{"id":135,"date":"2025-11-21T18:51:14","date_gmt":"2025-11-21T18:51:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/anarchistfaq.org\/anarcho\/?p=135"},"modified":"2025-11-21T18:51:14","modified_gmt":"2025-11-21T18:51:14","slug":"kropotkin-class-warrior","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/anarchistfaq.org\/anarcho\/kropotkin-class-warrior\/","title":{"rendered":"Kropotkin: Class Warrior"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This is a write-up of the notes of a talk made at the 2014 London Anarchist bookfair. I have made a few slight changes\/additions. On the day I skipped the section of \u201csmall-scale\u201d production (\u201cKropotkin the Medievalist?) and covered the differences between communist-anarchism and syndicalism in the discussion period. It is based, of course, on the work I did for Direct Struggle Against Capital: A Peter Kropotkin Anthology<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Kropotkin: Class Warrior<\/strong><\/h1>\n\n\n\n

We think that we all know Kropotkin. It is best shown by a recent book entitled The Prince of Co-operation<\/em> and can be found in many other works. For example, Carolyn Ashbaugh in her book Lucy Parsons: American Revolutionary<\/em> proclaimed him the \u201cgentle anarchist theoretician of non-violence\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The reality is very different.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He was not a Tolstoy-like visionary dreaming of a new Middle Ages but rather a Russian prince who rejected his privileges to become a class warrior for the people, for the working masses: a committed and realistic revolutionary communist-anarchist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Which raises an obvious question: How did we get this false picture of Kropotkin?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Perhaps it was Kropotkin\u2019s own fault. After all, he had a jovial personality as well as a very bushy beard, he wanted the free distribution of goods and always preferred red to black flag. Yes, that is right \u2013 he comes across as the Anarchist Santa!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Champions and Legacies<\/em><\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

However, to be serious any thinker\u2019s legacy is determined by what texts are easily available and who champions you after your death. The \u201cconventional wisdom\u201d about the person is what results.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Take Proudhon, for example. Out of the over 20 volumes of the works he published during his life until recently very little was available in English: three complete books, three partial book translations and a few articles from the period of the 1848 revolution. It would be fair to say that he is better known via Marx and Engels than his own works \u2013 but, unfortunately, some forget that those two were not<\/em> disinterested, accurate commentators!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In English-speaking world, he was championed after his death by Benjamin Tucker, the American Individualist Anarchist. There is some overlap but ultimately they held distinctly different ideas, most obviously Tucker had no critique of wage-labour nor understanding that exploitation occurred in production and so, unlike Proudhon, had no vision of workers\u2019 self-management as a necessary part of anarchism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These two facts mean that the conventional wisdom on Proudhon is mostly wrong but I hope that my anthology Property is Theft!<\/em> is challenging that to some degree.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Conventional Wisdom on Kropotkin<\/em><\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The same can be said of Kropotkin. The most easily available works by him are very general and theoretical introductions to anarchism, not<\/em> those on the concrete political and strategic issues facing the movement. He was championed in the post-war period by the overtly \u201creformist\u201d elements in British movement who, like Tucker and Proudhon, ignored most of his ideas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have quoted Carolyn Ashbaugh\u2019s terrible book about Lucy Parsons as an example of how Kropotkin is misunderstood. So what is the picture of Kropotkin you get from such works? The clich\u00e9s are well known: that he v<\/em>iewed nature and society through rose-tinted glasses; that he was utopian and backward looking; that he was utterly impractical and had no vision of how revolution would occur; that he saw libertarian communism being achieved more-or-less overnight as part of a fundamentally easy transformation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sadly for those who peddle such nonsense, none of this is true.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Princess Bride syndrome<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

In the film the Princess Bride<\/em> (an excellent book and film, by the way) a character repeatedly says \u201cinconceivable\u201d to which one of his compatriots finally replies:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

