Description:
This new and authoritative edition of Kropotkin's important contribution to the history of socialist ideas and anarchist ideology includes a critically informed afterword by Ruth Kinna that elucidates the book's relevance for today.
Brief description: Peter Kropotkin (1842-1921) was a Russian-born geographer, revolutionary, and the foremost theorist of the anarchist movement. Among his many influential publications, The Conquest of Bread (1892) and Mutual Aid (1902) have indelibly shaped anarchist thought and inspired political activists for more than a century.
Review Quotes:
"Russian social theorist Peter Kropotkin... argued that voluntary cooperation has been key to the flourishing of human civilization."
-The New York Times
"Practicing mutual aid is the surest means for giving each other and to all the greatest safety, the best guarantee of existence and progress, bodily, intellectual and moral."
-Peter Kropotkin, Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution
"Kropotkin did not deny the competitive form of struggle, but argued that the cooperative style had been underemphasized and must balance or even predominate over competition in considering nature as a whole."
-Stephen Jay Gould