A write up of a talk given in Glasgow in May 2022 on the life and ideas of Peter Kropotkin to mark the anniversary of his birth. As usual, this write-up reflects what I wanted to say rather than what was actually said but it is close enough.
The life of Peter Kropotkin: from the Paris Commune to the Kronstadt Revolt
First, who am I? Why should you take me seriously on Kropotkin and his life and ideas? Well, I’m a long standing anarchist activist and writer, an editor of Black Flag Anarchist Review (www.blackflag.org.uk) and the author of An Anarchist FAQ (www.anarchistfaq.org).
As regards Kropotkin, I am the editor of Modern Science and Anarchy (1913) and Words of a Rebel (1885), which are Kropotkin’s last and first anarchist books published in his lifetime. In addition, I edited Direct Struggle Against Capital: A Peter Kropotkin Anthology (2014), the most comprehensive collection of Kropotkin’s writings available. All include extensive introductions explaining his ideas and indicating their continued validity (and, of course, where he was wrong).
Peter Kropotkin: From Prince to Revolutionary
So, who was Peter Kropotkin? He was the most famous advocate of anarchist-communism as well as a world renown scientist – a leading geographer who contributed many articles to the 11th edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, not just the famous and much reprinted one on Anarchism.
He wrote articles and books on a host of subjects: Anarchism (of course), the labour and socialist movements, history (particularly on the French Revolution and the rise of the State), technology and industrial change, evolution (primarily on the importance of co-operation and origins of ethics), Russian literature and developments in science (his “day job” for part of his life).
1871-1921
Kropotkin was an anarchist from 1872 until his death in February 1921. Two key events bracketed his life as an anarchist, the Paris Commune (18 March to 28 May 1871) which expressed many libertarian ideas and played key role in Kropotkin’s Anarchism, and the Kronstadt Uprising (1 to 18 March 1921) which confirmed the anarchist critique of Marxism.
I will discuss Kropotkin’s life and ideas by discussing these plus his most important books and other events of note.
A few myths…
First, a few comments on a few myths on Kropotkin which seem sadly too common.
According to Marxist Bertell Ollman, “[u]nlike anarcho-communists, none of us [Marxists] believe that communism will emerge full blown from a socialist revolution”. This simply shows his ignorance of anarchist-communism as Kropotkin was quite clear a social revolution would be a difficult process, not an event. He explicitly rejected the idea of “overnight” or “one day” revolutions.
Kropotkin, claimed Pat Stack of the SWP, envisioned “small autonomous communities, devoted to small scale production” and “looked backwards for change”. No, he argued for appropriate technologies based on a close investigation of trends in the modern economy.
Then there is Carolyn Ashbaugh’s assertion, in her deeply flawed biography of Lucy Parsons, that he was “the world famous geographer and gentle anarchist theoretician of non-violence”. Yes, the first is true, the second completely wrong – he was an advocate of insurrection (indeed, he practiced his marksman skills during the 1905 Russian revolution in case he returned to his homeland and had to fight on the barricades).
Even those who should know better, such as libertarian socialist Maurice Brinton, get it wrong. Brinton argued that Kropotkin’s “aim is to convince and reason with (rather than to overthrow) those who oppress the masses” and he advocated “a co-operation that clearly transcended the barriers of class.” This can only be said if you have never read Kropotkin, not even Mutual Aid which is not silent on class struggle in history and current society.
In a nutshell, Kropotkin was not anarcho-Santa – he was an important and relevant revolutionary thinker.
Anarchism before Kropotkin
Kropotkin did not invent anarchism (not even anarchist communism, the branch he was most associated with). While anarchistic ideas and movements have existed as long as the State and property (it would be depressing if they had not, as it would suggest humans have not been paying attention). Anarchism as a named socio-economic theory and movements dates from 1840 and the work of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (1809-1865), the first person to call themselves an anarchist in What is Property? (1840).
He laid the foundations of anarchism, its opposition to property (“Property is theft”, “Property is despotism”) and the State (“inevitably enchained to capital and directed against the proletariat”) and its vision of a free socialism based on workers’ self-management of production, socialisation and federalism. While taking an active part in the 1848 Revolution, he was a reformist as was his version of anarchism, mutualism.
The next key development came with the International Workers’ Association, the IWA (1864-1877). This was founded by British trade unionists and French mutualists (not Karl Marx) and within the mutualist ranks arose revolutionary collectivism (syndicalist in nature).
