Benjamin Tucker Quotes
Socialism, on the contrary, extends its function to the description of society as it should be, and the discovery of the means of making it what it should be.
Tucker, Benjamin R. Instead of a Book, by a Man Too Busy to Write One. New York: Benj. R. Tucker, Publisher, 1893, p. 361.
Many anti-socialists criticize the political philosophy of socialism on the grounds that it denies citizens personal freedom. Yet most socialists claim that a central doctrine is to give citizens more freedom. The difference is in the type of freedom that they each emphasize. Most socialists observe that the major limits to the freedom of the vast majority of the people in the world are put there by the lack of economic resources. So increasing freedom to them is to decrease the de facto limits that are placed on people by the economic system. The person working for a large corporation that is a monopoly or the only employer in the area, and has a family and no saved money to move to another area, has no freedom to live where he would like. So the socialists emphasize getting the person more money and diminishing the power and the options of the employers to de facto restrict the corporations and businesses. The capitalists look at socialism and see a system that would diminish the freedom of the corporations and those people who own and manage them and argue that if they are successful enough the workers will fare better and be able to gather and save the resources that they might need to move, change careers and have more de facto freedoms." Viscount Prestwood
The king had his first meeting with the new Prime Minister:
The revolutionists had just captured the Winter Palace: Vladimir Lenin
Most people who call modern politicians socialists are not only wrong about the politicians political views but have very little understanding of socialism itself and what it advocates and stood for.
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 This is a classic example of a twisted logic what was used for many years in the 20th century Red Scare in America. The International Communist Party was critical of the United States legal racial segregation as it was one of the great weaknesses of U. S. Capitalism for most people in the world. The American Communist party also echoed the party line. Almost all socialist organizations supported the Civil Rights Bill as well. Therefore argued Russell and most Southerners, it should be opposed as a Communist effort to weaken America. What they did not mention was that the majority of Democrats and Republicans supported the bill. That the vast majority of all the American churches and other religious organizations supported the bill, that Business groups all across the country wanted legal segregation ended. The only reason there was a long debate is that the Southerners used the filibuster where a small minority could block Senate legislation. But the American majority was so great for civil rights that the filibuster was defeated and the law passed which changed America forever.
This was a fascinating definition of socialism in that it was not an absolute definition. It was to the ediors simply and improvement over the status quo in certain areas. Also, unlike Communism, democracy is a required element of Socialism.
Benjamin Ricketson Tucker was an American anarchist. A 19th-century proponent of individualist anarchism which he called "unterrified Jeffersonianism", Tucker was the editor and publisher of the American individualist anarchist periodical Liberty (1881–1908) as well as a member of the socialist First International.
