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Title: Kropotkin’s Communism Author: М. Korn Date: 1931 Language: en Topics: Pëtr Kropotkin, anarcho-communism, Communism Source: This translation was originally published in Notes: Editor’s note: Korn, M. “Kropotkin’s Communism,” in *International collection
It was the development of the theory of anarchist communism that
Kropotkin believed to be his main contribution to the theory of
anarchism. Indeed, what had the economic ideal of the anarchist movement
been before Kropotkin published a series of his famous articles in the
Le Révolté newspaper in 1879, articles which eventually made up his book
Words of a Rebel?
At the time of the foundation of the International, socialist doctrines
were developed along two lines: state communism and Proudhonism.
Communists sought to concentrate economic power in the hands of the
state and to structure social life in a military fashion: strict
discipline, “detachments” and “labor armies,” compulsory collective
consumption in a barracks-like environment, etc. The communism of Louis
Blanc and [Étienne] Cabet was precisely that kind of “war communism”; it
may have proclaimed the principle “to each according to his needs,” but
the actual needs had to be determined from above, by means of a kind of
a “reallocation” system.[1]
A social ideal like this could not, of course, satisfy free minds, and
Proudhon put forward an arrangement of an entirely different, opposing
type. He based the economic system of the future on the notion of
equality and reciprocity: production and exchange were grounded on
cooperative principles with members of society exchanging services and
products of equal value. The privileges of capital are thus eliminated,
but private property — though exclusively property actively in use for
labor[2] — would continue, and the notion of its communalization does
not enter into this arrangement.
As long ago as in the early years of the International, both ideals
failed to satisfy the advanced socialists and, at the Congresses held in
1867 and 1868, the principle of public (in opposition to state)
ownership of land and instruments of labor was adopted. In the years
that followed, at the height of Bakunin’s activity, this idea was
further developed to constitute, under the name of collectivism, the
economic program of the federalist part of the International. The
original meaning of the word “collectivism” later suffered a number of
mutations, but at that time it meant: public (“collective”) possession
of the land and the implements of production along with the organization
of distribution within each anarchist federation community according to
the preferences of the members of that community.[3]
The members of the International defined “collectivism” as non-state
federalist communism, thus distancing themselves from the centralized
state communism professed by Babeuf, Louis Blanc, Cabet, and Marx and
his followers.[4] That’s what Bakunin meant when he said at a congress:
“I am not a communist, I am a collectivist.” When the “collectivists” of
the International proclaimed the principle: “to each the whole result of
his labor,” they did not mean that labor would be evaluated and rewarded
by someone; they meant only that it would not be exploited and all the
products of labor would be used to the benefit of the workers. How these
products would be distributed was an open question, left to the decision
of each community.
But as the development of ideas advanced, collectivism in that form
became unsatisfactory, and the thought of the members of the
International began to search for a definite answer to the open
question, an answer that would be compatible with the principle of
absence of a coercive force, of state power in society. An idea was
proposed that the only thing that could guide the distribution was
everyone’s needs, and that an exact evaluation of each worker’s labor
was an impossible thing. In 1876, the Italian Federation of the
International spoke in favor of “anarchist communism” at its congress in
Florence and, four years later, the Jura Federation, the most
influential one, arrived at the same decision (at the 1880 congress in
Chaux-de-Fonds). At this congress, the old “collectivism” that only
proclaimed communalization of the land and instruments of labor
encountered the new idea of anarchist communism defended by Kropotkin,
[Élisée] Reclus, and [Carlo] Cafiero, as the only idea compatible with a
stateless system.[5]
The new idea triumphed, and since that time communism has entered the
anarchist worldview as an inseparable part of it, at least in the eyes
of the vast majority of anarchists. The credit for developing this idea
on the basis of data drawn from both science and practical life must go
to Kropotkin. It’s owing to him that anarchism possesses this guiding
economic principle.
