9 December 1842: the Birth of Peter Kropotkin
A day worth celebrating.
I read The Conquest of Bread this year and it's a very well written, relevant book. Not many political books from the late nineteenth century will still be so pertinent. Kropotkin used the experience of the Paris Commune to address how, exactly, would workers move forward to a classless society. Crucially, he argues, by ensuring the food supply is secure and then by listening to what the food producers want from the urban centres and planning around that.
It's a book that shows how to answer the question that keeps coming up: 'but how would anarchism actually work?' We could do with an updated version though, because the globalisation of food makes the same question much more challenging to answer. A revolution in any one country (even Ireland) would struggle with food security and some research into where Ireland's food comes from and what the workers' movement would have to do to keep control of it would be very valuable. Anyone fancy writing The Conquest of Bread 2025?
Posted Dec 9, 2025, 8:56 AM UTC