(1812 - 1886) ~ American Individualist Anarchist, Abolitionist, and Labor Union Activist : He moved to New York, where he became interested in linguistics, and later equitable commerce. He established a utopian community in New York City called Unity Home, and it was during this time that he began to formulate his philosophy of universology. (From : Anarchy Archives.)
• "The whole of that legislation which establishes or tolerates that form of human bondage which is called slavery is at this moment undergoing the most determined and vigorous onset of public opinion which any false and tyrannical institution of Government was ever called upon to endure. The full and final abolition of slavery can not but be regarded, by every reflecting mind, as prospectively certain." (From : "The True Constitution Of Government In The Sovere....)
• "Government still deals with criminals by the old-fashioned process of punishment, but both science and philanthropy concur in pronouncing that the grand remedial agency for crime is prevention, and not cure." (From : "The True Constitution Of Government In The Sovere....)
• "Under the old order of things, government interfered to determine the trade or occupation of the Individual, to settle his religious faith, to regulate his locomotion, to prescribe his hours of relaxation and retiremeut, the length of his beard, the cut of his apparel, his relative rank, the mode of his social intercourse, and so on continuously, until government was in fact every thing, and the Individual nothing." (From : "The True Constitution Of Government In The Sovere....)
(1886 - 1937) ~ Russian, Anarchist Revolutionary and Makhnovist Partisan : In prison he met Makhno. Both Makhno and Arshinov were released in 1917 and Arshinov joined Makhno in the Ukraine when the Makhnovite Insurrectionary Army took control. (From : Anarchy Archives.)
• "For the masses sense the futility of contradictory notions and avoid them instinctively; in spite of this, in a revolutionary period, they act and live in a libertarian fashion." (From : "The Old and New in Anarchism: A Reply to Comrade ....)
• "Libertarian communism cannot linger in the impasse of the past; it must go beyond it, in combating and surmounting its faults." (From : "The Old and New in Anarchism: A Reply to Comrade ....)
• "The question for anarchists of all countries is the following: can our movement content itself with subsisting on the base of old forms of organization, of local groups having no organic link between them, and each acting on their side according to its particular ideology and particular practice?" (From : "The Old and New in Anarchism: A Reply to Comrade ....)
(1896 - 1936) ~ Heart of the Anarchist Soldiers and Anarcho-Syndicalism During the Spanish Civil War : On the 15 Durruti arrived with a force of 1800 men to reinforce the defense of Madrid, where they went immediately to the toughest section and on the 19 he was struck by a bullet as he walked by a supposedly secure area. (From : Communiello Bio.)
• "Socialism is either active or isn't Socialism." (From : "Durruti," by Abel Paz, part 1, chapter 1.)
• "The emancipation of the working class requires the complete destruction of capitalism and we can't stop our revolutionary efforts until that happens." (From : "Durruti," by Abel Paz, part 1, chapter 1.)
• "We have the right and obligation to force the negative to clash with the positive and cause the spark. Is that adventurism? Then I say that all revolutions have been triggered by adventurists." (From : "Durruti," by Abel Paz, part 1, chapter 10.)
(1890 - 1964) ~ IWW Activist, Founder of the ACLU, and US Communist Party Chairwoman : At the age of 17 she became a full time organizer for the IWW, and was consequently arrested 10 times. Although she was never convicted of any criminal activity, she was forced to leave the IWW in 1916 because of internal conflicts. In 1920 she helped found the American Civil Liberties Union, and began actively supporting Sacco and Vanzetti... (From : Spartacus Educational Bio.)
• "...how they inspired us, how we revered them. French Communards, Russian revolutionists escaped from Siberia, Germans driven out by Bismarck, Garibaldians in their red shirts, Irish, Polish exiles. Oldtime Americans marching, telling of Haymarket, Homestead, Pullman. Men who knew Marx, Engels, Silvis, Parsons – patriarchs and prophets to us." (From : Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory, 1939.)
• "Defense of our civil liberties; for political prisoners; fighting against raids, wholesale arrests, and deportations of thousands of foreign-born workers – these were the big issues of 1918 and 1919. The boss class was terrified by the great Russian Revolution." (From : Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory, 1939.)
• ""The right to assemble; the right to speak" written in dead words in the Bill of Rights was written in live deeds by the people all over the United States." (From : Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory, 1939.)
(1869 - 1928) ~ Big Bill Haywood, Founder and Leader of the IWW : One of the foremost labor radicals of the American West, "Big Bill" Haywood became a leading figure in labor activities across the United States. (From : Anarchy Archives.)
