Rudolf Rocker > Quotes

“Just because the educational work of the Anarcho-Syndicalists is directed toward the development of independent thought and action, they are outspoken opponents of all those centralizing tendencies which are so characteristic of political labour parties. But centralism, that artificial organization from above downward which turns over the affairs of everybody in a lump to a small minority, is always attended by barren official routine ; and this crushes individual conviction, kills all personal initiative by lifeless discipline and bureaucratic ossification, and permits no independent action. The organization of Anarcho-Syndicalism is based on the principles of Federalism, on free combination from below upward, putting the right of self-determination of every member above everything else and recognizing only the organic agreement of all on the basis of like interests and common convictions. It has often been ch”
― Rudolf Rocker, Anarcho-Syndicalism: Theory and Practice

“In other words Socialism will be free or it will not be at all.”
― Rudolf Rocker, ANARCHO-SYNDICALISM : Theory and Practice

“So long as millions of human beings in every country had to sell their labour-power to a small minority of owners, and to sink into the most wretched misery if they could find no buyers, the so-called "equality before the law" remains merely a pious fraud, since the laws are made by those who find themselves in possession of the social wealth. But in the same way there can also be no talk of a "right over one's own person," for that right ends when one is compelled to submit to the economic dictation of another if he does not want to starve.”
― Rudolf Rocker, ANARCHO-SYNDICALISM : Theory and Practice

“Modem Socialism developed when profound observers of social life came to see more and more clearly that political constitutions and changes in the form of government could never get to the bottom of that great problem that we call "the social question." Its supporters recognized that a social equalizing of human beings, despite the loveliest of theoretical assumptions, is not possible so long as people are separated into classes on the basis of their owning or not owning property, classes whose mere existence excludes in advance any thought of a genuine community. And so there developed the recognition that only by elimination of economic monopolies and common ownership of the means of production, in a word, by a complete transformation of all economic conditions and social institutions associated with them, does a condition of social justice become thinkable, a status in which society shall become a genuine community, and human labour shall no longer serve the ends of exploitation, but shall serve to assure abundance to everyone.”
― Rudolf Rocker, Anarcho-Syndicalism: Theory and Practice

“I am not a Communist because Communism unites all forces of society in the state and becomes absorbed in it; because it inevitably leads to the concentration of all property in the hands of the state, while I seek the abolition of the state — the complete elimination of the principle of authority and governmental guardianship, which under the pretence of making men moral and civilising them, has up to now always enslaved, oppressed, exploited and ruined them.”
― Rudolf Rocker, ANARCHO-SYNDICALISM : Theory and Practice

“Le bourgeois aime l'ordre qui lui permet de poursuivre ses affaires en toute sérénité. Son cœur bat dans son portefeuille, et à ce dernier il sacrifie sans remords tout sentiment social plus profond. Avec la révoltante avidité du parvenu, il essaie de se rendre maître de tout ce qui l'entoure et de l'abaisser à son niveau ; intellectuellement limité, plébéien et lourdeau dans ses manières, tout en rondeur et content de lui, c'est un véritable Philistin ; mais il est prêt à toutes les vilenies s'il croit ses biens menacés.”
― Rudolf Rocker, NATIONALISME ET CULTURE

“This organisation based on reciprocity (mutualité) guarantees the enjoyment of equal rights by each in exchange for equal services. The average working time required for the completion of any product becomes the measure of its value and is the basis of mutual exchange. In this way capital is deprived of its usurial power and is completely bound up with the performance of work. By being made available to all it ceases to be an instrument for exploitation. Such a form of economy makes an political coercive apparatus superfluous. Society becomes a league of free communities which arrange their affairs according to need, by themselves or in association with others, and in which man's freedom finds in the freedom of others not its limitation, but its security and confirmation. "The freer, the more independent and enterprising the individual is in a society, the better for the society." This organisation of Federalism in which Proudhon saw the immediate future sets no definite limitations on further possibilities of development, and offers the widest scope to every individual and social activity.”
― Rudolf Rocker, ANARCHO-SYNDICALISM : Theory and Practice