Max Baginski : German-American Anarchist Revolutionary and Mother Earth Editor

Anarchism : Anarchist and Anti-Authoritarianism -- 1907 ~ (895 Words / 5,797 Characters)
The old International awakens diverse feelings. It was no doubt a powerful attempt to call into life the idea of the revolutionary proletariat in solidaric and international relationship. Unfortunately, however, it served as a center of intrigue and gossip. Karl Marx was essentially centralistic. Possibly he imagined that himself, Engels and their immediate friends embodied the only true conception as to the lines that Socialism and the movement of the proletariat should follow. The faith in his own infallibility inevitably resulted in Marx becoming autocratic and authoritarian. Michael Bakunin was temperamentally unfitted for dogmatic and orthodox ideas. He hated the zigzag path of diplomacy with its intrigues and speculations. Revolution to Bakunin did not mean a scientific doctrine, nor was it a cold, automatic result of evolution, to assert itself without the efforts and assistance of men. Rather did he see in Revolution the direct result... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Anarchism : Anarchist and Anti-Authoritarianism -- 1906 ~ (902 Words / 5,455 Characters)
There was a time when men imagined the Earth as the center of the universe. The stars, large and small, they believed were created merely for their delectation. It was their vain conception that a supreme being, weary of solitude, had manufactured a giant toy and put them into possession of it. When, however, the human mind was illumined by the torch-light of science, it came to understand that the Earth was but one of a myriad of stars floating in infinite space, a mere speck of dust. Man issued from the womb of Mother Earth, but he knew it not, nor recognized her, to whom he owed his life. In his egotism he sought an explanation of himself in the infinite, and out of his efforts there arose the dreary doctrine that he was not related to the Earth, that she was but a temporary resting place for his scornful feet and that she held nothing for him but temptation to degrade himself. Interpreters and prophets of the infinite sprang into being, c... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Anarchism : Anarchist and Anti-Authoritarianism -- 1911 ~ (1,477 Words / 9,419 Characters)
These lines are in tender memoriam of John Most, who died in Cincinnati, five years ago, on the seventeenth of March, 19o6. In the year 1882 Most came to America, as an exile, and continued the publication of the Freiheit, whose existence had been made impossible in England. After the execution of Alexander II, on the thirteenth of March, 1881, Most voiced his hope in a leading article in the Freiheit\ that all tyrants may thus be served. That article proved too much for the much-boasted-of British freedom. Prussian and Russian spies and diplomats intrigued an interpellation in the British Parliament, as a result of which Most was indicted for “inciting to kill the reigning sovereigns.” The court sentenced our comrade to sixteen months at hard labor, and life in the prison of free England proved a veritable hell. Most had previously been incarcerated in German and Austrian prisons, and his treatment there was always that... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Anarchism : Anarchist and Anti-Authoritarianism -- 1912 ~ (661 Words / 4,054 Characters)
Modern man is plentifully equipped with political rights. He has the right of citizenship, provided he be virtuous and not an Anarchist; he may elect his own rulers and jailers; he even enjoys, as one of the majority, the privilege of witnessing the government act “in the name of the people.” This privilege is a particularly bad hoax, because the activities of the government and courts have usually the sole purpose of intensifying the robbery and subjection of the people; in other words, the people — in their own sacred name — doom themselves to dependence and slavery. The hollowness and sham of political rights becomes fully apparent when we consider that all of them combined do not include the right to live. The right to live, — that is, the securing of the means of existence, the organization of society in a manner to insure to each the material basis of life and make it as self-evident... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Anarchism : Anarchist and Anti-Authoritarianism -- 1907 ~ (3,546 Words / 22,992 Characters)
I. Benjamin R. Tucker has published the first English translation of “Der Einzige und sein Eigentum,” written in 1845 by the ingenuous German thinker Kaspar Schmidt under the pseudonym of Max Stirner. The book has been translated by Steven T. Byington, assisted by Emma Heller Schumm and George Schumm. Mr. Tucker, however, informs us in his Preface to the book that “the responsibility for special errors and imperfections” properly rests on his shoulders. He is therefore also responsible for the Introduction by the late Dr. J. L. Walker, whose narrow-minded conception of Stirner is suggestive of Individualistic idolatry. Stirner said: “Ich hab’ mein’ Sach’ auf Nichts gestellt.” (“I have set my cause on naught.”) It seems that the Individualist Anarchists have set their cause on Stirner. Already they have sent money to Bayreuth and Berlin, for the purpose... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Anarchism : Anarchist and Anti-Authoritarianism -- (2,341 Words / 14,007 Characters)
The gist of the anarchistic idea is this, that there are qualities present in man, which permit the possibilities of social life, organization, and cooperative work without the application of force. Such qualities are solidarity, common action, and love of justice. To-day they are either crippled or made ineffective through the influence of compulsion; they can hardly be fully unfolded in a society in which groups, classes, and individuals are placed in hostile, irreconcilable opposition to one another. In human nature to-day such traits are fostered and developed which separate instead of combining, call forth hatred instead of a common feeling, destroy the humane instead of building it up. The cultivation of these traits could not be so successful if it did not find the best nourishment in the foundations and institutions of the present social order. On close inspection of these institutions, which are based upon the power of the State that maintains the... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)