\u201cYou keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

This applies to anarchism, with writers on the subject repeatedly showing they simply do not understand what the word they are using means. Ashbaugh, for example, argues that Lucy Parsons and the Chicago anarchists were not anarchists. The \u201cChicago leaders, as early as 1883, were syndicalists\u201d she asserted because \u201cthey had given up political work for work in the unions which they believed would provide the social organisation of the future\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here is Kropotkin from 1891:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

\u201cWere not our Chicago Comrades right in despising politics, and saying the struggle against robbery must be carried on in the workshop and the street, by deeds not words?\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

And again from a year later:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

\u201cNo one can underrate the importance of this labour movement for the coming revolution. It will be those agglomerations of wealth producers which will have to reorganise production on new social bases. They will have to organise the life of the nation\u2026 They \u2013 the labourers, grouped together \u2013 not the politicians.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Both these quotes are from speeches commemorating the deaths of the Chicago Martyrs so I guess Peter can join Lucy in not knowing what anarchism \u201creally\u201d is!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It could be argued that Kropotkin was speaking after the hanging of the Martyrs and so perhaps he had revised his ideas in light of their activities. Well, here is Kropotkin from \u201cas early\u201d as 1881:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

\u201cWe have to organise the workers\u2019 forces \u2013 not to make them into a fourth party in Parliament, but in order to make them a formidable MACHINE OF STRUGGLE AGAINST CAPITAL. We have to group workers of all trades under this single purpose: \u201cWar on capitalist exploitation!\u201d And we must prosecute that war relentlessly, day by day, by the strike, by agitation, by every revolutionary means<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Was that not what the \u201cChicago leaders\u201d had concluded in 1883? Little wonder, then, that Albert Parsons \u2013 Lucy\u2019s husband and one of the Martyrs \u2013 included two of Kropotkin\u2019s articles on communist-anarchism in his book Anarchism: Its Philosophy and Scientific Basis<\/em>!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not even wrong\u2026<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Let me now turn to a more recent writer, Pat Stack of the British SWP. According to him, we anarchists \u201cdismiss … the importance of the collective nature of change\u201d as anarchism \u201cdownplays the centrality of the working class\u201d, argues that this class \u201cis not the key to change\u201d and \u201cdespises the collectivity\u201d. For anarchists, \u201crevolutions were not about … collective struggle or advance\u201d. He went on to assert that Kropotkin \u201cfar from seeing class conflict as the dynamic for social change as Marx did, saw co-operation being at the root of the social process\u201d and it \u201cfollows that if class conflict is not the motor of change, the working class is not the agent and collective struggle not the means.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Someone should have told Kropotkin:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

\u201cIn order to be able to make revolution, the mass of workers must organise themselves, and resistance and the strike are excellent means by which workers can organise\u2026 What is required is to build resistance associations for each trade\u2026 and fight against the exploiters, to unify the workers\u2019 organisations\u2026 to federate across borders\u2026 workers\u2019 solidarity must become \u2026 a daily reality\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Ironically for Stack, Kropotkin opposed the Marxism of his day (social democracy) because it had \u201cmoved away from a pure labour movement, in the sense of a direct struggle against capitalists by means of strikes, unions, and so forth\u201d into a vote-gathering machine. These awkward facts did not stop Stack smugly proclaiming that the syndicalists\u2019 \u201chuge advantage\u2026 over other anarchists [like Kropotkin] was their understanding of the power of the working class, the centrality of the point of production (the workplace) and the need for collective action\u201d!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Perhaps this is unfair, because Direct Struggle<\/em> Against Capital<\/em> was not available? However, Caroline Cahm\u2019s excellent Kropotkin and the rise of revolutionary anarchism, 1872\u20131886<\/em> has been available since 1989 and this is essential<\/em> reading if you are going to write about Kropotkin. Or \u2013 and here is a radical notion! \u2013 read him. You do not need to delve into rare pamphlets or journals resting in archives to discover Kropotkin\u2019s position: he summarised it well in his justly famous 1910 Encyclopaedia Britannica<\/em> article on anarchism:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

