Peter Kropotkin
Animals and humans survive not only by competing but above all by helping one another, so a free society can share its goods according to need.
Placement
Russian prince, geographer and theorist of anarchist communism: in nature and history, mutual aid is as much a factor of evolution as struggle, and goods should be shared according to need.
Key ideas
- Mutual aid as a factor of evolution
- Anarchist communism
- Distribution according to need
- Decentralised production
Influence
Influenced by 3
Charles Darwin
influenced by
Against Huxley’s ‘struggle for existence’ Kropotkin invoked the social instincts of Darwin’s Descent of Man (1871) to make mutual aid a factor of evolution (Mutual Aid, 1902). P. Kropotkin, Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution (1902); T. H. Huxley, “The Struggle for Existence” (1888); C. Darwin, The Descent of Man (1871)
Evidence: AI draft
Charles Darwin › 1809–1882
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
influenced by ✓
Kropotkin traced anarchism to Proudhon’s What Is Property? (1840) but rejected his mutualist payment by work in favour of distribution according to need (The Conquest of Bread, 1892). P. Kropotkin, La Conquête du pain (1892); “Anarchism”, Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th ed. (1910); P.-J. Proudhon, Qu’est-ce que la propriété? (1840)
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon › 1809–1865
Mikhail Bakunin
influenced by ✓
Converted to anarchism among the Bakuninist Jura watchmakers (1872), Kropotkin kept Bakunin’s anti-statism but replaced his collectivism with anarchist communism (The Conquest of Bread, 1892). P. Kropotkin, Memoirs of a Revolutionist (1899); La Conquête du pain (1892); SEP “Anarchism”
Evidence: also in Wikidata · Wikidata
Mikhail Bakunin › 1814–1876
Influenced 2
Emma Goldman
influenced ✓
Goldman took Kropotkin’s anarchist communism and his view in Mutual Aid (1902) that society can rest on voluntary cooperation instead of the state (Anarchism and Other Essays, 1910). E. Goldman, Anarchism and Other Essays (1910); Living My Life (1931); P. Kropotkin, Mutual Aid (1902)
Evidence: also in Wikidata · Wikidata
Emma Goldman › 1869–1940
Martin Buber
influenced
In Paths in Utopia (1946) Buber took up Kropotkin’s idea of mutual aid and decentralised communities for a cooperative socialism opposed to Marx’s centralism. M. Buber, Netivot be-utopia (1946); Pfade in Utopia (1950); P. Kropotkin, Mutual Aid (1902)
Evidence: AI draft
Martin Buber › 1878–1965
Criticism
Criticizes 1
Karl Marx
criticised
Kropotkin rejected the collectivist wage system of labour cheques favoured by Marxist socialists, demanding distribution according to needs (The Conquest of Bread, 1892, ch. 13). P. Kropotkin, La conquête du pain (1892), ch. 13 “Le salariat collectiviste”; Modern Science and Anarchism (1901/1913)
Evidence: AI draft
Karl Marx › 1818–1883
Works
A programme of anarchist communism: houses, food and goods belong to all and are shared according to need, not according to hours worked.
From animal colonies to medieval guilds: cooperation within species is a factor of evolution – a reply to the reading of Darwinism as a war of all against all.
Position
Kropotkin gave anarchism the form of anarchist communism. Unlike Proudhon and Bakunin, he rejected payment according to work: since all production rests on the accumulated labour of past generations, houses, food and goods should be shared according to need. The Conquest of Bread (1892) set out how a city could organise this in a revolution, and Fields, Factories and Workshops (1899) argued for decentralised industry combined with intensive agriculture. His best-known work, Mutual Aid (1902), began as articles answering T. H. Huxley’s “The Struggle for Existence” (1888). From his own observations in Siberia and from studies of animal behaviour, village communities and medieval guilds, he argued that cooperation within species is a factor of evolution as important as competition; ethics grows out of this social instinct. He saw anarchism as the application of the natural sciences to society and rejected the Hegelian dialectic in Marxism as unscientific. In 1916 he signed the Manifesto of the Sixteen supporting the Allies against Germany, which split the anarchist movement. After 1917 he criticised the Bolshevik dictatorship in letters to Lenin; his funeral in Moscow in February 1921 was the last large anarchist demonstration in Soviet Russia.
Life & context
Peter Kropotkin was born in Moscow in 1842 into an old princely family. He was educated in the Corps of Pages in St Petersburg and served for a time as page to Alexander II, then chose service with a Cossack regiment in the Amur region and led geographical expeditions in Siberia and Manchuria (1862–67). Back in St Petersburg he studied mathematics and worked on the mountain structure of Asia and on glaciation in Finland. In 1872 he met the anarchist watchmakers of the Jura Federation in Switzerland. Arrested in 1874 for revolutionary propaganda, he escaped from a prison hospital in 1876. In France he was sentenced at the Lyon trial of 1883 and held at Clairvaux until 1886. He lived in England until 1917, returned to Russia after the February Revolution and died in Dmitrov in 1921.
Further main works
- Words of a Rebel (1885)
- Fields, Factories and Workshops (1899)
- Memoirs of a Revolutionist (1899)
- Ethics: Origin and Development (posthumous, 1922)
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