The doctrine of Malthus--Progress in wheat-growing--East Flanders--Channel Islands--Potato crops, past and present --Irrigation--Major Hallet's experiments--Planted wheat. Few books have exercised so pernicious an influence upon the general development of economic thought as Malthus's Essay on the Principle of Population exercised for three consecutive generations. It appeared at the right time, like all books which have had any influence at all, and it summed up ideas already current in the minds of the wealth-possessing minority. It was precisely when the ideas of equality and liberty, awakened by the French and American revolutions, were still permeating the minds of the poor, while the richer classes had become tired of their amateur excursions into the same domains, that Malthus came to assert, in reply to Godwin, that no equality is possible; that the poverty of the many is not due to institutions, but is a natural law. Population, he wrote,...
Godwin, William. Of Population. London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme and Brown, Paternoster Row, 1820. CHAPTER XI. General View of the Arguments against the Increase of Mankind Mr. Malthus's theory is certainly of a peculiar structure, and it is somewhat difficult to account for the success it has met with. The subject is population. It has been agreed among the best philosophers in Europe, especially from the time of Lord Bacon to the present day, that the proper basis of all our knowledge respecting man and nature, respecting what has been in times that are past, and what may be expected in time to come, is experiment. This standard is peculiarly applicable to the subject of population. Mr. Malthus seems in one respect fully to concur in this way of viewing the subject. There are two methods of approaching the question, the first, by deriving our ideas respecting it from the volumes of sacred writ, an...
The proclamation of the 1883 Congress of the International Working Peoples' Association, taken from the English edition of Freiheit, 27 December 1890. - Johann Joseph Most The Pittsburgh Proclamation Comrades! In the Declaration of Independence of the United States we read: "When in a long Train of Abuses and Usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a Design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their Right, it is their Duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future Security." Has the moment not arrived to heed the advice of Thomas Jefferson, the true founder of the American Republic? Has government not become oppression? And is our government anything but a conspiracy of the ruling ... (From : Anarchy Archives.)
Malatesta was a committed revolutionary: he believed that the anarchist revolution was inevitable, and that violence would be a necessary part of it since the state rested ultimately on violent coercion, which can be seen in the article, "the Revolutionary 'Haste.'" (From : Wikipedia.)
Let us deal again with G. Valenti’s article republished by the Reggio Emilia newspaper Giustizia. Valenti dwells on enumerating all the masses that are indifferent or hostile to subversive propaganda. Writing about the United States, he claims that there are 60 (?) million Catholics organized in religious associations who go to church and pray God, and he invites the anarchists to go and make propaganda among those 60 millions, if they want to speed up the revolution. He claims that only 4 and a half million producers out of 40 million are organized in organizations, the majority of which, as a matter of fact, are still opposed to socialism; he also invites trade unionists to start working at organizing workers in unions, if they reall... (From : Anarchy Archives.)
The workers of England have been bestirring themselves again during the past few weeks. This is a good and encouraging sign, although the demands made are comparatively trifling. It shows a healthy discontent with existing conditions, a kind of feeling that the capitalist is not doing quite the square thing by the worker. We are sure that at bottom this movement is due to the impetus of the energetic revolutionary nucleus of Socialists, which now exists in every large industrial center and among every large body of workers in the country. It is our work to fan the flame by increasing the number of those who strive for a really fair division of the profits of labor, that is to say, for a total abolition of exploitation. Let us hope-and we ha... (From : AnarchyArchives.)