Peter Kropotkin on criticism and hope
Only one makes successful revolutions
The nineteenth century Russian political thinker Peter Kropotkin advocated an eccentric political philosophy called “anarcho-communism,” never as popular or influential as unqualified communism. He proposed “a decentralised communist society free from central government and based on voluntary associations of self-governing communities and worker-run enterprises,” according to marxists.org. An activist, he spent two years in prison, then in 1876 escaped to Europe where he lived and wrote in exile for 41 years, when he returned to the new Soviet Union, which (unsurprisingly) disappointed him. His description of the reason for revolution appears in Memoirs of a Revolutionist.
Socialist papers have often a tendency to become mere annals of complaints about existing conditions. The oppression of the laborers in the mine, the factory, and the field is related; the misery and sufferings of the workers during strikes are told in vivid pictures; their helplessness in the struggle against employers is insisted upon: and this succession of hopeless efforts, related in the paper, exercises a most depressing influence upon the reader.
To counterbalance that effect, the editor has to rely chiefly upon burning words by means of which he tries to inspire his readers with energy and faith.
I thought, on the contrary, that a revolutionary paper must be, above all, a record of those symptoms which everywhere announce the coming of a new era, the germination of new forms of social life, the growing revolt against antiquated institutions. . . .
To make one feel sympathy with the throbbing of the human heart all over the world, with its revolt against age-long injustice, with its attempts at working out new forms of life, — this should be the chief duty of a revolutionary paper. It is hope, not despair, which makes successful revolutions.
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