Occasionally some grey-bearded Chartist would rise from the audience and tell us that all we were saying had been said forty years before, and was greeted then with enthusiasm by crowds of workers, but that now all was dead, and there was no hope of reviving it.
Kropotkin shares a poignant moment when an audience member reflects on the past enthusiasm for socialism.
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I took a lively part in this movement, and with a few English comrades we started, in addition to the three socialist papers already in existence, an anarchist-communist monthly, ‘Freedom,’ which continues to live up to the present day.
The amount of interest in socialism and all sorts of schemes of reform and reconstruction of society was very great in all layers of society.
None of these are produced in greater quantities than would be required to secure well-being for all; and the over-production, so often spoken of, means nothing but that the masses are too poor to buy even what is now considered as…
But suppose the workers owned all the railways.
Other voices in this conversation
