Thank you! I did read it today.

Kropotkin wrongly treats capitalist exploitation and wage labor as results of individual moral flaws like greed or slavishness. In reality, they are objective necessities driven by profit maximization and the workers’ lack of means of production.

By claiming that private property or a monarchy would be harmless among “good” people, Kropotkin reduces systemic power structures to mere vessels of individual morality. However, private property and the state are inherently coercive institutions of exclusion and force, regardless of anyone’s personal character.

Kropotkin’s reliance on historical progress (such as the abolition of slavery and serfdom, which actually just transitioned people into modern wage labor) fails to provide a rational argument for communism. The case for communism rests on overcoming the irrationality of capitalist production through planned, need-based labor, not on historical optimism.

Communism is neither a moral training ground to improve human nature nor a shelter to protect people from their own bad instincts. Instead, it is the conscious, collective interest of producers to abolish capital and the state because these systems subjugate their lives to profit and state power.

I know that old people and children are not workers in the strict sense of the word, but in a broader definition they are. Everyone should be part of “the workers” in my opinion. In an ideal “soviet” system workers are organized in councils and democracy a grassroot endevour. The problem is the way to get there. At first every socialist system will be attacked by reactionist forces. Lenin argued that it is therefor necessary to have a communist party. This contains the danger of it getting corrupted and establising an authoritarian system. There seems no way around that. Lenin argues that in a capitalist world, it is not possible to just jump to a communist utopia. The state has to wither away.

The good and effective dictator, that rules just and only has the well-beeing of his people in mind. Sounds good right? It might actually have existed a few times in history, but is the absolute exception. The reason for that is, that it includes an individual that has to have absurdly high moral standards and compassion in a system that encourages a totally different behaviour. Where should this moral come from? When somthing like that happens, it is not more than a fluke.

That argument comes from an idealistic view of things and that is never a good way to analyse the world. Don’t underestimate the power of systems.

When it comes to the french revolution the answer is easy: This was not a workers revolution - it was a bourgeois revolution. It means that feudal lords were replaced with capitalists. As you said, the power went from one small group to another small group, but it still changed an economic system - feudalism to capitalism. The russian revolution is still the better example that should be studied. It abolished feudalism and got a step further to a form of socialist experiment.

I guess there will always be bad people that are hungry for power and have no morals, as you said - no matter the system. Corruption will always be a thing, but it is important to have a system that sanctions it properly and that allows society to have a clear moral stance on such behaviour.

You are right - one has to look at ALL of human history. Most of it was in cooperation. Give, take, share and everyone has plenty. Feudalism and after that capitalism have shrunk our peer group further and further and told us selfishness is the core of the human psychology - it is not and we will overcome this.

Anarchist tendencies have some inherent philosophical and practical flaws unfortunately. Anarchism relies on a naive, idealistic view of human nature, falsely assuming people are inherently good and cooperative once state authority is removed. Selfishness does stem from capitalist competition and private property, meaning solidarity cannot simply be unlocked by abolishing the state, but must be consciously organized through a new economic system.

I agree - but the workers and the public should be the same entity!