132-522: The Jura Federation represented the anarchist, Bakuninist faction of the First International during the anti-statist split from the organization. Jura , a Swiss area, was known for its watchmaker artisans in La Chaux-de-Fonds , who shared anti-state, egalitarian views on work and social emancipation. The Jura Federation formed between international socialist congresses in 1869 and 1871. When
264-421: A gift economy can break the cycle of poverty . They rely on Kropotkin, who believed that the hunter-gatherers he had visited implemented mutual aid. In his 1892 book The Conquest of Bread , Kropotkin proposed a system of economics based on mutual exchanges made in a system of voluntary cooperation. He believed that in a society that is socially, culturally, and industrially developed enough to produce all
396-674: A plain . This discovery of the Patom and Vitim Plateaus won him a gold medal from the Russian Geographical Society and led to the commercialization of the Lena gold fields . A range of mountains in this region was later named for him. Kropotkin covered Siberia for St. Petersburg newspapers since his arrival, including the condition of the Polish political exiles who participated in the unsuccessful 1866 Baikal Insurrection . Kropotkin secured
528-566: A 1919 letter to the workers of Western Europe, promoting the possibility of revolution, but also warning against the centralized control in Russia, which he believed had condemned them to failure. Kropotkin wrote to Lenin in 1920, describing the desperate conditions that he believed to be the result of bureaucratic organization, and urging Lenin to allow for local and decentralized institutions. Following an announcement of executions later that year, Kropotkin sent Lenin another furious letter, admonishing
660-795: A Kropotkin Museum. This closed in 1938 with his wife's death. Kropotkin is the namesake for multiple regional entities. The Konyushennaya district in Moscow, where Kropotkin was born, is now known by his name, as the Kropotkinsky district, including the Kropotkinskaya metro station. He is the namesake for a large town in the North Caucasus (southwest Russia) and a small town in Siberia. The Kropotkin Range he
792-541: A Rebel , a compilation of Kropotkin's Révolté writings while he was in prison, which became a main source of Kropotkin's thoughts on revolution. As Kropotkin's health worsened from scurvy and malaria , France released him in early 1886. He would stay in England through 1917, settling in Harrow, London , apart from brief trips to other European countries. In London in late 1886, he co-founded Freedom , an anarchist monthly and
924-467: A bloodless revolution and forgo another Pugachev's Rebellion . In early August 1862, he briefly travelled to Paris. In Paris at this time, famous photographer Nadar took three famous photographs of him on August 7, 1862. After being photographed, he also signed Nadar's Livre d'Or (autograph albume), wrote that (leaf 161): "Watch out that liberty doesn't come to you from the north." In 1863, Bakunin joined in an unsuccessful effort to supply armed men for
1056-418: A career as a mathematics teacher. Bakunin lived a bohemian, intellectual life in Moscow, where German Romantic literature and idealist philosophy were influential in the 1830s. In the intellectual circle of Nikolai Stankevich , Bakunin read German philosophy, from Kant to Fichte to Hegel , and published Russian translations of their works. Bakunin produced the first Russian translation of Hegel and
1188-484: A certain small scale, communities and communes and co-ops could flourish and provide humans with a rich material life and wide areas of liberty without centralized control." Kropotkin's focus on local production led to his view that a country should strive for self-sufficiency by manufacturing its own goods and growing its own food, thus lessening the need to rely on imports. To these ends, he advocated irrigation and greenhouses to boost local food production. There
1320-859: A constant subordination. He believed intelligence to have intrinsic benefits so as to not require additional privileges. Towards the end of his life, beginning in 1864 in Italy with the International Brotherhood, Bakunin attempted to unite his international network under secret revolutionary societies, a concept at odds with his professed caution against the autocratic tendencies of the revolutionary elite. Composed of Bakunin's circle, these informal groups existed mainly on paper and thus did not participate in revolutionary action or bridge revolutionary theory to practice like Bakunin intended. The groups operated with significant autonomy, having diverged from Bakunin on multiple controversial issues. Despite being cast at
1452-628: A disguised reconnaissance expedition to find a direct route through Manchuria from Chita to Vladivostok the next year. He explored the East Siberian Mountains in the north the year after. The mountain measurements from his 1866 Olekminsk - Vitimsk expedition confirmed his Manchurian hypothesis that the Siberian area from the Ural Mountains to the Pacific Ocean was a plateau and not
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#17328483400991584-704: A family estate in Tver Governorate . From 1840, he studied in Moscow , then in Berlin hoping to enter academia. Later in Paris , he met Karl Marx and Pierre-Joseph Proudhon , who deeply influenced him. Bakunin's increasing radicalism ended hopes of a professorial career. He was expelled from France for opposing the Russian Empire 's occupation of Poland . After participating in the 1848 Prague and 1849 Dresden uprisings, Bakunin
1716-504: A fragment found and published posthumously as God and the State (1882). The latter was his most famous work, translated widely, and a touchstone of anarchist literature. It appeals to cast off both the state and religion to realize man's inborn freedom. Bakunin's core political thought addressed emancipatory communities in which members freely develop their abilities and faculties without overpowering each other. Participation within community
1848-465: A majority or any presumed intelligence rule over a presumed stupidity. Bakunin wrote of referring to the " authority to the bootmaker " on boots and to savants for their specialities, and listening to the freely in respect for their expertise, but not allowing the bootmaker or the savant to impose this authority and not letting them be beyond reproach of criticism or censure. Bakunin believed that authority should be in continual voluntary exchange rather than
1980-692: A paradoxical abstraction from social reality. Although a popular legislature is meant to represent the will of the people, he saw it rarely function as such in practice. Elected politicians instead represented abstractions. Bakunin believed that powerful institutions to be inherently stronger than individual will and incapable of internal reform due to the overwhelming ambitions and temptations that corrupt those with power. To Bakunin, anarchists were rightly "enemies of all power, knowing that power corrupts those invested with it just as much as those compelled to submit to it". Bakunin clashed with Marx over worker governance and revolutionary change. Bakunin argued that even
2112-566: A position with the Russian interior ministry with no duties. He studied physics, math, and geography at the university. After presenting his Vitim expedition findings, Kropotkin accepted the Russian Geographical Society's part-time offer of its Physical Geography section Secretaryship. Kropotkin translated Herbert Spencer for additional income. He continued to develop a theory, which he considered his best scientific contribution, that
