Third Study. The Principle of Association. The Revolution of ’89 had the industrial order to build, after having made a clean sweep of the feudal order. By returning to political theories, it plunged us into economic chaos. In place of a natural order conceived in accordance with science and labor, we have a factitious order, in the shadow of which we have developed parasitic interests, abnormal morals, monstrous ambitions, prejudices at variance with common sense, which today all claim to be legitimate, invoking a tradition of sixty years, and, being unwilling either to abdicate or to modify their demands, place themselves in an antagonistic attitude toward one another, and in a reactionary attitude toward progress. As this state of affairs, of which the principle, the means and the end is War, is unable to answer the needs of an entirely industrial civilization, revolution is the necessary result. But, as everything in the...
God and the State by Michael Bakunin WITH A PREFACE BY CARLO CAFIERO AND ELISÉE RECLUS First American Edition Price 50 Cents MOTHER EARTH PUBLISHING ASSOCIATION 10 East 125th Street New York City Preface to the First French Edition One of us is soon to tell in all its details the story of the life of Michael Bakunin, but its general features are already sufficiently familiar. Friends and enemies know that this man was great in thought, will, persistent energy; they know also with what lofty contempt he looked down upon wealth, rank, glory, all the wretched ambitions which most human beings are base enough to entertain. A Russian gentleman related by marriage to the highest nobility of the empire, he was one of the first to enter that... (From : Anarchy Archives (The text is from Michael Bakunin....)
Proudhon, Pierre Joseph. System of Economical Contradictions: or, the Philosophy of Misery Electronic Text Center, University of Virginia Library 3. -- Application of the law of proportionality of values. Every product is a representative of labor. Every product, therefore, can be exchanged for some other, as universal practice proves. But abolish labor, and you have left only articles of greater or less usefulness, which, being stamped with no economic character, no human seal, are without a common measure, -- that is, are logically unexchangeable. Gold and silver, like other articles of merchandise, are representatives of value; they have, therefore, been able to serve as common measures and mediums of exchange. But the special function which custom has allotted to the precious metals, -- that of serving as a commercial agent, -- is purely conventional, and any other article...