Collectivism was advocated by Michael Bakunin (1814-1876), like Kropotkin a Russian aristocrat. Originally a Slavic Republican, he became an anarchist in the last ten years of his life before championing collectivism within the International, helping to make it anarchist. He laid the foundations of revolutionary anarchism, as seen at St. Imier Congress (1872) at which the Federalist International was born.
Kropotkin before Anarchism
Kropotkin was born into the Russian aristocracy, father was a serf-owner who gave him the best education the toil of his serfs could fund. Influenced by his tutor, a French Republican, he became a liberal reformer.
Aged 14, he enrolled in the Corps of Pages at St. Petersburg and then became the page of Tsar Alexander II. He saw the failings of the regime first hand. He graduated first in class and entered the Army, joining a Cossack regiment in Siberia and took part in geographical expeditions. He tried and failed to reform the local Tsarist State and saw the inertia, ignorance and power of bureaucracy. Also, he met radical exiles and read Proudhon’s System of Economic Contradictions, becoming a socialist.
In 1867, Kropotkin resigned his commission and entered the St Petersburg Imperial University, becoming secretary of the geography section of the Russian Geographical Society. Politically, he took a keen interest in developments in Western Europe and in particular, the International Workers’ Association and the Paris Commune
In 1871, while exploring glacial deposits in Finland, Kropotkin rejected a life of science for changing the world.
The Paris Commune (1871)
Meanwhile, Paris was being besieged during the Franco-Prussian war. The defeat of France saw the creation of a republic and its new government tried to take the cannons from the Paris National Guard. The troops refused to open fire on the crowd, the government fled and a municipal council was elected, proclaiming its federalist autonomy (its Declaration to the French People was written by a Proudhonist).
It terrified the bourgeois, but only minor economic reforms were implemented and it was crushed by the French state, with tens of thousands killed by the army. Bakunin and Marx both championed it, with Bakunin proclaiming it “a bold, clearly formulated negation of the State”.
1872
The following year, 1872, was a significant one for Kropotkin. While on a scientific trip to Switzerland, he visited radicals and met with both branches of the IWA. He was disgusted by the “official” (Marx approved) branch, later recalling its political compromises and “the real motives of the leaders… who made me understand that a strike at that time would be disastrous for the election of the lawyer”
In contrast, he was impressed by the Jura Federation (a leading section of the Federalist-wing of the IWA). He recalled how the “separation between leaders and workers which I had noticed at Geneva in the Temple Unique did not exist in the Jura Mountains”. He indicated how the “theoretical aspects of anarchism” and “the criticisms of state socialism — the fear of an economic despotism, far more dangerous than the merely political despotism — and the revolutionary character of the agitation, appealed strongly to my mind”. He concluded that “my views upon socialism were settled. I was an anarchist.”
From Russia with rebellion…
Kropotkin returned to Russia, joining a populist group (the Chaikovsky Circle) and within it advocated Federalist-wing IWA politics. Thus propaganda must be made “unquestionably among the peasantry and urban workers”, the “insurrection must proceed among the peasantry and urban workers themselves” and that revolutionaries “must not stand outside the people but among them, must serve not as a champion of some alien opinions worked out in isolation, but only as a more distinct, more complete expression of the demands of the people themselves.” These ideas stayed with him to the end.
Arrested by the Tsar’s secret police and imprisoned in 1874, he escaped from the prison hospital in 1876 and went into exile, joining the Federalist wing of the IWA and taking a leading role, helping to establish Le Révolté (The Rebel) in 1879. He championed the already started move from collectivism to communism but this was stopped when he was arrested in France in 1882 and imprisoned in 1883 after Lyon Trial.
Words of a Rebel (1885)
Kropotkin’s Words of a Rebel was published in 1885. It was edited by Elisée Reclus when Kropotkin was in jail and was made up, mostly, of articles from Le Révolté. The book, like the paper, aimed to be “a record of those symptoms which everywhere announce the coming of a new era, the germination of new forms of social life, the growing revolt against antiquated forms of social life” for “it is hope, not despair, which makes successful revolutions”.
Kropotkin later noted that he considered it the “critical part” of his anarchism, discussing and critiquing the State, Law and Authority, Revolutionary Government, War, amongst other aspects of capitalism. However, it also addressed other key issues such as the role of revolutionary minorities, political rights, the need for the spirit of revolt and the lessons of the Commune. It ends on Expropriation, which Kropotkin stressed was the very nature of the social revolution:
“Expropriation – this is the watchword that is imposed on the next revolution, under pain of failing in its historic mission. The complete expropriation of all those who have the means to exploit human beings.”