2244-497: A promise from the governor-general to suspend the prisoners' death sentences, which was reneged. Disillusioned, Kropotkin and his brother resolved to leave the military. His time in Siberia taught him to appreciate peasant social organization and convinced him that administrative reform was an ineffectual means to improve social conditions. After five years in Siberia, Kropotkin and his brother moved to St. Petersburg, where they continued their schooling and academic work. Kropotkin took
2376-400: A pseudonym, it marked Bakunin's transition from philosophy to revolutionary rhetoric. Throughout the 1840s, Bakunin grew into revolutionary agitation. When his cadre aroused interest from Russian secret agents, Bakunin left for Zürich in early 1843. He met the proto-communist Wilhelm Weitling whose arrest led Bern 's Russian embassy to distrust Bakunin. Defying Russian orders to return,
2508-529: A public speaker. As a thinker, Kropotkin focused more acutely on issues of morality than of economics or politics and carried himself by his own principles without imposition on others. In practice, this made him more of a "revolutionary humanitarian" than a revolutionist by deed. He was also known for being exceptionally kind and for forgoing material comforts to live a revolutionary, principled life by example. Gerald Runkle wrote that "Kropotkin with his scholarly and saintly ways ... almost brought respectability to
2640-436: A reformed bourgeois or revolutionary state could emancipate like such a community he described, so his vision of revolution meant not capturing power but ensuring that no new power took the place of the old. Bakunin was not a systematic thinker and did not design grand systems or theoretical constructs. His writing was prolific and fragmented. He was prone to large digressions and rarely completed what he set out to address. As
2772-406: A result, much of his writings on anarchism do not cohere and were published only posthumously. Bakunin did develop his theoretical perspective through draft programs. Bakunin first called himself an anarchist in 1867. Bakunin saw the institutions of church and state as standing against the aims of emancipatory community, namely that they impose wisdom and justice from above under the pretense that
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#17328483400992904-585: A secret party—its existence unknown and its policies beholden to none—had the potential for greater tyranny than a Blanquist or Marxist party and was hard to envision as presaging an open, democratic society. Bakunin married Antonia Kwiatkowska, originally from Poland, during his exile in Siberia. Kwiatkowska was much younger than Bakunin (a difference of 26 years; she was 18) and had little interest in politics. Their differences and Bakunin's meagre attention to romance have left biographers speculating about possible psychosexual rationales for Bakunin's personal life and
3036-458: A societally useful life. For his tour of service, in 1862 he chose the Amur Cossacks in east Siberia , an undesirable post that would let him study the technical mathematics of artillery, travel, live in nature, and achieve financial independence from his father. He developed a firm worldview of compassion for the poor and contrasted the pride and dignity of the yeoman peasant farmers against
3168-461: A source of discord and hatred. Kropotkin believed that any post-revolutionary government would lack the local knowledge to organize a diverse population. Their vision of society would be limited by their own vindictive, self-serving, or narrow ideals. To ensure order, preserve authority , and organize production the state would need to use violence and coercion to suppress further revolution, and control workers. The workers would be reliant on
3300-494: A system would breed the same type of centralization and inequality as a capitalist wage system. He stated that it is impossible to determine the value of an individual's contributions to the products of labor and thought that anyone who was placed in a position of trying to make such determinations would wield authority over those whose wages they determined. According to Kirkpatrick Sale , "[w]ith Mutual Aid especially, and later with Fields, Factories, and Workshops , Kropotkin
3432-445: A whole, referring to the country as “the finest political organization that ever existed in history.” In London, Bakunin reunited with Herzen and Ogarev. Bakunin collaborated with them on their Russian-language newspaper but his revolutionary fervor exceeded their moderate reform agenda. Bakunin's 1862 pamphlet The People ' s Cause: Romanov, Pugachev, or Pestel? criticized the Russian tsar for not using his position to facilitate
3564-510: A wide range of intellectuals (including the writers Ba Jin and James Joyce ). Much of Kropotkin's impact was in his intellectual writings prior to 1914. He had little influence on the Russian revolution, despite returning for it. Emma Goldman regarded Kropotkin as her "great teacher" and as among the greatest minds and personalities of the 19th century. After Kropotkin's 1921 death, the Bolsheviks permitted Kropotkin's Moscow house to become
3696-612: A widespread "Boldness of thought, a distinct and wide conception of all that is desired, constructive force arising from the people in proportion as the negation of authority dawns; and finally -- the initiative of all in the work of reconstruction -- this will give to the revolution the Power required to conquer." Kropotkin applied this criticism to the Bolsheviks ' rule following the October Revolution . Kropotkin summarized his thoughts in
3828-503: Is slavery and brutality". Bakunin disagreed with Marx that the state would wither away under worker ownership and that worker conquest and changes in production conditions would inherently kill the state. Bakunin promoted spontaneous worker actions over Marx's suggested organization of a working-class party. While Bakunin believed that science and specialists could be useful in enlightening communities, he did not believe in government by experts or letting any privileged minority rule over
3960-695: The 1830 Polish uprising with a speech. His call for Poles to overthrow czarism in alliance with Russian democrats made Bakunin known throughout Europe and led the Russian ambassador to successfully request Bakunin's deportation. When the French King Louis Philippe I abdicated during the February 1848 Revolution , Bakunin returned to Paris and basked in the revolutionary milieu. With the French government's support, he headed to Prussian Poland to agitate for revolt against Russia but never arrived. He attended
4092-517: The Chaikovsky Circle , a group of revolutionaries that Kropotkin considered more educational than revolutionary in their activities. Kropotkin believed in the inevitability of social revolution and the need for stateless social organization. His populist revolutionary program for the group focused on urban workers and peasants whereas the group's moderates focused on students. Partially for this reason, he declined to contribute his personal wealth to
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4224-581: The Geographical Journal and Nature . After 1890, according to biographers George Woodcock and Ivan Avakumović , Kropotkin became more of a scholarly recluse and less of a propagandist. His works' revolutionary zeal subsided as he turned to social, ethical, and scientific questions. He joined the British Association for the Advancement of Science . He continued to contribute to Freedom but
