excerpts from "The Essential Kropotkin", with commentary

The following is taken from The Essential Kropotkin, edited by Emile Capouya and Keitha Tompkins. It is a collection of the writings of Peter (Petr) Kropotkin, a 19th-century anarchist activist. Kropotkin's words are in black; my comments are in red.

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Modern Science and Anarchism [first published 1901; this is an edited version, according to the back of the book]

74 - Passing now to the economic views of anarchists, three different conceptions must be distinguished.
So long as socialism was understood in its wide, generic, and true sense--as an effort to abolish the exploitation of labor by capital--the anarchists were marching hand-in-hand with the socialists of that time. But they were compelled to seperate from them when the socialists began to say that there is no possibility of abolishing capitalist exploitation within the lifetime of our generation: that during that phase of economic evolution which we are now living

75 - through we have only to mitigate the exploitation, and to impose upon the capitalists certain legal limitations.

Contrarily to this tendency of the present-day socialists, we maintain that already now, without waiting for the coming of new phases and forms of the capitalist exploitation of labor, we must work for its abolition. We must, already now, tend to transfer all that is needed for production--the soil, the mines, the factories, the means of communication, and the means of existence, too--from the hands of the individual capitalist into those of the communities of producers and consumers.

Note: Kropotkin and I will argue against each other further down along related lines. Further down, Kropotkin dismisses the idea that the value or fruits of production--the profits--can be given to individual workers according to their own contributions.

Remember, the important point is that for Kropotkin as well as for anti-capitalist anarchists of both individualist and communist strains, what they oppose about capitalism is mainly the exploitation of workers and the stealing of profit value from them, rather than the idea of markets trading goods. This is especially true for the individualist anarchists like Benjamin Tucker, who drew a line between capitalism and the free market, opposing the former and championing the latter. Further down, Kropotkin will talk about the individualist anarchists and disagree with them--Kropotkin himself is an anarcho-communist, who thinks communal ownership--and a more equality-based system of rewarding work--is essential. There are anarchists (anarcho-capitalists) who support both free markets and "bourgeois ownership", but we're not talking about them here.

I do not consider myself an anarchist of any type, strictly speaking. I do not believe that either anarchy (meaning modern society without government) or socialism (as defined by Kropotkin as abolishing exploitation of labor by non-laborers) is possible--perhaps not at all in the case of anarchy, and definitely not right away in the case of both anarchy and socialism. Of course, I tend to lean toward the individualists in distrusting communal economics altogether, but I also distrust selfish individualistic economics too, so it evens out :-)

Anyway--I don't know this, but it seems that when Kropotkin talks about socialists disbelieving that capitalist exploitation can be ended right away, he may be referring to the more democratic socialists of the Edward Bernstein and Fabian Society varieties, rather than militant, ends-justify-means non-democratic elitists like Lenin's Communist Party. If I remember my history right, it seems that the anti-democratic element of state socialism (as opposed to anarchism) wasn't really around in 1901 when Kropotkin wrote this. The Communist revolution in Russia wasn't until 1917, and in the period between the death of Marx and the Russian Revolution, I think I remember state socialism being mainly engaged in representative government and compromise, much like a contemporary Labor party or Social Democratic party in Europe. That would explain why Kropotkin seems to think state socialists don't believe in a quick move away from capitalism. Actually, Lenin himself thought Russia needed to go through a short, state-sponsored capitalist phase before the transition as well--in fact, it was largely the Leninists' reluctance to believe in a quick transition to Marxist utopia--which also featured no government--that led to the establishment of the Soviet dictatorship. But I am really digressing.

Thus, I shouldn't say too much (though I will) about how Kropotkin's idea that technological advancement makes anarcho-communism possible goes directly against what contemporary primitivists say--that advanced civilization and technology make anarchy impossible. But non-primitivist anarchists all think primitivists are wackos. I don't know much about how technological civilization helps or hurts anarchy--I just hope the primitivists don't start committing genocide to curb population size, which some primitivists have hinted at. All I can say is, if civilization and high population make anarchy impossible, we'll just have to do without anarchy until we can slowly reduce the number of births to reduce population without killing anyone already on the planet.

