The two sister arts of Agriculture and Industry were not always so estranged from one another as they are now. There was a time, and that time is not far off, when both were thoroughly combined: the villages were then the seats of a variety of industries, and the artisans in the cities did not abandon agriculture; many towns were nothing else but industrial villages. If the medieval city was the cradle of those industries which fringed art and were intended to supply the wants of the richer classes, still it was the rural manufacture which supplied the wants of the million; so it does until the present day in Russia. But then came the water-motors, steam, the development of machinery, and they broke the link which formerly connected the far... (From : Anarchy Archives.)
If all Socialists should agree together on the point which we have developed in our last issue, namely, that the wants of all must be the first guiding consideration of any revolutionary movement which has a Socialist character--and we really cannot understand how this can be denied, or even underrated--then they would perceive that the next revolution, if it is guided by Socialist principle, must necessarily drive them to Communism, and Communism drive them to Anarchy. Of course, if we admit that the next revolution will have accomplished its mission as soon as it succeeds in overthrowing the present rulers and proclaims some great industrial undertakings, like railways and mines, the property of a State democraticized a bit--everything be... (From : AnarchyArchives.)
The attempt of the local authorities to renew the London coal and corn duties has revealed to the people one of the numberless indirect methods by which they are fleeced by their masters. The Corporation and Board of Works devote these duties (coal, taxed 13d. a ton, brings in L450,000 a-year) to the fair-seeming purposes of town improvements and the purchase of open spaces. But-putting aside all questions of jobbery and speculation, of " turns " and " bonuses " and " good things " for self and friends-for whose benefit are town improvements chiefly undertaken !The rich dwellers in fashionable districts and the traders of the City, or the poor crowded together in the slums ? Pulling down an occasional rookery is about as far as the authorit... (From : AnarchyArchives.)
When Professor Huxley introduced, twenty-three years ago, the name and the subject of Physiography, his intentions were certainly excellent. Natural sciences were almost entirely excluded at that time from the schools. The teaching of geography stood very low: political geography, so-called, was a mere collection of names, and an entirely subordinate subject; and physical geography was a collection of information, too abstract, too incoherent, too wide, and too superficial at the same time, to be of any use in education. Under the name of Physiography natural sciences were, so to say, smuggled into the schools. And by showing how the study of Nature may be approached, and methods of scientific observation may be rendered familiar by examini... (From : Anarchy Archives.)
Their Present Limits and Their Possible Extension
(The substance of a paper read on December 5, 1899, before the Freedom Discussion Group, London by M. Nettlau.) The following remarks, based on an article published by me in Freedom, November 1897, must not be understood as wishing to replace direct Anarchist propaganda by a "remedy or a "hobby," they simply raise a general subject which has been, as far as I know and am told, neglected up till now : the possibility of some new form and combination in the labor struggle; and I am anxious for Anarchist criticism, which, apart from the general possibility has to examine whether the means suggested are on the road to freedom or the contrary ; consequently, whether they merit the support of Anarchists or not. Progress in the labor movement seem... (From : Anarchy Archives.)