A review by samdalefox
Anarchist Communism by Peter Kropotkin

informative inspiring medium-paced

5.0

As with all older leftist texts, 'Anarchist Communism', or 'The Conquest of Bread', contains certain priciples and ideas that remain fundamental to political and economic thought, and some that are outdated as we now live under corporate capiltalism and in the age of the billionaire. Overall I actually found this quite a diffcult text to read; Kropotkin had a habit of posing an excellent question then spend three pages of waffle before eventually answering it. That being said I'm still going to give it 5 stars as it's The Communist Manifesto's anarchist counter part, it's right that these seminal texts are recognised for the impact they have had.

This text focuses on an important part of revolutions that is critical but overlooked - the 'practical work' i.e., how to literally feed the people during a revolution to avoid them being subdued again, bought by the promise of bread and end to their current suffering. Although the principles are still applicable to this day, I do think we need to rethink the methodology suggested to acheive it. Many of Kropotkin's suggestions rely on an organisation of community (both rural and urban) and a world pre-globalisation that no longer exists. However on the other hand, the example of water supply being a case study of how humans naturally interact with a communialised resourced and relative abundance/scarcity transcends time. 

I read the revised editoion, published in 1913 before the Russian revolution, which is worth noting because Kropotkin astutely criticises not only capitalism and democratic socialism (sociaism through reform, not revolution) but also state capitalism which is what we eventually saw the USSR become developing from Marxist-Leninism.

allison_reynolds's review - "His claims in the text are bold, but I think are often perceived as naïve as their boldness stems from extreme compassion and not extreme violence. The first introduction to Kropotkin is usually his idea of mutual aid - that species naturally work to better each other. This text outlines the revolution as a time of community as opposed to the usual idea of revolution being bloodshed. Social upheaval and the way it is thought about all too often falls into the same pattern. Kropotkin here lays the introduction for breaking that pattern."

Quotes:

"Truly we are rich - far richer than we think; rich in what we already possess, richer still in the possibilities of production of our actual mechanical outfit; richest of all in what we might win from our soil, from our manufactures, from our science, from our technical knowledge, were they applied to bringing about the well-being of all."

"In our civilised societies we are rich. Why then are many poor? Why this painful drudgery for the masses?...The socialists have said it and the repeat it unwearingly...It is because all that is necessary for production...all have been seized by the few in a long course of robbery, enforced migration and wars, of ignorance and oppression... - Taking advantage of alleged rights aquired in the past, these few appropraite today two-thirds of the products of human labour, then squander them in the most stupid and shameful way....It is because these few prevent the remainder of men from producing the things they need, and force them to produce, not the necessities of life for all, but whatever offers the greatest profits to the monopolists. In this is the substance of all socialism."

[With respect to the idea of retaining a money economy and sharing the reclaimed profits of labour equitabily amongst workers]. 
"Science and industry, knowledge and application, discovery and practical realisation leading to new discoveries, cunning of brain and hand, toil of mind and muscle - all work together. Each discovery, each advance, each increase in the sum of human riches, owes its being to the physical and mental travail of the past and the present. By what right can anyone whatever appropriate the least morsel of this immense whole and say - This is mine, not yours?"

"The means of production being the collective work of humanity, the product should be te collective property of the race. Individual appropriation is neither just nor serviceable. All belongs to All. All things are for all men, since all men have need of them, since all men have worked the measure of their strength to produce them, and since it is not possible to evaluate everyone's part in the production of the world's wealth. "

"Nowadays, in te present state of industry whern everything is interdependent, when each branch of production is knit up with all the rest, the attempt to claim an individualist origin for the products of industry is absolutely untenable."

[Criticising wage labour] 
"The wage system arises out of the individual ownership of the land and the instruments of labour. It was the necessary condition from the development of capitalist production and will perish with it as 'profit-sharing'/ The common possession of the instruments fo labout must necessarily bring with it the enjoyment in common of the fruits of labour."

"The forms have changed, but the relations have remained the same, and the worker is forced, under the name of free contract, to accept feudal obligations. For, turn where he will, he can find no better conditions. Everything has become provate property, and he must accept, or die of hunger."

"The result of this state of things is that all our production tends in a wrong direction. Enterprise takes no thought for the needs of the community. Its only aim is to increase the gains of the speculator. Hence the constant fluctuations of trade, the periodical industrial crises, each of which throws scores of thousands of workers on the streets."

"The working people cannot purchase with their wages the wealth with which they have produced, and industry seeks foreign markets among the monied classes of other nations...All nations evolve on the same lines, and wars, perpetual wars, breakout for precendence in the market. Wars for the possession of the East, wars for the empire of the sea, wars to impose duties on imports and to dictate conditions to neighbouring states; wars againist those 'blacks' that revolt! The roar of the canon never ceases in the world, whole races are massacred, the states of Europe spend a third of their budgets in armaments; and we know how heavily these taxes fall on the workers."

