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Peter Kropotkin Ecologist, Philosopher and Revolutionary

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Peter Kropotkin Ecologist, Philosopher and Revolutionary Peter Kropotkin Ecologist, Philosopher and Revolutionary Graham Purchase A thesis submitted to The School of Philosophy The University of New South Wales Sydney Australia in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2003 Certificate of Originality I hereby declare that this submission is my own and to the best of my knowledge it contains no materials previously published or written by another person, nor material which to a substantial extent has been accepted for the award of any other degree or diploma at UNSW or any other educational institution, except where due acknowledgment is made in this thesis. Any contribution made to the research by others, with whom I have worked at UNSW or elsewhere, is explicitly in the thesis. I also declare that the intellectual content of this thesis the product of my own work, except to the extent that assistance from others in the projects design and conception or in style, presentation and linguistic expression is acknowledged. (Signed)…………………………… Contents Chapter 1 The Life and Times Peters Kropotkin Chapter 2 Kropotkin and The Birth of Ecology Chapter 3 The Mutual Aid Theories Chapter 4 Evolution and Environment: The Weismann-Kropotkin debate Chapter 5 Kropotkin’s Social Anarchism: Its Environmental Dimensions Chapter 6 Anarchism and Organisation Chapter 7 Progressivism Chapter 8 Scientific Metaphores: Struggle and Cooperation Bibliography 3 Abstract Peter Kropotkin: Ecologist, Philosopher and Revolutionary By Graham Purchase The Problem Investigated: This thesis is conceived as: [1] a work of scholarship and exegesis [2] an examination of more recent scientific works which use similar metaphors or concepts, eg. Cooperation, that are central to Kropotkin’s thinking. As a work of scholarship and exegesis this thesis is an attempt to present the many areas/dimensions of Kropotkin’s philosophy and thinking in a systematic way. I do not believe that this has been attempted previously in any language. Although his political, social and economic theories have generated a substantial secondary literature, Kropotkin’s scientific works and philosophy of science, with the exception of his famous book, Mutual Aid, have received virtually no attention. In consequence of this the emphasis of this work will be upon his scientific writings. However, his political writings will also be examined as well as related to his broad scientific outlook. In addition to evaluating Kropotkin’s scientific works in relation to his period I also discuss them in relation to contemporary debates. Although not strictly true, the second half of this thesis is not a work of historical scholarship but an attempt to bring together the ideas of scientists that in one way or another support a Kropotkinesque characterisation of natural processes. Although Kropotkin is often rightly regarded as a founder of modern environmentalism, this is difficult to substantiate from his purely political and social 4 writings. Thus I will attempt to present the core concepts of Kropotkin’s anarchism in a coherent and succinct way with an emphasis upon showing how they relate to contemporary debates and perspectives within the environmental movement. The Procedures Followed: The thesis will be introduced biographically. This seemed the best way to introduce Kropotkin’s works to the reader and place them in relation to one another and in their historical context. Thus the primary purpose of this historical section is to contextualise the great diversity of works by Kropotkin. As I do not have a science background, but also for reasons of clarity, the remainder of the analysis shall be based upon the least technical and most accessible scientific literature in the various disciplines investigated. I will begin by systematically collecting, cataloguing and analysing both Kropotkin’s works as well as the secondary literature and then proceed to make some overall sense of them and then relate them to contemporary debates upon process and organisation in nature and society. The General Results Obtained: My research has revealed a large body of scientific work by Kropotkin. My analysis of them shows that he had a deep understanding of the role of mutualism, symbiosis, dynamism, group and social behaviour etc., in relation to physical and biological processes. His ideas, although necessarily containing errors, are broadly, as well as in many detailed aspects, consistent with the findings of professional, though often unorthodox, scientists of the present day. The main faults of Kropotkin’s approach was a fundamental failure to appreciate the role of territories and hierarchies in animal groups and his excessive progressivism. 