The State: Its Historic Role

by Peter Kropotkin, 1897

Transcribed from the Freedom Press edition.

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Either the State for ever, crushing individual and local life, taking over in all fields of human activity, bringing with it all its wars and domestic struggles for power, its palace revolutions which only replace one tyrant by another, and inevitably at the end of this development there is...death!

Or the destruction of States, and new life starting again in thousands of centers on the principles of the lively initiative of the individual and groups and that of free agreement.

The choice lies with you!


Translator's Notes
Section I
Section II
Section III
Section IV
Section V
Section VI
Section VII
Section VIII
Section IX
Section X

oEssays by Kropotkin, Anarchist Library