Petr Alekseevich Kropotkin

Italy aspires to go on without foreign produce.

There is not a single manufacturer or tradesman who, even in the most trifling circumstances, does not do his best to emancipate himself from foreign guardianship.” The best French and English patterns are imitated and improved by a touch…

But the appearance of the cotton industry in a country, or, in fact, of any textile industry, unavoidably becomes the starting-point for the growth of a series of other industries; chemical and mechanical works, metallurgy and mining feel…

It is time to conclude, and, for every unprejudiced mind, the conclusion is self-evident.

Wars and several accidental causes may check for some time the scattering of industries: they will not stop it; it is unavoidable.

There is not a second India in the world, and the old conditions will be repeated no more.

As to the yet neutral markets, China will never be a serious customer to Europe: she can produce much cheaper at home; and when she begins to feel a need for goods of European patterns, she will produce them herself.

But force is reciprocal; and if the god of war always sides with the strongest battalions, those battalions are strongest which fight for new rights against outgrown privileges.

As to the honest longing for more technical education--surely let us all have as much of it as possible: it will be a boon for humanity; for humanity, of course--not for a single nation, because knowledge cannot be cultivated for home use…

The world--the wide, wide world--is now the true domain of knowledge; and if each nation displays some special capacities in some special branch, the various capacities of different nations compensate one another, and the advantages which…

And yet it is easy to prove that both are totally erroneous: plenty of food could be grown on the territories of Western Europe for much more than their present populations, and an immense benefit would be derived from doing so.

Need I say, after that, that quite to the contrary of what we are told about the British agriculturists becoming “meat-makers” instead of “wheat-growers,” no corresponding increase of live stock took place during the last twenty-five years.

They smile when we boast about the rotation system, having permitted us to take from the field one crop every year, or four crops each three years, because their ambition is to have six and nine crops from the very same plot of land during…

The seeds are carefully tried, the seedlings receive proper attention, and there is no fear of drought, because of the variety of crops, the liberal watering with the help of a steam engine, and the stock of plants always kept ready to…

What chiefly attracts the gardener to the great cities is stable manure; and this is not wanted so much for increasing the richness of the soil--one-tenth part of the manure used by the French gardeners would do for that purpose--but for…

Any soil, of any desired composition, can be made by machinery.

It is a fact that chemical manures, without organic manure, seldom prove to be sufficient.

The falsifications discovered by these laboratories exceed all that could have been imagined.

Few books have exercised so pernicious an influence upon the general development of economic thought as Malthus’s Essay on the Principle of Population exercised for three consecutive generations.

Science, down to the present day, remains permeated with Malthus’s teachings.

Almost every year brings some new, often unexpected improvement in the art of agriculture, which for so many centuries had been dormant.

But now it is capable, thanks to the work of the Flemish peasants and to irrigation, to produce the food of one milch cow per acre--the dung of the cattle being utilised for further improvements.

We have already, in the facts mentioned in this chapter, an experimental basis for quite a number of means of improving our present methods of culture and of largely increasing the crops.

And the division and subdivision--the permanent subdivision--of functions has been pushed so far as to divide humanity into castes which are almost as firmly established as those of old India.