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Peter Kropotkin
Peter Kropotkin
Kropotkin by Nadar. Born Pyotr Alexeyevich Kropotkin 9 December 1842 Moscow, Russian Empire 8 February 1921 (aged78) Dmitrov, Russian SFSR 19th century philosophy 20th century philosophy Russian philosophy Western philosophy [2]
Died
Era
Region
Religion School
None (atheist)
Anarchist communism Authority Cooperation Politics Revolution Labor Economics Agriculture Evolution Geography Literature Science Philosophy Ethics Founder of anarchist communism Mutual aid Abolition of wage-labor Four-hour workday Voluntary communes The Conquest of Bread Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution Fields, Factories and Workshops
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Peter Kropotkin
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Prince Pyotr Alexeyevich Kropotkin (Russian: ; 9 December 1842 8 February 1921) was a Russian zoologist, evolutionary theorist, philosopher, scientist, revolutionary, philologist, economist, activist, geographer, writer, and prominent anarcho-communist. Kropotkin advocated a communist society free from central government and based on voluntary associations between workers. He wrote many books, pamphlets and articles, the most prominent being The Conquest of Bread and Fields, Factories and Workshops, and his principal scientific offering, Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution. He also contributed the article on anarchism to the Encyclopdia Britannica Eleventh Edition.[4]
Biography
Early life
Kropotkin was born in Moscow, into the second-highest level of the Russian aristocracy. His mother was the daughter of a Cossack general. His father, Alexei Petrovich Kropotkin, was a prince in Smolensk, of the Rurik dynasty which had ruled Russia before the rise of the Romanovs. Kropotkin's father owned large tracts of land and nearly 1,200 male serfs in three provinces. "[U]nder the influence of republican teachings," Kropotkin dropped his princely title at the age of twelve, and "even rebuked his friends, when they so referred to him."[5] In 1857, at age 14, Kropotkin enrolled in the Corps of Pages at St. Petersburg. Only 150 boys mostly children of nobility belonging to the court were educated in this privileged corps, which combined the character of a military school endowed with special rights and of a court institution attached to the Imperial Household. Kropotkin's memoirs detail the hazing and other abuse of pages for which the Corps had become notorious. In Moscow, Kropotkin had developed an interest in the condition of the peasantry, and this interest increased as he grew older. Although his work as a page for Tsar Alexander II made Kropotkin sceptical about the tsar's "liberal" reputation, Kropotkin was greatly pleased by the tsar's decision to emancipate the serfs in 1861. In St. Petersburg, he read widely on his own account, and gave special attention to the works of the French encyclopdists and to French history. The years 18571861 witnessed a growth in the intellectual forces of Russia, and Kropotkin came under the influence of the new liberal-revolutionary literature, which largely expressed his own aspirations. In 1862, Kropotkin was promoted from the Corps of Pages to the army. The members of the corps had the prescriptive right to choose the regiment to which they would be attached. For some time, he was aide de camp to the governor of Transbaikalia at Chita. Later he was appointed attach for Cossack affairs to the governor-general of
In 1867, Kropotkin resigned his commission in the army and returned to St. Petersburg, where he entered the university to study mathematics, becoming at the same time secretary to the geography section of the Russian Geographical Society. His departure from a family tradition of military service prompted his father to disinherit him, "leaving him a 'prince' with no visible means of support." In 1871, he explored the glacial deposits of Finland and Sweden for the Society. In 1873, he published an important contribution to science, a map and paper in which he showed that the existing maps entirely misrepresented the physical features of Asia; the main structural lines were in fact from southwest to northeast, not from north to south or from east to west as had been previously supposed. During this work, he was offered the secretaryship of the Society, but he had decided that it was his duty not to work at fresh discoveries but to aid in diffusing existing knowledge among the people at large. Accordingly, he refused the offer and returned to St. Petersburg, where he joined the revolutionary party.
