Pod Insights Stuff You Missed in History Class Peter Kropotkin's Mutual Aid, Part 2 About this episode After returning to Russia, Kropotkin was captured and imprisoned. But his life took many turns from there, and in 1902 he published his book book “Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution.”
Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Speaker 00 This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.
0:04 Speaker 01 Cash Flow Crunch. OnDeck's small business line of credit gives your business immediate access to funds, up to $200,000, right when you need it. Cover seasonal dips, manage payroll, restock inventory, or tackle unexpected expenses without missing a beat. With flexible draws, transparent pricing, and control over repayment, get funded quickly and confidently. Apply today at ondeck.com. Funds could be available as soon as tomorrow. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.
0:34 Tracy V. Wilson? Whether you're calling the wise women in your life, video calling your girlfriends across the country, or checking in on someone who always knows how to make you smile, staying connected matters. Those small conversations, shared laughs, and quick hellos are what keep relationships strong even when life gets busy. Some of the most life-giving conversations start with just a phone call. That's why AT&T guarantees the network you can rely on, so you can focus on the moments and people that matter most. That's the AT&T Guarantee. AT&T, connecting changes everything. Terms and conditions apply. Visit att.com/guarantee for details.
1:09 Speaker 03 Granger knows. If you're a procurement manager at an industrial manufacturing facility, you're balancing inventory and budget while sourcing critical supplies across the operation. Too much inventory? Costs climb. Too little? Production slows. Granger's $2 billion in on-hand inventory helps you get what you need, when you need it. So you can help keep budgets balanced and lines moving. Call 1-800-GRANGER, click Granger.com, or just stop by. Granger, for the ones who get it done.
1:39 Speaker 04 Attention Chicken Nugget fans. Burger King heard that a lot of you didn't like the old Chicken Nuggets, so they got to work and reinvented them. These new Chicken Nuggets are their tastiest, crispiest, juiciest nuggets ever. And because better Chicken Nuggets deserve better sauces, they've reinvented several of their sauces, and they created a brand-new one. The new Special Savorie Sauce, which is only available for a limited time at participating U.S. restaurants, don't wait around. You gotta try the new Burger King Chicken Nuggets today.
2:10 Holly Frey? Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of iHeartRadio.
2:20 Tracy V. Wilson? Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson.
2:24 Holly Frey? And I'm Holly Frey.
2:25 Tracy V. Wilson? This is the second part of our two-parter on Peter Kropotkin, who was deeply influential in the development of anarchism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. We are picking up with Kropotkin's return to Russia from the Jura Mountains, which was in May of 1872. But first, we are going to take a quick jump ahead in the timeline for just a moment. In 1911, Kropotkin wrote the Encyclopedia Britannica entry on anarchism. And it seems useful at this point for context to talk a little bit about what anarchism is as a political philosophy. Since there are a lot of different types of anarchism today,
3:09 Tracy V. Wilson? and they all have their own various goals and nuances, it's also helpful to spell out what Kropotkin, who was an anarchist communist, meant by this terminology. And like what he thought that somebody consulting the encyclopedia about anarchism would need to know about it.
3:26 Holly Frey? Kropotkin began his entry on anarchism with its etymology from Greek words meaning contrary to authority. He defined it as, quote, "the name given to a principle or theory of life and conduct under which society is conceived without government. Harmony in such a society being obtained not by submission to law or by obedience to any authority, but by free agreements concluded between the various groups, territorial and professional, freely constituted for the sake of production and consumption as also for the satisfaction of the infinite variety of needs and aspirations of a civilized being. In a society developed on these lines,
4:10 Holly Frey? the voluntary associations, which already now begin to cover all the fields of human activity, would take a still greater extension so as to substitute themselves for the state in all its functions."
4:24 Tracy V. Wilson? He went on to say, quote, "If, it is contended, society were organized on these principles, man would not be limited in the free exercise of his powers in productive work by a capitalist monopoly maintained by the state." Nor would he be limited in the exercise of his will by a fear of punishment, or by obedience towards individuals or metaphysical entities which both lead to depression of initiative and servility of mind. He would be guided in his actions by his own understanding, which necessarily would bear the impression of a free action and reaction between his own self and the ethical
5:07 Tracy V. Wilson? conceptions of his surroundings. Man would thus be enabled to obtain the full development of all his faculties, intellectual, artistic, and moral, without being hampered by overwork for the monopolists, or by the servility and inertia of mind of the great number. He would thus be able to reach full individualization, which is not possible, either under the present system of individualism, or under any system of state socialism in the so-called volkstát, the popular state.
5:44 Holly Frey? Kropotkin went on to describe private ownership of land and capitalist production for the sake of profit as, quote, "the main obstacle which prevents the successes of modern technics from being brought into the service of all, so as to produce general well-being." He called the state "the chief instrument in permitting a few people to monopolize the land and capitalists to keep a disproportionate amount of production for themselves." This five-page encyclopedia entry also includes a history of anarchist thought going back more than 2,000 years and a lengthy bibliography.
6:22 Tracy V. Wilson? It is not all that surprising that governments don't really like it when people start calling for their abolition. And in Russia, material about anarchism, socialism, and revolutionary ideas were banned. Kropotkin had collected a library of these kinds of books and papers during his travels through Western Europe, and he wanted to smuggle all of that into Russia. He had heard that there were networks of Jewish smugglers operating along the Russian frontier in Poland, and he negotiated with a smuggler who typically worked with cloth to get his library across the border.
