Proposed Roads to Freedom by Earl Bertrand Arthur William 3rd Russell
page 62 of 240 (25%)
page 62 of 240 (25%)
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he has not absolutely invented; it has been glimpsed, expressed
in part, by many others besides him; but in any case to him belongs the honor of having solidly established it and of having enunciated it as the basis of his whole economic system. (1870; ib. ii. p. xiii.) [16] This title is not Bakunin's, but was invented by Cafiero and Elisee Reclus, who edited it, not knowing that it was a fragment of what was intended to he the second version of ``L'Empire Knouto-Germanique'' (see ib. ii. p 283). The State is not society, it is only an historical form of it, as brutal as it is abstract. It was born historically in all countries of the marriage of violence, rapine, pillage, in a word, war and conquest, with the gods successively created by the theological fantasy of nations. It has been from its origin, and it remains still at present, the divine sanction of brutal force and triumphant inequality. The State is authority; it is force; it is the ostentation and infatuation of force: it does not insinuate itself; it does not seek to convert. . . . Even when it commands what is good, it hinders and spoils it, just because it commands it, and because every command provokes and excites the legitimate revolts of liberty; and because the good, from the moment that it is commanded, becomes evil from the point of view of true morality, of |
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