Rudolph Rocker Quotes

Our "bond' is one of free agreement between my wife and myself. It is a purely private matter that only concerns ourselves, and it needs no confirmation from the law.

Rudolph Rocker

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Above all it is necessary to cure the labour movement of its inner ossification and rid it of the empty sloganeering of the political parties, so that it may forge ahead intellectually and develop...

Rudolph Rocker

Anarcho-Syndicalism - 1938 - Ch. 1 "Anarchism: Its Aims and Purposes" Ch. 5 "The Methods of Anarcho-Syndicalism"

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True intellectual culture and the demand for higher interests in life does not become possible until man has achieved a certain material standard of living, which makes him capable of these. Without...

Rudolph Rocker

Anarcho-Syndicalism - 1938 - Ch. 1 "Anarchism: Its Aims and Purposes" Ch. 5 "The Methods of Anarcho-Syndicalism"

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Political rights do not exist because they have been legally set down on a piece of paper, but only when they have become the ingrown habit of a people, and when any attempt to impair them will meet...

Rudolph Rocker

Anarcho-Syndicalism - 1938 - Ch. 1 "Anarchism: Its Aims and Purposes" Ch. 5 "The Methods of Anarcho-Syndicalism"

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It has often been charged against Anarcho-Syndicalism that it has no interest in the political structure of the different countries, and consequently no interest in the political struggles of the...

Rudolph Rocker

Anarcho-Syndicalism - 1938 - Ch. 1 "Anarchism: Its Aims and Purposes" Ch. 5 "The Methods of Anarcho-Syndicalism"

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For the state centralisation is the appropriate form of organisation, since it aims at the greatest possible uniformity in social life for the maintenance of political and social equilibrium. But for...

Rudolph Rocker

Anarcho-Syndicalism - 1938 - Ch. 1 "Anarchism: Its Aims and Purposes" Ch. 4 "The Objectives of Anarcho-syndicalism"

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For the Anarcho-Syndicalists the trade union is by no means a mere transitory phenomenon bound up with the duration of capitalist society, it is the germ of the Socialist society of the future, the...

Rudolph Rocker

Anarcho-Syndicalism - 1938 - Ch. 1 "Anarchism: Its Aims and Purposes" Ch. 4 "The Objectives of Anarcho-syndicalism"

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Participation in parliamentary politics has affected the Socialist labour movement like an insidious poison. It destroyed the belief in the necessity of constructive Socialist activity and, worst of...

Rudolph Rocker

Anarcho-Syndicalism - 1938 - Ch. 1 "Anarchism: Its Aims and Purposes" Ch. 4 "The Objectives of Anarcho-syndicalism"

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Modern Anarcho-Syndicalism is a direct continuation of those social aspirations which took shape in the bosom of the First International and which were best understood and most strongly held by the...

Rudolph Rocker

Anarcho-Syndicalism - 1938 - Ch. 1 "Anarchism: Its Aims and Purposes" Ch. 4 "The Objectives of Anarcho-syndicalism"

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Ideas do not make a movement; they are themselves merely the product of concrete situations, the intellectual precipitate of particular conditions of life. Movements arise only from the immediate and...

Rudolph Rocker

Anarcho-Syndicalism - 1938 - Ch. 2 "The Proletariat and the Beginning of the Modern Labour Movement"

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