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 TUCKERSocialism, 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.
More Benjamin Tucker Quotes
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The exercise of authority over the same area by two States is a contradiction.
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War and Authority are companions; Peace and Liberty are companions.
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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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I define Anarchism as the belief in the greatest amount of liberty compatible with equality of liberty; or, in other words, as the belief in every liberty except the liberty to invade.
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The essence of government is control, or the attempt to control.
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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 ….
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The Anarchists never have claimed that liberty will bring perfection; they simply say that its results are vastly preferable to those that follow authority.
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The State is said by some to be a necessary evil; it must be made unnecessary.
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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.
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Such security is equal liberty. But it is not necessarily equality in the use of the earth.
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Voting is merely a labor-saving device for ascertaining on which side force lies and bowing to the inevitable…
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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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Monopoly and privilege must be destroyed, opportunity afforded, and competition encouraged. This is Liberty’s work, and Down with Authority her war-cry.
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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 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