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But which is the State’s essential function, aggression or defence, few seem to know or care.

Benjamin Tucker

There 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 ….
BENJAMIN TUCKER

Blessing Evil Perfection
Peace and Liberty are companions. It is foolish in the extreme not only to resort to force before necessity compels, but especially to madly create the conditions that will lead to this necessity.
BENJAMIN TUCKER

Condition Extreme Liberty Necessity Peace Strength
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
The two principles referred to are Authority and Liberty, and the names of the two schools of Socialistic thought which fully and unreservedly represent one or the other of them are, respectively, State Socialism and Anarchism.
BENJAMIN TUCKER

Country Names School
War and Authority are companions; Peace and Liberty are companions.
BENJAMIN TUCKER

Authority Liberty War
It is because peaceful agitation and passive resistance are effective that I uphold them, and it is because force strengthens tyranny that I condemn it. War and Authority are companions.
BENJAMIN TUCKER

Passive Peaceful Resistance War
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

Government Liberty Purpose
Thus, the same blow that strikes interest down will send wages up.
BENJAMIN TUCKER

Blow Strikes Wages
Whoso knows what these two schools want and how they propose to get it understands the Socialistic movement.
BENJAMIN TUCKER

Movement School Socialistic Understand
An Anarchist is anyone who denies the necessity and legitimacy of government; the question of his methods of attacking it is foreign to the definition.
BENJAMIN TUCKER

Anarchy Definitions Government
It will probably surprise many who know nothing of Proudhon save his declaration that ‘property is robbery’ to learn that he was perhaps the most vigorous hater of Communism that ever lived on this planet.
BENJAMIN TUCKER

Book Mean
Give woman equality with man, by all means; but do it by taking power from man, not giving it to woman.
BENJAMIN TUCKER

Equality Mean Power Taking Women
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
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

Kings Leader Wings
[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
In times past…it was my habit to talk glibly of the right of man to land. It was a bad habit, and I long ago sloughed it off.
BENJAMIN TUCKER

Ago Long Men Past

But which is the State’s essential function, aggression or defence, few seem to know or care.

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But which is the State’s essential function, aggression or defence, few seem to know or care.

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