If the individual has a right to govern himself, all external government is tyranny. Hence the necessity of abolishing the State.
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.
Aggression is simply another name for government.
Aggression is simply another name for government. Aggression, invasion, government, are interconvertible terms. The essence of government is control, or the attempt to control. He who attempts to control another is a governor, an aggressor, an invader; and the nature of such invasion is not changed, whether it is made by one man upon another man, 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.
To force a man to pay for the violation of his own liberty is indeed an addition of insult to injury.
The State is said by some to be a necessary evil; it must be made unnecessary.
The government is a tyrant living by theft, and therefore has no business to engage in any business.
Anarchists are simply unterrified Jeffersonian Democrats.
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. 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.
The Anarchists never have claimed that liberty will bring perfection; they simply say that its results are vastly preferable to those that follow authority.
Voting is merely a labor-saving device for ascertaining on which side force lies and bowing to the inevitable... It is neither more nor less than a paper representative of the bayonet, the bully, and the bullet.
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.
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.
War and Authority are companions; Peace and Liberty are companions.
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. 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.
The moment one abandons the idea that he was born to discover what is right and enforce it upon the rest of the world, he begins to feel an increasing disposition to let others alone and to refrain even from retaliation or resistance except in those emergencies which immediately and imperatively require it.
Laissez Faire was very good sauce for the goose, labor, but was very poor sauce for the gander, capital.
The essence of government is control, or the attempt to control.
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. 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.
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.
The moment that justice must be paid for by the victim of injustice it becomes itself injustice.
[T]he State . . . gives idle capital the power of increase, and, through interest, rent, profit, and taxes, robs industrious labor of its products.
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.
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.
One thing, however, is sure, - that in all cases the effort should be to impose all the cost of repairing the wrong upon the doer of the wrong. This alone is real justice, and of course such justice is necessarily free.
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