least possible waste of human energy." Elegantly efficient. There are other lessons in here. Kropotkin argues in favor of free association and diversity and decentralization of production, and against coercion and centralized authority, always with examples and evidence to support his claims, but also always with a heartfelt uplifting of human creativity, inclinations toward kindness and mutual support, and general respect for the mass of people being competent and able. Finally, he argues for "the need for luxury." It is this acknowledgement of the importance of happiness that I think makes Kroptkin and anarchism so much more embedded in reality than other social theories, including capitalism's pursuit of competitive self-interest. We want bread but we want roses too-- Kropotkin says start there, with our needs and desires, and then figure out the best means of meeting them. [For the <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/774982-feb-mar-the-conquest-of-bread-kropotkin" rel="nofollow noopener">(A) book club</a>]

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E. G.

June 27 2018

Introduction & Notes, by David Priestland Further Reading --The Conquest of Bread Notes

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Sean Mccarrey

July 07 2012

This book was thoroughly disappointing, especially after reading Memoirs of a Revolutionist, which was an incredible book. This book however, was pretty much a 279 page rant about what a perfect society would look like, and what was wrong with the industrialized world at that time, rather than how these things could realistically be achieved. One reason for this is, as Kropotkin points out, was that these anarchist ideals could be achieved rather easily once some great revolution had occurred. Humanity only need to catch a glimpse of some efficient anarchist organization and they would fall in line. It's strange then, that Kropotkin gives example after example of where anarchist principles already exist in organizations of that period, be it the Red Cross, various communes, the British Life Boat Association, Russian peasant communes, the Royal Society of Zoology, etc. I wonder if these organizations were so well founded, and it would only take humanity glimpsing them during a period of revolution, why then, did the French not turn to anarchism in 1793, 1848, or 1871? For that matter, with the Soviets of the Russian Revolution that decided things in consensus, and ran their factories and farms efficiently without outside intervention, particularly of the State (such as the Kronstadt sailors), why was anarchism so easily defeated by state-sponsord Communism? The answer lies in the fact that people are fully engrossed in the systems that they are a part of. Just because the oppressors and their tools are shattered does not mean that people stop thinking in certain manners and change towards whichever way the wind blows. Humanity is cultured and steeped in systems of capitalism, and state run systems, to the point where are very cities are designed upon the premise of the good of the state, as Kropotkin points out. Why then, would he expect people to readily abandon that system when they have had little education to the contrary, and even if they do try to change the status-quo they will be unfamiliar with the systems of anarchism until they are fully educated in them. This can be seen in the case of Occupy Wall Street. And in Occupy Wall Street one can see why his simplistic prognosis for revolution being a sudden and necessary cure-all failed. While organizers of the movement in various cities did attempt to make some form of change, they were often stymied by a lack of knowledge of their own consensus system (General Assembly), and that made it all too easy for those with enough will to wreck havoc on the organizational structure, especially when no one involved even seemed to be aware that the movement was fundamentally anarchist (at least outside of New York). So when I read Kropotkin's ideas about a spontaneous committee arising to address the cities need for food and supply, I do have to laugh. In reality, this would become so complicated, even if it did happen there would surely be so much infighting among organizations and power players that nothing of value would have gotten done. Kropotkin himself must have seen this system fall apart during his last days in the Russian Revolution. I wish this book would have been better, but as it stands, it is a lot of pie-in-the-sky BS.

