Democritus came from Abdera, a city in Thrace. He lived c. 460–380, a generation later than two other philosophers from Abdera, Protagoras (below, p. 173) and Leucippus. Democritus and Leucippus are known as the inventors of atomism, the theory that all matter consists of atoms and void. In addition to fragments on physics, more than a hundred ethical/political fragments are attributed to Democritus. Although their authenticity has been doubted, a majority of scholars accept them as authentic. We present here only those fragments that deal with the themes of this volume.

(DK 5)

This is an excerpt from the History of Diodorus Siculus (1.8) who wrote in the first century. It does not mention Democritus, but is based on the work of a fifth-century thinker, and this is likely to have been Democritus (see Cole, Bibliographical Note, § B.4).

The generations of humans born in the beginning led an unruly and bestial life. They foraged individually for food and consumed the most pleasing of the plants and whatever fruit fell from the trees. When attacked by wild beasts, they helped each other, learning that this was mutually advantageous; and when they were thus brought together by fear, little by little they learned each other's ways. The sounds of their voices were confused and unintelligible at first, but gradually they articulated words, and by establishing signs (symbola) for each existing thing, they taught each other the meanings of each of them.

Gorgias came from Leontini in Sicily. All sources report that he lived more than 100 years, c. 480–375. In 427 he came to Athens as an ambassador from Leontini and reportedly created a sensation with his rhetorical style. He had many other interests in addition to rhetoric, for which he is best known. The material we translate includes two complete speeches attributed to mythological characters, a fragment of a funeral oration, a later summary/paraphrase of a philosophical treatise, and miscellaneous fragments and reports of his views. None of these can be dated, except perhaps for On Not Being, which was reportedly written in the eighty-fourth Olympiad (444–441).

Gorgias' teaching was closely associated by Plato with rhetoric, and he apparently disclaimed teaching all other subjects, including virtue. We arrange the material loosely by subject matter: first rhetoric, then ethics, metaphysics, and science.

Encomium of Helen (DK 11)

According to the principal version of the myth (as found in Homer), when the Trojan prince Alexander (Paris) was a guest in the house of Menelaus, king of Sparta, he took advantage of Menelaus' absence to abduct his wife Helen and take her back to Troy with him. Menelaus raised a Greek army to recover Helen, hence the Trojan War. There were many other versions of the story, including some in which Helen did not go to Troy at all.

Aeschylus, the first of the three great Athenian tragic poets, lived 525–456. Seven of his nearly one hundred tragedies are preserved complete, and we have fragments of several dozen others. His most complex work, the Oresteia trilogy (458), raises many of the social, political, and ethical issues of contemporary Athens, such as the nature of justice, the origins of law and order, and the relations between the sexes. Some modern scholars doubt the authenticity of Prometheus Bound and would date the play after 450, because it shows the apparent influence of sophistic ideas, especially in the passages translated here.

Prometheus Bound

In the excerpts from the Prometheus Bound (1–3), Prometheus addresses the chorus, who are generally sympathetic to him. Cf. Hesiod's treatment of the same myth (Hesiod, 1–2), and Protagoras, 8. “Prometheus” means “Forethought”

Prometheus (228–241)

Of the life of Thucydides we know little beyond what he tells us. We believe he was born around 460–455, and we know that he was an elected general in 424. During that year he was in charge of forces that were unable to save Amphipolis from the Spartans. Democratic Athens frequently brought criminal charges against unsuccessful generals, so Thucydides went into a twenty-year exile during which he visited the Peloponnesus (including Sparta) and probably also traveled to Syracuse. Most of the time he probably spent in Thrace, where his family had longstanding connections. He returned to Athens after the war but apparently did not live to finish the History.

His education must have included some study with the sophists who were beginning to be popular in Athens during his youth. His style of writing, however, is uniquely his own, and he must be counted as one of the most original prose stylists of the Greek or any language.

The first phase of the Peloponnesian War began in 431 and lasted ten years. Although the Athenians met some reverses, they were victorious on the whole. Their greatest success in this period was the capture in 425 of a band of 120 Spartan citizen soldiers on a small island called Sphacteria, near Pylos. So much did the Spartans value their citizens that they were willing to sue for peace on virtually any terms to get their men back.

In this section are two passages that cannot be assigned with certainty to any particular historical figure. They reflect teachings that have been associated with various sophists.

