Fields, Factories and Workshops

Fields, Factories and Workshops is a landmark anarchist text by Peter Kropotkin, and arguably one of the most influential and positive statements of the anarchist political position. It is viewed by many as the central work of his writing career. His inspiration has reached into the 20th and 21st centuries as a lasting vision of a more harmonious way of living, of a new world. It is often positioned as a counter to the thinking of Trotsky, Lenin and Stalin which tended to imply centralised planning and control. To a large degree Kropotkin's emhasis 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 industtial thinking of communists and socialists.

His focus on local production leads to his view that a country should manufacture its own goods and grow its own food, making import and export unnecessary. To these ends he advocated irrigation and growing under glass to boost local food production ability. The book contains logical arguments to its ends and is generally persuasive rather than being dogmatic. 255 pages long, it is structured as a series of essays, together with a large number of appendices of supporting evidence. Critics say he is rather optimistic in the work, however the problems arising from indusrialisation and its reliance on fossil fuels has shown his ideas to be far sighted and possibly appropriate for the post-fossil fuel age.

There is a remarkable similarity between some of Kropotkin's views and those of the architect Christopher Alexander, for the example the elimination of vast buildings and the introduction of workshops in or attached to the home.

See also

(nearly) full text of the work