The Conquest of Bread · Chapter
Food explained
Kropotkin argues that a social revolution must prioritize food and production from the start, unlike previous revolutions that focused on political change while people starved.
What happens
Kropotkin argues that a social revolution must prioritize food and production from the start, unlike previous revolutions that focused on political change while people starved. He warns that revolutions relying on exploitation of peasants abroad will face famine as oppressed peoples free themselves. The solution is for cities to integrate agriculture and industry, using modern technology and voluntary labor to grow food locally, ensuring abundance through anarchist communism.
Themes in this chapter
Integration of Agriculture and Industry
Kropotkin advocates for cities to grow their own food, combining farming with industrial production to prevent famine.
Anarchist Communism
The chapter outlines how anarchist communism would reorganize production and distribution to meet everyone's needs.
Historical Lessons of Revolutions
Kropotkin uses the failures of 1793, 1848, and 1871 to argue that revolutions must secure food immediately.
Critique of Capitalism and Wage Labor
The wage system is blamed for causing starvation during revolutions, as workers cannot live without wages.
Characters to notice
- Kropotkin
Author and narrator; presents the anarchist communist perspective on food and revolution.
- Danton
Quoted at the end: 'De l'audace, de l'audace, et encore de l'audace.'
- Mignet
Referenced indirectly through Michelet's account of 1792 peasant cultivation.
- The Socialists
Criticized for dreaming of a revolution that only takes profits without transforming production.
Key passages
“Cheat the peasant no longer with scraps of paper—be the sums inscribed upon them ever so large; but offer him in exchange for his produce the very things of which he, the tiller of the soil, stands in need.”
Stop paying peasants with worthless money; instead, give them the goods they actually need for their labor.
Kropotkin argues that fair trade with peasants is essential to secure food for cities.
“The combination of agriculture and industry, the husbandman and the mechanic in the same individual—this is what anarchist communism will inevitably lead us to, if it starts fair with expropriation.”
Anarchist communism will naturally merge farming and manufacturing, making each person both a farmer and a worker.
This is the core solution to food shortages: integrating production roles.
“The danger is where Danton saw it when he cried to France: 'De l'audace, de l'audace, et encore de l'audace.'”
The real threat to revolution is timidity and half-measures, not famine; boldness is needed.
Kropotkin ends with a call for audacity, quoting Danton.