Writing in 1880, Peter Kropotkin saw troubling consequences of industrial advances:
You study recent industrial advances and you see that the seamstress has gained nothing, absolutely nothing, by the invention of the sewing machine; the laborer in the St. Gothard tunnel dies of ankylostoma, notwithstanding diamond drills; the mason and the day laborer are out of work just as before at the foot of the Giffard lifts. If you discuss social problems with the independent spirit that guided your technical work, you necessarily come to the conclusion that under the system of private-property and wage-slavery every new invention, far from increasing the well-being of the worker, only makes his slavery heavier, his labor more degrading, the period of slack work more frequent, the depressions sharper; and that the man who already has every pleasure for himself is the only one who profits by it. (Quoted from An Appeal to the Young, Peter Kropotkin, The Resistance Press, 1948.)
At first Sauntering thought, these are problems of a bygone age. But on reflection, is today’s world entirely free of them? For a brief biography of Peter Kropotkin, click here.
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