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Pëtr Kropotkin and Mutual Aid

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Re: Pëtr Kropotkin and Mutual Aid

#21

Post by phillc73 »

The article links to a few book pages scanned as PDFs and an HTML version of Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution. Also worth mentioning is that there is a very large collection of Kropotkin's writing at the Anarchist Library[1], including an epub version of Mutual Aid[2] and his autobiography, Memoirs of a Revolutionist[3], which was also mentioned in the article.

[1] https://theanarchistlibrary.org/category/author/petr-kropotk...

[2] https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/petr-kropotkin-mutua...

[3] https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/petr-kropotkin-memoi...

Re: Pëtr Kropotkin and Mutual Aid

#22

Post by cuteboy19 »

avodonosov wrote: post #16
psychoslave wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m rather surprised he might not be not better known here. Kropotkin is a major figure of anarchism that you’ll found revered even in some Russel's books. Surely hackernews readership red all Russel works — both color, didn’t it? Don’t you search for a Wikipedia biography each time you cross an antonomastic street, creating it if needed?

In some countries almost every street is named after a person, so it would be too much trouble to research every street name. We have a square named after indian city of Bangalore - the Bangalore square. I was sure for a long time that's just another (jewish?) surname. Even though I knew that city, in context of street names I simply assume surnames, it didn't occur to me to think anything else.

We had a Minsk Square in Bangalore too. They are sister cities

Re: Pëtr Kropotkin and Mutual Aid

#23

Post by usrnm »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #14
neontomo wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's different because in English, a diacritic of two dots (diaeresis) is used to show that a vowel is pronounced separately from the vowel that came before it, not as a mix. Naïve is one example, where it is pronounced na-ive, not nive. That said, I also like it, but it means something different here.

> in English, a diacritic of two dots (diaeresis) is used to show that a vowel is pronounced separately from the vowel that came before it, not as a mix. You've correctly defined diaeresis, but it's not actually used in English except in articles that get published in The New Yorker . There is a reason the common English name for the diacritic is "umlaut". The normal use in English is to show that a word comes from G…

> it is not related to the visually similar Russian letter E

Well, it is very much related to it historically, but it's beyond the point. Just nitpicking, sorry

Re: Pëtr Kropotkin and Mutual Aid

#24

Post by neontomo »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #14
neontomo wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's different because in English, a diacritic of two dots (diaeresis) is used to show that a vowel is pronounced separately from the vowel that came before it, not as a mix. Naïve is one example, where it is pronounced na-ive, not nive. That said, I also like it, but it means something different here.

> in English, a diacritic of two dots (diaeresis) is used to show that a vowel is pronounced separately from the vowel that came before it, not as a mix. You've correctly defined diaeresis, but it's not actually used in English except in articles that get published in The New Yorker . There is a reason the common English name for the diacritic is "umlaut". The normal use in English is to show that a word comes from G…

Sorry mate, but an umlaut does not represent the same thing as a diaeresis! I don't know what you're arguing for other than that the diaeresis is archaic, which does not conflict with what I said at all. My argument was that the ë used in Russian is different from the ë used in English (and French) because they represent different things, which is exactly what you said too.

Re: Pëtr Kropotkin and Mutual Aid

#25

Post by culi »

acabal wrote: post #19

I produced a free ebook edition of Mutual Aid for Standard Ebooks last year: https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/peter-kropotkin/mutual-aid It's very readable and quite interesting. It aimed to have a veneer of science, when the science of animals and nature was still fairly undeveloped; and it succeeded in a sense, because its observations are still held in regard, but I think it succeeded much better as a work of phi…

In what ways has mankind demonstrated that "tribes of men" can't cooperate? Humans have been able to live in large decentralized polities for millennia and modern archeology strongly backs this up. Göbekli Tepe (~11kya), the still-standing mammoth houses of North Eastern Europe (~15kya), or perhaps best exemplified by "the new archaic" or "monuments without kings"[^0] which is a term used by archeologists to describe the study of certain North American monument sites like Poverty Point where massive complex monuments were built by mobile groups of foragers without the need for permanent habitation. These massive geo-engineering projects were taken on by many different independent but connected tribes of peoples.