The social contract (Plato, Republic 358e3–359b5)

Hoping that Socrates will be able to refute the view, Glaucon tells him what is being said about the nature and origin of justice. We do not know who first proposed the contract theory of the origin of justice, or who first inferred from the theory that justice is not an intrinsic good. Although the language of the passage is Platonic, it probably reflects the views of an earlier thinker connected with some of the sophists.

As far as nature goes, they say that doing injustice is good, while suffering injustice is bad; the badness of suffering injustice, however, outweighs the goodness of doing it to such an extent that after people have been doing injustice to each other and suffering it, once they've had a taste of both, then those who lack the power to avoid the one while choosing the other decide that it is in their interests to make a mutual agreement neither to do nor to suffer injustice. And so (they say) people start making their own laws (nomoi) and agreements (sunthēkai) at that point, and they use the words “lawful” (nomimon) and “just” (dikaion) for what these laws require.

Archilochus of Paws, an elegiac and iambic poet, lived in the eighth and seventh centuries, and is said to have taken part in the colonization of Thasos in about 708. Little is known about his life, but a large number of poems and fragmentary quotations survive.

The common people (W 14)

If a man listened to the reproaches of the common people,

Aesimedes, he would never have very much fun.

The eagle and the fox

(W 174)

This is a fable people tell,

how a fox and an eagle joined

as partners.

(Atticus, quoted by Eusebius in Praeparatio Evangelica 15.4.4)

Do you see where that high rock is,

rough and menacing?

There I sit lightly, planning my fight with you…

[Our source continues in paraphrase as follows:]

Up to this high rock it is impossible for this clever wicked animal to climb, so that for the fox to come where the eagle's offspring are, they would have to meet a sad accident and fall to earth, losing their home, or else he would have to grow what it is not his nature to grow, and bend swift wings; then rising from the ground, he could fly up to the high rock. But as long as each stays in his appointed home, there will be no sharing between the creatures of the land and those of the sky.

Prodicus came from the island of Ceos; he was probably born around 470 and died some time after 400. There is an amusing picture of him in Plato's Protagoras (315c–d), lying on a couch. Socrates often refers to Prodicus as his teacher, and some have speculated that Socrates' concern with the precise meanings of words like “justice” may owe something to Prodicus' work on distinctions. In addition to fr. 1, there are also references to Prodicus' fondness for distinguishing between near synonyms in Protagoras 339e–341d, Meno 75e, Euthydemus 277e, and Aristotle, Topics 2.6, 122b22.

(Plato, Protagoras 337a–c; DK A13)

During an interlude in the discussion between Socrates and Protagoras, Prodicus contributes the following.

Those who are present at these discussions should be an impartial but not an egalitarian audience; for these are not the same. You must hear both sides impartially but not give them equal weight; rather, give more weight to the wiser and less to the more foolish speaker. For my own part, moreover, I think you two, Protagoras and Socrates, should agree to debate but not to quarrel; for friends debate with friends in a cordial spirit, but enemies and adversaries quarrel with one another. In this way we will have the best discussion, for you speakers will be esteemed, and not praised: esteem is truly in the minds of the listeners without deceit, whereas praise is often falsely given in words that run counter to one's actual opinion.

‘Message to the Workers of the Western World’, 10 June 1920 Two letters to Lenin, 4 March 1920 and 21 December 1920 ‘What Is to Be Done?’ 23 November 1920

Kropotkin's return to Russia in 1917 after four decades in emigration was bittersweet. No longer able to play an active political role, he could only bear witness as the long-anticipated revolution gave way to the one-party rule of the Bolsheviks. A sampling of his brief pronouncements in his last years shows him trying to come to terms with a phenomenon that aroused both his brightest hopes and his worst fears.

‘Message to the Workers of the Western World’ was given to the members of a British Labour Delegation that came to visit him on 10 June 1920. It is reprinted from The Labour Leader of 22 July 1920. The two letters to Lenin are reprinted from Martin A. Miller, ed., Selected Writings on Anarchism and Revolution: P. A. Kropotkin (Cambridge, Mass., and London: MIT Press, 1970), pp. 335–39. ‘What Is to Be Done?’, dated 23 November 1920, was published in Berlin in 1923. Reprinted here is the somewhat abridged translation which appears under the title ‘What to Do?’ in Roger N. Baldwin, ed., Kropotkin's Revolutionary Pamphlets (New York and London: Benjamin Blom, 1927; reissued 1968), pp. 256–59.

