Big Issues

How do you get people to surrender their lives to Big Issues? By demonstrating that unless society is fixed, each person's day-to-day is driven to failure. I think that's Kropotkin's approach here. He asks the aspiring doctor what drug can be prescribed for workers deteriorated by poverty; the scientist how his discoveries will ever be applied except in service of wealth; the lawyer how he can defend the poor, who really do break property laws. Instead, Kropotkin urges, all should capital-S Socialists! It's addressed to the young, so perhaps suitably the argument is a bit juvenile. It is the rhetoric of someone who has learned one very effective rhetorical trick, and plans to to show it off.