Leaving aside the great question of “Crime and Punishment” which occupies now so many prominent lawyers and sociologists, I shall limit my remarks to the question: "Are prisons answering their purpose, which is that of diminishing the number of antisocial acts?"
To this question, every unprejudiced person who has a knowledge of prisons from the inside will certainly answer by an emphatic No. On the contrary, a serious study of the subject will bring everyone to the conclusion that the prisons — the best as much as the worst — are breeding places of criminality; that they contribute to render the antisocial acts worse and worse; that they are, in a word, the High Schools, the Universities of what is known as Cr... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) As to parliamentary rule, and representative government altogether, ... It is becoming evident that it is merely stupid to elect a few men [sic], and to entrust them with the task of making laws on all possible subjects, of which subject most of them are utterly ignorant. It is becoming understood that Majority rule is as defective as any other kind of rule; and Humanity searches, and finds, new channels for resolving the pending questions. The Postal Union did not elect an international postal parliament in order to make laws for all postal organizations adherent to the Union. The railways of Europe did not elect an international railway parliament in order to regulate the running of the trains and the partition of the income of intern... (From: Anarchy Archives.) The Newcastle Daily Chronicle: February 20, 1985, p4.
Reprinted in Small Communal Experiments and Why They Fail
Jura Books
Editor's Preface
Peter Kropotkin (1842-1921) was one of the greatest anarchist theoreticians of
his time. Although he admired the directly democratic and non-authoritarian
practices of the traditional peasant village commune, he was never an advocate
of small and isolated communal experimentalism. Many people, upon reading his
works, have been inspired to found such communities, both in his own time as
well as the hippies of the 1960s (a period when Kropotkin's major works were
republished and influential). Kropotkin did not consider such ventures were
likely to be successful or useful ... (From: Anarchy Archives.) PART 1
That the Governments at present existing ought to be abolished, so that Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity should no longer be empty words but become living realities, and that all forms of government as yet tried have only been so many forms of oppression, and ought to be replaced by a new form of grouping, so far all who have a brain and temperament ever so little revolutionary unanimously agree. In truth one does not need to be much of an innovator in order to arrive at this conclusion; the vices of the governments of today, and the impossibility of reforming them, are too evident to be hidden from the eyes of any reasonable observer. And as regards overturning governments, it is well-known that at certain epochs that can be don... (From: Anarchy Archives.) I.
The word Revolution is upon all lips and one feels its first vibrations. And, as always, at the approach of great commotions and great changes, all who are dissatisfied with the actual regime -- how small may be their discontent -- hasten to adopt the title of revolutionaries, hitherto so dangerous, now so simple. They do not cling to the actual regime; they are ready to try a new one; that suffices for them.
This affluence, to the ranks of the revolutionaries, of a mass of malcontents of all shades, creates the force of revolutions and renders them inevitable. A simple conspiracy in the palace, or of Parliament, more or less supported by what is called public opinion suffices to change the men in power, and sometimes the form o... (From: Anarchy Archives.) If the September number of the North American Review, which contained a rejoinder by the procurator of the Holy Synod to my article on "The Present Crisis in Russia," (North American Review, May, 1901) was allowed to enter Russia, my compatriots will surely feel most grateful to the editor for having obtained that rejoinder. For nearly twenty years, almost every paper and review in Russia, with the exception of the subsidized Moscow Gazette and The Russian Messenger, has been bitterly criticizing both the system of schools inaugurated by the procurator and the highly-colored reports about them which have been made every year to the Emperor. These papers have received "warnings" — three warnings meaning the suppression of the paper; bu... (From: Anarchy Archives.) Anarchy, the No-Government system of Socialism, has a double origin. It is an outgrowth of the two great movements of thought in the economical and the political fields which characterize our century, and especially its second part. In common with all Socialists, the anarchists hold that the private ownership of land, capital, and machinery has had its time; that it is condemned to disappear; and that all requisites for production must, and will, become the common property of society, and be managed in common by the producers of wealth. And, in common with the most advanced representatives of political Radicalism, they maintain that the ideal of the political organization of society is a condition of things where the functions of government... (From: Anarchy Archives.) Last summer I received from the Toronto organizing committee the invitation to come out to Canada with the British Association. It is well known, but it gives me great pleasure to acknowledge it once more that the members of the British Association, whether British or foreign, received from the Canadians -- and those of us who went to the States from the Americans -- the most friendly welcome, and were treated with the utmost cordiality and hospitality. Many a standing friendship between scientific men of the Old and the New World has grown up during that visit. After the meeting of the British Association was over a most instructive trip was organized by the Canadian Pacific Railway Association across the continent to Vancouver, and I had ... (From: Anarchy Archives.) There are periods in the life of human society when revolution becomes an imperative necessity, when it proclaims itself as inevitable. New ideas germinate everywhere, seeking to force their way into the light, to find an application in life; everywhere they are opposed by the inertia of those whose interest it is to maintain the old order; they suffocate in the stifling atmosphere of prejudice and traditions. The accepted ideas of the constitution of the State, of the laws of social equilibrium, of the political and economic interrelations of citizens, can hold out no longer against the implacable criticism which is daily undermining them whenever occasion arises,--in drawing room as in cabaret, in the writings of philosophers as in daily ... (From: Anarchy Archives.) Most philosophers of the eighteenth century had very elementary ideas on the origin of societies.
