Benjamin Tucker Quotes

Aggression is simply another name for government.
Almost the only persons who may be said to comprehend even approximately the significance, principles, and purposes of Socialism are the chief leaders of the extreme wings of the Socialistic forces, and perhaps a few of the money kings themselves.
Anarchists are simply unterrified Jeffersonian Democrats.
And capital punishment, however ineffective it may be and through whatever ignorance it may be resorted to, is a strictly defensive act, - at least in theory.
And this is the Anarchistic definition of the State: the embodiment of the principle of invasion in an individual, or a band of individuals, assuming to act as representatives or masters of the entire people within a given area.
But this is not to say that the society which inflicts capital punishment commits murder.
But which is the State's essential function, aggression or defence, few seem to know or care.
Commanded love of all men indiscriminately is an obliteration of distinction between love and hate, and therefore is not love at all.
Defence was an afterthought, prompted by necessity; and its introduction as a State function, though effected doubtless with a view to the strengthening of the State, was really and in principle the initiation of the State's destruction.
First, then, State Socialism, which may be described as the doctrine that all the affairs of men should be managed by the government, regardless of individual choice.
For, just as it has been said that there is no half-way house between Rome and Reason, so it may be said that there is no half-way house between State Socialism and Anarchism.
I have also seen it stated that Capital punishment is murder in its worst form. I should like to know upon what principle of human society these assertions are based and justified.
I insist that there is nothing sacred in the life of an invader, and there is no valid principle of human society that forbids the invaded to protect themselves in whatever way they can.
In the matter of the maintenance and rearing of children the Anarchists would neither institute the communistic nursery which the State Socialists favor nor keep the communistic school system which now prevails.
Laissez Faire was very good sauce for the goose, labor, but was very poor sauce for the gander, capital.
Marx, as we have seen, solved it by declaring capital to be a different thing from product, and maintaining that it belonged to society and should be seized by society and employed for the benefit of all alike.
Murder is an offensive act. The term cannot be applied legitimately to any defensive act.
One thing, however, is sure, - that in all cases the effort should be to impose all the cost of repairing the wrong upon the doer of the wrong. This alone is real justice, and of course such justice is necessarily free.
Socialism, on the contrary, extends its function to the description of society as it should be, and the discovery of the means of making it what it should be.
Such security is equal liberty. But it is not necessarily equality in the use of the earth.
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AuthorName
Benjamin Tucker
Profession
Activist
BirthDate
17 April, 1854
DeathDate
22 June, 1939
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