Today I finished listening to this audiobook edition of one of the
most important works by Kropotkin. It's quite dull, filled with
endless raws of numbers and data about potatoes, wool, and other
goods production in different regions of Europe. That would have been
enlightening if it had not been so disastrously outdated, depicting
the second half of the nineteenth century.
General ideas that I recovered from a book are the following. First,
agriculture in its state of development at even a hundred and fifty
years ago was able to produce enough healthy and various food with no
exhausting labour. Besides, the possibility to cooperate with other
farmers, e.g. buying one tractor per village, can be essential.
Importantly, the tractor has a particular owner who ploughs _all_ the
fields needed, not only belonging to her. The tractorist does it free
of charge, for the commonwealth of the whole settlement. In reverse,
other farmers can then perform some other chores on tractorist's
land. This idea, observed by Kropotkin's correspondents in the US, is
similar to what now is called a gift economy. Quid pro quo.
The second idea is a prevalence of so-called 'petty trades', or small
industries, or what Kropotkins also calls workshops, in contrast to
large factories. He proved that by evaluating the average number of
workers per factory, based on multiple governmental reports' data.
These numbers were usually small, from which the author concludes
that there operated much more businesses stuffed by only several
workers than huge plants employing thousands. For enterprises like
shipbuilding, amassing workers is unavoidable, but for making
clothes, it is not strictly necessary. Kropotkin provides plentiful
examples of rural communities in which inhabitants not only grew food
for themselves but also were involved in the production of, for
example, woven baskets. Here he also underscores the importance of
cooperation. That to say, every basket weaver is independent and
works for herself, using a cooperative store only as a convenient
marketing device. That idea of a decentralised factory of independent
artisans, I find particularly appealing.
The third idea is that of combining not only agriculture and
production but also manual and intellectual labour. Kropotkin's ideal
is thus not a megapolis dependent on food supplied by highly
automated farms with minimal professional stuff. He offered not
moving from the country to cities but moving production to villages,
since contemporary agriculture became labour inexpensive, leaving
much leisure time spendable in the craftsmanship of all trades.
Unfortunately, that was the opposite of what happened in reality
during the twentieth century. Kropotkin also wrote on the importance
of so-called complete education for that matter. For example,
children should be taught physics not by staring on drawings which
they can't even reproduce themselves and writing equations which they
can only memorise. One should guide pupils through the creation of
simple mechanisms demonstrating applications of physical laws in
point. Moreover, the product of younger students should be used as
input for older ones, improving it. Finally, what students create
should be put on a sale in a school's shop. If only schools were at
least not slave-mints producing conform, similarly minded consumers
for the greater good of capital.
