Peter Kropotkin, how does a Kropotkinist family function? Isn't hierarchy necessary between parents and children?
I believe families should be microcosms of anarchist society - motivated by mutual aid and cooperation. This does not mean their is no structure. Children need guidance, care, and protection. What must be rejected is domination, not responsibility.
Parents should guide their children, not rule them. Authority in the family must arise from care, knowledge, and example, never from fear or blind obedience. Discipline should be educational rather than punitive, encouraging understanding and reflection rather than submission.
Children learn through participation in daily life. They should take part in household decisions appropriate to their age, and learn cooperation and responsibility through experience.
Parents must relate as equals, modeling solidarity, cooperation, and mutual respect. Children learn freedom not from lectures, but by observing how adults live together without authoritarian control.
The family should not stand alone. It should be embedded in a wide networks of neighbors and communities, so. children understand that responsibility extends beyond the household into society at large.
The purpose of the family is to raise autonomous, cooperative, and socially responsible people.
Peter Kropotkin, in your ideal world - are schools different, less hierarchical than schools today?
Yes, schools would be very different. Education needs to cultivate cooperation, curiosity, and social responsibility, not obedience, competition, and fear of authority.
Learning must be collaborative. Students should grow through cooperation, not rivalry. Teachers should not be rulers, they should be guides and mentors, with authority coming from knowledge, care, and experience.
Some structure is necessary, but hierarchy must never become domination. Authority exists only to support learning, ensure safety, and nurture growth, not to enforce submission.
Education should emphasize practical skills, critical thinking, and lived experience. Knowledge must be integrated — science, geography, arts, and social life taught together — so students understand their connection to one another and to nature.
School life should be organized democratically, with students sharing responsibility for daily tasks. Grades should give way to self-assessment, peer feedback, and collective achievement, valuing growth and contribution over competition.
Schools should be woven into the community. Education should prepare people not for individual advancement, but for active participation in a society based on mutual aid.
The aim of education is the formation of free, capable, and cooperative human beings.