7:00 Holly Frey? After arriving back in St. Petersburg, Kropotkin joined the Chekhovski Circle, named for the Russian revolutionary socialist Nikolai Chekhovski. The Circle had started as a student group for self-education and self-improvement. It had evolved into a revolutionary organization that printed and distributed materials on socialism, nihilism, and political agitation, and which tried to organize workers in the country. The Circle was focused on populism and socialism, not on anarchism. And in 1873, Kropotkin wrote an essay called, "Must We Occupy Ourselves With An Examination Of The Ideal Of A Future System",
7:42 Holly Frey? to advocate for other members to adopt anarchism.
7:46 Tracy V. Wilson? Kropotkin worked with the Chekhovski Circle for about two years. And during that time, more and more people who were connected to it or to other revolutionary movements in Russia were arrested. It started to become difficult to have meetings because so many leaders had been imprisoned. Eventually, Kropotkin got word that the police were targeting him. And he refused to leave Russia or go into hiding, in part because he was scheduled to hold a debate about his work with the Russian Geographical Society.
8:20 Holly Frey? In 1874, Kropotkin was captured and imprisoned at the Peter and Paul Fortress in St. Petersburg. His brother Alexander rallied the Russian scientific community to advocate for him to be allowed to complete his scientific work. He was working on a book at the time about the Earth's glacial period that the Geographic Society wanted him to be able to finish. Alexander was also motivated by the understanding that being in prison with nothing to occupy his time would probably kill his brother. In Peter's words, quote, "My brother turned the whole scientific world in St. Petersburg upside down to move it to support his application."
9:01 Tracy V. Wilson? Eventually, the czar gave permission for Kropotkin to finish his report, and arrangements were made for him to be allowed to have a pen, ink, and paper from sunup to sundown every day. Sundown was at 3:00 in the afternoon in the winter, and he was like, "Well, can't do anything about that." When it got dark, someone would bring him a lamp and take away his paper and pen, and he spent his evenings reading history books. While Peter was in prison, his brother Alexander was also arrested after writing a letter in which he described what was happening to his brother at the prison and expressed his hatred for the despotic rule of Russia.
9:45 Holly Frey? Kropotkin was held at the fortress for about two years, during which he became increasingly ill. He was moved to the house of detention next to the court once a trial date was set. By that point, he was really sick, and while people were allowed to bring him food, he had become too sick to eat most of it.
10:05 Tracy V. Wilson? Eventually, in 1876, he was sent to St. Petersburg Military Hospital, which wasn't as secure as the fortress or the house of detention. He and his friends started making a plan to break him out. There was a gate at the hospital that was left open for carts to get in and out for deliveries and things, but there were also guards watching. Kropotkin and his friends communicated using enciphered letters, and they worked out pre-arranged signals. He was supposed to watch for somebody walking by with a red balloon, singing a particular song. But then on the day, Kropotkin never saw a balloon. It turned out that his friends outside the prison had not been able to find one that day,
10:49 Tracy V. Wilson? but that worked out because the carriage that he was supposed to get into to escape wound up getting stuck in traffic. They tried again with a new plan involving a violin player that he would need to listen for to give the signal, and Kropotkin successfully made his escape.
11:07 Holly Frey? Kropotkin's plan was to go back to Russia after the hubbub of his escape had died down. But instead, in his words, quote, "I was soon taken up by the wave of the anarchist movement, which was just then rising in Western Europe. And I felt that I should be more useful in helping that movement to find its proper expression than I could possibly be in Russia."
11:29 Tracy V. Wilson? Kropotkin spent the next stretch of time traveling around parts of Western Europe, working and making contacts. He went to Finland, then to England, where he started writing science articles for the journal Nature. From there, he went to Switzerland, where he joined the Jura Federation and the International Workingmen's Association, also called First International. We talked about those organizations last time.
11:54 Holly Frey? He established an anarchist newspaper called Le Révolte in 1879. Some of the funding for that came from another anarchist geographer. That was Elise Reclus, who was from France and had become Kropotkin's friend and collaborator. Kropotkin and Reclus had very similar ideas on interpreting anarchism through science.
12:17 Tracy V. Wilson? I just, I kind of love that there were these two specifically anarchist geographers.
12:23 Holly Frey? Yes.
12:26 Tracy V. Wilson? A lot of the places that Kropotkin lived and visited during these years were home to international groups of anarchists, including people who had been expelled or had fled from other countries, including Russia, for their revolutionary activism. This included people who had been part of the insurrection known as the Paris Commune in 1871. Kropotkin had a lot of friends and collaborators, and they held meetings and workshops, and they exchanged letters and papers as they, in his words, "worked out the, quote, 'practical and theoretical aspects of anarchist socialism.'"
13:03 Holly Frey? During this time, Kropotkin, quote, "gradually came to realize that anarchism represents more than a mere mode of action and a mere conception of a free society, that it is part of a philosophy, natural and social, which must be developed in a quite different way from the metaphysical or dialectic methods which have been employed in sciences dealing with man. I saw that it must be treated by the same methods as natural sciences. Not, however, on the slippery ground of mere analogies, such as Herbert Spencer accepts, but on the solid basis of induction applied to human institutions. And I did my best to accomplish what I could in that direction."
13:47 Tracy V. Wilson? We'll talk more about this after a sponsor break.
13:53 Speaker 06 OnDeck is built to back small businesses like yours. Whether you're buying equipment, expanding your team, or bridging cash flow gaps, OnDeck's loans up to $400,000 help make it happen fast. Rated A+ by the Better Business Bureau and earning thousands of five-star TrustPilot reviews, OnDeck delivers funding you can count on. Apply in minutes at ondeck.com. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.
