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[T]he State . . . gives idle capital the power of increase, and, through interest, rent, profit, and taxes, robs industrious labor of its products.

Benjamin Tucker

If the individual has a right to govern himself, all external government is tyranny. Hence the necessity of abolishing the State.
BENJAMIN TUCKER

Anarchist Anarchy Government
Therefore coercion of the non-invasive, when justifiable at all, is to be justified on the ground that it secures, not a minimum of ‘ invasion, but a minimum of pain.
BENJAMIN TUCKER

Atheism Coercion Pain
First, then, State Socialism, which may be described as the doctrine that all the affairs of men should be managed by the government, regardless of individual choice.
BENJAMIN TUCKER

Choice Individual Men Swag
Socialism, on the contrary, extends its function to the description of society as it should be, and the discovery of the means of making it what it should be.
BENJAMIN TUCKER

Discovery Eugenics Mean
The student of Liberty must constantly endeavor to disassociate his imagination from sanguinary dramas of assassination and revolt.
BENJAMIN TUCKER

Drama Imagination Liberty
The State is said by some to be a necessary evil; it must be made unnecessary.
BENJAMIN TUCKER

Anarchy Evil Unnecessary
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

Apparent Mean Power Privilege Simply Usury Vanish
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.
BENJAMIN TUCKER

Answers Compulsory Leave May Mean
The main question … is not what motive inspired the law, but what it will be possible for men of bad motive to do with the law.
BENJAMIN TUCKER

Anarchy Law Men Possible
Anarchists are simply unterrified Jeffersonian Democrats.
BENJAMIN TUCKER

Anarchist Democrat
The exercise of authority over the same area by two States is a contradiction.
BENJAMIN TUCKER

Contradiction Exercise Two
Capital will be set free, business will flourish, new enterprises will start, labor will be in demand, and gradually the wages of labor will rise to a level with its product.
BENJAMIN TUCKER

Business Capital Demand Labor Product
The shortest way to change a radical into a conservative, a liberal into a tyrant, a man into a beast, is to give him power over his fellows.
BENJAMIN TUCKER

Men Power Tyrant
One thing, however, is sure, – that in all cases the effort should be to impose all the cost of repairing the wrong upon the doer of the wrong. This alone is real justice, and of course such justice is necessarily free.
BENJAMIN TUCKER

Effort Justice Real
For, just as it has been said that there is no half-way house between Rome and Reason, so it may be said that there is no half-way house between State Socialism and Anarchism.
BENJAMIN TUCKER

Between Country House Reason
[T]he State . . . gives idle capital the power of increase, and, through interest, rent, profit, and taxes, robs industrious labor of its products.
BENJAMIN TUCKER

Giving Increase States

[T]he State . . . gives idle capital the power of increase, and, through interest, rent, profit, and taxes, robs industrious labor of its products.

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[T]he State . . . gives idle capital the power of increase, and, through interest, rent, profit, and taxes, robs industrious labor of its products.

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Popular Authors

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