B

Brando

June 16 2017

I now know how to find bread

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cee

March 04 2017

FULLY AUTOMATED LUXURY COMMUNISM

D

Duarte

April 06 2020

Ah yes, The Conquest of Bread. The Bread Book. Every anarchist knows it, every anarchist has read it (supposedly - I'll get into that in a second). Leftist Youtube is even named after it - Breadtube. A small book that is a shining argument against both the horrible, currently world-destroying mode of production that is capitalism and the nightmare that was the endless 20th century Stalinist regimes... or is it? See, anarchists today, they don't actually talk about production. They talk about "freedom", "direct action", they care about the typical left liberal social justice topics (transgenderism and so on). Anarchism is, for them, almost always some far off utopia, that will come no matter what (ironically replicating the worst of Marxist teleology) that is irrelevant to the matter at hand, and as such, talking about production becomes too just the topic of idle musings while actual action is either mindless action, often times just kicking trash cans and beating up whatever right-wing idiot cares enough about culture wars to go after while chanting "we're revolutionaries!" (the result of the "we don't need theory, we need to act!" mentality, which is very common with the anarchists today - we'll see why this is nonsense soon). What does the fact that production is seen as either irrelevant "future plans" or not considered at all by anarchists with The Conquest of Bread, which all said anarchists tell us to read as some sort of all ending argument? Because, quite in simple terms, this book is about nothing but production. Yes, this book does not busy itself with historical analysis, how society works, how the economy works, how revolutions work and so on. It does not concern itself with the hows and whys but simply the what, and that what is: how can we immediately abolish the state and meet everyone's material needs, doing away with money, the division of labor, etc? Well, not like this! See, we can ignore the fact that modern anarchists do not care about production and have no real economic doctrine and so on, that does not bear on the work itself (after all, the worst anti-Marxists all not only call themselves Marxists but endlessly ramble about "anti-revisionism" in a truly incredibly example of psychological projection, as they vulgarize Marx's work as to make it unrecognizable). However, the matter of fact is that The Conquest of Bread is neither correct factually (as in, Kropotkin's analysis is just wrong to the core) nor is it correct as a revolutionary programme (as in, a revolution that actually held these principles seriously would be annihilated). Let's see why. The main reason is that Kropotkin does not start his analysis from any real material conditions: anarcho-communism, for him, is a set of ideals that will magically happen after revolution, and that reality will just have to adjust itself to these ideals. The core of his thesis is essentially moralistic (X must be done because it is morally correct), which is always a fundamentally bankrupt methodology, because morals are not in way "objective". What we find moral and right is of little concern to material reality - that we think it's right that everyone has everything they want has no bearing on the factuality of whether that is possible or not, which Kropotkin just does not care about. How capitalism works and thus how anarcho-communism would come out of capitalism is then not just poorly explained, it is just not explained at all. As such, no real argument is made here besides a moral utopian one, which you either already agree with or you are convinced but only in the same meaningless moralistic way (I have a great deal of respect for the early utopian socialists, but this is actually more primitive than the very rough, raw and bizarre work of Charles Fourier, which still has its unique insights. The point is to go beyond the utopians, but this only goes even more backwards). Revolution wise, it wouldn't work for a variety of reasons. I think it was best and most succinctly put by Bukharin and Preobrazhensky in ABC of Communism: The essential difference consists in this, that the anarchists are far more concerned with dividing up than with the organization of production; and that they conceive of the organization of production as taking the form, not of a huge cooperative commonwealth, but of a great number of "free," small, self-governing communes. It need hardly be said that such a social system would fail to liberate mankind from nature's yoke, for in it the forces of production would not be developed even to the degree to which they have been developed under capitalism. This is the real problem, ultimately: A common cliche from the braindead "left unity" types is that anarchists and communists want the same thing, they just think that there are different ways of going about it. This is false: Communists want the abolishment of commodity production - production for direct use rather than production for profit, which is best done by a centralization of the means of production into the hands of the proletariat. What the anarchists want is a federation of an uncountable amount of "free communes" all producing for themselves and each other, which is not just horribly inefficient - it is downright impossible in both revolutionary practice and as an actual economy after an hypothetical anarcho-communist revolution. As a revolution, well, how is revolution meant to be carried out without a state? Perhaps that's the least damning aspect of anarchism - the state is just a moral category, not an actual political theory. So the state is never even defined as, say, the mechanism of government through which class antagonisms are resolved until they collapse through revolution and either the relations to production or the mode of production outright change. For many anarchists, "the state" is simply any sort of central government, and the notion that a revolution without such a thing or even that an economy without a central government is possible, or even that a central government means "oppressive" because of the old idiotic moralist platitude that "hierarchy = oppression". Let us talk economics: Kropotkin just gives you examples of how much a few people can do, and it happens to be quite a lot, so only 5 hours for a fully employed community would be enough to clothe and feed and house people, etc. However, how is the quantity of what is to be produced decided? There's no central government, and Kropotkin is obviously not arguing for central planning, just communes, so... what? We just farm everything that we can, at all times? We extract everything that we can? What about things like computers? Since we don't plan them, what happens, you just make one if you want one? Or we just make a random number of them and make more when they run out? What about recycling old computers' parts for new ones? Do we just make new PCs with new materials as with the capitalist model, instead of making a circular economy, where new materials are made with recycled parts of old computers? Presumably not, since that would require centralized government apparatuses (which means "the state" for the anarchists - not for the Marxists). What about crisis solutions? COVID-19 is ravaging the world as of now, and it's authoritarian, Capitalism With Asian Values countries, China and specially Vietnam, that proved the most effective in curbing it. This would be even more efficiently done in communism, where profits do not matter because they just aren't part of social reality anymore, but in anarchism, it would just ravage the world with no central world-wide government apparatuses. And that example is ultimately a good microcosm for my point about anarchism and this book: Communists care about material needs, anarchists care about abstract ideals like "freedom". Who cares about having central apparatuses to take care of deadly pandemics when that (somehow) encroaches on "freedom". This book really is a certain kind of poison - to someone looking for radical theory, it turns them away from analysis and into utopian dreamlands. Instead of making someone realize that revolution is a horrible thing that must none-the-less be done, it turns them into what is essentially a libertarian caring for "freedom" above all. Worse of all, so utopian is the message, that it makes the people who believe it in a complacent, narcotized state because such a thing can only be "in the far future", and thus only engage in typical liberal progressive politics, rather than turning them into militants. If someone wants revolutionary theory, give them the Manifesto, Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, State and Revolution, something by Bordiga, anything but this. It's not even Kropotkin's best work, that's Mutual Aid!

