The Conquest of Bread

The Conquest of Bread

By Peter Kropotkin.

Translated by Chapman and Hall.

Table of Contents

1. Titlepage
2. Imprint
3. Preface
4. The Conquest of Bread
   1. I: Our Riches
      1. I
      2. II
      3. III
   2. II: Well-Being for All
      1. I
      2. II
      3. III
   3. III: Anarchist Communism
      1. I
      2. II
   4. IV: Expropriation
      1. I
      2. II
      3. III
   5. V: Food
      1. I
      2. II
      3. III
      4. IV
      5. V
      6. VI
      7. VII
   6. VI: Dwellings
      1. I
      2. II
      3. III
   7. VII: Clothing
   8. VIII: Ways and Means
      1. I
      2. II
   9. IX: The Need for Luxury
      1. I
      2. II
      3. III
      4. IV
      5. V
   10. X: Agreeable Work
       1. I
       2. II
   11. XI: Free Agreement
       1. I
       2. II
       3. III
   12. XII: Objections
       1. I
       2. II
       3. III
       4. IV
   13. XIII: The Collectivist Wages System
       1. I
       2. II
       3. III
       4. IV
   14. XIV: Consumption and Production
       1. I
       2. II
   15. XV: The Division of Labour
   16. XVI: The Decentralization of Industry
       1. I
       2. II
       3. III
   17. XVII: Agriculture
       1. I
       2. II
       3. III
       4. IV
       5. V
       6. VI
5. Endnotes
6. Colophon
7. Uncopyright

Imprint

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Preface

One of the current objections to Communism, and Socialism altogether, is that the idea is so old, and yet it has never been realized. Schemes of ideal States haunted the thinkers of ancient Greece; later on, the early Christians joined in communist groups; centuries later, large communist brotherhoods came into existence during the Reform movement. Then, the same ideals were revived during the great English and French Revolutions; and finally, quite lately, in 1848, a revolution, inspired to a great extent with Socialist ideals, took place in France. “And yet, you see,” we are told, “how far away is still the realization of your schemes. Don’t you think that there is some fundamental error in your understanding of human nature and its needs?”

At first sight this objection seems very serious. However, the moment we consider human history more attentively, it loses its strength. We see, first, that hundreds of millions of men have succeeded in maintaining amongst themselves, in their village communities, for many hundreds of years, one of the main elements of Socialism⁠—the common ownership of the chief instrument of production, the land, and the apportionment of the same according to the labour capacities of the different families; and we learn that if the communal possession of the land has been destroyed in Western Europe, it was not from within, but from without, by the governments which created a land monopoly in favour of the nobility and the middle classes. We learn, moreover, that the medieval cities succeeded in maintaining in their midst, for several centuries in succession, a certain socialized organization of production and trade; that these centuries were periods of a rapid intellectual, industrial, and artistic progress; while the decay of these communal institutions came mainly from the incapacity of men of combining the village with the city, the peasant with the citizen, so as jointly to oppose the growth of the military states, which destroyed the free cities.

The history of mankind, thus understood, does not offer, then, an argument against Communism. It appears, on the contrary, as a succession of endeavours to realize some sort of communist organization, endeavours which were crowned here and there with a partial success of a certain duration; and all we are authorized to conclude is, that mankind has not yet found the proper form for combining, on communistic principles, agriculture with a suddenly developed industry and a rapidly growing international trade. The latter appears especially as a disturbing element, since it is no longer individuals only, or cities, that enrich themselves by distant commerce and export; but whole nations grow rich at the cost of those nations which lag behind in their industrial development.

These conditions, which began to appear by the end of the eighteenth century, took, however, their full development in the nineteenth century only, after the Napoleonic wars came to an end. And modern Communism has to take them into account.

It is now known that the French Revolution, apart from its political significance, was an attempt made by the French people, in 1793 and 1794, in three different directions more or less akin to Socialism. It was, first, the equalization of fortunes, by means of an income tax and succession duties, both heavily progressive, as also by a direct confiscation of the land in order to subdivide it, and by heavy war taxes levied upon the rich only. The second attempt was a sort of Municipal Communism as regards the consumption of some objects of first necessity, bought by the municipalities, and sold by them at cost price. And the third attempt was to introduce a wide national system of rationally established prices of all commodities, for which the real cost of production and moderate trade profits had to be taken into account. The Convention worked hard at this