• "A few rich people own the lands and machines. The many labor and have nothing. This every worker knows." (From : "Industrial Socialism," by Frank Bohn and William ....)
• "...I know I owe my life to the workers of the nation, it is to the working class of the nation that I am under obligation, not to any subdivision of that class. That is why I am here now. That is why I am talking working-class solidarity, because I want to see the working class do for themselves what they did for me." (From : ...I know I owe my life to the workers of the nati....)
• "Capitalists cannot live without wage-workers. Where one class exists there the other will be found. Furthermore, there is sure to be trouble between the two. The master is always scheming to get more profits out of the worker. The worker fights for more wages from his boss. The less one gets the more there is for the other. Hence we have, between the capitalist and his worker, what is known as the Class Struggle." (From : "Industrial Socialism," by Frank Bohn and William ....)
(1839 - 1893) ~ Anarchist Writer for the Black International : His career as a participant in the labor movement grew out of his reflections on the Pittsburgh riots during the 1877 railroad strike, but before Haymarket had swung over to the extreme left position of the anarchists and mutualists, impressed with the possibilities of cooperation in economics. (From : James Martin Bio.)
• "Force, however used, can teach no economic truth, yet events flowing from it often awaken consciousness of what equity demands." (From : "The Economics of Anarchy: A Study Of The Industri....)
• "The renaissance of mind from scholastic tyranny; the revolt of Luther and his followers against mental dictation; the temporary compromise in religious toleration; the insurrection against kingcraft leading in its triumph to the toleration of political opinions; -- have now logically led to an insurrection against economic subjection to the privileges usurped and hotly defended by capital in its alliance with labor..." (From : "The Economics of Anarchy: A Study Of The Industri....)
• "Let us beware the militant assumption that man exists for the State, and trust to theoretical brakes to check the momentum of a body moving with increasing velocity. The social aggregate is not something over and above the units which constitute it." (From : "The Economics of Anarchy: A Study Of The Industri....)
(1901 - 1980) ~ FAI Labor Unionist and Anti-Fascist Militant During the Spanish Civil War : ...a native of Catalonia and member of the Catalan Regional Committee of the C.N.T. or National Labor Federation, where he was a close associate of Buenaventura Durruti. He led a group in battle against the military uprising of July 1936 in Barcelona, occupying the women's prison and releasing all its prisoners. (From : Blood of Spain Bio.)
• "We had no use for anything connected to the past, a past which had in some ways sunk already, but which would still make inexhaustible attempts to reassert itself. All revolutions carry with them a counter revolution. A Revolution is a forward murch from ac ertain point, whereas counter revolution is a return to that point, or in some cases to a point that is further back." (From : "Wrong Steps: Errors in the Spanish Revolution," b....)
• "Without this demonstration that we can build Libertarian Socialism, the future will continue to belong to the sort of politics that came out of the French Revolution -- with many political parties to begin with, and just one at the end." (From : "Wrong Steps: Errors in the Spanish Revolution," b....)
• "If these syndicates are of an anarchist orientation and their militants have been formed by an anarchist moral then, to presuppose that they'll act the same as if they were Marxist, for example, is as good as saying that anarchism and Marxism are fundamentally the same ideology, being as they produce the same fruit. I don't accept such simplifications." (From : "Wrong Steps: Errors in the Spanish Revolution," b....)
(1848 - 1887) ~ American Anarchist Leader and Haymarket Martyr : ...Parsons spoke at the laborers demonstration in Haymarket Square on May fourth, 1886. That morning at around 10 a.m. 180 policemen arrived at the scene and told the crowd to disperse. At this point, a bomb was thrown at the police from an alleyway. (From : Evan Kelley Bio.)
• "Thousands of volumes have been written to record the acts of governments; the most trifling amelioration due to law has been recorded; its good effects have been exaggerated, its bad effects passed by in silence. But where is the book recording what has been achieved by free co-operation of well-inspired men?" (From : "Anarchism: Its Philosophy and Scientific Basis as....)
• "In the growth of individualism (especially during the last three centuries) we merely see the endeavors of the individual towards emancipating, himself from the steadily growing powers of capital and state. But side by side with this growth we see also, throughout history up to our own times, the latent struggle of the producers of wealth for maintaining the partial communism of old..." (From : "Anarchism: Its Philosophy and Scientific Basis as....)
• "...the very next step to be made by society, as soon as the present regime of property undergoes a modification, will be in a communist sense. We are communists. But our communism is not that of either the Phalanstere or the authoritarian school: it is anarchist communism, communism without government, free communism." (From : "Anarchism: Its Philosophy and Scientific Basis as....)
