I have always been interested in Peter Kropotkin. This is partly because I was always uneasy with the idea of the 'dicatatorship of the proletariat' (even in my days as a card carrying member of the 'loony left') but also because of the way in which his writing surfaced in unlikely areas, for example as an influence on Ebenezer Howard, the creator of the new towns movement and to a degree therefore on planning in general.
Planning in the UK has always been multi-dimensional. (Foley, D, 1960, 'British Town Planning: One Ideology or Three?',.British Journal of Sociology
11 (3) - not available on-line) It has never been the exclusive preserve of petty bureaucrats, (although they do exist) and has always included people with a strong utopian - in the best sense of the word - outlook. It probably isn't so strange therefore to see Kropotkin (via Fields Factories and Workshops and Mutual Aid) influencing the British planning system. (see here and here for print versions)
I have just got a copy of his collected pamphlets (published as Anarchism: a collection of revolutionary writings) and was very taken with this passage from The Spirit of Revolt which seemed to have strong resonances for today in both the UK and the US :
The machinery of government, entrusted with the maintenance of the existing order, continues to function, but at every turn of its deteriorated gears it slips and stops. Its working becomes more and more difficult, and the dissatisfaction ca\used by its defects grows continuously. Every day gives rise to a new demand. “Reform this,” “Reform that,” is heard from all sides. “War, finance, taxes, courts, police, everything must be remodelled, reorganised, established on a new basis,” say the reformers. And yet all know that it is impossible to make things over, to remodel anything at all because everything is interrelated; everything would have to be remade at once; and how can society be remodelled when it is divided into two openly hostile camps? To satisfy the discontented would be only to create new malcontents.
Incapable of undertaking reforms, since this would mean paving the way for revolution, and at the same time to impotent to be frankly reactionary, the governing bodies apply themselves to half measures which can satisfy nobody, and only cause new dissatisfaction. The mediocrities who, in such transition periods, undertake to steer the ship of State, think of but one thing: to enrich themselves against the coming debacle. Attacked from all sides they defend themselves awkwardly, they evade, they commit blunder upon blunder, and they soon succeed in cutting the last rope of salvation; they drown the prestige of the government in ridicule, caused by their own incapacity.(pp36-37)
Kropotkin was incidently the founder of the long standing anarchist newspaper Freedom.
