Anarchism Quotes - Page 7

• That's what I'm trying to get over: the idea that anarchism offers a description of equitable relations that go way back rather than a hypothesis of what the future should look like.

  Rebecca Solnit

  Ideas, Trying, Looks

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• The term anarchism has become associated with two phenomena with which real anarchist don't want to associate themselves with. One is violence, and the other is disorder or chaos. The popular conception of anarchism is on the one hand bomb-throwing and terrorism, and on the other hand no rules, no regulations, no discipline, everybody does what they want, confusion, etc. That is why there is a reluctance to use the term anarchism.

  Howard Zinn

  Real, Hands, Two

  "Rebels Against Tyranny". Interview with Ziga Vodovnik, www.counterpunch.org. May 12, 2008.

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• No doubt that anarchist ideas are frightening to those in power. People in power can tolerate liberal ideas. They can tolerate ideas that call for reforms, but they cannot tolerate the idea that there will be no state, no central authority. So it is very important for them to ridicule the idea of anarchism to create this impression of anarchism as violent and chaotic. It is useful for them.

  Howard Zinn

  Ideas, People, Doubt

  "Rebels Against Tyranny". Interview with Ziga Vodovnik, www.counterpunch.org. May 12, 2008.

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• There is one central characteristic of anarchism on the matter of means, and that central principle is a principle of direct action - of not going through the forms that the society offers you, of representative government, of voting, of legislation, but directly taking power.

  Howard Zinn

  Mean, Direct Action, Government

  "Rebels Against Tyranny". Interview with Ziga Vodovnik, www.counterpunch.org. May 12, 2008.

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• The idea of direct action against the evil that you want to overcome is a kind of common denominator for anarchist ideas and anarchist movements. I think one of the most important principles of anarchism is that you cannot separate means and ends. Anarchism requires means and ends to be in line with one another. I think this is in fact one of the distinguishing characteristics of anarchism.

  Howard Zinn

  Mean, Thinking, Direct Action

  "Rebels Against Tyranny". Interview with Ziga Vodovnik, www.counterpunch.org. May 12, 2008.

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• Anarchism is surprisingly effective in solving actual problems largely because anarchists have thought a lot about solving actual problems on a micro level in ways that other political ideologies don't really feel they have to until after they seize state power.

  David Graeber

  Political, Levels, Way

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• Anarchism is a definite intellectual current in the life of our times, whose adherents advocate the abolition of economic monopolies and of all political and social coercive institutions within society. In place of the present capitalistic economic order Anarchists would have a free association of all productive forces based upon co-operative labour, which would have as its sole purpose the satisfying of the necessary requirements of every member of society, and would no longer have in view the special interest of privileged minorities within the social union.

  Rudolf Rocker

  Views, Order, Political

  Rudolf Rocker (2004). “Anarcho-Syndicalism: Theory and Practice”, p.1, AK Press

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• My early work is politically anarchist fiction, in that I was an anarchist for a long period of time. I'm not an anarchist any longer, because I've concluded that anarchism is an
  impractical ideal. Nowadays, I regard myself as a libertarian.

  Robert Anton Wilson

  Long, Fiction, Libertarian

  "Robert Anton Wilson: Searching For Cosmic Intelligence". Interview with Jeffrey Elliot, 1980.

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• Whenever freedom is made into the absolute, the result is not freedom but anarchism. Freedom must be under law, or it is not freedom.

  R.J. Rushdoony

  Law, Made, Results

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• Anarchism is grounded in a rather definite social-psychological hypothesis: that forceful, graceful and intelligent behaviour occurs only when there is an uncoerced and direct response to the physical and social environment; that in most human affairs, more harm than good results from compulsion, top-down direction, bureaucratic planning, pre-ordained curricula, jails, conscription, states.

  Paul Goodman

  Intelligent, Jail, Top Down

  Paul Goodman (1967). “Like a conquered province: the moral ambiguity of America”

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• Whatever its future success as a historical movement, anarchism will remain a fundamental part of human experience, for the drive for freedom is one of our deepest needs and the vision of a free society is one of our oldest dreams. Neither can ever be fully repressed; both will outlive all rulers and their States.

  Peter Marshall

  Dream, Historical, Vision

  Peter Marshall (2009). “Demanding the Impossible: A History of Anarchism”, p.15, PM Press

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• With subjectivity in philosophy, anarchism in politics goes hand in hand. Already during Luther's lifetime, unwelcome and unacknowledged disciples had developed the doctrine of Anabaptism, which for a time dominated the city of Munster. The Anabaptists repudiated all law since they held that good men will be guided at every moment by the Holy Spirit, who can not be bound by formulas. From this premise they arrive at communism and sexual promiscuity; they were therefore exterminated after a heroic resistance.