\u201cthe anarchists\u2026 do not seek to constitute, and invite the working men not to constitute, political parties in the parliaments. Accordingly, since the foundation of the International Working Men\u2019s Association\u2026 they have endeavoured to promote their ideas directly amongst the labour organisations and to induce those unions to a direct struggle against capital\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Okay, it is the SWP so what can you expect?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is \u201cA Factor of Evolution\u201d for a reason\u2026<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Yet even normally sensible libertarian socialists can write nonsense about Kropotkin. Maurice Brinton, for example, stated that Kropotkin\u2019s \u201caim is to convince and reason with (rather than to overthrow) those who oppress the masses\u201d and that he stood for \u201ca co-operation that clearly transcended the barriers of class.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is false: even Mutual Aid<\/em> discusses unions and strikes. Yet it is important to note that this classic is not an anarchist book (as such) but rather a work of popular science by an anarchist. To understand Kropotkin\u2019s ideas on class struggle and anarchism you need, perhaps unsurprisingly enough, to look at his explicitly anarchist<\/em> works: \u201cWhat solidarity can exist between the capitalist and the worker he exploits?\u2026 Between the governing and the governed?\u201d Those works \u2013 and not Mutual Aid<\/em> \u2013 which discuss anarchist perspectives on need to wage the class struggle and the importance of a militant labour movement in both improving things now and for social revolution. To quote from a series of articles in Freedom<\/em> which were subsequently published as a pamphlet:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

\u201cWe prefer the ameliorations which have been imposed by the workers upon their masters in a direct struggle\u2026 concessions\u2026 have always been achieved by the action of the trade-unions \u2013 by strikes, by labour revolts, or by menaces of labour war.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

As Kropotkin continually<\/em> stressed, Mutual Aid<\/em> was \u201cone-sided\u201d, it was \u201ca book on the law of Mutual Aid, viewed at as one of the chief factors of evolution \u2013 not of all<\/em> factors of evolution and their respective values.\u201d If its critics had bothered to consult its sub-title (\u201cA Factor of Evolution\u201d<\/em>) then the most obviously wrong claims would have been averted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kropotkin the Medievalist?<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Another popular myth is that Kropotkin (to quote Stack) \u201clooked backwards for change. He believed the ideal society would be based on small autonomous communities, devoted to small scale production.\u201d This must be true because Marx had proclaimed this of Proudhon based on a book by the Frenchman \u2013 System of Economic Contradictions<\/em> \u2013 that explicitly stated the opposite!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What of Kropotkin? After extensively studying the advanced Western economies of his time, he argued for appropriate<\/em> scale technology:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cif we analyse the modern industries, we soon discover that for some of them the co-operation of hundred, 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.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

