TRANSLATORS' PREFACE
Kropotkin's "Ethics: Origin and Development," is, in a sense, a
continuation of his well-known work, "Mutual Aid as a Factor of
Evolution." The basic ideas of the two books are closely connected,
almost inseparable, in fact: -- the origin and progress of human
relations in society. Only, in the "Ethics" Kropotkin approaches his
theme through a study of the ideology of these relations.
The Russian writer removes ethics from the sphere of the speculative
and metaphysical, and brings human conduct and ethical teaching back to
its natural environment: the ethical practices of men in their everyday
concerns -- from the time of primitive societies to our modern highly
organized States. Thus conceived, ethi... (From: Anarchy Archives.) We have most interesting monographs dealing with separate branches of the small industries of Switzerland, but we have not yet such comprehensive statistical data as those which have been mentioned in the text in speaking of Germany and France. It was only in the year 1901 that the first attempt was made to get the exact numbers of work people employed in what the Swiss statisticians describe as Hausindustrie, or "the domestic industries' extension of the factory industries "(der hausindustrielle Anhang der Fabrikindustrie). Up till then these numbers remained "an absolutely unknown quantity." For many it was, therefore, a revelation when a first rough estimate, made by the factory inspectors, gave the figure of 52,291 work people belonging... (From: Anarchy Archives.) National questions are not in vogue now in Europe. After having so much exercised the generation of '48, they seem to be now in neglect. The poor results of a movement which caused so many illusions; the new problems that are coming to the front -- the social problem taking the precedence of all; the prominence recently given to the ideas of unification and centralization above those of territorial independence and federalism, by the sudden growth of a powerful military State in middle Europe, -- all these have helped to repel into the background those questions of national independence which seemed to constitute the very essence of the history of Europe during the first half of our century. Faith in national programs, formerly so firm, has... (From: Anarchy Archives.) (P. 928) I Find, in the Contemporary Review for February last, a paper by Mr. Lansdell on 'A Russian Prison,' containing a description of the State prison at the St. Petersburg fortress of St. Peter and St. Paul. This description being, in my opinion, too incomplete to convey a correct idea about the real conditions of prison life in the Russian fortress, and being intended, moreover, to cast a doubt upon other trustworthy information about such parts of the fortress as were not visited by Mr. Lansdell, I desire to give some supplementary information about the fortress which I know from my own experience. At the same time I would avail myself of this opportunity for answering, documents in hand, several questions addressed to me by Mr. Lans... (From: Anarchy Archives.) On the 5th of May last the celebration of the centenary of the French Revolution began by the commemoration of the opening of the States-General at Versailles, at the same date, in the memorable year of 1789. And Paris—that city which in January last so clearly manifested its dissatisfaction with Parliamentary rule—heartily joined in the festivities organized to celebrate a day when parliamentary institutions, crossing the Channel, went to take firm root on the Continent. Must we see in the enthusiasm of the Parisians one of those seeming contradictions which are so common in the complicated life of large human agglomerations? Or was it the irresistible attraction of a spring festival which induced the Parisians to rush in flock... (From: Anarchy Archives.) Condition of people previous to 1789 -- Wanton luxury of aristocrats -- Poverty of majority of peasants -- Rise and importance of well-to-do peasant class
It would be waste of time to describe here at any length the condition of the peasants in the country and of the poorer classes in the towns on the eve of 1789.
All the historians who have written about the great French Revolution have devoted eloquent pages to this subject. The people groaned under the burden of taxes levied by the State, rents and contributions paid to the lord, tithes collected by the clergy, as well as under the forced labor exacted by all three. Entire populations were reduced to beggary and wandered on the roads to the number of five, ten or twenty thousand me... (From: Anarchy Archives.) Its Origin-The Czars Alexis and Peter I.-Sumarókoff-Pseudo-classical Tragedies: Knyazhnin, ; Ozeroff-First Comedies-The First Years of the Nineteenth Century-Griboyedoff-The Moscow Stage in the Fifties-Ostrovskiy; his first Dramas- "The Thunderstorm"-Ostrovskiy's later Dramas-Historical Dramas: A. K. Tolstóy-Other Dramatic Writers.