4356-661: The International Workingmen's Association , leading the anarchist faction to rapidly grow in influence. The 1872 Hague Congress was dominated by a struggle between Bakunin and Marx, who was a key figure in the General Council of the International and argued for the use of the state to bring about socialism. In contrast, Bakunin and the anarchist faction argued for the replacement of the state by federations of self-governing workplaces and communes. Bakunin could not reach
4488-698: The National Library of Russia , and the International Institute of Social History . Peter Kropotkin Pyotr Alexeyevich Kropotkin (9 December 1842 – 8 February 1921) was a Russian anarchist and geographer known as a proponent of anarchist communism . Born into an aristocratic land-owning family, Kropotkin attended Page Corps and later served as an officer in Siberia , where he participated in several geological expeditions. He
4620-690: The Russian Senate stripped him of his rights as a nobleman and sentenced him in absentia to penal labor in Siberia. Without steady financial support, Bakunin became an itinerant, traveling Europe meeting the people who had influenced him. He visited Brussels and Paris , where he joined international emigrants and socialists, befriended the anarchist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon , and met the philosopher Karl Marx , with whom he would later tussle. Bakunin only became personally active in political agitation in 1847, as Polish emigrants in Paris invited him to commemorate
4752-818: The Young Hegelians , an intellectual group with radical interpretations of Hegel's philosophy, and who drew Bakunin to political topics. He left Berlin in early 1842 for Dresden and met the Hegelian Arnold Ruge , who published Bakunin's first original publication. German : Die Reaktion in Deutschland ("The Reaction in Germany") proposes a continuation of the French Revolution to the rest of Europe and Russia. Though steeped in Hegelian jargon and published under
4884-521: The glacial lakes of its northeast. His father died later that year and Kropotkin inherited a wealthy estate in Tambov . Kropotkin turned down the Geographical Society's offer of its general secretary position, instead choosing work on his Ice Age data and interest in bettering the lives of peasants. While Kropotkin became increasingly revolutionary in his writings, he was not known for activism. He
5016-485: The state or the Russian Orthodox Church , which he saw as stifling human creativity and impeding human instinctual drive towards cooperation . Kropotkin claimed that the benefits arising from mutual organization incentivizes humans more than mutual strife. His hope was that in the long run, mutual organization would drive individuals to produce . Anarcho-primitivists and anarcho-communists believe that
5148-611: The 1848 Prague Slavic Congress to defend Slavic rights against German and Hungarian nationalism, and participated in its impromptu insurrection against the Austrian Habsburgs . Uncaptured, he wrote Aufruf an die Slaven ("Appeal to the Slavs") at the end of the year, advocating for a Slavic federation and revolt against the Austrian, Prussian, Turkish, and Russian governments. It was widely read and translated. After participating in both
5280-445: The 1860s. Bakunin's relationship with Marx became strained in the early 1870s for both interpersonal and ideological differences. Bakunin respected Marx's erudition and passion for socialism but found his personality to be authoritarian and arrogant. In turn, Marx was skeptical towards Russian reactionism and Bakunin's unruliness. As Bakunin developed his anarchist ideas in this period, he came to see federative social organization, led by
5412-633: The 1890s on the animal instinct for cooperation as a counterpoint to Darwinism became a series of articles in Nineteenth Century and, later, the book Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution , which was widely translated. Following a scientific congress in Toronto in 1897, Kropotkin toured Canada. His experience there led him to advise the Russian Doukhobors who sought to immigrate there. He helped facilitate their emigration in 1899. Kropotkin entered
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5544-496: The Darwinian sense that made for the success of species, including the human". In the last chapter, he wrote: In the animal world we have seen that the vast majority of species live in societies, and that they find in association the best arms for the struggle for life: understood, of course, in its wide Darwinian sense – not as a struggle for the sheer means of existence, but as a struggle against all natural conditions unfavourable to
5676-628: The East Siberian mountains were part of a large plateau and not independent ridges. Kropotkin participated in an 1870 polar expedition plan that postulated the existence of what was later discovered as the Franz Josef Land Arctic archipelago. In early 1871, he was commissioned to study the Ice Age in Scandinavian geography, in which Kropotkin developed theories of the glaciation of Europe and
5808-637: The First International agreed and even statists joined the anti-statists' resulting Anti-authoritarian International, but by 1876, the alliance had mostly dissolved. While in decline, the Jura Federation remained the home of Bakuninists whose figures engaged on a two-decade debate on the merits of propaganda of the deed . The egalitarian relations of the Jura Federation had played an important role in Peter Kropotkin 's adoption of anarchism, who became
5940-651: The First International largely supported the St. Imier congress, and opposed the General Council's suppression of the Bakuninists at the 1871 London Conference and 1872 Hague Congress . As a result, the Anti-authoritarian International congresses in 1873 and 1874 attracted Belgian, English, Dutch, and German federations into the fold, along with the First International's statist and anti-statist factionalism. The English Federation, for example, explicitly disagreed with
6072-653: The First International's 1872 Hague Congress . This breaking point split the Marxist socialist movement from the anarchist movement and led to the undoing of the International. Bakunin's ideas continued to spread nevertheless to the labor movement in Spain and the watchmakers of the Swiss Jura Federation . Bakunin wrote his last major work, Statism and Anarchy (1873), anonymously in Russian to stir underground revolution in Russia. It restates his anarchist position, establishes
6204-405: The First International's General Council, led by Marxists, suppressed the Bakuninists, the Jura Federation organized an international of the disaffected federations at the 1872 St. Imier Congress . The congress disavowed the General Council's authoritarian consolidation of power and planning as an affront to the International's loose, federalist founding to support workers' emancipation. Members of
6336-592: The Fédération Romande congress of the International, in January 1869. Though Bakunin's faction was larger, the International's General Council was Marxist, and did not recognize the Jura Federation for its relation to Bakunin. The group was formally inaugurated at the 1871 Congress of Sonvilier. Their founding treatise, the Sonvilier Circular , held positions against the state and against the General Council, which
6468-525: The General Council for its centralization of political power and advocation for uniform action towards social emancipation. The coalition would become the Anti-authoritarian International , as formalized at the 1873 Congress of Geneva, and it held that only the proletariat masses could seek social emancipation for themselves through free, spontaneous action and egalitarian economic federation: It could not be imposed from hierarchy. Members of
