While at one time Kropotkin's view of our future might have been regarded as a 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 stultifying, the lessons of this book, for both the rich world and the poor, are topical and hopeful.

It would not be an exaggeration to describe this book as the central work of Kropotkin's writing career. In one way or another, it occupied more than twenty years of his life. It is a work of argument and suggestion rather than dogmatic statement, and the very tentativeness of this great book make its perceptions all the more relevant.

In addition to a general introduction to the most significant aspects of Kropotkin's life and thought, George Woodcock has prepared a comprehensive afterword to each essay, allowing the reader to fully see Kropotkin's ideas in the context of the world a century later.