14:23 Holly Frey? A rare disease diagnosis can change your life, but it doesn't have to define your future. Tune in for season seven of Untold Stories: Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition, a Ruby Studio production in partnership with Argenx. Hosted by public health and policy expert Dr. Martine Hackett, Untold Stories: Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition pushes the conversation within the rare disease community forward. Featuring guests living with MG, CIDP, myositis, SMA, and other rare autoimmune conditions, each episode explores hope, progress, and connection. How does research create new opportunities? How do shared experiences help light the way forward? How do we best show up for each other?
15:08 Holly Frey? Tune in to find out. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
15:18 Speaker 07 This is Colin Cowherd from the Colin Cowherd Podcast. Buy smart, drive for less, and trade for more. That's Toyota affordability. All starts with a great deal on an off-road Ready Tacoma or a half-ton Tundra to a Toyota's most capable and longest-lasting trucks. Built on a reputation for quality and reliability, Toyota trucks are known for holding their value, which could mean big savings when it's time for your next Toyota. For a great deal today to a great value tomorrow, shop toyota.com. Toyota, let's go places. Your business operates under pressure and you need control over your data, but IBM Research shows only 9% of companies have real oversight of their technology.
15:59 Speaker 07 IBM's Open Hybrid Cloud approach is designed to give you visibility with built-in governance tools, data sovereignty, and compliance reporting.
16:08 Tracy V. Wilson? It's another way IBM helps you stay in control of your data. Let's create smarter business. IBM. Visit ibm.com to learn more. Because Peter Kropotkin had escaped from prison in Russia and because his revolutionary and anarchist writings were somewhere between suspicious and illegal in a lot of places, he had been traveling under the name Levashov. In 1877, he went to Belgium for the International Workingmen's Association's International Congress and then the International Socialist Congress.
16:52 Tracy V. Wilson? While he was in Ghent for the second of these, police discovered his alias. Friends spotted police officers waiting for him outside of his hotel and then got him out of the country and back to England. He stayed there briefly before going to Paris. After one of his friends was arrested in a sting that was also apparently meant to include Kropotkin, he left again and went to Switzerland.
17:18 Holly Frey? Kropotkin was wanted not just because of his anarchist communist ideas. There were also anarchists who were using violence in pursuit of their social and political goals. In 1878, there were four different assassination attempts against European heads of state. Alfonso XII of Spain, Umberto I of Italy, and two different attempts on the life of Kaiser Wilhelm I of Germany. The assailants were anarchists and anarchist organizations and publications expressed their sympathy or support for them. Rumors started to spread that these attacks were an international conspiracy, possibly coordinated by the Jura Federation.
18:01 Tracy V. Wilson? There were other violent incidents as well, including bombings. Narodnaya Volja, or The People's Will, was formed in 1879. Some of this organization's leaders were anarchist revolutionaries, and its tactics included terrorism and a series of assassination attempts, eventually the successful assassination of Tsar Alexander II in 1881. In part one, we read from Kropotkin's writings about the goal of attaining, quote, "the greatest results with the most limited amount of civil war, the least number of victims, and a minimum of mutual embitterment." But he never disavowed this kind of political violence.
18:44 Tracy V. Wilson? There were other incidents that were more like massacres that he did criticize, but like, this was not the kind of thing that he really saw a need to try to disavow or disclaim. And after Alexander II's assassination, Kropotkin and his wife Sophie considered working with Narodnaya Volja.
19:03 Holly Frey? Sophie, or Sofia Grigorjevna, was a Jewish woman from Ukraine, and she married Peter Kropotkin in October of 1878. Kropotkin doesn't actually mention their meeting or their marriage in his memoir. Sort of like his offhand mention of being hospitalized for half of his first winter at the Kor of Pages that we talked about in part one, he just casually mentions his wife later on in the narrative. Like, everybody knows about her.
19:32 Tracy V. Wilson? Like, when did he get a wife?
19:33 Holly Frey? Yeah, she just kind of pops in. A number of sources describe Kropotkin as almost twice her age, but she was born in 1856. So when they got married, she would have been 22, and he was 36. Sophie was a teacher and a writer and a collaborator in her husband's work. They seemed to have had a happy marriage, but they were separated at various points when Peter was traveling or had to flee or was imprisoned.
20:01 Tracy V. Wilson? After the assassination of Alexander II, Kropotkin was expelled from Switzerland, something he believed had been done at Russia's request. He and his wife went to London, where they stayed for about a year. There wasn't much of an anarchist or revolutionary movement happening in London at that point, and they found that really isolating. So they went to France and they reconnected with the movement there. In 1882, Sophie's brother died, and that night, gendarme came to arrest Peter. It was not related to his brother's death. That was just when they showed up to try to take him into custody. He asked if he could stay with his wife until after his brother-in-law's funeral, and that was refused.
20:44 Tracy V. Wilson? Elise Reclu and his friends from Geneva came to stay with her.
20:49 Holly Frey? Kropotkin's arrest was part of a wave of arrests of suspected anarchists and members of the International Workingmen's Association, which was banned in France. He was tried and imprisoned in Lyon, and then he was moved to a prison in Clairvaux, along with 22 others, who had all been sentenced to more than a year in prison. In Clairvaux, Kropotkin got sick again. The prison was in a swampy area, and he got malaria, and he also developed scurvy. Sophie and their friends and allies continually petitioned for his release.
21:23 Tracy V. Wilson? In 1886, Peter's brother Alexander took his own life. The brothers had stopped corresponding after Peter had first left Russia because of the risks it would have posed to Alexander to be writing to this brother, who was basically a political exile at that point. But that did not really protect Alexander. He was exiled to Siberia under suspicion that he had helped with Peter's 1876 prison escape.
21:51 Tracy V. Wilson? After reconnecting, a lot of their writing was about science. And Peter described his brother as despairing because he knew that once he was released from exile, he would never be allowed to live in any of the university towns in Russia or Western Europe. He was survived by a wife and three children.
