Fields, Factories & Workshops Tomorrow
Kropotkin’s classic edited, introduced and with additional material by Colin Ward
This is one of those great prophetic works of the nineteenth century, whose hour has yet to come. Kropotkin argued that there is an inevitable trend for industry to disperse throughout the world, that the scramble for overseas markets is consequently futile, and that small-scale production for a local market is the pattern of future industry.
He concludes that intensive small-scale farming could meet the basic food needs of a country like Britain and that the dispersal of industry in combination with agriculture is rational and desirable and would provide both a high standard of living and reduction of working hours. He wants an education which combines manual and intellectual work because he envisages an economy under workers’ control which
rejects the division of labour.
Seventy years A century ( :”’) ) after his book was first published, the dominant trends in our society contradict him in almost all respects. But while at one time his view of our future might have been regarded as utopian dream, today, as a result of the growing realisation that the world’s resources of energy and raw materials are finite, that food is our most precious commodity and that most people’s working lives are futile and mind-numbing, the lessons of this book are topical and hopeful. It is an argument for a plausible future.
In this edition, Colin Ward has pruned Fields, Factories and Workshops Tomorrow of obsolete statistics while retaining his argument intact, and has added a series of commentaries indicating the significance of his ideas for today and tomorrow.
Publisher: Freedom Press
First Published: 1898
This Edition: 1998
Format: Book
Binding: Paperback
Interior: Black & White
Pages: 205
ISBN: 9780900384288