(1853 - 1942) ~ IWW Founder, Anarchist Activist, and Labor Organizer : In addition to defending the rights of African-Americans, Lucy spoke out against the repressed status of women in nineteenth century America. Wanting to challenge the notion that women could not be revolutionary, she took a very active, and often militant, role in the labor movement... (From : IWW.org.)
• "I say to the wage class: Think clearly and act quickly, or you are lost. Strike not for a few cents more an hour, because the price of living will be raised faster still, but strike for all you earn, be content with nothing less." (From : "The Principles of Anarchism," by Lucy E. Parsons.)
• "...in freedom to possess and utilize soil lie social happiness and progress and the death of rent." (From : "The Principles of Anarchism," by Lucy E. Parsons.)
• "...be assured that you have spoken to these robbers in the only language which they have ever been able to understand, for they have never yet deigned to notice any petition from their slaves that they were not compelled to read by the red glare bursting from the cannon's mouths, or that was not handed to them upon the point of the sword." (From : "To Tramps, The Unemployed, the Disinherited, and ....)
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(1896 - 1965) ~ Anarchist, Feminist Organizer and ILGWU Leader : ...an anarchist, feminist labor organizer and vise president within the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union. Born Rakhel Peisoty in Derazhnia, Ukraine in 1896 to a family of grain merchants, Pesotta was well educated during her childhood and, influenced by People's Will, would eventually adopt anarchist views. (From : Anarchy Archives.)
• "Soon after the 1929 stock market crash 30,000 persons in that city were jobless. Some organized the Unemployed Citizens' League, which set the pace for similar self-help groups all over the United States. Harvesting fruit and vegetable crops on a sharing basis, it set up various co-operative enterprises, which, however, were opposed by business men, who feared these would cut into their profits." (From : "Bread Upon the Waters," by Rose Pesotta.)
• "I had no ambition to hold executive authority. Valuing my own freedom, I wanted to avoid getting into harness, and to keep from becoming enmeshed in inner-circle politics. Too, I felt that I could serve the cause of my fellow-unionists just as effectively as a rank-and-file member. And it was my contention that the voice of a solitary woman on the General Executive Board would be a voice lost in the wilderness." (From : "Bread Upon the Waters," by Rose Pesotta.)
• "In the brief span of its life, the IWW produced men who became internationally known and whose names were torches of inspiration in many lands. Most of them paid a high price for their fame, some with their lives." (From : "Bread Upon the Waters," by Rose Pesotta.)
(1855 - 1910) ~ Bohemian Anarchist Historian and Radical Labor Organizer : ...involved in distributing Freiheit published by Johann Most, but became increasingly critical of Most as Social-Revolutionist as opposed to an anarchist. In 1884 he set up the newspaper Rebell and became involved with the Gruppe Autonomie in London. (From : Anarchy Archives.)
• "...within these two years, I had become a convinced socialist. Not the type to swear by some prophet or thoughtlessly follow what is preached to him, but the kind of person who, through understanding of his place in nature and society, comes to the understanding of mankind and has taken on the fight of the betterment of mankind as though it was his life's duty." (From : "Memoirs Of A Proletarian From The Revolutionary L....)
• "The first ingredient in the kind of businessman who can "make something of himself" is a healthy portion of selfishness and a lack of morals and ethics. If he possesses these things he will reach success; without such aspects, he will never achieve success and will be crushed by the competition." (From : "Memoirs Of A Proletarian From The Revolutionary L....)
• "In Hannover I heard a socialist speech for the first time. The speaker's views made a deep impression on me.... I could only attend some public meetings every now and again but I felt instinctually drawn to these ideas immediately." (From : "Memoirs Of A Proletarian From The Revolutionary L....)
(1873 - 1958) ~ German Father of Anarcho-Syndicalism : Rocker was born in Mainz, Germany, son of a workingman who died when the boy was five years of age. It was an uncle who introduced him to the German SociaI Democratic movement, but he was soon disappointed by the rigidities of German socialism. (From : Irving Horowitz Bio.)
• "Every type of political power presupposes some particular form of human slavery, for the maintenance of which it is called into being." (From : "Anarchism and Anarcho-Syndicalism," by Rudolph Ro....)
• "...our present economic system, leading to a mighty accumulation of social wealth in the hands of privileged minorities and to a constant repression of the great masses of the people..." (From : "Anarchism and Anarcho-Syndicalism," by Rudolph Ro....)
• "...power always tries to keep things as they are, safely anchored to stereotypes. That has been the reason for all revolutions in history. Power operates only destructively, bent always on forcing every manifestation of social life into the straitjacket of its rules. Its intellectual expression is dead dogma, its physical form brute force." (From : "Anarchism and Anarcho-Syndicalism," by Rudolph Ro....)