22:12 Holly Frey? Kropotkin was released from prison in 1886. And a year later, he and his wife welcomed a daughter Alexandra, named for Kropotkin's late brother. Kropotkin's experiences up to this point led him to condemn all prisons. And in 1887, he published a book titled "In Russian and French Prisons."
22:34 Tracy V. Wilson? While Kropotkin had been in prison, an anarchist movement had gotten underway in England, and he went there to join it. He had become one of Europe's foremost writers and thinkers on the subject of anarchism. And he also started to become connected to anarchists in North America in the wake of the Haymarket Affair, in which four men were executed after someone threw a bomb during a labor demonstration at Haymarket Square in Chicago. Kropotkin wrote letters condemning their death sentences and then stayed abreast of what was happening in the anarchist movement in the United States afterward.
23:12 Holly Frey? In 1890, Kropotkin wrote his first article on the subject of mutual aid, titled "Mutual Aid Among Animals," which was the start of a whole series of articles published in the journal "The 19th Century." In 1892, he published a book titled "The Conquest of Bread," which was originally a series of articles that appeared in "Le Révolte." This book laid out Kropotkin's anarchist communist ideas and also countered common objections to those ideas. At various points in the text, Kropotkin rhetorically asks the question and then answers it. The first chapters are more focused on political philosophy, and the later chapters are more
23:54 Holly Frey? practical, detailing how to power a revolution and what would happen afterward, with sections on food, dwellings, clothing, and ways and means.
24:05 Tracy V. Wilson? He almost plays devil's advocate against his own argument so that then he can address those devil's advocate questions.
24:14 Tracy V. Wilson? Kropotkin was aware of various utopian social experiments that were underpinned with communist ideals, but were ultimately unsuccessful. We've talked about various of them on the show before. And he thought that one reason for some of these failures was that a lot of these experiments were very austere, and a lot of them had a very sharp focus on rules, or religious or moral standards. Their leaders could be very controlling. In answer to this, The Conquest of Bread also has chapters on the need for luxury and agreeable work, and the need for people to be able to make free agreements with one another.
24:54 Holly Frey? This all rested on the core idea of everyone having value. Quote, "We must recognize and loudly proclaim that everyone, whatever his grade in the old society, whether strong or weak, capable or incapable, has before everything the right to live, and that society is bound to share amongst all, without exception, the means of existence at its disposal. We must acknowledge this and proclaim it aloud and act up to it."
25:27 Tracy V. Wilson? He went on to say, quote, "This cannot be brought about by acts of parliament, but only by taking immediate and effective possession of all that is necessary to ensure the well-being of all. This is the only really scientific way of going to work, the only way which can be understood and desired by the mass of the people. We must take possession in the name of the people, of the granaries, of the shops full of clothing and the dwelling houses. Nothing must be wasted. We must organize without delay a way to feed the hungry, to satisfy all wants, to meet all needs, to produce not for the special benefit of this one or that one, but so as
26:11 Tracy V. Wilson? to ensure to society as a whole, its life and further development." Enough of ambiguous words like "the right to work", with which the people were misled in 1848, and which are still resorted to with the hope of misleading them. Let us have the courage to recognize that well-being for all henceforward possible must be realized.
26:37 Holly Frey? Okay, if you're wondering at this point, what does this have to do with bread specifically? Here's more. Quote, "If we wish for a social revolution, it is no doubt, first of all, to give bread to everyone, to transform this execrable society in which we can every day see capable workmen dangling their arms for want of an employer who will exploit them. Women and children wandering shelterless at night. Whole families reduced to dry bread. Men, women, and children dying for want of care and even for want of food. It is to put an end to these inequities that we rebel. But we expect more from the revolution. We see that the worker compelled to struggle painfully
27:22 Holly Frey? for bare existence is reduced to ignore the higher delights, the highest within man's reach of science and especially of scientific discovery, of art and especially of artistic creation. It is in order to obtain for all of us joys that are now reserved to a few. In order to give leisure and the possibility of developing everyone's intellectual capacities that the social revolution must guarantee daily bread to all. After bread has been secured, leisure is the supreme aim."
27:57 Tracy V. Wilson? To move on from this book, in 1897, Kropotkin made his first of two visits to North America. He was invited for the Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Toronto and then spent 10 weeks in Canada. From there, he went to Detroit for the meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and then to the Conference of the National Geographic Society in Washington DC. He also gave various lectures and speeches, many of which were republished and distributed by anarchist organizations in North America. On this trip, he also went to Massachusetts, where he admired a communal dining room that was organized by less affluent students at Harvard, and to New York, where he made arrangements
28:42 Tracy V. Wilson? to start publishing an autobiography in installments in The Atlantic. That autobiography was Memoirs of a Revolutionist, which we have been reading from over these two episodes. It was published as a book in 1899.
28:59 Holly Frey? That same year that that book came out, Kropotkin also published Fields, Factories, and Workshops, which applied the anarchist idea of decentralization to industry. He also examined how this would work through a scientific lens, and he discussed work as a form of art, with practical learning an important part of a person's education.
29:20 Tracy V. Wilson? In 1899, another thing that happened was the Socialist International, also called the Second International, was founded. It was one of the successors to the International Workingmen's Association, or First International. Kropotkin was part of debates within the Federation about the use of political action, meaning participation and advocacy through existing political systems. Kropotkin thought that political action could lead to very minor changes at most. Anarchists were banned from the Federation in 1896.
