ABSTRACT
The Russian exile Pyotr Kropotkin elaborated a theory of anarchism founded on individual cooperation and spontaneous equilibrium. School of socialist thought, anarchism, also believed in equality and the common ownership of the means of production as necessary to obtain social justice, but shunned the concentration of authority in governmental hands as a sure prescription for dictatorship. The union was seen as the nucleus of the new society; just as capitalism had created the factories, it was believed that organizations created by workers must act to destroy from the inside the system that exploited them, and to bring about true justice. The working class had to prepare itself to manage the society of the future, but the instrument of its revolutionary action was the general strike. The new society would be a federative one, stimulated by mutual understanding and working in concert without the coercive and destructive power of a state.