Peter Kropotkin such as being allowed to continue his geographical work in his cell. He delivered his report on the subject of the Ice Age, where he argued that it had taken place in not as distant a past as originally thought. In 1876, just before his trial, Kropotkin was moved to a low-security prison in St. Petersburg, from which he escaped with the assistance of his friends. On the night of the escape, Kropotkin and his friends celebrated by dining in one of the finest restaurants in St. Petersburg, assuming correctly that the police would not think to look for them there. After this, he boarded a boat, and headed to England. After a short stay there, he moved to Switzerland where he joined the Jura Federation. In 1877 he moved to Paris, where he helped start the socialist movement. In 1878 he returned to Switzerland where he edited the Jura Federation's revolutionary newspaper Le Rvolt, and published various revolutionary pamphlets. In 1881, shortly after the assassination of Tsar Alexander II, he was expelled from Switzerland. After a short stay at Thonon (Savoy), he went to London where he stayed nearly a year. He attended the Anarchist Congress that met in London from 14 July 1881. Other delegates included Marie Le Compte, Errico Malatesta, Saverio Merlino, Louise Michel, Peter Tchaikovsky and mile Gautier. While respecting "complete autonomy of local groups" the congress defined propaganda actions that all could follow and agreed that propaganda by the deed was the path to social revolution. The Radical of 23 July 1881 reported that the congress met on July 18 at the Cleveland Hall, Fitzroy Square, with speeches by Marie Le Compte, "the transatlantic agitator", Louise Michel, and Kropotkin. Later Le Compte and Kropotkin gave talks to the Homerton Social Democratic Club and to the Stratford Radical and Dialectical Club. Kropotkin returned to Thonon in late 1882. Soon he was arrested by the French government, tried at Lyon, and sentenced by a police-court magistrate (under a special law passed on the fall of the Paris Commune) to five years' imprisonment, on the ground that he had belonged to the IWA (1883). The French Chamber repeatedly agitated on his behalf, and he was released in 1886. He settled near London, living at various times in Harrow where his daughter, Alexandra, was born Ealing and Bromley (6 Crescent Road 18861914).[6] He also lived for a number of years in Brighton.[7] While living in London, Kropotkin became friends with a number of prominent English-speaking socialists, including William Morris and George Bernard Shaw.[citation needed]
Return to Russia
In 1917 after the February Revolution, Kropotkin returned to Russia again after years of exile. Upon his arrival, he was greeted by crowds of tens of thousands of people, cheering his return. He was offered the ministry of education in the provisional government, which he promptly refused, feeling that working with them would be a violation of his anarchist principles. His enthusiasm for the changes happening in the Russian Empire turned to disappointment when the Bolsheviks seized power in the October Revolution. "This buries the revolution," he said. He thought that the Bolsheviks had shown how the revolution was not to be made; by authoritarian rather than libertarian methods. He had spoken out against authoritarian socialism in his writings (for example The Conquest of Bread), making the prediction that any state founded on these principles would most likely see its own breakup and the restoration of capitalism.[citation
needed]
Peter Kropotkin
Death
Kropotkin died of pneumonia on 8 February 1921, in the city of Dmitrov, and was buried at the Novodevichy Cemetery. Thousands of people marched in his funeral procession, including, with Vladimir Lenin's approval, anarchists carrying banners with anti-Bolshevik slogans. It was to become the last public demonstration of anarchists, which saw engaged speeches by Emma Goldman and Aron Baron. In 1957 the Dvorets Sovetov station of the Moscow Metro was renamed Kropotkinskaya in his honor.
Philosophy
Critique of capitalism
Kropotkin's friend and comrade Emma Goldman delivers a eulogy before crowds at his funeral, accompanied by Alexander Berkman.
