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Updated: June 26, 2025
In the same sense in which Marx may be regarded as the founder of modern Socialism, Bakunin may be regarded as the founder of Anarchist Communism. But Bakunin did not produce, like Marx, a finished and systematic body of doctrine. The nearest approach to this will be found in the writings of his follower, Kropotkin.
Is it not that the teachings of Marx and of all his disciples dwell upon the folly of violence, the futility of riots, the madness of assassination, while, on the other hand, the teachings of Bakounin, of Nechayeff, of Kropotkin, and of Most advocate destructive violence as a creative force? "Extirpate the wretches!" cries Most. "Make robbers our allies!" says Nechayeff.
On this round earth that revolves so rapidly in space, a grain of sand amid infinity, is it worth while for us to hate one another?" Reclus has no special doctrine, but shares generally the views of his friend Kropotkin, although his greater scientific insight on many points leads him to incline rather to the Collectivism of Proudhon and Bakunin.
Several years later, as one of the detective staff of District Attorney Jerome, he committed perjury, was convicted, and sent to Sing Sing for a year. He is now probably employed by some private detective agency, a desirable pillar of respectable society. In 1901 Peter Kropotkin was invited by the Lowell Institute of Massachusetts to deliver a series of lectures on Russian literature.
"It is the good, practical sense of an American which says that," comments Kropotkin. This act of the Supreme Court and this statement of the Labor Standard were very welcome news to the anarchists. They were convinced that the Americans had abandoned political action and were turning to what they had already begun to call "direct action." Another event, a month later, added to this conviction.
The objection which some feel to Socialism and Anarchism alike on this ground cannot be upheld in view of the possible productivity of labor. The system at which Kropotkin aims, whether or not it be possible, is certainly one which demands a very great improvement in the methods of production above what is common at present.
The student had no need to study Wallace, or re-read Tolstoy or Tourguenieff or Dostoiewski to refresh his memory of the most poignant analysis of human inertia ever put in words; Gorky was more than enough: Kropotkin answered every purpose. The Russian people could never have changed could they ever be changed? Could inertia of race, on such a scale, be broken up, or take new form?
Almost all the accused, including Kropotkin, openly confessed that both intellectually and in deed they were the originators of the excesses at Lyons and Montceau-les-Mines, and that they were Anarchists, but denied the existence of an international organisation, and protested against the application of the law of the 14th March, 1872.
Kropotkin, who believes that manual and intellectual work should be combined, holds that authors themselves should be compositors, bookbinders, etc. He even seems to suggest that the whole of the manual work involved in producing books should be done by authors.
Just as all great discoveries of modern science have proceeded by rejecting the unfruitful deductive method and beginning to build up from below, so also, Kropotkin maintains, society must be built up afresh by realising all power, all reality, all purpose in individuals, and can only arise again new-born synthetically, from the free grouping of these individuals.
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