The Conquest of Bread · Chapter
Endnotes explained
This chapter provides endnotes and references that support the arguments made in the main text, including statistical data on industrial employment, critiques of the 'one-day revolution' fallacy, and detailed calculations showing how a redu
What happens
This chapter provides endnotes and references that support the arguments made in the main text, including statistical data on industrial employment, critiques of the 'one-day revolution' fallacy, and detailed calculations showing how a reduced workday could provide ample food for a population through intensive local agriculture, while criticizing the current system that forces workers to labor excessively to support the idle.
Themes in this chapter
Integration of Agriculture and Industry
The endnotes present detailed calculations showing how the departments of Seine and Seine-et-Oise could feed their population with only 58 five-hour workdays per year per agricultural worker, integrating intensive market gardening and efficient land use.
Individuality and Leisure
The calculation contrasts the current 1,000 hours a worker spends on food with the potential 290 hours, highlighting the liberation of time for leisure and individuality.
Critique of Capitalism and Wage Labor
The note criticizes the current system where workers give 700 hours 'too much to fatten the idle and the would-be administrators,' pointing to exploitation by middlemen, landowners, and the state.
Characters to notice
- M. Ponce
Cited as author of 'La Culture maraîchere' (1869), a source on agricultural productivity.
- Barral
Mentioned as editor of 'Le dictionnaire d’agriculture' (Hachette), a reference work.
- Messrs. Thomas Nelson
Publisher of Kropotkin's 'Fields, Factories, and Workshops' and its new edition in the 'Shilling Library.'
- Joule
Referenced in a footnote about Playfair mentioning him at Joule's death.
- Kropotkin
Author of the main work and of 'In Russian and French Prisons' (1887), cited in a footnote.
Key passages
“Today a workman spends for the necessary food of his family (generally less than what is necessary) at least one-third of his 300 workdays a year, about 1,000 hours be it, instead of 290. That is, he thus gives about 700 hours too much to fatten the idle and the would-be administrators, because he does not produce his own food, but buys it of middlemen, who in their turn buy it of peasants who exhaust themselves by working with bad tools, because, being robbed by the landowners and the State, they cannot procure better ones.”
A worker currently spends about 1,000 hours per year on food for his family, but only 290 hours would be needed if food were produced locally and efficiently; the extra 700 hours of labor go to support the idle rich and administrators, since the worker buys from middlemen who exploit peasants using poor tools due to landowner and state exploitation.
This passage encapsulates the critique of the capitalist food distribution system and the potential for reduced labor through local agriculture.
“No fallacy more harmful has ever been spread than the fallacy of a 'One-day Revolution,' which is propagated in superficial Socialist pamphlets speaking of the Revolution of the 18th of March at Berlin, supposed (which is absolutely wrong) to have given Prussia its representative Government. We saw well the harm made by such fallacies in Russia in 1905–1907.”
The idea of a revolution happening in a single day is a dangerous fallacy, as seen in the mistaken belief that the Berlin revolution of March 18 gave Prussia a representative government; this misconception caused harm during the Russian Revolution of 1905–1907.
Kropotkin warns against oversimplified views of revolution, emphasizing the need for sustained structural change.