But what is the use of talking to this peasant about American machines, when he has barely enough bread to live upon from one crop to the next; when the rent which he has to pay for that boulder clay grows heavier and heavier in proportion to his success in improving the soil?
Kropotkin critiques the impracticality of discussing advanced farming techniques with impoverished peasants struggling to survive.
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He can do it; and in so doing he would save an immense quantity of the work which is now given for buying his food abroad, and for paying all the intermediaries who live upon this trade.
The small bicycle workshops, with the hundreds of small improvements which they introduced, have been under our very eyes the primary cells out of which the great industry of the motor cars, and later on of the aeroplanes, has grown up.
For improving our methods of culture to that extent, we surely need not divide the land into one-acre plots, and attempt to grow what we are in need of by everyone’s separate individual exertions, on everyone’s separate plot with no better…
And wherever the village-community spirit is maintained, the small industries persist, while no effort is spared to bring the small plots under higher culture.
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