The Relation of the State to the Invididual Excerpted from the book; Individual Liberty Selections From the Writings of Benjamin R. Tucker Vanguard Press, New York, 1926 Kraus Reprint Co., Millwood, NY, 1973. The following is an address by Mr. Tucker delivered before the Unitarian Ministers' Institute, at the annual session held in Salem, Mass., October 14, 1890. On account of the clear and concise manner in which the subject is treated, it may well engage the attention of any student seeking to understand Anarchism: Ladies and Gentlemen: Presumably the honor which you have done me in inviting me to address you today upon "The Relation of the State to the Individual" is due principally to the fact that circumstances have combined to make me somewhat conspicuous as an exponent of the theory of Modern Anarchism, - a theory which is coming to be more and more regar...
Who is the Somebody? [Liberty, August 6, 1881.] Somebody gets the surplus wealth that labor produces and does not consume. Who is the Somebody? Such is the problem recently posited in the editorial columns of the New York Truth. Substantially the same question has been asked a great many times before, but, as might have been expected, this new form of putting it has created no small hubbub. Truth’s columns are full of it; other journals are taking it up; clubs are organizing to discuss it; the people are thinking about it; students are pondering over it. For it is a most momentous question. A correct answer to it is unquestionably the first step in the settlement of the appalling problem of poverty, intemperance, ignorance, and crime. Truth...
Fellow Laborers, Brothers, Sisters, of the Great Human Family: 'I APPEAR before you not as a silver tongued speaker to tickle your fancies, please your conceits, or to call forth your applause by lofty flights of oratory; but as a cool and deliberate sympathizer in your labors, sufferings, hopes and fears; as one who for years has studied to find out what the matter is in this favored land, that possesses all the elements of prosperity of all other countries in the world; that there can be at the same time creaking warehouses, burdened by the surplus products, and also millions starving. Mothers agonizing for their children who cry for bread they have not to give; fathers desperate and ready for almost anything that promises redress. I come... (From : RevoltLib.com.)