Kropotkin’s communism stems from two sources: on the one hand, from the
study of economic phenomena and their historical development, and, on
the other, from the social ideal of equality and freedom. His objective
scientific research and his passionate search for a social formation
into which maximum justice can be embodied consistently led him to the
same solution: anarchist communism.
Over the centuries, step by step, by the labor of countless generations,
by conquering nature, by developing productive forces, by improving
technology, humanity has accumulated enormous wealth in the fertile
fields, in the bowels of the earth, in vibrant cities. Countless
technical improvements have made it possible to facilitate and reduce
human labor; the broadest human needs can be satisfied to greater and
greater extent. And it is only because a small handful of people have
seized everything that is needed to create this wealth — land, machines,
means of communication, education, culture, etc. — these possibilities
remain possibilities without ever being translated into reality.
Our whole industry, says Kropotkin, our entire production, has embarked
on a false course: instead of serving the needs of society, it is guided
solely by the interests of profit. Hence the industrial crises,
competition, and struggle for the market with its inevitable companions
— constant wars. The monopoly of a small minority extends not only to
material goods, but also to the gains of culture and education; the
economic slavery of the vast majority makes true freedom and true
equality impossible, prevents people from developing social feelings
and, as this whole way of life is based on lies, lowers their moral
standards.
Adjusted to this abnormal situation, modern political economy — from
Adam Smith to Karl Marx — follows, in its entirety, a false path: it
begins with production (accumulation of capital, role of machines,
division of labor, etc.) and only then moves on to consumption, i.e., to
the satisfaction of human needs; whereas, if it were what it is meant to
be, i.e., the physiology of human society, it would “study the needs of
humanity, and the means of satisfying them with the least possible waste
of human energy.”[6] One must always bear in mind that “the goal of
every production is the satisfaction of needs.”[7]
Forgetting this truth leads to a situation which cannot last:
Under pain of death which has already befallen many states in antiquity,
human societies are forced to return to first principles: the means of
production being the collective work of humanity, they should be the
collective property of the race. Individual appropriation is neither
just nor serviceable. All things are for all people, since all people
have need of them, since all people have worked in the measure of their
strength to produce them, and since it is not possible to evaluate every
individual’s part in the production of the world’s wealth... Yes, all is
for all! If the man and the woman bear their fair share of work, they
have a right to their fair share of all that is produced by all, and
that share is enough to secure them well-being.[8]
In this total sum of social wealth, Kropotkin sees no way to distinguish
between the instruments of production and the commodities, a distinction
that characterizes socialist schools of the social-democratic type. How
may the former be separated from the latter, especially in a civilized
society?
We are not savages who can live in the woods, without other shelter than
the branches... For the worker, a room, properly heated and lighted, is
as much an instrument of production as the tool or the machine. It is
the place where the nerves and sinews gather strength for the work of
the morrow. The rest of the worker is the daily repairing of the
machine. The same argument applies even more obviously to food. The
so-called economists of whom we speak would hardly deny that the coal
burnt in a machine is as necessary to production as raw cotton or iron
ore. How then can food, without which the human machine is incapable of
a slightest effort, be excluded from the list of things indispensable
for production?[9]
The same is true for clothing and for everything else.
The distinction between instruments of production and commodities,
artificially established by economists, not only does not stand up to
logical criticism, but also cannot be put into practice. “In our society
everything is so closely interconnected that it is impossible to touch
one branch of the production without affecting all the others.”[10]
At the moment of transformation of capitalist order into a socialist
formation, expropriation must affect everything; half-measures will only
cause an enormous upheaval in society by disrupting its routines and
will lead to overall discontent. One cannot, for example, expropriate
the landed estates and hand them over to the peasants, while leaving the
factories in the possession of the capitalists; one cannot hand the
factories over to the workers, while leaving the trade, the banks, the
stock exchange in their present form. “It is impossible for society to
organize itself following two opposite principles: on the one hand, to
make common property of all that has been produced up to the present
day, and on the other hand, to keep strictly private property of what
will be produced by the individual with public instruments and
supplies…”[11] Kropotkin strongly condemns all labor remuneration, all
buying and selling.