[On the proliferation of the bourgeoisie middle class]
"Alongside the rapid development of our wealth-producing powers we have an overwhelming increase of middlemen. Instead of capital gradually concentrating itself in a few hands, so that it would only be necessary for the community to dispossess of a few millionaires and enter upon its lawful heritage...the exact reverse is coming to pass: the swarm of parasites is ever increasing."

[On direct and indirect limitations of production]
"it is impossible to reckon in figures the extent to which wealth is restricted indirectly, the extent to which energy is squandered, while it might have been served to produce, and above all prepare the machinery necessary to production. It is enough to cite the immense sums spent by Europe in armaments, for the sole purpose of aquiring control of the markets, and so forcing her own goods on neighbouring territories, and making exploitation easier at home; the millions apid every year to officials of all sorts, whose function it is to maintain the 'rights' of minorities - the right, that is, of a few rich men - to manipulate the economic activities of the nation; the millions spent on judges, prisons, policemen, and all the paraphernalia of so-called justice - spent to no purpose, because we know that every alleviation, however slight, of the wretchedness of our great cities is always followed by a considerable diminuation of crime; lastly, the millions made by propagating pernicious doctrines by means of the press, and news 'cooked' in the interest of this or that party, of the politician or of that group of speculators." 

[On the topic of abundance and waste and leisure]
"If we consider on the one hand the rapidity with which civilised nations augment their powers of production, and on the other hand the limits to that production, be it directly or indirectly, by existing conditions, we cannot but conclude that an economic system and trifle more reasonable would permit them to heap up in a few years so many useful products that they would be constrained to say - Enough! We have enough coal and bread and raiment! Let us rest and consider how best to use our powers, how best to employ our leisure."

"If plenty for all is to become a reality, this immense capital - cities, houses, pastures, arable lands, factories, highways, education - must cease to be regarded as private property, for the monopolist to dispose of at his pleasure. This rich endowment, painfully won, builded, fashioned, or invested by our ancestors, must become common property, so that the collective interests of men may gain from it the greatest good of all. There must be expropriation. The well-being of all - the end; expropriation - the means."

"In claiming the right to well-being, they claim the right to take possession of the wealth of the community - to take houses to dwell in according to the needs of each family; to socialise the stores of food and learn the meaning of plenty, after having known famine so well. They provide their right to all social wealth - fruit of the labour of past and present generations - and learn by its means to enjoy those high pleasures of art and science which have too long been monopolised by the rich. And while asserting their right to live in comfort, they assert, what is still more important, their right to decide for themselves what this comfort shall be, what must be produced to ensure it, and what discarded as no longer of value. The right to 'well-being' means the possibility of living like human beings, and bringing up children to be members of a society better than ours, whilst the 'right to work' only means the right to always be a wage-slave, a drudge, ruled over and exploited by the middle class of the future."

[On how to prevent a new rich person from elsewhere from exploiting people within anarchist communism]
"At the root of this argument these is a great error. Those who propound it have never paused to enquire whence comes the fortunes of the rich. A little though weould, however, suffice to show that these fortunes have their beginnings in the poverty of the poor. When there are no longer any destitute, there will not longer be any rich to exploit them."

"Everywhere you will find that the wealth of the wealthy springs from the poverty of the poor."

"Our friends often warn us, 'take care you do not go too far! Humanity cannot be changed in a day, so do not be in too great a hurry with your schemes of expropriation and anarchy, or you will be in danger of achieving no permanent result.' Now, what we fear with regard to expropriation is exactly the contrary. We are afraid of not going far enough, or carrying our expropriation on too small a scale to be lasting. We would not have the revolutionary impulse arrested in mid-career, to exhaust itself in half measures, which would content no-one, and while producing a tremendous confusion in society, and stopping its customary activities, would have no vital power - would merely spread general discontent and inevitably prepare the way for the triumph of reaction."

"All is interdependent in a civilised society; it is impossible to reform any one thing without altering the whole. Therefore, on the day a nation will strike at private property, under any one of its forms, territorial or industrial, it will be obliged to attack them all. The very success of the revolution will impose it."

"If the coming revolution is to be social revolution, it will be distinguished from all former uprisings not only be its aim, but also by its methods. To attain a new end, new means are required."

[On the relationship between the global north exploiting the global south]
"Since all our middle-class civilisation is based upong the exploitation of inferior races and countries with less advanced industrial systems, the revolution will confer a boon at the very outset, by menacing that 'civilsation', and allowing the so-called inferor races to free themselves."

"Let the revolution only get so far, and famine is not the enemy it will have to fear. No, the danger which will menance it lies in timidity, prejudice and half measures."
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