29:57 Holly Frey? In 1901, Kropotkin made his second visit to North America, this time at the invitation of the Lowell Institute, which had been founded in Boston, to provide educational opportunities to the public, regardless of race, education, or economic status. Kropotkin gave lectures on both Russian literature and anarchism in and around Boston, and then went to New York, where Emma Goldman arranged many of his appearances. Kropotkin got the flu during this tour, and he had to take some time off before going on to Pittsburgh, and then to Chicago, where he stayed with Jane Addams and spent a week living at Hull House. We have talked about Jane Addams and Hull House on the podcast before, and another previous subject,
30:41 Holly Frey? Dr. Alice Hamilton, was living there at the time. She said that everyone there came to love him. While in Chicago, Kropotkin also visited the tomb of the Haymarket Murders.
30:54 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah, we haven't really mentioned it, but like, a lot of people described Kropotkin as like, really friendly and happy and personable. People seemed to just like him wherever he went. Four months after Kropotkin left the United States, President William McKinley was assassinated by anarchist Leon Zulgitz.
31:15 Tracy V. Wilson? Rumors spread that this assassination was a plot that had been orchestrated by Kropotkin and Goldman. Kropotkin was deeply upset by this, especially when people that he had worked with while in the United States were jailed in the wake of these allegations. That November, he had a heart attack.
31:34 Holly Frey? Anarchists had carried out multiple other assassinations between those of Alexander II and William McKinley. Those included President Sadi Carnot of France in 1884, Premier Antonio Canovas del Castillo of Spain in 1897, Empress Elizabeth of Austria in 1898, and King Umberto of Italy in 1900. Kropotkin's visit to the US in 1901 was his last, since in 1903, Congress passed a law banning anarchists from entering the country.
32:10 Tracy V. Wilson? Kropotkin's book Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution was published in 1902 and is often described as this masterpiece, and we will get to that after a sponsor break.
32:22 Speaker 06 Cash Flow Crunch? OnDeck's small business line of credit gives your business immediate access to funds, up to $200,000, right when you need it. Cover seasonal dips, manage payroll, restock inventory, or tackle unexpected expenses without missing a beat. With flexible draws, transparent pricing, and control over repayment, get funded quickly and confidently. Apply today at ondeck.com. Funds could be available as soon as tomorrow. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.
32:53 Holly Frey? A rare disease diagnosis can change your life, but it doesn't have to define your future. Tune in for season seven of Untold Stories: Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition, a Ruby Studio production in partnership with Argenx. Hosted by public health and policy expert Dr. Martine Hackett, Untold Stories: Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition pushes the conversation within the rare disease community forward. Featuring guests living with MG, CIDP, myositis, SMA, and other rare autoimmune diseases.
33:24 Holly Frey? Immune conditions. Each episode explores hope, progress and connection. How does research create new opportunities? How do shared experiences help light the way forward? How do we best show up for each other? Tune in to find out. Listen on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
33:48 Speaker 06 Hey, what's up? This is Kelvin Washington from The I Couple with Rob Parker and Kelvin Washington. Buy smart, drive for less and trade for more. That's Toyota affordability and it starts with a great deal on off-road-ready Tacoma or half-ton Tundra. Two of Toyota's longest-lasting trucks, combining power for work, tech for adventures, and style in between. Built on a reputation for quality and reliability, Toyota trucks are known for holding their value, which could mean big savings when it's time for your next Toyota. So get a great deal today and a great value tomorrow. Shop toyota.com for more. Toyota, let's go places. I'm Malcolm Gladwell, host of Smart Talks with IBM. I spoke with Dr.
34:30 Speaker 06 Laura Jayhai of Cleveland Clinic about how advanced computing is helping shorten the path from medical discovery to treatment. The moment that there is a compound that someone in a lab thinks it would be effective to treat a certain disease, it takes about 10 to 13 years from that moment to when that drug is on a shelf for a patient. A big part of that gap could be computationally solved. Better simulation of compounds, designing drug trials that are more efficient, that would finish faster. That was the motivation to bring computational tools and technology closer to biomedical researchers.
35:13 Speaker 06 Learn more about how Cleveland Clinic and IBM are using AI and quantum computing to revolutionize biomedical research at ibm.com.
35:22 Tracy V. Wilson? Com/smarttalks.
35:32 Tracy V. Wilson? Peter Kropotkin's 1902 book, Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution, grew out of the work and experiences that we talked about in part one of this episode. In a lot of ways, it feels like the whole episode has been working up to this book. It was also a response to some of the scientific and social writing of the time. Charles Darwin had published on the origin of species by means of natural selection in 1859. Other scientists had interpreted Darwin's work primarily in terms of survival of the fittest, meaning that life on Earth was rooted in continual struggle with only the strongest
36:11 Tracy V. Wilson? surviving. There's some of that in Darwin's work, but like, people kind of took it to an extreme. Social Darwinists had also applied the idea to humans, framing human groups and human races in a hierarchy with the strongest and best being the white men. Social Darwinism was explicitly racist and ableist and was used to justify eugenics and laissez-faire capitalism. It basically framed the poor as less fit. In 1888, Thomas Henry Huxley published The Struggle for Existence in Human Society, which also incorporated Thomas
36:52 Tracy V. Wilson? Malthus's theory that population growth will always outpace the amount of food available. This essay framed human existence as one of inevitable relentless struggle, and Kropotkin's mutual aid was a response to it. Mutual aid was also inspired in part by a lecture given by Russian zoology professor Carl Kessler at the Russian Congress of Naturalists in January 1880. Kessler argued that there was a law of struggle in the animal world, but also a law of mutual aid, and that cooperation was more important to survival than competition. This was a short introductory address, so
37:34 Tracy V. Wilson? it didn't include a lot of detail, and it had only been printed in Russian. So the ideas in it had not really spread beyond the Russian scientific community. The first chapters of mutual aid discuss mutual aid among non-human animals. Kropotkin notes that there is violence and conflict in the animal world, but he argues that there is as much or even more mutual support, mutual aid, and mutual defense. And then he gives numerous examples. We are not saying them all by any stretch, but there are things like ants working collectively to build nests and rear young and forage for food and raise aphids.
