Biography
"What does it say about you, if you allow someone to set themselves up as your leader and make all your decisions for you? What anarchism helped me see was that you, as an individual, should be respected and that no one is important enough to do your thinking for you."
"The people themselves have to create structures in which they articulate their own voice and make their own decisions. I didn’t get that from other ideologies: I got that from anarchism."
"Oppositional thinking and oppositional risks are necessary. I think that is very important right now and one of the reasons why I think anarchism has so much potential to help us move forward. It is not asking of us to dogmatically adhere to the founders of the tradition, but to be open to whatever increases our democratic participation, our creativity, and our happiness."
"Anarchism, if it means anything, means being open to whatever it takes in thinking, living, and in our relationships—to live fully and win. In some ways, I think they are both the same: living to the fullest is to win. Of course we will and must clash with our oppressors and we need to find good ways of doing it. Remember those on the bottom who are most impacted by this. They might have different perspectives on how this fight is supposed to go. If we can’t find ways for meeting face-to-face to work that stuff out, old ghosts will re-appear and we will be back in the same old situation that we have been in before. You all can do this. You have the vision. You have the creativity. Do not allow anyone to lock that down."
"Anarchist theory and practice cannot take the form of a mere adherence to the founding fathers and canonical practices, such as Kropotkin, Bakunin, and the Spanish Civil War. Tired of hearing it! Anarchism HERE in Babylon must reflect our unique problems and possibilities for struggle. Our struggles are not just against capitalism. Too simple. Our struggles are not just against racism. That’s also too simple. There are all kinds of negative “isms” we are fighting against and, just as important, all kinds of worlds we are fighting for. That’s why the whole idea and practice of “convergences” and “spokescouncils” are so important to activists in general to learn from and enhance because they are about making space for all “Voices” to be heard and factored into the decision-making so that whatever activities comes forth from it prefigures the kind of new worlds we truly want."
"The theory or doctrine that all forms of government are oppressive and undesirable and should be abolished … Rejection of all forms of coercive control and authority."
"If no one works for you, no one decides for you."
"Anarchy and statism are incompatible, which explains why statists must mislead people by defining anarchy as chaos and disorder. Somebody once declared that the only two political theories that are completely consistent are anarchy and totalitarianism. Anarchy fully embraces the concept of self, totalitarianism fully rejects that concept. Statism always degenerates into totalitarianism."
"Jesus Christ was the supreme example of authentic anarchy — the creative non-violent anarchist par excellence — working not from the top down, but from the bottom up with the poor, and the poorest of the poor, to empower people and enable them to realize their potential, as men and women made in the images of God."
"Anarchist historians enthusiastically report increases in production in the collectivized areas. According to Deidre Hogan, harvests had increased by up to five times. But the numbers vary widely. They have to be put into perspective of the significant regional differences, the inclusion of formerly uncultivated land, the statistical problems that will be discussed below, and most of all, the short time during that most of the collectives existed, none exceeding two years."
"Modern Anarchism … is primarily a tendency — moral, social, and intellectual. As a tendency it questions the supremacy of the State, the infallibility of statute laws, and the divine right of all authority, spiritual or temporal. It is, in truth, a product of Authority, the progeny of the State, a direct consequences of the inadequacy of law and government to fulfill their assumed functions. In short, the Anarchist tendency is a necessity of progress, a protest against usurpation, privilege, and injustice."
"Anarchism is "stateless socialism.""
"Anarchism is the purity of rebellion. A pig who struggles wildly and rends the air with his cries while he is held to be slaughtered, and a baby who kicks and screams when, wanting warmth and his mother's breast, he is made to wait in the cold—these are two samples of natural rebellion. Natural rebellion always inspires either deep sympathy and identification with the rebelling creature, or a stiffening of the heart and an activation of aggressive-defensive mechanisms to silence an accusing truth. This truth is that each living being is an end in itself; that nothing gives a being the right to make another a mere instrument of his purposes."
"For the anarchist, rebellion is not only a statement of will but a statement of rightness and truth."
