Petr Alekseevich Kropotkin

Industries of all kinds decentralise and are scattered all over the globe; and everywhere a variety, an integrated variety, of trades grows, instead of specialisation.

Each nation becomes in its turn a manufacturing nation; and the time is not far off when each nation of Europe, as well as the United States, and even the most backward nations of Asia and America, will themselves manufacture nearly…

But, as soon as any industry has taken firm root, it calls into existence hundreds of other trades; and as soon as the first steps have been made, and the first obstacles have been overcome, the industrial growth goes on at an accelerated…

The fact is so well felt, if not understood, that the race for colonies has become the distinctive feature of the last twenty years.

Nay, some of the British colonies already threaten to become serious competitors with their mother country; others, like Australia, will not fail to follow the same lines.

Whereas in France, where the decimal system of measures and money is a matter of daily life, even those workers who have received the plainest elementary education are quite familiar with decimals.

The waste of time in physics is simply revolting.

Instead of learning the laws of force with plain instruments which a boy of fifteen can easily make, they learn them from mere drawings, in a purely abstract fashion.

If waste of time is characteristic of our methods of teaching science, it is characteristic as well of the methods used for teaching handicraft.

We know how years are wasted when a boy serves his apprenticeship in a workshop; but the same reproach can be addressed, to a great extent, to those technical schools which endeavour at once to teach some special handicraft, instead of…

Just as there are in science some notions and methods which are preparatory to the study of all sciences, so there are also some fundamental notions and methods preparatory to the special study of any handicraft.

It was, not to give work for mere exercise, but to utilise everything which the pupil makes, from his very first steps.

Do you remember how you were delighted, in your childhood, if your work was utilised, be it only as a part of something useful?

It is evident that celerity of work is a most important factor in production.

But the very fact of requiring such kind of rapid work is the condemnation of the factory system.

Why this waste of human force, when it could produce ten times the value of the odd rests of yarn?

This is the true time-saving celerity, the most appropriate for economising human labour; and the best means for attaining it is an education of the most superior kind.

The great masters painted with an astonishing rapidity; but their rapid work was the result of a great development of intelligence and imagination, of a keen sense of beauty, of a fine perception of colours.

Certainly, I do not cherish the illusion that a thorough reform in education, or in any of the issues indicated in the preceding chapters, will be made as long as the civilised nations remain under the present narrowly egotistic system of…

But those who will take into account the following considerations probably will agree that the result ought to be the reverse--namely, such a revival of science and art, and such a progress in industry, as we only can faintly foresee from…

It has become a commonplace to speak with emphasis about the progress of science during the nineteenth century; and it is evident that our century, if compared with centuries past, has much to be proud of.

But, if we take into account that most of the problems which our century has solved already had been indicated, and their solutions foreseen, a hundred years ago, we must admit that the progress was not so rapid as might have been…

And if the revision requires some of that inspiration of genius which moved Galileo and Newton, and which depends in its appearance upon general causes of human development, it requires also an increase in the number of scientific workers.

When facts contradictory to current theories become numerous, the theories must be revised (we saw it in Darwin’s case), and thousands of simple intelligent workers in science are required to accumulate the necessary facts.

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.