Murray Bookchin Quotes - Page 3

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• I have no quarrel with libertarians who advance the concept of capitalism . I believe that people will decide for themselves what they want to do. The all-important thing is that they be free to make that decision and that they do not stand in the way of communities that wish to make other decisions.

  Murray Bookchin

  Believe, People, Community

  Source: reason.com

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• Wherever people defend the rights of the individual, I stand with them above all, over and beyond any wishes relating to how an economy should be managed or how people should govern themselves. This is a very strong commitment on my part.

  Murray Bookchin

  Strong, Commitment, Rights

  Interview with Jeff Riggenbach, reason.com. October 1979.

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• I think it's terribly important that networks of anarchists establish themselves with a view toward educating people.

  Murray Bookchin

  Thinking, Views, People

  Source: robertgraham.wordpress.com

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• I say this ironically, not because I favor the State, but because people are not in the state of mind right now where they feel that they can manage themselves. We have to go through an educational process - which does not involve, in my opinion, compromises with the State. But if the State disappeared tomorrow by accident, and the police disappeared and the army disappeared and the government agencies disappeared, the ironical situation is that people would suddenly feel denuded.

  Murray Bookchin

  Educational, Army, Agency

  Interview with Jeff Riggenbach, reason.com. October 1979.

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• I categorically deny that. The American left today as I know it - and believe me, I am very familiar with the American left - is going toward authoritarianism, toward totalitarianism. It's becoming the real right in the United States.

  Murray Bookchin

  Real, Believe, Today

  Source: reason.com

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• I feel that if people investigate the emergence of government, of State power - if they examine the logic of State power historically, and more specifically in the United States - they will find that the concept of limited government is not tenable once they adopt some type of libertarian principle.

  Murray Bookchin

  Government, People, Principles

  Interview with Jeff Riggenbach, reason.com. October 1979.

  6 Copy quote

• My communism attempts basically to create a shared society, that's all; a shared society in which individuality will flourish, along with love, and along with mutual respect.

  Murray Bookchin

  Individuality, Communism, Mutual Respect

  Interview with Jeff Riggenbach, reason.com. October 1979.

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• I was a Stalinist in the '30s. I had come from a Russian revolutionary family who simply were elated by the fact that the Czar was overthrown by this group known as the Bolsheviks. My family identified with anybody who overthrew the Czar. So they identified themselves intuitively with Bolshevism.

  Murray Bookchin

  Groups, Facts, Revolutionary

  Interview with Jeff Riggenbach, reason.com. October 1979.

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• I think that people who believe in limited government would benefit greatly by studying the logic in government itself and the role of power as a corruptive mechanism in leading finally to unlimited government.

  Murray Bookchin

  Believe, Thinking, Government

  Interview with Jeff Riggenbach, reason.com. October 1979.

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• I've been criticized by many anarchists as believing that anarchism is impossible without affluence. On the contrary, I think affluence is very destructive to anarchism. If you are absorbed by that commodity world then you're not going to move toward any radical positions, you're going to move toward a stance of protectiveness.

  Murray Bookchin

  Believe, Moving, Thinking

  Source: robertgraham.wordpress.com

  4 Copy quote

• My feeling is that whatever people elect to do, insofar as they don't deny the rights of others, every effort should be made to defend their right to do it.

  Murray Bookchin

  Rights, People, Effort

  Source: reason.com

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• If anarcho-communism served to regiment the population in the name of libertarian unity, if it served in any way through collectivist measures to deny the rights of the individual instead of reconciling the rights of the individual with the collective, I would definitely stand completely on the side of the individualist who is trying to rescue above all that most precious thing that makes us human - consciousness and personality.

  Murray Bookchin

  Rights, Names, Personality

  Interview with Jeff Riggenbach, reason.com. October 1979.

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• I would agree that much with people who accept private property - that conscription is an unpardonable transgression, whether it be "corrupt" or not. The Spanish anarchists opposed conscription during the civil war in Spain as a gross expropriation of property, the most precious property that we have, our own physical beings themselves.

  Murray Bookchin

  War, People, Spain

  Interview with Jeff Riggenbach, reason.com. October 1979.

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• What higher property do you have than your own person? I totally agree, by the way, with John Locke's idea that one's body is literally the most precious property that exists. I would say that conscription is the most heinous violation of property that one can imagine.

  Murray Bookchin

  Ideas, Body, Way

  Interview with Jeff Riggenbach, reason.com. October 1979.

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• I would say that today the real support for State power and totalitarianism comes from the Communist parties and the Socialist parties and, where they are sizable, the Trotskyist groups. They are the ones that really frighten me.

  Murray Bookchin

  Real, Party, Support

  Source: reason.com

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• There are people, of course, who profess to be libertarian Marxists. I believe they mean very well, and I even write in their periodicals; but I write very militantly that I regard Marxism as a very subtle form of what I would call the totalitarian ideology - all the more subtle because it professes to advance the notions of freedom.

  Murray Bookchin

  Believe, Mean, Writing

  Source: reason.com

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• I believe that the American people should defend themselves if any attempt is made to take over the government by coup d'etat, whether by the military or the Marxists or any people who profess to be anarchists.

  Murray Bookchin

  Military, Believe, Government

  Interview with Jeff Riggenbach, reason.com. October 1979.

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• The State certainly played a decisive role. I also believe that it may have stemmed from the rivalry itself. Grow or die, devour or die. That's the one problem that I have to wrestle with. I have to wrestle with whether or not rivalry in the free market does not ultimately lead to concentration, corporatism, and finally totalitarianism.

  Murray Bookchin

  Believe, Doe, Roles

  Source: reason.com

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• I'm less influenced by any of [Karl] Marx's ideas today than I've ever been in my life, and most significantly Marx's theory of historical materialism, which I think is virtually a debris of despotism.

  Murray Bookchin

  Thinking, Ideas, Historical

  Source: robertgraham.wordpress.com

  4 Copy quote

• I'm much more interested in developing human character in society. And I'm much more interested in the social conditions that foster commitment to ideals, a sense of solidarity, purposefulness, steadfastness, responsibility.

  Murray Bookchin

  Commitment, Responsibility, Character

  Source: robertgraham.wordpress.com

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• We should try to become better people, ethically speaking, reflect upon ourselves and our very limited existences and develop a sense of tolerance for each other, as well as for other anarchist groups with which we may disagree. But we're not committed to toeing a line called anarchism; there are many different anarchisms.

  Murray Bookchin

  People, Tolerance, Trying

  Source: robertgraham.wordpress.com

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• My concern over private property is that it no longer fosters individuality. The historic destiny of private property is that it has created a highly corporatized economy, and I have to ask myself why. What is it in the market that led 100 capitalists to dissolve into 10 as a result of rivalry and accumulation, 10 into 3, and I think if the system has its way, those 3 into 1?

  Murray Bookchin

  Destiny, Thinking, Individuality

  Source: reason.com

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• If the State does not enjoy a monopoly of violence, which then gives it the power to order people's lives and to compel them to obey decisions over which they have no control, or just limited control, then I think you have a consistently libertarian society.

  Murray Bookchin

  Thinking, Order, People

  Interview with Jeff Riggenbach, reason.com. October 1979.

  4 Copy quote

• When I die Bookchinism comes to an end, and all the allusions to it both among Marxists and anarchists.

  Murray Bookchin

  Anarchist, Ends, Marxist

  Source: robertgraham.wordpress.com

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• My main interests right now are to publish, to write, to explicate various views which I hope have an impact on thinking people.

  Murray Bookchin

  Writing, Thinking, Impact

  Source: robertgraham.wordpress.com

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