""STOP" WHAT!?! "STOP" WHAT!?!? Think about all those men out there, in their uniforms! Barking and swallowing orders! Inflicting their petty rule over the entire globe! Think of all the harm they've done! To you! To me! To humanity! And know this, that we can make them, and their flags, and their anthems, and their governments disappear! In a flash! You and me!"
"There is absolute truth in anarchism and it is to be seen in its attitude to the sovereignty of the state and to every form of state absolutism. [...] The religious truth of anarchism consists in this, that power over man is bound up with sin and evil, that a state of perfection is a state where there is no power of man over man, that is to say, anarchy. The Kingdom of God is freedom and the absence of such power... the Kingdom of God is anarchy."
"Anarchism had belonged to the most active resistance fighters against , and their numbers had been decimated by the ruthless National Socialist persecution. Between 1919 and 1923 there had been approximately 1500,000 anarchists in Weimar Germany. By the end of the Weimar Republic, about 50,000 activists remained. In 1945 their numbers were down to 15,000, and many of those were seriously ill as consequence of torture and persecution. Hence, anarchist groups in the immediate post-war period had no more than about 5,000 members. In its pre-1933 centres such as , , /, Berlin, and groups were formed who tried to rivive German anarchism organisationally and intellectually. In the Soviet zone of occupation, they soon clashed with the Soviet military authorities and the SED. Their leading figures such as Alfred Weiland or Willi Jelinek were kidnapped by the and imprisoned on trumped-up charges. Whether Jelinek's death in Bautzen prison had natural causes or was murder is still unclear today. By 1948-49 there subsequent waves of persecution had uprooted anarchism in the Soviet zone to such an extent that it was organisationally extinct. In the West, the 1950s saw maany attempts to unite the diverse groups into one German federation. The absence of the leading intellects on the movement's ability to regenerate its energies. Many, like , had been murdered by the Nazis. Others, like Rudolf Rocker or , were still in exile. Furthermore, Rocker was arguably more influential in Spain than in Germany, ant the same can be said in relation to Souchy and Latin America. Despite the many organisational and ideological fissures which characterised post-war German anarchism, an attempt to the movement finally succeeded at a conference in Neviges in August 1959. Yet the emerging Association of Free Socialist and Anarchists was not successful in reviving the fortunes of German anarchism. It failed to overcome the strong ideological differences between the diverse anarchist groups leading a rather shadowy existence in subsequent years. By the mid-1960s, anarchism was marginal political phenomenon in the Federal Republic, and the very words 'anarchism' and 'anarchic' had become bywords for disorganisation rather than signifying one of the few genuine alternatives which had existed in the history of the German left to reformist Social Democracy on the one hand and authoritarian Communism on the other."
"Anarchism means voluntary co-operation instead of forced participation. It means harmony and order in place of interference and disorder."
"Certainly the worker has nothing to lose by a change from government and capitalism to a condition of no government, of anarchy."
"If there ever was an anarchist on Earth the gospel Jesus was one."
"Almost anyone, I suppose, can call himself or herself an anarchist, if he or she believed that the society could be managed without the state. And by the state—I don't mean the absence of any institutions, the absence of any form of social organisation—the state really refers to a professional apparatus of people who are set aside to manage society, to preëmpt the control of society from the people. So that would include the military, judges, politicians, representatives who are paid for the express purpose of legislating, and then an executive body that is also set aside from society. So anarchists generally believe that, whether as groups or individuals, people should directly run society."
"Anarchism is the doctrine that government should be abolished."
"Political theory holding all forms of government authority to be unnecessary and undesirable and advocating a society based on voluntary cooperation and free association of individuals and groups"
"Anarchism is a cluster of doctrines and attitudes centred on the belief that government is both harmful and unnecessary."
"While the popular understanding of anarchism is of a violent, anti-State movement, anarchism is a much more subtle and nuanced tradition then a simple opposition to government power. Anarchists oppose the idea that power and domination are necessary for society, and instead advocate more co-operative, anti-hierarchical forms of social, political and economic organization."