Message to the Workers of the Western World

Dmitrov, 10 June 1920

I have been asked whether I have not some message to send to the working men of the Western world? Surely, there is much to say about the current events in Russia, and much to learn from them.

Let us now examine the principal objections put forth against communism. Most of them are evidently caused by a simple misunderstanding, yet they raise important questions and merit our attention.

It is not for us to answer the objections raised by authoritarian communism – we ourselves hold with them. Civilized nations have suffered too much in the long, hard struggle for the emancipation of the individual, to disown their past work and to tolerate a government that would make itself felt in the smallest details of a citizen's life, even if that government had no other aim than the good of the community. Should an authoritarian socialist society ever succeed in establishing itself, it could not last; general discontent would soon force it to break up, or to reorganize itself on principles of liberty.

It is of an anarchist-communist society we are about to speak, a society that recognizes the absolute liberty of the individual, that does not admit of any authority, and makes use of no compulsion to drive men to work. Limiting our studies to the economic side of the question, let us see if such a society, composed of men as they are today, neither better nor worse, neither more nor less industrious, would have a chance of successful development.

Man is not a being whose exclusive purpose in life is eating, drinking, and providing a shelter for himself. As soon as his material wants are satisfied, other needs, which, generally speaking may be described as of an artistic character, will thrust themselves forward. These needs are of the greatest variety; they vary with each and every individual; and the more society is civilized, the more will individuality be developed, and the more will desires be varied.

Even today we see men and women denying themselves necessaries to acquire mere trifles, to obtain some particular gratification, or some intellectual or material enjoyment. A Christian or an ascetic may disapprove of these desires for luxury; but it is precisely these trifles that break the monotony of existence and make it agreeable. Would life, with all its inevitable drudgery and sorrows, be worth living, if, besides daily work, man could never obtain a single pleasure according to his individual tastes?

If we wish for a social revolution, it is no doubt, first of all, to give bread to everyone; to transform this execrable society, in which we can every day see capable workmen dangling their arms for want of an employer who will exploit them; women and children wandering shelterless at night; whole families reduced to dry bread; men, women and children dying for want of care and even for want of food. It is to put an end to these iniquities that we rebel.

The article ‘Anarchism’ was written for the eleventh edition of The Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1910. It is an outstanding example of Kropotkin's ability to communicate with a broad, non-anarchist audience. While it reflects Kropotkin's own commitment to anarchist communism, it is comprehensive in nature and stands as a classic summary of the ideological foundations of anarchism.

ANARCHISM (from the Gr. ἀν, and ἀϱχἠ, contrary to authority), the name given to a principle or theory of life and conduct under which society is conceived without government – harmony in such a society being obtained, not by submission to law, or by obedience to any authority, but by free agreements concluded between the various groups, territorial and professional, freely constituted for the sake of production and consumption, as also for the satisfaction of the infinite variety of needs and aspirations of a civilized being. In a society developed on these lines, the voluntary associations which already now begin to cover all the fields of human activity would take a still greater extension so as to substitute themselves for the state in all its functions. They would represent an interwoven network, composed of an infinite variety of groups and federations of all sizes and degrees, local, regional, national and international – temporary or more or less permanent – for all possible purposes: production, consumption and exchange, communications, sanitary arrangements, education, mutual protection, defence of the territory, and so on; and, on the other side, for the satisfaction of an ever-increasing number of scientific, artistic, literary and sociable needs.

If the coming revolution is to be a social revolution, it will be distinguished from all former uprisings not only by its aim, but also by its methods. To attain a new end, new means are required.

The three great popular movements which we have seen in France during the last hundred years differ from each other in many ways, but they have one common feature.

In each case the people strove to overturn the old regime, and spent their heart's blood for the cause. Then, after having borne the brunt of the battle, they sank again into obscurity. A government, composed of men more or less honest, was formed and undertook to organize a new regime: the Republic in 1793, Labour in 1848, the Free Commune in 1871. Imbued with Jacobin ideas, the government occupied itself first of all with political questions, such as the reorganization of the machinery of government, the purifying of the administration, the separation of church and state, civic liberty, and such matters. It is true the workmen's clubs kept an eye on the members of the new government, and often imposed their ideas on them. But even in these clubs, whether the leaders belonged to the middle or to the working classes, it was always middle-class ideas which prevailed. They discussed various political questions at great length, but forgot to discuss the question of bread.

