I’ve been reading the conquest of bread and I can’t understand this excerpt here:
We do not know whether the folk who call themselves “practical people” have ever asked themselves this question in all its nakedness. But we do know that they wish to maintain the wage system, and we must therefore expect to have “national workshops” and “public works” vaunted as a means of giving food to the unemployed.
Because national workshops were opened in 1789 and 1793; because the same means were resorted to in 1848; because Napoleon III. succeeded in contenting the Parisian proletariat for eighteen years by giving them public works—which cost Paris to-day its debt of £80,000,000 and its municipal tax of three or four pounds a-head;[3] because this excellent method of “taming the beast” was customary in Rome, and even in Egypt four thousand years ago; and lastly, because despots, kings, and emperors have always employed the ruse of throwing a scrap of food to the people to gain time to snatch up the whip—it is natural that “practical” men should extol this method of perpetuating the wage system. What need to rack our brains when we have the time-honoured method of the Pharaohs at our disposal?
Yet should the Revolution be so misguided as to start on this path, it would be lost.
ok, I understand doing away with wages, abolishing capitalism and the state and letting people have what they need to live regardless of their ability to give back to their communities (although they should if they are able and if there is a need). But what is the issue with public workshops? cuz that probably means something else in this context but I don’t know what. And what’s with all of these instances of “because”? I really don’t get what he’s trying to say here. Sorry if this was the wrong place to post this but I couldn’t think of anywhere better.
What I see from this is “don’t try to ‘help’ the poor by creating programs that give them jobs [public workshops]. Help them unconditionally”
Basically, fdr’s new deal policies were still a capitalist approach that could have been replaced more elegantly with free food and housing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Workshops
refer to areas of work provided for the unemployed by the French Second Republic after the Revolution of 1848. The political crisis which resulted in the abdication of Louis Philippe caused an industrial crisis adding to the general agricultural and commercial distress which had prevailed throughout 1847. It rendered the problem of unemployment in Paris acute.
basically the government trying to solve unemployment by employing people for the sake of employing them
Just throwing in my thoughts: the second paragraph looks like a (no judgement, I do the same) self-indulgently artsy way of laying out the reasons why practical people maintain the use of workshops, while simultaneously trying to let reality speak for itself through the list.
I’m not super-familiar with Kropotkin’s theses and ideology, but from what I know, he seems very against single-point control, such as that found in pyramidal hierarchies. With this and solely the information offered in the snippet, it seems to me that he’s trying to highlight the continued intent to control the masses, employed through these workshops.
To add, from what I remember about the National Workshops set up by France, they didn’t really solve unemployment, rather they kinda’ used up unemployed people like prisoners are used up by America nowadays - lotsa’ work, basically no pay, but heavily advertising the idea of “giving the downtrodden a purpose.” This serves to pacify the employed bit of the population as well (It’s Being Handled™, I don’t need to look into it, shit’s fixed). But the proletariat gained no power through this, the owner stayed the same.
Plus they were back out in the dirt as soon as the workshops were closed down, another point of caution.
Edit: to be clear, this is mostly speculation and deduction on my part, so I may be completely off the mark with it.
thanks for posting! id love to see more sharing of interesting theory and questions lile this <3
ur clearly way smarter than me pls take my upvote even though i don’t have any input 🙇♀️
