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

Anarchist Communism / 1 17
34. Kropotkin: Fields, Factories and Workshops (1898)
Kropotkin was especially concerned with the division between intellectual, or brain. work, and
manual labour. In Fields, Factories and Workshops (London: TllOmas Nelson & Sons, 1912;
originally published 1898; abridged edition: Montreal: Black Rose Books, 1994, ed. George
Woodcock), he set forth his ideas on how to combine tIle two by decentralizing industry and
eliminating, as far as possible, the division of labour. These ideas were particularly influential
in China andJapan.
POLITICAL ECONOMY HAS HITHERTO insisted chiefly upon division. We proclaim integration;
and we maintain that the ideal of society-that is, the state towards which
society is already marching-is a society of integrated, combined labour. A society
where each individual is a producer of both manual and intellectual work; where
each able-bodied human being is a worker, and where each worker works both in the
field and the industrial workshop; where every aggregation of individuals, large
enough to dispose of a certain variety of natural resources-it may be a nation, or
rather a region-produces and itself consumes most of its own agricultural and manufactured
produce ...
The scattering of industries over the country-so as to bring the fa ctory amidst
the fields, to make agriculture derive all those profits which it always finds in being
combined with industry ... and to produce a combination of industrial with agricultural
work-is surely the next step to be made, as soon as a reorganization of our
present conditions is possible ... This step is imposed by the very necessity of producing
for the producers themselves. It is imposed by the necessity for each healthy man
and woman to spend a part oftheir lives in manual work in the free air; and it will be
rendered the more necessary when the great social movements, which have now become
unavoidable, come to disturb the present international trade, and compel each
nation to revert to her own resources fo r her own maintenance. Humanity as a whole,
as well as each separate individual, will be gainers by the change, and the change will
take place ...
We maintain that in the interests of both science and industry, as well as of society
as a whole, every human being, without distinction of birth, ought to receive such
an education as would enable him, or her, to combine a thorough knowledge of science
with a thorough knowledge of handicraft. We fu lly recognize the necessity of
specialization of knowledge, but we maintain that specialization must follow general
education, and that general education must be given in science and handicraft alike.
To the division of society into brain workers and manual workers we oppose the