Anarchism Quotes - Page 7

• I don't think anarchism consists of sitting down and saying let's form a collective. I don't think it consists of saying we're all anarchists: you're an anarcho-syndicalist; you're an anarcho-communist; you're an anarcho-individualist.

  Murray Bookchin

  Thinking, Sitting Down, Down And

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• I've developed my anarchism, my critique of Marxism, which has been the most advanced bourgeois ideology I know of, into a community of ideas and ultimately a common sense of responsibilities and commitments.

  Murray Bookchin

  Commitment, Responsibility, Ideas

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• I believe that there has to be an ideal and I favour an ethical anarchism which can be cohered into an ideal.

  Murray Bookchin

  Believe, Favour, Ethical

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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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• 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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• Science is essentially an anarchic enterprise: theoretical anarchism is more humanitarian and more likely to encourage progress than its law-and-order alternatives.

  Paul Feyerabend

  Order, Law, Progress

  Paul Feyerabend (1993). “Against Method”, p.5, Verso

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• Anarchism? You bet your sweet betsy. The only cure for the ills of democracy is more democracy. Much more.

  Edward Abbey

  Sweet, Democracy, Cures

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• I believe that the biblical teaching is clear. It always contests political power. It incites to "counterpower," to "positive" criticism, to an irreducible dialogue (like that between king and prophet in Israel), to antistatism, to a decentralizing of the relation, to an extreme relativizing of everything political, to an anti-ideology, to a questioning of all that claims either power or dominion (in other words, of all things political), and finally, if we may use a modern term, to a kind of "anarchism" (so long as we do not relate the term to the anarchist teaching of the nineteenth century).

  Jacques Ellul

  Kings, Teaching, Biblical

  "The Subversion of Christianity" by Jacques Ellul, translated by G. Bromiley, (p. 116), 1986.

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• Cleansed of its leftist residues, anarchy - anarchism minus Marxism - will be free to get better at being what it is.

  Bob Black

  Get Better, Anarchy, Minus

  "Anarchy after Leftism". Book by Bob Black, 1997.

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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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• Capitalism is the fullest expression of anarchism, and anarchism is the fullest expression of capitalism. Not only are they compatible, but you can't really have one without the other. True anarchism will be capitalism, and true capitalism will be anarchism

  Murray Rothbard

  Expression, Capitalism, Compatible

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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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• Peter Kropotkin described Anarchism as the extreme left wing of socialism - a view with which I completely agree. One of my deepest concerns today is that the libertarian socialist core will be eroded by fashionable, post- modernist, spiritualist, mystic individualism.

  Murray Bookchin

  Views, Wings, Libertarian

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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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• Liberalism is to freedom as anarchism is to anarchy.

  Ernst Junger

  Anarchy, Liberalism

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• Ask for work. If they don't give you work, ask for bread. If they do not give you work or bread, then take bread.

  Emma Goldman

  Work, Giving, Bread

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