6600-579: The German Empire as the foremost centralized state in opposition to European anarchism, likens Marx to German authoritarianism, and warns of Marx's dictatorship of the proletariat being led by autocrats for their own gain in the name of the proletariat. This premonition furthered the gulf between the Marxists and Bakunist anarchists. In one final revolutionary act, Bakunin planned the unsuccessful 1874 Bologna insurrection with his Italian followers. Its failure
6732-575: The Hague Congress as under Bakunin's stern authority, they were organized by personal relationships rather than the vertical hierarchies and membership ranks found in Bakunin's notes. His written programs played a larger role in his politics than these draft secret societies. The idea of the "invisible dictatorship" was central to Bakunin's politics. In combination with Bakunin's opposition to parliamentary politics, historian Peter Marshall wrote that such
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#17328483400996864-534: The Jura Federation and began editing its publication. There he met Ukrainian Jewish student Sophie Kropotkin , and the two were married in 1878. In 1879, he started Le Révolté , a revolutionary fortnightly, in Geneva that published his personal articulation of anarchist communism , the idea of distributing work product communally based on need rather than by work. He became the philosophy's most prominent proponent, despite not creating it. The philosophy became part of
6996-461: The Jura Federation was in decline. The Jura watchmakers cooperative in La Chaux-de-Fonds had a work shortage and the group's isolation from the general population had worn them. Bakunin retired from the Jura Federation in 1873 and died three years later. Jura remained a continuation of Bakunin's International alliance and Peter Kropotkin became the international anarchist standard-bearer. Jura
7128-518: The Jura Federation, in La Chaux-de-Fonds , adopted " anarchist communism " as its doctrine, as did many anarchists outside Spain, since the latter's anarchism was more dependent on trade unions. Schwitzguébel and his adherents in Jura were reticent at the adoption of communism over collectivism. Bakuninist Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin ( / b ə ˈ k uː n ɪ n / bə- KOO -nin ; 30 May [ O.S. 18 May] 1814 – 1 July 1876)
7260-545: The Jura charged with turning free and autonomous parts of the International into an authoritarian hierarchy. The Federation started its journal, Bulletin de la Fédération jurassienne , in February 1872 to explicate its stance against the General Council. The Jura Federation organized a group of the First International's apostate factions at the September 1872 St. Imier Congress . The Bakuninists from Jura, France, Italy, Spain, and
7392-571: The Jura program in 1880 at Kropotkin's advocacy. Le Révolté also published Kropotkin's best known pamphlet, "An Appeal to the Young," in 1880. Switzerland expelled Kropotkin at Russia's behest after the assassination of Alexander II in early 1881. He moved to Thonon-les-Bains , France , near Geneva, so that his wife could finish her Swiss education. Upon learning that the Holy League, a tsarist group, intended to kill him for his alleged association with
7524-488: The Jurassian position on action, but as long as the federations were free to pursue their own methods, affirmed the higher purpose of restoring a federalist International. The Jura argued for abstention from political action, citing their fruitless experiences with parliamentary politics and their subsequent organization outside political parties. By 1876, the alliance between the statists and anti-statists had mostly dissolved and
7656-557: The Nechayev conspiracy model. Members of the circle began to be arrested in late 1873 and the Third Section secret police came for Kropotkin in March 1874. His arrest for agitation, as a former page de chambre and officer, was scandalous. Kropotkin had just filed his Ice Age report and had been recently elected president of the Geographical Society's Physical and Mathematical Department. At
7788-705: The Netherlands, and the anarchist faction lost the debate in his absence. Bakunin was expelled from the International for maintaining, in Marx's view, a secret organisation within the International, and founded the Anti-Authoritarian International in 1872. From 1870 until his death in 1876, Bakunin wrote his longer works such as Statism and Anarchy and God and the State , but he continued to directly participate in European worker and peasant movements. In 1870, he
7920-433: The Polish January Uprising against Russia. Bakunin, reunited with his wife, moved to Italy the next year, where they stayed for three years. Bakunin, in his early 50s, developed his core anarchist thoughts in Italy. He continued to refine these ideas in his remaining 12 years. Among this ideology was the first of many conspiratorial revolutionary societies, though none of these participated in revolutionary actions, chiefly
8052-531: The Prague uprising and the 1849 Dresden uprising , Bakunin was imprisoned, tried, sentenced to death, extradited multiple times, and ultimately placed in solitary confinement in the Peter and Paul Fortress of St. Petersberg, Russia , in 1851. Three years later, he transferred to Shlisselburg Fortress near St. Petersberg for another three years. Prison weathered but did not break Bakunin, who retained his revolutionary zeal through his release. He did, however, write an autobiographical, genuflecting Confession to
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#17328483400998184-415: The Russian emperor, which proved to be a controversial document upon its public discovery some 70 years later. The letter did not improve his prison conditions. In 1857, Bakunin was permitted to transfer to permanent exile in Siberia. He married Antonia Kwiatkowska there before escaping in 1861, first to Japan, then to San Francisco, sailing to Panama and then to New York and Boston, and arrived in London by
8316-412: The Social Revolution will be so immense and so profound, it must so change all the relations based today on property and exchange, that it is impossible for one or any individual to elaborate the different social forms, which must spring up in the society of the future. [...] Any authority external to it will only be an obstacle, only a trammel on the organic labor which must be accomplished, and beside that
8448-658: The United States and met John Most , Emma Goldman , and Benjamin Tucker . American publishers published his Memoirs of a Revolutionist and Fields, Factories, and Workshops by the end of the decade. He visited the United States again in 1901 at the invitation of the Lowell Institute to give lectures on Russian literature that were later published. He published The Great French Revolution (1909), The Terror in Russia (1909), and Modern Science and Anarchism (1913). His 70th birthday in 1912 had celebratory gatherings in London and Paris. Kropotkin's support for Western entry into World War I, siding with Britain and France, divided
8580-408: The United States reaffirmed their Sonvilier Circular position and charged the General Council with violating the premises of their partnership: the autonomy of the federations and their ultimate cause: workers' emancipation. The St. Imier coalition agreed to a solidarity pact to ensure the member federations' independent autonomy and their common union against the General Council. The Bakuninists rebuked