It is impossible to reward everyone for his or her labor without
exploiting this labor and violating justice. All socialist systems
establishing remuneration in proportion to labor (be it in cash,
worker’s checks, or in kind) thus make an essential concession to the
spirit of capitalist society. At first glance, this seems to be a
paradox. “In fact,” writes Kropotkin in his critique of the wage labor
system,[12] “in a society like ours, in which the more that people work
the less they are remunerated, this principle, at first sight, may
appear to be a yearning for justice. But it is really only the
perpetuation of past injustice.”
“It was by virtue of this principle that wagedom began — ‘to each
according to his deeds’ — to end in the glaring inequalities and all the
abominations of present society. From the very day work was appraised in
currency, or in any other form of wage, from the very day it was agreed
upon that workers would only receive the wage they could secure for
themselves; the whole history of the State-aided Capitalist Society was
as good as written...
“Services rendered to society, be they work in the factory, or in the
fields, or intellectual services, cannot be valued in money. There can
be no exact measure of value (of what has been wrongly-termed exchange
value), nor of use value, with regard to production... We may roughly
say that the worker who during their lifetime has deprived themselves of
leisure ten hours a day has given far more to society than the one who
has only been deprived of leisure five hours a day, or who has not been
deprived at all. But we cannot take what the worker has done over two
hours and say that the yield is worth twice as much as the yield of
another individual, working only one hour, and remunerate the worker in
proportion. It would be disregarding all that is complex in industry, in
agriculture, in the whole life of present society; it would be ignoring
to what extent all individual work is the result of past and present
labor of society as a whole. It would mean believing ourselves to be
living in the Stone Age, whereas we are living in an age of steel.”[13]
Kropotkin, therefore, recognizes no real basis under the labor theory of
value, which plays, as we know, the most essential role in Marxist
economics. Similarly, he does not recognize the distinction between
simple labor and skilled labor which some socialist schools subscribe
to. On the basis of Ricardo’s and Marx’s theory of value, they try to
justify this distinction scientifically by arguing that training a
technician costs society more than training a simple worker, that the
“cost of production” of the former is greater. Kropotkin argues that the
colossal inequality existing in this respect in modern society is not
created by the “cost of production,” but by the existing monopoly on
knowledge: knowledge constitutes a kind of capital, which can be
exploited more easily because high pay for skilled labor is often simply
a matter of profit calculated by the entrepreneur. Kropotkin believes
that maintaining these distinctions in a socialist society — even if
they were to be considerably mitigated — is extremely harmful, because
it would mean “the Revolution sanctioning and recognizing as a principle
a brutal fact we submit to nowadays, but that we nevertheless find
unjust.”[14]
In general, the principle of evaluation and remuneration of labor must
be abandoned once and for all. If the social revolution does not do
this, says Kropotkin, it will put an obstacle to the further development
of humanity and maintain the unsolved problem that we have inherited
from the past. “‘The works of each!’ But human society would not exist
for more than two consecutive generations if everyone did not give
infinitely more than that for which he is paid... if workers had not
given, at least sometimes, without demanding an equivalent, if workers
did not give just to those from whom they expect no reward.”[15]
“If middle-class society is decaying, if we have got into a blind alley
from which we cannot emerge without attacking past institutions with
torch and hatchet, it is precisely because we have calculated too much;
because we have let ourselves be influenced into giving only to receive,
because we have aimed at turning society into a commercial company based
on debit and credit.”[16]
And so, Kropotkin calls for the courage of thought, for the courage of
building a new world on new foundations. And for this purpose, it is
first of all necessary to “put people’s needs above their works,” it is
necessary to “recognize, and loudly proclaim, that every one, whatever
their status in the old society, whether strong or weak, capable or
incapable, has, before everything, the right to live, and that society
is bound to share amongst all the means of existence at its
disposal.”[17]
“Let us have no limit to what the community possesses in abundance, but
equal sharing and dividing of those commodities which are scarce or apt
to run short.”[18] But what shall we be guided by when establishing
those necessary limitations? Who will have to endure them? It goes
without saying that Kropotkin cannot accept the existence of different
categories of citizens based on their value — economic or political — in
society, nor can he accept any importance in this respect of their
present occupation or past social position.
