ER V

PETER KROPOTKIN AND HIS SCHOOL

Biography -- Kropotkin's Main Views -- Anarchist Communism
and the "Economics of the Heap" (_tas_) -- Kropotkin's
Relation to the Propaganda of Action -- Elisee Reclus: his
Character and Anarchist Writings -- Jean Grave -- Daniel
Saurin's _Order through Anarchy_ -- Louise Michel and G.
Elievant -- A. Hamon and the Psychology of Anarchism --
Charles Malato and other French Writers on Anarchist
Communism -- The Italians: Cafiero, Merlino, and Malatesta.

"Seek not to found your comfort and freedom on the servitude
of another; so long as you rule others, you will never be
free yourself. Increase your power of production by studying
nature; your powers will grow a thousandfold, if you put them
at the service of Humanity. Free the individual: for without
the freedom of the individual, it is impossible for society
to become free. If you wish to emancipate yourselves, set not
your hope on any help from this life or the next: help
yourselves! Next you must free yourselves from all your
religious and political prejudices. Be free men and trust the
nature of a free man: all his faults proceed from the power
which he exercises over his own kind or under which he
groans."--P. KROPOTKIN.

One more Russian, a _declasse_, as Bakunin was, has exercised
considerable influence on the development of modern Anarchism; and, in
fact, although he has introduced but few new doctrines into it, has
made, in the truest sense, a school of his own. Kropotkin, is regarded
everywhere as the father of "Anarchist Communism," which is, to some
extent, directly opposed both to the collectivist and evolutionist
Anarchism of Proudhon and to the other philosophic and individual
Anarchism of Stirner. In future we must carefully discriminate between
these two directions of individual and communal Anarchism; moreover
they are sharply distinguished not only in their intellectual but also
their actual form. The former tendency seems more adapted to the
Teutonic races in Germany, England, and America, whilst the Anarchists
of the Romance nations, but especially the French, are devoted to the
latter--the communist doctrine of Kropotkin.

Peter Alexandriewitsch Kropotkin is a descendant of the royal house of
the Ruriks, and it used to be said in jest in the revolutionary
circles of St. Petersburg that he had more rig