Another member posted an homage to the Russian anarchist Mikhail Bakunin. Certainly, if Bakunin deserves an homage, so does Piotr Kropotkin. "Fields, Factories, and Workshops" is heartily recommended to all who wish to explore the idea of autonomous socioeconomic life.
Replies 9
1
11 Jul 2012 9:50PM
Isn't that idea just another form of Communism? I think I've heard of that variation before, but I'm not sure.
1
11 Jul 2012 10:15PM
Yeah, I thought so. Communism seems like such a good theory, until it's put into practice.
1
11 Jul 2012 11:48PM
What? It's never been put into practice? Maybe not this particular variation, but it has, over and over. It's never worked. Human nature simply isn't compatible with communism.
1
12 Jul 2012 10:24AM
The hallmarks of communist society are statelessness and classlessness. Only the Soviet Union and it's satellites ever claimed the rubric communist to the best of my knowledge, and they pretty clearly fail on both desiderata. And since Kropotkin and similar thinkers have quite a different approach to social organization to the Marxist-Leninists, the outcome of the M-Ls would have no bearing on the possible outcome of the Kropotkinite model.
This is really arguing on the wrong level, in any case. There's no way forward bandying about such abstract categories as "communism", which have had all concrete meaning sucked out of them generations ago. "God is in the details", as Aby Warburg says. If you want to discuss Kropotkin, the thing to do is to read "Fields, Factories, and Workshops" or "Mutual Aid" and see what the arguments are and where the strong and weak points are.
