Graham R (Ed.) - Anarchism - A Documentary History of Libertarian Ideas Volume One - From Anarchy to Anarchism (300 CE to 1939)

I 14/
ANARCHISM
bring their pay to the mother who keeps the cash and gives them food to eat. They all
bring unequally; but, at mealtime, each is served in his own way and according to his
own appetite. There is no rationing. But let hard times come, and let poverty prevent
the mother from continuing to allow for the appetite or taste of each in the distribution
of the meal. There must be rationing; and, whether by the initiative of the
mother or by the unspoken custom of all, the helpings are reduced. But look, this
sharing is not done according to merit, for the younger boy and the child above all receive
the largest share; and, as for the choice portion, it is kept fo r the old woman
who brings in nothing at all. So even during fa mine, within the fa mily this principle is
applied of rationing according to need. Would it be otherwise in the great humanitarian
fa mily of the future
33. Kropotkil1: Tile Conquest of Bread (1892)
By tfle 1880's Kropotkill Iwd become aile of the leading expollents of allarcllist C01l11l111Ilism,
the basic principles of which he set forth in a series of pamphlets and articles. In 1892 he published
his most eloquent alld injluential argLIIllenljor anarchist commwlism, The Conquest of
Bread (Montreal: Black Rose Books, 1990; reprint of 1906 English edition). It was soon translated
into several languages and had a considerable impact on the anarchist movement, not
only ill Europe but also througlJOut Latin America and Asia, particularly Chilla. The fo llowing
excerpts are taken ji'Om the chapter on the wage system, whicll has been wide(v trall/ntpd ol1d
published in pamphlet fo rm. The "collectivists" Kropotkin refers to were fo r the most part
Marxist state socialists.
WE HAVE SAiD THA I CERTAIN collectivist writers desire that a distinction should be
made between qualified or professional work and simple work. They pretend that an
hour's work of an engineer, an architect, or a doctor, must be considered as two or
three hours' work of a blacksmith, a mason, or a hospital nurse. And the same distinction
must be made between all sorts of trades necessitating a more or less long apprenticeship
and the simple toil of day labourers.
Well, to establish this distinction would be to maintain all the inequalities of
present society. It would mean fixing a dividing line, from the beginning, between
the workers and those who pretend to govern them. It would mean dividing society
into two very distinct classes-the aristocracy of knowledge above the horny-handed
lower orders-the one doomed to serve the other; the one working with its hands to
feed and clothe those who, profiting by their leisure, study how to govern their
fosterers ...