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.
These two chapters are both very short. First, Kropotkin argues that economic calculation or understanding should start with what people need, and then move on to production. Oddly enough, he has a bit of a point here, but unfortunately, he carries it off into one of his bizarre and flatly wrong tangents again.
He ends up arguing that the division of labor is destructive to prosperity. He wanders off in a couple of weird directions that are clearly counter to reality, but that fact doesn’t stop him.
Full notes here.
This video is available on Odysee, YouTube, and BitChute.
This episode’s intro quote is from a talk by Shawn Ritenour:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7bP4Mw3uk1A
Intro music by MFCC, courtesy Pixabay:
https://pixabay.com/users/mfcc-28627740/
References:
Mises, Human Action:
https://mises.org/library/book/human-action
Rothbard, Man, Economy, and State:
https://mises.org/library/book/man-economy-and-state-power-and-market
My article containing intros to Mises’s Calculation Problem, Hayek’s Knowledge Problem, and the concept of Pareto-Superiorty:
https://mises.org/mises-wire/mmt-feeding-economically-inferior-machine
Mises, Money, Method, and the Market Process:
https://mises.org/online-book/money-method-and-market-process/trade/10-autarky-and-its-consequences
Hoppe, Marxist and Austrian Class Analysis:
https://mises.org/mises-wire/marxist-and-austrian-class-analysis
Chapter 13 is titled “The Collectivist Wages System” and it is a tissue of faulty comparisons, bad conclusions stapled to obsolete theories, and nonsensical figures attached to shifting goalposts.
Chapter 12 is supposed to be Kropotkin’s answers to objections, but (perhaps unsurprisingly) he only goes after a few cursory criticisms and even his answers to those are seriously flawed.
Full show notes here.
Practically every argument Kropotkin makes is even better satisfied by private property, free markets, and voluntary exchange.
There are even some terrifying positions he takes that basically confirm that his “voluntary associations” are simply the coercive state with a prettier name. They have the potential to be even more tyrannical than the most callous private employer.
This video available on Odysee, YouTube, and BitChute.
Intro quote is from “Kropotkin’s Ethics and the Public Good,” by Williamson M. Evers:
https://mises.org/journal-libertarian-studies/kropotkins-ethics-and-publc-good
Article reference:
“Sweatshops: A Way Out of Poverty,” an interview with Benjamin Powell
https://mises.org/mises-daily/sweatshops-way-out-poverty
Intro music edited from a piece by Music for Video, courtesy Pixabay:
https://pixabay.com/users/music_for_video-22579021/
A man was walking through a lonely forest one day, when he saw a tiny sapling. “This sapling,” he said, “will someday become a great bush that will grow many delicious berries. Perhaps I should try to make sure it survives.”
More bizarre economic ignorance from Kropotkin in these two chapters, which demonstrate his inability to comprehend the concept of trade-offs–specifically in labor comfort and safety and in the quality and/or durability of capital goods.
Full show notes here.
We’re speedrunning these chapters of Kropotkin’s book because they’re basically repetitions of the same mistakes and fallacies again and again, only applied to different types of goods.
Full show notes here.
Chapter 4 is titled “Expropriation,” and (perhaps unsurprisingly) it is another chapter of assertions not backed up by significant arguments.
Full show notes available here.
Chapter 3 of the book is titled “Anarcho-Communism,” so I was expecting to finally get Kropotkin’s great argument for how to establish communes without a state apparatus forming.
What I got was a series of weird historical cherry-picking and declarations pretending to be arguments.
Detailed notes available here.
Kropotkin’s second chapter is a doozy. He makes a variety of really bad extrapolations, a bunch of incredibly ignorant anti-economic points, and then goes on to demand total expropriation of all goods, both capital and consumption, “private” and personal.
He bases this mostly on floppy definitions of “need” and “live,” as well as the usual incorrigible envy that motivates most actual socialists and communists.
Even worse, the next chapter is supposedly his argument for “anarchic” communism, but considering how he simply papered over the confiscation of all goods with some utopian nonsense, I’m not going to hold my breath waiting for a good argument, because it doesn’t look like one is coming.
Full show notes here.