“While holding this synthetic view on production, the Anarchists cannot consider, like the Collectivists, that a remuneration which would be proportionate to the hours of labor spent by each person in the production of riches may be an ideal, or even an approach to an ideal, society.” Kropotkin, Anarchist Communism, p. 20. ↩
I do not say freedom is the greatest of all goods: the best things come from within—they are such things as creative art, and love, and thought. Such things can be helped or hindered by political conditions, but not actually produced by them; and freedom is, both in itself and in its relation to these other goods the best thing that political and economic conditions can secure. ↩
Communist Manifesto, p. 22. ↩
“On the other hand, the State has also been confused with government. As there can be no State without government, it has been sometimes said that it is the absence of government, and not the abolition of the State, that should be the aim.
“It seems to me, however, that State and government represent two ideas of a different kind. The State idea implies quite another idea to that of government. It not only includes the existence of a power placed above society, but also a territorial concentration and a concentration of many functions of the life of society in the hands of a few or even of all. It implies new relations among the members of society.
“This characteristic distinction, which perhaps escapes notice at first sight, appears clearly when the origin of the State is studied.” Kropotkin, The State. p. 4. ↩
“Representative government has accomplished its historical mission; it has given a mortal blow to Court-rule; and by its debates it has awakened public interest in public questions. But, to see in it the government of the future Socialist society, is to commit a gross error. Each economical phase of life implies its own political phase; and it is impossible to touch the very basis of the present economical life—private property—without a corresponding change in the very basis of the political organization. Life already shows in which direction the change will be made. Not in increasing the powers of the State, but in resorting to free organization and free federation in all those branches which are now considered as attributes of the State.” Kropotkin, Anarchist Communism, pp. 28–29. ↩
On this subject there is an excellent discussion in the before-mentioned work of Monsieur Naquet. ↩
“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. The more we study the question, the more we are brought to the conclusion that society itself is responsible for the antisocial deeds perpetrated in its midst, and that no punishment, no prisons, and no hangmen can diminish the numbers of such deeds; nothing short of a reorganization of society itself. Three-quarters of all the acts which are brought every year before our courts have their origin, either directly or indirectly, in the present disorganized state of society with regard to the production and distribution of wealth—not in the perversity of human nature. As to the relatively few antisocial deeds which result from antisocial inclinations of separate individuals, it is not by prisons, nor even by resorting to the hangmen, that we can diminish their numbers. By our prisons, we merely multiply them and render them worse. By our detectives, our ‘price of blood,’ our executions, and our jails, we spread in society such a terrible flow of basest passions and habits, that he who should realize the effects of these institutions to their full extent, would be frightened by what society is doing under the pretext of maintaining morality. We must search for other remedies, and the remedies have been indicated long since.” Kropotkin, Anarchist Communism, pp. 31–32. ↩
Anarchist Communism, p. 27. ↩
This was written before the author had any personal experience of the prison system. He personally met with nothing but kindness at the hands of the prison officials. ↩
Bell, 1917. ↩
Walter Scott Publishing Company, 1906, p. 262. ↩
This was written in March, 1918, almost the darkest moment of the war. ↩
L’Anarchie et le Collectivisme, p. 114. ↩
Which we discussed in Chapter IV. ↩
Self-Government in Industry, G. Bell & Sons, 1917, pp. 110–111. ↩
Some may fear that the result would be an undue increase of population, but such fears I believe to be groundless. See above, Chapter IV, on “Work and Pay.” Also, Chapter vi of Principles of Social Reconstruction (George Allen and Unwin, Ltd.). ↩
See the discussion of this question in the
