Social oppression

“ This will be done by the armed nation itself, as simply and as readily as any crowd of civilized people, even in modern Society, parts a pair of combatants or does not allow a woman to be outraged. And, secondly, we know that the fundamental social cause of excesses which violate the rules of social life, is the exploitation of the masses, their want and their poverty. ”

“ When the revolt at length takes place it is in answer to an immediate and pressing need of the whole community. When the restrictions upon a class have become hurtful to the whole, when their removal is called for because society is in need of the energies thus set free, then takes place a more or less general uprising of the oppressed and restricted ones, apparently entirely spontaneous and voluntary, in reality having its origin partly at least in the claim which society is making upon the hitherto restricted class to take up fuller social responsibilities. ”

“ The derangements and miseries of mankind are precisely due to the ignorant and arrogant rule of “superior” classes and persons. The mental and spiritual capacity of these classes is a myth; their so-called culture but thinly veneers their essential savagery, their social rapacity and impudence....
The system that divides society into classes can bring forth no true knowledge, no living truth, no industrial competence, no fundamental social decency. ”

“ Now that in every civilized land the working class, sick of the reign of cruelty and wrong, is awakening to a consciousness of its power, and to a determination to ordain a fairer life, you take upon yourselves the mission to ridicule its aims and ideals and to discredit its leaders. ”

“ As he reflects upon his wrongs and sufferings, will he not be filled with hatred towards that one who, as he thinks, unjustly and cruelly keeps him from the fruits of his labor? And as time goes on, and the hardships he endures sink more and more deeply into his mind, will he not finally, in desperation, resolve to put down his oppressor, be he landlord or be he capitalist, and to reverse, by the force of a strong right arm, an unnatural and artificial social organization? ”

“ Proceeding from these views it struggles in the present society, not only against exploitation and oppression of the wage-workers, but against every kind of exploitation and oppression, whether directed against class, party, sex, or race. ”

“ He had nothing but contempt for the sparrow-like frivolity of fashionable Society, and was repelled from the middle classes by their servitude to conventions, their prejudices social and political, and their non-receptivity to ideas. ”

“ Say that I would isolate humanity, reduce society to its elemental state, make men savage! It is not true. But rather than see this devastating, cankering, enslaving system you call social order go on, rather than help to keep alive the accursed institutions of Authority, I would help to reduce every fabric in the social structure to its native element. ”

“ Those of one class, not realizing what they are and what they might be, take life as it comes, believe that they are born to be slaves, and content themselves with the little that is given them in exchange for their labor. But there are others, on the contrary, who think, who study, and who, looking about them, discover social iniquities. Is it their fault if they see clearly and suffer at seeing others suffer? ”

“ But their denial of social authority and discipline, their strong assertion of individual rather than of social rights, their emphasis of the sovereignty or autonomy of the individual, and their constant tendency to view society as the enemy instead of the friend of man, and, while declaring men to be on the whole individually good and trustworthy, at the same time ceaselessly to rail against organised society as inherently wicked and tyrannical, were notions alien alike to his temperament and his reason. ”

“ It understands that all its so-called citizens' rights and progressive organs assail and menace its class rule, both in its social foundation and its political superstructure—consequently, have become "socialistic." ”

“ With every hand raised against him in the old land and the new, in the land of his hoped-for freedom, what more logical than that his should be turned against society that seems to exist only for his oppression? ”

“ There are today upwards of sixty millions of Socialists, loyal, devoted adherents to this cause, regardless of nationality, race, creed, color, or sex. They are all making common cause. They are spreading with tireless energy the propaganda of the new social order. ”

“ And of this mass of men so brutalized as to be ready to promise to kill their own parents, the social reformers — conservatives, liberals, socialists, and anarchists—propose to form a rational and moral society. ”

“ But we decline to be forced by this one intellectual fiasco towards the laissez faire of the Individualist and the Marxist, or to accept the Normal Social Life with its atmosphere of hens and cows and dung, its incessant toil, its servitude of women, and its endless repetitions as the only tolerable life conceivable for the bulk of mankind—as the ultimate life, that is, of mankind. ”

“ Everything goes to prove their fixed determination to subvert, from its foundation, that anti-social structure of society which made man the slave of his fellow-man; their every act and discourse tended accordingly to its overthrow. ”

“ His experience led him to the conclusion that "there is floating upon the surface of society, a body of restless, disappointed, jealous, indolent spirits, disgusted with our present social system, not because it enchains the masses to poverty, ignorance, vice, and endless servitude ”

“ So they find themselves mobilizing one class of oppressors (The Wind) against another — neither of which understands egoism, individualism, labor and revolution as expressions of a single principle: the viability and desirability of the sovereignty of the individual and the destruction of every social institution that impedes it. ”

“ Just the same as every individual, every class or social group struggles for its existence. And just as the bourgeoisie struggled against the clergy and the aristocracy, and triumphed in the French Revolution, in the same way to-day the international proletariat struggles, and not by the use of violence, as is constantly charged against us, but by propaganda and organization for its economic and moral existence at present so ill assured and depressed to so sadly low a plane. ”

“ Some natures in such a plight, and those by no means the least social or the least sensitive, will become violent, and will even feel that their violence is social and not anti-social, that in striking when and how they can, they are striking, not for themselves, but for human nature, outraged and despoiled in their persons and in those of their fellow sufferers. ”

