Peter Alexeivitch Kropotkin

“ On the contrary, we represent ourselves a forward movement of society as an approach to the abolition of all the authority of Government, as a development of free agreement for all that formerly was a function of Church and State, and as a development of free initiative in every individual and every group. And these are the tendencies which determine the tactics of the Anarchists in the life of both the individual and our circles. ”

“ 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 Labour, 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. ”

“ Likewise when an Anarchist is told that, according to Hegel, "every evolution represents a thesis, an antithesis, and a synthesis"; or that "the aim of Law is to establish Justice, which represents a materialisation of the Supreme Idea"; or yet again, when he is asked: "What is, then, according to you, the Aim of Life!" the Anarchist likewise shrugs his shoulders. And he asks himself: "How is it possible that with the present development of natural science there should still exist such antiquated beings who go on believing in these 'words and words'! ”

“ The State is, for us, a society of mutual insurance between the landlord, the military commander, the judge, the priest, and later on the capitalist, in order to support each other's authority over the people, and for exploiting the poverty of the masses and getting rich themselves. ”

“ But its complete extinction is now, in its turn, a historical necessity, because the State represents the negation of liberty, and spoils even what it undertakes to do for the sake of general well-being. All legislation made within the State, even when it issues from the so-called universal suffrage, has to be repudiated, because it always has been mode with regard to the interests of the privileged classes. Every nation, every region, every commune must be absolutely free to organise itself, politically and economically, as it likes, so long as it is not a menace to its neighbours. ”

“ Each step towards economic freedom, each victory won over Capitalism will be at the same time a step towards political liberty—towards liberation from the yoke of the State by means of free agreement, territorial, professional, and functional. And each step made towards taking from the State any one of its powers and attributes will be helping the masses to win a victory over Capitalism. ”

“ But a new method had been applied to whole of human knowledge, and, thanks to this new method, the errors themselves were easily recognised and corrected later on. By this means the nineteenth century received the inheritance of a powerful instrument of research. And with this instrument, modern science was enabled to build our whole conception of the universe on a scientific basis, and to cast away the prejudices that obscured it, as well as the nebulous words which meant nothing, but, from fear of religious prosecution, were thrust in everywhere in order to get rid of difficult questions. ”

“ It is evident that in understanding the problem of the Social Revolution in this way, Anarchism cannot let itself be seduced by a programme that offers as its aim: "The conquest of the power now in the hands of the State."
We know that this conquest is not possible by peaceful mean. The middle class will not give up its power without a struggle. It will resist. And in proportion as Socialists will become part of the Government, and share power with the middle class their Socialism will grow paler and paler. This is, indeed, what Socialism is rapidly doing. ”

“ If we examine the vital functions of a living being during the different stages of its existence, or even during different seasons, and in some cases during different hours of the day, we find an application of that of labour in time, which is intimately connected with division of labour between the organs (Adam Smith's law) .
"Men of science unacquainted with natural sciences are incapable of understanding the real scope of a Law in Nature; they are blinded by the mere word law, and they imagine that a law like that of Adam Smith, has a fatal force from which it is impossible to escape. ”

“ Everywhere the State has been, and still is the main pillar and the creator, direct and indirect, of Capitalism and its powers over the masses. Nowhere, since States have grown up, have the masses had the freedom of resisting the oppression by capitalists. ”

“ We can already read the book of Nature, which comprises that of the development of both inorganic and organic life and of mankind, without resorting to a Creator, or to a mystical vital force, or to an immortal soul; and without consulting the trilogy of Hegel, or hiding our ignorance behind any metaphysical symbols whatever, endowed with a real existence by the writer. Mechanical phenomena, becoming more and more complicated as we pass from physics to the facts of life, are sufficient to explain Nature and all the intellectual and social organic life on our planet. ”

“ The State was established for the precise purpose of imposing the rule of the landowners, the employers of industry, the warrior class, and the clergy upon the peasants on the land and the artisans in the city. And the rich perfectly well know that if the machinery of the State ceased to protect them, their power over the labouring classes would be gone immediately.
Socialism, we have said—whatever form it may take in its evolution towards Communism—must find its own form of political organisation. Serfdom and Absolute Monarchy have always marched hand-in-hand. ”