For Kropotkin, then, the scale of industry would be driven by objective<\/em> technological facts rather than an ideologically-driven commitment to \u201csmall scale\u201d production.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Moreover, he was well aware that the structure of industry today influenced by class<\/em>: \u201cthe benefits which the owners of land or capital\u2026 can derive\u2026 from the under-paid work of the wage-labourer, or from the inferior position of one class of the community toward another class\u201d. As a free society would not be using the same criteria as a capitalist one this meant that while it will inherit an industrial structure that has<\/em> to be just the starting point for \u201cSocialism implies\u2026 a transformation of industry so that it may be adapted to the needs of the customer, not those of the profit-maker.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sadly, Kropotkin\u2019s common sense is lost on Leninists and their \u201cbig is beautiful\u201d dogma \u2013 and it must be stressed that Bolshevik utilisation of inherited capitalist structures in 1917 and 1918 just created state<\/em> capitalism in Russia, not socialism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The curse of Paul Avrich<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Brinton\u2019s and Stack\u2019s comments are based on Paul Avrich\u2019s book The Russian Anarchists<\/em>. Much of this book is correct and important, with ground-breaking accounts of the factory committee movement in 1917 and the role of anarchists in the Russian Revolutions of 1905 and 1917. However, its many positive reviews hide the awkward fact that it gets many things wrong (at best, incomplete), most obviously the ideas of Bakunin and Kropotkin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Indeed, all the clich\u00e9s we associate with Kropotkin are there: his \u201cbenign optimism\u201d, how \u201cnostalgic yearning for a simpler but fuller life led him to idealise the autonomous social units of bygone years\u201d, that he \u201clooked backward\u201d, thought there would be a \u201cspontaneous\u201d and \u201cspeedy\u201d revolution, that \u201cco-operation rather than conflict lay at the root of human progress\u201d and that he gave only \u201cqualified support\u201d to syndicalism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet if you read closely enough Avrich presents enough actual facts to refute the impression given. For example, he proclaims that syndicalism was inspired by Marx\u2019s \u201cdoctrine of class struggle\u201d yet on the same page writes how \u201cthe followers of Proudhon and Bakunin in the First International were proposing the formation of workers\u2019 councils designed both as a weapon of class struggle against capitalists and as the structural basis of the future libertarian society\u201d. Avrich suggests that \u201cnor [for Kropotkin] could the trade unions become the nuclei of the anarchist commonwealth\u201d after<\/em> quoting him on unions being \u201cnatural organs for the direct struggle with capitalism and for the composition of the future order\u201d. Avrich also quotes Kropotkin on the general strike being \u201ca powerful weapon of struggle\u201d but fails to mention that Engels caricatured and mocked the idea when it was raised by Bakunin and his followers in the First International (words used, incidentally, by orthodox social democrats in the Second International against both syndicalism and their more radical fellows).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Worse, Avrich also often presents a selective account of texts to support his clich\u00e9s. He argued that \u201cthe partisans of syndicalism went beyond Kropotkin by reconciling the principle of mutual assistance with the Marxian doctrine of class struggle. For the syndicalists, mutual aid did not embrace humanity as a whole, but existed only within the ranks of a single class, the proletariat, enhancing its solidarity in the battle with the manufacturers\u201d. Yet reading his anarchist works you quickly see that Kropotkin embraced the \u201cdoctrine of class struggle\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This can seen from the pamphlet Avrich quotes Kropotkin on unions and the general strike which also argued that a working class movement was needed which \u201cwages a direct,<\/em> unmediated battle of labour against capital \u2013 not through parliament but directly by means that are generally available to all workers and only the workers\u201d. Anarchists had \u201cto awaken in the workers and peasants an understanding of their own power, of their determining voice in the revolution and of what they can accomplish in their own interests.\u201d Clearly \u201cthe partisans of syndicalism\u201d and Kropotkin shared<\/em> the same perspective. It was also Bakunin\u2019s position and, indeed, Avrich writes of Bakunin\u2019s \u201call-encompassing class war\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So there is nothing specifically \u201cMarxian\u201d about advocating class struggle. It is annoying when an otherwise useful book makes mistakes like that\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not anti-syndicalist but syndicalism-plus<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Unsurprisingly, given this, Avrich presents a chronology that reflected and reinforced the conventional wisdom on anarchism and syndicalism, suggesting that the failure of propaganda by deed in the \u201cearly [eighteen-]nineties\u2026 created widespread disillusionment\u2026 causing large numbers of French anarchists to enter workers\u2019 unions\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet Kropotkin was advocating \u201csyndicalism\u201d (anarchist involvement in the labour movement and unmediated class struggle on the economic arena) in Russia in the early 1870s before being arrested and imprisoned in 1874, in France after escaping from his Tsarist prison and before being arrested and imprisoned in 1882 and, finally, in France and Britain from 1889 onwards.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These facts contradict the standard narrative on anarchism and syndicalism. The successful return<\/em> to syndicalism dates from the 1889 London Dock Strike with Kropotkin talking of the General Strike starting the revolution in 1889 and 1890, as did Malatesta and other leading communist-anarchists. This was simply returning to ideas raised by the likes of Bakunin in the 1860s and 1870s in the First International.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What, then, are the differences between communist-anarchism and syndicalism?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For communist-anarchists, while important in the class struggle and anarchist activity trade unions were not automatically<\/em> revolutionary. As Kropotkin summarised in a letter:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cThe syndicate is absolutely necessary. It is the only form of worker\u2019s association which allows the direct struggle against capital to be carried on without a plunge into parliamentarianism. But, evidently, it does not achieve this goal automatically\u2026 There is need of the other element which Malatesta speaks of and which Bakunin always professed\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

