Anarchist & Radical Book Club discussion
This topic is about
The Conquest of Bread
Book Club 2011 & 2012
>
[Feb/Mar] The Conquest of Bread - Kropotkin
date
newest »
newest »
I'm on chapter 11 currently and at this point I can say I'm not buying what Kropotkin is selling. I get if you were a serf back in the day this might be an appealing picture given your situation, but to me it sounds worse than a suburban hell.
Yikes, did Kropotkin kill our reading group? Overall, I thought the Conquest of Bread was interesting. And I thought Kropotkin did a good job at attempting to argue for Anarchist-Communism . . .
The two questions that the Conquest of Bread left me with were: 1) What is Kropotkin's definition of "the human"? or rather, who can be considered responsible enough for anarchy to Kropotkin? and 2) What is Kropotkin's definition of anarchy and from what philosophical trajectory does it come from?
While reading The Conquest of Bread I was also reading Maia Ramnath's Decolonizing Anarchism and these articles: http://www.affinitiesjournal.org/inde... So I was reading Kropotkin's (seemingly) Euro-centric discussion of an anarchist society while also reading pieces that discuss the histories and intersections of non-western societies and anarchism. I've read several times that non-western societies greatly influenced anarchist and liberal theory, though this trajectory is just now being recognized. This definitely wasn't recognized in Kropotkin's time.
Which brings me to my first question: who is anarchism for in Kropotkin's work? I ask this because he derides "savages" at least three times throughout the book. He does this in a way that creates a hierarchy between who is "civilized" and who isn't (see: "We are not New Guinea savages" pg.71 Project Gutenberg edition). Are savages not "civilized" enough to successfully create an anarchist society? Are "savages" not actually human, or worthy of equality?
I understand that Kropotkin's ideas come from a specific time and place, and I'm not necessarily docking him points for that. Rather, I'm trying to figure out the biased undercurrents within his ideas. As Uday Mehta successfully argues in Liberalism and Empire - liberal theory was not to be applied to non-whites, and this is how liberal theory was used to conquer and colonize (without seeming contradictory).
I just joined this group the other day, but I read Conquest of Bread two years ago so that worked out. I especially liked his exposition and commentary on alternative revolutionary ideologies and potential problems and shortcomings. I wont say much more because its been so long since I've read it.As to Demelza, I don't know any specific points in his ideology where he espouses a racist attitude other then the ones you've pointed out but he was definitely prone to nationalist frames of mind despite his claims to internationalism. He actually supported WWI because he felt that France was the birth place of the revolution needed to be protected from the Germans. He also used fairly derogatory language against "the huns." This ostracized him from a good deal of the anarchist community who were outspoken in opposition of all wars. There are letters written to him from Goldman and Malatesta trying to convince him that he was betraying his own expressed principles. There is a decent biography about him called "Kropotkin" by Brian Morris. I can't remember if he speaks to Kropotkin's views on non-Europeans, but it is a very interesting book and does talk about the WWI controversy.
I finally finished this! I gotta say I was surprised to love it, because I haven't been enjoying a lot of the authors we've been choosing for this book club. Now, some of you contend that the book's focus on agriculture is irrelevant ("worse than a suburban hell"), but for me that was what made this so appealing. Kropotkin's basic thesis (begin with "what are the needs of all, and what are the means of satisfying them") blends perfectly with ecological design and permaculture theory; his book felt oddly familiar to me. This book is an intervention in capitalism and centralized, authoritarian communism, yes, but it is also an intervention into the paradigm of industrial civilization, overproduction, and environmental waste and wanton destruction. These logistics of feeding ourselves are fundamental aspects of structural societal change, and I think it's powerful that Kropotkin's take on anarcho-communism was based in agro-ecology and food sovereignty, what I consider among the most important issues and international movements today. I also loved Kropotkin deep respect for humanity's abilities to self-organize.
Demelza, I appreciate your critiques on his Euro-centrism and white colonial attitudes. I definitely found him fetishizing Parisians (maybe the way some US anarchists fetishize Athens today??), but I also thought I found a few places where he refuted colonial claims, saying that indigenous people in colonies have just as much ability to do their own science and manufacturing as in the metropole. He seemed to me to be coming out against white supremacy without moving to the next step of questioning race-based difference and cultivating solidarity. I'd like to know how he felt about colonial liberation movements.