His measure is simpler and more humane; it is the only humane measure:
privileges are accorded to those who find it most difficult to endure
deprivation — the weak and the sick, the children and the old. This is
so natural, so understandable to everybody that, on this basis, it is
not difficult to come to a mutual agreement without any confrontation or
coercion.
Therefore, at the heart of the new society, there is voluntary labor and
the right of everyone to live. This immediately raises a number of
questions. Would not such a communist society be a society of hungry,
destitute people? Wouldn’t labor productivity fall in the absence of the
nudging spur of hunger? Kropotkin, on the contrary, shows by a number of
examples how much the productivity of human labor has always risen when
labor became at least comparatively free: after the abolition of feudal
rights in France in 1792, after the abolition of slavery of the Negroes
in America, and after the destruction of serfdom in Russia.
And — on a smaller scale — all of the examples of collective free labor
(in Russian, Swiss, and German villages, in worker’s cooperative
associations, among American pioneers, among the Russian Doukhobors in
Canada, in Mennonite communities, etc., etc.) — that they show such
productivity, such a surge of energy in the workers, that no enterprise
using wage labor can match.
“Wage labor is servile labor, which cannot and is not supposed to yield
all that it is capable of. It is time to put an end to this tale of
wages as the best means of obtaining productive labor. If today’s
industry yields a hundred times more than it did in the epoch of our
ancestors, we owe it to the rapid development of physics and chemistry
at the end of the last century; this happened not owing to the
capitalist system of wage labor, but in spite of it.”[19]
It is freedom that is able to raise labor productivity, while all other
measures, all pressure from above, whether in the form of disciplinary
measures, whether in the form of piecework wages, all share the opposite
effect. They are vestiges of slavery and serfdom, when Russian landlords
used to say amongst themselves that the peasants were lazy and would not
work the land if not watched.
And do we not now see in Russia a brilliant confirmation of Kropotkin’s
words: labor productivity is falling, the country is sliding into
poverty, while disciplinary measures are increasing and increasing,
turning the country into barracks and the workers into mobilized
soldiers?
Then there is another question: let us suppose that communism is able to
ensure well-being and even wealth to society, but will it not also kill
personal freedom? State communism will, answers Kropotkin, but anarchist
communism will not.
“Communism, as an economic institution, can take all forms, from total
personal freedom to the total enslavement of all.”[20] But any other
economic form is worse in this respect, because it inevitably requires
the existence of coercive power: where wage labor and private property
are preserved, some people are made dependent on others and the
privileges created must be forcefully guarded against possible
encroachments from the disadvantaged part of society. Not only is
communism not in conflict with personal freedom, but, on the contrary,
“without communism man will never attain the full development of his
personality, which is perhaps the most ardent desire of every thinking
being.”[21]
Communism, at least in relation to the necessities of life, constitutes
the solution to which modern societies are heading, and in a civilized
society, the only possible form of communism is the one proposed by
anarchists, i.e., communism without any authorities. Any other kind of
communism is impossible. We have outgrown it. Communism, in its essence,
presupposes the equality of all members of the commune and therefore
denies all power. On the other hand, no anarchical society of a certain
size is conceivable that would not begin by providing everyone with at
least a certain level of living comforts obtained jointly by all. Thus,
the concepts of communism and anarchism necessarily complement each
other.[22]
Objections are put forward against communism, among other things, on the
grounds of the failure that commonly befalls various communist societies
— religious communities or socialist colonies. Both suffer from
shortcomings that have nothing to do with communism, and it is from
these shortcomings that they perish. In the first place, Kropotkin
remarks, they are usually too small and unconnected; their members, by
force of things, live an artificial life in a too limited sphere of
interests. These communities withdraw from the life of the rest of
humanity, from its struggles, from its progress.
