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

Propaganda By The Deed /155
In the chapter on expropriation, translated by George Woodcock, Kropotkin sets forth in
more detail how to make the social revolution:
If social wealth remains in the hands of the few who possess it today; if the factory,
the warehouse and the workshop remain the property of the owner; if the railways
and the other means oftransport continue in the hands of the companies and individuals
who have made them monopolies; if the mansions in the cities and the villas of
landlords remain in the possession of their present owners instead of being placed,
on the day of the revolution, at the free disposition of all the workers; if all the accumulated
treasures, in the banks or in the houses of the rich, do not return immediately
to the collectivity-because all of us have contributed to produce them; ifthe
insurgent people does not take possession of all the goods and provisions accumulated
in the great cities and does not organize affairs so that they are put at the disposal
of those who need them; if the land, finally, remains the property of bankers
and usurers-to whom it belongs today, in fact if not by right-and ifthe great properties
are not taken away from the great proprietors to be placed in the hands of
those who wish to cultivate the soil; if, finally, there emerges a new class of rulers
who give orders to the ruled, the insurrection will not have been a revolution, and we
shall have to start all over again ...
Expropriation-that is the guiding word of the coming revolution, without
which it will fail in its historic mission: the complete expropriation of all those who
have the means of exploiting human beings; the return to the community ... of everything
that in the hands of anyone can be used to exploit others ...
If on the morrow of the revolution the popular masses have only words at their
disposal, if they do not recognize by facts whose evidence is as blinding as sunlight
that the situation has been transformed to their advantage, and if the overturning of
power ends up as merely a change of persons and fo rmulas, nothing will have been
achieved. There will remain only one more disillusionment. And we shall have to put
ourselves once again to the ungrateful task of Sisyphus, rolling his eternal rock.
For the revolution to be anything more than a word, for the reaction not to lead
us on the morrow to the same situation as on the eve, the conquest on the day itself
must be worth the trouble of defending; the poor of yesterday must not find themselves
even poorer today ...
Only a general expropriation can satisfy the multitudes who suffer and are oppressed
... But for expropriation to respond to the need, which is to put an end to private
property and return all to all, it must be carried out on a vast scale. On a small
scale, it will be seen only as a mere pillage; on a large scale it is the beginning of social
reorganization ...