(in response to Demelza's comment)I didn't catch any hint of racism/nationalism in this book. The part where he refers to 'savages' is when he says that 'man is no longer content to live in the condition of the savage', and so we must assume that the minimum conditions neccesary to a livable life include the houses we live in now- i.e. we are no longer a hunter-gatherer society, and it's unrealistic to propose that we all go live in the woods. In fact, unlike almost all of his contempararies, or Bertrand Russell, he doesn't think 'natives' are less intelligent or capable
"Colonies competing with the mother-land in its production of manufactured goods, such is the factor which will regulate economy in the twentieth century.
And why should India not manufacture? What should be the hindrance? Capital?--But capital goes wherever
there are men,poor enough to be exploited. Knowledge? But knowledge recognizes no national barriers. Technical skill of the worker?--No. Are, then, Hindoo workmen inferior to the hundreds of thousands of boys and girls, not eighteen years old, at present working in the English textile factories?"
One of many pretty spot-on assertions, I think.
Also, the type of society found in most tribal cultures is pretty much the mirror image of his brand of anarchism, and he knew it, so it's riduclous to infer he thinks tribal societies incapable of Anarchism- they're already there.
"Colonies competing with the mother-land in its production of manufactured goods, such is the factor which will regulate economy in the twentieth century.
And why should India not manufacture? What should be the hindrance? Capital?--But capital goes wherever
there are men,poor enough to be exploited. Knowledge? But knowledge recognizes no national barriers. Technical skill of the worker?--No. Are, then, Hindoo workmen inferior to the hundreds of thousands of boys and girls, not eighteen years old, at present working in the English textile factories?"
One of many pretty spot-on assertions, I think.
Also, the type of society found in most tribal cultures is pretty much the mirror image of his brand of anarchism, and he knew it, so it's riduclous to infer he thinks tribal societies incapable of Anarchism- they're already there.
I'm still going to stand next to my original assertion that Kropotkin has a subtle bias against non-Europeans. This is mostly what I was attempting to tease out. On the section we've been discussing where he uses the New Guinea "savages" as an example he says: "We are not savages who can live in the woods, without shelter other than the branches" (pg.70). First, the use of the word savages is pretty bad (in itself). He goes on to say: "The civilized man needs a room, etc." To push my point even further, he's created a difference between people who are civilized and people who are un-civilized, or "savages."Additionally, he's making an assumption that the folks of New Guinea don't create their own shelter or structures. He apparently just thinks they live underneath trees. To push this even further, does he not think they're smart enough to create structures of their own? Isn't one of the basic needs of all humans shelter? So, are people from New Guinea not human if he doesn't think they need shelter? (I know, this is a tangent).
I'm unsure, Jonathan, where you get the impression that his brand of anarchism is a mirror image of tribal societies - and that he knew it was. He doesn't refer to any specific tribes by name, nor does he use them as an example (at least not that I saw in The Conquest of Bread). Rather, he focuses on Euro examples (the railroad system, the Red Cross, etc.) to prove his point. Was he reading up on early American anthropology, but just didn't include it in his writing?
Anyways, again, my argument is that he has a subtle bias against non-Europeans that is belied through his writing. . . a bias that he possibly wasn't very aware of himself.
I agree with Demelza. Eurocentric and white supremacist biases may be products of an author's socialization and his ignorance of other societies and peoples, but that doesn't make them less harmful to the reader-- it's important for readers to search for and understand these biases so we can better understand the book itself. It helps to figure out what of Kropotkin to learn from and what to critique and what to ignore.
Demelza wrote:
I'm unsure, Jonathan, where you get the impression that his brand of anarchism is a mirror image of tribal societies - and that he knew it was"
Well, the whole thing is based upon the collective ownership of all property, agricultural self-sufficency and so on. It seems blindingly obvious that the basic structure of his society is based on older communities and extant tribal systems- he says as much in the first pages of the book. It was you who pointed out the influence of tribal systems on anarchist thought, so I didn't imagine you would dispute that. As to him knowing it was, I was admittedly vague in that point. This book was written after his essays on Mutal Aid as a basis for both biological and cultural development (although I think before he collected them in book form). Your statement that the influence of tribal systems on anarchist thought was unrecognised (presumably acquired through osmosis or from some Jungian collective memory) is completely incorrect: if, ironically, only because of Kropotkin himself. A section of the book deals with specific tribes, explaining how their communal systems work in practice, systems which Kroppy calls 'primitive communism'.
I don't know how much you know about his career as a scientist- i only recently read his memoirs, and wasn't aware of just how important his non-political work was (he was probaly the first person to propose that Europe was under ice in the ice age, and literally redrew the previously wildly inaccurate maps of eastern Europe, for instance), but yes he definitely was reading, and arguing with, early American anthropologists.