Great ideas sprang up at such times, ideas that have moved the world; words were spoken which still stir our hearts, at the interval of more than a century. But the people were starving in the slums.

Accustomed as we are by hereditary prejudices and our unsound education and training to represent ourselves the beneficial hand of government, legislation and magistracy everywhere, we have come to believe that man would tear his fellow man to pieces like a wild beast the day the police took his eye off him; that absolute chaos would come about if authority were overthrown during a revolution. And with our eyes shut we pass by thousands and thousands of human groupings which form themselves freely, without any intervention of the law, and attain results infinitely superior to those achieved under governmental tutelage.

If you open a daily paper you find that its pages are entirely devoted to government transactions and to political jobbery. A man from another world, reading it, would believe that, with the exception of the Stock Exchange transactions, nothing gets done in Europe save by order of some master. You find nothing in the paper about institutions that spring up, grow up, and develop without ministerial prescription! Nothing – or almost nothing! Even where there is a heading, ‘Sundry Events’ (Faits divers, a favourite column in the French papers), it is because they are connected with the police. A family drama, an act of rebellion, will only be mentioned if the police have appeared on the scene.

Three hundred and fifty million Europeans love or hate one another, work, or live on their incomes; but, apart from literature, theatre or sport, their lives remain ignored by newspapers if governments have not intervened in it in some way or other.

When the houses have become the common heritage of the citizens, and when each man has his daily supply of food, another forward step will have to be taken. The question of clothing will of course demand consideration next, and again the only possible solution will be to take possession, in the name of the people, of all the shops and warehouses where clothing is sold or stored, and to throw open the doors to all, so that each can take what he needs. The communalization of clothing – the right of each to take what he needs from the communal stores, or to have it made for him at the tailors and outfitters – is a necessary corollary of the communalization of houses and food.

Obviously we shall not need for that to despoil all citizens of their coats, to put all the garments in a heap and draw lots for them, as our critics, with equal wit and ingenuity, suggest. Let him who has a coat keep it still – nay, if he have ten coats it is highly improbable that anyone will want to deprive him of them, for most folk would prefer a new coat to one that has already graced the shoulders of some fat bourgeois; and there will be enough new garments, and to spare, without having recourse to second-hand wardrobes.

When socialists maintain that a society, freed from the rule of the capitalists, would make work agreeable, and would suppress all repugnant and unhealthy drudgery, they are laughed at. And yet even today we can see the striking progress that is being made in this direction; and wherever this progress has been achieved, employers congratulate themselves on the economy of energy obtained thereby.

It is evident that a factory could be made as healthy and pleasant as a scientific laboratory. And it is no less evident that it would be advantageous to make it so. In a spacious and well-ventilated factory the work is better; it is easy to introduce many small ameliorations, of which each represents an economy of time or of manual labour. And if most of the workshops we know are foul and unhealthy, it is because the workers are of no account in the organization of factories, and because the most absurd waste of human energy is the distinctive feature of the present industrial organization.

Nevertheless, now and again, we already find, even now, some factories so well managed that it would be a real pleasure to work in them, if the work, be it well understood, were not to last more than four or five hours a day, and if everyone had the possibility of varying it according to his tastes.

The human race has travelled a long way, since those remote ages when men fashioned their rude implements of flint and lived on the precarious spoils of hunting, leaving to their children for their only heritage a shelter beneath the rocks, some poor utensils – and Nature, vast, unknown and terrific, with whom they had to fight for their wretched existence.

During the long succession of agitated ages which have elapsed since, mankind has nevertheless amassed untold treasures. It has cleared the land, dried the marshes, hewn down forests, made roads, pierced mountains; it has been building, inventing, observing, reasoning; it has created a complex machinery, wrested her secrets from Nature, and finally it pressed steam and electricity into its service. And the result is, that now the child of the civilized man finds at his birth, ready for his use, an immense capital accumulated by those who have gone before him. And this capital enables man to acquire, merely by his own labour combined with the labour of others, riches surpassing the dreams of the fairy tales of the Thousand and One Nights.

The soil is cleared to a great extent, fit for the reception of the best seeds, ready to give a rich return for the skill and labour spent upon it – a return more than sufficient for all the wants of humanity. The methods of rational cultivation are known.