P. A. Kropotkin’s communist anarchism in the context of R. Nozick’s libertarianism: Comparative historical and philosophical analysis

Abstract

This article presents a comparative analysis of P.A. Kropotkin’s anarchist and R. Nozick’s libertarian philosophy. The relevance of this study is explained by the relevance and significance of the very ideas of anarchism and libertarianism in modern society. The comparative analysis clearly demonstrates that the doctrines of communist anarchism and libertarianism are marked by certain logical convergence. Moreover, the dialogue with representatives of contemporary political philosophy facilitates the interpretation of Russian thought in a global context. The study of individual doctrines provides insights into the mutual influence of the Russian philosophical tradition and Western intellectual culture. The reported research uses the methodology of case studies. It allows to trace the history of thought in detail through the description and analysis of individual cases. This task is impossible to achieve with a descriptive statistical study. The article compares the key ideas of Kropotkin’s and Nozick’s political and legal thought. It establishes the thematic unity of Russian and Western philosophy and the unity of anarchism and libertarianism. The article compares the basic concepts of Kropotkin’s anarchism and Nozick’s libertarianism. Among them are human nature, the state, freedom and equality, and economic life. Kropotkin aims to solve problems that can be considered central to modern Western political thought. His ideas expand the semantic field of politics and represent an important part of world political thought. Despite different time periods and cultural contexts, Kropotkin and Nozick discuss the same topics using a common language and provide either identical or directly opposite solutions to the same problems.