The Anarchist Handbook

by Michael Malice

Aristotle says justice is the advantage of society.

Governments from their very nature never can be revolutionary. Society, the whole mass of the people elevated in intelligence, can alone revolutionize itself. Governments are the scourges of God to discipline the world; for them to create liberty would be to destroy themselves.

Marx is a democrat, an Authoritarian Socialist, and a Republican;

the State, like the Church, by its very nature is a great sacrificer of living beings. It is an arbitrary being, in whose heart all the positive, living, individual, and local interests of the population meet, clash, destroy each other, become absorbed in that abstraction called the common interest, the public good, the public safety, and where all real wills cancel each other in that other abstraction which hears the name of the will of the people.

Every logical and sincere theory of the State is essentially founded on the principle of authority—that is to say on the eminently theological, metaphysical and political idea that the masses, always incapable of governing themselves, must submit at all times to the benevolent yoke of a wisdom and a justice, which in one way or another, is imposed on them from above. But imposed in the name of what and by whom? Authority recognized and respected as such by the masses can have only three possible sources—force, religion, or the action of a superior intelligence; and this supreme intelligence is always represented by minorities.

being a slave is being forced to work for other people—as being a master is to live on the labor of other people. In ancient times, as to-day in Asia and Africa, slaves were simply called slaves. In the Middle Ages, they took the name of “serfs”, to-day they are called “wage-earners”.

the reign of scientific intelligence, the most aristocratic, despotic, arrogant and contemptuous of all regimes. There will be a new class, a new hierarchy of real and pretended scientists and scholars, and the world will be divided into a minority ruling in the name of knowledge and an immense ignorant majority.

For the government must be strong, says Engels, to maintain order among these millions of illiterates whose brutal uprising would be capable of destroying and overthrowing everything, even a government directed by heads overflowing with brains.

Any number of scoundrels, having money enough to start with, can establish themselves as a “government”; because, with money, they can hire soldiers, and with soldiers extort more money; and also compel general obedience to their will.

The Anarchists are simply unterrified Jeffersonian Democrats. They believe that the best government is that which governs least, and that that which governs least is no government at all.

If God exists, said Proudhon, he is man’s enemy.

Anarchism says, Make no laws whatever concerning speech, and speech will be free;

In a laissez-faire society, as has been pointed out, a good reputation is the most valuable asset any business or individual can have.

the two organizations which fought hardest against the repeal of Prohibition were the Women’s Christian Temperance Union and the Mafia!)