As to his being 'Euro-centric', i just don't buy it.
you say "(see: "We are not New Guinea savages" pg.71 Project Gutenberg edition). Are savages not "civilized" enough to successfully create an anarchist society? Are "savages" not actually human, or worthy of equality? ". Here, he brings up a possible objection- that anarchism may be easy for 'savages', but not for us. he then refutes the materialistic logic of this in depth. I'll explain why i think you're wrong about your analysis if you can explain how you possibly drew the conclusion that, by bringing up the view that anarchistic communes are impossible for non-tribal societies, he's actually saying they're impossible for tribal societies. One, or perhaps both, of us seem confused in this regard-you'll need to explain it to me before i can argue the point.(in other words i think we've come to opposite conclusions about what he's saying. I'll probably read this chapter again in any case though, because obviously I could have misinterpreted him here- conventions of authorial style around this period tend towards ambiguity: for instance Neitszche's statements seem to acquire the meaning the reader's predisposed to project onto them)
You ask why he's only addressing Europeans, and say that this shows a colonial mindset. I think this is back-to-front for a number of reasons.
1- the book is about post-capitalist societies, mainly as an alternative to Marxist solutions.
2 He specifically looks at industrial societies where socialist revolutions have failed.
3. He's writing at the height of the age of empire, when the large colonial societies governed over 90 percent of the world, by Corporate or State power, and his aim is the dissolution of these powers. Therefore it's inherently anti-colonial.
4 His system of self-sufficeny is a refutation of the need for empire, which was justifed on the grounds that the colonising countries needed raw materials- foods, cloths etc.
For these reasons, i can't see how he's Eurocentric, unless admitting that Europe held the rest of the planet in brutal subjugation is somehow racist.
In other parts of the book, he argues against the beliefs propogated by Marx that Capitalism advanced society, and was a neccessary step (similar to the idea that slavery was neccesary for a short time to ingrain the work ethic), when he discusses how capitalism needs to destroy natural abundance- of human productivity, natural resources etc, in order to create surplus and demand, and the crucial role of the division of labour in creating demand. I think this is incredibly far ahead of his time, and has only really become a mainstream concept in the past few years, partly through Naomi Klein's 'disaster capitalism' works, although it's still not understood as a fundamental part of capitalism in the way Kropotkin describes, just as a 'neo-liberal' offshoot. However it is understood in the third world.
As to the language, i think that's pretty tenous. You'll be pleased to learn that he does actually put "savages" in quotation marks in Mutual Aid. Savage was simply the word for tribal societies. He actually belived these societies were far less 'savage' in moral terms than those of modern Europe. And he was pretty much alone in refuting the claim that non-European cultures had 'regressed' in evolutionary terms, and needed benign rulers to stop them regressing further.
Now, i'm not saying that he didn't have some illusions about other cultures-clearly this is practically inevitable, and i don't think we are at the end of history in this regard today either- I think all humanity are inculcated with generalising prejudices almost by definition. For instance, while protesting against the 'regression theory' prevalent among Darwinians, he didn't appreciate the extent to which non-European cultures had changed over the centuries, and perhaps saw extant hunter-gatherer ways of life as reflective of how earlier European hunter gatherer societies functioned (although to be fair to him, this wasn't really challenged properly until the 80's as far as I'm aware) And of course we should always consider how the paradigms of a distant age colour the perceptions even of people who are attempting to shift them. However, he was far ahead of his time in ridding himself of such conceptions and was far from ignorant about tribal customs and I don't see how any racist bias is evident in his practical suggestions- quite the contrary: were his suggestions to be followed up their benficial effects on Europe/North America would have been much less than on the rest of the planet.
I'm unsure, Jonathan, where you get the impression that his brand of anarchism is a mirror image of tribal societies - and that he knew it was"
Well, the whole thing is based upon the collective ownership of all property, agricultural self-sufficency and so on. It seems blindingly obvious that the basic structure of his society is based on older communities and extant tribal systems- he says as much in the first pages of the book. It was you who pointed out the influence of tribal systems on anarchist thought, so I didn't imagine you would dispute that. As to him knowing it was, I was admittedly vague in that point. This book was written after his essays on Mutal Aid as a basis for both biological and cultural development (although I think before he collected them in book form). Your statement that the influence of tribal systems on anarchist thought was unrecognised (presumably acquired through osmosis or from some Jungian collective memory) is completely incorrect: if, ironically, only because of Kropotkin himself. A section of the book deals with specific tribes, explaining how their communal systems work in practice, systems which Kroppy calls 'primitive communism'.
