"Le titre du livre : La Conquête du Pain doit être pris dans le sens le plus large, car « l’homme ne vit pas de pain seulement. » À une époque où les généreux et les vaillants essaient de transformer leur idéal de justice sociale en réalité vivante, ce n’est point à conquérir le pain, même avec le vin et le sel, que se borne notre ambition. Il faut conquérir aussi tout ce qui est nécessaire ou même simplement utile au confort de la vie ; il faut que nous puissions assurer à tous la pleine satisfaction des besoins et des jouissances. Tant que nous n’aurons pas fait cette première « conquête », tant qu’il « y aura des pauvres avec nous », c’est une moquerie amère de donner le nom de « société » à cet ensemble d’êtres humains qui se haïssent et qui s’entre-détruisent, comme des animaux féroces …
"Le titre du livre : La Conquête du Pain doit être pris dans le sens le plus large, car « l’homme ne vit pas de pain seulement. » À une époque où les généreux et les vaillants essaient de transformer leur idéal de justice sociale en réalité vivante, ce n’est point à conquérir le pain, même avec le vin et le sel, que se borne notre ambition. Il faut conquérir aussi tout ce qui est nécessaire ou même simplement utile au confort de la vie ; il faut que nous puissions assurer à tous la pleine satisfaction des besoins et des jouissances. Tant que nous n’aurons pas fait cette première « conquête », tant qu’il « y aura des pauvres avec nous », c’est une moquerie amère de donner le nom de « société » à cet ensemble d’êtres humains qui se haïssent et qui s’entre-détruisent, comme des animaux féroces enfermés dans une arène."
Classic imagining of a future that sorta came true?
5 stars
First published in 1906, a lot of the things Kropotkin imagined (soon we will all have electricity! And food delivery!) actually came to pass, and a lot of the social issues (child labor) have been mitigated, in the west. Many of his suggestions / predictions did not come to pass (we still have money).
Very interesting to review what the pressing issues of his day, and feel some degree of hope that although we have our own problems, we have less cases of 8 year olds out-competing their parents in the workplace.
Uncle Pyotr is way too optimistic, and doesn't always back up his opinions or estimations all that well (with a few notable exceptions).
At the same time, he is sharp, clear headed, and can see through normative ideas and explain in plain language the failings of those ideas and his counterproposals.
His material analysis, which in a couple of occasions (both having to do with the production of food) is backed by numbers surprisingly well, is of course very dated. He claims that we can produce nutritious food for everyone and cover all other needs, by asking everyone to put in about five hours of work a day, leaving the rest of life for artistic, leisurely and even scientific pursuit (he curiously includes science here instead of in the work part). That cannot be trusted, but it can be used to make arguments about today: with current technology and industry, …
Uncle Pyotr is way too optimistic, and doesn't always back up his opinions or estimations all that well (with a few notable exceptions).
At the same time, he is sharp, clear headed, and can see through normative ideas and explain in plain language the failings of those ideas and his counterproposals.
His material analysis, which in a couple of occasions (both having to do with the production of food) is backed by numbers surprisingly well, is of course very dated. He claims that we can produce nutritious food for everyone and cover all other needs, by asking everyone to put in about five hours of work a day, leaving the rest of life for artistic, leisurely and even scientific pursuit (he curiously includes science here instead of in the work part). That cannot be trusted, but it can be used to make arguments about today: with current technology and industry, we can probably beat his predictions.
His quantitative arguments (and even the qualitative ones) aren't supposed to be taken as gospel anyway. Uncle Pyotr ends the book with this passage:
With our minds already narrowed in our youth, enslaved by the past in our mature age and till the grave, we hardly dare to think. If a new idea is mentioned — before venturing on an opinion of our own, we consult musty books a hundred years old, to know what ancient masters thought on the subject.
Solid burn to us, his readers, even from hundreds of years in the grave.
All in all, the book is a source of surprisingly solid ideas to argue about anarchist communism today, even though is doesn't answer everything and it doesn't do that well in backing up some of its claims. What it does excel at, though, is clear, simple language.
There's a reason this book is synonymous with anarchist communism
5 stars
Sure, some parts are out of date. But so much of it remains true even today.
There's a saying about lectures that say that the best questions a lecturer can get are the ones answered by the very next slide. Well, that is exactly what happened to me, again and again, with the chapters of this book. Most amazingly, a question a friend raised in a discussion we had about chapter 8 was answered by the very first sentence of chapter 9. Can't be better than that.
A classic, of course. Clear-eyed and practical, yet visionary; a a re-envisioning of a post-revolutionary society serving the needs of people from the bottom (of Maslow’s) up: first food, then shelter, then clothing, then everything else. Without the twin coercive expropriators of the capitalist and the state, there will be more than enough to create a pleasant society for all with minimal work and maximal leisure and pleasure. As a bonus, the lure of the above expropriators will be castrated because you can’t coerce and subjugate a populace whose needs are met.
Basically the introduction to anarcho-communism. A relatively short and digestible read that presents many interesting ideas but be prepared to struggle your way through pages of calculations that aim to show you that an anarchist society is possible in the late 19th century.
Proposal and FAQ for why the Revolution should lead to an Anarchist Communist state, that individuals freed from Capitalism (the source and cause of poverty in the modern world) are entirely capable of self-organizing and delegating and negotiating without a corruptible State overseer. Optimistic and Idealistic and a little Cranky, not bad.
