THE ABC OF THE REVOLUTIONARY ANARCHIST
Nestor Makhno
Anarchism means man living free and working constructively. It means the destruction of everything that is directed against man's natural, healthy aspirations.
Anarchism is not exclusively a theoretical teaching emanating from programs artificially conceived with an eye to the regulation of life: it is a teaching derived from life across all its wholesome manifestations, skipping over all artificial criteria.
The social and political visage of anarchism is a free, anti-authoritarian society, one that enshrines freedom, equality and solidarity between all its members.
In anarchism, Right means the responsibility of the individual, the sort of responsibility that brings with ... (From : NestorMakhno.info.)
Opposition to institutions, support the workers rights because a right without opportunity is no right at all, and our struggle against the exploiters should be led by love and not hatred. (From : HoldOffHunger.)
• "The duty of the press paid to defend the interests of police and sharks, is to hide the real nature of anarchism from the public, and seek to accredit the tale about anarchists being full of hatred and destroyers; the press does that by duty, but we have to acknowledge that they often do it in good faith, out of pure and simple ignorance. Since journalism, which once was a calling, decayed into mere job and business, journalists have lost not only their ethical sense, but also the intellectual honesty of refraining from talking about what they do not know."
• "...it is a truth that history has made the proletariat the main instrument of the next social change, and that those fighting for the establishment of a society where all human beings are free and endowed with all the means to exercise their freedom, must rely mainly on the proletariat."
• "...I had always sought to demonstrate that the social wrongs do not depend on the wickedness of one master or the other, one governer or the other, but rather on masters and governments as institutions; therefore, the remedy does not lie in changing the individual rulers, instead it is necessary to demolish the principle itself by which men dominate over men..."
AN
ACCOUNT
OF THE
SEMINARY
That will be opened
On Monday the Fourth Day of AUGUST,
At EPSOM in SURREY,
For the INSTRUCTION of
TWELVE PUPILS
IN
The GREEK, LATIN, FRENCH, and ENGLISH
Languages.
LONDON:
Printed for T.CADELL, in the Strand.
M.DCC.LXXXIII.
Of whom information respecting other particulars may
be received.
AN
ACCOUNT
OF THE SEMINARY, &c.
THE two principal objects of human power are government and education. They have accordingly engrossed a very large share in the disquisitions of the speculative in all ages. The subject of the former indeed is man, already endowed with his greatest force of body, and arrived at the exercise of his intellectual powers: the subject of the latter is man, as yet shut up in ... (From : Anarchy Archives.)
This article appears courtesy of Emma Goldman Papers, Manuscripts and Archives Division, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations
Address to the International Working Men's Association Congress
by Emma Goldman
Life imposes strange situations on all of us. For forty-eight years I was considered an extremist in our ranks. One who refused to compromise our ideas or tactics for any purpose whatsoever--one who always insisted that the Anarchist aim and methods must harmonize, or the aim would never be achieved. Yet here I am trying to explain the action of our Spanish comrades to the European opponents, and the criticism of the latter to the comrades of the CNT-FAI. In other words, after a lifetime of an ext... (From : Anarchy Archives.)
Address to the Jury in U.S. v. Emma Goldman and Alexander BerkmanEmma Goldman, 1917
Gentlemen of the Jury:
As in the case of my codefendant, Alexander Berkman, this is also the first time in my life I have ever addressed a jury. I once had occasion to speak to three judges.
On the day after our arrest it was given out by the U.S. Marshal and the District Attorney's office that the "big fish" of the No Conscription activities had been caught, and that there would be no more trouble-makers and disturbers to interfere with the highly democratic effort of the Government to conscript its young manhood for the European slaughter. What a pity that the faithful servants of the Government, personified in the U.S. Marshal and the District Attor... (From : WikiSource.)
From the Encyclopedia Britannica
"Anarchism", from The Encyclopedia Britannica, 1910.
Peter Kropotkin
ANARCHISM (from the Gr. ἄν, and αρχος, contrary to authority), the name given to a principle or theory of life and conduct under which society is conceived without government - harmony in such a society being obtained, not by submission to law, or by obedience to any authority, but by free agreements concluded between the various groups, territorial and professional, freely constituted for the sake of production and consumption, as also for the satisfaction of the infinite variety of needs and aspirations of a civilized being. In a society developed on these lines, the voluntary associations which already now begin to cover all ... (From : Anarchy Archives.)
Anarchism: Arguments for and against
by Albert Meltzer
Table of Contents
IntroductionInalienable Tenets of AnarchismThe Class StruggleOrganization and AnarchismThe Role of an Anarchist in an Authoritarian SocietyBringing About the New SocietyThe Marxist Criticism of AnarchismThe Social-Democratic Critique of AnarchismThe Liberal-Democratic Objection to AnarchismThe Fascist Objection to AnarchismThe Average Person's Objection to Anarchism
Introduction
The Historical Background to Anarchism
It is not without interest that what might be called the anarchist
approach goes back into antiquity; nor that there is an ana (From : Hack.org.)
Introduction by Noam Chomsky "Notes on Anarchism" in For Reasons of State Noam Chomsky, 1970 Transcribed by rael@ll.mit.edu (Bill Lear) A French writer, sympathetic to anarchism, wrote in the 1890s that "anarchism has a broad back, like paper it endures anything"---including, he noted those whose acts are such that "a mortal enemy of anarchism could not have done better."[1] There have been many styles of thought and action that have been referred to as "anarchist." It would be hopeless to try to encompass all of these conflicting tendencies in some general theory or ideology. And even if we proceed to extract from the history of libertarian thought a living, evolving tradition, as Daniel Guérin does in Anarchism, it remains difficult to formulate its doctrines as a specific and determinate theory of society and social change. The anarchist historian Rudolph Rocker, who presents a systematic conception of the development of anarchist th...
"Anarchism: its philosophy and ideal." San Francisco: Free Society, 1898.
ANARCHISM:Its Philosophy and ldeal.
BY
PETER KROPOTKIN.
ANARCHY.
______
(Translated from the German by Harry Lyman Koopman.)
______
Ever reviled, accursed,-n'er understood,
Thou art the grisly terror of our age.
"Wreck of all order," cry the multitude,
"Art thou, and war and murder's endless rage."
O, let them cry. To them that ne'er have striven,
The truth that lies behind a word to find,
To them the word's right meaning was not given.
They shall continue blind among the blind.
But thou, O word, so clear, so strong, so pure,
That sayest all which I for goal have taken.
I give thee to the future! -Thine secure
When each at... (From : Anarchy Archives.)
The anarchist effort, like any effort, is one focused on social organization, these organizations should be voluntary and cooperative, and it is through these groups that we will establish a better world. (From : HoldOffHunger.)
• "...the agelong oppression of the masses by a small privileged group has always been the result of the inability of the oppressed to agree among themselves to organize with others for production, for enjoyment and for the possible needs of defense against whoever might wish to exploit and oppress them. Anarchism exists to remedy this state of affairs..."
• "Workers will never be able to emancipate themselves so long as they do not find in union the moral, economic and physical strength that is needed to subdue the organized might of the oppressors."
• "...we anarchists do not want to emancipate the people; we want the people to emancipate themselves. We do not believe in the good that comes from above and imposed by force; we want the new way of life to emerge from the body of the people and correspond to the state of their development and advance as they advance. It matters to us therefore that all interests and opinions should find their expression in a conscious organization and should influence communal life in proportion to their importance."