There was, then, a need for anarchists to organise as anarchists and so Kropotkin thought that \u201cthe formation of an anarchist party\u2026 far from being prejudicial to the common revolutionary cause, is desirable and useful to the greatest degree\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Similarly, the General Strike was an excellent means of starting a revolution and \u201ca good method of struggle, [but] it does not free the people that use it from the necessity of an armed struggle against the dominating order\u201d. Syndicalists, moreover, \u201cconsiderably attenuated the resistance that the Social Revolution will probably meet with on its way\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Finally, unions were just one<\/em> aspect of a free society. Kropotkin agreed that workers must become \u201cthe managers of production\u201d in \u201cfederations of Trade Unions for the organisation of men in accordance with their different functions\u201d but also there was the need for \u201cindependent Communes for the territorial organisation\u201d as well as \u201cthousands upon thousands of free combines and societies growing up everywhere for the satisfaction of all possible and imaginable needs.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Real Kropotkin<\/em><\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

As you can see, based on this critique of the \u201cconventional wisdom\u201d you see the real<\/em> Kropotkin. This is, I must stress, not<\/em> the \u201cunknown\u201d Kropotkin as this information was there, if you could be bothered to do the research. It was also there in his \u201chigh-level\u201d works, if you bothered to pay attention. As noted, even Mutual Aid<\/em> is not silent on the class struggle, unions, strikes and so on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So there is a reason Direct Struggle Against Capital<\/em> is so entitled \u2013 class war was a core aspect of Kropotkin\u2019s ideas from the start<\/em>. This is hardly surprising, as he joined the so-called \u201cBakuninist\u201d wing of the First International with its union based organisation and struggle, its vision of social revolution rooted in the general strike, insurrection and workers\u2019 councils as well as its advocacy of workers\u2019 self-management of their own organisations, struggles and \u2013 in the future \u2013 workplaces and communities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is no fundamental difference between the politics of Kropotkin and Bakunin: the problem is simply that Bakunin\u2019s ideas are not well known (but that is for another time!).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So what were Kropotkin\u2019s real<\/em> politics?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He was a realistic, practical revolutionary anarchist engaged in the issues of the day and committed to anarchist involvement in mass movements, particularly \u2013 but not exclusively \u2013 the labour movement. He argued from the early 1870s to his death for \u201cdirect struggle against capital\u201d, for labour organisations to fight and replace capitalism \u2013 we needed to \u201cbuild up a force capable of imposing better working conditions on the bosses, but also\u2026 to create among the working classes the union structures that might some day replace the bosses and take into their own hands the production and management of every industry.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He was against electioneering as it was reformist and undermined the socialist movement as political parties are \u201ccontinually driven by the force of circumstances to become tools of the ruling classes in keeping things as they are.\u201d Given the fate of the Marxism of his day, he raised the obvious question:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cAre we going to abandon the terrain of the economic struggle, of the worker against the capitalist, in order to become compliant tools in the hands of the politicians?\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Kropotkin saw the growing mass movement as the link between now and socialism, urging libertarians to get involved in mass movements to influence and radicalise them. For example, he was a keen advocate of the campaign to mark May Day by demonstrations and strikes. This participation in popular movements was needed and urged anarchists \u201cnot [to] wait for the revolution to fall upon us unsolicited, like manna from heaven\u201d, always remember that \u201cwithout the masses, no revolution\u201d and that \u201cthe man of action\u2019s place is where the masses are\u201d. Popular movements and struggles, like strikes, would produce a social revolution because \u201c[t]hanks to government intervention, the factory rebel becomes a rebel against the State.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Contrary to the myths, Kropotkin saw the revolution as a long and difficult process that took time:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

