Graham R (Ed.) - Anarchism - A Documentary History of Libertarian Ideas Volume One - From Anarchy to Anarchism (300 CE to 1939)

The Interwar Years /439
where every one must try to become as good a runner as the fastest. He will regard
leisure as more important than work, and work will fall into its proper, subordinate
place as the means to leisure, to the enj oyment of life.
Life will mean the striving for finer cultural values, the penetration of nature's
mysteries, the attainment of higher truth. Free to exercise the limitless possibilities
of his mind, to pursue his love of knowledge, to apply his inventive genius, to create,
and to soar on the wings of imagination, man will reach his full stature and become
man indeed. He will grow and develop according to his nature. He will scorn uniformity,
and human diversity will give him increased interest in, and a more satisfYing
sense of, the richness of being. Life to him will not consist in functioning but in living,
and he will attain the greatest kind of freedom man is capable of, freedom in joy ...
If your object is to secure liberty, you must learn to do without authority and
compulsion . If you intend to live in peace and harmony with your fellow-men, you
and they should cultivate brotherhood and respect for each other. If you want to
work together with them for your mutual benefit, you must practice cooperation.
The social revolution means much more than the reorganization of conditions only:
it means the establishment of new human values and social relationships, a changed
attitude of man to man, as of one free and independent to his equal; it means a different
spirit in individual and collective life, and that spirit cannot be born overnight. It
is a spirit to be cultivated, to be nurtured and reared, as the most delicate flower is,
for indeed it is the flower of a new and beautiful existence ...
New situations and changed conditions make us feel, think, and act in a different
manner. But the new conditions themselves come about only as a result of new
feelings and ideas. The social revolution is such a new condition. We must learn to
think differently before the revolution can come. That alone can bring the revolution.
We must learn to think differently about government and authority, for as long
as we think and act as we do today, there will be intolerance, persecution, and oppression,
even when organized government is abolished. We must learn to respect
the humanity of our fellow-man, not to invade him or coerce him, to consider his liberty
as sacred as our own; to respect his freedom and his personality, to foreswear
compulsion in any form: to understand that the cure for the evils of liberty is more
liberty, that liberty is the mother of order.
And furthermore we must learn that equality means equal opportunity, that
monopoly is the denial of it, and that only brotherhood secures equality. We can
learn this only by freeing ourselves from the false ideas of capitalism and of property,
of mine and thine, of the narrow conception of ownership.