Charming de la Doggo

Peter Kropotkin
The Conquest of Bread
Preface
One of the current objections to Communism and
Socialism altogether, is that the idea is so old, and yet it
could never be 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?”
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 mediæval cities
succeeded in maintaining in their midst for several
centuries in succession a certain socialized organization
of production and trade; that these centuries were
periods of a rapid intellectual, industrial, and artistic
progress; and that 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.
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 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.
These conditions, which began to appear by the end of
the eighteenth century, took, however, their full swing in
the nineteenth century only, after the Napoleonic wars
came to an end. And modern Communism had to take
them into account.
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, the
equalization of fortunes, by means of an income tax and
succession duties, both heavily progressive, as also by a
direct confiscation of the land in order to subdivide it,
and by heavy war taxes levied upon the rich only. The
second attempt was to introduce a wide national system
of rationally established prices of all commodities, 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 overhand. And the third
was a sort of Municipal Communism as regards the
consumption of some objects of first necessity, bought
by the municipalities, and sold by them at cost price.
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 Buonarotti, 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 Buonarotti and Babeuf, gave
their stamp to militant Communism for the next fifty
years.
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.
In fact, it was only after the Revolution of July, 1830, in
France, and the Reform movement of 1830–32, in
England, had shaken off that terrible reaction, that the
discussion of Socialism became possible for the next
sixteen to eighteen years. And it was during those years
that the aspirations of Fourier, Saint Simon, and Robert
Owen, worked out by their followers, took a definite
shape, and the different schools of Socialism which exist
nowadays were defined.
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 founded — the
forerunner of the Labour Parties of our days and the
International Workingmen’s Association.
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 Organization of Labour, which
became later on the programme of Lassalle, in Germany.
Vidal in France and Lorenz Stein in Germany further
developed, in two remarkable works, published in 1846
and 1847 respectively, the theoretical conceptions of
Considerant; and finally Vidal, and especially Pecqueur —
the latter in a very elaborate work, as also in a series of
Reports — developed in detail the system of Collectivism,
which he wanted the Assembly of 1848 to vote in the
shape of laws.
However, there is one feature, common to all Socialist
schemes, of the 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, in some
great ruler. 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 the means of 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 and carry Europe with him and
transfer the new Gospel into life?... That faith was rooted
very deep, and it stood for a long time in the way of
Socialism; its traces are ever seen amongst us, down to
the present day.
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 free association and
the organizing powers of the working men themselves.
But then came the Revolution of February, 1848, the
middle-class Republic, and — with it, broken 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 coup d’état 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 wiped out of
the memories and were taken, later on, by the present
generation, for new discoveries.
However, when a new revival came, about 1866, when
Communism and Collectivism once more came forward