Night of August 4 -- Aristocracy pretends to relinquish feudal rights -- Assembly begs King to take action -- D'Aiguillon and de Noailles take up cause of peasants -- Their great speeches -- Le Guen de Kérangall-Scene in Assembly -- Extent of actual concessions -- Effect of news in provinces -- Middle classes take up arms against peasants The night of August 4 is one of the great dates of the Revolution. Like July 14 and October 15, 1789, June 21, 1791, August 10, 1792, and May 31, 1793, it marked one of the great stages in the revolutionary movement, and it determined the character of the period which follows it. The historic legend is lovingly used to embellish this night, and the majority of historians, copying the story as it has been given by a few contemporaries, represent it as a night full of enthusiasm and saintly abnegation. With the taking of the Bastille, the historians tell us, the Revolution had g...
A Factor of EvolutionMutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution Peter Kropotkin 1902 Chapter 4: MUTUAL AID AMONG THE BARBARIANS The great migrations. -- New organization rendered necessary. -- The village community. -- Communal work. -- Judicial procedure -- Inter-tribal law. -- Illustrations from the life of our contemporaries -- Buryates. -- Kabyles. -- Caucasian mountaineers. -- African stems. It is not possible to study primitive mankind without being deeply impressed by the sociability it has displayed since its very first steps in life. Traces of human societies are found in the relics of both the oldest and the later stone age; and, when we come to observe the savages whose manners of life are still those of neolithic man, we find them closely bound together by an extremely ancient clan organization which enables them to combine their individually weak forces, to enjoy life in common, and to progress. Man is no exception in nature.
The village community consisted then, as it still does, of individual families. But all the families of the same village owned the land in common. They considered it as their common heritage and shared it out among themselves on the basis of the size of each family - their needs and their potential. Hundreds of millions of human beings still live in this way in Eastern Europe, India, Java, etc. It is the same kind of system that has been established in our time by Russian peasants, freely in Siberia, as soon as the State gave them a chance to occupy the vast Siberian territory in their own way. Today the cultivation of the land in a village community is carried out by each individual household independently. Since all the arable land is shared out between the families (and further shared out when necessary) each cultivates its field as best it can. But originally, the land was also worked in common, and this custom is still carried on in many places - at least on...