The Drama in Russia, as everywhere else, had a double origin. It developed out of the religious "mysteries" on the one hand and the popular comedy on the other, witty interludes being introduced into the grave, moral representations, the subjects of which were borrowed from the Old or the New Testament. Several such mysteries were adapted in the seventeenth century by the teachers of the Graeco-Lat... (From: Anarchy Archives.) The two sister arts of Agriculture and Industry were not always so estranged from one another as they are now. There was a time, and that time is not far off, when both were thoroughly combined: the villages were then the seats of a variety of industries, and the artisans in the cities did not abandon agriculture; many towns were nothing else but industrial villages. If the medieval city was the cradle of those industries which fringed art and were intended to supply the wants of the richer classes, still it was the rural manufacture which supplied the wants of the million; so it does until the present day in Russia. But then came the water-motors, steam, the development of machinery, and they broke the link which formerly connected the far... (From: Anarchy Archives.) The central prison of Clairvaux, described in the preceding chapter, may be considered as a fair representative of modern prisons. In France, it is decidedly one of the best - I should say the best if I were not aware that the military prison at Brest is not inferior to the Maison Centrale of Clairvaux. In fact, the recent discussion about prisons in the French Chamber of Deputies, and the outbreaks of prisoners which have been witnessed last year in nearly ail the chief penal establishments of France, have disclosed such a state of affairs in most French prisons that we must recognize them as much worse than the central prison with which I was enabled to make some acquaintance.
lf we compare the prison discipline at Clairvaux with that of... (From: Anarchy Archives.) Personal; not for print
Viola. Muswill Hill Row London, N. November 20, 1908
Dear Berkman
You are quite right in taking a hopeful view of the progress of our ideas in America. It would have been far greater, I am sure, if the American anarchists had succeeded in merging themselves into the mass of the workingmen. So long as they remain a knot, a handful, aristocratically keeping apart from the mass of the working men -- they may display the most heroic devotion to the cause of labor -- as you did.
Dear, good friend -- their efforts will remain fruitless and their teachings will appeal more to the intellectual bourgeois who rebels against certain restraints in Art, in relations between man and woman, than to the worker.... (From: Anarchy Archives.) From Selected Writings on Anarchism and Revolution, P.A. Kropotkin, edited and translated by Martin A. Miller. The letter appears in Anarchy Archives with the permission of the editor and translator.
Dmitrov (Moscow province)
21 December, 1920
Respected Vladimir Illich,
An announcement has been placed in Izvestiia and in Pravda which makes known the decision of the Soviet government to seize as hostages SRs [Social Revolutionary party members] from the Savinkov groups, White Guards of the nationalist and tactical center, and [Pyotr] Wrangel officers; and, in case of an [assassination] attempt on the leaders of the soviets, to “mercilessly exterminate” these hostages.
Is there really no one around you to remind... (From: Anarchy Archives.) From Selected Writings on Anarchism and Revolution, P.A. Kropotkin, edited and translated by Martin A. Miller. The letter appears in Anarchy Archives with the permission of the editor and translator.
Dmitrov, 4 March, 1920
Esteemed Vladimir Ilich,
Several employees of the postal-telegraph department have come to me with the request that I bring to your attention information about their truly desperate situation. As this problem concerns not only the commissariat of mail and telegraphs alone, but the general condition of everyday life in Russia, I hasten to fulfill their request.
You know, of course, that to live in the Dmitrov district on the salary received by these employees is absolutely impossible. It is impossibl... (From: Anarchy Archives.) Viola, Bromley, Kent
March 5, 1902
My dear friend,
I read your letter with a great deal of personal and general interest, and I would like to be able to answer it at length, as well as to discuss one of its essential points, individualism. Maybe someday I will write a few articles on individualism. At any rate, I will try to answer you now without entering into lengthy details.
I will start with the central point of your letter, in which you ask why youth is not the same now as it was in 1890-94. According to you, it is because at the time, we were affected by the libertarian movement in art and literature and so forth.
Well, we still are. The only difference is that it is they who no longer want us, and that, after ... (From: Anarchy Archives.) Chapter 1
"When ignorance reigns in society and disorder in the minds of men, laws are multiplied, legislation is expected to do everything, and each fresh law being a fresh miscalculation, men are continually led to demand form it what can proceed only from themselves, from their own education and their own morality." It is no revolutionist who says this, nor even a reformer. It is the jurist, [Joseph] Dallois, author of the Collection of French law known as “Repertoire de la Legislation.” And yet, though these lines were written by a man who was himself a maker and admirer of law, they perfectly represent the abnormal condition of our society.
In existing States a fresh law is looked upon as a remedy for evil. Instead of... (From: Anarchy Archives.) Dear Steffen,
You ask my opinion about the war. I have expressed it on several occasions in France, and the present events, unfortunately, only reinforced it.
I consider that the duty of everyone who cherishes the idea of human progress altogether, and especially those that were inscribed by the European proletarians on the banner of the International Workingmen's Association, is to do everything in one's power, according to one's capacities, to crush down the invasion of the Germans into Western Europe.
