Peter Kropotkin 1842 – 1921
Peter Kropotkin (1842 – 1921) was a Russian philosopher of the Modern era, associated with Political Philosophy.
Prince Pyotr Alexeyevich Kropotkin was a Russian geographer, naturalist, and anarchist philosopher and one of the founders of anarcho-communism. After early fieldwork in Siberia that shaped his evolutionary views, he renounced his title and committed himself to the revolutionary movement, spending decades in exile in Western Europe. His Mutual Aid argued, against the social Darwinists of his day, that cooperation rather than competition is the principal factor in evolution, while The Conquest of Bread outlined his vision of a stateless society organized on the principle of common provision.
Peter Alekseevich Kropotkin was born in 1842 in Moscow into one of the oldest princely Russian families, tracing descent from the medieval Rurikid dynasty. After the Corps des Pages in St Petersburg he chose, unusually, an assignment to Siberia, where as a young officer he led geographical expeditions through the Amur basin and northern Manchuria; the work transformed his understanding of physical geography and was honored by the Russian Geographical Society.
Drawn into the Chaikovsky Circle in St Petersburg, he was arrested in 1874 and after two years in the Peter and Paul Fortress made a dramatic escape into European exile, where he lived in Switzerland, France, and from 1886 in England. His writings include Words of a Rebel, The Conquest of Bread (1892), Fields, Factories and Workshops (1899), Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution (1902), the autobiographical Memoirs of a Revolutionist (1899), Modern Science and Anarchism, and the unfinished Ethics. He returned to Russia after the February Revolution of 1917.
Kropotkin gave anarchist communism its scientific and ethical framework. Mutual Aid argued that cooperation, no less than competition, is a Darwinian factor of evolution, and his vision of decentralized federations of free communes combining intellectual and manual labor exerted lasting influence on the cooperative, ecological, and direct-action traditions. Disillusioned with Bolshevism and ailing, he died at Dmitrov outside Moscow in February 1921.
Key facts
- Nationality
- Russian
- Era
- Modern
- Movements
- Political Philosophy
Selected quotes
-
“Mutual aid is a factor of evolution.”
A soon as we study animals — not in laboratories and museums only, but in the forest and prairie, in the steppe and in the mountains — we at once perceive that though there is an immense amount of warfare and extermination going on amidst various species, and especially amidst various classes of animals, there is, at the same time, as much, or perhaps even more, of mutual support, mutual aid , and -
Attributed to Peter Kropotkin:
“Cooperation, not competition, is the law of life.”
-
Attributed to Peter Kropotkin:
“Anarchy is the rejection of all rule, of all authority not consented to.”
-
Attributed to Peter Kropotkin:
“Bread for all is the foundation of every human society.”
-
Attributed to Peter Kropotkin:
“The state is the organized destruction of mutual aid.”
Peter Kropotkin by topic
Frequently asked about Peter Kropotkin
- When did Peter Kropotkin live?
- Peter Kropotkin was born in 1842 and died in 1921.
- Where was Peter Kropotkin from?
- Peter Kropotkin was a Russian philosopher of the Modern era.
- What philosophical movements is Peter Kropotkin associated with?
- Peter Kropotkin was associated with Political Philosophy.
- What was Peter Kropotkin known for?
- Prince Pyotr Alexeyevich Kropotkin was a Russian geographer, naturalist, and anarchist philosopher and one of the founders of anarcho-communism.
- How many quotes are attributed to Peter Kropotkin?
- There are 14 attributed quotations from Peter Kropotkin in the 1001Philosophers collection, organized by topic.
Quotes that are not actually from Peter Kropotkin
These lines are widely circulated as Peter Kropotkin, but they do not appear in Peter Kropotkin's works. Each entry below identifies the actual source.
-
“Unless Socialists are prepared openly and avowedly to profess that the satisfaction of the needs of each individual must be their very first aim; unless they have prepared public opinion to establish itself firmly at this standpoint, the people in their next attempt to free themselves will once more suffer a defeat.”
This quote is commonly attributed to philosophers but its actual source is uncertain or unverified in the standard reference works. Wikiquote's note on this attribution: This appeared in "The First Work of the Revolution" an article by an unidentified author in Freedom , Vol. 1, No. (11 August 1887), where another article had been written by Kropotkin.