As he stresses in later works, he did not see revolution as an event but rather a process which takes time: “It is a whole insurrectionary period of three, four, perhaps five years that we have to pass through to accomplish our revolution in the property system and society’s form of organisation.”
The Conquest of Bread (1892)
Released from prison in 1886, Kropotkin went to Britain and founded Freedom. He started writing again for Le Révolté, continuing where imprisonment stopped him with Expropriation. A selection of these articles was later collected in 1892 into The Conquest of Bread, which he later proclaimed as being “the constructive part of an anarchist-communist society, so far as it could be forecast, [being] in a series of articles published… in La Révolte” (as Le Révolté was renamed in 1887).
Essentially, it was a sketch of what the Paris Commune should have done with expropriation being a key theme, needed to secure the economic basis of any revolt. It contains powerful arguments for communism such as the chapter entitled “The Wages System”, which remains the best case for (libertarian) communism ever made. It also predicts how State communism is doomed to failure.
It presents an ideal case, for Kropotkin recognised that no actual revolution would follow precisely this path to “well-being for all”. As he put it in 1911, “never to forget that the author does not offer us anything unchangeable, anything decreed in advance” as “life is infinitely more complicated than anything that can be foreseen”.
Encouraging the Spirit of Revolt
Both books suffer from a lack of discussion of means. This can be found in the articles he wrote for the anarchist press, primarily in Le Révolte, La Révolte, Freedom and Les Temps Nouveaux (his articles and letters were published globally). As Kropotkin said, these “are more expressive of my anarchist ideas”
He was aware of a missing volume between the “critical” and “constructive” ones, once noting that “I now ask myself if it would not be useful to make a selection of these articles and publish them in a volume” (“Anarchists and Trade Unions”, 1907).
I should note that Direct Struggle Against Capital (2014) includes many of these articles (but many more exist!) while the new edition of Words of a Rebel (2022) includes articles from 1879 to 1882 on this. Suffice to say, as a good “Bakuninist”, he had always advocated a syndicalist strategy but also recognised the need for an anarchist “party” to influence the struggle, never forgetting that “a Social Revolution can not be the work of individuals. It will be the work of the masses”.
Fields, Factories and Workshops (1898)
His next book was Fields, Factories and Workshops first published in 1898 and made up of articles written for the non-anarchist press based on a detailed examination of economic data and trends (showing his scientific background).
Its central premise was that economic trends suggested that integration rather than division was the future, namely the integration of industry and agriculture as well as manual work and brain work. He (rightly) predicted the spread of industry across the globe, with no nation specialised in just agriculture, as well as the continuing existence – and growth – of small scale industry. Myths notwithstanding, it did not argue that “small is beautiful” but rather for appropriate levels of technology:
“if we analyse the modern industries, we soon discover that for some of them the co-operation of hundreds, or even thousands, of workers gathered at the same spot is really necessary. The great iron works and mining enterprises decidedly belong to that category; oceanic steamers cannot be built in village factories.”
So while he envisioned a spread of workplaces into the countryside, so ending their conglomeration into vast cities, and suggested that local production should be prioritised, this was not the be-all and end-all of a just economy: “Not to reduce… world-exchange: it may still grow in bulk; but to limit it to the exchange of what really must be exchanged”.
However, he was recognised the realities of the capitalist economy and, as a consequence, any tendency was influenced by capitalist power relations for “as long as society remains organised… to permit the owners of the land and capital to appropriate for themselves…. the yearly surplus of human production, no such change can be thoroughly accomplished”.
Mutual Aid (1902)
His next work was Mutual Aid in 1902, which is probably Kropotkin’s most famous book and based on a series of articles written for the leading British liberal journal, The Nineteenth Century.
This was “a book on the law of Mutual Aid, viewed at as one of the chief factors of evolution — not on all factors of evolution and their respective values”. It is important to stress that mutual Aid was considered “A factor of evolution” (to quote its sub-title) and Kropotkin does not deny selfishness, competition or class struggle. He recognised that “Man is a result of both his inherited instincts and his education”, the relative importance of each varying within societies and individuals (even the same ones at different times).
