Power operates only destructively, bent always on forcing every manifestation of life into the straitjacket of its laws. Its intellectual form of expression is dead dogma, its physical form brute force. And this unintelligence of its objectives sets its stamp on its supporters also and renders them stupid and brutal, even when they were originally endowed with the best of talents. One who is constantly striving to force everything into a mechanical order at last becomes a machine himself and loses all human feeling.
Rudolf RockerPower operates only destructively, bent always on forcing every manifestation of life into the straitjacket of its laws. Its intellectual form of expression is dead dogma, its physical form brute force.
Rudolf RockerPeople 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.
Rudolf RockerSo long as millions of human beings in every country has to sell their labour-power to a small minority of owners, and to sink into the most wretched misery if they could find no buyers, the so called โequality before the lawโ remains a pious fraud, since the laws are made by those who find themselves in possession of the social wealth. But in the same way there can also be no talk of a โright over one's own person,โ for that right ends when one is compelled to submit to the economic dictation of another if he does not want to starve.
Rudolf RockerThe nation which can only be saved by one man and wants to be saved that way deserves a whipping!
Rudolf RockerThe will to power which always emanates from individuals or from small minorities in society is in fact a most important driving force in history. The extent of its influence has up to now been regarded far too little, although it has frequently been the determining factor in the shaping of the whole of economic and social life.
Rudolf Rocker