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Kompass

Thinkers and political figures

Photographic portrait of Peter Kropotkin with a long white beard.

Portrait: Photograph, c. 1900, via Wikimedia Commons (opens in a new tab) · Public domain

Peter Kropotkin

Country
Russia
Era
1842–1921
Tradition
Anarchist communism

Russian prince turned geographer and anarchist, who argued from biology that cooperation is at least as important as competition in evolution, and built a case for a society organised around voluntary mutual aid.

01

Documented positions

Documented positions come from the sources listed. Similarity is this project’s inference from those positions, and is a much weaker claim.

  • Argued that mutual aid is a major factor in evolution, against the reading of Darwin as licensing pure competition
  • Advocated abolition of both the state and private property, with distribution according to need
  • Held that voluntary federations of communes could organise production without central direction
  • Argued that integrating industry with agriculture and manual with intellectual work would make small-scale self-sufficiency viable
  • Opposed wage labour even in a socialist form, rejecting payment by labour vouchers
  • Condemned the Bolshevik seizure of power as the creation of a new bureaucratic tyranny
02

Where it sits on each dimension

Wealth and inequality

4

Evidence: Well documented

The state in the economy

26

Evidence: Documented

Personal liberty

92

Evidence: Well documented

Tradition and change

86

Evidence: Well documented

Nation and the world

18

Evidence: Documented

Religion and the state

8

Evidence: Documented

Power and its limits

72

Evidence: Documented

Crime and punishment

90

Evidence: Documented

Dimensions left unscored, for want of evidence: Environment and growth

Sources

  • Peter Kropotkin, Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution · 1902
  • Peter Kropotkin, The Conquest of Bread · 1892

Last verified: