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Kropotkin
1892
The anarchist answer to "but how would it actually work?"
The Conquest of Bread
Peter Kropotkin · 1892
Most 19th-century socialist writing critiques capitalism; The Conquest of Bread tries to build the alternative in concrete detail. Kropotkin walks through expropriation, food, housing, clothing, and work itself, arguing that abundance is achievable and that a free society can organize production through voluntary agreement rather than state planning or wage labor. It is Kropotkin's most optimistic and most practical book — read it alongside his Mutual Aid, which supplies the argument about human cooperation this book takes as its starting premise, and against the collectivist and Marxist alternatives it explicitly argues against.
18 chapters · 72,275 words · ~5.5 hr read
Contents
Preface
Kropotkin answers the standard objection to communism head-on: that the idea is old and has never been realized.
The Case for Communism
The abundance industrial society has already produced, why partial reform isn't enough, and the case for full expropriation.
Meeting Everyone's Needs
Bread, shelter, clothing, and the means to provide them — and why even comforts and luxuries belong to everyone, not a few.
Organizing Work
How work itself could be made agreeable, organized by free agreement rather than wages or central planning — and Kropotkin's case against the rival collectivist wage system.
Industry and Agriculture
Decentralizing production and Kropotkin's closing argument, with figures, that intensive small-scale agriculture can feed a free society.