 | RegistrationBy Alexander Berkman (1917) |
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| RegistrationBy Alexander Berkman (1917) |
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Globe-Trotting Anarchist, Journalist, and Exposer of Bolshevik Tyranny
: He was a well-known anarchist leader in the United States and life-long friend of Emma Goldman, a young Russian immigrant whom he met on her first day in New York City. The two became lovers and moved in together, remaining close friends for the rest of Berkman's life. (From: Anarchy Archives.)
• "...partizanship of whatever camp is not an objective judge." (From: "The Russian Tragedy," by Alexander Berkman, The R....)
• "Or will the workers at last learn the great lesson Of the Russian Revolution that every government, whatever its fine name and nice promises is by its inherent nature, as a government, destructive of the very purposes of the social revolution? It is the mission of government to govern, to subject, to strenghten and perpetuate itself. It is high time the workers learn that only their own organized, creative efforts, free from Political and State interference, can make their age-long struggle for emancipation a lasting success." (From: "The Russian Tragedy," by Alexander Berkman, The R....)
• "The state has no soul, no principles. It has but one aim -- to secure power and hold it, at any cost." (From: "The Kronstadt Rebellion," by Alexander Berkman, 1....)
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Registration
Photo by mermaid,
CC BY-NC-ND License
The war shouters and their prostitute press, bet on snaring you into the army, tell you that registration has nothing to do with conscription.
They lie.
Without registration, conscription is impossible.
Conscription is the abdication of your rights as a citizen. Conscription is the cemetery where every vestige of your liberty is to be buried. Registration is its undertaker.
No man with red blood in his veins can be forced to fight against his will.
But you cannot successfully oppose conscription if you approve of, or submit to, registration.
Every beginning is hard. But if the government can induce you to register, it will have little difficulty in putting over conscription.
By registering, you willfully supply the government with the information it needs to make conscription effective.
Registration means placing in the hands of the authorities the despotic power of the machinery of passports which made darkest Russia what it was before the Revolution.
There are thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of young men in this country who have never voted and who have never paid taxes, and who, legally speaking, have no official existence. Their registration means nothing short of suicide, in a majority of cases.
Failure to register is punishable by imprisonment. Refusal to be conscripted may be punishable by death.
To register is to acknowledge the right of the government to conscript.
The consistent conscientious objector to human slaughter will neither register nor be conscripted.
Source: The Blast, Vol. 2, No. 5, 6/1/1917.)
From : Anarchy Archives
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