Authors > Laurance Labadie
Laurance Labadie Quotes
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.
Source: Labadie Reviews Nock (1936) [link] #199
When people begin to understand that the State originated for predatory purposes and for conquest, and realize that its underlying aim ever since has been to camouflage what in reality is its essential feature of controlling people so that it can arbitrarily rob some for the benefit of others, they will begin to understand the motives and effects of State activity in every quarter of the globe. They will begin to ponder on other alternatives for solving their problems than resort to the State machine. Such a recourse is today almost completely absent from the minds of reformers and revolutionists. In fact, subtract the idea of the State as an implementor of social policy from the minds of nearly all those bent on reform and their thinking processes would be immediately halted.
Source: Reflections on Socio-economic Evolution (~mid-1940s) [link] #245
What form voluntary associations which anarchists contemplate will take, remains for the future to evince. Anarchism primarily, is not an economic arrangement but a social philosophy based upon the conclusion that man is happy and independent in proportion to the freedom he experiences and can maintain.
Source: Anarchism Applied to Economics (1933) [link] #280
If the State would be on a voluntary taxation basis as any other business it would have to give something else than abuse and the misappropriation of funds else no one would support it. But this would mean that it would cease to be a state in the anarchistic sense. Of course this is only the economic objection to the State; there are many other ways that it restricts and hampers the non-invasive life of a nation. The State is the cancer in the social life of a people. That is why those in political life are looked upon as criminals by anarchists, not because they so much actually intend to do wrong, even though political life does corrupt a man, but because the effects of their actions are to provoke what is more obviously criminal.
Source: Liberty and the State (1934) [link] #345
The anarchistic solution of the money problem is so simple as to cause amazement. It is to permit anyone and everyone to go into the banking system. Why not? No one objects to anyone going into the hat business or building business or any other non-invasive enterprise. Naturally those who furnish the soundest and cheapest money will crowd others out of existence. To facilitate recognizability there would probably be cooperation or mergers between the banks. The public at large would be the "rulers" of this type of institution because they would patronize it or not, at will, and it must maintain its efficiency and reputability because of the pressure of competition.
Source: Liberty and the State (1934) [link] #348
The State must be destroyed not by killing those in power, but by destroying the political myth in the minds of people. Then the State would be laughed away as an absurdity. Meanwhile we must not only discover the nature of liberty, its possibilities and promise, but must also combat the thousand and one spurious nostrums which now tempt the human race.
Source: Liberty and the State (1934) [link] #349
Clarity, definiteness, and specificity are desired for the enhancement of understanding. But anarchism as a social philosophy suffers from the handicap of not being an affirmative theory about the activities of humans. It is rather a negative philosophy in the sense that it tries to ascertain what is invasive of the maximum amount of liberty for each individual, as such, and to proscribe such behavior. Moreover, anarchism contemplates and embraces the largest variety of individual and social behavior. And further, it is mutable, pertains to change and development; it is a philosophy of movement as distinguished from a condition, a conception of society which is dynamic and “open” as distinguished from a static system of social relations--a road and not a place.
Source: Anarchy and Law (1967) [link] #365
In a world where inequality of ability is inevitable, anarchists do not sanction any attempt to produce equality by artificial or authoritarian means. The only equality they posit and will strive their utmost to defend is the equality of opportunity. This necessitates the maximum amount of freedom for each individual. This will not necessarily result in equality of incomes or of wealth but will result in returns proportionate to service rendered. Free competition will see to that. To base society on the supposition "that the laborer of great capacity will content himself, in favor of the weak with half his wages, furnish his services gratuitously, and produce for that abstraction called society," in the words of Proudhon, "is to base society on a sentiment, I do not say beyond the reach of man, but one which erected systematically into principle, is only a false virtue, a dangerous hypocrisy." A hypocrisy, unfortunately, eagerly subscribed to by a weak, downtrodden, and misguided proportion of the populace.
Source: Anarchism Applied to Economics (1933) [link] #461
It is also the claim of anarchists that government and States are involuntary and invasive institutions originated and maintained for the purpose of protecting and enforcing antisocial rights. They claim that the very first act of governments, the compulsory payment of taxes, is not only a denial of the right of the individual to determine what he shall buy and how much he shall choose to offer, but is nothing more than adding insult to injury when the very money extorted from him should be used to his disadvantage. They therefore attempt to instruct people in the belief that government, whether it be the rule of the mass by a few or of the minority by the majority, is both tyrannical and unjust, that any form of ruler-ship is bound to redound to the detriment of the ruled.