8712-413: The anarchist movement, which had been anti-war, and damaged his esteem as a luminary of socialism. He exacerbated this by insisting, with returning to Russia, that Russians support the war as well. With the outbreak of the Russian Revolution, Kropotkin returned to Russia in June 1917. He refused the Petrograd Provisional Government's offer of a cabinet seat. In August, he advocated for defending Russia and
8844-416: The anarchist standard-bearer after Bakunin. The Jura became the geographic center of the First International 's anarchist coalition under luminary Mikhail Bakunin in the late 1860s and early 1870s, assisted by the Swiss government's laxity toward political agitators. The Jura Federation formed during infighting in the International between Bakunin and Karl Marx 's factions. The Jura Federation split during
8976-407: The antisemitic passages in Bakunin's writing have been the subject of extended interest, such that Bakunin biographer Mark Leier has said the question is raised every time he speaks on Bakunin. Both Leier and scholar of antisemitism Eirik Eiglad have commented that antisemitism was not essential to Bakunin's thought, nor was his thought valued for his antisemitism. Sociologist Marcel Stoetzler argued
9108-424: The article on anarchism to the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition and left an unfinished work on anarchist ethical philosophy. Kropotkin was born in Moscow on 9 December 1842, in the Konyushennaya (" Equerries ") district. His father, Alexander, was a typical royal officer who owned serfs in three provinces and whose family descended from the Grand Princes of Smolensk . His mother, Ekatarina Sulima,
9240-431: The assassination, he moved to London, but could only bear to live there for a year. Upon his return in late 1882, the French arrested him for agitation, partly to appease Russia. He was sentenced to five years in Lyons . In early 1883, he was transferred to the Clairvaux Prison , where he continued his academic work. A public campaign of intellectuals and French legislators called for his release. Reclus published Words of
9372-431: The best revolutionary placed on the Russian throne would become worse than Czar Alexander. Bakunin wrote that socialist workers in power would become ex-workers who govern by their own pretensions, not representing the people. Bakunin did not believe in transitional dictatorship serving any purpose other than to perpetuate itself, saying that "liberty without socialism is privilege and injustice, and socialism without liberty
9504-525: The citizens briefly occupied the city hall. Bakunin retreated to Switzerland. In Switzerland, the Russian revolutionary Sergey Nechayev sought out Bakunin for a collaboration. Not knowing Nechayev's past betrayals, Bakunin warmed to Nechayev's revolutionary zeal and they together produced the 1869 Catechism of the Revolutionary , a tract that endorsed an ascetic life for revolutionaries without societal or moral bonds. Bakunin's connection with Nechayev hurt
9636-420: The common good. Kropotkin believed that a communist society could be established only by a social revolution , which he described as, "... the taking possession by the people of all social wealth. It is the abolition of all the forces which have so long hampered the development of Humanity". However, he criticized forms of revolutionary methods (like those proposed by Marxism and Blanquism ) that retained
9768-418: The day. He advocated for workers' cooperatives and argued against the Bolsheviks' hostage policy and centralization of authority while simultaneously encouraging Western comrades to stop their governments' military interventions in Russia. Kropotkin ultimately had little impact on the Russian revolution, but his advocacy work for political and anarchist prisoners in Russia and for the Russian revolution, during
9900-714: The end of the year. Bakunin set foot in America just as the Civil War was breaking out. Speaking with supporters of both sides, Bakunin stated that his sympathies were with the North, although he claimed hypocrisy in their stated goal of slave liberation while also forcing the South to remain in the Union. Though a fierce critic and enemy of slavery, Bakunin held a deep admiration for the United States as
10032-545: The estate's servants and serfs who cared for him and relayed stories of his mother's kindness. He was raised in the family's Moscow mansion and an estate in Nikolskoye, Kaluga Oblast , outside Moscow. At the age of eight, Kropotkin attended Tsar Nicholas I 's Royal Ball. Commending the child's costume, the tsar chose Kropotkin for his Page Corps , an elite school in St. Petersburg that combined military and court education and produced
10164-421: The extent of his dedication to revolutionary action. Though she remained married to Bakunin until his death in 1876, Kwiatkowska had three children with another man while Bakunin was still alive – an Italian disciple of his, who married her after Bakunin's death. Bakunin was the leading anarchist revolutionary of the 19th century, active from the 1840s through the 1870s. His foundational anarchist writings helped
10296-410: The extraction of surplus value from their labor. Kropotkin claimed this power was made possible by the state's protection of private ownership of productive resources. However, Kropotkin believed the possibility of surplus value was itself the problem, holding that a society would still be unjust if the workers of a particular industry kept their surplus to themselves, rather than redistributing it for
10428-536: The first English anarchist periodical, which he continued to support for almost three decades. His first and only child, Alexandra Kropotkin , was born the next year. He published multiple books over the next coming years including In Russian and French Prisons and The Conquest of Bread . His intellectual circle in London included William Morris and W. B. Yeats as well as old Russian friends Sergey Stepnyak-Kravchinsky and Nikolai Tchaikovsky . Kropotkin contributed to
10560-411: The former's reputation. More recent scholarship, however, challenges the catechism's authorship, crediting Nechayev as the primary or sole author. Bakunin ultimately disavowed their connection. While Bakunin encountered Karl Marx in Paris (1844) and London (1864), he came to know him through the First International (International Working Men's Association), which Marx and Friedrich Engels formed in
10692-402: The freedom to participate in the city's social life, but was unfulfilled. Derelict in his studies, he was sent to Belarus and Lithuania as punishment in early 1834, where he read academic theory and philosophy. He deserted the school in 1835 and only escaped arrest through his familial influence. He was discharged at the end of the year and, despite his father's protests, left for Moscow to pursue
10824-419: The goods and services it needs, there would be no obstacle, such as preferential distribution, pricing or monetary exchange, to prevent everyone to take what they need from the social product. He supported the eventual abolition of money or tokens of exchange for goods and services. Kropotkin believed that Mikhail Bakunin 's collectivist economic model was just a wage system by a different name and that such
10956-534: The group in 1876 and was debated for two decades. Adherents such as Malatesta and the Italian anarchists quickly adopted the tactic, while Guillaume was hesitant. Up until this time, the anarchist philosophy had flourished in small artisan communities, such as the watchmakers in Jura, and propaganda of the deed was intended to bond anarchist and workers' groups, as had been done in Spain and Italy. Upset by Kropotkin's advances, Guillaume left Jura in 1878. An 1880 congress of