“ In this mood he totally disregards the laws of society and seizes every opportunity that presents itself to prey upon it and he thus becomes an anti-social being. Through all ages up to the present, society has at the cost of much effort and suffering been progressing, stage by stage, towards a higher order. ”

“ Your insolence and ignorance of the rights conceded to workers universally in the modern world were incredible, and as great as your inhumanity. If you had between you collectively a portion of human soul as large as a three-penny bit, you would have sat night and day with the representatives of labor, trying this or that solution of the trouble, mindful of the women and children, who at least were innocent of wrong against you. ”

“ All an infernal system of oppression, like the sweating system, asks, is to be let alone. To uncover its atrocities is like turning over a huge stone in the meadow in springtime, that has been a hiding-place for bugs and worms that nest away in the dark. ”

“ He repairs to his lodgings, and there, too, all his moral sensibilities are shocked and outraged, by seeing a class of men and women hopelessly degraded, cut off by law and custom from all opportunity of emerging from their debasement; whom no talent, taste, or virtue can ever redeem to the pleasures and the rights of social intercourse. ”

“ A fermentation of social discontent—bred by the philosophy of the times, by the glaring disparity between the ruling class and the working people, the latters’ distrust of the morals and the assumed authority of the former, by the teachings of freemasonry and the trades unions—was slowly gathering momentum. ”

“ This is why the processes of evolution and revolution—the only wholly social or collective processes—are the most efficacious, while partial rebellion and, still more, individual violence have only a very feeble power of social transformation; they are, moreover, anti-social and anti-human, because they re-awaken the primitive savage instincts, and because they deny, in the very person whom they strike down, the principle with which they believe themselves animated—the principle of respect for human life and of solidarity. ”

“ As this iniquitous class can grow rich only by grinding and cheating their fellow-creatures, that is, by robbery and oppression, they are, by the very nature of their pursuits and practices, irreconcilable enemies of society. It is their interest that the working-classes should be always at variance amongst themselves—always a prey to ignorance—given to mutual jealousy and mistrust—and filled with prejudices and superstitions, by which they may at all times have their passions inflamed against those who would unite, enlighten, and emancipate them from bondage. ”

“ In that perpetual anarchy, some factions must be beaten. But a class with traditions and habits of oppression is very different, when beaten, from a society swayed by manufacturing, commercial, and legal interests. ”

“ It is among these classes that the projectors of the wildest, most incendiary schemes readily recruit their partisans; that the advocates of socialism, community of goods and wives, all, in fact, who, under the pretext of removing the ills and abuses that afflict the social system, propose to tear it down, find ready listeners and zealous believers. ”

“ In the stationary societies, where all individuals were permeated by the same political, religious, moral, and social ideas; and where each class had its own hereditary and fixed traditions of action and manners, this cause of friction and suffering had of necessity no existence; individual differences and discord might be occasioned by personal greeds, ambitions, and selfishnesses, but not by conflicting conceptions of right and wrong, of the desirable and undesirable, in all branches of human life. ”

“ And last, though not least, to this end, too, is directed the effort to purge society of social evils, such as drinking and litigiousness, and of the sin of untouchability which condemns a vast proportion of the population to a position worse than that of lower animals. ”

“ In this country, however, the effective restraints on mental freedom proceed much less from the law or the government, than from the intolerant temper of the national mind; arising no longer from even as respectable a source as bigotry or fanaticism, but rather from the general habit, both in opinion and conduct, of making adherence to custom the rule of life, and enforcing it, by social penalties, against all persons who, without a party to back them, assert their individual independence. ”

“ Follow the ‘jeunes revues,’ and you will observe that there is not, to speak in the large, a piece of verse, a story, a study of any sort whatsoever, which does not tend towards the destruction of what the anarchists qualify as social prejudice,—la patrie, authority, family, religion, courts of law, militarism, etc. ”

“ If that field widens to our view, it is still, to the utmost line to which the shade clears away, a scene of cruelty, oppression, and slavery; of the strong trampling on the weak, and the weak often attempting to bite at the feet of the strong; of rancorous animosities and murderous competitions of persons raised above the mass of the community ”

“ Such, for example, are the progress of ``statism,'' the diminution of the power of the bourgeoisie, the increasing activity of financiers, the conflict of the classes, the vanishing of the old social constraints, and the degradation of morality.
All these effects are displayed in a general insubordination and anarchy. The son revolts against the father, the employee against his patron, the soldier against his officers. Discontent, hatred, and envy reign throughout.
A social movement which continues is necessarily like a machine in movement which accelerates its motion. ”

“ They fight for a particular claim of right—the utterly unjustifiable claim to the whole product of labour—and they propose to turn the world upside down by a vast scheme of social reconstruction in order to get their unjust, delusive, and mischievous idea realized. ”

“ The advocates of "sabotage," the "reds" in the socialist camp, the preachers of practical anarchism, must be treated as among the most dangerous of criminals. On the other hand, the spread of the spirit of lawlessness among the lower classes should serve to warn the upper classes that present social conditions will not much longer be endured. ”

“ Those who become indifferent to these objects and duties, and allows selfish or ambitious men to get the control of the government, and prostitute it to their own purposes, are the authors of their own sufferings. And those who permit themselves to become instruments in the hands of the people's oppressors for the continuance of oppression, commit great wrongs to themselves and their country. ”

“ This prejudice is based on the ground that bad economic conditions and an unwholesome environment are the source of all social evils, and that a better distribution of wealth, or a vast scheme of social welfare, is the one thing necessary, when that is achieved all other things being added unto us, without any further trouble on our part. ”