<SPAN name="startofbook"></SPAN>
<h2>THE</h2>
<h1>Conquest of Bread</h1>
<p class="tbrk"> </p>
<h2><i>By</i> PETER KROPOTKIN</h2>
<hr />
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_vii" id="Page_vii"></SPAN></span></p>
<h2><SPAN name="PREFACE" id="PREFACE"></SPAN>PREFACE</h2>
<p>One of the current objections to Communism, and Socialism altogether, is
that the idea is so old, and yet it has never been realized. Schemes of
ideal States haunted the thinkers of Ancient Greece; later on, the early
Christians joined in communist groups; centuries later, large communist
brotherhoods came into existence during the Reform movement. Then, the
same ideals were revived during the great English and French
Revolutions; and finally, quite lately, in 1848, a revolution, inspired
to a great extent with Socialist ideals, took place in France. "And yet,
you see," we are told, "how far away is still the realization of your
schemes. Don't you think that there is some fundamental error in your
understanding of human nature and its needs?"</p>
<p>At first sight this objection seems very serious. However, the moment we
consider human history more attentively, it loses its strength. We see,
first, that hundreds of millions of men have succeeded in maintaining
amongst themselves, in their village communities, for many hundreds of
years, one of the main elements of Socialism—the common ownership of
the chief instrument of production, the land, and the apportionment of
the same according to the labour capacities of the different families;
and we learn that if the communal possession of the land has been
destroyed in Western Europe, it was not from within, but from without,
by the governments which created a land monopoly in favour of the
nobility and the middle classes. We learn, moreover, that the medieval
cities succeeded in maintaining in their midst, for several centuries in
succession, a certain socialized organization of production and trade;
that these centuries were<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_viii" id="Page_viii"></SPAN></span> periods of a rapid intellectual, industrial,
and artistic progress; while the decay of these communal institutions
came mainly from the incapacity of men of combining the village with the
city, the peasant with the citizen, so as jointly to oppose the growth
of the military states, which destroyed the free cities.</p>
<p>The history of mankind, thus understood, does not offer, then, an
argument against Communism. It appears, on the contrary, as a succession
of endeavours to realize some sort of communist organization, endeavours
which were crowned here and there with a partial success of a certain
duration; and all we are authorized to conclude is, that mankind has not
yet found the proper form for combining, on communistic principles,
agriculture with a suddenly developed industry and a rapidly growing
international trade. The latter appears especially as a disturbing
element, since it is no longer individuals only, or cities, that enrich
themselves by distant commerce and export; but whole nations grow rich
at the cost of those nations which lag behind in their industrial
development.</p>
<p>These conditions, which began to appear by the end of the eighteenth
century, took, however, their full development in the nineteenth century
only, after the Napoleonic wars came to an end. And modern Communism has
to take them into account.</p>
<p>It is now known that the French Revolution, apart from its political
significance, was an attempt made by the French people, in 1793 and
1794, in three different directions more or less akin to Socialism. It
was, first, <i>the equalization of fortunes</i>, by means of an income tax
and succession duties, both heavily progressive, as also by a direct
confiscation of the land in order to sub-divide it, and by heavy war
taxes levied upon the rich only. The second attempt was a sort of
<i>Municipal Communism</i> as regards the consumption of some objects of
first necessity, bought by the municipalities, and sold by them at cost
price. And the third attempt was to introduce a wide <i>national system of
rationally established prices of all<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_ix" id="Page_ix"></SPAN></span> commodities</i>, for which the real
cost of production and moderate trade profits had to be taken into
account. The Convention worked hard at this scheme, and had nearly
completed its work, when reaction took the upper hand.</p>
<p>It was during this remarkable movement, which has never yet been
properly studied, that modern Socialism was born—Fourierism with
L'Ange, at Lyons, and authoritarian Communism with Buonarroti, Babeuf,
and their comrades. And it was immediately after the Great Revolution
that the three great theoretical founders of modern Socialism—Fourier,
Saint Simon, and Robert Owen, as well as Godwin (the No-State
Socialism)—came forward; while the secret communist societies,
originated from those of Buonarroti and Babeuf, gave their stamp to
militant, authoritarian Communism for the next fifty years.</p>
<p>To be correct, then, we must say that modern Socialism is not yet a
hundred years old, and that, for the first half of these hundred years,
two nations only, which stood at the head of the industrial movement,
i.e., Britain and France, took part in its elaboration. Both—bleeding
at that time from the terrible wounds inflicted upon them by fifteen