K

Kathyana Carvajal

September 20 2020

I hope this doesn't put me on some list

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muthuvel

March 13 2021

In a world like this, why something has more value over others? In these times of global crises concerning our health, well-being and economic systems, many of us can't help but wonder where we might have got wrong. Some would be worrying about the privileges especially those who are doing in relative comfort and watching the world burn beforehand. It's one of the seriously pursued endeavours in the civilized societies. But the term civilized is as funny and vulgar as calling ourselves as sapiens especially if we're only good enough at conformity and rationalizing. Peter Kropotkin in this work explores the possibilities of leading far more fairer societies with abolishing the ways and means by which we have been living. TW: Too radical for conformed/practical people. Written during the unstable times of Monarchial kingdoms of 1890s, the book discusses what went wrong during the previous social revolutions from French revolution, the 1848 one, 1871 Commune times and others, and what could've made them more sustainable and effective for praxis. Plus or minus depending on the geekiness, the work is filled with rich statistical examples and case studies where he passionately argues, whether a capitalist or collectivist communist society, the welfare of the people will be at stake as long as there's statism. Focusing upon small, self-sufficient communes with decentralized industries, permaculture and abolition of all unnecessary works, moving away from the wage systems with emphasis on free agreement for work, association, aids and leisure. With minor setbacks that I found every now and then going through the work from last 19th Century regarding absolute liberty and specialization of work forces, I admire the ways he questioned the centralized economies causing inequalities over regions geographically which in some way sounded prophetic as well with regard to Globalization. Not to forget the passionate parts where he calls for a more fairer society where gender are to be considered as cultural influences and acknowledge the difference than their roles as natural obligation. "..a revolution, intoxicated with the beautiful words Liberty, Equality, Solidarity would not be a revolution if it maintained slavery at home. Half humanity subjected to the slavery of the hearth would still have to rebel against the other half." I could see many social movements like various workers unions and Anarchist bloc unioninizing during Spanish Civil War, and many artistic works of brave imaginations getting inspired by this one. Ursula le Guin's Dispossessed must be name-dropped! With so much ideological propaganda going on in this ever changing world of cultures and coercion, we'll have to see the damages that we have made on this planet and on ourselves if at all its worth for the names of vanity that we have our ourselves. It doesn't mean the means have to be universalized but exactly the opposite. "We are anarchists precisely because these privileges revolt us." The Conquest of Bread (1892) ~ Peter Kropotkin

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Yann

July 23 2011

<img src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/hostedimages/1462260525i/18971660.jpg" class="gr-hostedUserImg" loading="lazy"> Pierre Kropotkine, aristocrate russe ému par l'injustice des sociétés européennes d'il y a un siècle livre dans ce livre ses réflexions quand aux solutions qu'il imagine pour soulager la misère des classes ouvrières, lors de cette première mondialisation économique. La hauteur de ses aspirations morales, la justesse et la mesure dont il fait preuve le font grandement estimer, quoique l'on puisse éprouver quelques dissentiment sur tel ou tel point de ses analyses. Il ne perd jamais de vue la finalité de l'amélioration de tous les hommes et femmes, sans tomber dans le piège de l'esprit de vengeance, de soif de pouvoir et de destruction. Il prend le temps de répondre aux contradictions les plus communes qui pourraient lui être opposées. On notera néanmoins des remarques injustes à l'égard d'Adam Smith, lequel s'inquiétait effectivement des risques d'abus relatifs la division du travail, dans "La richesse des nations", contrairement à ce qu'avance imprudemment l'auteur.

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Ted