Source: Anarchism Applied to Economics (1933) [link] #462
There is altogether too much dependence on the State institution to act as big papa to settle our difficulties and solve our problems. That the State machine should be the effective cause of those difficulties seldom enters the heads of the populace. Indeed, take the concept of the State from the minds of nearly every reformer and revolutionist who aspires to save the world, and his thinking is checkmated immediately.
Source: The Relationship of Money to the Social Problem [link] #548
Does Society need the State to settle its difficulties? Answer: Yes; just like a drowning man needs a glass of water.
Source: Is Credulity Sweeping the World? (1937) [link] #576
What is the State today but an evolution of violent parasitism? How can this parasitic organization exist without the credulity of its dupes? Slaves having been bossed about for ages--how can they conceive of a condition wherein there is no one to tell them what to do, what they may do and what they may not. Tell such a man that you do not believe in a governmental society and he will think you're crazy. Indeed, 'tis likely that he will think you're dangerous and might like to bash your head in for wanting to do away with what he believes he cannot live without--dictators and rulers.
Source: Is Credulity Sweeping the World? (1937) [link] #604
Whether warfare, even though disguised, was and is a normal mode of human activity, it has been fairly well established that the origin of government was a band of robbers who in conquest set themselves up as rulers over the people they had plundered and subjugated. As it was to no advantage to have these slaves scramble among themselves, the tyrants "maintained law and order" among them, and in time directed them in "public works," such as building roads, making armor, battleships, etc. originally of course for the purposes of further plunder and conquest. As time went on, the slaves actually believed they couldn’t do without their masters, until today we see them concernedly run to the polls to elect new ones every few years. These stupid human animals can become inured to almost anything, and only occasionally rebel, and demand "rights" for themselves, against their masters. They never dream of abolishing mastership itself.
Source: Excerpts From a Letter to a Friend (1949) [link] #630
It is being proposed, as an answer to the questions raised by the civil rights movement, by cybernation, and the prospects of an atomic holocaust, that everyone be given government checks, and presumably the political and economic life of the country be relegated to the tender mercies of power elites who no doubt will be entrusted with our health, education, and welfare, "from cradle to grave." One might comment on the infantile state of mind of the worthies who so propose--a sort of parasitic exploitation in reverse with the State as a full-fitted nursemaid taking care of its victims. But who would expect the members of any institution, school, or study group that had been subsidized by the "powers that be" to come to any conclusion inimical to the privileges of their sponsors?
Source: From Nowhere to the Garbage Heap (1965) [link] #765
I know of hardly one reformer or any other person proposing any feature for the betterment of mankind, in a hundred thousand, who does not propose or expect to implement his proposition through the coercive power of the government. The method of political thought from Plato down to the technocrats was to prefabricate an ideal society, and then to get governmental power to coercively fit people to their systems. The classic example of this type of thinking and action is the attempt to impose systematic communism on a populace. Communism itself is such an infantile conception of the solution of the social problem that it is no accident of circumstance that it is accompanied by continual liquidations. At the present time, the strongest support for government appears to be habit, a common garden variety of ignorance, credulity, and superstition, sustained by a vast amount of mis-education perpetuated by governmental schools in every quarter of the globe. To this must be added emergencies in which sections of a populace find themselves (such as the present-day farmer), in a predicament, the immediate release from which no other power than government appears to exist. Thus, from the very evils caused by government, do governments find a pretext to come in as succor, and thereby enhance their powers. Irrespective of their relative banefulness (for some governments are worse than others) the present day power struggle between governments threatens the annihilation of mankind in a carnage that can hardly be conceived as possible in the absence of all governments whatsoever.
Source: Origin and Nature of Government (1958) [link] #798
When a "nation" is relatively wise politically it requires considerable force, in the shape of police and army, to keep the populace in their place. Where people are steeped in political ignorance, very little force is necessary, especially when the illusion is kept up that when choosing their rulers they are actually ruling themselves.
