Instead Of A Book, By A Man Too Busy To Write One — Part 01, Chapter 21 : Mr. Pentecost an Abettor of Government

By Benjamin R. Tucker (1897)

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Untitled Anarchism Instead Of A Book, By A Man Too Busy To Write One Part 01, Chapter 21

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(1854 - 1939)

American Father of Individualist Anarchism

: An individualist Anarchist, Tucker was a person of intellect rather than of action, focusing on the development of his ideas and on the publication of books and journals, especially the journal Liberty: Not the Daughter but the Mother of Order... (From: Anarchy Archives.)
• "It has ever been the tendency of power to add to itself, to enlarge its sphere, to encroach beyond the limits set for it..." (From: "State Socialism and Anarchism," by Benjamin R. Tu....)
• "If the individual has a right to govern himself, all external government is tyranny. Hence the necessity of abolishing the State." (From: "State Socialism and Anarchism," by Benjamin R. Tu....)
• "The evil to which this [tariff] monopoly gives rise might more properly be called misusury than usury, because it compels labor to pay, not exactly for the use of capital, but rather for the misuse of capital." (From: "State Socialism and Anarchism," by Benjamin R. Tu....)


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Part 01, Chapter 21

Mr. Pentecost an Abettor of Government.

[Liberty, November 14, 1891.]


Because I claim and teach that Anarchism justifies the application of force to invasive men and condemns force only when applied to noninvasive men, Mr. Pentecost declares that the only difference between Anarchism on the one hand and Monarchism or Republicanism on the other is the difference between the popular conception of invasion and my own. If I were to assert that biology is the science which deals with the phenomena of living matter and excludes all phenomena of matter that is not living, and if Mr. Pentecost were to say that, assuming this, the only difference between the biological sciences and the abiological is the difference between the popular conception of life and my own, he would take a position precisely analogous to that which he takes on the subject of Anarchism, and the one position would be every whit as sensible and every whit as foolish as the other. The limit between invasion and non-invasion, like the limit between life and non-life, is not, at least in our present comprehension of it, a hard and fast line. But does it follow from this that invasion and non-invasion, life and non-life, are identical? Not at all. The indefinite character of the boundary does no more than show that a small proportion of the phenomena of society, like a small proportion of the phenomena of matter, still resist the respective distinguishing tests to which by far the greater portion of such phenomena have yielded and by which they have been classified. And however embarrassing in practice may be the reluctance of frontier phenomena to promptly arrange themselves on either side of the border in obedience to the tests, it is still more embarrassing in theory to attempt to frame any rational view of society or life without recognition of these tests, by which, broadly speaking, distinctions have been established. Some of the most manifest distinctions have never been sharply drawn.(22 ¶ 1)

If Mr. Pentecost will view the subject in this light and follow out the reasoning thus entered upon, he will soon discover that my conception or misconception of what constitutes invasion does not at all affect the scientific differentiation of Anarchism from Archism. I may err grievously in attributing an invasive or a noninvasive character to a given social phenomenon, and, if I act upon my error, I shall act Archistically; but the very fact that I am acting, not blindly and at hap-hazard, but in furtherance of an endeavor to conform to a generalization which is the product of long experience and accumulating evidence, adds infinitely to the probability that I shall discover my error. In trying to draw more clearly the line between invasion and non-invasion, all of us, myself included, are destined to make many mistakes, but by our very mistakes we shall approach our goal. Only Mr. Pentecost and those who think with him take themselves out of the path of progress by assuming that it is possible to live in harmony simply by ignoring the fact of friction and the causes thereof. The no-rule which Mr. Pentecost believes in would amount in practice to submission to the rule of the invasive man. No-rule, in the sense of no-force-in-any-case, is a self-contradiction. The man who attempts to practice it becomes an abettor of government by declining to resist it. So long as Mr. Pentecost is willing to let the criminal ride roughshod over him and me, his preference not to be ruled at all is nothing but a beatific reveling in sheerest moonshine and Utopia.(22 ¶ 2)

From : fair-use.org

(1854 - 1939)

American Father of Individualist Anarchism

: An individualist Anarchist, Tucker was a person of intellect rather than of action, focusing on the development of his ideas and on the publication of books and journals, especially the journal Liberty: Not the Daughter but the Mother of Order... (From: Anarchy Archives.)
• "It has ever been the tendency of power to add to itself, to enlarge its sphere, to encroach beyond the limits set for it..." (From: "State Socialism and Anarchism," by Benjamin R. Tu....)
• "If the individual has a right to govern himself, all external government is tyranny. Hence the necessity of abolishing the State." (From: "State Socialism and Anarchism," by Benjamin R. Tu....)
• "Even in so delicate a matter as that of the relations of the sexes the Anarchists do not shrink from the application of their principle. They acknowledge and defend the right of any man and woman, or any men and women, to love each other for as long or as short a time as they can, will, or may. To them legal marriage and legal divorce are equal absurdities." (From: "State Socialism and Anarchism," by Benjamin R. Tu....)

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1897
Part 01, Chapter 21 — Publication.

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February 19, 2017; 7:35:50 PM (UTC)
Added to http://revoltlib.com.

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January 15, 2022; 8:59:19 AM (UTC)
Updated on http://revoltlib.com.

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