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The Conquest of Bread: The Founding Book of Anarchism by Peter Kropotkin, Peter Kropotkin, .
lipsandpalms's review
1.0
I can't read more. The book doesn't consider feasibility in any way in regards to supply and demand. It provides no solutions for many of the problems we would face after abolishing wages. Expropriation is a pipe dream without any show of force and can only be considered theft. If all crime and resentment disappeared overnight along with an unlimited supply of food and shelter, even then this wouldn't be possible.
franchenstein's review
4.0
I have to admit that whenever I read radical left theoretical literature, anarchist ideals always seem more pleasing than socialist/Marxist perspectives. But I also have to admit how naive it sounds once we know about the upheavals of the 20th century.
From what I've read so far, I don't believe Mark and Kropotkin would have insurmountable disagreements over the final destination for a Communist Society and they even agree in seeing the Paris Commune as an example of what it should be, but the proposed means to this end are radically different. Old Pete seems to go out of his way to avoid mentioning Marx and Marxist thinkers in his discussions.
The books starts similarly to the Communist Manifesto, by pointing out the struggles of the impoverished majority of humanity, it goes on listing all the amazing technological feats of capitalism and how it benefits just a small minority of population and how humanity and each individual will only be truly emancipated once all property is abolished.
Kropotkin goes into some scientific analysis by first pondering what are the needs of humans and then using then-current figures for production he shows that it would be possible to feed, clothe and shelter all human beings if each person works some 5 or 6 hours per day until they are 50 and they would still have the rest of the day to develop themselves and form scientific and artistic communities. To this goal he proposes a revolution that would expropriate all private property and turn it into common property for all people. He has a convincing argument to show that incomplete expropriation would undo all the progress that the revolution would have accomplished.
This ended up having real world examples. The incomplete expropriation (just redistribution but no socialization) of the fields in the first step of the Russian Revolution led to incomplete results and then when Stalin managed to finally create common property for agriculture, the transition had terrible and unfortunate consequences.
Old Pete also has a point about authoritarian socialism when he condemns how centralization of power, even with good intentions, might lead to violent abuse. Although bourgeois historians and media greatly exaggerate the atrocities committed by socialist regimes, it is also important to keep in mind this criticism from the left and to broaden the discussion about democratization of institutions in any future attempt of socialism.
This being said this "soul as pure as crystal", as Rabbi Yehuda Ashlag referred to him, seems retrospectively naive now that we know of the failures of anarchist revolutions in the 20th century. He dismisses too easily the corruptible influence the money from capitalist states would exert on the new revolutionary society, that its people would not be tempted by bourgeois luxuries once they had all their physical and spiritual needs met with less work. He also avoids going into too much detail on how the political decision-making structure would actually work, just citing the Paris Commune. Peter also deals with the issue of people not willing to contribute to society as something that could easily be solved by ostracizing the slackers. And the greatest sin is the lack of detail on how to actually proceed with the total expropriation he proposes.
For all these situations we now have historical evidence that it's not so simple to achieve and maintain without some sort of more central organization, which would makes Marx's vision of a dictatorship of the proletariat as an intermediate state before the total abolition of class and property as more scientific and grounded in reality.
Still, the vision and possibilities proposed in this work are wonderful and with the technological progress obtained since this writing it is possible to imagine a society with even less scarcity and toil than the one shown here, akin to the vision by Bookchin. I believe that the failings that the practical applications of these ideals shouldn't be used to dismiss the whole work, but Kropotkin's analysis should still be used to further the progress of leftist ideology.
From what I've read so far, I don't believe Mark and Kropotkin would have insurmountable disagreements over the final destination for a Communist Society and they even agree in seeing the Paris Commune as an example of what it should be, but the proposed means to this end are radically different. Old Pete seems to go out of his way to avoid mentioning Marx and Marxist thinkers in his discussions.
The books starts similarly to the Communist Manifesto, by pointing out the struggles of the impoverished majority of humanity, it goes on listing all the amazing technological feats of capitalism and how it benefits just a small minority of population and how humanity and each individual will only be truly emancipated once all property is abolished.
Kropotkin goes into some scientific analysis by first pondering what are the needs of humans and then using then-current figures for production he shows that it would be possible to feed, clothe and shelter all human beings if each person works some 5 or 6 hours per day until they are 50 and they would still have the rest of the day to develop themselves and form scientific and artistic communities. To this goal he proposes a revolution that would expropriate all private property and turn it into common property for all people. He has a convincing argument to show that incomplete expropriation would undo all the progress that the revolution would have accomplished.
This ended up having real world examples. The incomplete expropriation (just redistribution but no socialization) of the fields in the first step of the Russian Revolution led to incomplete results and then when Stalin managed to finally create common property for agriculture, the transition had terrible and unfortunate consequences.
Old Pete also has a point about authoritarian socialism when he condemns how centralization of power, even with good intentions, might lead to violent abuse. Although bourgeois historians and media greatly exaggerate the atrocities committed by socialist regimes, it is also important to keep in mind this criticism from the left and to broaden the discussion about democratization of institutions in any future attempt of socialism.
This being said this "soul as pure as crystal", as Rabbi Yehuda Ashlag referred to him, seems retrospectively naive now that we know of the failures of anarchist revolutions in the 20th century. He dismisses too easily the corruptible influence the money from capitalist states would exert on the new revolutionary society, that its people would not be tempted by bourgeois luxuries once they had all their physical and spiritual needs met with less work. He also avoids going into too much detail on how the political decision-making structure would actually work, just citing the Paris Commune. Peter also deals with the issue of people not willing to contribute to society as something that could easily be solved by ostracizing the slackers. And the greatest sin is the lack of detail on how to actually proceed with the total expropriation he proposes.
For all these situations we now have historical evidence that it's not so simple to achieve and maintain without some sort of more central organization, which would makes Marx's vision of a dictatorship of the proletariat as an intermediate state before the total abolition of class and property as more scientific and grounded in reality.
Still, the vision and possibilities proposed in this work are wonderful and with the technological progress obtained since this writing it is possible to imagine a society with even less scarcity and toil than the one shown here, akin to the vision by Bookchin. I believe that the failings that the practical applications of these ideals shouldn't be used to dismiss the whole work, but Kropotkin's analysis should still be used to further the progress of leftist ideology.
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