Kropotkin pointed out what he considered to be the fallacies of the economic systems of feudalism and capitalism, and how he believed they create poverty and artificial scarcity while promoting privilege. He further proposed a more decentralized economic system based on mutual aid, mutual support, and voluntary cooperation, asserting that the tendencies for this kind of organization already exist, both in evolution and in human society.[citation needed]
Peter Kropotkin cooperation. His observations of cooperative tendencies in indigenous peoples (pre-feudal, feudal, and those remaining in modern societies) allowed him to conclude that not all human societies were based on competition, such as those of industrialized Europe, and that in many societies, cooperation was the norm among individuals and groups. He also concluded that most pre-industrial and pre-authoritarian societies (where he claimed that leadership, central government and class did not exist) actively defend against the accumulation of private property by, for example, equally distributing within the community a person's possessions when he died, or by not allowing a gift to be sold, bartered or used to create wealth (see Gift economy).[9]
Mutual aid
In The Conquest of Bread, Kropotkin proposed a system of economics based on mutual exchanges made in a system of voluntary cooperation. He believed that should a society be socially, culturally, and industrially developed enough to produce all the goods and services required by it, then no obstacle, such as preferential distribution, pricing or monetary exchange will stand as an obstacle for all taking what they need from the social product. He supported the eventual abolishment of money or tokens of exchange for goods and services.[citation needed] Kropotkin believed that Bakunin's collectivist economic model was simply a wage system by a different name,[10] and thought that such a system would breed the same type of centralization and inequality as a capitalist wage system. He stated that it is impossible to determine the value of an individual's contributions to the products of social labor, and thought that anyone who was placed in a position of trying to make such determinations would wield authority over those whose wages they determined. He further developed these ideas in Fields, Factories and Workshops.[citation needed] According to Kirkpatrick Sale: With Mutual Aid especially, and later with Fields, Factories, and Workshops, Kropotkin was able to move away from the absurdist limitations of individual anarchism and no-laws anarchism that had flourished during this period and provide instead a vision of communal anarchism, following the models of independent cooperative communities he discovered while developing his theory of mutual aid. It was an anarchism that opposed centralized government and state-level laws as traditional anarchism did, but understood that at a certain small scale, communities and communes and co-ops could flourish and provide humans with a rich material life and wide areas of liberty without centralized control. His focus on local production led to his view that a country should strive for self-sufficiency manufacture its own goods and grow its own food, lessening dependence on imports. To these ends he advocated irrigation and growing under glass to boost local food production ability.[citation needed]
Peter Kropotkin
Works
Books
Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution (1955 paperback (reprinted 2005), includes Kropotkin's 1914 preface, Foreword and Bibliography by Ashley Montagu, and The Struggle for Existence, by Thomas H. Huxley ed.). Boston: Extending Horizons Books [11], Porter Sargent Publishers [12]. ISBN0-87558-024-6. Project Gutenberg e-text [13], Project LibriVox audiobook [14] The Conquest of Bread Project Gutenberg e-text [15], Project LibriVox audiobook [16] Fields, Factories and Workshops In Russian and French Prisons [17], London: Ward and Downey; 1887. Memoirs of a Revolutionist, London : Smith, Elder; 1899. Kropotkin's own memoirs, which were also published in the United States in the same year and have appeared in a number of modern editions. The Great French Revolution, 17891793, New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, London, William Heinemann, 1909, translated from the French by N.F. Dryhurst. e-text (in French) [18] Russian Literature: Ideals and Realities (New York: A. A. Knopf, 1915). Available online at the Anarchy Archives, Ethics (unfinished). Included as first part of Origen y evolucin de la moral (Spanish e-text) [19]