(1891 - 1927) ~ Italian Anarchist Activist and Martyr of the State : Sacco and Vanzetti feared the draft during World War I and in objection fled to Mexico with Sacco's family. When the war ended both returned to their homes. After they returned the two became more active in the anarchist community. (From : Anarchy Archives.)
• "It is very true indeed, what you are saying -- that we can never be good and well again for the future -- as we want to be. No, I guess not: we can never get back that old young energy again, because of these dolorous long years of confinement..." (From : Letters of Sacco and Vanzetti.)
• "So I turn over towards the soldiers and I said, "Brothers, you will not fire on your own brothers, because they tell you to fire; no, brothers, remember that everyone of us has has mother and child, and you know that we fight for the freedom which is your freedom."" (From : Letters of Sacco and Vanzetti.)
• "...when a man remains all day long back of these sad bars you feel your mind sometime very tired and exhausted of ideas..." (From : Letters of Sacco and Vanzetti.)
(1808 - 1887) ~ Individualist Anarchist and Unitarian Christian Abolitionist : The greatest natural rights thinker of the 19th century was the American lawyer and maverick individualist Lysander Spooner. He responded to the tumultuous events of his era, including the Panic of 1837 and the Civil War, with pamphlets about natural rights, slavery, money, trial by jury and other timely subjects. (From : Jim Powell Bio.)
• "The doctrine that the majority have a right to rule proceeds upon the principle that minorities have no right in the government; for certainly the minority cannot be said to have any rights in a government so long as the majority alone determine what their rights shall be." (From : "Free Political Institutions," by Lysander Spooner.)
• "Again, the doctrine that the minority ought to submit to the will of the majority proceeds, not upon the principle that government is formed by voluntary association and for an agreed purpose on the part of all who contribute to its support, but upon the presumption that all government must be practically a state of war and plunder between opposing parties..." (From : "Free Political Institutions," by Lysander Spooner.)
• "There is no particle of truth in the notion that the majority have a right to rule, or exercise arbitrary power over, the minority simply because the former are more numerous than the latter. Two men have no more natural right to rule one than one has to rule two." (From : "Free Political Institutions," by Lysander Spooner.)
(1879 - 1943) ~ IWW Leader and Enemy of Big-Business-Owned, Yellow Unions : Though he started as a Socialist, Tresca died an Anarchist. He edited a number of papers which stood up for workers' rights and denounced the hypocrisy and corruption of those in power. One of his favorite targets was the clergy who he attacked relentlessly. (From : Anarchy Archives.)
• "Come redeeming socialism, come. Only then will the mine cease to be what it is today, a rich tomb created for men by the cruel and blind improvidence of capitalism." (From : "Carlo Tresca: Portrait of a Rebel," by Nunzio Per....)
• "It is necessary to see these slaves as I have seen them. Then no one would repeat the lie that work ennobles; rather, as a reproach to capitalism, they would say that work brutalizes and kills." (From : "Carlo Tresca: Portrait of a Rebel," by Nunzio Per....)
• "The army is the most monstrous, immoral, degenerate organism of brutal force." (From : "Carlo Tresca: Portrait of a Rebel," by Nunzio Per....)
(1888 - 1927) ~ Italian Anarchist Activist and Martyr of the State : After they returned the two became more active in the anarchist community. Vanzetti began reading about industrial society and revolt and both began distributing anarchist and revolutionary literature. (From : Anarchy Archives.)
• "That was a sad year. What toiler does not remember it? The poor slept outdoors and rummaged the garbage barrels to find a cabbage leaf or a rotten potato. For three months I searched New York, its length and its breadth, without finding work." (From : "The Story of a Proletarian Life," by Bartolomeo V....)
• "Nameless, in the crowd of nameless ones, I have merely caught and reflected a little of the light from that dynamic thought or ideal which is drawing humanity towards better destinies." (From : "The Story of a Proletarian Life," by Bartolomeo V....)
• "Judge Webster Thayer, the same man who later presided at the murder trial imposed the sentence. There was not a vibration of sympathy in his tone when he did so. I wondered as I listened to him, why he hated me so. Is not a judge supposed to be impartial? But now I think I know - I must have looked like a strange animal to him, being a plain worker, an alien, and a radical to boot. And why was it that all my witnesses, simple people who were anxious to tell the simple truth, were laughed at and disregarded? No credence was given their words because they, too, were merely aliens...." (From : "The Story of a Proletarian Life," by Bartolomeo V....)