
Reading Kropotkin‘s classic “Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution” from 1902, in times of the coronavirus.
Continue reading Peter Kropotkin – Mutual Aid: A Factor of EvolutionEnough 14 is not organizing any of these events, we are publishing these texts for people across the US and Europe to be able to see what is going on and for documentation only.
David Lester, illustrator, artist , writer and musician, is working on a graphic novel-biography of Emma Goldman. Above is an excerpt commemorating her deportation from the United States to Russia on December 21, 1919, which is also Kropotkin’s birthday. This reminded me of Goldman’s recollections of her meetings with Kropotkin. Below I set forth an excerpt from Goldman’s My Disillusionment with Russia, where Goldman describes her visit with Kropotkin in the summer of 1920, when both were witnessing the consolidation of the growing Bolshevik dictatorship. Kropotkin suggested that rather than working with authoritarian state socialists, despite their revolutionary slogans, anarchists should work to strengthen revolutionary workers’ movements, like anarcho-syndicalism, and movements to create alternate economic relationships, such as the cooperative movement (both of which were being suppressed by Bolshevik regime). Less than a year later, Kropotkin was dead, with his funeral marking the last mass anarchist demonstration in Russia for about 75 years.
Continue reading Emma #Goldman and Peter #KropotkinDavid Shub’s essay on the relationship between Lenin and Kropotkin was was written shortly after the author’s biography of Lenin in 1948 and draws a striking contrast between the two famous Russian revolutionaries. While initially deferential to the gentle and polite Kropotkin – at the time far more famous and influential both inside and outside Russia than the Bolshevik leader – Lenin quickly came to despise Kropotkin and his constant criticism of Bolshevism. The anarchist proclaimed Lenin’s government would be the “burial of the Russian Revolution”. Kropotkin’s predictions of the horrors of the Bolshevik State (“a Soviet Union only in name”) came true even before his death in 1921, and foretold the horrors of the Stalinist regime to come. This pamphlet is a brief illustration of their strained relationship and history.
“Even if the dictatorship of the party were an appropriate means to bring about a blow to the capitalist system (which I strongly doubt), it is nevertheless harmful for the creation of a new socialist system. What are necessary and needed are local institutions, local forces; but there are none, anywhere.”
Continue reading Peter #Kropotkin: Letter to #Lenin (4 March 1920) – #anarchism
Peter Kropotkin devoted a major part of his prolific anarchist writings to two related themes: examining the actual workings of capitalist economies and developing the broad outlines of an anarchist-communist society. Kropotkin was not satisfied to merely assert that’ a free society was possible, he sought to show how such a society could be constructed from the materials at hand-realizing that a revolutionary movement that failed to consider the problems of production and distribution would quickly collapse. This installment outlines Kropotkin’s critique of capitalist political economy; next issue will turn to his positive economic program. This distinction, however, is somewhat arbitrary, as Kropotkin always preferred to illustrate what might be by pointing to what already was.
Continue reading Jon Bekken: #Kropotkin’s Anarchist Critique of Capitalism
Today it’s the birthday of Peter Kropotkin. Happy Birthday!
“Peter Kropotkin…was recognized by friend and foe as one of the greatest minds…of the nineteenth century… The lucidity and brilliance of his mind combined with his warm-heartedness into the harmonious whole of a fascinating and gracious personality. ” -Emma Goldman
The following excerpts are taken from an article by Kropotkin, “The Action of the Masses and the Individual,” in which he responds to a letter regarding increased strike activity among the workers in conjunction with May Day demonstrations.
Continue reading Peter #Kropotkin: The Action of the Masses and the Individual
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