\u201cwe know that an uprising<\/em> can overthrow and change a government in one day, while a revolution<\/em> needs three or four years of revolutionary convulsion to arrive at tangible results\u2026 if we should expect the revolution, from its earliest<\/em> insurrections, to have a communist character, we would have to relinquish the possibility of a revolution\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

He was explicitly against the notion of one-day revolutions and argued that libertarians \u201cdo not believe\u2026 the Revolution will be accomplished at a stroke, in the twinkling of an eye, as some socialists dream.\u201d He was well aware a revolutionary people would be facing economic crisis and disruption as well as counter-revolution, recognising \u2013 for he was no pacifist \u2013 that the working class is that class \u201cwhich, alone, will take arms and make the revolution\u201d and a \u201cpeople that will itself be the armed strength of the country and which will have afforded armed citizens the requisite cohesion and concerted action, will no longer be susceptible to being ordered around.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Simply put, anarchism was best not because revolution was easy but because<\/em> it was difficult<\/em>. It needed mass participation to overcome its many problems and because the change needed was \u201cso immense and so profound\u201d that it is \u201cimpossible for one or any individual to elaborate the different social forms which must spring up in the society of the future. This elaboration of new social forms can only be made by the collective work of the masses\u201d. He pointed to the Paris Commune as evidence that \u201c[a]ny authority external to [the people] will only be an obstacle\u201d and freely federated communities and workplaces as the alternative.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Needless to say, his predictions about the problems that the social revolution would face were confirmed by the Russian Revolution \u2013 as were his warnings over statist \u201csolutions\u201d to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Conclusion<\/em><\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

So you can see why this talk is entitled Kropotkin: Class Warrior<\/em> and why Direct Struggle Against Capital<\/em> has that title. His message is still valid:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cThe enemy on whom we declare war is capital, and it is against capital that we will direct all our efforts, taking care not to become distracted from our goal by the phony campaigns and arguments of the political parties. The great struggle that we are preparing for is essentially economic<\/em>, and so it is on the economic terrain that we should focus our activities.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

On issue after issue he was proven right. Libertarians today must recognise the wealth of ideas he left us in his articles and books and rescue his legacy from the false pictures painted of it by, at best, well-meaning but uncomprehending liberals or, at worst, malicious Marxists seeking to rescue the Bolshevik Myth by distorting the ideas of anarchist thinkers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet there is no point reading Kropotkin without also thinking about our<\/em> struggles and problems and how we apply and develop what is best and valid in his ideas today<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is a write-up of the notes of a talk made at the 2014 London Anarchist bookfair. I have made a few slight changes\/additions. On the day I skipped the section of \u201csmall-scale\u201d production (\u201cKropotkin the Medievalist?) and covered the differences between communist-anarchism and syndicalism in the discussion period. It is based, of course, on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,6,34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-135","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anarchisthistory","category-kropotkin","category-talk"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/anarchistfaq.org\/anarcho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/anarchistfaq.org\/anarcho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/anarchistfaq.org\/anarcho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anarchistfaq.org\/anarcho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anarchistfaq.org\/anarcho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=135"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/anarchistfaq.org\/anarcho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":136,"href":"https:\/\/anarchistfaq.org\/anarcho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135\/revisions\/136"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/anarchistfaq.org\/anarcho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=135"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anarchistfaq.org\/anarcho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=135"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anarchistfaq.org\/anarcho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=135"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}