Petr Alekseevich Kropotkin: “How can we then explain the persistence of the petty trades?”

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.

The small industries are as much a distinctive feature of the British industry as its few immense factories and ironworks.

They are entirely in our institutions, in our inheritances and survivals from the past--in the “Ghosts” which oppress us.

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.