76 - [. . .] The opinions of the anarchists concerning the form which the remuneration of labor may take in a society freed from the yoke of capital and State still remain divided.
To begin with, all are agreed in repudiating the new form of the wage system which would be established if the State became the owner of all the land, the mines, the factories, the railways, and so on, and the great organizer and manager of agriculture and all the industries. If these powers were added to those which the State already possesses (taxes, defence of the territory, subsidized religions, etc.), we should create a new tyranny even more terrible than the old one.
The greater number of anarchists accept the communist solution. They see that the only form of communism that would be acceptable in a civilized society is one which would exist without the continual interference of government, i.e., the anarchist form. And they realize also that an anarchist society of a large size would be impossible, unless it would begin by guaranteeing to all its members a certain minimum of well-being produced in common. Communism and anarchism thus complete each other.
However, by the side of this main current there are those who see in anarchism a rehabilitation of individualism.
This last current is, in our opinion, a survival from those times when the power of production of food-stuffs and of all industrial commodities had not yet reached the perfection they have attained now. In those times communism was truly considered as equivalent to general poverty and misery, and well-being was looked at as something which is accessible to a very small number only. But this

77 - quite real and extremely important obstacle to communism exists no more. [ . . . ]
Be this as it may, the individualist anarchists subdivide into two branches. There are, first, the pure individualists, in the sense of Max Stirner, who have lately gained some support in the beautiful poetical form of the writings of Nietzsche. But we have already said once how metaphysical and remote from real life is this "self-assertion of the individual;" how it runs against the feelings of equality of most of us; and how it brings the would-be "individualists" dangerously near to those who imagine themselves to represent a "superior breed"--those to whom we owe the State, the church, modern legislation, the police, militarism, imperialism, and all other forms of oppression.
The other branch of individualist anarchists comprises the mutualists, in the sense of Proudhon. However, there will always be against this system the objection that it could hardly be compatible wihth a system of common ownership of land and the necessaries of production. Communism in the possession of land, factories, etc. and individualism in production are too contradictory to coexist in the same society--to say nothing of the difficulty of estimating the market value or the selling value of a product by the average time that is necessary, or the time that was actually used, in producing it. To bring men to agree upon such an estimation of their work would already require a deep penetration of the communist principle into their ideas--at least, for all produce of first necessity.

Note: This last part of Kropotkin's agrument, in the paragraph above, may be disagreed with by mutualists, geolibertarians, and others. To insist too strongly that being paid for the value of one's own work is incompatible with communual control of workplaces, etc, may give too much ammunition to those who claim capitalism to be the only way to preserve individual freedom. Of course, this largely comes down to the distinction some theorists make between capitalism--as elitist exploitation of producer/workers--on one hand and the free market--as being allowed to trade and be paid for the value of one's labor--on the other. Kropotkin seems to think this distinction--made by many individualist anarchists--is impossible, but I'm not so sure. I am recording Kropotkin's writings not because I agree with his every word, but because I respect him and think his thought-provoking ideas have relevance even for people who don't agree with him entirely. Furthermore, I agree with a lot of what he writes, just not everything.

81 - [. . .] Moreover, the whole of political economy appears to us in a different light from that in which it is seen by modern economists of both the middle-class and the social-democratic camps. The scientific method (the inductive method of natural sciences) being utterly unknown to them, they fail to give themselves any definite

82 - account of what constitutes "a law of nature," although they delight in using the term. They do not know--or if they know they continually forget--that every law of nature has a conditional character. In fact every natural law always means this: "If certain conditions in nature are at work, certain things will happen." [. . .]
So far academic political economy has been only an enumeration of what happens under the just-mentioned conditions--without distinctly stating the conditions themselves. [ . . .]
And yet, in our opinion, political economy must have an entirely different problem in view. It ought to occupy with respect to human societies a place in science similar to that held by physiology in relation to plants and animals. It must become the physiology of society. It should aim at studying the needs of society and the various means, both hitherto used and available under the present state of scientific knowledge, for their satisfaction. [ . . .]

Note: I don't remember if I got this idea from Kropotkin, but it's one I've had for a while. Poltical theory needs to be based on political-science theory, and political science needs to be as scientific as it can be.