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Quote by Pyotr Kropotkin

“Well-being - that is to say, the satisfaction of physical, artistic, and moral needs, has always been the most powerful stimulant to work. And where a hireling hardly succeeds to produce the bare necessities with difficulty, a free worker, who sees ease and luxury increasing for him and for others in proportion to his efforts, spends infinitely far more energy and intelligences and obtains first-class products in a far greater abundance. The one feels riveted to misery, the other hopes for ease and luxury in the future. In this lies the whole secret. Therefore a society aiming at the well-being of all, and at the possibility of all enjoying life in all its manifestations, will give voluntary work, which will be infinitely superior and yield far more than work had produced up till now under the goad of slavery, serfdom, or wagedom.”

Quote by Pyotr Kropotkin

Book:The Conquest of Bread and Other Writings
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The Conquest of Bread and Other Writings

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Pyotr Kropotkin

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“By admitting that the only guarantee not to be robbed of the fruits of your labour is to possess the instruments of labour - which is true - the economists only prove that man really produces most when he works in freedom, when he has a certain choice in his occupations, when he has no overseer to impede him, and lastly, when he sees his work bringing in a profit to him and to others who work like him, but bringing in little to idlers. Nothing else can be deducted from their argumentation and this is what we maintain ourselves.”

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Book:The Conquest of Bread and Other Writings
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“They fear that without compulsion the masses will not work. But during our own lifetime, have we not heard the same fears expressed twice? Once, by the anti-abolitionists in America before the emancipation of the Negroes, and, for a second time, by the Russian nobility before the liberation of the serfs? ‘Without the whip the Negro will not work,’ said the anti-abolitionist. ‘Free from their master’s supervision the serfs will leave the fields uncultivated’, said the Russian serf-owners. It was the refrain of the French noblemen in 1789, the refrain of the Middle Ages, a refrain as old as the world, and we shall hear it every time there is a question oof sweeping away an injustice. And each time actual facts give it the lie.”

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Book:The Conquest of Bread and Other Writings
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“If this isn't the essential American story, I don't know what is: Guy hews a life out of nothing, by working every waking moment, with no education, no government help, no external advantages whatsoever, and no ulterior motive. What did he want? A place where his kids could grow up, with less fear and more material comforts.”

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Book:The Braindead Megaphone
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