38:18 Tracy V. Wilson? He notes that ants maintain this social structure by punishing ones who violate it, like ants will kill an ant that has food and refuses to share it with other ants that are hungry, or they will drive that ant out of the nest. He writes, quote, "If we knew no other facts from animal life than what we know about the ants and the termites, we already might safely conclude that mutual aid, which leads to mutual confidence, the first condition for courage, and individual initiative, the first condition for intellectual progress, are two factors infinitely more important than mutual struggle and the evolution of the animal kingdom."
39:01 Holly Frey? Kropotkin describes cooperation among the lower animals, like the social insects, as driven by instinct. But in higher animals, like mammals and other vertebrates, he attributes it at least partly to reason. His examples include pelicans fishing together by paddling together in a half-circle, driving the fish ahead of them toward the shore; birds migrating together and singing in concert; social mammals playing together for pleasure, including animals of different species; and in numerous species all across the animal kingdom, sentries keeping watch to warn others of threats. He wrote that even rats, which fight each other in people's cellars, quote, "are sufficiently
39:46 Holly Frey? intelligent not to quarrel when they plunder our larders, but to aid one another in their plundering expeditions and migrations, and even to feed their invalids."
39:57 Tracy V. Wilson? He writes, quote, "All these mammals live in societies and nations, sometimes numbering hundreds of thousands of individuals. Although now, after three centuries of gunpowder civilization, we find but the debris of the immense aggregations of old. How trifling in comparison with them are the numbers of the carnivores, and how false, therefore, is the view of those who speak of the animal world as if nothing were to be seen in it but lions and hyenas plunging their bleeding teeth into the flesh of their victims. One might as well imagine that the whole of human life is nothing but a succession of war massacres."
40:40 Tracy V. Wilson? But then after that, he notes that even the carnivores cooperate, starting with wolves, jackals, and hyenas hunting together in packs.
40:49 Holly Frey? And in the non-human animals most like us, being the monkeys and apes, quote, "It is hardly needful to say that those mammals which stand at the very top of the animal world and most approach man by their structure and intelligence are eminently sociable. All things considered, it must be said that sociability, action in common, mutual protection, and a high development of those feelings which are the necessary outcome of social life are characteristic of most monkeys and apes. From the smallest species to the biggest ones, sociability is a rule to which we know but a few exceptions."
41:29 Tracy V. Wilson? He goes on to say, quote, "Life in societies enables the feeblest insects, the feeblest birds, and the feeblest mammals to resist or protect themselves from the most terrible birds and beasts of prey. It permits longevity. It enables the species to rear its progeny with the least waste of energy and to maintain its numbers, albeit a very slow birth rate. It enables the gregarious animals to migrate in search of new abodes. Therefore, while fully admitting that force, swiftness, protective colors, cunningness, and endurance to hunger and cold, which are mentioned by Darwin and Wallace, are so many qualities making the
42:11 Tracy V. Wilson? individual or the species the fittest under certain circumstances, we maintain that, under any circumstances, sociability is the greatest advantage in the struggle for life."
42:25 Holly Frey? Kropotkin eventually moves from cooperation among non-human animals to cooperation in human societies. And just to be clear here, he uses some very outdated language describing mutual aid among savages, and then barbarians, and then medieval cities, and then among ourselves, kind of walking through what he perceives as the timeline of development. The point that he was making was that humans have worked together and helped each other as human social structures have evolved from societies that were organized around a whole tribe or clan, those are the ones he called the savages, to societies in which smaller villages became the core unit, those were, by his definition, the barbarians,
43:09 Holly Frey? to the development of medieval cities with governments, to the creation of whole nations the way we live today.
43:16 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah, he apparently criticized this language later on, but he continued to use it because it was still like the language that was in use at the time. He continues to give lots of examples through these chapters. He acknowledges that there are limits to what we know about a lot of indigenous communities of the past who faced warfare and genocide, and were sometimes written about primarily by the people who had tried to exterminate them. But he also includes examples from indigenous hunting and gathering peoples that still exist today, like the San peoples of Southern Africa, who are also known as the Bushmen. He writes that before many of them were forced to abandon their way of
44:00 Tracy V. Wilson? life, they quote, "lived in small tribes or clans, sometimes federated together," that they used to hunt in common and divided the spoil without quarreling, that they never abandoned their wounded, and displayed strong affection to their comrades.
44:15 Holly Frey? Kropotkin writes of the, quote, "barbarian village communities," that they were, quote, "not only a union for guaranteeing to each one his fair share in the common land, but also a union for common culture, for mutual support in all possible forms, for protection from violence, and for a further development of knowledge, national bonds, and moral conceptions. And every change in the judicial, military, educational, or economical manners had to be decided at the folk moods of the village, the tribe, or the confederation."
44:49 Tracy V. Wilson? When it comes to the medieval city, he writes about the common people trying to free themselves from feudal lords, saying, quote, "No period of history could better illustrate the constructive powers of the popular masses than the 10th and 11th centuries, when the fortified villages and marketplaces representing so many oases among the feudal forests began to free themselves from their lords' yoke, and slowly elaborated the future city organization. But unhappily, this is a period about which historical information is especially scarce. We know the results, but little has reached us about the means by which they were achieved.