While some suggest that it is non-Darwinian, it in fact expresses a clear Darwinian perspective and Kropotkin quotes Darwin’s own writings to support his case. Its central message was that “those animals which acquire habits of mutual aid are undoubtedly the fittest. They have more chances to survive”.
Mutual aid should not be confused with altruism, although it was “the real foundation of our ethical conceptions”. Kropotkin subsequently worked on the evolution of ethics, suggesting the following dependency: “Mutual Aid — Justice — Morality”.
These ideas are now a mainstay of sociobiology (under the name “reciprocal altruism”) as Noam Chomsky indicates: “Kropotkin’s Darwinian speculations about the possible role of co-operation in evolution, with their implications for anarchist social organisation, remain about as solid a contribution to human sociobiology as exists today.”
1905
The next major event in Kropotkin’s life was the 1905 Russian Revolution, which he welcomed and worked with Russian anarchists to spread anarchist ideas within it. Indeed, he thought about returning home, including practicing his shooting skills in expectation of manning the barricades.
While thinking the revolution produce a republic (a la 1789), he also argued that raising working class demands was essential and that “[t]o distinguish in this fight two periods – one to gain representative rule and another to implement economic reforms – we see as fundamentally impossible.” So, “[t]ogether with the whole Russian people we fight against autocracy. At the same time… broaden our struggle and fight simultaneously against capital and against the government.” A key aspect of this was weakening the economic and political power of the bourgeoisie:
“The land – to the peasant; the factory, the workshop, the railway and the rest ― to the worker… not managed up there at St. Petersburg by the bureaucrats or by the deputies, but at home, in every town and village by the people themselves”
He sought to provide the emerging Russian anarchist movement with the lessons of the Western Europe one, seeking to discourage terrorism and encourage participation with popular movements and struggles. He recognised the links between the now and after, seeing – for example – the “workers’ unions as cells of the future social order and as a powerful means for the preparation of the social revolution”. Likewise with the Soviets, arguing that “the Workers Council… is exactly, we see, like the Central Committee which preceded the Commune, and, like their predecessors, this Council… represents the revolutionary forces of the labouring classes
The Great French Revolution (1909)
Kropotkin had always been fascinated by the French Revolution, writing repeated on it and drawing lessons from it. This came to fruition with the publication on The Great French Revolution in 1909, which focused on the role of the masses – in the towns and villages – in events for “the popular history of the Revolution remains still to be told. The part played by the people of the country places and towns in the Revolution has never been studied and narrated in its entirety.”
It indicates what makes a revolution successful: “To make a revolution it is not, however, enough that there should be such risings — more or less successful. It is necessary that after the risings there should be left something new in the institutions, which would permit new forms of life to be elaborated and established.” So it is more than a history, it aims to learn the lessons of past revolutions: “By acting in this way – and the libertarians would no doubt do the same to-day – the districts of Paris laid the foundations of a new, free, social organisation”.
Modern Science and Anarchy (1913)
Kropotkin’s final book appeared in 1913, Modern Science and Anarchy. Again, it was mostly a collection of articles from Les Temps Nouveaux and pamphlets that had previously published plus a few new chapters.
Its first part, Modern Science and Anarchy, had initially been published in 1903 in Russian (unusually) but now appeared substantially revised and expanded. It discusses both the rise of anarchism and the scientific method, noting that “Anarchy was born amongst the people, and it will maintain its vitality and creative force only as long as it remains a movement of the people.”
Its second part, on Communism and Anarchy, discusses the importance of free distribution to create a genuinely free society while refuting claims that it would diminish the individual: “without [libertarian] communism man will never be able to reach that full development of individuality which is, perhaps, the most powerful desire of every thinking being.”
The third and fourth parts are on the State, on its historic role and current incarnation (respectively). These show why Anarchists “declare themselves against what constitutes the real strength of capital – the State and its principal supports: centralisation of authority, law (always made by the minority, for the profit of minorities), and [a form of] Justice whose chief aim is to protect authority and capital.”
This analysis also showed the stupidity of those “socialists…[who] adopted the ideal of the Jacobin State when this ideal had been designed from the viewpoint of the bourgeois, in direct opposition to the egalitarian and communist tendencies of the people which had arisen during the Revolution”. The alternative to electioneering was also indicated:
“Could its governmental machine, developed for the creation and upholding of these privileges, now be used to abolish them? Would not the new function require new organs? And these new organs would they not have to be created by the workers themselves, in their unions, their federations, completely outside the State?”