The Conquest of Bread by Peter Kropotkin, influential work which presents the economic vision of anarcho-communism
Articles
"Research on the Ice age", Notices of the Imperial Russian Geographical Society, 1876. "The desiccation of Eur-Asia", Geographical Journal, 23 (1904), 72241. Mr. Mackinder; Mr. Ravenstein; Dr. Herbertson; Prince Kropotkin; Mr. Andrews; Cobden Sanderson; Elise Reclus, "On Spherical Maps and Reliefs: Discussion", The Geographical Journal, Vol. 22, No. 3. (Sep., 1903), pp.294299, JSTOR [20] "Baron Toll", The Geographical Journal, Vol. 23, No. 6. (Jun., 1904), pp.770772, JSTOR [21] "The population of Russia", The Geographical Journal, Vol. 10, No. 2. (Aug., 1897), pp.196202, JSTOR [22] "The old beds of the Amu-Daria", The Geographical Journal, Vol. 12, No. 3. (Sep., 1898), pp.306310, JSTOR
[23]
Peter Kropotkin
Pamphlets
An Appeal To The Young [24] War. Law and Authority. The Place of Anarchy in Socialist Evolution. Revolutionary Government. Are Prisons Necessary? [25] Chapter X from "In Russian and French Prisons" (1887) Anarchism : Its Philosophy and Ideal [26] (1896) The State : Its Historic Role [27] (1897) On Economics [28] Selected Passages from his Writings (18981913)
References
[1] Bookchin, Murray. The Ecology of Freedom. Oakland: AK Press, 2005. p.11 [2] "[T]he noblest man, the one really greatest of them all was Prince Peter Kropotkin, a self-professed atheist and a great man of science."Ely, Robert Erskine (October 10, 1941), New York World-Telegram. [3] http:/ / en. wikipedia. org/ w/ index. php?title=Template:Anarcho-communism_sidebar& action=edit [4] Peter Kropotkin entry on 'anarchism' from the Encyclopaedia Britannica (eleventh ed.) (http:/ / www. archive. org/ details/ PeterKropotkinEntryOnanarchismFromTheEncyclopdiaBritannica), Internet Archive. Public Domain text. [5] Roger N. Baldwin, "The Story of Kropotkin's Life," in Kropotkin's Anarchism: A Collection of Revolutionary Writings, ed. by Baldwin (Orig. 1927; Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, Inc., 1970), p. 13. [6] Bromley Council guide to blue plaques [7] Peter Marshall Demanding the Impossible: A History of Anarchism, London: Fontana, 1993, p.315 [8] Sale, Kirkpatrick (2010-07-01) Are Anarchists Revolting? (http:/ / www. amconmag. com/ article/ 2010/ jul/ 01/ 00045/ ), The American Conservative [9] Morris, David. Anarchism Is Not What You Think It Is And There's a Whole Lot We Can Learn from It (http:/ / www. alternet. org/ story/ 154126/ anarchism_is_not_what_you_think_it_is_--_and_there's_a_whole_lot_we_can_learn_from_it/ ), AlterNet, February 13, 2012 [10] Kropotkin wrote: "After the Collectivist Revolution instead of saying 'twopence' worth of soap, we shall say 'five minutes' worth of soap." (quoted in ) [11] http:/ / www. extendinghorizons. com [12] http:/ / www. portersargent. com [13] http:/ / www. gutenberg. org/ etext/ 4341 [14] http:/ / librivox. org/ mutual-aid-a-factor-of-evolution-by-peter-kropotkin/ [15] http:/ / www. gutenberg. org/ etext/ 23428 [16] http:/ / librivox. org/ the-conquest-of-bread-by-peter-kropotkin/ [17] http:/ / dwardmac. pitzer. edu/ Anarchist_Archives/ kropotkin/ prisons/ toc. html [18] http:/ / kropot. free. fr/ Kropotkine-GrdRev. htm [19] http:/ / bivir. uacj. mx/ LibrosElectronicosLibres/ Autores/ PedroKropotkin/ Pedro%20Kropotkin%20-%20Origen%20y%20evoluci%F3n%20de%20la%20moral. pdf [20] http:/ / links. jstor. org/ sici?sici=0016-7398%28190309%2922%3A3%3C294%3AOSMARD%3E2. 