The Conquest of Bread

The Conquest of Bread

1892 Print Cover
Author	Peter Kropotkin
Country	France
Language	French
Genre	Political theory
Publisher	Tresse et Stock
Publication date	1892
Published in English	1907
Dewey Decimal	335.83
LC Class	HX632 .K7613
Original text	The Conquest of Bread at French Wikisource
Translation	The Conquest of Bread at Wikisource

Part of a series on
Anarchist communism
Concepts Anarchy Anti-authoritarianism Anti-capitalism Anti-statism Class consciousness Class conflict Classless society Common ownership Common resources Commune Consensus decision-making Co-operative economics Egalitarian community Free association "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs" General strike Gift economy Give-away shop Market abolitionism Mutual aid Prefigurative politics Primitive communism Proletarian internationalism Stateless society Workers' control Worker cooperative Workers' council Wage slavery
People Berkman Bleikhman Bookchin Cafiero Covelli Déjacque Dixon Dumartheray Durruti Faure Galleani Goldman Kropotkin Malatesta Magón Makhno Meltzer Volin
Organizational forms Insurrectionary anarchism Platformism Synthesis federations Anarcho-syndicalism
Theoretical works The Conquest of Bread Fields, Factories, and Workshops Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution Anarchism and Other Essays Now and After Post-Scarcity Anarchism
Related topics Anarchism Autonomism Communization Council communism Left communism Libertarian socialism Social anarchism
Anarchism portal  Communism portal  Politics portal
v t e

The Conquest of Bread (French: La Conquête du Pain; Russian: Хлѣбъ и воля, romanized: Khleb i volja, "Bread and Freedom"; Хлеб и воля in contemporary spelling), also known colloquially as The Bread Book, is an 1892 book by the Russian anarchist communist Peter Kropotkin. Originally written in French, it first appeared as a series of articles in the anarchist journal Le Révolté. It was first published in Paris with a preface by Élisée Reclus, who also suggested the title. Between 1892 and 1894, it was serialized in part in the London journal Freedom, of which Kropotkin was a co-founder.

In the work, Kropotkin identified what he considered to be the defects of the economic systems of feudalism and capitalism, and argued that these systems thrive on and maintain poverty and scarcity. He proceeded to propose a more decentralized economic system based on mutual aid and voluntary cooperation, asserting that the tendencies for this kind of organization already exist, both in evolution and in human society.

The Conquest of Bread has become a classic of political anarchist literature. It was heavily influential on both the Spanish Civil War and the Occupy movement.^[1]