Parsons, Albert Richard. Anarchism: Its Philosophy and Scientific Basis as defined by some of its apostles. Chicago, Mrs. A. R. Parsons [c1887]. CHAPTER IV. CAPITALISM-ITS ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT IN EUROPE. The wage system of labor is a despotism It is coercive and arbitrary. It compels the wage-worker, under a penalty of hunger, misery and distress of wife and children to obey the dictation of the employer. The individuality and personal liberty of the, wage-worker, and those dependent upon him is destroyed by the wage-system. A republican form of government does not alter the class servitude of the wage-worker. While governments are necessarily despotic--they may differ in degree. But all governments based upon the wage-labor system are essentially the same. The government of the United States, based upon the wage-labor system, does not, and cannot guarantee the inalienable right of the wage-workers to "life, liberty an...
THE CONQUEST OF BREAD by P. Kropotkin PREFACE ONE of the current objections to Communism and Socialism altogether, is that the idea is so old, and yet it could never be realized. Schemes of ideal States haunted the thinkers of Ancient Greece; later on, the early Christians joined in communist groups; centuries later, large communist brotherhoods came into existence during the Reform movement. Then, the same ideals were revived during the great English and French Revolutions; and finally, quite lately, in 1848, a revolution, inspired to a great extent with Socialist ideals, took place in France. "And yet, you see," we are told, "how far away is still the realization of your schemes. Don't you think that there is some fundamental error in your understanding of human nature and its needs?" At first sight this objection seems very serious. However, the moment we consider human his...
Ergo and Presto! [Liberty, July 7, 1888.] In Henry George may be seen a pronounced type of the not uncommon combination of philosopher and juggler. He possesses in a marked degree the faculty of luminous exposition of a fundamental principle, but this faculty he supplements with another no less developed,—that of so obscuring the connection between his fundamental principle and the false applications thereof which he attempts that only a mind accustomed to analysis can detect the flaw and the fraud. We see this in the numerous instances in which he has made a magnificent defense of the principle of individual liberty in theory, only to straightway deny it in practice, while at the same time palming off his denial upon an admiring following as a practical affirmation. Freedo...
Proudhon, Pierre Joseph. System of Economical Contradictions: or, the Philosophy of Misery Electronic Text Center, University of Virginia Library I. If I follow the God-idea through its successive transformations, I find that this idea is preeminently social: I mean by this that it is much more a collective act of faith than an individual conception. Now, how and under what circumstances is this act of faith produced? This point it is important to determine. From the moral and intellectual point of view, society, or the collective man, is especially distinguished from the individual by spontaneity of action, -- in other words, instinct. While the individual obeys, or imagines he obeys, only those motives of which he is fully conscious, and upon which he can at will decline or consent to act; while, in a word, he thinks himself free, and all the freer when he knows that he is possessed of keener reasoni...
FREEDOM PAMPHLETS. No. 1. New Edition. 1920. I. REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT AND WAGES. In their plan for the reconstruction of society, the Collectivists commit, in our opinion, a double error. Whilst speaking of the abolition of the rule of capital, they wish, nevertheless, to maintain two institutions which form the very basis of that rule, namely, representative government and the wage system. As for representative government, it remains absolutely incomprehensible to us how intelligent men (and they are not wanting among the Collectivists) can continue to be the partizans of national and municipal parliaments, after all the lessons on this subject bestowed on us by history, whether in England or in France, in Germany, Switzerland or the U... (From : Anarchy Archives.)