Fields, Factories and Workshops

Fields, Factories and Workshops: or Industry Combined with Agriculture and Brain Work with Manual Work is a landmark anarchist text by Peter Kropotkin, and arguably one of the most influential and positive statements of the anarchist political philosophy. It is viewed by many as the central work of his writing career. It was published by Thomas Nelson & Sons, London, Edinburgh, Dublin and New York, in 1912. In this work, Kropotkin shares his vision of a more harmonious way of living based on cooperation instead of competition. To a large degree, Kropotkin's emphasis is on local organisation, local production obviating the need for central government. Kropotkin's vision is also on agriculture and rural life, making it a contrasting perspective to the largely industrial thinking of communists and socialists.

Kropotkin's focus on local production leads to his view that communities should strive for self-sufficiency, the production of a community's own goods and food, thus making import and export unnecessary. To these ends, Kropotkin advocates irrigation and growth under glass and in fields to boost local food production.

The book presents arguments to its ends, and is generally persuasive in tone rather than dogmatic. The work is structured as a series of essays, together with a large number of appendices of supporting evidence. While some critics have complained that Kropotkin is overly optimistic, the problems arising from industrialization and its reliance on fossil fuels have shown Kropotkin's ideas to be far sighted and possibly appropriate for the post-fossil fuel age.

External links

• Fields, Factories and Workshops entry at the Anarchy Archives
• Fields, factories and workshops – plain text, PDF and eBook formats available at at The Internet Archive