Peter Kropotkin

“ He studies human society as it is now and was in the past; and, without either endowing men altogether, or separate individuals, with superior qualities which they do not possess, he merely considers society as an aggregation of organisms trying to find out the best ways of combining the wants of the individual with those of co-operation for the welfare of the species. He studies society and tries to discover its tendencies, past and present, its growing needs, intellectual and economical, and in his ideal he merely points out in which direction evolution goes. ”

“ There are at this moment only two great Russians who think for the Russian people, and whose thoughts belong to mankind,—Leo Tolstoy and Peter Kropotkin.—Georg Brandes
storm careered madly over the Northern Sea, its impatient waves heaving and howling, leaping with a burning frenzy, the fuming raging billows surging and swelling, calling and crying, roaring louder and louder, vaulting higher and higher. ”

“ Sometimes men have even given themselves the trouble to reflect, and at the present moment we have at least gained a point: it is willingly admitted that Anarchists have an ideal. Their ideal is even found too beautiful, too lofty for a society not composed of superior beings.
But is it not pretentious on my part to speak of a philosophy, when, according to our critics, our ideas are but dim visions of a distant future? Can Anarchy pretend to possess a philosophy, when it is denied that Socialism has one? ”

“ But seldom have there been revolutionists so humane and mild. One feels astounded when, in alluding on one occasion to the possibility of an armed conflict with the Swiss police, there appears in his character the fighting instinct which exists (xvi) in all of us. He cannot say precisely in this passage whether he and his friends felt a relief at being spared a fight, or a regret that the fight did not take place. This expression of feeling stands alone. He has never been an avenger, but always a martyr.
He does not impose sacrifices upon others; he makes them himself. ”

“ The friends and comrades of Kropotkin decided that the Anarchist organizations should have exclusive charge of the funeral, and a Peter Kropotkin Funeral Commission was formed in Moscow, consisting of representatives of the various Anarchist groups. ”

“ It is impossible to conceive a society in which the affairs of any one of its members would not concern many other members, if not all; still less a society in which a continual contact between its members would not have established an interest of every one towards all others, which would render it impossible to act without thinking of the effects which our actions may have on others. ”

“ It no longer suffices for the people to voice their misery in those songs whose melody breaks one's heart, and which the serfs of the eighteenth century sung, and which the Slavonic peasant still sings to-day; he works to-day, fully conscious of what he has done, in spite of every obstacle for his enfranchisement. His thoughts are continually occupied in considering what to do so that life instead of being a mere curse to three-fourths of the human race may be a blessing to all. ”

“ The genial Kropotkin spoke to him, but the mass of meat only snored. Many of Kropotkin's comrades were already entombed in Litovsky prison, but his question if he too were going there was unanswered. Then the cab crossed Palace Bridge, and it was no longer necessary to interrogate the [56] guardian. Peter Kropotkin knew he was bound for that silent coffin of stone which darkly rises like a Hell-on-Earth—the Fortress of Saint Peter and Saint Paul. ”

“ The worker claims, his share in the riches he produces; he claims his share in the management of production; and he claims not only some additional well-being, but also his full rights in the higher enjoyments of science and art. These claims, which formerly were uttered only by the social reformer, begin now to be made by a daily growing minority of those who work in the factory or till the acre;- and they so conform to our feelings of justice, that they find support in a daily growing minority amidst the privileged classes themselves. Socialism becomes thus the idea of the nineteenth century ”

“ She had no need to embellish the workers and the peasants with imaginary virtues in order to love them and to work for them. She took them as they were, and said to me once: ‘We have begun a great thing. Two generations, perhaps, will succumb in the task, and yet it must be done.’ None of the women of our circle would have given way before the certainty of death on the scaffold. Each would have looked death straight in the face. But none of them, at that stage of our propaganda, thought of such a fate. Peróvskaya’s well-known portrait is exceptionally good ”

“ But, admitting that there ever was a man who reasoned in this way, again, he would be a mere reckoner, and society would do better not to rely very much upon him: who knows what sophism might pass one day through his head! And here is the third man. He does not calculate, much But he has grown in the habit of always feeling the joys of those who surround him, and feeling happy when others are happy; of suffering, deeply suffering when others suffer. ”

“ A society thus inspired will fear neither dissensions within nor enemies without. To the coalitions of the past it will oppose a new harmony, the initiative of each and all, the daring which springs from the awakening of a people's genius.
Before such an irresistible force "conspiring kings" will be powerless. Nothing will remain for them but to bow before it, and to harness themselves to the chariot of humanity, rolling towards new horizons opened up by the Social Revolution. ”

“ And he concludes that the twe most prominent, although often unconscious, tendencies throughout our history have been: a tendency towards integrating labour for the production of all riches in common, so as finally to render it impossibie to discriminate the part of the common production due to the separate individual; and a tendency towards the fullest freedom of the individual in the prosecution of all aims, beneficial both for himself and for society at large. The ideal of the Anarchist it thus a mere summing-up of what he considers to be the next phase of evolution. ”

“ The Bolshevik Government announced in its official press that for every Communist victim it would execute ten Social Revolutionists. It was then that the famous revolutionist Vera Figner and Peter Kropotkin sent their protest to the powers that be in Russia. ”