Source: Origin and Nature of Government (1958) [link] #812
Individuals within tribes no doubt learned that cooperation in robbery was a safer procedure than lone robbery. In time it must have occurred to someone that one tribe could rob another tribe. In such forays the winners would kill the losers. Natural handicaps made women weaker than men, so men became the warriors and the women did the work. Women thus being useful, in subsequent raids they were captured instead of killed. Somewhere along the line a fellow who had been clubbed for his goods survived, and proceeded to gather more goods. When this was observed, probably the greatest humanitarian idea that man has discovered throughout the ages was born—that it was not necessary to kill a man in order to get his goods. This boon was slavery, which at least promised a lease on life. Thus, in conquest between tribes, the conquerors became the rulers and the conquered the slaves. This, in my view, was the origin of the State, which may be defined as an organization of rulers who rob the populace over which it can hold sway, and which uses that populace as soldiers to enlarge the territory and number of people it can exploit. The political history of the world has been the record of internal struggles to grasp State power, and between governments to enlarge their domains. (That governments provide services which citizens want or can be persuaded to want, does not alter the basic concept of nature and origin of the State.) The ruler-ruled relation became in the course of time so ingrained as to become a universal superstition. It is the common belief that no society could exist without government. Indeed, what government will allow anything else to be taught in the schools?
Source: Origin and Nature of Government (1958) [link] #839
Human society, must, in freedom, become one large experimental field wherein, according to the law of the survival of the fittest, only those institutions and customs which actually serve human needs can survive. Only by the free and unhampered operation of this great law will folly be eliminated because the absence of paternalism places fools in a position to reap the full rewards of their folly and in doing so become wise, i.e. capable, self-reliant, and responsible. Of course, in the larger view, the law of the survival of the fittest, which, by the way and contrary to the beliefs of many humanitarians, is an amoral law and taxes no cognizance of "good" or "bad" men, is always in operation, We the great mass of people suffer today because, in our ignorance we do not understand how to live. But in the long run, if there is to be any "survival" on this earth, it is within the realm of certainty that it is to come only by the extension of individual liberties through the ultimate abolition of the State, the elimination of all government of man by man.
Source: Liberty and the State (1934) [link] #846
About Laurance Labadie
(From Wikipedia)
Laurance Labadie (June 4, 1898 - August 12, 1975) was an American individualist anarchist and author. Jo Labadie was his father. Career
Labadie worked in the car industry in Detroit, Michigan.
Labadie became an anarchist author, at first mainly republishing articles of previous anarchist authors, and in the late 1930s he started to publish his own work.
In Anarchism Applied to Economics Labadie writes: "In a world where inequality of ability is inevitable, anarchists do not sanction any attempt to produce equality by artificial or authoritarian means. The only equality they posit and will strive their utmost to defend is the equality of opportunity. This necessitates the maximum amount of freedom for each individual. This will not necessarily result in equality of incomes or of wealth but will result in returns proportionate to services rendered. Free competition will see to that." (Labadie's emphasis)
Labadie was a supporter of jury nullification in an anarchist society. He criticised Murray Rothbard's proposed judicial system which would not allow jury nullification, saying it would uphold, "the very economic evils which are at bottom the very reason for human contention and conflict."
Labadie was a strong critic of capitalism, referring to it as a system of "government protection and coddling" and its defect being the want of competition, and was an exponent of anti-capitalist individualism associated with Benjamin Tucker.
Labadie was involved with multiple anarchist journals. Besides his Discussion, he was also a contributor to A Way Out, The Interpreter and Journal of Human Relations. There he often engaged in debates with or critique contemporary anarchists and libertarians, such as Murray Rothbard, S.E. Parker and Ayn Rand.
Labadie was born on June 4, 1898. He was youngest child of Sophie and Jo Labadie. He was influenced by his father, and by age of 16 he was involved in labor movement. He worked as a machinist in Detroit and was self taught. During the Great Depression, he started his anarchist career with his periodical Discussion - A Journal of Free Spirits.
In World War II, Laurence retired from his work and focused on anarchism. He met Ralph Borsodi and his School of Living in late 40s and remained friends with him until his death. After the death of Borsodi's wife, he moved to (and purchase) Borsodi's Dogwoods Homestead in Suffern, New York. He spent the rest of his life as a recluse, contributing to various libertarian journals. He died on August 12, 1975.
Laurence Labadie was also a friend of monetary theorist Edwin Clarence Riegel and historian James J. Martin. He had no wife or kids but was fond of kids.
Additional Resources
Laurance Labadie, Gloomy Keeper of the Flame - Libertarianism.orgLaurance Labadie and His Critics - Union Of Egoists
Laurance Labadie: Keeper of the Flame - The Anarchist Library
Anarcho-Pessimism: the collected writings of Laurance Labadie (2014) - The Anarchist Library
