Read "The Conquest of Bread" by Peter Kropotkin online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
It has come about, however, in the course of the ages traversed by the human race, that all that enables man to produce and to increase his power of production has been seized by the few. Some time, perhaps, we will relate how this came to pass. For the present let it suffice to state the fact and analyze its consequences.
Today the soil, which actually owes its value to the needs of an ever-increasing population, belongs to a minority who prevent the people from cultivating it -- or do not allow them to cultivate it according to modern methods.