Five-minute digest
The Conquest of Bread
Summary
The Conquest of Bread is Peter Kropotkin's most famous statement of anarchist communism, first published in French as La Conquête du pain in 1892, with a preface by the geographer Élisée Reclus, and in English in 1906. This text reproduces the 1926 Vanguard Press printing of the English version, with a short biographical note on the author. Kropotkin, a Russian prince who gave up his rank to join the revolutionary movement, begins by describing the immense riches that humanity has built up over centuries: fields cleared, cities raised, machines invented and knowledge accumulated by the labour of countless generations. Because this wealth is the collective work of all, he argues, it cannot justly belong to a few, and he concludes that all belongs to all. He insists that well-being for all is not a dream but is possible with existing means of production, if they are organised for the needs of everyone rather than for profit. He then describes how, after a revolution, the people of a great city such as Paris might take over houses, food stores and workshops, a process he calls expropriation, and share them according to need, beginning with food, shelter and clothing. He rejects state socialism and the collectivist proposal to pay workers in labour notes according to hours worked, arguing that it would preserve the wage system and its injustices. Instead he proposes free agreement among voluntary associations, giving many examples of cooperation without government, such as the international lifeboat associations and the European railway agreements. He argues that people need leisure, art and luxury as well as bread, that work can be made agreeable, and that intensive agriculture and decentralised industry could make every region nearly self-sufficient. He answers objections that people would not work without compulsion. The book was influential in labour and anarchist movements; students should read it critically, comparing its hopes with the history of twentieth-century revolutions.
Top Lessons
Common inheritance
Kropotkin argues that wealth is produced collectively over generations.
Mutual cooperation
He points to voluntary associations as models for society.
Reading critically
His hopes can be weighed against the history of later revolutions.
Verified Quotes
“Individual appropriation is neither just nor serviceable. All belongs to all.”
“Well-being for all is not a dream. It is possible, realizable, owing to all that our ancestors have done to increase our powers of production.”