The Conclusion of the Conquest of The Conquest of Bread
The end of the book came almost as a surprise. Chapter 16 is very short and is mostly focused on a gross misunderstanding of the meaning of “specialization.”
Full show notes here.
Chapter 17 is longer and largely seems to repeat the same nonsense Kropotkin threw at us in earlier chapters: everyone will stop what they’re doing and farm, essentially.
As I was studying these last two chapters, I reached the end of chapter 17 and was surprised that there was nothing more. Kropotkin has failed to make any point that seems significant, while still not violating some major tenet of economic theory.
The intro quote for this one is one I have alluded to many times. I was worried that simply ignoring these works was giving them too short of shrift, but after finishing this one, I find myself agreeing with and reiterating the positions of Mises and Rothbard: there is nothing here worth the time it takes to read it.
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Return to the table of contents for this book critique.
Intro quote is from Rothbard’s essay collection “Egalitarianism as a Revolt Against Nature and Other Essays”
https://mises.org/online-book/egalitarianism-revolt-against-nature-and-other-essays/12-anarcho-communism
The Jeff Riggenbach essay I mentioned is here:
https://mises.org/mises-daily/anarchism-peter-kropotkin
Even if Kropotkin himself isn’t worth reading in toto, Riggenbach generally is.
Intro music by Praz Khanal, courtesy Pixabay:
https://pixabay.com/users/prazkhanal-24653570/
Thumbnail image edited from a photo by Roger Starnes Sr.:
https://unsplash.com/@rstar50