“ But we no more admit this method than would natural science. The dialectic method reminds the modern naturalist of something very antiquated that has had its day and is forgotten, happily long since forgotten by science. No discovery of the nineteenth century, in mechanics, astronomy, physics, chemistry, biology, psychology, or anthropology, has been made by the dialectic method. All the immense acquisitions of the century are due to the use of the inductive-deductive method—the only scientific method. ”

“ We may say, therefore, that Anarchism is a certain ideal of society, and that this ideal is different from the ideal of society which has hitherto been advocated by most philosophers, scientists, and leaders of political parties, who pretended to rule mankind and to govern men.
But it would not be fair to describe such a conception as a Utopia, because the word "Utopia" in our current language conveys the idea of something that cannot be realised. ”

“ Taking advantage of the scientific method of the exact sciences, as well as of the researches made of late under the impulse of this method, Anarchism endeavours to reconstruct all sciences concerning man, and re-examines the generally received conceptions of Law, Justice, etc. Basing itself on the new data obtained by anthropological research, and extending the work of its eighteenth-century predecessors, Anarchism has sided with the individual against the State, and with society against the authority which, by virtue of historical inheritance, dominates society. ”

“ As long ago as those remote ages which are lost in the dark night of the Glacial period, men lived in societies. And in these societies a whole series of institutions were worked out and rigidly observed, in order to make possible the life in common. And later on, through the whole course of human evolution, the same creative power of the nameless multitude always worked out new forms of social life, of mutual aid, of guarantees of peace, as soon as new conditions arose. ”

“ The series of epoch-making, fundamental works which appeared in the course of those five or six years, dealing in quite a new way with all the principal branches of knowledge, accomplished so complete a revolution in all our ways of looking at Nature, at life in general, and at the life of human societies, that no similar revolution has ever taken place in the whole history of science in the last twenty centuries. ”

“ On the contrary, we believe that if a revolution begins, it must take the form of a widely spread popular movement, during which movement, in every town and village invaded by the insurrectionary spirit, the masses set themselves to the work of reconstructing society on new lines. The people—both the peasants and the town workers—must themselves begin the constructive work, on more or less Communist principles, without waiting for schemes and orders from above. ”

“ They start from the principle that the only law which is obligatory for the Anarchist is to mind his own business, and not to meddle with that of others; that each individual and each group have the right, to oppress all mankind—if they have the force to do so; and that if this only law, of minding one’s own business, had received a general and complete application, it would offer no danger, because the rights of each individual would have been limited by the equal rights of all others. ”

“ The authority that was constituted in order to unite the nobleman, the judge, the soldier, and the priest for their mutual protection and their class advantages, and which always was an obstacle to the attempts of man to create for himself a life somewhat secure and free—this authority cannot become a weapon of enfranchisement, any more than Caesarism or Imperialism, or the Church, can become instruments of a social revolution. ”

“ State Capitalism, or some sort of State Communism, or a federation of free Communist associations for the production, the exchange, and the consumption of commodities.
Each party has thus its own conception of the future—its ideal which enables it to pronounce its own judgment on all facts occurring in the political and economic life of nations, and inspires it in its search for suitable means of action, in order the better to march towards its aim. It is, therefore, natural that Anarchism, although it has originated in every-day struggles, has also worked to elaborate its ideal. ”

“ Communism in the possession of land, factories, etc., and Individualism in production are too contradictory to co-exist 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. ”

“ Now, the history of human societies, institutions and religions can be written from the point of view of adaptive Evolution, without having recourse to the metaphysical formulas of Hegel, and without resorting to "innate ideas," to revelation from above, or to Kant's "substances." We can reconstrue it without appealing to those formulas which were death to the spirit of research, and behind which the same ignorance was always hidden—the same old superstition, the same blind faith disguised under sonorous words. ”

“ At all times, from ancient Greece till nowadays, there were individuals and currents of thought and action that sought, not to replace any particular authority by another, but to destroy the authority that had grafted itself on popular institutions, without creating a new one to take its place. They proclaimed the sovereignty of both the individual and the people, and they tried to free the popular institutions from authoritarian overgrowths ”

“ All his work was a beautiful illustration of the unity of physical forces, which represents the greatest conquest of science in the course of the nineteenth century, and of that other great conquest, the transformation of mechanical movement into heat. He therefore retained till his death a firm belief in the unlimited power of science to give well-being to mankind, and in his philosophy and in its application to life he remained true to the best traditions of the Encyclopaedists. ”

“ 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. ”