Kropotkin: 'The Conquest of Bread' and Other Writings

305 Pages·2012·13.34 MB·English

by  Shatz

CAMBRIDGE TEXTS IN THE
HISTORY OF POLITICAL THOUGHT
PETER KROPOTKIN
The Conquest of Bread and Other Writings
CAMBRIDGE TEXTS IN THE
HISTORY OF POLITICAL THOUGHT
Series editors
RAYMOND GEUSS
Reader in Philosophy, University of Cambridge
QUENTIN SKINNER
Regius Professor of Modern History in the University of Cambridge
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PETER KROPOTKIN
The Conquest of Bread and
Other Writings
EDITED BY
MARSHALL SHATZ
University of Massachusetts at Boston
CAMBRIDGE
UNIVERSITY PRESS
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© in the translation, introduction and editorial matter
Cambridge University Press 1995
This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception
and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,
no reproduction of any part may take place without the written
permission of Cambridge University Press.
First published 1995
Third printing 2005
A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data
Kropotkin, Petr Alekseevich, kniaz', 1842-1921.
[Selections. English. 1995]
The conquest of bread and other writings / Peter Kropotkin; edited by Marshall
Shatz.
p. cm. — (Cambridge texts in the history of political thought)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0 521 45398 4. - ISBN 0 521 45990 7 (pbk)
1. Anarchism. I. Shatz, Marshall. II. Title.
HX833.K65213 1995
335'.83-dc20 94-36272 CIP
ISBN 978-0-521-45398-1 Hardback
ISBN 978-0-521-45990-7 Paperback
Transferred to digital printing 2010
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Contents
Introduction page vii
Principal events in Kropotkin's life xxiv
Bibliographical note xxvii
Biographical synopses xxxii
The Conquest of Bread 1
Preface 4
Our riches 11
Well-being for all 21
Anarchist communism 31
Expropriation 41
Food 52
Dwellings 75
Clothing 84
Ways and means 87
The need for luxury 94
Agreeable work 107
Free agreement 115
Objections 128
The collectivist wages system 144
Consumption and production 158
The division of labour 165
The decentralization of industry 169
Agriculture 179
'Western Europe', from Memoirs of a Revolutionist 203
'Anarchism', from The Encyclopaedia Britannica 233
Contents
Kropotkin on the Russian Revolution 248
'Message to the Workers of the Western World' 249
Two letters to Lenin 254
'What Is to Be Done?' 257
Index 261
Introduction
The intellectual commerce between Russia and the West in the
nineteenth century for the most part flowed in an easterly direction.
Russian Marxism, for example, was only one of a long series of
political, social and philosophical systems imported from Western
Europe and adapted to Russian circumstances, often undergoing
considerable alteration in the process. One notable exception, which
helped to redress Russia's intellectual balance of trade, so to speak,
was anarchism. Anarchism had Western roots, to be sure, specifi-
cally in the thought of William Godwin and Pierre-Joseph Proud-
hon, but for over half a century it derived much of its vitality,
both as a social theory and as a revolutionary movement, from the
efforts of two Russians, Michael Bakunin and Peter Kropotkin.
(Meanwhile, yet another Russian, Leo Tolstoy, would create a
distinctive variety of religious anarchism.)
Both Bakunin and Kropotkin, however, spent long years as
emigres in the West, and it was in Western Europe that they
formulated their anarchist ideology. The interaction of Russian and
Western elements was particularly complex in the case of Kropotkin,
for unlike Bakunin he actively participated in the Russian revol-
utionary movement before he emigrated, spent even longer in the
West, and then returned to Russia in his final years. Kropotkin's
anarchism therefore was the product of a lifetime of interplay
between his Russian and Western experiences.
Like many another nineteenth-century Russian revolutionary,
including Bakunin, Kropotkin was born into the landowning Russian
nobility. Kropotkin's origins, however, were more aristocratic than
Introduction
most. His family traced its ancestry back to the rulers of Smolensk,
one of the independent principalities of medieval Russia. Thus he
was born Prince Peter Alekseevich Kropotkin, in Moscow, on 27
November 1842 (according to the old Russian calendar, which was
twelve days behind the Western calendar). His father, an army
officer, owned some 1,200 'souls', or male serfs, the customary
measure of wealth in pre-emancipation Russia. Kropotkin spent
his early years in the tranquil quarter of Moscow where many of
the old noble families maintained houses, with summers on one
of the family's country estates. For all its material privileges, Kropot-
kin's childhood was no idyll: his mother died when he was three,
leaving him to the care of his father, a narrow-minded martinet,
and his stepmother, whom he detested. Like many other lonely
children of the nobility, he found warmth and affection among
the family's numerous house-serfs. Judging by the account in his
autobiography, Memoirs of a Revolutionist, these childhood experi-
ences were one of the sources of his abiding dedication to the
'people' of Russia. Kropotkin's closest friend was his older brother
Alexander, who shared many of his interests and ideas but from
whom he was separated in his early teens when they were sent to
different schools. Their correspondence is a rich biographical source
for Kropotkin's early years, supplementing the memoirs he penned
many years later. Alexander's temperament was not as firm as his
brother's, however, and in 1886, while exiled in Siberia for a
political offence, he committed suicide.
Though Kropotkin later repudiated the privileges of his youth,
they did provide him with an excellent education. He was first
tutored at home by French, German and Russian teachers, then
attended a Moscow gymnasium for two years. In 1857 he entered
the Corps of Pages in St Petersburg, an elite military school,
attached to the imperial court, whose top pupils served as pages
to the tsar and his family. To supplement the school's sometimes
meagre intellectual diet, Kropotkin devoured whatever books he
could get his hands on. His correspondence with his brother
Alexander, who was attending a military school in Moscow, is filled
with references to an astonishing number of readings in philosophy,
literature, and especially history, as well as a variety of other
subjects - and this at a time when Kropotkin was still in his
teens. As his later writings would attest, he possessed the most