As seems usual these days, I have been a bit too busy to write a proper blog – heaven knows there is plenty to comment on! To be fair, this has been due to getting my new edition of Kropotkin’s Words of a Rebel finished. The translation of Kropotkin’s words have been sent to the publisher (PM Press) – both the actual book plus supplementary material (see below) – and I have finished the first draft of the Glossary and its Bibliographical sketch. Just the bulk of the Introduction to do…
As seems usual these days, I have been a bit too busy to write a proper blog – heaven knows there is plenty to comment on! To be fair, this has been due to getting my new edition of Kropotkin’s Words of a Rebel finished. The translation of Kropotkin’s words have been sent to the publisher (PM Press) – both the actual book plus supplementary material (see below) – and I have finished the first draft of the Glossary and its Bibliographical sketch. Just the bulk of the Introduction to do…
For those who may not be aware, Words of a Rebel was Kropotkin’s first anarchist book and it was published in 1885 while Kropotkin was in prison in France (as a result of the Lyon show-trial of 1883). Edited by his friend and comrade Elisée Reclus, it is mostly a collection of some of his lead articles in Le Révolté (which Kropotkin had founded in 1879) between 1879 and 1882. A few chapters (notably “Representative Government” and “Expropriation”) had substantial material added for publication in book form while many others had already been published as pamphlets.
Kropotkin later recounted that Le Revolté aimed at being “moderate in tone, but revolutionary in substance, and I did my best to write it in such a style that complex historical and economic questions should be comprehensible to every intelligent worker.” Rather than be “mere annals of complaints about existing conditions”, the “oppression of the workers” and describing a “succession of hopeless efforts” to change these which would produce “a most depressing influence upon the reader” which the “burning words” of the editor tries to counteract, Kropotkin thought “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 forms of social life” for it “is hope, not despair, which makes successful revolutions.” (Memoirs of Revolutionist, 389-90)
Reclus organised the chapters in a logical fashion, with them following into each other, and added a preface (and a few footnotes). As Kropotkin later noted, Words of a Rebel was “the critical part” of his “work on anarchism.” He had, he wrote, “to interrupt” this work when he had been arrested and on release he “began to work out the constructive part of an anarchist-communist society – so far as it can now be forecast – in a series of articles” in La Révolte. (Memoirs of Revolutionist, 463) These were later revised and incorporated into La Conquête du Pain (The Conquest of Bread) in 1892, again edited by Reclus.
This raises the question of whether these two periods are sufficient to understand Kropotkin’s contribution to anarchism. Both works are somewhat light in terms of how we get to a revolutionary situation, on what anarchists need to do in the here-and-now (beyond encouraging “the Spirit of Revolt”). Much later, in 1907, Kropotkin noted that he would like to “make a selection” of his articles on the labour movement “and publish them in a volume.” (“Les Anarchistes et les Syndicates,” Les Temps Nouveaux, 25 May 1907 – this was translated as “Anarchists and Trade Unions” [Freedom June 1907] and included in Direct Struggle against Capital). This, sadly, was never done so I have taken the opportunity to include some “Supplementary Material” which addresses this issue.
Before discussing why I decided to translate Words of a Rebel, I has best give the contents of the new edition:
Words of a Rebel
Introduction
· Further Reading
· A Note on the text
· Words of a Rebel: A Bibliographical Sketch
1885 Preface (Elisée Reclus)
1904 Italian Preface
1919 Russian Preface
I. The Situation
II. The Breakdown of the State
III. The Necessity of Revolution
IV. The Next Revolution
V. Political Rights
VI. To the Young
VII. War
VIII. Revolutionary Minorities
IX. Order
X. The Commune
XI. The Paris Commune
XII. The Agrarian Question
XIII. Representative Government
XIV. Law and Authority
XV. Revolutionary Government
XVI. All Socialists!
XVII. The Spirit of Revolt
XVIII. Theory and Practice
XIX. Expropriation
1919 Russia Afterword
Supplementary Material
· International Workers’ Association: General Assembly of the Jura Federation
· The Anarchist Idea from the Point Of View of its Practical Realisation
· International Workers’ Association: Jura Federation
· Enemies of the People
· The League and the Trade Unions
· The Workers’ Movement in Spain
· Workers’ Organisation
· Congress of the Jura Federation of the International Workers’ Association
· Declaration of the accused anarchists before the Lyon Criminal Court
· The Lyon Trial
· A letter to Georges Herzig
· The Great French Revolution and its Lesson
Glossary
Some of this material was translated by Nicholas Walter – the 1885 preface, the chapters “The Situation,” “Order,” “The Paris Commune” and “Revolutionary Government” and the articles “International Workers’ Association: General Assembly of the Jura Federation,” “The Anarchist Idea from the Point of View of its Practical Realisation,” “International Workers’ Association: Jura Federation,” “Declaration of the accused anarchists before the Lyon Criminal Court” and “The Lyon Trial” (from Freedom: Anarchist Weekly: 24 June 1967, 25 February 1967, 24 June 1967 and 29 April 1967). I have revised these translations and so they will differ slightly from the originals (some of which appear in Direct Struggle against Capital).
