Peter Kropotkin

Kropotkin, Peter A. 1842 – 1921 (1000 words)

            Peter (Pytor) Alekeyevich Kropotkin was a revolutionary and a philosopher; he was known for his works in other fields such as zoology, anthropology, and sociology. Kropotkin was the son of Prince Aleksey Perovich Kropotkin of the old Russian aristocracy. He was educated in the elite Corps of the Pages, a special military school for boys of noble birth. From 1862 to 1867, Kropotkin served in the Army as an officer in Siberia. While there he carried out original studies on cartography and geomorphology. Kropotkin proved that eastern Siberia was acted upon by post Pliocene continental glaciations. He found similar evidence in Finland and Sweden. He theorized that glaciers had once covered the northern plains of Eurasia and North America. A prolific writer, he developed his theories of libertarian communism on the principle of mutual aid, while observing tribal communities, and the social life of the wild animals in Siberia.

As a result of his studies of animal life, Kropotkin theorized that mutual aid was the key to understanding human evolution. In the animal world, most animals live in societies. He felt the survival strategy of safety was a concept that needed closer examination. This was not just a struggle for existence, but a protection from all natural conditions any species may face. Each individual increases their chances by being a member of a group. Mutual protection allows certain individuals to attain old age and experience. With humans, these collective groups allowed for the evolution of culture.

In the earliest band societies, social institutions were highly developed. In the later evolution of clans and tribes, these institutions were expanded to include larger groups. Chiefdoms and state societies carried this mutual identity to groups so large an individual did not know all members. The idea of common defense of a territory and the shared character of nationalism appears in the growth of the group sharing a collective distinctiveness.

Kropotkin thought science and morality must be united in the revolutionary project. Education should be global, humanistic, and empower everyone equally. Children should learn not only in the classroom, but also in nature and in living communities.

Mutual aid remains a necessary part of the life of any family, band, city or nation. It becomes even more important for smaller groups to survive the rule of an elite. Mutual aid becomes the foundation for our ethical systems. Ethics is the basis of our biological evolution, and in this morality lies our collective material existence in nature. Kropotkin claims anarchism would extend mutual aid from family to include all of humanity. This universal ethics is the origin of all universal religions and philosophies.

The economic analysis of Kropotkin begins not with production, but with consumption established upon human needs. Needs are the starting point of production decisions. Needs should not be determined by the greed and avarice of the individual. Economies should guarantee all the peoples’ needs are met with the least waste of energy. Hunger and want is the fault of an improper economic system and not nature. Only an economy of mutual aid can meet all the peoples’ needs. These needs include not just biological needs, but all creative and emotional needs to live the most meaningful life possible. Artistic creativity and concern for the well being of one’s self and others is the foundation for social morality, artistic creation, and the will to work at jobs that benefit the community.

According to Kropotkin’s theory, each community will produce as much of its local needs as possible, exchanging only what it can produce in surplus for what it cannot produce. Mutual aid and voluntary cooperation eliminates the need to motivate labor through greed, hunger, or coercion. Kropotkin stated that even those who do not work should be fed, as they are but the “ghosts of bourgeois society.” He felt strongly that most people would contribute to the well being of others as long as they freely choose to do so.

People can easily have all they need to be truly happy, healthy and live a meaningful life. In labor, work and art must be united. Through the rotation of jobs, all people share in both the noxious and creative work. Joy and responsibility cannot be separated. Now the separation of mental and physical labor can be eliminated. Decentralization helps reduce the poverty of separation of humans from nature.

Kropotkin felt that it is possible for people to create a society in which unbridled wealth and all poverty can be eliminated. With wages or property, people can live in luxury with every need being met. This society can be achieved, Kropotkin wrote, only through propaganda of the deed, and through direct action. This unites a collective insurrection with a collective construction of society.

A large portion of contemporary social and biological science follows in the footsteps of Kropotkin's academic work. Responding to the social Darwinism of his day, he wrote his primary scientific work, Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution, arguing that a major factor in the evolutionary success of humans was a predisposition to cooperate and share, without the need for institutions such as the market or the state.

 Research in Anthropology has provided substantial confirmation to supporting Mutual Aid in non-market economies. Karl Polanyi, among others, has shown that a moral economy can and does exist. Anthropologists continually show extensive decentralized cooperation based upon reciprocity and redistribution. Marshal Sahlins writes that, in many cultures, selfishness is not rewarded. Substantivist economists have shown that people often give away substantial amounts of wealth. In many cultures, people actively cooperate against their own narrow self-interest. This is not simply "enlightened self-interest,” it is a genuine need for justice as it own justification. Biologists have acknowledged that competition among early human groups could have contributed to the evolution of cooperative behavior on the part of individuals. Both cooperation and competition has existed in the past.

In 1871, Kropotkin dedicated his life social anarchism, mostly because of the observations of animal and human communities, which he conducted in Siberia during his military service. In 1874 he was imprisoned in Russia for his radical actions and beliefs. In 1876 he escaped and went into exile, fleeing first to Switzerland, then France, and finally settling in Britain in 1886. He supported the allies during World War I; because of this, he lost much of the respect he had held with his fellow anarchists. Then, because of the Russian Revolution he was allowed to return to Russia in June 1917. While he was respected by both the Bolsheviks and the opposing forces, he was critical of both sides. After the Bolshevik Revolution succeeded in overthrowing the Revolutionary Provisional Government of Kerensky, Kropotkin strongly argued that a vanguard couldn’t make a revolution; only the people can fight a revolution and establish freedom. The Bolsheviks did not listen; broken hearted, Kropotkin died in his beloved Russia in 1921.

      For Anthropologists, Kropotkin’s work on Mutual Aid is perhaps his most important contribution. It is not only the basis of his argument for the moral basis for communist anarchism, but is also the base for his theories of human evolution.

Michael Joseph Francisconi

University of Montana Western

See also ANTHROPOLOGY, ECONOMIC

Furthering Readings and References

Carter, Alan Analytical Anarchism: Some Conceptual Foundations Political Theory Vol. 28,

No. 2, (April 2000) 230 253.

Guerin, Daniel 1970 Anarchism New York: Monthly Review

Kropotkin, Peter 1967 Memoirs of a Revolutionist Glocester, MA: Peter Smith

Kropotkin, Peter 1967 Mutual Aid Boston: Extending Horizons

Kropotkin Ethics: Origin and Development London: Benjamin Blom

Kropotkin, Peter 1968 Fields, Factories and Workshops Tomorrow London: Benjamin Blom

Kropotkin, Peter 1970 Revolutionary Pamphlets New York: Dover

Kropotkin, Peter 1989 The Conquest of Bread Montreal Black Rose Books

Woodcock, George 1971 The Anarchist Prince: Peter Kropotkin New York Schocken

Woodcock, George 1971 Anarchism: a history of Libertarian Ideas and Movements New York: Meridian