Search
Log in
  • Home

  • Categories

  • Audiobooks

  • E-books

  • For kids

  • Top lists

  • Help

  • Download app

  • Use campaign code

  • Redeem gift card

  • Try free now
  • Log in
  • Language

    🇩🇰 Danmark

    • DK
    • EN

    🇧🇪 Belgique

    • FR
    • EN

    🇩🇪 Deutschland

    • DE
    • EN

    🇪🇸 España

    • ES
    • EN

    🇫🇷 France

    • FR
    • EN

    🇳🇱 Nederland

    • NL
    • EN

    🇳🇴 Norge

    • NO
    • EN

    🇦🇹 Österreich

    • AT
    • EN

    🇨🇭 Schweiz

    • DE
    • EN

    🇫🇮 Suomi

    • FI
    • EN

    🇸🇪 Sverige

    • SE
    • EN
  1. Books
  2. Society and Social Sciences
  3. Politics

Read and listen for free for 14 days!

Cancel anytime

Try free now
0.0(0)

The Conquest of Bread

Pyotr Alexeyevich Kropotkin (1842-1921) was the leading - and the most widely admired - anarchist Communist in the last decades of the 19th century and the first decades of the 20th. He lived long enough to see the establishment of Communism in Russia under Lenin, who acknowledged Kropotkin’s commitment to political change. However, Kropotkin was a very different kind of revolutionary figure, for he argued not only for Communism but anarchist Communism, distrusting and even despising central government control in favour of a more individual sense of responsibility and civic duty.

In The Conquest of Bread, first published in 1892, Kropotkin set out his ideas on how his heightened idealism could work. It was all the more extraordinary because he was born into an aristocratic land-owning family - with some 1,200 male serfs - though from his student years his liberal views and his fixation on the need for social change saw him take a revolutionary path. This led rapidly to decades of exile. Even today, The Conquest of Bread is fascinating listening.

It is a passionate, even a fierce polemic for dramatic social change. Kropotkin looks at the European revolutions, from the French Revolution to the upheavals of 1848 and later 19th-century events, commenting on why they were ultimately unsuccessful. Like Karl Marx he was convinced that major social upheaval was inevitable, but he argued for a different social structure - one where innate human goodness would not only overcome individualist capitalist greed but obviate the necessity of overbearing government control. Kropotkin’s faith in humanity and the reasonableness of man may seem naive, but his slogans are persuasive. ‘All belongs to all’; 'well-being for all’; ‘anarchist Communism, Communism without government - the Communism of the free: it is the synthesis of the two ideals pursued by humanity throughout the ages - economic and political liberty.’

His views encompassed further ideals: wealth should not hoarded by the few but distributed to each according to his need; women must be released from traditional domestic drudgery (he predicted that new machines would lightening the domestic load); the working day could easily be reduced to five hours a day, allowing more leisure time. With these innovations, Kropotkin argues, the future would be very different.

The Conquest of Bread is a classic political text of an idealistic vision that may never come to pass but which contains views which are difficult - theoretically - to dismiss.


Author:

  • Pyotr Kropotkin

Narrator:

  • Peter Kenny

Format:

  • Audiobook

Duration:

  • 7 h 30 min

Language:

English

Categories:

  • Society and Social Sciences
  • Politics
  • Society and Social Sciences
  • Philosophy

More by Pyotr Kropotkin

Skip the list
  1. Fields, Factories, and Workshops : Industry Combined with Agriculture and Brain Work with Manual Work

    Pyotr Kropotkin

    audiobook
  2. Mutual Aid : A Factor of Evolution

    Pyotr Kropotkin

    audiobook

Others have also read

Skip the list
  1. The Holocaust Industry : Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering

    Norman G. Finkelstein

    audiobook
  2. To Kill a Nation : The Attack on Yugoslavia

    Michael Parenti

    audiobook
  3. The Blind Spot

    Adam Frank, Marcelo Gleiser, Evan Thompson

    audiobook
  4. Democracy Rules

    Jan-Werner Müller

    audiobook
  5. Them : Adventures with Extremists

    Jon Ronson

    book
  6. The Shortest History of Democracy

    John Keane

    audiobookbook
  7. Rivers of Gold

    Hugh Thomas

    audiobook
  8. Erasing History : How Fascists Rewrite the Past to Control the Future

    Jason Stanley

    book
  9. Ethics in the Real World, Revised Edition

    Peter Singer

    audiobook
  10. The Wisdom of Angela Davis : Revolutionary Icon

    Geoffrey Giuliano

    audiobook
  11. The Sickness is the System

    Richard D. Wolff

    audiobook
  12. Black Pill : How I Witnessed the Darkest Corners of the Internet Come to Life, Poison Society, and Capture American Politics

    Elle Reeve

    audiobookbook

Help and contact


About us

  • Our story
  • Career
  • Press
  • Accessibility
  • Partner with us
  • Investor relations
  • Instagram
  • Facebook

Explore

  • Categories
  • Audiobooks
  • E-books
  • Magazines
  • For kids
  • Top lists

Popular categories

  • Krimis
  • Biografien und Reportagen
  • Romane und Erzählungen
  • Feelgood und Romance
  • Ratgeber
  • Kinderbücher
  • Tatsachenberichte
  • Schlaf und Entspannung

Nextory

Copyright © 2025 Nextory AB

Privacy Policy · Terms ·
Excellent4.3 out of 5