They [anarchists] spring from a single seed, no matter the flowering of their ideas. The seed is liberty. And that is all it is. It is not a socialist seed. It is not a capitalist seed. It is not a mystical seed. It is not a determinist seed. It is simply a statement. We can be free. After that it’s all choice and chance.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes that the core of anarchism is the concept of freedom, independent of other ideological frameworks.
In this quote, Karl Hess argues that anarchists are united by a fundamental belief in liberty, which he describes as the 'seed' from which their ideas grow. He asserts that this seed is not tied to socialism, capitalism, or any other ideology, but rather serves as a straightforward declaration of the human capacity for freedom. After establishing this idea, he implies that the choices individuals make and the outcomes that follow are based on personal decisions and random events.
In practice
In a discussion about political ideologies, you might quote Hess to emphasize the importance of individual liberty.
It is curious to note that when for reasons of conscience, people refuse to kill, they are often exempted from active military duty. But there are no exemptions for people who, for reasons of conscience, refuse to financially support the bureaucracy that actually does the killing. Apparently, the state takes money more seriously than life.
We have the illusion of freedom only because so few ever try to exercise it. Try it sometime. Try to save your home from the highway crowd, or to work a trade without the approval of the goons, or to open a little business without a permit, or to grow a crop without a quota, or to educate your child the way you want to, or to not have a child. We all have the freedom of a balloon floating in a pin factory.
The revolution occurs when the victims cease to cooperate.
I wish we didn't live in a world where buying and selling things seems to have become almost more important than either producing or using them.
We ourselves were well conversant with war, murder and everything evil, but all of us throughout the whole wide earth have traded in our weapons of war. We have exchanged our swords for plowshares, our spears for farm tools...now we cultivate the fear of God, justice, kindness, faith, and the expectation of the future given us through the Crucified One....The more we are persecuted and martyred, the more do others in ever increasing numbers become believers.
Ah! How I hate the crimes of the new generation: they are dry and sterile as darnel.
That one plant should be sown and another be produced cannot happen; whatever seed is sown, a plant of that kind even comes forth.
It might be said that society speaks through the clothing it wears. Through its clothing it reveals its secret aspirations and uses it, at least in part, to build or destroy its future.
When we come to know who we truly are, we will see ourselves in all people.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.