[48] "Anarchist-Communism; its Basis and Principles," by Peter Kropotkine, republished by permission of the Editor of the Nineteenth Century. February and August, 1887, London.
[49] l.c., pp. 1-2.
[50] "La Conquête du Pain." Paris, 1892. pp. 77-78.
[51] Ibid., p. 111.
[52] As, however, Kropotkine was in London at the time of the great Dock Strike, and therefore had an opportunity of learning how the food supply was managed for the strikers, it is worth pointing out that this was managed quite differently from the method suggested above. An organised Committee, consisting of Trade Unionists helped by State Socialists (Champion) and Social-Democrats (John Burns, Tom Mann, Eleanor Marx Aveling, etc.) made contracts with shopkeepers, and distributed stamped tickets, for which could be obtained certain articles of food. The food supplied was paid for with the money that had been raised by subscriptions, and to these subscriptions the bourgeois public, encouraged by the bourgeois press, had very largely contributed. Direct distributions of food to strikers, and those thrown out of work through the strike, were made by the Salvation Army, an essentially centralised, bureaucratically organised body, and other philanthropic societies. All this has very little to do with the procuring and distributing of the food supply, "the day after the revolution;" with the organising of the "service for supplying food." The food was there, and it was only a question of buying and dividing it as a means of support. The "People," i.e., the strikers, by no means helped themselves in this respect; they were helped by others.
[53] "La Conquête du Pain," pp. 128-129.
[54] Ibid., pp. 201-202.
[55] Ibid., p. 202.
[56] "L'Anarchie dans l'Evolution socialiste." Lecture at the Salle Levis, Paris, 1888, pp. 20-21.
[57] Ibid., p. 19.