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Benjamin Tucker Quotes


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Benjamin Tucker
April 17, 1854 - June 22, 1939
Nationality: American
Category: Activist
Subcategory: American Activist

And capital punishment, however ineffective it may be and through whatever ignorance it may be resorted to, is a strictly defensive act, - at least in theory.

   

Laissez Faire was very good sauce for the goose, labor, but was very poor sauce for the gander, capital.

   

I have also seen it stated that Capital punishment is murder in its worst form. I should like to know upon what principle of human society these assertions are based and justified.

   

In the matter of the maintenance and rearing of children the Anarchists would neither institute the communistic nursery which the State Socialists favor nor keep the communistic school system which now prevails.

   

One thing, however, is sure, - that in all cases the effort should be to impose all the cost of repairing the wrong upon the doer of the wrong. This alone is real justice, and of course such justice is necessarily free.

   

Aggression is simply another name for government.

   

The two principles referred to are Authority and Liberty, and the names of the two schools of Socialistic thought which fully and unreservedly represent one or the other of them are, respectively, State Socialism and Anarchism.

   

The Anarchists answer that the abolition of the State will leave in existence a defensive association, resting no longer on a compulsory but on a voluntary basis, which will restrain invaders by any means that may prove necessary.

   

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

   

Therefore coercion of the non-invasive, when justifiable at all, is to be justified on the ground that it secures, not a minimum of ' invasion, but a minimum of pain.

   

Commanded love of all men indiscriminately is an obliteration of distinction between love and hate, and therefore is not love at all.

   

The essence of government is control, or the attempt to control.

   

Murder is an offensive act. The term cannot be applied legitimately to any defensive act.

   

And this is the Anarchistic definition of the State: the embodiment of the principle of invasion in an individual, or a band of individuals, assuming to act as representatives or masters of the entire people within a given area.

   

We are here, on earth. Not one of us has any right to the earth.

   

The claim of the State Socialists, however, that this right would not be exercised in matters pertaining to the individual in the more intimate and private relations of his life is not borne out by the history of governments.

   

First, then, State Socialism, which may be described as the doctrine that all the affairs of men should be managed by the government, regardless of individual choice.

   

Almost the only persons who may be said to comprehend even approximately the significance, principles, and purposes of Socialism are the chief leaders of the extreme wings of the Socialistic forces, and perhaps a few of the money kings themselves.

   

The exercise of authority over the same area by two States is a contradiction.

   

To force a man to pay for the violation of his own liberty is indeed an addition of insult to injury.

   

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