Pyotr Alexeyevich Kropotkin (9 December 1842 – 8 February 1921) was a Russian zoologist, evolutionary theorist, philosopher, scientist, revolutionary, economist, activist, geographer and writer. He is in large part responsible for the theories and practice of anarcho-communism whose culmination was a communist society free from central government and based on voluntary associations between workers.
• The Conquest of Bread
In this work, Kropotkin points out what he considers to be the defects of the economic systems of feudalism and capitalism, and how he believes they thrive on and maintain poverty and scarcity, in spite of being in a time of abundance thanks to technology, while promoting privilege. He goes on to propose a more decentralized economic system based on mutual aid and voluntary cooperation, asserting that the tendencies for this kind of organization already exist, both in evolution and in human society. He also talks about details of revolution and expropriation in order not to end in a reactionary way.
• Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution (1955 paperback (reprinted 2005), includes Kropotkin’s 1914 preface, Foreword and Bibliography by Ashley Montagu
Provided an alternative view on animal and human survival, beyond the claims of interpersonal competition and natural hierarchy proffered at the time by some “social Darwinists”, such as Francis Galton. He argued “that it was an evolutionary emphasis on cooperation instead of competition in the Darwinian sense that made for the success of species, including the human.”
• Fields, factories and workshops
Arguably one of the most influential and positive statements of the anarchist political philosophy. It is viewed by many as the central work of his writing career.
• Communism and Anarchy
• Anarchist Morality
• Anarchist Communism: Its Basis and Principles
• Kropotkin’s Revolutionary Pamphlets
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