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ANARCHISM (from the Greek an- and arche, contrary to authority), the name
given to the principle or theory of life and conduct under which society
is conceived without government -- harmony in such a society being
obtained, not by submission to law, or by obedience to any authority, but
by free agreements concluded between the various groups, territorial and
professional, freely constituted for the sake of production and
consumption, as also for the satisfaction of the infinite variety of needs
and aspirations of a civilized being.
Peter Kropotkin (1842-1921)
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In common with all socialists, the anarchists hold that the
private ownership of land, capital, and machinery has had its time;
that it is condemned to disappear: and that all requisites for
production must, and will, become the common property of society,
and be managed in common by the producers of wealth. And...they
maintain that the ideal of the political organization of society is a
condition of things where the functions of government are reduced to
minimum....(and) that the ultimate aim of society is the reduction of
the functions of government to nil--that is, to a society without
government, to an-archy.
Baldwin, Roger N.(Ed.); Kropotkin's Revolutionary Pamphlets, N.Y:
Benjamin Blom, 1927, p. 46.
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"But owing to our wage system, this increase of wealth -- due to
the combined efforts of men of science, of managers, and workmen as
well -- has resulted only in an unprecedented accumulation of
wealth in the hands of the owners of capital; while an increase of
misery for the great numbers, and an insecurity of life for all,
have been the lot of the workmen; the unskilled labourers, in
continuous search for labour, are falling into an unheard-of
destitution. And even the best paid artisans and skilled workmen
labour under the permanent menace of being thrown, in their turn,
into the same conditions as the unskilled paupers, in consequence
of some of the continuous and unavoidable fluctuations of industry
and caprices of capital."