11088-680: The group. He viewed professionals as unlikely to forgo their privileges and judged them to not live societally useful lives. His program emphasized federated agrarian communes and a revolutionary party. While he could speak powerfully, Kropotkin was not a successful organizer. Kropotkin's first political memo in November 1873 covered his basic plan for stateless social reconstruction including common property, worker control of factories, shared physical labor towards societal need, and labor vouchers in lieu of money. He emphasized living among commoners and using propaganda to focus mass dissatisfaction. He rejected
11220-511: The help of his sister. With assistance from friends, he escaped from the minimal-security prison in June 1876. By way of Scandinavia and England, Kropotkin arrived in Switzerland by the end of the year, where he met Italian anarchists Carlo Cafiero and Errico Malatesta . He visited Belgium and Zurich, where he met French geographer Élisée Reclus , who became a close friend. Kropotkin associated with
11352-529: The higher intellectual development, and the further growth of sociable habits, secure the maintenance of the species, its extension, and its further progressive evolution. The unsociable species, on the contrary, are doomed to decay. Kropotkin did not deny the presence of competitive urges in humans, but did not consider them the driving force of human history . He believed that seeking out conflict proved to be socially beneficial only in attempts to destroy injustice , as well as authoritarian institutions such as
11484-636: The indignities of serfdom. He wrote approvingly of the cultivated Transbaikalia governor-general Boleslav Kukel , to whom Kropotkin reported. Kukel engaged Kropotkin in prison reform and city self-governance projects that the central government ultimately denied. The exiled poet and political prisoner Mikhail Larionovitch Mikhailov introduced Kropotkin to anarchism by recommending he read an essay by Pierre-Joseph Proudhon . Kropotkin's brother came to live with him in Irkutsk . After Kukel's ouster in early 1863, Kropotkin found solace in geographical work. He led
11616-491: The last four years of his life replenished some of the goodwill he had lost from his support for Western powers in World War I. Kropotkin died of pneumonia on 8 February 1921. His family refused an offer of a state funeral . With his Moscow funeral, the Bolsheviks permitted the diminished Russian anarchist movement an official, restrained occasion to memorialize their figurehead. It was the last major anarchist demonstration of
11748-411: The masses could not fully self-govern. He wrote that "to exploit and to govern mean the same thing". Bakunin held the State as a regulated system of domination and exploitation by a privileged, ruling class. This applied to States both historical and contemporaneous, including modern monarchies and republics that each used military and bureaucratic centralization. He regarded representative democracies as
11880-445: The modern-day anti-globalization movement . On 30 May [ O.S. 18 May] 1814, Mikhail Aleksandrovich Bakunin was born into Russian nobility . His family's Priamukhino estate, in the Tver region northwest of Moscow, had over 500 serfs. His father, Alexander Mikhailovich Bakunin , was a Russian diplomat who had served in Italy. Upon returning to Priamukhino and marrying
12012-703: The movement stand in contrast to capitalism and Marxism and became more popular after his death, with some of his highest regarded works published posthumously and in new editions. His Statism and Anarchy influenced the growing Russian Narodnik movement of peasant socialism, and his anarchism influenced ideology in both the Russian Revolution and the Spanish Civil War . The 1960s New Left revived interest in his works and ideas of voluntary association and opposition to authoritarian socialism, with new editions and translations published. Bakunin's legacy reflects
12144-520: The movement." As the anarchists' leading theorist in his lifetime, Kropotkin wrote their most systematic doctrine in an accessible way; and led the development of anarchist-communist social doctrine. His works, inventive and pragmatic, were the most read anarchist books and pamphlets, with translations into major European and Eastern languages that influenced revolutionaries (e.g., Nestor Makhno and Emiliano Zapata ) and non-anarchist reformers alike (e.g., Patrick Geddes , Ebenezer Howard ), as well as
12276-554: The much younger Varvara Aleksandrovna Murav'eva, the elder Bakunin raised his ten children in the Rousseauan pedagogic model. Mikhail Bakunin, their third child and oldest son, read the languages, literature, and philosophy of the period and described his youth as idyllic and sheltered from the realities of Russian life. As an early teenager, he began training for a military career at the St. Petersburg Artillery School, which he rejected. Becoming an officer in 1833, he availed himself of
12408-442: The opposite, saying that the antisemitic trope of Jewish world domination was at the centre of Bakunin's political thought. Bakunin's anti-Jewish and anti-German resentment are most visible in the context of his attacks on Marx, but his antisemitism predated these passages. Scholar Marshall Shatz noted that there is a gap between Bakunin's egalitarian principles and his ethnic prejudices, even if this antisemitism and stereotyping
12540-414: The other, no matter what name is given to government, whether dictator, royalty, or parliament. We know that what makes the strength and the truth of our party is contained in this fundamental formula — "Nothing good or durable can be done except by the free initiative of the people, and every government tends to destroy it;" and so the very best among us, if their ideas had not to pass through the crucible of
12672-482: The paradox and ambivalence by which he lived. As historian Paul Avrich put it, Bakunin was "a nobleman who yearned for a peasant revolt, a libertarian with an urge to dominate others, an intellectual with a powerful anti-intellectual streak", who professed support for unfettered liberty while demanding unconditional obedience from his followers. Many of his actions put him closer to later authoritarian movements, even if his words were anti-authoritarian. In particular,
12804-401: The peasantry and poorest workers, as the primary post-revolution goal, whereas Marx believed in a dictatorship of the proletariat , led by organized workers in industrially advanced countries, in which the workers use state infrastructure until the state withers away . Bakunists abhorred the political organization for which Marx advocated. Marx had Bakunin and Bakunist anarchists ejected from
12936-439: The period in Russia, as the movement and Kropotkin's writings would be fully suppressed later that year. Kropotkin critiqued what he considered to be the fallacies of the economic systems of feudalism and capitalism . He believed they create poverty and artificial scarcity and promote privilege . Alternatively, he proposed a more decentralized economic system based on mutual aid and voluntary cooperation . He argued that
13068-457: The popular mind, before being put into execution, and if they should become masters of that formidable machine — the government — and could thus act as they chose, would become in a week fit only for the gallows. We know whither every dictator leads, even the best intentioned, — namely to the death of all revolutionary movement. Rather than a centralized approach, Kropotkin stressed the need for decentralized organization. He believed that dissolving
