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14          THE ATTITUDE OF ANARCHISM

And this is not only a solution of the trust question, but the first step that should be taken, and the greatest single step that can be taken, in economic and social reform.

I have tried, in the few minutes allotted to me, to state concisely the attitude of Anarchism toward industrial combinations. It discountenances all direct attacks on them, all interference with them, all anti-trust legislation whatsoever. In fact, it regards industrial combinations as very useful whenever they spring into existence in response to a demand created in a healthy social body. If at present they are baneful, it is because they are symptoms of a social disease originally caused and persistently aggravated by a regimen of tyranny and quackery. Anarchism wants to call off the quacks, and give liberty, nature's great cure-all a chance to do its perfect work.

Free access to the world of matter, abolishing land monopoly; free access to an untaxed and unprivileged market, abolishing tariff monopoly and money monopoly,-- secure these, and all the rest shall be added unto you. For liberty is the remedy of every social evil, and to Anarchy the world must look at last for any enduring guarantee of social order.

Printer's error, --On page 7, line 5, after the word liberty, -- should be the clause ---finds that some of these denials of liberty are mandatory to the mantenance of equality of liberty.

Some harsh words by
Libertarians on Government.

Pierre Joseph Proudhon
      Whatever form it takes -- Monarchis, Oligarchic or Democratic -- the government of man by man is illegitimate and absurd, .. As man seeks justice in equity, so society seeks order in Anarchy.

George Washington
      Government is not reason, it is not eloquence--- it is force! Like fire it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master; never for a moment should be left to irresponsible action.

Wendell Phillips
      Law has always been wrong. Government is the fundamental ism of the soldier, bigot, and priest.

Thomas Paine
      The trade of governing has always been monopolized by the most ignorant and the most rascally individuals of mankind.

Edmund Burke
      In vain you tell me that artificial government is good but that I fall out only with the abuse; the thing -- the thing itself is the abuse.

Junius
      It is not a disease, but the physician; it is the pernicious hand of government alone which can reduce a whole people to despair.

Stephen T. Byington
      It can never be unpatriotic for a man to take his country's aide against his government; it must always be unpatriotic for a man to take his government's aide against his country.

 

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