I define anarchist society as one where there is no legal possibility for coercive aggression against the person or property of any individual.
Murray Rothbard

Anarchism may be described as the doctrine that all the affairs of men should be managed by individuals or voluntary associations, and that the State should be abolished.
Benjamin Tucker

The state is an organization of mere mortals who, by one dubious method or another, have been allowed to don the mantle of political legitimacy and to command obedience on pain of imprisonment even of those who never consented to the preposterous arrangement.
Sheldon Richman

Governments do not come into existence as social service organizations or as private firms seeking to please consumers in a competitive market. Instead, they are born in conquest and nourished by plunder. They are, in short, well-armed gangs intent on organized crime.
Robert Higgs

The greatest achievement of the statist intellectuals is the fact that they have cultivated the masses' natural intellectual laziness (or incapacity) and never allowed for the subject to come up for serious discussion. The state is considered as an unquestionable part of the social fabric.
Hans-Hermann Hoppe

A man's natural rights are his own, against the whole world; and any infringement of them is equally a crime, whether committed by one man, calling himself a robber, or by millions, calling themselves a government.
Lysander Spooner

Set men up to rule their fellow-men, to treat them as mere soulless material with which they may deal as they please, and the consequence is that you sweep away every moral landmark and turn this world into a place of selfish striving, hopeless confusion, trickery and violence, a mere scrambling ground for the strongest or the most cunning or the most numerous.
Auberon Herbert

Although resting on violence, the State in the final analysis, exists by virtue of a state of mind which prevails toward it, a peculiar ignorance, delusion, and moral debility which, in the face of its unbroken record of doing nothing honestly and efficiently, tends to call on it to ameliorate any social predicament.
Laurance Labadie

The idea of creating systems designed to threaten, coerce, and kill, and to imbue such agencies with principled legitimacy, and not expect them to lead to wars, genocides, and other tyrannical practices, expresses an innocence we can no longer afford to indulge.
Butler Shaffer

Why don't we have libertarian anarchy? Why does government exist? The answer is that government as a whole exists because most people believe it is necessary.
David Friedman

Liberty is not a box into which people are forced. Liberty is a space in which people may live. It does not tell you how they will live. It says, eternally, only that we can.
Karl Hess

A free society is the only one in which each and every one of us can satisfy his or her subjective values without crushing others' values by violence and coercion.
Samuel Edward Konkin III

If he who employs coercion against me could mould me to his purposes by argument, no doubt he would. He pretends to punish me because his argument is important, but he really punishes me because his argument is weak.
William Godwin

Once you understand the economics of the Austrian School and the philosophy of liberty in the tradition of Rothbard, you never look at anything—not the state, the media, the central bank, the political class, nothing—the same way again.
Lew Rockwell

Unless we can make the philosophic foundations of a free society once more a living intellectual issue, and its implementation a task which challenges the ingenuity and imagination of our liveliest minds, the prospects of freedom are indeed dark.
F. A. Hayek

Voters, activists, and political leaders of the present day are in the position of medieval doctors. They hold simple, prescientific theories about the workings of society and the causes of social problems, from which they derive a variety of remedies—almost all of which prove either ineffectual or harmful.
Michael Huemer

Voluntary communism, together with laissez-faire capitalism, has nothing to be ashamed of on moral and economic grounds. They can each hold up their heads, high. Far from enemies, they are merely opposite sides of the same voluntaristic coin.
Walter Block

If most people truly consent to taxes let's make them voluntary. We'll find out real quick what people consent to.
Dave Smith

Telling strangers that they do in fact consent despite them explicitly stating otherwise is a mockery of the concepts of consent and of contract, and one of the more incoherent ways used to justify state oppression.
Michael Malice

A man’s liberties are none the less aggressed upon because those who coerce him do so in the belief that he will be benefited. In thus imposing by force their wills upon his will, they are breaking the law of equal freedom in his person; and what the motive may be matters not.
Herbert Spencer

I don’t like the use of force. I like voluntarism. That’s what a free society is supposed to be all about.
Ron Paul

The voluntary arrangements of a private property society would be far more conducive to peace and the rule of law, than the coercive setup of a parasitical monopoly government.
Robert Murphy

Because the state necessarily commits aggression, the consistent libertarian, in opposing aggression, is also an anarchist.
Stephan Kinsella

