Quotes About Anarchism

This effervescence was on boisterous display in the big cities, magnets as they were for talent and ambition of all kinds. Here, labor unionism most closely overlapped with a second current of defiance against the Gilded Age system: revolutionary political movements such as socialism of various stripes, or anarchism.

The Communist Manifesto (like anarchism, the rival ideology at the time) requires of its adherents a great deal of blind faith. In this, it's more of a religious doctrine than a scientific theory. For this reason, it's not surprising that the words of the Manifesto actually took root among the pre-industrial societies of Africa, China, South America and Russia – among the 'rural idiots', as Marx and Engels used to refer to people who worked on the land.

Anarchism, then, really stands for the liberation of the human mind from the dominion of religion; the liberation of the human body from the shackles and restraints of government. Anarchism stands for a social order based on the free grouping of individuals for the purpose of producing real social wealth.

Anarchism stands for the liberation of the human mind from the dominion of religion and liberation of the human body from the coercion of property; liberation from the shackles and restraint of government. It stands for a social order based on the free grouping of individuals…

Anarchism, then, really stands for the liberation of the human mind from the dominion of religion; the liberation of the human body from the dominion of property; liberation from the shackles and restraint of government.

Such security is equal liberty. But it is not necessarily equality in the use of the earth.

Anarchists...' I began and then faltered. 'No political philosophy I ever heard of loves the human race as much as anarchism. Every other way of looking at the world says that people have to be controlled, and ordered around, and governed. Only the anarchists trust human beings enough to let them work it out for themselves. And I used to be that optimistic once. I used to believe and think like that. But I don't, any more. So, no--I guess I'm not an anarchist now.

No political philosophy I ever heard of loves the human race as much as anarchism. Every other way of looking at the world says that people have to be controlled, and ordered around, and governed. Only the anarchists trust human beings enough to let them work it out for themselves.

Anarchism and anthropology go well together because anthropologists know that a society without a state is possible because so many exist.

Liberalism is to freedom as anarchism is to anarchy.

Bruno withdrew from the field of history more resolutely than Vigo; that is why I prefer the former's retrospect but the latter's prospect. As an anarch, I am determined to go along with nothing, ultimately take nothing seriously – at least not nihilistically, but rather as a border guard in no man's land, who sharpens his eyes and ears between the tides.

I could not bank on the phlegmatic Chinese; I would have to take care of it myself. This would be safer and also consistent with my own responsibility. The latter is the anarch's ultimate authority.

We anarchists do not want to emancipate the people; we want the people to emancipate themselves.

We too aspire to communism as the most perfect achievement of human solidarity, but it must be anarchist communism, that is, freely desired and accepted, and the means by which the freedom of everyone is guaranteed and can expand; for these reasons we maintain that State communism, which is authoritarian and imposed, is the most hateful tyranny that has ever afflicted, tormented and handicapped mankind.

Anarchism is organization, organization and more organization.

There is among us a tendency to consider true, good and fine everything that appears under the agreeable cloak of revolt against the accepted "truths", especially if supported by people who are, or call themselves, anarchists. This shows a deficiency of that spirit of investigation and criticism that should be maximally developed in anarchists.

Anarchists are justifiably opposed to authoritarian communism, which presupposes a government wanting to direct every aspect of social life, and placing the organization of production and the distribution of wealth under the orders of its nominees, which cannot but create the most hateful tyranny and the crippling of all the living forces in society.

Anarchists present a new method; the free initiative of all and free agreement; then, after the revolutionary abolition of private property, every one will have equal power to dispose of social wealth.

Fare il comunismo prima dell'anarchia, cioè prima di avere conquistata la completa libertà politica ed economica, significherebbe (come è significato in Russia) stabilire la più esosa tirannia, tale da far rimpiangere il regime borghese, e ritornare poi (come purtroppo si ritornerà in Russia) al regime capitalistico

We do not carry on our struggle in order to put ourselves in the place of the exploiters and oppressors of today, nor do we even struggle for the triumph of an empty abstraction.

The aims of anarchists and true communists are identical.

I'm not an anarchist any longer, because I've concluded that anarchism is an impractical ideal.

the pretensions of anarchism in its individualist variants have always been laughable

The effects of this change were momentous. Truth was no longer to be ascertained by consulting authority, but by inward meditation. There was a tendency, quickly developed, towards anarchism in politics, and, in religion, towards mysticism, which had always fitted with difficulty into the framework of Catholic orthodoxy. There came to be not one Protestantism, but a multitude of sects; not one philosophy opposed to scholasticism, but as many as there