According to them, in the beginning Mankind lived in small isolated families, and perpetual warfare between them was the normal state of affairs. But, one day, realizing at last the disadvantages of their endless struggles, men decided to socialize. A social contract was concluded among the scattered families who willingly submitted themselves to an authority which - need I say? - became the starting-point as well as the initiator of all progress. And does one need to add, since we have been told as much at school, that our present governments have so far remained in their noble role as the salt of the earth, the pacifiers and civilizers of th... (From: Anarchy Archives.) From all sides, people are always asking us, “What is Syndicalism and what is its relationship to Anarchism?”. Here we will do our best to answer these questions.
Syndicalism is only a new name for an old tactic in which the workers of Great Britain have taken successful refuge for a long time: the tactic of Direct Action, and the fight against Capital in the economic sphere. This tactic, in fact, was their favorite weapon. Not possessing the right to vote, British workers in the first half of the nineteenth century won important economic gains and created a strong trade union organization through use of this weapon alone, and even forced the ruling classes to acknowledge their demands with legislation (including an exten... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) The workers of England have been bestirring themselves again during the past few weeks. This is a good and encouraging sign, although the demands made are comparatively trifling. It shows a healthy discontent with existing conditions, a kind of feeling that the capitalist is not doing quite the square thing by the worker. We are sure that at bottom this movement is due to the impetus of the energetic revolutionary nucleus of Socialists, which now exists in every large industrial center and among every large body of workers in the country. It is our work to fan the flame by increasing the number of those who strive for a really fair division of the profits of labor, that is to say, for a total abolition of exploitation.
Let us hope-an... (From: AnarchyArchives.) I. INDUSTRIAL COMPETITION
In 1883, when England, Germany, Austria, and Romania, taking advantage of the isolation of France, leagued themselves against Russia, and a terrible European war was about to blaze forth, we pointed out in the Révolté what were the real motives for rivalry among States and the wars resulting therefrom.
The reason for modern war is always the competition for markets and the right to exploit nations backward in industry. In Europe we no longer fight for the honor of kings. Armies are pitted against each other that the revenues of Messrs. Almighty Rothschild, of Schneider, of the Most Worshipful Company of Anzin, or of the most Holy Catholic Bank of Rome may remain unimpaired. Kings are no lo... (From: Anarchy Archives.) We search our recent memories in vain for a single strike that was as important as the one that broke out in the docks of London and is still on going.
There have been more numerous strikes, there have been more violent ones. But none had the same meaning for the revolutionary socialist idea.
Firstly, the socialist movement was born within better-paid trades and has grouped the elite workers, the latter have always looked down on the rough trades. Men from the Fourth-Estate like to talk about “the unconscious masses, incapable of organizing themselves, demoralized by poverty”.
We know that we have maintained the opposite view. And now these dock workers, who can neither go to socialist meetings nor read our ... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) It was easy to foresee that the great revival of Natural Science which our generation has had the happiness to witness for thirty years, as also the new direction given to scientific literature by a phalanx of prominent men who dared to bring up the results of the most complicated scientific research in a shape accessible to the general reader, would necessarily bring about a like revival of Geography. This science, which takes up the laws discovered by its sister sciences, and shows their mutual action and consequences with regard to the surfaces of the globe, could not remain an outsider to the general scientific movement; and we see now an interest awakened in Geography which very much recalls the general interest taken in it by a procee... (From: Anarchy Archives.) Part I
As bourgeois society becomes more and more chaotic, as States fall apart, and as one can sense a coming revolution in Europe, we perceive in the hearts of the workers of all countries an ever increasing desire to unite, to stand shoulder to shoulder, to organize. In France particularly, where all workers’ organizations were crushed, dismantled and thrown to the four winds after the fall of the Commune, this desire is ever more visible. In almost every industrial town there is a movement to reach agreements and to unite; and even in the villages, according to reports from the most trusted observers, the workers are demanding nothing less than the development of institutions whose sole purpose is the defense of workers&rsq... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