Some material has never been translated into English before – the 1919 Russian “Preface,” “The League and the Trade Unions,” “Congress of the Jura Federation of the International Workers’ Association,” and “A letter to Georges Herzig.” I have also translated three articles which appeared in Direct Struggle against Capital – “Enemies of the People,” “The Workers’ Movement in Spain” and “Workers’ Organisation” – to bring them in-line with the “feel” of the main-body of the book. I also decided to include an article Kropotkin wrote for The Nineteenth Century to mark the 100th anniversary of the Great French Revolution as he refers to that revolution many times in the book, so I thought it would provide readers with more context. This has, as far as I am aware, never been reprinted.
This extra material should help provide more context to the original book and help flesh-out how Kropotkin saw a revolutionary situation become a possibility – namely, by anarchist involvement in the labour movement and, yes, he does use the expression “direct struggle against capital” even at this early stage in his revolutionary activities. As I noted recently, anarchist-communism was just as much a precursor of syndicalism as Bakunin and the Federalist-wing of the International (although not without reservations).
Needless to say, I have had to track down quite a lot of people, events, and so on which Kropotkin mentions or references. Also, needless to say, I found this quite interesting (if frustrating at times!) and have added footnotes and glossary entries to explain comments and references Kropotkin takes for granted. Also, I must again recommend Caroline Cahm’s Kropotkin and the rise of revolutionary Anarchism, 1872-1886 (Cambridge University Press, 1989 – pdf here) as it covers the development of Kropotkin’s communist-anarchist ideas during the period when the articles included in Words of a Rebel and provides essential context to when he was an active militant in the European anarchist movement. It really is essential reading for anyone interested in Kropotkin or anarchism.
So why have a done this, an activity some may dismiss as backward looking? Particularly when the 1992 George Woodcock edition is still available?
Well, Kropotkin remains one of the best anarchist writers and theoreticians: his writings are a useful source of theory for anarchists today, if they read it critically and not seek to mechanically apply it in circumstances which, while at bottom the same (capital and state remain), are different in many ways. While specific examples or suggestions can be revised, the general thrust of the book remains valid. Likewise, his critique of capitalist society remains valid, as does his analysis of previous revolutions (primarily the Paris Commune of 1871) – as I will explore in the introduction, his analysis of events in 1871 were confirmed by 1921. So, modern radicals and revolutionaries can gain from a new edition and better inform their activities now.
Also, while Kropotkin may be the best known and most read anarchist thinker, I think he is also – paradoxically – one of the least understood in many ways (well, after Proudhon but then he is not read as much!). After the Second World War, there seems to be an attempt to turn him from the revolutionary he was into, well, anarcho-Santa. People like Woodcock were at the lead in this (as can be seen from his introduction to the Black Rose edition of The Great French Revolution, 1789-1793) but this does him and his ideas a great disservice. Comparing his first anarchist book (Words of a Rebel, 1885) with his last (Modern Science and Anarchy, 1913), it soon becomes clear his is discussing the same themes and advocating the same tactics (labour direct action and social revolution). This is unsurprising, as he was and remained a communist-anarchist! Hence the need for a new edition, with appropriate “supplementary material” to help debunk the myths which have grown-up around him.
Finally, the 1992 edition is flawed. Translated by George Woodcock as part of Kropotkin’s Collected Works series by Black Rose, like the wider project it was incomplete – limiting itself to the original 1885 edition and excluding the 1904 and 1919 prefaces and 1919 afterward. In addition, as Nicolas Walters noted in his review when it first came out, it is “rather badly translated […] the language is sometimes so crude as to become a sort of Frenglish” and as well as the missing prefaces and afterword “it isn’t actually quite complete; some short passages have been omitted from the original text, presumably by mistake, as well as a couple of long footnotes, presumably on purpose.” (“Raven Review: Words of a Rebel,” The Raven: An Anarchist Quarterly No. 20 [October-December 1992], 324-5, 326) I can confirm all that, the translation is poor and, worse, at times misleading (for example, the chapter “The Necessity of Revolution” was translated as “The Inevitability of Revolution,” which is not the same thing at all!).
I noted the problem when I was working on volume 1 of A Libertarian Reader. I wanted to include the chapter “Political Rights” and had thought the version on the Anarchy Archives was one by Walters. Just as well I double-checked, for it was by Woodcock and as Black Rose can be somewhat pernickety over its material, I thought I should retranslate it. I soon noticed a few strange decisions and missing bits. The year before I was working on a new collection of Kropotkin’s pamphlets (as the Rodger N. Baldwin’s edition lacks a few and edits what it does include) and re-translated “The Spirit of Revolt” and had also noticed some issues with Woodcock’s version.
(I should note that this collection is currently in limbo, but perhaps AK Press or PM Press would be interested in publishing it for the 100th anniversary of Kropotkin’s death in 2021?)
Hopefully this explains the new edition – which includes all missing material as part of a complete new (and hopefully better!) translation as well as supplementary material which helps place the book in context and better shows Kropotkin for what he was, a committed revolutionary anarchist with a clear strategy towards social revolution.
Until I blog again, be seeing you…