years of Napoleonic wars, and both enveloped in the great European
reaction that had come from the East.</p>
<p>In fact, it was only after the Revolution of July, 1830, in France, and
the Reform movement of 1830-1832 in this country, had begun to shake off
that terrible reaction, that the discussion of Socialism became possible
for a few years before the revolution of 1848. And it was during those
years that the aspirations of Fourier, St. Simon, and Robert Owen,
worked out by their followers, took a definite shape, and the different
schools of Socialism which exist nowadays were defined.</p>
<p>In Britain, Robert Owen and his followers worked out their schemes of
communist villages, agricultural and industrial at the same time;
immense co-operative associations were started for creating with their
dividends more communist colonies; and the Great Consolidated Trades'
Union was<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_x" id="Page_x"></SPAN></span> founded—the forerunner of both the Labour Parties of our
days and the International Working-men's Association.</p>
<p>In France, the Fourierist Considérant issued his remarkable manifesto,
which contains, beautifully developed, all the theoretical
considerations upon the growth of Capitalism, which are now described as
"Scientific Socialism." Proudhon worked out his idea of Anarchism and
Mutualism, without State interference. Louis Blanc published his
<i>Organization of Labour</i>, which became later on the programme of
Lassalle. Vidal in France and Lorenz Stein in Germany further developed,
in two remarkable works, published in 1846 and 1847 respectively, the
theoretical conceptions of Considérant; and finally Vidal, and
especially Pecqueur, developed in detail the system of Collectivism,
which the former wanted the National Assembly of 1848 to vote in the
shape of laws.</p>
<p>However, there is one feature, common to all Socialist schemes of that
period, which must be noted. The three great founders of Socialism who
wrote at the dawn of the nineteenth century were so entranced by the
wide horizons which it opened before them, that they looked upon it as a
new revelation, and upon themselves as upon the founders of a new
religion. Socialism had to be a religion, and they had to regulate its
march, as the heads of a new church. Besides, writing during the period
of reaction which had followed the French Revolution, and seeing more
its failures than its successes, they did not trust the masses, and they
did not appeal to them for bringing about the changes which they thought
necessary. They put their faith, on the contrary, into some great ruler,
some Socialist Napoleon. He would understand the new revelation; he
would be convinced of its desirability by the successful experiments of
their phalansteries, or associations; and he would peacefully accomplish
by his own authority the revolution which would bring well-being and
happiness to mankind. A military genius, Napoleon, had just been ruling
Europe. Why should not a social genius come forward, carry Europe with
him and translate the new Gospel into life? That faith was rooted very
deep, and it<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_xi" id="Page_xi"></SPAN></span> stood for a long time in the way of Socialism; its traces
are even seen amongst us, down to the present day.</p>
<p>It was only during the years 1840-48, when the approach of the
Revolution was felt everywhere, and the proletarians were beginning to
plant the banner of Socialism on the barricades, that faith in the
people began to enter once more the hearts of the social schemers:
faith, on the one side, in Republican Democracy, and on the other side
in <i>free</i> association, in the organizing powers of the working-men
themselves.</p>
<p>But then came the Revolution of February, 1848, the middle-class
Republic, and—with it, shattered hopes. Four months only after the
proclamation of the Republic, the June insurrection of the Paris
proletarians broke out, and it was crushed in blood. The wholesale
shooting of the working-men, the mass deportations to New Guinea, and
finally the Napoleonian <i>coup d'êtat</i> followed. The Socialists were
prosecuted with fury, and the weeding out was so terrible and so
thorough that for the next twelve or fifteen years the very traces of
Socialism disappeared; its literature vanished so completely that even
names, once so familiar before 1848, were entirely forgotten; ideas
which were then current—the stock ideas of the Socialists before
1848—were so wiped out as to be taken, later on, by our generation, for
new discoveries.</p>
<p>However, when a new revival began, about 1866, when Communism and
Collectivism once more came forward, it appeared that the conception as
to the means of their realization had undergone a deep change. The old
faith in Political Democracy was dying out, and the first principles
upon which the Paris working-men agreed with the British trade-unionists
and Owenites, when they met in 1862 and 1864, at London, was that "the
emancipation of the working-men must be accomplished by the working-men
themselves." Upon another point they also were agreed. It was that the
labour unions themselves would have to get hold of the instruments of
production, and organize production themselves. The French idea of the
Fourierist and Mutualist "Association" thus<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_xii" id="Page_xii"></SPAN></span> joined hands with Robert