45:31 Tracy V. Wilson? The whole process of liberation progressed by a series of imperceptible acts of devotion to the common cause, accomplished by men who came out of the masses, by unknown heroes whose very names have not been preserved by history."
45:46 Holly Frey? Kropotkin also describes medieval cities as having overlapping systems of support and mutual aid. Quote, "The medieval city thus appears as a double federation, of all households united into small territorial unions, the street, the parish, the section, and of individuals united by oath into guilds according to their professions, the former being a produce of the village-community origin of the city, while the second is a subsequent growth called to life by new conditions."
46:17 Tracy V. Wilson? From there, Kropotkin moves into the present and the growth of military states, which most of us are living in today. Even if it doesn't have a standing military, there's probably other military presence there. He believed that as states became more powerful, developed these militaries and social structures, communities found new ways to collectively help one another. This included the rise of labor unions and their mutual aid during strikes, and mutual aid organizations among people living in slums.
46:51 Holly Frey? In Kropotkin's point of view, this need to help is an innate part of us. Quote, "The sophisms of the brain cannot resist the mutual aid feeling, because this feeling has been nurtured by thousands of years of human social life and hundreds of thousands of years of pre-human life in societies." And it extends to clubs and organizations that are all about enjoying things in life, or study, research, education, or art, not just helping people with basics of survival.
47:23 Tracy V. Wilson? The book Mutual Aid became a foundational text of anarchist communism, even though it doesn't include the terms anarchism or anarchy anywhere in its 375 pages, and the word communism is only in there seven times. Four of those times are in descriptions of indigenous social structures as quote, "primitive communism," and two of them are a book title and that book's entry in the index, which leaves one use of the word communism, which was again to describe an existing social structure. This is really a work of zoology and anthropology. But the examples throughout the book and the perspective on them are examples of
48:07 Tracy V. Wilson? the ideas of anarchist communism in action.
48:11 Holly Frey? There are also passages like this, quote, "In short, neither the crushing powers of the centralized state nor the teachings of mutual hatred and pitiless struggle which came, adorned with the attributes of science from obliging philosophers and sociologists, could weed out the feeling of human solidarity, deeply lodged in men's understanding and heart, because it has been nurtured by all our preceding evolution." What was the outcome of evolution since its earliest stages cannot be overpowered by one of the aspects of that same evolution. And the need of mutual aid and support, which had lately taken refuge in the narrow
48:51 Holly Frey? circle of the family, or the slum neighbors, in the village, or the secret union of workers, reasserts itself again, even in our modern society, and claims its rights to be, as it has always been, the chief leader towards further progress. Such are the conclusions which we are necessarily brought to when we carefully ponder over each of the groups of facts briefly enumerated in the last two chapters.
49:19 Tracy V. Wilson? To move on from this book, a revolution swept through Russia in 1905 as people demanded political reforms, including the creation of a Russian parliament. Nicholas II eventually issued the October Manifesto, which promised the creation of a popularly elected legislative body, the Duma, as well as other reforms. Some people, including Kropotkin, thought this manifesto did not go nearly far enough. This inspired him to look for lessons from the French Revolution, and he published a book on that in 1909.
49:56 Holly Frey? When World War I began in the 1910s, Kropotkin took the stance of supporting the Allied Powers, which many anarchists saw as a betrayal. Militarized states were antithetical to the core ideas of anarchism. But Kropotkin thought that the authoritarianism of Germany and the Central Powers was the much bigger threat. He also thought that if the Allies won the war, France might act as an inspiration for social equality and liberty around the world. This led to divisions within the anarchist movement.
50:30 Tracy V. Wilson? Then, in March of 1917, after years of wartime deprivation and military defeats, Tsar Nicholas II abdicated the throne, which marked the end of Tsarist rule in Russia. Peter Kropotkin, who was now 74, went back to Russia with his family. They arrived there that May. He was so eager to get there that he left while the war was still ongoing. Like, they were, they were traveling through hostile waters to get there. He had been meeting and corresponding with Russian anarchists and other revolutionaries for years, especially after that 1905 revolution.
51:12 Tracy V. Wilson? He had been nicknamed "the grandfather of the Russian Revolution." After he arrived back in Russia, he played a role in setting the direction of the provisional government, although he turned down a cabinet-level position of Minister of Education.
51:29 Holly Frey? Kropotkin had immense hopes for what this revolution could mean for Russia. The provisional government established basic civil rights, including free speech rights and the rights to form unions, bargain collectively, and to strike. There was a flourishing of communal efforts, mutual aid organizations, and unions, which Kropotkin hoped would lead to a decentralized, stateless society. But there was also ongoing unrest and food shortages, and some of that led to food riots.
52:01 Tracy V. Wilson? Then in November of 1917, or late October in the old-style calendar, the Bolshevik Party, led by Vladimir Lenin, overthrew the provisional government. Tensions rose between the Bolsheviks and the anti-Bolsheviks, which led to the Russian Civil War between the Bolshevik Red Army and the opposing White Army. In March of 1918, Russia signed the Treaty of Brest-Litvozhsk with the Central Powers and withdrew from World War I. That July, the Bolsheviks murdered Nicholas II and his family. The Russian Civil War ended with a Bolshevik victory in 1920, and Russia and three other
52:43 Tracy V. Wilson? socialist republics formed the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in 1922.
52:50 Holly Frey? Kropotkin said of the Bolshevik takeover, quote, "This buries the revolution." A lot of Lenin's rhetoric paralleled Kropotkin's own writing with a vision of decentralized Soviets led by workers and peasants. There was so much overlap that outside of Russia, there were people who thought the Bolsheviks were anarchists. But Kropotkin saw Lenin as a dictator, and the Bolsheviks reminded him of the Committee of Public Safety in the French Revolution. They had suppressed the democratically-elected Constituent Assembly and had carried out a violent campaign of repression, hostage-taking, and executions known as the Red Terror.
