Peter Kropotkin

Peter Kropotkin was a Russian prince, geographer and anarchist thinker who spent decades in exile in Switzerland, France and England before returning to Russia in 1917. As a young officer in Siberia he observed that animals in harsh conditions survived more through cooperation than competition. In Mutual Aid he argued against readings of Darwin that made ruthless struggle the law of nature. He also set out a theory of anarchist communism, in which free communities would share production and distribute goods according to need.

Key ideas

• Mutual aid, cooperation within species, is a major factor in evolution alongside competition.
• Human societies have always depended on voluntary cooperation, which the state tends to absorb or suppress.
• In an anarchist-communist society goods would be distributed according to need, not according to work done.
• Industry and agriculture, and manual and mental work, should be integrated in decentralised communities.
• Ethics has natural roots in the social instincts that evolution has produced.

Major works

• Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution (1902)
• The Conquest of Bread (1892)
• Fields, Factories and Workshops (1899)
• Memoirs of a Revolutionist (1899)
• The Great French Revolution (1909)

In the Book corner

• Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution 1902 · Beginner
  A book by the Russian anarchist and naturalist Peter Kropotkin, written in English and collected in 1902 from essays first published in…

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