I don't know how much you know about his career as a scientist- i only recently read his memoirs, and wasn't aware of just how important his non-political work was (he was probaly the first person to propose that Europe was under ice in the ice age, and literally redrew the previously wildly inaccurate maps of eastern Europe, for instance), but yes he definitely was reading, and arguing with, early American anthropologists.
As to his being 'Euro-centric', i just don't buy it.
you say "(see: "We are not New Guinea savages" pg.71 Project Gutenberg edition). Are savages not "civilized" enough to successfully create an anarchist society? Are "savages" not actually human, or worthy of equality? ". Here, he brings up a possible objection- that anarchism may be easy for 'savages', but not for us. he then refutes the materialistic logic of this in depth. I'll explain why i think you're wrong about your analysis if you can explain how you possibly drew the conclusion that, by bringing up the view that anarchistic communes are impossible for non-tribal societies, he's actually saying they're impossible for tribal societies. One, or perhaps both, of us seem confused in this regard-you'll need to explain it to me before i can argue the point.(in other words i think we've come to opposite conclusions about what he's saying. I'll probably read this chapter again in any case though, because obviously I could have misinterpreted him here- conventions of authorial style around this period tend towards ambiguity: for instance Neitszche's statements seem to acquire the meaning the reader's predisposed to project onto them)
You ask why he's only addressing Europeans, and say that this shows a colonial mindset. I think this is back-to-front for a number of reasons.
1- the book is about post-capitalist societies, mainly as an alternative to Marxist solutions.
2 He specifically looks at industrial societies where socialist revolutions have failed.
3. He's writing at the height of the age of empire, when the large colonial societies governed over 90 percent of the world, by Corporate or State power, and his aim is the dissolution of these powers. Therefore it's inherently anti-colonial.
4 His system of self-sufficeny is a refutation of the need for empire, which was justifed on the grounds that the colonising countries needed raw materials- foods, cloths etc.
For these reasons, i can't see how he's Eurocentric, unless admitting that Europe held the rest of the planet in brutal subjugation is somehow racist.
In other parts of the book, he argues against the beliefs propogated by Marx that Capitalism advanced society, and was a neccessary step (similar to the idea that slavery was neccesary for a short time to ingrain the work ethic), when he discusses how capitalism needs to destroy natural abundance- of human productivity, natural resources etc, in order to create surplus and demand, and the crucial role of the division of labour in creating demand. I think this is incredibly far ahead of his time, and has only really become a mainstream concept in the past few years, partly through Naomi Klein's 'disaster capitalism' works, although it's still not understood as a fundamental part of capitalism in the way Kropotkin describes, just as a 'neo-liberal' offshoot. However it is understood in the third world.
As to the language, i think that's pretty tenous. You'll be pleased to learn that he does actually put "savages" in quotation marks in Mutual Aid. Savage was simply the word for tribal societies. He actually belived these societies were far less 'savage' in moral terms than those of modern Europe. And he was pretty much alone in refuting the claim that non-European cultures had 'regressed' in evolutionary terms, and needed benign rulers to stop them regressing further.
Now, i'm not saying that he didn't have some illusions about other cultures-clearly this is practically inevitable, and i don't think we are at the end of history in this regard today either- I think all humanity are inculcated with generalising prejudices almost by definition. For instance, while protesting against the 'regression theory' prevalent among Darwinians, he didn't appreciate the extent to which non-European cultures had changed over the centuries, and perhaps saw extant hunter-gatherer ways of life as reflective of how earlier European hunter gatherer societies functioned (although to be fair to him, this wasn't really challenged properly until the 80's as far as I'm aware) And of course we should always consider how the paradigms of a distant age colour the perceptions even of people who are attempting to shift them. However, he was far ahead of his time in ridding himself of such conceptions and was far from ignorant about tribal customs and I don't see how any racist bias is evident in his practical suggestions- quite the contrary: were his suggestions to be followed up their benficial effects on Europe/North America would have been much less than on the rest of the planet.
I found a few versions free online:
- text on a website
- Project Gutenberg (text & e-readers)
- audio
Use this space to share questions about and reactions to the text, as well as any other context, links, background, history, or thoughts that seem relevant and will help us understand (or critique!) what we're reading better. This one probably has tons of resources and study guides on it, so it'd be great to access some of those, too.