5 My research also reveals how Kropotkin’s social vision, although somewhat utopian, can be sympathetically interpreted in terms of modern environmentalist perspectives. The Major Conclusions Reached: Kropotkin’s diverse works in science and social theory when presented systematically reveals that he is a philosopher of considerable interest in respect to both contemporary and historical debates concerning sociality and its influence upon the evolution of life on Earth. 6 Chapter One The Life and Ideas of Peter Kropotkin Prince Peter Kropotkin was born in 1842 to an ancient aristocratic family whose line stretches back to the Viking founders of Moscow. His mother, who is honoured in his Memoirs for her great warmth and compassion, unfortunately died when he was very young. His father, Kropotkin relates, was rarely present and a pathetically conservative man who had lived a cloistered military life. A strict disciplinarian, he ruled his children by fear and desired that all of his sons should follow a military career. The only toys he ever provided to them were a rifle and a sentry box. What might have been a somewhat barren and emotionally starved childhood and youth was to a great extent compensated through Peter's strong emotional and intellectual relationship with his older brother Alexander.1 The passage of his early life was finally sealed at the age of eight when Tsar Nicholas I became momentarily enchanted with the little boy at a ball. The emperor decreed that he be inducted into the Corps de Pages. This was then the most prestigious military academy in Russia. It not only supplied personal attendants to the imperial family but also secured an excellent and extremely lucrative career at court or in the military. Peter rapidly came to detest the military regime of the academy, which imposed discipline like a regular military unit. The academy provided, however, excellent teachers and a surprisingly wide and liberal education. Peter was thus able to endure a life-style which would have proved intolerable had he 1 For an account of Peter's childhood relationship with his brother see the first few chapters of M. Miller, Kropotkin, Chicago; University of Chicago Press, 1976. This book originated from the author's Ph. D. thesis on the formative years of Kropotkin's life. 7 not been able to retreat into a private intellectual world that he lovingly shared with his brother. Despite frequent brushes with authority, Peter graduated in 1862, first in his class, winning thereby the position of page de chambre to the Emperor. This position involved close personal contact with Tsar Alexander II. From the viewpoint of the society into which Peter had been born, such honours would have been the envy of his peers. Peter, however, found that he could not bring himself to respect the Tsar and was stifled by the petty intrigues of court life. Peter would dearly have loved to withdraw from military life and continue his mathematical studies at university. His father, however, would have refused to support his son through university had Peter chosen to give up such an obviously promising military career. He had no choice but to continue along the path set for him, but he did not pursue it in the way that his father would have liked or his peers expected. Prudence demanded that he enter one of the élite regiments surrounding the Court. It was, however, a special privilege of the graduates of his academy to choose any branch of the military service. His adventurous and rebellious character led him to apply to the Siberian regiment, selecting the Mounted Cossacks of the Amur. Siberia was even more remote in the mid-nineteenth century than it is today. It was not in any way considered a desirable place for a young prince to go. The regiment was a newly formed and highly disreputable one. Such a choice rather blatantly exhibited a conscious wish to end a more than promising military career. It was only through impressing the commander of the school with his bravery and organisational capabilities during a fire that he was ever granted permission to go to Siberia. Apart from his need to rebel, Peter disliked city life, desired to live amongst the people and was strongly motivated to do something useful. He thought that there would be useful things to do at the frontier of an expanding Russian empire. He 8 hoped that he would find solace, freedom and adventure in the great and unexplored wilderness of North-East Asia. As early as 1855 Tsar Alexander II told an assembly of Moscow nobles that it was better to abolish serfdom from above than to wait for it to abolish itself from below. The Act of Emancipation of February 1861, which was the Tsar's personal initiative, constituted the official transition from the feudal to the capitalist regime. Although the peasant reforms did absolutely nothing by way of raising the living standards of the peasantry (in fact quite the reverse), it was regarded by even the most ardent revolutionaries of the time as an enormous step forward. Kropotkin, in his childhood, had sympathised with Herzen's liberalism and was actually at the Tsar's side whilst the reforms of 1861 were being conceived and implemented.
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