Petr Alekseevich Kropotkin

We all know that the child ought, at least, to be familiarised with the forces of Nature which some day he will have to utilise; that he ought to be prepared to keep pace in his life with the steady progress of science and technics; that…

What floods of useless sufferings deluge every so-called civilised land in the world!

When we look back on ages past, and see there the same sufferings, we may say that perhaps then they were unavoidable on account of the ignorance which prevailed.

But human genius, stimulated by our modern Renaissance, has already indicated new paths to follow.

For thousands of years in succession to grow one’s food was the burden, almost the curse, of mankind.

If you make yourselves the soil, and partly the temperature and the moisture which each crop requires, you will see that to grow the yearly food of a family, under rational conditions of culture, requires so little labour that it might…

You will admire the amount of sound knowledge which your children will acquire by your side, the rapid growth of their intelligence, and the facility with which they will grasp the laws of Nature, animate and inanimate.

Let those factories and workshops be erected, not for making profits by selling shoddy or useless and noxious things to enslaved Africans, but to satisfy the unsatisfied needs of millions of Europeans.

Very soon you will yourselves feel interested in that work, and you will have occasion to admire in your children their eager desire to become acquainted with Nature and its forces, their inquisitive inquiries as to the powers of…

Such is the future--already possible, already realisable; such is the present--already condemned and about to disappear.

For centuries science and so-called practical wisdom have said to man: “It is good to be rich, to be able to satisfy, at least, your material needs; but the only means to be rich is to so train your mind and capacities as to be able to…

Either you must stand in the ranks of the peasants and the artisans who, whatsoever economists and moralists may promise them in the future, are now periodically doomed to starve after each bad crop or during their strikes, and to be shot…

But modern knowledge has another issue to offer to thinking men.

Technics and science will not be lagging behind if production takes such a direction.

They will reduce the time which is necessary for producing wealth to any desired amount, so as to leave to everyone as much leisure as he or she may ask for.

They surely cannot guarantee happiness, because happiness depends as much, or even more, upon the individual himself as upon his surroundings.

But they guarantee, at least, the happiness that can be found in the full and varied exercise of the different capacities of the human being, in work that need not be overwork, and in the consciousness that one is not endeavouring to base…

However, it would be absolutely erroneous to conclude that Indian manufactures can compete with the British ones as long as they continue the terrible exploitation of human labour which we see now.

But times will come when Indian workers will restrain the cupidity of the capitalists, and the manufacturers of Bombay will be none the worse for that in their competition with the British manufactures.

First of all, the people of the Isles know but little of the tax-collector.

Those who buy land for cultivation can do so without becoming enslaved to the money-lender.

The Scilly Islands.--These islands also give a beautiful illustration of what may be obtained from the soil by an intensive cultivation.

When shipping and supplying pilots became a decaying source of income, the Scillonians took to the growing of potatoes.

In this way the Japanese obtain from twenty to thirty-two bushels of dressed rice to the acre in the poor provinces, forty bushels in the better ones, and from sixty to sixty-seven bushels on the best lands.

That the land in this country is not sufficiently utilised for market-gardening, and that the largest portion of the vegetables which are imported from abroad could be grown in this country, has been said over and over again within the…