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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.

Benjamin Tucker

Is not the very beginning of privilege, monopoly and industrial slavery this erecting of the ballot-box above the individual?
BENJAMIN TUCKER

Privilege Slavery Voting
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.
BENJAMIN TUCKER

Ignorance May Punishment
The State is said by some to be a necessary evil; it must be made unnecessary.
BENJAMIN TUCKER

Anarchy Evil Unnecessary
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

Church Corruption War
The moment that justice must be paid for by the victim of injustice it becomes itself injustice.
BENJAMIN TUCKER

Justice Moments Victim
Marx, as we have seen, solved it by declaring capital to be a different thing from product, and maintaining that it belonged to society and should be seized by society and employed for the benefit of all alike.
BENJAMIN TUCKER

Benefit Different Maintaining
Aggression is simply another name for government.
BENJAMIN TUCKER

Aggression Government Names
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 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.
BENJAMIN TUCKER

Anarchy Believe Government
To force a man to pay for the violation of his own liberty is indeed an addition of insult to injury.
BENJAMIN TUCKER

Injury Insult Liberty Men
And this is the Anarchistic definition of the State: the embodiment of the principle of invasion in an individual, or a band of individuals, assuming to act as representatives or masters of the entire people within a given area.
BENJAMIN TUCKER

Band People Principles
But which is the State’s essential function, aggression or defence, few seem to know or care.
BENJAMIN TUCKER

Aquarium Care Essential
The right of the majority is absolute.
BENJAMIN TUCKER

Absolutes Majority
War and Authority are companions; Peace and Liberty are companions.
BENJAMIN TUCKER

Authority Liberty War
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 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
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

Absolute Manner Men Modern Monarch Ordinary
Man’s only right to land is his might over it. If his neighbor is mightier than he and takes the land from him, then the land is his neighbor’s, until the latter is dispossessed by one mightier still.
BENJAMIN TUCKER

Disoppessed Land Man Neighbour
Anarchism is for liberty, and neither for nor against anything else. Anarchy is the mother of co-operation, yes, just as liberty is the mother of order; but, as a matter of definition, liberty is not order nor is Anarchism co-operation.
BENJAMIN TUCKER

Liberty Mother Order
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
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
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
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
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
Mind your own business” is its own moral law. Interference with another’s business is a crime and the only crime, and as such may properly be resisted.
BENJAMIN TUCKER

Business Interference Mind Resisted
Aggression is simply another name for government. Aggression, invasion, government, are interconvertible terms. The essence of government is control, or the attempt to control.
BENJAMIN TUCKER

Essence Men Names
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

Business Law Men Mind Own

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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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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