This article appears to be several small updates by Kropotkin on the revolutionary situation in Russia that initially broke out in October, 1905. It is unknown if these updates were compiled from secondary sources by the staff of Mother Earth for their readership, or sent by Kropotkin to update the international anarchist community.
No Social problem is more important for Revolutionists than that which deals with the expropriation of the rich in favour of the people, and the appropriation of all wealth by the latter. We invite all our comrades to study this problem under all its aspects, and to discuss it unceasingly, in view of its realization, which must sooner or later force itself upon us, as the definite success or temporary failure of the Revolution depends upon the manner in which this expropriation is applied.
Brain Work and Manual Work is an argument for a holistic integration of thought and action, theory and practice, arts and science, science and industry. In this context, Peter Kropotkin focuses specifically on the education of youth, the nature of labor, and the progress of science. Contemporary readers may be struck by the similarities in Kropotkin’s discussion with the present day, roughly 120 years later.
This article, like Kropotkin’s earlier “The Revolution in Russia,” gives readers a glimpse of the first Russian Revolution as it was unfolding. Writing sometime between June and August 1907, shortly after the end of the Second Duma, he forcefully recounts and condemns the actions of Nicholas II. Calling the period between the outset of the revolution and the closing of the Second Duma the “Period of Illusions,” Kropotkin writes that only sustained opposition from the people can oust the Tsar and secure democratic changes.
This article, originally appearing in Emma Goldman‘s radical journal Mother Earth in 1910, was one in a series of profiles of prominent anarchists.
In a long farewell letter addressed to the “Western Working Men,” prior to his return to Russia, Peter Kropotkin writes:
“After having worked in your midst for forty years, I cannot leave Western Europe without sending you a few words of farewell. From the depths of my heart I thank you for the reception–more than fraternal–that I found in your midst. The International Working Men’s Association was not for me a mere abstract word. Amidst the working men of Switzerland, France, Britain, Spain, Italy, the United States, I was in a society of brothers and friends. And in your struggles, each time I had the opportunity to take part in them, I lived the best moments of my life. I deeply felt that wave of human solidarity and oneness of men, disregarding all frontiers, which represents one of the greatest promises for man in the future.”
Revised September 2018 The truth is the whole…. –GWF Hegel Better Worlds, Brighter Futures (BWBF) endeavors to create a comradely “unity-in-diversity” between the broadly ecosocialist tendencies of the radical left, to pose a substantive challenge to the system of global, monopoly capitalism that is shown to be at root of both
Revised September 2018 Recently, someone immersed in Murray Bookchin‘s late-period works asked my definition of social ecology. This brought up an important issue. How is social ecology to be defined generally, taking the entirety of the field and its historical development into account? This implies a broad conception–one that recognizes
August 2018 Preface While it may be easy to forget Occupy Wall Street (OWS) in the exhausting haze of the Trump era, the issues raised by that movement are as prevalent as ever. Wealth inequality between the “1%” and the rest of society has continued to increase. Attacks on healthcare, education,
Revised May 2018 While ecosocialists (particularly Joel Kovel, John Bellamy Foster, and Fred Magdoff) and their tendency have been given consideration by social ecologists like John P. Clark and Brian Tokar, their work seems under-appreciated in our field. Conversely, the social ecological perspective seems to have had little presence or