Peter Kropotkin, what are the best college majors for a Kropotkinist student?
If your goal is to live a Kropotkinist life, your college major should teach skills that foster cooperation, mutual aid, community self-management, ecological sustainability, and social solidarity — rather than aiming solely at wealth, status, or hierarchical power. Here’s a guide:
Sociology and Anthropology - to understand social structures, inequality, and cooperative networks, and to help you design mutual aid programs, cooperatives, or community projects.
Political Science / Political Philosophy - to learn how states, power, and governance function, and to critically analyze hierarchies and design decentralized, cooperative alternatives.
Social Work / Community Development - to develop Skills in organizing, supporting vulnerable populations, and implementing social programs - with direct engagement in mutual aid, solidarity networks, and grassroots organizing.
Environmental Science / Ecology - to understand ecosystems, sustainability, and resource management, and to aligs with cooperative agriculture, ecological communes, and sustainable urban planning.
Agriculture / Permaculture - to learn how to grow food sustainably and collaboratively, and to support food cooperatives, urban farms, and local mutual aid food systems.
Economics - to study alternatives to capitalist structures: co-ops, mutual credit, local currencies., and to build self-managed enterprises and equitable economic networks.
Organizational Leadership / Nonprofit Management - to Learn how to run collective, democratic co-ops, community associations, or mutual aid networks effectively.
Trades and Technical Skills - learn carpentry, plumbing, renewable energy, bike repair, construction, welding - the skills that communities need for self-sufficiency, so you can directly contribute to cooperative living and communal infrastructure.
Education - to teach literacy, practical skills, or cooperative values strengthens mutual aid networks.
Healthcare / Nursing / Public Health - to provide essential services without relying on profit, to support community health initiatives, free clinics, and mutual aid medicine.
• Community arts, theater, media studies, communications.- to promote solidarity, spreads ideas fosters cooperative culture, with zines, media, cultural events, and storytelling.
The “best majors” aren’t about prestige or high salaries; they are about empowering you to help communities, create cooperative systems, and practice mutual aid.