One of the impressive anarchist books I have seen during my time here in Rojava has been this beautiful Arab language edition of Pjotr Kropotkin’s ”Ethics: Origin and Development”. This particular piece of Kropotkin’s books is not personally my favorite but it sure has been influential to many anarchists around the globe.
This hardcover edition is part of the Anarchism Studies -series by publishing houses Nagesh Publishing and Weşanxaneya Şilêr. On that series there has been published also books by Proudhon and Bakunin (of which I have also made Pixelfed posts). So, it continues the series to dive into the very foundations and basic pillars of anarchist ideology.
Ethics was originally published posthumously in 1921 and translated to English first time in 1924. This Arabic translation is done from Russian language by Youssef Nabil and published 2021, hundred years after the original book came out. Finally one could say, and many anarchists still think, that Kropotkin has a contemporary relevance as political and moral philosopher. Some people even consider him nowadays as a pioneering social ecologist (see Brian Morris and Graham Purchase if you want to read more about it). It is said that Kropotkin was making this book for 15 years but never managed to finish it. And no wonder – living as an old man and an anarchist in Bolshevik run soviet state was not one of the things that expand your life expectancy. Whether you were a worker, anarchist or overall a human being, Bolsheviks sure took care that you lived in poverty, jail or in hunger.
This book is also said to be continuing or deepening the theses that Kropotkin already started on his masterpiece ”Mutual Aid: a Factor of Evolution”. So Ethics is arguing against something that is nowadays mostly called Darwinist struggle for survival.
(post continues on comment section)
#Kropotkin #anarchism #anarchist #socialism #books #philosophy #Rojava #Shiler #AANES #bibliophile