Anyone who actually believes in the principle of non-aggression - the underlying premise of libertarianism - must be an anarchist, as it is logically impossible to oppose the initiation of violence while supporting any form of "government," which is nothing but violence.
Larken Rose

Human beings have a major cognitive dissonance problem when it comes to taxes. For some reason they don't see it as an armed extortion racket.
Jeff Berwick

Statism is the very paradoxical idea that people are inherently greedy and self-interested and therefore we should pick a handful of them and give them all the power.
Spike Cohen

The State turns every contingency into a resource for accumulating power in itself, always at the expense of social power; and with this it develops a habit of acquiescence in the people.
Albert Jay Nock

Market anarchism is the doctrine that the legislative, adjudicative, and protective functions unjustly and inefficiently monopolised by the coercive State should be entirely turned over to the voluntary, consensual forces of market society.
Roderick T. Long

History shows that the masses are always improved in mental, moral, and material conditions as the powers of the state over the individuals are reduced. As man becomes more enlightened regarding his interests, individual and collective, he insists that forcible authority over him and his conduct shall be abolished.
Joseph A. Labadie

The primary contribution of government to this world is to elicit, entrench, enable, and finally to codify the most destructive aspects of the human personality.
Jeffrey Tucker

It is vain to fight totalitarianism by adopting totalitarian methods. Freedom can only be won by men unconditionally committed to the principles of freedom. The first requisite for a better social order is the return to unrestricted freedom of thought and speech.
Ludwig von Mises

A free, unregulated laissez-faire market should, and can, take care of everything government claims to do, only better, cheaper, and without wrecking individual lives in the process: national defense, adjudication, pollution control, fire protection, and police.
L. Neil Smith

The shape of a free society is formed not only by anonymous economic tendencies and “market forces,” but also by conscious social activism and community organizing.
Charles W. Johnson

I don't think I am obligated to find an answer to every question in the world. That being said, all I can do is take care of the means and live as close to my conscience as possible: educate myself and help educate others, and not contribute to the problem of coercive government.
Carl Watner

What keeps a truly civil society together isn’t laws, regulations, and police. It’s peer pressure, social opprobrium, moral approbation, and your reputation. These are the four elements that keep things together. Western Civilization is built on voluntarism. But, as the State grows, that’s being replaced by coercion in every aspect of society.
Doug Casey

Liberalism is, in fact, the ideology of the capitalist revolution that prodigiously raised the living standards of the mass of people; a doctrine gradually elaborated over several centuries, which offered a new concept of social order, encompassing freedom in the only form suited to the modern world.
Ralph Raico

Market anarchists are radical advocates of individual liberty and mutual consent in every aspect of social life — thus rejecting all forms of domination and government as invasions against liberty and violations of human dignity.
Gary Chartier

The welfare of the people in particular has always been the alibi of tyrants, and it provides the further advantage of giving the servants of tyranny a good conscience.
Albert Camus

Statists are the utopian dreamers who imagine that individuals acting under the magical banner of government can plan, coerce, and coordinate millions of lives.
Jeff Deist

Nine hundred and ninety nine men out of a thousand are more interested in drinking a glass of beer than in questioning the tax that is laid on it.
Voltairine de Cleyre

The true remedy for most evils is none other than liberty, unlimited and complete liberty, liberty in every field of human endeavour.
Gustave de Molinari

Authors > Francis Dashwood Tandy

Francis Dashwood Tandy Quotes

The State is founded in aggression. Its main function is the suppression of individual liberty. It claims absolute jurisdiction over all within its borders. It derives its power from the superstitious veneration of its subjects, and governs and coerces them in proportion to the depth of that superstition. But gradually superstitions decay. A few members of the community demand more liberty, and they obtain it when they become sufficiently strong to enforce their demands.

Francis Dashwood Tandy

Source: Voluntary Socialism (1896) [link] #61

Since the State is founded in aggression, and is inimical to individual liberty, it is but natural to suppose that its very existence is threatened by the principle of Equal Freedom. This is actually the case. If all forms of compulsion are tyrannical, the enforced payments of taxes is no less so... To compel a man to buy that which he does not want is the grossest tyranny. If he finds that it is necessary to his happiness, he will buy it without compulsion. If he does not find it necessary, by what right can anyone compel him to pay for it? But taxes are the source from which the State derives its life’s blood. So it is, as its history would lead us to believe, essentially a tyrannical institution. The ways in which this tyranny is exercised are too numerous to mention.

