Anarchists are simply unterrified Jeffersonian Democrats.
BENJAMIN TUCKERThere are some troubles from which mankind can never escape …. have never claimed that liberty will bring perfection; they simply say that its results are vastly preferable to those that follow from authority ….
More Benjamin Tucker Quotes
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After the manner of the ordinary criminal, or by one man upon all other men, after the manner of an absolute monarch, or by all other men upon one man, after the manner of a modern democracy.
BENJAMIN TUCKER -
Whoso knows what these two schools want and how they propose to get it understands the Socialistic movement.
BENJAMIN TUCKER -
Almost the only persons who may be said to comprehend even approximately the significance, principles, and purposes of Socialism are the chief leaders of the extreme wings of the Socialistic forces, and perhaps a few of the money kings themselves.
BENJAMIN TUCKER -
Is not the very beginning of privilege, monopoly and industrial slavery this erecting of the ballot-box above the individual?
BENJAMIN TUCKER -
Government is the assumption of authority over a given area and all within it, exercised generally for the double purpose of more complete oppression of its subjects and extension of its boundaries.
BENJAMIN TUCKER -
If I can go through life free and rich, I shall not cry because my neighbor, equally free, is richer. Liberty will ultimately make all men rich; it will not make all men equally rich.
BENJAMIN TUCKER -
If the individual has a right to govern himself, all external government is tyranny. Hence the necessity of abolishing the State.
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In the matter of the maintenance and rearing of children the Anarchists would neither institute the communistic nursery which the State Socialists favor nor keep the communistic school system which now prevails.
BENJAMIN TUCKER -
The exercise of authority over the same area by two States is a contradiction.
BENJAMIN TUCKER -
Mind your own business” is its own moral law. Interference with another’s business is a crime and the only crime, and as such may properly be resisted.
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And capital punishment, however ineffective it may be and through whatever ignorance it may be resorted to, is a strictly defensive act, – at least in theory.
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This, then, is the Anarchistic definition of government: the subjection of the non-invasive individual to an external will.
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Thus, the same blow that strikes interest down will send wages up.
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The Anarchists answer that the abolition of the State will leave in existence a defensive association, resting no longer on a compulsory but on a voluntary basis, which will restrain invaders by any means that may prove necessary.
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But the apparent inconsistency vanishes when you read his book and find that by property he means simply legally privileged wealth or the power of usury, and not at all the possession by the labourer of his products.
BENJAMIN TUCKER