Петр Кропоткин, философия сотрудничества и цифровая революция

Anarchism has been rejected by modern science as an antihistorical and utopian concept. Even Kropotkin, who sought to provide scientific justification for anarchist views, in fact professed the ideology of the "Golden Age", according to which the idyll of collaboration, which had taken place before the emergence of states, was destroyed by their formation. He considered the state only as an instrument of exploitation of the population by the ruling class, without taking into account that the elite can perform functions vital to society. According to Kropotkin, not only the state, but also market competition is a mistake of evolution. He did not distinguish between positive (not directed against third parties) and negative collaboration. Kropotkin's tolerant attitude towards terrorism contradicts the very essence of his teachings. At the same time, a number of statements of Kropotkin's theory have been adopted by contemporary researchers. Kropotkin demonstrated the incorrectness of a straightforward understanding of Darwinism, noted the connection between mechanisms of collaboration and certain ethical norms, and drew attention to the importance of development of civil society. Decreasing the level of violence as institutions improve is the central idea of the theory of social orders, constructed by D. North and his co-authors; it echoes Kropotkin’s theory. A generalization of the same idea is the philosophy of collaboration (proposed by the author of this article), which shows that socio-economic development leads to a decrease in the role of violence embedded in the mechanisms of competition and power, and to an increase in the role of collaboration. It is shown that this trend is reinforced by the digital revolution.