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.
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12 Jul 2012 10:24AM