Owen's idea of "The Great Consolidated Trades' Union," which was
extended now, so as to become an International Working-men's
Association.</p>
<p>Again this new revival of Socialism lasted but a few years. Soon came
the war of 1870-71, the uprising of the Paris Commune—and again the
free development of Socialism was rendered impossible in France. But
while Germany accepted now from the hands of its German teachers, Marx
and Engels, the Socialism of the French "forty-eighters" that is, the
Socialism of Considérant and Louis Blanc, and the Collectivism of
Pecqueur,—France made a further step forward.</p>
<p>In March, 1871, Paris had proclaimed that henceforward it would not wait
for the retardatory portions of France: that it intended to start within
its Commune its own social development.</p>
<p>The movement was too short-lived to give any positive result. It
remained communalist only; it merely asserted the rights of the Commune
to its full autonomy. But the working-classes of the old International
saw at once its historical significance. They understood that the free
commune would be henceforth the medium in which the ideas of modern
Socialism may come to realization. The free agro-industrial communes, of
which so much was spoken in England and France before 1848, need not be
small phalansteries, or small communities of 2000 persons. They must be
vast agglomerations, like Paris, or, still better, small territories.
These communes would federate to constitute nations in some cases, even
irrespectively of the present national frontiers (like the Cinque Ports,
or the Hansa). At the same time large labour associations would come
into existence for the inter-communal service of the railways, the
docks, and so on.</p>
<p>Such were the ideas which began vaguely to circulate after 1871 amongst
the thinking working-men, especially in the Latin countries. In some
such organization, the details of which life itself would settle, the
labour circles saw the medium through which Socialist forms of life
could find a much easier realization than through the seizure of all
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_xiii" id="Page_xiii"></SPAN></span>industrial property by the State, and the State organization of
agriculture and industry.</p>
<p>These are the ideas to which I have endeavoured to give a more or less
definite expression in this book.</p>
<p>Looking back now at the years that have passed since this book was
written, I can say in full conscience that its leading ideas must have
been correct. State Socialism has certainly made considerable progress.
State railways, State banking, and State trade in spirits have been
introduced here and there. But every step made in this direction, even
though it resulted in the cheapening of a given commodity, was found to
be a new obstacle in the struggle of the working-men for their
emancipation. So that we find growing amongst the working-men,
especially in Western Europe, the idea that even the working of such a
vast national property as a railway-net could be much better handled by
a Federated Union of railway employés, than by a State organization.</p>
<p>On the other side, we see that countless attempts have been made all
over Europe and America, the leading idea of which is, on the one side,
to get into the hands of the working-men themselves wide branches of
production, and, on the other side, to always widen in the cities the
circles of the functions which the city performs in the interest of its
inhabitants. Trade-unionism, with a growing tendency towards organizing
the different trades internationally, and of being not only an
instrument for the improvement of the conditions of labour, but also of
becoming an organization which might, at a given moment, take into its
hands the management of production; Co-operation, both for production
and for distribution, both in industry and agriculture, and attempts at
combining both sorts of co-operation in experimental colonies; and
finally, the immensely varied field of the so-called Municipal
Socialism—these are the three directions in which the greatest amount
of creative power has been developed lately.</p>
<p>Of course, none of these may, in any degree, be taken as a substitute
for Communism, or even for Socialism, both of<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_xiv" id="Page_xiv"></SPAN></span> which imply the common
possession of the instruments of production. But we certainly must look
at all these attempts as upon <i>experiments</i>—like those which Owen,
Fourier, and Saint Simon tried in their colonies—experiments which
prepare human thought to conceive some of the practical forms in which a
communist society might find its expression. The synthesis of all these
partial experiments will have to be made some day by the constructive
genius of some one of the civilized nations. But samples of the bricks
out of which the great synthetic building will have to be built, and
even samples of some of its rooms, are being prepared by the immense
effort of the constructive genius of man.</p>
<p> <span class="smcap">Brighton.</span><br/><br/> <i>January, 1913.</i></p>
<hr />
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_1" id="Page_1"></SPAN></span></p>
<h1>THE CONQUEST OF BREAD</h1>
<h2><SPAN name="CHAPTER_I" id="CHAPTER_I"></SPAN>CHAPTER I</h2>
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