Wherever you look we see constant evidence of humanity's ability to cooperate to achieve grand accomplishments. I mean we're on the internet ffs. Ever heard of Wikipedia? Or how most modern tech companies are only possible because of the massive efforts of the open source communities? These aren't really new behaviors for humanity. In fact, I'd argue that if you take a look at the way language evolved you'd find a lot of support for the idea that it's actually a defining characteristic of humanity

[^0]: https://documents.saa.org/container/docs/default-source/doc-...

Re: Pëtr Kropotkin and Mutual Aid

#26

Post by Andrew_nenakhov »

usrnm wrote: post #12
JustinVx wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well it’s different as in this case it’s translated from a Cyrillic alphabet. Also, I would be surprised to read Köln in English as an English name exists for the city: Cologne.

So? I'm going to transliterate stuff from Russian with ё from now on, it just looks great. A language is whatever we want it to be, after all

You'll hardly achieve anything by it, besides really breaking spellchecking software.

Re: Pëtr Kropotkin and Mutual Aid

#27

Post by mad_tortoise »

lynx23 wrote: post #15
psychoslave wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m rather surprised he might not be not better known here. Kropotkin is a major figure of anarchism that you’ll found revered even in some Russel's books. Surely hackernews readership red all Russel works — both color, didn’t it? Don’t you search for a Wikipedia biography each time you cross an antonomastic street, creating it if needed?

[flagged]

If you consider the ideological philosophy of anarchy as 'leftism terror', then you only serve to out yourself as having no idea of the tenets of anarchism itself.

He is also not saying HN readers should lean that way, but having an intellectual and enlightened view on life, often means having read up on multiple ideologies, theories or philosophies. Which if the HN reader base would generally consider themselves well read, then it is quite possible many would know about one of the most famous political and philosophical minds in history, Petr Kropotkin.

Re: Pëtr Kropotkin and Mutual Aid

#28

Post by culi »

shmerl wrote: post #13
p1esk wrote: post #2

I grew up on a street named after him, but I had no idea who he was until now. Fascinating.

Nestor Makhno considered himself a student of Kropotkin.

If anyone's unaware: famous Ukrainian anti-anti-semitist/anarchist revolutionary who lead a peasant revolt that supported farmer communes in much of Ukraine before getting crushed by both the White and Red Army

pro-russian tankies hate him

Re: Pëtr Kropotkin and Mutual Aid

#29

Post by thaumasiotes »

neontomo wrote: post #24
thaumasiotes wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> in English, a diacritic of two dots (diaeresis) is used to show that a vowel is pronounced separately from the vowel that came before it, not as a mix. You've correctly defined diaeresis, but it's not actually used in English except in articles that get published in The New Yorker . There is a reason the common English name for the diacritic is "umlaut". The normal use in English is to show that a word comes from G…

Sorry mate, but an umlaut does not represent the same thing as a diaeresis! I don't know what you're arguing for other than that the diaeresis is archaic, which does not conflict with what I said at all. My argument was that the ë used in Russian is different from the ë used in English (and French) because they represent different things, which is exactly what you said too.

A diaeresis mark is not used in English. You claimed that it was. That's what I'm saying. There is no ë used in English.

> Sorry mate, but an umlaut does not represent the same thing as a diaeresis!

You're going to need to decide what you're talking about. The diacritic of two dots positioned above a letter is most often called "umlaut" in English. It is not normally called "diaeresis", but sometimes it is.

There is a phonological phenomenon also called "umlaut", which is related to the name for the mark in that the mark was historically used in German to indicate the phenomenon. The relationship is dead now; German ö is just a different letter from German o.

Don't get confused between https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umlaut_(linguistics) and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umlaut_(diacritic) .

Re: Pëtr Kropotkin and Mutual Aid

#30

Post by culi »

pavlov wrote: post #17
usrnm wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually like it, it's a great idea. You wouldn't be surprised if you saw words like Köln or Malmö (or even Malmø) in an English text, right, so how is this different?

Cyrillic letters mostly don’t map to Latin based on visual similarity. If you’re going to use Ë just because it looks the same as the original Cyrillic, then logically you’d also use P instead of R, X instead of Kh, etc.

english orthography is so fucked up it's kinda fun seeing people desperate try to hold together different conventions loosely mapped to the phonetics they're supposed to represent
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