Mutual Aid Peter Kropotkin (ebook reader 7 inch TXT) 📖

death of soldiers slaughtered on a battlefield. The fact was simply this: The village communities had lived for over a thousand years; and where and when the peasants were not ruined by wars and exactions they steadily improved their methods of culture. But as the value of land was increasing, in consequence of the growth of industries, and the nobility had acquired, under the State organization, a power which it never had had under the feudal system, it took possession of the best parts of the communal lands, and did its best to destroy the communal institutions.

However, the village-community institutions so well respond to the needs and conceptions of the tillers of the soil that, in spite of all, Europe is up to this date covered with living survivals of the village communities, and European country life is permeated with customs and habits dating from the community period. Even in England, notwithstanding all the drastic measures taken against the old order of things, it prevailed as late as the beginning of the nineteenth century. Mr. Gomme⁠—one of the very few English scholars who have paid attention to the subject⁠—shows in his work that many traces of the communal possession of the soil are found in Scotland, “runrig” tenancy having been maintained in Forfarshire up to 1813, while in certain villages of Inverness the custom was, up to 1801, to plough the land for the whole community, without leaving any boundaries, and to allot it after the ploughing was done. In Kilmorie the allotment and re-allotment of the fields was in full vigour “till the last twenty-five years,” and the Crofters’ Commission found it still in vigour in certain islands.265 In Ireland the system prevailed up to the great famine; and as to England, Marshall’s works, which passed unnoticed until Nasse and Sir Henry Maine drew attention to them, leave no doubt as to the village-community system having been widely spread, in nearly all English counties, at the beginning of the nineteenth century.266 No more than twenty years ago Sir Henry Maine was “greatly surprised at the number of instances of abnormal property rights, necessarily implying the former existence of collective ownership and joint cultivation,” which a comparatively brief inquiry brought under his notice.267 And, communal institutions having persisted so late as that, a great number of mutual-aid habits and customs would undoubtedly be discovered in English villages if the writers of this country only paid attention to village life.268

As to the Continent, we find the communal institutions fully alive in many parts of France, Switzerland, Germany, Italy, the Scandinavian lands, and Spain, to say nothing of Eastern Europe; the village life in these countries is permeated with communal habits and customs; and almost every year the Continental literature is enriched by serious works dealing with this and connected subjects. I must, therefore, limit my illustrations to the most typical instances. Switzerland is undoubtedly one of them. Not only the five republics of Uri, Schwytz, Appenzell, Glarus, and Unterwalden hold their lands as undivided estates, and are governed by their popular folkmotes, but in all other cantons too the village communities remain in possession of a wide self-government, and own large parts of the Federal territory.269 Two-thirds of all the Alpine meadows and two-thirds of all the forests of Switzerland are until now communal land; and a considerable number of fields, orchards, vineyards, peat bogs, quarries, and so on, are owned in common. In the Vaud, where all the householders continue to take part in the deliberations of their elected communal councils, the communal spirit is especially alive. Towards the end of the winter all the young men of each village go to stay a few days in the woods, to fell timber and to bring it down the steep slopes tobogganing way, the timber and the fuel wood being divided among all households or sold for their benefit. These excursions are real fêtes of manly labour. On the banks of Lake Leman part of the work required to keep up the terraces of the vineyards is still done in common; and in the spring, when the thermometer threatens to fall below zero before sunrise, the watchman wakes up all householders, who light fires of straw and dung and protect their vine-trees from the frost by an artificial cloud. In nearly all cantons the village communities possess so-called Bürgernutzen⁠—that is, they hold in common a number of cows, in order to supply each family with butter; or they keep communal fields or vineyards, of which the produce is divided between the burghers, or they rent their land for the benefit of the community.270

It may be taken as a rule that where the communes have retained a wide sphere of functions, so as to be living parts of the national organism, and where they have not been reduced to sheer misery, they never fail to take good care of their lands. Accordingly the communal estates in Switzerland strikingly contrast with the miserable state of “commons” in this country. The communal forests in the Vaud and the Valais are admirably managed, in conformity with the rules of modern forestry. Elsewhere the “strips” of communal fields, which change owners under the system of re-allotment, are very well manured, especially as there is no lack of meadows and cattle. The high level meadows are well kept as a rule, and the rural roads are excellent.271 And when we admire the Swiss châlet, the mountain road, the peasants’ cattle, the terraces of vineyards, or the schoolhouse in Switzer land, we must keep in mind that without the timber for the châlet being taken from the communal woods and the stone from the communal quarries, without the cows being kept on the communal meadows, and the roads being made and the schoolhouses built by communal work, there would be little to admire.

It hardly need be