Francis Dashwood Tandy

Source: Voluntary Socialism (1896) [link] #259

The first essentials of freedom are, of course, the freedom to live unmolested and the freedom of the producer to retain unrestricted the full product of his toil. While there may be serious differences of opinion in regard to the definitions of "producer" and "product," I think no one will deny that crimes against person and property – murder, assault, theft, etc. – are violations of Equal Freedom.

Francis Dashwood Tandy

Source: Voluntary Socialism (1896) [link] #260

Liberty works automatically. Tyranny ever has to bolster itself up with elaborate machinery, which is always getting out of order and producing the most unlooked for and grotesque results.

Francis Dashwood Tandy

Source: Voluntary Socialism (1896) [link] #386

Probably the first question which presents itself to the mind, when the abolition of the State is suggested, is how crime will be suppressed. It will be apparent to all who understood the last chapter, that actions are only criminal insofar as they directly transgress the freedom of others. Many people still cling to the idea that the main function of the State is to maintain Equal Freedom, an idea which has already been exploded, by showing that the State is the greatest violator of the law -- in other words, the greatest criminal. How then can we expect it to protect us? ... It is surely time private enterprise had a turn. It can hardly do any worse, and I hope to show that it will do much better. In nearly every large city business men either employ special night watchmen, or else subscribe to some merchants' police company, in order to have their stores protected. Here are men who are compelled to pay the State for protection that is so inadequate and worthless, that they voluntarily pay a private institution to perform the same services. The State fails to perform its duty but still continues to collect the money for it by force. Meanwhile private enterprise steps in and does the work properly. Is there any danger that a community, in which the rights of life and property are held in such high regard that men will pay twice over for their protection rather than go without it -- is there much danger that such a community will fail to protect itself from crime if left to do so without State intervention? The work of insurance companies is suggestive of a method by which this might be done. If the State collects taxes from you to save your house when it is on fire, insurance companies will, if you pay your premiums, reimburse you for all your loss. The former thrusts its services on you unasked, and makes you pay for them whether you want them or not. The latter is a purely voluntary arrangement, and is perfectly willing to leave you alone if you do not molest it. There are accident insurance companies which insure elevators. Should any person get hurt while riding in an elevator so insured and sue the owner of the building, the insurance company will settle the whole matter and pay such damages as may be awarded. In Colorado -- I don't know how it may be in other States -- there is no State elevator inspector, consequently insurance companies inspect the elevators themselves and issue proper certificates. These companies have everything depending upon the correctness of their inspection. The loss of large sums of money and the shaking of public confidence are the penalties they must pay for mistakes ... Why cannot such institutions protect our persons and property from theft and assault as well as from accidents, fires, storms, etc.? That they are capable is clearly demonstrated by their past history. The exorbitant prices that they charge will be curtailed as soon as the monopolies of land and money are destroyed.

Francis Dashwood Tandy

Source: Voluntary Socialism (1896) [link] #797

About Francis Dashwood Tandy

(From Wikipedia)

Voluntary Socialism is a work of nonfiction by the American mutualist Francis Dashwood Tandy (1867–1913). First published in 1896, it has been favorably cited by many individualist anarchists, including Clarence Lee Swartz, minarchist Robert Nozick and left-libertarian Roderick T. Long, who has noted that "many of the standard moves in market anarchist theory today are already in evidence in Tandy".

Tandy was a member of the "Denver Circle", a group of men who associated with Benjamin Tucker and contributed to the periodical Liberty. In the preface to Voluntary Socialism, he declares his intent to "give a complete outline of [Voluntaryism] in its most important bearings". To that end, chapters one through four outline the foundation for Tandy's anarchism, drawing heavily from Max Stirner and Herbert Spencer. Chapters five through fourteen cover specific areas of interest, including private defense agencies, the labor theory of value, mutual banking, transportation, and political strategy.

The book is dedicated to Benjamin Tucker, "whose lucid writings and scathing criticisms have done so much to dispel the clouds of economic superstition".