13200-415: The practice of creating communities of free, independent people. His first attempts at this, with the Polish emigrants and Prague Slav Congress in the 1840s, focused on national liberation, but he turned to emancipatory community after the failed 1863 Polish naval expedition. For Bakunin, freedom required community (such that humanity could only be free if everyone was free) and equality (that all people have
13332-477: The proletariat, not rule by the proletariat. His book God and the State has been widely translated and remains in print. Bakunin has had a significant influence on thinkers such as Peter Kropotkin , Errico Malatesta , Herbert Marcuse , E. P. Thompson , Neil Postman and A. S. Neill as well as syndicalist organizations such as the IWW , the anarchists in the Spanish Civil War and contemporary anarchists involved in
13464-586: The revolution at the National State Conference. Kropotkin applied for a residence in Moscow in 1918, which was personally approved by Vladimir Lenin, head of the Soviet government. Months later, finding life in Moscow difficult in his old age, Kropotkin moved with his family to a friend's home in the nearby town of Dmitrov. In 1919, Emma Goldman visited his family there. Kropotkin met with Lenin in Moscow and corresponded by mail to discuss political questions of
13596-423: The revolutionary toppling of the state, to be replaced by free federation between voluntarily associated economic producers. He moved to Switzerland in 1867, a more permissive environment for revolutionary literature. Bakunin's anarchist writings were fragmentary and prolific. With France's collapse in the 1870 Franco-Prussian War , Bakunin traveled to Lyon and participated in the fruitless Lyon Commune in which
13728-579: The same starting basis), including equality in rights and social functions for women. He envisioned an international revolution by the awakened masses that would bring about new forms of social organization (by committees of delegates and independent municipalities) in a large-scale federation undoing all state structure and social coercion. In this emancipated community, every adult would be entitled freedom, to be governed by their own conscience and reason according to their own will, responsible foremost to themselves and then to their community. He did not believe
13860-404: The school, where he advocated for a Russian constitution. He developed an interest in science, reading, and opera. As a top student, Kropotkin became a sergeant-major in 1861 and was thrust into court life, serving as the emperor's personal Page de Chambre. His views of the tsar and court life soured as imperial policy changed over the next year. Privately he was preoccupied with the need to live
13992-506: The society's request the tsar granted Kropotkin books to finish his glaciation report. Kropotkin was held in the Peter and Paul Fortress . His brother, who had also radicalized as a follower of Lavrov, was also arrested and exiled in Siberia , where he committed suicide about a decade later. Kropotkin was moved to the House of Detention prison military hospital in St. Petersburg for poor health, with
14124-405: The species. The animal species [...] in which individual struggle has been reduced to its narrowest limits [...] and the practice of mutual aid has attained the greatest development [...] are invariably the most numerous, the most prosperous, and the most open to further progress. The mutual protection which is obtained in this case, the possibility of attaining old age and of accumulating experience,
14256-468: The state bureaucracy to organize them, so they would never develop the initiative to self-organize as they needed. This would lead to the re-creation of classes , an oppressed workforce, and eventually another revolution. Thus, Kropotkin wrote that maintaining the state would paralyze any true social revolution, making the idea of a "revolutionary government" a contradiction in terms: We know that Revolution and Government are incompatible; one must destroy
14388-524: The state and hierarchical religious, social, and economic institutions, to be replaced by a system of freely federated communes organized "from below upward" with voluntary associations of economic producers, starting locally but ostensibly organizing internationally. These thoughts were first published in his unfinished 1871 The Knouto-Germanic Empire and the Social Revolution , expanded by a second part published in his 1908 Oeuvres , and again elaborated
14520-401: The state would cripple counter-revolution without reverting to authoritarian methods of control, writing, "In order to conquer, something more than guillotines are required. It is the revolutionary idea, the truly wide revolutionary conception, which reduces its enemies to impotence by paralyzing all the instruments by which they have governed hitherto." He believed this was possible only through
14652-424: The tendencies for this kind of organization already exist, both in evolution and in human society. Kropotkin disagreed in part with the Marxist critique of capitalism, including the labor theory of value , believing there was no necessary link between work performed and the values of commodities. His attack on the institution of wage labor was based more on the power employers exerted over employees, and not only on
14784-452: The terror which Kropotkin saw as needlessly destructive. In 1902, Kropotkin published his book Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution , which gave an alternative view of animal and human survival. At the time, some proponents of " Social Darwinism " such as Francis Galton proffered a theory of interpersonal competition and natural hierarchy. Instead, Kropotkin argued that "it was an evolutionary emphasis on cooperation instead of competition in
14916-493: The tsar's imperial attendants. Kropotkin joined the Page Corps as a teenager and began a 14-year epistolary relationship with his brother that charts his intellectual and emotional development. By the time of his arrival, Kropotkin had already shown a populist position towards the emancipation of serfs and a nature of revolt against his father and the school's hazing. Kropotkin began his first underground revolutionary writings at
15048-471: The use of state power, arguing that any central authority was incompatible with the dramatic changes needed by a social revolution. Kropotkin believed that the mechanisms of the state were deeply rooted in maintaining the power of one class over another, and thus could not be used to emancipate the working class . Instead, Kropotkin insisted that both private property and the state needed to be abolished together. The economic change which will result from
15180-519: Was a Russian revolutionary anarchist . He is among the most influential figures of anarchism and a major figure in the revolutionary socialist , social anarchist , and collectivist anarchist traditions. Bakunin's prestige as a revolutionary also made him one of the most famous ideologues in Europe, gaining substantial influence among radicals throughout Russia and Europe. Bakunin grew up in Pryamukhino ,
15312-500: Was a major setback to the Italian anarchist movement . Bakunin retreated to Switzerland, where he retired, dying in Bern on 1 July 1876. "The passion for destruction is also a creative passion." Much of Bakunin's writings on anarchism reflects antipathy for the state and "political organization itself as the source of oppression and exploitation". His revolutionary solutions focus on undoing