In short, the ideas that he had found advocated within the Federalist International so many decades before.
1914 and all that…
Kropotkin, as is well known, supported the Entente against Germany and Austro-Hungary in 1914 becoming, to quote his friend and comrade Errico Malatesta, “a truly pathological case”. Anarchists around the globe were surprised and shocked, but this did not appear from nowhere. He had long viewed France as the homeland of revolution.
Writing in 1905, he saw revolution break out with war so defence of the country was also defence of the revolution. Unfortunately, in 1914, that did not happen and he had not considered this possibility. Kropotkin always had a favourable view of national liberation and did not think the social question could be addressed while under foreign rule. Hence the need to free land taken by the Germans. Also the fear of German militarism and authoritarianism was a factor, with Kropotkin arguing that a German victory would produce a reaction worse than that after Franco-Prussian War.
It must be stressed that this was, in spite of numerous claims, not a “split” in the movement as very few agreed with Kropotkin. As Malatesta wrote at the time, the pro-war anarchists were “not numerous, it is true, but having amongst them comrades whom we love and respect most”. So few were convinced by his arguments, seeing them in contradiction to his earlier ones. Ironically, Anarchists across the globe pointed to and published his previous writings to critique his new position.
1917 and after
Then the long-awaited revolution in Russia broke out in February 1917 and Kropotkin returned to Russia in summer of that year. Sadly, he continued to call for support of the war effort and so eroded any influence he could have had in the developing social revolution.
Most Russia Anarchists ignored his current position for his 1905 one, raising economic demands and struggles to push the revolution forward. Ironically, Lenin took over Kropotkin’s call for raising economic demands and disrupting the State from the 1905 revolution.
Too old and frail to play an active role, after the October Revolution he retired to work on Ethics, a book he had long planned and which was published posthumously. He also wrote critiques of events and met with visiting anarchists.
“How not to introduce communism”
Kropotkin’s critique of the Bolsheviks is important, arguing that the “attempt to establish a highly centralised power, imposing the communist revolution by decrees and by armies of bureaucrats did not succeed. The usual vices of every centralised State gnaw away at this administration, the mass of the people is excluded from reconstruction”. As in his earlier writings, he stressed the need for the mass participation that centralisation by its nature excludes:
“The immense constructive work that is required from a Social Revolution… requires the knowledge, the brains, and the willing collaboration of a mass of local and specialised forces, which alone can cope with the diversity of economical problems…”
The failure of the revolution was, however, unsurprising: “We have always pointed out the effects of Marxism in action. Why be surprised now?”
As before, he urged anarchists to work within the labour movement and reiterated his view that “the trade-union movement… will become… a great force capable of achieving a communist society without authority… a movement which is that of the First International, not the Second nor the Third, both of which usurped the idea of the workers’ International for the benefit of a party – social democracy – which is not half composed of workers”.
Kronstadt 1921
Kropotkin died on 8th February 1921. A public funeral was agreed by the Bolsheviks, which turned into a mass protest – the last allowed until the fall of the USSR decades later.
A few weeks later strikes broke out across Russia, raising economic and political demands. Petrograd, like other cities, was placed under a state of siege while sailors in the Kronstadt naval base sent delegates to investigate. They held a mass meeting and passed a resolution in support as well as calling for the promises of 1917: Soviet democracy, freedom of press, assembly, union, etc.
The Bolsheviks responded by crushing it to maintain their dictatorship. Kropotkin’s warnings on State Socialism were confirmed beyond doubt
Conclusions
Kropotkin’s contributions to anarchism are many but a few are worth stressing.
First, a scientific approach to anarchism: “We shall not construct a new society by looking backwards. We shall only do so by studying, as Proudhon, has already advised, the tendencies of society today and so forecasting the society of tomorrow.”
Second, he had realistic approach to revolution and saw it as a process and not an event: “were we to wait for the Revolution to display an openly communist or indeed collectivist character right from its initial insurrections, that would be tantamount to throwing the idea of Revolution overboard once and for all”
Third, he was class warrior and – regardless of certain claims – based his ideas on the class struggle: “what solidarity can exist between the capitalist and the worker he exploits? Between the army chief and the soldier? The governing and the governed?”
Fourth, he presented a still relevant vision of a better world and how to achieve it as well as an appealing alternative to the treadmill of capitalism: “The ‘right to well-being’ means the possibility of living like human beings… The right to well-being is the Social Revolution”