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title: Anarcho-Syndicalism Theory and Practice
author: Rudolf Rocker
pubyear: 1938
edition: AKPress 6th ed. 2004
readdate: October 2014
tags: non-fiction

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The portentous development of our present economic system, leading to a mighty accumulation of social wealth in the hands of privileged minorities and to a continuous impoverishment of the great masses of the people, prepared the way for the present political and social reaction, and befriended it in every way. It sacrificed the general interests of human society to the private interests of individuals, and thus systematically undermined the relationship between man and man. People forgot that industry is not an end in itself, but should be only a means to insure to man his material subsistence and to make accessible to him the blessings of a higher intellectual culture. Where industry is everything and man is nothing begins the realm of a ruthless economic despotism whose workings are no less disastrous than those of any political despotism. The two mutually augment one another, and they are fed from the same source.
page: 2

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Anarchism found a valuable advocate in Peter Kropotkin, who set himself the task of making the achievements of modern natural science available for the development of the sociological concepts of Anarchism. In his ingenious book, *Mutual Aid—A Factor of Evolution*, he entered the lists against so-called *Social Darwinism* whose exponents tried to prove the inevitability of the existing social conditions from the Darwinian theory of the struggle for existence by raising the struggle of the strong against the weak to the status of an iron law for all natural processes, to which even man is subject. In reality this conception was strongly influenced by the Malthusian doctrine that life's table is not spread for all and that the unneeded will just have to reconcile themselves to this fact.

Kropotkin showed that this conception of nature as a field of unrestricted warfare is only a caricature of real life, and that along with the brutal struggle for existence, which is fought out with tooth and claw; there exists in nature also another principle which is expressed in the social combination of the weaker species and the maintenance of races by the evolution of social instincts and mutual aid.
page: 7

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Anarchism recognises only the relative significance of ideas, institutions, and social forms. It is, therefore, not a fixed, self-enclosed social system, but rather a definite trend in the historic development of mankind, which, in contrast with the intellectual guardianship of all clerical and governmental institutions, strives for the free unhindered unfolding of the individual and social forces in life. Even freedom is only a relative, not an absolute concept, since it tends constantly to become broader and to affect wider circles in more manifold ways. For the anarchist freedom is not an abstract philosophical concept, but the vital concrete possibility fo every himan being to bring to full development all the powers, capacities and talents with which nature has endowed him, and turn then to social account. The less this natural development of man is influenced by ecclesiastical or political guardianship, the mere effective and harmonious will human personality become, the more will it become the measure of the intellectual culture of the society in which it has grown.
page: 16

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"No one can finally spend more than he has. That holds good for individuals; it holds good for peoples. If one spends oneself for power, for high politics, for husbandry, for commerce, parliamentarism, military interests -- if one gives away that amount of reason, earnestness, will, self-mastery, which constitutes one's real self for one thing, he will not have it for the other. Culture and state -- let no one be deceived about this -- are antagonists: the 'Culture State' is merely a modern idea. The one lives on the other, the one prospers at the expense of the other. All great periods of culture are periods of political decline. Whatever is great in a cultured sense is non-political, is even anti-political. -- Nietzsche (source not given)
page: 17

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