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 TUCKERThe 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.
More Benjamin Tucker Quotes
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Whoso knows what these two schools want and how they propose to get it understands the Socialistic movement.
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Aggression is simply another name for government. Aggression, invasion, government, are interconvertible terms. The essence of government is control, or the attempt to control.
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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.
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It is not competition, but monopoly, that deprives labor of its product. Destroy the banking monopoly, establish freedom in finance, and down will go interest on money through the beneficent influence of competition.
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The Anarchists are simply unterrified Jeffersonian Democrats. They believe that ‘the best government is that which governs least,’ and that which governs least is no government at all.
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War and Authority are companions; Peace and Liberty are companions.
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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