Anarchism Quotes
In the 19th century, most people, like Spooner, saw the combination of money and politics as per se corrupting—much like the view of John McCain in the 21st century. Howver, by then all of politics had been dependent on money. However, distrust of government and politicians prevailed, with money paying a large part of the distrust. Spooner was against the government levying taxes and thought that governments should be financed by the voluntary contributions of money or labor of the citizens. His idea was something like a religious and biblical tithing.
It is hard for us today to understand why intelligent, thoughtful, people would seriously consider and even advocate anarchy. Yet there were many intelligent people who preached anarchy. The key to understanding this is that it is also hard for us to realize how terrible and actually dangerous was typical life under the Russian Government of the Czars. It was not only that most people were serfs--virtually slaves, but the government officials, the military and civilian both, could and did, abuse people in every way imaginable. In America today, if any of us were unfortunate to be the victim of violence, the odds are high that it would be at the hands of another citizen. In Russia (and other countries) at the time, the odds were that the perpetrator of the violence was a government official or government sanctioned person—police, military, aristocrats, civil officers. As but one example. Cossacks would frequently get drunk, pillage and rape a community and kill any who resisted—all with impunity. This quotation from Tolstoy is the classic argument of the anarchist at the time. It was impossible that the absence of government could be as bad as the government then was.
