What an amount of wasted force, of bitter words exchanged and efforts divided, simply because those who have adopted the formula of ‘conquest of power within the existing states’ do not understand that activity in this direction cannot embody all the socialist movement!
Kropotkin critiques the focus on seizing power within existing states, arguing it undermines the broader socialist movement.
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Or, ‘We don’t like the idea of state management of railways, and the present management by private companies is organized robbery.
Already during my stay at Clairvaux I saw the necessity of completely revising the formula itself of ‘struggle for existence’ in the animal world, and its applications to human affairs.
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.
People flocked at night into Trafalgar Square to sleep there in the open air, under the wind and rain, between two newspapers; and one day in February a crowd, after having listened to the speeches of Burns, Hyndman, and Champion, rushed…
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