The cause of this war was not Russia's attitude toward the Austrian ultimatum, as the German government, true to Bismarck's traditions, has tried to represent it. As early as July 19 it was known among the West European contine... (From: Anarchy Archives.) The Manifesto of the Sixteen From various sides, voices are raised to demand immediate peace. There has been enough bloodshed, they say, enough destruction, and it is time to finish things, one way or another. More than anyone, and for a long time, we and our journals have been against every war of aggression between peoples, and against militarism, no matter what uniform, imperial or republican, it dons. So we would be delighted to see the conditions of peace discussed—if that was possible—by the European workers, gathered in an international congress. Especially since the German people let itself be deceived in August 1914, and if they really believed that they mobilized for the defense of their territory, they have since had ... (From: Libertarian-Labyrinth, http://libertarian-labyrint....) Few writers have established their reputation so rapidly as Maxím Górky. His first sketches (1892-95), were published in an obscure provincial paper of the Caucasus, and were totally unknown to the literary world, but when a short tale of his appeared in a widely-read review, edited by Korolénko, it at once attracted general attention. The beauty of its form, its artistic finish, and the new note of strength and courage which rang through it, brought the young writer immediately into prominence. It became known that Maxím Górky was the pen-name of quite a young man, A. Pyeshkoff, who was born in 1868 in Nizhni Novgorod, a large town on the Volga; that his father was a merchant, or an artisan, his mother... (From: University of Virginia Library.) In May 1919 Lenin met Kropotkin in the Kremlin. Lenin admired Kropotkin, especially for his book The Great French Revolution, but the conversation revealed how the anarchist leader was more interested in this or that cooperative being set up and had lost the general picture of where the revolution was going.
After the February Revolution, on June 12th 1917, P.A. Kropotkin returned to Russia from England, to Petrograd, where he wanted to live. Soon, however, he changed his mind and moved to Moscow.
One day — it was the year 1918 — a relative of Pyotr Alexeyevich Kropotkin — his daughter if I remember correctly, together with her husband — applied at my office at the Committee of the Soviet of Peoples Co... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) The autobiographies which we owe to great minds have in former times generally been of one of three types: 'So far I went astray, thus I found the true Path' (St Augustine); or, 'So bad was I, but who dares to consider himself better!" (Rousseau); or, 'This is the way a genius has slowly been evolved from within and by favorable surroundings'(Goethe). In these forms of self-representation the author is thus mainly pre-occupied with himself.
In the nineteenth century the a autobiographies of men of mark are more often shaped on lines such as these: 'So full of talent and attractive was I; such appreciation and admiration I won!' (Johanne Louise Heiberg, 'A Life lived once more in Reminiscence'); or, 'I was full of talent and worthy of being... (From: Anarchy Archives.) What position, then, does Anarchism occupy in the great intellectual movement
of the nineteenth century?
The answer to this question has already been partly formulated in the
preceding pages. Anarchism is a world-concept based upon a mechanical
explanation of all phenomena,1
embracing the whole of Nature--that is,
including in it the life of human societies and their economic, political, and
moral problems. Its method of investigation is that of the exact natural
sciences, by which every scientific conclusion must be verified. Its aim is to
construct a synthetic philosophy comprehending in one generalization all the
phenomena of Nature--and therefore also the life of societies,--avoiding,
however, the errors mentioned above into... (From: Anarchy Archives.) Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution
Peter Kropotkin
1902
CHAPTER 7
MUTUAL AID AMONG OURSELVES
Popular revolts at the beginning of the State-period. -- Mutual Aid institutions of the present time. -- The village community; its struggles for resisting its abolition by the State. -- Habits derived from the village-community life, retained in our modern villages. -- Switzerland, France, Germany, Russia.
The mutual-aid tendency in man has so remote an origin, and is so deeply interwoven with all the past evolution of the human race, that it has been maintained by mankind up to the present time, notwithstanding all vicissitudes of history. It was chiefly evolved during periods of peace and prosperity; but when even the greatest calamities bef... (From: Anarchy Archives.) The following address is one with which Kropotkin opened a series of meetings in London, which our friends of the Freedom group propose to give for the Anarchistic propaganda. To our regular readers this address will contain much with, which they are already familiar; but new readers may be interested in the following summary of the subject:
This address is the first of a series organized to discuss the subjects of Anarchism and Communism, and before entering upon the matter proper, our comrades have asked me to give an outline of Anarchism. I now proceed to do this, but confess that I should have felt infinitely happier if, instead of being limited to a mere sketch, it were possible for me to have ten or a dozen evenings on which to... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) We are often reproached for accepting as a label this word anarchy, which frightens many people so much. "Your ideas are excellent," we are told, "but you must admit that the name of your party is an unfortunate choice. Anarchy in common language is synonymous with disorder and chaos; the word brings to mind the idea of interests clashing, of individuals struggling, which cannot lead to the establishment of harmony."
