“And that's what socialism was supposed to be about, or anarchism was supposed to be about, and tragically has been betrayed.”
In this clip, Murray Bookchin is speaking to a crowd of anarcho-capitalists and other libertarians at a Libertarian Party Conference. Karl Hess is sitting next to Bookchin at the table.
Anarchism in America http://alexpeak.com/art/films/aia/ (15 January 1983)
Context: The basic problem I really have is that whenever I meet leftists in the socialist and Marxist movements, I'm called a petit-bourgeois individualist. [audience laughs] I'm supposed to shrink after this— Usually I'm called petit-bourgeois individualist by students, and by academicians, who’ve never done a days work life [sic] in their entire biography, whereas I have spent years in factories and the trade unions, in foundries and auto plants. So after I have to swallow the word petit-bourgeois, I don't mind the word individualist at all!I believe in individual freedom; that's my primary and complete commitment—individual liberty. That’s what it's all about. And that's what socialism was supposed to be about, or anarchism was supposed to be about, and tragically has been betrayed.And when I normally encounter my so-called colleagues on the left—socialists, Marxists, communists—they tell me that, after the revolution, they're gonna shoot me. [audience laughs, Murray nods] That is said with unusual consistency. They're gonna stand me and Karl up against the wall and get rid of us real fast; I feel much safer in your company. [audience laughs and applauds]
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Murray Bookchin 24
American libertarian socialist author, orator, and philosop… 1921–2006Related quotes
Source: Anarcho-Syndicalism (1938), Ch. 1 "Anarchism: Its Aims and Purposes"
Context: Anarchism is no patent solution for all human problems, no Utopia of a perfect social order, as it has so often been called, since on principle it rejects all absolute schemes and concepts. It does not believe in any absolute truth, or in definite final goals for human development, but in an unlimited perfectibility of social arrangements and human living conditions, which are always straining after higher forms of expression, and to which for this reason one can assign no definite terminus nor set any fixed goal. The worst crime of any type of state is just that it always tries to force the rich diversity of social life into definite forms and adjust it to one particular form, which allows for no wider outlook and regards the previously exciting status as finished. The stronger its supporters feel themselves, the more completely they succeed in bringing every field of social life into their service, the more crippling is their influence on the operation of all creative cultural forces, the more unwholesomely does it affect the intellectual and social development of any particular epoch.
“Unquestionably socialism and anarchism attract distinctly different types”
Source: Violence and the Labor Movement (1914), p. 92
Context: Unquestionably socialism and anarchism attract distinctly different types, who are in many ways alien to each other. Their mental processes differ.
Source: Civilisation (1969), Ch. 13: Heroic Materialism
Source: Culture's consequences: International differences in work-related values (1980), p. 45.
“What we're doing is playing social experimentation with our military right now. And that's tragic.”
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http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20110698-503544.html
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https://archive.is/J7zWq
2013-01-02
Source: Dismantling America and Other Controversial Essays (2011), p.397
Introductory
A Treatise on Man and the Development of His Faculties (1842)
Context: Every social state supposes... a certain number and a certain order of crimes, these being merely the necessary consequences of its organisation. This observation, so discouraging at first sight, becomes, on the contrary, consolatory, when examined more nearly, by showing the possibility of ameliorating the human race, by modifying their institutions, their habits, the amount of their information, and, generally, all which influences their mode of existence.