“ Millions of Socialists of both hemispheres already agree that the present form of capitalistic social appropriation cannot last much longer. Capitalists themselves feel that it must go and dare not defend it with their former assurance. Their only argument is reduced to saying to us: "You have invented nothing better!" But as to denying the fatal consequences of the present forms of property, as to justifying their right to property, they cannot do it. They will practise this right as long as freedom of action is left to them, but without trying to base it on an idea. ”

“ Nevertheless, men often speak of stages to be travelled through, and they propose to work to reach what they consider to be the nearest station and only then to take the high road leading to what they recognise to be a still higher ideal.
But reasoning like this seems to me to misunderstand the true character of human progress and to make use of a badly chosen military comparison. Humanity is not a rolling bail, nor even a marching column. It is a whole that evolves simultaneously in the multitude of millions of which it is composed ”

“ To act accordingly is his second nature. He hears the cry of the mother, he sees the child struggling for life, and he jumps into the river like a good dog, and saves the child, thanks to the energy of his feelings. ”

“ If there is still work which is really disagreeable in itself, it is only because our scientific men have never cared to consider the means of rendering it less so: they have always known that there were plenty of starving men who would do it for a few pence a day.
As to the third—the chief—objection, which maintains the necessity of a government for punishing those who break the law of society, there is so much to say about it that it hardly can be touched incidentally. ”

“ In the soul of every libertarian swings a fragrant censer which offers up olibanum to the stainless character of the great revolutionist. Put those who love Kropotkin on one side, and those who don't on the other, and you will have separated the heralds of the morning from the spooks of the night. It is no [119] more necessary to be an anarchist-communist to have a warm spot in your heart for Peter Kropotkin, than it is necessary to believe in Adam and Eve to enjoy Milton's Paradise Lost. ”

“ In a free country they would have been the habitual speakers at public meetings; but, like the privileged workers of the watch trade in Geneva, they treated the mass of the factory hands with a sort of contempt, and were in no haste to become martyrs to the socialist cause. It was only after they had been arrested and kept three or four years in prison for having dared to think as socialists, and had sounded the full depth of Russian absolutism, that several of them developed into ardent propagandists, chiefly of a political revolution. ”

“ When a stranger appeared on our horizon, he was asked with usual nihilist frankness about his past and his present prospects, and it soon appeared what sort of person he or she was. Frankness in mutual intercourse is altogether the best way for bringing about proper relations between men. In this case it was invaluable. Numbers of persons whom none of us had known or heard of in Russia—absolute strangers to the circles—came to Geneva, and many of them, a few days or even hours after their arrival, stood on the most friendly terms with the colony of refugees ”

“ My father takes his seat at the table and writes a note. ‘Take Makár with this note to the police station, and let a hundred lashes with the birch rod be given to him.’
Terror and absolute muteness reign in the house.
The clock strikes four, and we all go down to dinner; but no one has any appetite, and the soup remains in the plates untouched. We are ten at table, and behind each of us a violinist or a trombone-player stands, with a clean plate in his left hand; but Makár is not among them.
‘Where is Makár?’ our stepmother asks. ”

“ And Anarchy is not a mere insight into a remote future. Already now, whatever the sphere of action of the individual, he can act, either in accordance with Anarchist principles or on an opposite line. And all that may be done in that direction will be done in the direction whereto further development goes. All that may be done in the opposite way will be an attempt to force humanity to go where it will not go. ”

“ Libertarian philosophy is suffocated by pseudo-Roman and Catholic State philosophy. History is vitiated from the first page where it lies about the Merovingian and Carlovingian dynasties, to its last page, on which it glorifies Jacobinism and ignores the people and their work in the creation of institutions. Natural sciences are perverted to the benefit of the dual idol Church and State. The psychology of the individual, and still more that of societies, is falsified in each of its assertions to justify the triple alliance of soldier, priest and executioner. ”

“ Anarchists recognise the justice of both the just-mentioned tendencies towards economical and political freedom, and see in them two different manifestations of the very same need of equality which constitutes the very essence of all struggles mentioned by history. Therefore, in common with all Socialists, the Anarchist says to the political reformer: 'No substantial reform in the sense of political equality, and no limitation of the powers of government, can be made as long as society is divided into two hostile camps, and the labourer remains, economically speaking, a serf to his employer. ”

“ A few days later, two weavers—most unreliable fellows, who had even embezzled some money from their comrades, and who knew me under the name of Borodín—were arrested. These two would surely set the police at once upon the track of Borodín, the man, dressed as a peasant, who spoke at the weavers’ meetings. Within a week’s time all the members of our circle, excepting Serdukóff and myself, were arrested.
There was nothing left to us but to fly from St. Petersburg: this was exactly what we did not want to do. ”

“ Socialistic literature has never been rich in books. It is written for workers, for whom one penny is money, and its main force lies in its small pamphlets and its newspapers. Moreover he who seeks for information about socialism finds in books little of what he requires most. They contain the theories or the scientific arguments in favour of socialist aspirations, but they give no idea how the workers accept socialist ideals, and how they could put them into practice. ”

“ The individual understands that he will be really free in proportion only as all the others round him become free.
As to his economic conceptions, Bakunin was at heart a Communist; but, in common with his Federalist comrades of the International, and as a concession to the antagonism to Communism that the authoritarian Communists had inspired in France, he described himself as a "Collectivist Anarchist." But, of course, he was not a "Collectivist" in the sense of Vidal or Pecqueur, or of their modern followers, who simply aim at "State Capitalism" ”