0. CO%3B2-O [21] http:/ / links. jstor. org/ sici?sici=0016-7398%28190406%2923%3A6%3C770%3ABT%3E2. 0. CO%3B2-B [22] http:/ / links. jstor. org/ sici?sici=0016-7398%28189708%2910%3A2%3C196%3ATPOR%3E2. 0. CO%3B2-V [23] http:/ / links. jstor. org/ sici?sici=0016-7398%28189809%2912%3A3%3C306%3ATOBOTA%3E2. 0. CO%3B2-D [24] http:/ / flag. blackened. net/ daver/ anarchism/ kropotkin/ atty. html [25] http:/ / www. panarchy. org/ kropotkin/ prisons. html [26] http:/ / www. panarchy. org/ kropotkin/ 1896. eng. html [27] http:/ / www. panarchy. org/ kropotkin/ 1897. state. html [28] http:/ / www. panarchy. org/ kropotkin/ economics. html
Peter Kropotkin
Further reading
Books on Kropotkin
Alan, Barnard (March 2004). "Mutual Aid and the Foraging Mode of Thought: Re-reading Kropotkin on the Khoisan". Social Evolution & History 3 (1): 321. Joll, James (1980). The Anarchists. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. ISBN0-674-03641-7. LCCN 80-010503 (http://lccn.loc.gov/80-010503). Woodcock, George & Avakumovic, Ivan (1950). The Anarchist Prince: A Biographical Study of Peter Kropotkin. Morris, Brian (2004). Kropotkin: the Politics of Community. Humanity Press. The World That Never Was: A True Story of Dreamers, Schemers, Anarchists and Secret Police by Alex Butterworth (Pantheon Books, 2010) Engelbert, Arthur (2012). Help! Gegenseitig behindern oder helfen. Eine politische Skizze zur Wahrnehmung heute (http://arthur-engelbert.de/publikationen/ help-gegenseitig-behindern-oder-helfen-eine-skizze-zur-wahrnehmung-heute/). Wrzburg: Knigshausen & Neumann. ISBN978-3-8260-5017-6. Cahm, Caroline (1989). Kropotkin and the rise of revolutionary anarchism 1872-1886. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN0 521 36445 0.
Journal articles
Gould, S.J. (June 1997). "Kropotkin was no crackpot" (http://www.marxists.org/subject/science/essays/ kropotkin.htm). Natural History 106: 1221. Basic Kropotkin: Kropotkin and the History of Anarchism (http://www.afed.org.uk/ace/ kropotkin_history_of_anarchism.html) by Brian Morris, Anarchist Communist Editions pamphlet no.17 (The Anarchist Federation, October 2008). Efremenko D., Evseeva Y. Studies of Social Solidarity in Russia: Tradition and Modern Trends. // American Sociologist, v. 43, 2012, no. 4, pp. 349-365. NY: Springer Science+Business Media.
External links
Works by Peter Kropotkin (http://www.gutenberg.org/author/Kropotkin+Petr+Alekseevich+kniaz) at Project Gutenberg Free audiobooks of Peter Kropotkin (http://librivox.org/newcatalog/search.php?title=&author=Peter+ Kropotkin&action=Search) at project LibriVox Kropotkin Page (http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/Encyclopedia/KropotkinPeter.htm) at the Daily Bleed's Anarchist Encyclopedia The Peter Kropotkin text archive (http://libcom.org/library/peter-kropotkin) on libcom.org library BlackCrayon.com: People: Peter Kropotkin (http://www.blackcrayon.com/people/kropotkin/) Peter Kropotkin (http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/anarchist_archives/kropotkin/Kropotkinarchive.html) entry at the Anarchy Archives with complete collected works Peter Kropotkin-Short Documentary (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iu4n5uopvrg) on YouTube Summary of records (http://yourarchives.nationalarchives.gov.uk/index. php?title=Kropotkin,_Peter_Alexeivitch_(1842-1921)_Prince,_Russian_Anarchist) in The National Archives and elsewhere, with a link to the National Register of Archives pages. Kropotkin's works (http://theanarchistlibrary.org/authors/Petr_Kropotkin.html) at TheAnarchistLibrary.org Kropotkin's grave at Novodevichy Cemetery (http://www.flickr.com/photos/85101573@N00/139484527)
Peter Kropotkin Kropotkin: The Coming Revolution (http://vimeo.com/30571222) short documentary in Kropotkin's own words. Map of the Southern Half of Eastern Siberia and Parts of Mongolia, Manchuria, and Sakhalin: For a General Sketch of the Orography of Eastern Siberia (http://www.wdl.org/en/item/125/) by Kroptokin, from the World Digital Library
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