  Bertrand Russell

  Philosophy, Men, Hands

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• The best way to think about anarchism is as a combination of three levels. On the one hand, the sort of instinctual revulsion against forms of inequality in power; on the other hand, a reappraisal of what one is already doing in egalitarian relations; and then the projection of these principles on all sorts of relations.

  David Graeber

  Thinking, Hands, Levels

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• Anarchism means all sort of things to different people but the traditional anarchists' movements assumed that there'd be a highly organized society, just one organized from below with direct participation and so on. Actually, one piece of the media confusion has a basis because there really are two different strands in the occupy movement, both important, but different.

  Noam Chomsky

  Mean, Two, Media

  "Noam Chomsky on America's Economic Suicide". Interview with Laura Flanders / GRITtv, www.alternet.org. May 4, 2012.

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• Anarchism as the name for an ideal total social form is a really complicated question. I have never found satisfying answers from anarchists about the definition of the state they are opposed to. Most are opposed to coercive forms of state power. Questions about large scale systems of organization and how they will be funded - those are questions it's hard to get anarchists to give good answers to.

  Cynthia Kauffman

  Names, Organization, Giving

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

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• Into every tidy scheme for arranging the pattern of human life, it is necessary to inject a certain dose of anarchism.

  Bertrand Russell

  Patterns, Schemes, Human Life

  Bertrand Russell (2004). “Sceptical Essays”, p.217, Psychology Press

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• People’s State, is a yoke, on the one hand giving rise to despotism and on the other to slavery. They say that such a yoke – dictatorship is a transitional step towards achieving full freedom for the people: anarchism or freedom is the aim, while state and dictatorship is the means, and so, in order to free the masses of people, they have first to be enslaved!

  Mikhail Bakunin

  Mean, Order, Firsts

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• In the early period of Left struggles, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, there were many different trajectories for the struggle, whether you call it 'syndicalism' or 'anarchism' or, at the time, 'social democracy', eventually 'Communism', these were different theories of struggle. But all of them shared a basic understanding that the people...experience exploitation, they experience oppression, but they're not prepared to rise up.

  Vijay Prashad

  Struggle, People, Understanding

  "'Exiles From the Future': An Interview with Vijay Prashad". Interview with Andrew Stewart, www.counterpunch.org. August 17, 2016.

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• You see, one strand...of anarchism believed that you needed to use essentially homeopathic doses of terror by assassinating people, et cetera, the so-called 'propaganda of the deed', and that this propaganda of the deed would rouse people up, give them confidence to rise up. Another section believed 'No, it was not by seeing something happen that people get confidence, but it's by acting', in other words, the movements must go among the people and produce small struggles, bigger struggles, to give people greater and greater confidence.

  Vijay Prashad

  Struggle, People, Giving

  "“Exiles From the Future”: An Interview with Vijay Prashad". Interview with Andrew Stewart, www.counterpunch.org. August 17, 2016.

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• Peter Kropotkin was surely on the left. He was one of the founders of what is now called 'sociobiology' or 'evolutionary psychology' with his book Mutual Aid, arguing that human nature had evolved in ways conducive to the communitarian anarchism that he espoused.

  Noam Chomsky

  Book, Psychology, Way

  Source: libcom.org

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• I learned that [Trotskyism] were no different from the Stalinists, and they expelled me, which is the typical Marxist-Leninist way of dealing with dissenters. From that point on, I migrated by the 1950s into anarchism, increasingly emphasizing decentralization. Also, I made the all-important step of bridging my social philosophy with ecology. I did that in 1952 and went on to write a whole series of books developing an anarcho-ecological approach.

  Murray Bookchin

  Philosophy, Book, Writing

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• My concern is to develop a North American type of anarchism that comes out of the American tradition, or that at least can be communicated to Americans and that takes into consideration that Americans are not any longer people of European background.

  Murray Bookchin

  People, Tradition, Consideration

  Source: robertgraham.wordpress.com

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• I know one thing: that you can do a lot of things but if you don't educate people into conscious anarchism it gets frittered away.

  Murray Bookchin

  People, Conscious, Educate

  Source: robertgraham.wordpress.com

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• I'm by no means convinced that capitalism and the development of technology has made anarchism easier.

  Murray Bookchin

  Mean, Technology, Development

  Source: robertgraham.wordpress.com

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• I have been criticized for pointing out that anarchism is likely to flourish more easily, at least in the western world, and to a certain extent in eastern Europe, in those areas where there is either grim need or considerable technological development.

  Murray Bookchin

  Technological Development, Europe, Needs

  Source: robertgraham.wordpress.com

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