Anarchist Studies 31.2 (2023) is out now!

Anarchist Studies 31.2 (2023) is out now!

From Anarchist Studies
October 10, 2023

Issue 31.2 is a special issue on 'One Hundred Years with and without Kropotkin', featuring an editorial, 5 original articles, and 5 book reviews.

Anarchist Studies Volume 31 (2023) Issue 2

Contents:

About this Issue’s Cover: Memorializing Kropotkin, pages 5‑9
Allan Antliff

Editorial: One Hundred Years with and without Kropotkin, pages 10‑15
Cord-Christian Casper, Billy Godfrey, Adeline Coignet

This special edition was born of a conference organised to commemorate the centenary year of Kropotkin’s death in 2021. Our discussions there cohered around the relevance of Kropotkin’s revolutionary anarchism, his evolutionary timescales, and his scientific commitments in a world quite unrecognisable from the one he left behind. We asked which of his ideas might require ‘updating’ to be made relevant to our historical conjuncture, or whether it is our image of Kropotkin that ought to be revised. How does his corpus already speak to the interrelated and overlapping crises of the Capitalocene (Moore 2016)? These are the principal questions that guide this issue as well. Our authors variously re-emphasise and reconstruct elements of Kropotkin’s work across the gamut of disciplines to which he turned his hand: philosophy, ecology, evolutionary biology, agriculture, and anarchist praxis.

‘Everything Changes in Nature’: Kropotkin’s Process Philosophy, pages 16‑33
Ole Martin Sandberg

A frequent misunderstanding about Peter Kropotkin, and anarchism more generally, is that by emphasising mutual aid as a factor of evolution and history, he advocates a view of human nature as essentially benign. This essay aims to disprove that claim by showing that Kropotkin explicitly rejects any notion of a fixed human essence and insists that we are composed of a multitude of autonomous but interacting faculties with no authentic or essential centre. This view of the human psyche reflects his view of the world in general: for Kropotkin, philosophy and science were not about finding universal mechanisms and eternal substances. Instead, he advances a view of the world that can only be described as process-thinking: a philosophical tendency that prioritises difference over identity and change over stability. Kropotkin’s process ontology also informs his view of politics, which rejects the idea of a harmonious social end state free of conflict and embraces diversity as a factor that promotes progress and movement. Kropotkin’s process philosophy has relevance to debates in such diverse fields as philosophy and metaphysics, political and social theory, and biology and ecology.

Mutual Aid and Technology in the Time of Covid, pages 34‑52
Claudia Firth

The pandemic afforded us a tiny glimpse of our interconnectedness to each other and to the planetary ecosystem. This article explores the mutual aid groups that emerged during the Covid-19 pandemic and the technologies that facilitated their proliferation in relation to Kropotkin’s ideas. Although Covid Mutual Aid Groups (CMAGs) themselves have mostly disappeared as the acute crisis of the pandemic has faded, it is still unclear what, if anything, the political implications of this emergence of mutual aid might be, or if it might contribute to any kind of paradigm shift. This article examines the intersections between organisation and media in relation to the CMAGs, and, focusing on the UK context, reviews the original concept of mutual aid as conceived by Kropotkin, his ideas on technology, and his vision of a future of plenty for all. Borrowing from Cultural Studies, it maps some of the complexities of struggles of power and difference to trace what might be vying to emerge. It argues that a new common sense centred around ‘social Kropotkinism’ could be a way to develop what has been left of the CMAG’s activities.

Reimagining the Food System: Kropotkin, Food Sovereignty and OrganicLea, pages 53‑72
Tomas Pewton

This paper explores the similarities between Kropotkin’s vision of a just food system and the food sovereignty movement, with the concrete example of the work of OrganicLea. It will begin with an analysis of the deepening problems of our food system through food insecurity and its negative impact upon the environment. The second part will introduce the idea of food sovereignty and show how it intersects with Kropotkin’s work, with it being argued that a just food system is one that recognises central aspects of both; alongside local and collective ownership, the well-being of all, regenerative agriculture and a commitment to wider social and environmental justice. I will then show how such principles are being put into practice through the work and direct action of OrganicLea. This will reveal how Kropotkin’s thought is still relevant today and how it can be used to address contemporary concerns such as food insecurity and climate change. The paper will also consider the limitations of Kropotkin, including his time-restricted ideas, and the need for new perspectives such as those found in OrganicLea and the food sovereignty movement.

Peter Kropotkin and Social Ecology: Between Biology and Revolution, pages 73‑95
Jelena H. Pantel, Selva Varengo, Federico Venturini

Research or concepts in the biological field have often been used as a basis to root political projects of different orientations. In the libertarian literature, there have also been attempts to explore the link between the natural world and the possibility of freedom by combining discoveries in biological fields and research in philosophical/political fields. In the first part of our work, we analyse Peter Kropotkin’s thought, especially his theory of mutual aid, focusing on his proto-ecological concepts. This section also focuses on the Social Ecology of Murray Bookchin in the context of the evolution of life in the natural world. The concepts of cooperation, empathy and mutual aid are explored, and also revolution, federalism and egalitarian ethics. In the second part, we review these ideas and concepts, drawing on insights from recent discoveries in the study of ecology and evolutionary biology. We conclude our review by discussing how these natural principles can inform social projects and social organisation, identifying how mismatches between social and biological organisation have contributed to inequality and domination.

Kropotkin and Revolution, pages 96‑115
Zoe Baker

Anarchists, and Kropotkin in particular, are often depicted as optimists who lack a realistic view of how to achieve fundamental social change. This article counters this narrative by reconstructing Kropotkin’s views on revolution and the arguments he used to justify it. In particular, I demonstrate that Kropotkin developed complex theories about how revolutions arise, what form a revolution must take in order to succeed, and how anarchists should act to achieve their goals. Kropotkin did not ignore or downplay the difficulties that any revolution would encounter. Instead, he considered the potential obstacles and developed coherent arguments for why the methods of anarchism were best suited to overcome them.

Reviews, pages 116‑127

As ever:
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There are 4 Comments

Good one.

Kropotkin was socialist who inspired the blandest forms of anarchist ideas. Change my mind.

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