Kropotkin at this Moment

The new interest in Kropotkin is part of the worldwide revival of Anarchist action and thought, in both “private enterprise” and socialist countries. So Bakunin, Kropotkin, and the other Anarchists were right after all: the real enemies have proved to be the State (whose health is war), overcentralized organization, the authoritarian personality of people. The call is for grassroots social structures, spontaneity and mutual aid, direct action and doing it yourself, education for self-reliance, and agitation for freedom. Marxists now talk a good deal about alienation and liberals have picked it up, especially “youth alienation,” but this is what Anarchists were always talking about, without neo-Hegelian trimmings. They knew it by human feeling and common observation. Closely studying the social history of rural communes and medieval towns, Kropotkin concluded that man did not have to be ruled.

Yet mankind being what it was, it probably has been necessar...