Besides, they always demand the total subordination of their members to
the collective: everyone’s life is controlled, they never belong to
themselves, all of their time is absorbed by the community. This is why
all at least remotely independent people, especially young people,
usually run away from such communities. “Phalansteries are repugnant to
millions of human beings.[23] It is true that even the most reserved
individual certainly feels the necessity of meeting their fellows for
the purpose of common work which becomes more attractive the more the
individual feels themselves a part of an immense whole. But it is not so
for the hours of leisure, reserved for rest and intimacy... Sometimes a
phalanstery is a necessity, but it would be hateful, were it the general
rule... As to considerations of economy, which are sometimes laid stress
on in favor of phalansteries, they are those of a petty tradesman. The
most important economy, the only reasonable one, is to make life
pleasant for all, because the person who is satisfied with their life
produces infinitely more than the person who curses their
surroundings.”[24]
These are some considerations that should now be well thought upon by
those who see the goal of socialist construction in the “socialization
of living” and expect in such a way to cure the evils created by using
similar methods imbued with military spirit.
In essence, Kropotkin notes, the objections to anarchist communism
raised by other socialist schools are not fundamental: almost all
recognize communism and anarchism as an ideal. After all, Marxists also
outline the disappearance of the state following the disappearance of
classes as a future endeavor. Anarchist communism is usually rejected on
the grounds of its allegedly utopian nature. The majority of socialists
do not see the possibility of a direct transition from capitalism to
anarchist communism and aim their practical work not at it, but at that
form of economic life which, in their opinion, will be realized during
the inevitable transitional period. Kropotkin did not seek to prove that
anarchist communism would necessarily be implemented immediately in its
perfect form, but he did put the question of the transitional period
differently.
“But we must remember that any discussion of the transitions that will
have to be made on the way to the goal will be utterly useless unless it
is based on the study of those directions, those rudimentary
transitional forms that are already emerging.”[25] And here, Kropotkin
points out that these directions lead exactly to communism. We cannot
dwell here on the numerous examples and proofs of this; we refer the
reader, therefore, to the text itself.
But, in this connection, it does not hurt to recall another expression.
We all know how often Kropotkin’s extreme optimism is mentioned — with
condescending praise by some (“idealist, wonderful man!”) and with
censure by others. Indeed, they usually say, such a social system does
not require a modern person, but a much more morally advanced one. And
they put aside any thought of this until the time when people develop in
some unknown way. Yes, of course, Kropotkin believes in people,
especially in their ability to develop and in those feelings of
sociality and solidarity inherent in their nature; but isn’t this kind
of optimism an indispensable characteristic of all people of progress,
revolutionaries and reformers? After all, the argument that people are
imperfect, that people are “immature,” that they are savage, ignorant,
etc., has always been the domain of conservatives of all kinds, of
defenders of the existing order against all attempts at liberation.
However, progressive people have always known that to raise people to be
better, more advanced, more cultured, they should first be raised to
better living conditions; that slavery can never teach you to be free;
and that a war of all against all can never engender humane
feelings.[26]
The same is true here: only the anarchist system will produce
accomplished anarchists like Kropotkin was, and like few others are
today. Therefore, it is necessary to work for it, to advance in its
direction without waiting for the quality of people to rise: people will
grow as freedom and equality in social formations expand. And, at any
rate, it is not the socialists, nor the people of the future, who can
ever be entitled to use the argument of the masses being imperfect and
unprepared.
Kropotkin’s anarchist communism is endorsed by a vast majority of
anarchists, but not by all. There are individualist anarchists, some of
whom are proponents of private property, while others have little
concern at all for future social organization, concentrating their
attention on the inner freedom of an individual in any social order;
there are also Proudhonist anarchists. But the fact that anarchist
communism is accepted by all those involved in the social struggle of
our time, chiefly in the workers’ movement, is not a coincidence nor a
question of the temporary success of one idea or another.