15444-448: Was a personal concern of his, and his vision of a community's role in creating free and happy humans stemmed from his close sibling relationships. Bakunin unsuccessfully sought community in religion and philosophy through influences including Arnold Ruge (Left Hegelianism), Ludwig Feuerbach (philosophical humanism), Wilhelm Weitling (proto-communism), and Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (early anarchism). Bakunin turned from metaphysics and theory to
15576-437: Was a proponent of a decentralized communist society free from central government and based on voluntary associations of self-governing communities and worker-run enterprises. He wrote many books, pamphlets and articles, the most prominent being The Conquest of Bread (1892) and Fields, Factories, and Workshops (1899), with Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution (1902) being his principal scientific offering. He contributed
15708-440: Was able to move away from the absurdist limitations of individual anarchism and no-laws anarchism that had flourished during this period and provide instead a vision of communal anarchism , following the models of independent cooperative communities he discovered while developing his theory of mutual aid. It was an anarchism that opposed centralized government and state-level laws as traditional anarchism did, but understood that at
15840-440: Was an anarchist." He then returned to Russia and did not re-involve himself until 1877, the year after he escaped from Russia. Major figures at Jura included James Guillaume , Adhémar Schwitzguébel , Severino Albarracín , Carlo Cafiero , Errico Malatesta , and Élisée Reclus . They discussed the practical and theoretical tenets of anarchist socialism, particularly " propaganda of the deed ", whose question became associated with
15972-542: Was based on her own experience with her husband at Clairvaux prison. She created an archive in Moscow dedicated to his works before her death in 1941. Their only child, Alexandra , was born in London in 1887. Kropotkin was reserved about his private life. As an individual, Kropotkin was known for having exceptional integrity and moral character that matched his beliefs. Henry Hyndman , an ideological adversary, recalled Kropotkin's charm and sincerity. These traits, wrote Stepnyak-Kravchinsky, contributed to Kropotkin's power as
16104-736: Was common among French radicals of the era and shared by Marx himself. Noam Chomsky called Bakunin's prediction that Marxist regimes would become dictatorships "one of the few predictions in the social sciences that actually came true". Bakunin archives are held in several places: the Pushkin House , the State Archive of the Russian Federation , the Russian State Library , the Russian State Archive of Literature and Art ,
16236-518: Was imprisoned for his activism in 1874 and managed to escape two years later. He spent the next 41 years in exile in Switzerland , France (where he was imprisoned for almost four years) and England. While in exile, he gave lectures and published widely on anarchism and geography. Kropotkin returned to Russia after the Russian Revolution in 1917, but he was disappointed by the Bolshevik state. Kropotkin
16368-465: Was imprisoned, tried, sentenced to death, and extradited multiple times. Finally exiled to Siberia in 1857, he escaped via Japan to the United States and then to London , where he worked with Alexander Herzen on the journal Kolokol ( The Bell ). In 1863, Bakunin left to join the insurrection in Poland , but he failed to reach it and instead spent time in Switzerland and Italy. In 1868, Bakunin joined
16500-754: Was introduced to the Jura Federation 's James Guillaume and Adhémar Schwitzguébel . The Jura were the main internal opposition to the Marxist-controlled First International , as followers of Mikhail Bakunin . Kropotkin was quickly impressed and was instantly converted to anarchism by the group's egalitarianism and independence of expression, but narrowly missed meeting the leading anarchist, Bakunin, while there. Kropotkin visited Belgium's movement before returning to Russia in May with contraband literature. Back in St. Petersburg, Kropotkin joined
16632-537: Was involved in an insurrection in Lyon , France. Bakunin sought to take part in an anarchist insurrection in Bologna , Italy, but his declining health forced him to return to Switzerland in disguise. Bakunin is remembered as a major figure in the history of anarchism, an opponent of Marxism , especially of the dictatorship of the proletariat ; and for his predictions that Marxist regimes would be one-party dictatorships ruling over
16764-471: Was no cleavage between the man and his world. He spoke and acted in all things as he felt and believed and wrote. Kropotkin was a whole man. Rudolf Rocker Kropotkin married Sofia , a Ukrainian Jewish student, in Switzerland in October 1878. She was over a decade younger than Kropotkin. Kropotkin references her as a primary source of criticism and feedback. Her published story, "The Wife of Number 4,237",
16896-463: Was no longer an editor. Several of Kropotkin's books began as journal articles. His writings on anarchist communist social life were printed in the French successor to Le Révolté and later revised into The Conquest of Bread in 1892. Kropotkin's writings on decentralizing production and industry against the countervailing trend of centralized industrialization were compiled into his Fields, Factories, and Workshops in 1899. His research throughout
17028-500: Was particularly influential in Kropotkin's adoption of anarchism. Skeptical of the First International's leadership in Geneva, had visited the organization's other stronghold, in Jura in 1872, where he was impressed by their egalitarian ethics, independence of thought, devotion to the cause, and opposition to the International's authoritarian elements. "After a week's stay with the watchmakers," he wrote, "my views on socialism were settled. I
17160-587: Was spurred by the 1871 Paris Commune and trial of Sergey Nechayev . He and his brother attended meetings on the Franco-Prussian War and revolutionism. Likely at the encouragement of a Swiss extended family member and his own desire to see the socialist worker's movement, Kropotkin set out to see Switzerland and Western Europe in February 1872. Over three months, he met Mikhail Sazhin in Zurich, worked and fell out with Nikolai Utin 's Marxist group in Geneva, and
17292-578: Was the daughter of General Nikolai Sulima and a descendant of a Zaporozhian Cossacks leader. Peter, the youngest of her four children, was three years old when she died of tuberculosis . Kropotkin's father remarried two years later. This stepmother was indifferent towards the Kropotkin children and had a streak of jealous vindictiveness, going through great lengths to remove the memory of Kropotkin's mother. With his father mostly absent, Kropotkin and his older brother, Alexander, were raised by their German nurse. Kropotkin developed an enduring compassion for
17424-503: Was the foremost Russian expert on Hegel by 1837. Bakunin befriended Russian intellectuals including the literary critic Vissarion Belinsky , the poet Nikolay Ogarev , the novelist Ivan Turgenev , and the writer Alexander Herzen as youth prior to their careers. Herzen funded Bakunin to study at the University of Berlin in 1840. Bakunin's plans to return to Moscow as a professor were soon abandoned. In Berlin, Bakunin gravitated towards
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