Kropotkin's Revolutionary Pamphlets - Libcom

304 KROPOTKIN'S REVOLUTIONARY PAMPHLETS
Berlin, 1908. This was taken from Les Temps Nouveaux
and did not appear in pamphlet form in French or English.
Les Temps Nouveaux. 63 pages, La Kivalte, Paris. 1894.
NOTES ON lUlOPOTKIN'S BOOKS AS AN AID TO FU&THE&
The C01U]ucst of Bred.
READING
This is Kropotkin's most thorough study of the tendencies
toward free cooperation as the best means to abolish capitalism,
class control, the wage system and above all, the State.
It deals only with the economic and political factors,--chiefly
the reorganization of production and distribution. Present
evils are analyzed in the light of historic examples of voluntary
cooperation as the driving force toward larger freedom.
The workability of anarchist-communism is predicated on that
experience.
Most of the book is an argument,--exceedingly simple and
dear,-for the conquest of economic power by the workers
without resort to the State to do it. He argues the case with
the state socialists of course,-and adds his views for intensified
agriculture and decentralized industry.
Ethics.
This book, assembled from Kropotkin's notes, and published
posthumously, is an elaboration and development of articles
which appeared in the London magazine Nineteenth Century
between 1904 and 1906.
After tracing ethical principles in nature and among the
primitives, Kropotkin gives a history of ethical theories and
teachings beginning with those of the ancient Greeks, followed
by those of medieval Christianity, the Renaissance and
the nineteenth century. He discusses the evolution of the
conceptions of justice, the ethics of socialism, altruism and
egoism, etc., and concludes with showing the necessity of
envisaging ethics from the sociological point of view.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Kropotkin denies the connection o mrality with
eligon
. and metaphysics, and tries to establish 1ts urely SCIentific
basis. His ethical theory could be expressed In one wC),rd,­
solidarity,-for he considers solidarity and equality necessary
conditions for the establishment of social justice. Hence his
formula: "Without equality no justice and without justice
no morality.>t
Fields, P(lC'trmes, mul Workshops.
This book published in 1912, is a revision of magazine
articles writen between 1888 and 1890. It discusses "the
advantages which civilized societies would derive from a combination
of industrial pursuits with intensive agriculture, and
of brain work with manual work."
Tracing the gradual spread of manufactur from its' original
centers in England and France, Kropotkln comes to the
conclusion that each nation will in its turn become a manufacturing
nation, and that each region, therefore, will have
to become its own producer and its own consumer of manufactured
goods. From a study of the results of intensive
agriculture he concludes, als ? , tat an "econ my of space and
labor," representing a comblnatlOn of machlnery and manual
labor would enable almost every nation to grow on Its .
own
soil the food and most of the raw material required for it.s
own use. Moreover, the abolition of the distinction betwe :
n
city and village, by the increased use of applied science In
agriculture and by the easy transmission of electric po w: er to
,
places at great distances from its source, WIll make posSIble a
"synthesis of human activities:'
For an all-round technical and "integral" education K.ropo ­
kin would substitute for the division of society int braln
workers and manual workers a combination of both kmds of
activities. The results would be a greater economy of hu
an
effort a better balance of individual life, and the happmcss
that an be found in the full exercise and development of the
different and dormant capacities of the human being.
Thus country and city, factory and labo
ato
, worksop
and studio would no longer divide human bemgs Into vanous