Let us begin by pointing out that a party devoted to action, a party representing a new tendency, seldom has the opportunity of choosing a name for itself. It was not the Beggars of Brabant who made up their name, which later came to be popular. But, beginning as a nickname -- and a well-chosen one -- it was taken up b... (From: Anarchy Archives.) When Professor Huxley introduced, twenty-three years ago, the name and the subject of Physiography, his intentions were certainly excellent. Natural sciences were almost entirely excluded at that time from the schools. The teaching of geography stood very low: political geography, so-called, was a mere collection of names, and an entirely subordinate subject; and physical geography was a collection of information, too abstract, too incoherent, too wide, and too superficial at the same time, to be of any use in education. Under the name of Physiography natural sciences were, so to say, smuggled into the schools. And by showing how the study of Nature may be approached, and methods of scientific observation may be rendered familiar by examini... (From: Anarchy Archives.) Introduction
In the year 1837, Adolphe Blanqui (brother of the revolutionary leader from whom the Blanquists took their name) wrote a book, The History of Political Economy. He showed in it the importance which economics had in the history of humanity for the determination of political forms and also for the building up of current ideas on Right, Morals and Philosophy. Sixty years ago, Liberals and Radicals concentrated their thoughts on politics, and were altogether unaware of the new industrial conditions which were in course of formation out of the ruins of the old regime. It was from Blanqui’s point of view quite legitimate that in order to draw attention upon economics and upon the Socialist movement which was then beginning, he ... (From: Anarchy Archives.) The question frequently arises in discussions: "But if you got an anarchist state of society to-morrow, how would you maintain it? and even if it did continue for a certain time, would not, afterwards, when the first force of revolutionary sentiment and vigilance had spent itself, the old abuses gradually and insidiously come to reestablish themselves, as they came to be established in the first instance?" The question is worth answering, especially the latter portion of it.
The only way in which a state of Anarchy can be obtained is for each man who is oppressed to act as if he were at liberty, in defiance of all authority to the contrary, and evading or overcoming by force by which he is opposed or pursued. The liberty of each is creat... (From: AnarchyArchives.) The following letter was written by Peter Kropotkin to his friend, De Reijger, the Dutch anarchist, who had invited him to come to stay at Haarlem:
“Moscow, Dmitrooka,
“December, 23rd, 1920.
“Dear Comrade De Reijger,—My heartiest thanks for your kind letter of November, which has at last reached me. All three of us, my wife, my daughter, and myself, are profoundly touched by your letter and your invitation. But as perhaps you know already from the letter which I sent to the comrades of the ‘Berlin Syndicalist,’ our position is as bad to-day as it was last year. We have the necessities of life, and considering one could not say that everywhere else in Europe, it is a great deal.... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) Part 1
You must often have asked yourselves what is the cause of Anarchism, and why, since there are already so many Socialist schools, it is necessary to found an additional one -- that of Anarchism. In order to answer this question I will go back to the close of last century.
You all know the characteristics which marked that epoch: there was all expansion of intelligence a prodigious development of the natural sciences, a pitiless examination of accepted prejudices, the formation of a theory of Nature based on a truly scientific foundation, observation and reasoning. In addition to these there was criticism of the political institutions bequeathed to Humanity by preceding ages, and a movement towards that ideal of Liberty, Equalit... (From: Anarchy Archives.) We said in our last issue that "Nationalization of Land." if it becomes the watchword of the next movement in this country, will simply mean nothing more than the expropriation of the landed aristocracy, and the seizure of land by the middle classes; the creation of middle-class land proprietors who may prosper for a number of years, and even increase the amount of agricultural produce raised in this country, who will monopolize the land in their turn; while the small land-proprietor will be ruined by competition, taxes, and mortgages. In short, something like what happened in France by the end of the last century, when the soil was also transferred on a large scale from the landed aristocracy to the wealthier farmers and peasants.
Is it... (From: AnarchyArchives.) The last students' disturbances in Russia were quite different from all the disturbances which have taken place in the Russian universities for the last forty years. They began, as all students' movements begin, with an insignificant incident, which concerned the students alone; but, owing to a series of circumstances quite peculiar to Russia, they took, all of a sudden, a political complexion; and in this respect they acquired such a significance that they will now count in the history of the constitutional movement in Russia as an important milestone. Consequently it is impossible to speak of the last events without going deeper than their surface — that is, without touching upon the general problem of education in Russia, and witho... (From: Anarchy Archives.)
