It is neither more nor less than a paper representative of the bayonet, the bully, and the bullet.
BENJAMIN TUCKERThis, then, is the Anarchistic definition of government: the subjection of the non-invasive individual to an external will.
More Benjamin Tucker Quotes
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Voting is merely a labor-saving device for ascertaining on which side force lies and bowing to the inevitable…
BENJAMIN TUCKER -
Thus, the same blow that strikes interest down will send wages up.
BENJAMIN TUCKER -
But which is the State’s essential function, aggression or defence, few seem to know or care.
BENJAMIN TUCKER -
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 -
Is not the very beginning of privilege, monopoly and industrial slavery this erecting of the ballot-box above the individual?
BENJAMIN TUCKER -
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 -
To force a man to pay for the violation of his own liberty is indeed an addition of insult to injury.
BENJAMIN TUCKER -
Anarchism may be described as the doctrine that all the affairs of men should be managed by individuals or voluntary associations, and that the State should be abolished….. Nor does the Anarchistic scheme furnish any code of morals to be imposed upon the individual. “
BENJAMIN TUCKER -
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.
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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.
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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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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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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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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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[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