Anarchy: It is NOT bombs, disorder or chaos. It is NOT robbery and murder. It is NOT a war of each against all. It is NOT a return to barbarism or to the wild state of man. Anarchism is the very opposite of all that.
Interpretation
Anarchy is often misunderstood; it is not chaos or violence but a system of freedom and order.
In this quote, Alexander Berkman emphasizes that anarchy is frequently misrepresented as a state of chaos or lawlessness. He asserts that true anarchism is about creating a society based on mutual aid and freedom, contrasting sharply with the common misconceptions that link it to violence or disorder.
In practice
During a debate on governance, one might use this quote to illustrate the true nature of anarchism.
When the highwayman holds his gun to your head, you turn your valuables over to him. You 'consent' alright, but you do so because you cannot help yourself, because you are compelled by his gun. Are you not compelled to work for an employer? Your need compels you, just as the highwayman's gun.
What is this thing we call government? Is it anything but organized violence? The law orders you to obey, and if you don't obey, it will compel you by force - all governments, all law and authority finally rest on force and violence, on punishment or fear of punishment.
Man's inhumanity to man is not the last word. The truth lies deeper. It is economic slavery, the savage struggle for a crumb, that has converted mankind into wolves and sheep.
War means blind obedience, unthinking stupidity, brutish callousness, wanton destruction, and irresponsible murder.
I'm not interested in celebrity.
I spent a long time looking at faces, drinking in smiles. Am I happy or unhappy? It’s not a very important question. I live with such frenzied intensity. Things and people are waiting for me, and doubtless I am waiting for them and desiring them with all my strength and sadness. But, here, I earn the right to be alive by silence and by secrecy. The miracle of not having to talk about oneself.
Woman's degradation is in mans idea of his sexual rights. Our religion, laws, customs, are all founded on the belief that woman was made for man.
Archetypes, in spite of their conservative nature, are not static but in a continuous dramatic flux. Thus the self as a monad or continuous unit would be dead. But it lives inasmuch as it splits and unites again. There is no energy without opposites!
Men seldom, or rather never for a length of time and deliberately, rebel against anything that does not deserve rebelling against.
I have walked through many lives,_x000D_ some of them my own,_x000D_ and I am not who I was,_x000D_ though some principle of being_x000D_ abides, from which I struggle_x000D_ not to stray.
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