Peter Kropotkin, the "Prince" of Anarchism

Here is an article I wrote on my favorite anarchist philosopher, Peter Kropotkin. Hope you enjoy.

Towards the end of the industrial revolution and the development of modern Capitalism, an anti-authoritarian undercurrent began to develop in Russia. These thoughts culminated and were exemplified by Peter Kropotkin, a Russian geographer and fervent anarchist writer. Born in Moscow on December 21, 1842 into a wealthy royal family. In fact, Kropotkin had a legitimate claim to the Russian throne, but renounced his title after he mapped Siberia in 1871 (WorldBook Online). In 1872 Kropotkin joined the Circle of Chaykovsky, a revolutionary anarchist group that smuggled subversive literature into Russia, and were also responsible for the assassination of Alexander II (Robinson, 44).

Kropotkin's political philosophy was heavily influenced by his experiences in his youth. As a child of noble birth, his family owned more than 1200 serfs who he would befriend over the years. Peter watched his father beat them regularly, and he became very disenfranchised with his noble birthright. As a young man, when he was charting Siberia, Kropotkin became enamored of the small villages that existed there. In these villages, the Russian peasants and the native tribesman worked together to provide for everyone in the community. It was after these experiences that Kropotkin identified himself as an Anarchist Communist (Avrich, 55).

Anarchist Communism is a political ideology in which society is comprised of a federation of autonomous communes. Each commune would constitute a self-supporting village where inhabitants would work cooperatively in a decentralized cottage industry to trade with other communes. These communes would be established by free agreement of individuals without any form of authority or hierarchy.

A number of facets of a state society would be entirely eliminated in Anarchist Communism. Two of these are currency and private property. The abolition of currency, Kropotkin explains, is necessary in order to end class war and prevent the exploitation of the poor. Collectivism, another anarchist sect, proposed that instead of having currency, workers would be paid with labor cheques that denote how much time has been worked, that can be exchanged for a variety of commodities. Kropotkin argued that this system would only result in the reinstitution of private property, because these labor cheques would become the new currency (Kropotkin, Conquest…, 200-7).

In the event of a revolution, Kropotkin shows that expropriation is necessary in order to end class conflict in a post-capitalist society. He explains: "We do not want to rob any one of his coat, but we wish to give to the workers all those things the lack of which makes them fall an easy prey to the exploiter, and we will do our utmost that none shall lack aught, that not a single man shall be forced to sell the strength of his right arm to obtain a bare subsistence for himself and his babes" (Kropotkin, Conquest…, 41). The nature of this revolution must be inherently peaceful though, he claims. Breaking with Marx's belief in the revolutionary dictator, Kropotkin said that the nature of a revolution will define the nature of post-revolutionary society, and thus the ends do not justify the means (Avrich, 67).

Kropotkin was also known to have a proclivity for federalism. He states that centralization of government "creates an army of office-holders, sitting like spiders in their webs, who have never seen the world except through the dingy panes of their office windows and only know it from their files and absurd formulae…so long as it guarantees a maximum salary for a minimum of work" (Kropotkin, "Paroles…"). He demonstrates that many aspects of modern society have federalist tendencies without any governing body such as "The International Postal Union, the railway unions, and the learned societies give us examples of solutions based on free agreement in place and stead of law" (Kropotkin, Conquest…, 32).

As a proponent of Anarchist Communism, Kropotkin posits that "Anarchy leads to Communism, and Communism to Anarchy, both alike being expressions of the predominant tendency in modern societies, the pursuit of equality" (Kropotkin, Conquest…, 29). Anarchism is not an artificially implemented social order, but rather the natural flow of human behavior in the absence of the state. Kropotkin also argues that all existing societies that are founded on individualism "are inevitably impelled in the direction of Communism.

Another subject of great importance to him was the division of labor. In Anarchist Communism there is no divide between manual workers and brain workers. One reason for this is that if there were this division there would soon emerge an intellectual class and a working class. Another reason is that mixing manual and brain work makes doing work in general much more enjoyable. Kropotkin gives the example that "a weaver invent who merely supervises four looms, without knowing anything either about their complicated movements or how the machines grew to be what they are? What can a man invent who is condemned for life to bind together the ends of two threads with the greatest celerity, and knows nothing beyond making a knot?" (Kropotkin, Fields…, 367).

In response to criticism of Anarchist theory, Kropotkin addresses the problem of deviancy in society. Based on his experience in two prisons, he was an ardent opponent their institution because "criminals" are "simply unfortunate; that the remedy is not to flog him, to chain him up, or to kill him on the scaffold or in prison, but to help him by the most brotherly care, by treatment based on equality, by the usages of life amongst honest men" (Ward, 41). Kropotkin was the first person to use the phrase "prisons are the universities of crime" (Avrich, 66).

In addition to his political beliefs, Kropotkin is also renowned for his contributions to ethics and evolutionary biology. Kropotkin read "On the Law of Mutual Aid," one of Professor Karl Kessler's lectures while in Clairvaux prison, which "emphasized that the desire to protect their offspring brought animals together, and that 'the more individuals keep together, the more they mutually support each other, and the more are the chances of the species for surviving, as well as for making further progress in its intellectual development'" (Avrich, 56-7). This view is directly antithetical to that of Thomas Huxley, Darwin's top disciple, who argued that "in civilized society, the inevitable result of such obedience [to the animal kingdom's law of bloody battle] is the re-establishment, in all its intensity, of that struggle for existence – the war of each against all – the mitigation or abolition of which was the chief end of social organization" (Gould, par. 8). This stark opposition prompted him to write his most influential book Mutual Aid.

Kropotkin has gained a significant reputation as an ethical anarchist. As an early advocate of the evolutionary basis of morality, he contends that morality is an instinctual imperative. Morality, he explains, is "the close dependency of every one's happiness upon the happiness of all; and of the sense of justice, or equity, which brings the individual to consider the rights of every other individual as equal to his own. Upon this broad and necessary foundation the still higher moral feelings are developed" (Conquest, 22). In the pamphlet "Anarchist Morality," Kropotkin argued that human morality is an instinctual precondition of humanity. These moral instincts are intended to cause humans to engage in mutual aid and socialization, making humans evolutionarily adept ("Anarchist Morality").

Sources:

Avrich, Paul. Anarchist Portraits. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988.
Berneri, C. "Peter Kropotkin: His Federalist Ideas." London: Freedom Press, 1942.
Gould, Stephen Jay. "Kropotkin Was No Crackpot." Natural History June 1997: 12-21.
Kropotkin, Peter. "Anarchism." The Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1910 ed.
Kropotkin, Peter. Anarchist Morality. Print.
Kropotkin, Peter. The Conquest of Bread. New York: Vanguard Press, 1995.
Kropotkin, Peter. Fields, Factories and Workshops: or, Industry Combined with
Agriculture and Brain Work with Manual Work. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1913.
Kropotkin, Peter. Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution. London: Freedom Press, 1998.
Kropotkin, Petr, and Martin Zemliak. Paroles D'un Révolté. Paris: Flammarion, 1978.
Morris, Brian. "Basic Kropotkin." London: Anarchist Federation, 2008.
Robinson, Victor. "Scenes From Serfdom." Comrade Kropotkin. New York: Altrurians, 1908.
Ward, Colin. Anarchism: A Very Short Introduction. New York: Oxford University Press
Inc., 2004.
"Kropotkin, Peter." World Book Advanced. World Book, 2010. Web. 2 April 2010.