Only communism provides the guiding thread in solving a series of issues
of positive construction, because it constitutes the necessary condition
for making a stateless society possible. All other anarchist systems are
plagued by insoluble internal contradictions; anarchist communism alone
meets both the requirements of theoretical consistency and those that
can foster the creation of practical programs.
Marie Goldsmith (1871 – 1933), pseudonyms M. Korn or M. Isidine, was a
Russian anarchist and biologist who spent most of her life in France.
She was a close friend and colleague to Kropotkin and translated many of
his publications between French and Russian during their lifetime. Their
correspondences even reveal that there were plans for Goldsmith to help
him assemble a second volume of Mutual Aid. Although sadly overlooked
since her untimely passing, Goldsmith’s life and work are now the
subject of a research project meant to bring her scientific and
anarchist writing into the twenty-first century. Visit here for more
details:
.
[1] Ed: Louis Jean Joseph Charles Blanc (1811 – 1882) was a French
socialist politician and historian who was a staunch proponent of state
funded state-funded, worker-owned “social workshops”; Étienne Cabet
(1788 – 1856) was a French philosopher and utopian socialist who also
believed in workers’ cooperatives and government control of community
resources.
[2] Ed: Proudhon argued that while the means of production (land,
factories, housing, etc.) should be socialized to end wage labor, the
products of labor should be the property of the worker(s) who would
possess and control the means used to create them. Thus, possession (of
the means of life) would replace private property and the inequalities,
oppression, and exploitation it created. Such a system would be a form
of market socialism, with peasants, artisans, and worker-run
co-operatives selling the product of their labor on the market rather
than their labor to bosses and landlords.
[3] Ed: Implements can also be translated to “means.”
[4] Ed: François-Noël Babeuf (1760 – 1797) was an influential
revolutionary thinker and proto-communist theorist.
[5] Ed: Jacques Élisée Reclus (1830 – 1905) was a renowned French
geographer, writer and anarchist; Carlo Cafiero (1846 – 1892) was an
Italian anarchist, champion of Mikhail Bakunin, and one of the main
proponents of anarcho-communism.
[6] The Conquest of Bread (Bread and Freedom — Khleb i Volya), Golos
Truda (The Voice of Labor) Publishers, 172.
[7] Ibid., 173.
[8] Ibid., 27.
[9] Ibid., 58.
[10] Ibid., 57.
[11] Sovremennaya Nauka i Anarkhiya (Modern Science and Anarchism),
Golos Truda (The Voice of Labor) Publishers, 88.
[12] See the chapter “The Collectivist Wages System” in The Conquest of
Bread.
[13] The Conquest of Bread (Bread and Freedom — Khleb i Volya), Golos
Truda (The Voice of Labor) Publishers, 164–165.
[14] Ibid., 162.
[15] Ibid., 162.
[16] Ibid., 167–168.
[17] Ibid., 135.
[18] Ibid., 70.
[19] The Conquest of Bread (Bread and Freedom — Khleb i Volya), Golos
Truda (The Voice of Labor) Publishers, 146
[20] Sovremennaya Nauka i Anarkhiya (Modern Science and Anarchism), 140
[21] Ibid., 141.
[22] Ibid., 85.
[23] Ed: A phalanstery is a building containing a phalange, or group of
people living together in community, free of external regulation and
holding property in common. It was first conceptualized by the utopian
socialist Charles Fourier. Kropotkin cautions that this organizational
method becomes authoritarian in nature because the community’s needs
eventually subsume the individual’s autonomy.
[24] The Conquest of Bread (Bread and Freedom — Khleb i Volya), Golos
Truda (The Voice of Labor) Publishers, 118.
[25] Sovremennaya Nauka i Anarkhiya (Modern Science and Anarchism),
123.
[26] Ed: A reference to the political philosophy of Thomas Hobbes.
Hobbes wrote that a “war of all against all” would surely break out in
the absence of a state in his seminal work, Leviathan, a supposition
anarchists obviously rejected.