Tribute to Kropotkin
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“The idea that anarchism mainly appealed to peasants or appears where capitalism hasn’t developed just doesn’t fit with the facts.”
Nobody said anything about peasants. It is a fact that anarchism has been most popular in states where capitalism has been less developed, not that capitalism hasn’t developed at all.
ALB -“I am not sure that his views should be described as “Russian thought”. He was of course from Russia but his anarchist-communist views were formed when living in France and the French-speaking part of Switzerland. You could more accurately describe his views as an expression of “French thought”, ”
What do Tolstoy, Plekhanov and Gorky bring to the table?
This parable by Tolstoy is good but nothing else of his Christian anarchism. Never got round to reading his War and Peace but I am sure somebody here will have.
ALB. This is a really powerful parable on benign colonialism: points to that notion of charitable acts as ‘stock management’.
I am still mulling over it, might say munching its cud! Thank you for posting on Tolstoy.I didn’t see it as being about benign colonialism as about “benign capitalism” and its welfare state. More generally, about any situation where there is a one class that exploits the work of another. A expansion of the saying that the capitalists will do anything for the workers except get off their backs.
Searching on the internet for who said “the rich will do anything for the poor but get off their backs” I see it is widely attributed to Marx but no source is ever given.
Does anyone know if Marx did say this and where? I don’t think he did. Actually, it sounds more like something Tolstoy would have said.
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