The  Conquest  of  Bread

Peter  Kropotkin’s The  Conquest  of  Bread is one of the most lucid and compelling statements of anarchist communism ever written—a bold declaration that the poverty and scarcity haunting modern life are the artificial products of hierarchy, not the inevitable limits of nature. First serialized in Le Révolté and Freedom before its 1892 French edition, the text exposes the contradictions of capitalism and feudalism, then sketches a practical, decentralized alternative grounded in mutual aid, intensive local agriculture, and federated industry. This definitive new edition restores the authoritative 1907 English text while modernizing punctuation for contemporary readers and surrounding Kropotkin’s arguments with an extensive critical framework.
 
A newly commissioned foreword situates Kropotkin amid nineteenth‑century scientific debates on evolution and the cooperative practices of the Paris Commune, then carries his insights forward to current conversations about platform cooperativism, degrowth economics, and decentralized technology. A comprehensive preface traces the genesis of the book from Siberian prisons to London lecture halls and explains why Kropotkin’s call for federated communes resonates in an age of climate crisis and algorithmic monopolies. The volume also offers a comparative essay linking his proposals to present‑day experiments such as Rojava’s democratic confederalism, Barcelona en Comú’s municipalism, and the global Solidarity Economy movement, demonstrating that his vision of cooperative abundance continues to animate real‑world practice.
 
To aid study and teaching, the edition includes detailed annotations, a glossary of political‑economic (“usufruct,” “surplus value”) and agricultural terms (“intensive culture,” “market gardening”), and an intertwined chronology aligning Kropotkin’s travels—from Saint Petersburg and Chillon prison to his Harrow‑on‑the‑Hill lectures—with milestones in the labour movement, global communications, and urban electrification. 
 
By combining rigorous scholarship with elegant production, this Fortis Novum Mundum edition reintroduces The  Conquest  of  Bread as both historical document and contemporary handbook—a blueprint for organizing abundance through solidarity, local autonomy, and federated cooperation. Whether read in seminar rooms, cooperatives, or community gardens, it challenges each generation to reclaim the simple promise in its title: bread for all, and freedom won in its sharing.