53:30 Holly Frey? Kropotkin corresponded with Lenin and tried to discourage all of this, but to no avail. He described Russia as a Soviet republic in name only, not ruled by worker-led Soviets, but by party committees. Lenin called Kropotkin's advice stupid.
53:49 Tracy V. Wilson? Kropotkin spent the last years of his life in Dmytrov, north of Moscow, where an anarchist cooperative had formed. And there, he worked on a history of ethics and some of his other unfinished writing. Accounts of his last years describe him as devastated by the rise of the Bolsheviks and the civil war. He died on February 8, 1921, at the age of 78.
54:15 Holly Frey? His funeral was massive, with Emma Goldman delivering a eulogy. It was the last anarchist gathering in Russia until after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. His work continues to be very influential today. People still cite that 1911 Britannica article, and the conquest of bread was a big influence on the Occupy movement, for example.
54:38 Tracy V. Wilson? So that's Peter Kropotkin. I'm sure we'll have things to discuss on Friday.
54:43 Holly Frey? Yup. Do we have listener mail?
54:46 Tracy V. Wilson? I do have listener mail. Katie wrote to say, "Hello, history pals. I've mentally composed so many emails to you over the years that don't make it to the digital page, but after listening to your recent episode on Hercules' Posey, I had to stop and finally write to you. There is a restaurant in Washington DC called Founding Farmers and Distillers, and they commissioned portraits of Hercules and Old Doll that are on display at their Massachusetts Avenue restaurant." And then there is a link to the Founding Farmers and Distillers webpage. "Attached are photos of the portrait and the plaque about the artist and the intent behind the paintings. These paintings are massive, easily five feet tall, as my memory serves, so it's hard to get a photo, a good photo, all in one frame,
55:31 Tracy V. Wilson? but they're stunning and full of detail. Aside from the beautiful art, I remember the food and cocktails there to be excellent. It would definitely be worth going if you're in the area. I am in, I imagine Holly is already perusing the menus." For Pet Tax, I'm including pictures of one of our cats, Draper, who was hiding so well in plain sight that we looked for him for 15 minutes before laughing at our oversight, the joys of having black cats. He's a sweet boy with a big personality powered by canned food and fuzzy blankets. He was a ball of nerves when we adopted him from the rescue, but he has relaxed into a sweet and curious guy, but is still prone to hide under the bed sometimes when life is a bit too much relatable, to be honest. I hope you are each finding moments of joy in these difficult times.
56:16 Tracy V. Wilson? The work you do on this podcast each week is deeply appreciated, not only for its content, but for the humanity you bring to your subjects. Wishing you all the best. Katie. So, yes, we have pictures. This portrait of Hercules. I am very curious about this restaurant. The next time in Washington DC, maybe I'll manage to make it over there. But we have a picture of a cat tree, which looks like it's empty. It is not. There is a black cat in the shadows there.
56:46 Holly Frey? I am, incidentally, looking at the cocktail menu right now and going, ooh.
56:49 Tracy V. Wilson? Does it look great? If we ever head there for work for some reason, maybe we can go together.
56:56 Holly Frey? Yeah.
56:56 Tracy V. Wilson? If you would like to send us a note, we're at [email protected] . You can find our show notes, including the names of all these books by Peter Kropotkin that we have referenced and read from over these two episodes. That's at missedinhistory.com. And you can subscribe to the show on the iHeartRadio app and anywhere else you like to get your podcasts.
57:23 Tracy V. Wilson? Stuff You Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
57:38 Speaker 06 From the Odd Couple with Rob Parker and Kelvin Washington, buy smart, drive for less and trade for more. That's Toyota affordability and it starts with a great deal on off-road ready Tacoma or half-ton Tundra. Two of Toyota's longest-lasting trucks, combining power for work, tech for adventures, and style in between. Built on a reputation for quality and reliability, Toyota trucks are known for holding their value, which could mean big savings when it's time for your next Toyota. So get a great deal today and a great value tomorrow. Shop toyota.com for more. Toyota, let's go places. OnDeck is built to back small businesses like yours. Whether you're buying equipment, expanding your team, or bridging cash flow gaps,
58:21 Speaker 06 OnDeck's loans up to $400,000 help make it happen fast. Rated A+ by the Better Business Bureau and earning thousands of five-star Trust Pilot reviews, OnDeck delivers funding you can count on. Apply in minutes at ondeck.com. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.
58:43 Speaker 03 At Humana, our Medicare Advantage plans are easy to understand and easy on your wallet, like offering more benefits than you'd get from original Medicare alone and including dental, vision, and hearing coverage in every plan. And the best part is every plan has a $0 or low monthly plan premium, which makes it easier to save, too. So this Medicare planning season, plan well with Humana. Learn more at gethumana.com. Humana is a Medicare Advantage, HMO, and PPO organization with a Medicare contract. Enrollment in any Humana plan depends on contract renewal. How do you know that Claude won't become manipulative?
59:18 Tracy V. Wilson? This is a constant worry.
59:21 Speaker 07 And you can actually catch the model thinking, I think X is actually true, but I'm going to tell the user Y.
59:26 Speaker 03 I'm Walter Isaacson. On my new podcast, The Builders, I'm going inside the minds of the people shaping our future. Listen to The Builders starting October 13th on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
59:43 Speaker 00 This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.
Previous Peter Kropotkin's Mutual Aid, Part 1 Next Behind the Scenes Minis: Oh, Kropotkin! Page updated October 30, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated