Anarcha Feminists

"I ran for all I was worth, radiant at the thought that I was leaving all behind and going to the salvation of death."

"I got disgusted with the widespread desire among socialists to get their names in the paper."

"What an extraordinary contradiction for a Christian to preach love on the street corner then fail to follow through on a pure, unblemished love. Christians have become fettered to the concept of God which they created. Theirs is a cowardly faith of slaves. The virtue and beauty of human beings is to live naturally, ungoverned by external forces. I decided that I could not embrace Christianity, which preaches the doctrine of life that conflicts with the ideals of beauty and virtue. So I abandoned Christianity."

"For a long time I’ve thought deeply that all humans are equal. Everyone being human, they must all be equal. In that there’s no difference between stupid and smart or strong and weak. As humans that exist naturally on earth, I believe that all humans are completely equal in value, and following from the sole qualification of being human they should enjoy completely and equally their right to human activity. To put it concretely, all actions that have been done, are being done and can be done by humans are built on the foundation of their being human. Thus I think all of these actions, built on a natural foundation and performed by humans on the earth, should be recognized as equal human activities by the sole qualification of their being done by humans. And yet, how very much these natural actions, this natural existence itself, are being denied and controlled in the name of laws made by humans. Humans who should be by nature equal, how unequal their situation is in this society. I curse this inequality."

"They say that sincerity moves heaven."

"Because the wielders of power continue to defend their authority in the usual manner and oppress the weak – and because my past experience has been a story of oppression by all sources of authority – I decided to deny the rights of all authority, rebel against them, and stake not only my own life but that of all humanity on this endeavor."

"I feel boundless anger against parental authority, which crushed me under the high-sounding name of parental love, and against state and social authority, which abused me in the name of universal love."

"Socialism did not have anything particularly new to teach me; however, it provided me with the theory to verify what I already knew emotionally from my own past. I was poor then; I am poor now. Because of this I have been overworked, mistreated, tormented, oppressed, deprived of my freedom, exploited, and ruled by people with money. I had always harbored a deep antagonism toward people with that kind of power and a deep sympathy for people from backgrounds like mine. [...] Socialist ideology merely provided the flame that ignited this antagonism and this sympathy, long smoldering in my heart."

"I cannot destroy my current self so that my future self can survive. Officers, let me proclaim courageously to you once more: “Rather than prostrate myself before the wielders of power, I prefer to die and be true to myself. If this displeases you, you may take me anywhere you wish. I am not afraid of anything you may do to me.” This is the way I have felt in the past and it is the way I feel now."

"We have in our midst someone who is supposed to be a living god, one who is omnipotent and omniscient, an emperor who is supposed to realize the will of the gods. Yet his children are crying because of hunger, suffocating to death in the coal mines, and being crushed to death in factory machines. Why is this so? Because, in truth, the emperor is a mere human being."

"By nature human beings should be equal. And yet human beings who are equal by nature have been made unequal because of the presence of the entity called the emperor. The emperor is supposed to be august and exalted. Yet his photograph shows that he is just like us commoners. He has two eyes, one mouth, legs to walk with and hands to work with. But he doesn’t use his hands to work and his legs to walk. That the only difference. The reason I deny the necessity of the emperor rises from my belief that human beings are equal."

"Although I had once pinned all my hopes on putting myself through school, believing that I could thereby make something of myself, I now realized the futility of this all too clearly. No amount of struggling for an education is going to help one get ahead in this world. And what does it mean to get ahead anyway? Is there any more worthless lot than the so-called great people of this world? What is so admirable about being looked up to by others? I do not live for others. What I had to achieve was my own freedom, my own satisfaction. I had to be myself. I had been the slave of too many people, the plaything of too many men. I had never lived for myself. I had to do my own work; but what was it? I wanted so badly to find it and to set about accomplishing it."

"I looked then, once, at all that lay around me. How beautiful it was! I listened intently to the sounds around me, and how peaceful and still they were. This was farewell, farewell to the mountains, to the trees, to stones, to flowers, to animals, to the sound of this cicada, to everything…. I was suddenly sad. I could escape in this way the coldness and cruelty of my aunt and grandmother, but there were still so many things, countless things, beautiful things, to love."

"Then, just like that, because I had ceased to resist, it rose up from within and appeared before me in all its simplicity—death. That was it: just die. How simple everything would be. With that thought I felt I had been saved; and indeed I had. I was suddenly flooded with strength, body and soul. My limp limbs tensed, and before I knew it I was on my feet, concerns like my empty stomach left behind forever."

"I cannot die now, I thought. No, I have to seek vengeance; together with all the other people who have been made to suffer, I have to get back at those who have caused our suffering. No. I must not die."

"Adults make their children suffer for the sake of appearances, or to save themselves a little trouble. But it is the job of an adult, especially a mother, to help her child develop its natural abilities. It is a terrible wrong to deprive children of their freedom and rob them of their personalities. Let your children play as they please! To play freely on this earth is the one privilege nature has given to children. If they are allowed to play, they will grow up to be healthy human beings. Of this, at least, I am absolutely certain."

"Beautiful Bu Yong Bong towered off in the distance, and at its base, coursing leisurely from east to west like a silken , the Baek Cheon sparkled brilliantly with the reflected rays of the autumn sun. Along its sand banks, a mule plodded along under its burden, and at the foot of the mountain a Korean hamlet of low, thatched-roof houses peeped out here and there from between the trees. The peaceful village dimly emerging out of the mist could have been a scene from a . As I gazed upon all this beauty, I felt that now, for the first time in my life, I was really alive. Overcome by a feeling of well-being, I dropped to the grass and gazed up at the sky. How deep it was. If only I could penetrate those depths! I closed my eyes and gave myself over to thought. A cool breeze stirred the grass about me, and when I opened my eyes again, there was a dragonfly perched on the end of my nose. My ears were humming with the sounds of crickets and bell-ring insects."

"It was a quiet day, and I was alone in the kitchen, squatting in front of the stove. Lulled by the lethargic pounding of the pestle, the drizzle of the rain, and the soulful tones of the , I was lost in my own melancholy thoughts and savored the quiet that my loneliness afforded."

"Every joy that some experience is paid for by the sorrow of others."

"I descended back down into the grove of chestnut trees. I felt so light-hearted that I broke into a song I had learned at school. There was no one here to find fault with me; I was free as a bird. I sang until I was hoarse, making up my own songs, too. Emotions that I constantly had to repress now rose up freely, uninhibited, and I felt comforted. Thirsty, I picked some pears in the orchard beside the shack where we stored the chestnuts and devoured them, skins and all. Then I tumbled to the ground again to gaze up at the patches of sky and cloud that showed through the trees. I was assailed by the suffocating odor of the grass and the aroma of wild mushroom, and I breathed them in voraciously."

"In my view, if a village can cultivate silk worms, the peasants should spin silk thread and wear silk clothing, even for work. There is no need for them to buy striped cotton “country clothes” and obi from traders from the city. But, of course, the villagers cannot do this. The villagers sell their cocoons and charcoal to the city and then must turn around and buy inferior cotton and hair ornaments, losing the money they earned to the city in exchange. The temptation, money, is there, and they sell their cocoons and charcoal in order to get it. Merchants from the cities come into the villages to take advantage of them. A peddler bundles up boxes of goods which he carries on his back into a village. [...] Girls buy collars and hair ornaments without telling their fathers. Mothers come with cocoons or hand-spun raw silk or s, or still covered with earth and wrapped in straw, and exchange these things for something worth only a third as much. Year in and year out, villagers have the fruit of their hard labor stolen by such people."

"The empty substance of this Japanese nation that’s considered the land of the gods is nothing more than a provisional system for increasing the personal gains of the privileged few, the ideology of self-sacrifice for the nation called “loyalty and patriotism” that’s glorified and propagandized and even considered a national slogan being in truth nothing more than a cruel desire to sacrifice the lives of others for their own benefit wrapped up in pretty adjectives as a means of indulging their self-interest."

"The little weed twisted around my finger. When I tug at it gently, it cries out faintly, “I want to live.” Hoping not to be pulled out, it digs its heels in. I feel mean and sad. Is this the end of its bitter struggle for life? I chuckle softly at it."

"People are the pawns of fate."

"It began suddenly at 11:58 A.M. the first of September in the twelfth year of Taisho [1923]. A violent rocking deep in the earth shook the Kanto region on which the capital city of Tokyo rests. Houses creaked and whined, twisted grotesquely, and collapsed. Inhabitants were buried alive, while those lucky enough to flee in time ran about screaming like crazed animals. What had once been a thriving center of the civilized world was in the space of a moment transformed into hell itself. One aftershock came only to be followed by another violent tremor and yet another aftershock. Fires broke out all over the city, and great columns of smoke billowed up toward the sky as from a giant volcano. Tokyo was soon under a blanket of thick, black vapor. The terrible tremors left the population in the grip of fear. Then those outrageous rumors started spreading and pandemonium broke out."

"The police, who administer the law which teaches only the path to a better life for society’s victors and submission to authority, lower their sabers and menace human actions, taking everyone who they fear might shake the pillars of power and bam, bind them up one and all. And the judges, those respectable officials, flip through law books and hand down arbitrary judgments on human actions, alienating themselves from human lives, denying even their humanity as they undertake their duty as protectors of authority. Like when Christianity was at its height and, in order to protect its sanctity, they banned scientific research for fear of shaking the pillars of the superstitious miracles of God and long-held traditions they preached, things like the sanctity of the State or the holiness of the Emperor are also ephemeral, and force is used to oppress those ideas and arguments that would expose them as nothing more than illusions. Thus the earth is currently occupied and being trampled upon by a devil called power, because the lives which should by their nature be enjoyed by humans who are natural existences on the earth are only permitted if they fulfill the mission of serving it."

"With one foot over the threshold of the land of death, I had suddenly turned back. I returned to what was for me hell on earth. [...] But now one ray of hope, albeit a black and gloomy ray, shone for me, and I had the strength to endure any suffering that lay in store."

"Make children take responsibility only for what they have actually done! Otherwise you rob them of a true sense of responsibility, you make them servile, and you teach them to be two-faced, in both thought and deed. No one should have to make promises about their actions to another. Responsibility for what one does cannot be entrusted to a custodian. Each person, and that person alone, is the subject of his or her actions. Only when one realizes this will one be capable of acting responsibly, autonomously, and with true conviction, deceiving no one and in fear of no one."

"Now we lived by the sea, which was considered to be more conducive to my father’s health as well as my own; for I was a sickly child. The house was located on the coast at Isogo in , and we were drenched with salt water and blown by sea breezes from morning to night. This period did in fact transform me into a healthy person, but whether this was a blessing, or nature’s cruel scheme to bind me to the life of suffering fate had in store, I cannot say."

"From the start, things like countries, societies, peoples and rulers are nothing but ideas. Nevertheless, in order to bestow the rulers of these ideas with majesty, political power and holiness, there exists in this very Japan something that represents what I just wrenched out – the . Just as anyone born on Japanese soil is instilled with this idea, even grade school students, in order to impress upon the guileless people notions like the Emperor himself being descended from the gods, or his right to rule being something bestowed by decree of the gods, or else the Emperor being someone who controls the power of the State in order to realize the will of the gods, and thus the law is the will of the gods, they base these things in fantastic legends, vaunting and solemnly offering praise to things like a mirror, a sword and a jewel like they were given by the gods, completely deceiving them. The poor deceived people, engulfed in these absurd legends, consider things like the government and Emperor to be incredible gods beyond compare, but if the Emperor was a god himself or descended from the gods, if the people were under the protection of these gods, existing under the spirits of successive generations of these god-emperors, no Japanese soldiers should have to die in times of war, not one Japanese airplane should fall from the sky, and some tens of thousands of loyal subjects shouldn’t die in the gods’ own backyard due to a natural disaster like the one last year."

"Nature! Nature in which there is no deceit! Simple and free, you do not warp a person’s soul as humans do. I wanted to cry out my thanks to the mountain with all my heart … until I remembered the way that I lived; then I felt like crying. And cry I did, on and on, until there were no tears left. This day in the mountain was, after all, the only time I had to find myself. This was my one and only day of liberation."

"Passion! Passion! We live by this and nothing else. Passion is the power of prayer. The power of will. The power of meditation. The power of the way of the gods. Passion, in other words, is the power of spiritual concentration. And spiritual concentration is the one and only gateway to the realm of mystery and wonder."

"The proletariat has been kept in ignorance and slavery by the propertied classes for centuries, so that they have had little time for intellectual training, particularly for their own thinking, people who, though physically tough, are above all very often loaded malnourished and with all sorts of worries, have little opportunity to think seriously about social problems. In most cases it is not innate stupidity and inertia of thought that makes workers dull and indifferent, as is so often claimed, but the lack of the necessary opportunity and leisure."

"She opened a door in my heart which had been unknown to me before and which might never have been opened without her. Through the open door came sunshine, came joyous experience and inner peace without which life would be hopelessly distorted. That is why she will always be with me, my companion of so many fruitful and happy years. She stood undismayed through storm and stress and, at the same time was a tender mother to our child. She was a part, and surely the best part of my life. Death may separate us physically, it can never erase her image from my heart or dim the memories of the precious years we spent."

"That a woman whose life is only moving from one pregnancy to the next, is lost for any mental development, is all too understandable. And unfortunately there are millions of proletarian women in this terrible situation."

"She died on November 23rd, 1955 and was cremated on the 27th in accordance with her wishes. Once when we happened to touch on the subject she said, half in jest: “Perhaps it is all the same to the dead what happens to them but I find it beautiful to be consumed by flames, for fire is a pure element. To be eaten up by worms in the brave is ugly and repugnant to my feelings.” She was right. We went to life together for almost sixty years and my ashes will mingle with hers when my hour comes."

"We have already realized today that the dreary bullying to which stupid pedagogues subject young people usually achiever just the opposite of what it should. By trampling on the human dignity of youth in this way, they have greatly harmed them spiritually and mentally, placing obstacles to their natural development. We believe that such a method must be rejected in every way, that one should not always emphasize people’s weaker side, but must appeal more to the good, the noble and the purely human, strengthening their will and reviving their courage."

"Fifty years ago, it was utopian to dream of an eight-hour working day, as it is still a utopia to dream of a limitation of working hours in proletarian housekeeping. But utopias are invented to be realized, and as long as there is no demand for an improvement of living conditions, changing things is impossible."

"I need only recall the introduction, on the broadest basis, of central heating, washing machines and electric drying apparatus, vacuums, indoor baths, etc., all things that have already been made to serve large parts of the proletarian population in America, which make all the more embarrassing, for those who know it, the extremely primitive state of proletarian housekeeping in Germany."

"The claim that women cannot be won over to a great movement like socialism is just as groundless as the assertion that the proletariat generally has no sympathy for socialism."

"It was inevitable that some day the hour should come when one of us would have to go. But this is sober logic which cannot lessen the pain of the bereaved. I only know that, with this wonderful woman, something was taken from me that no eternity can bring back. We have all lost her, for, with Milly, one of the last of the old guard has passed away, one who contributed sixty years of her life to a cause that will never die as long as men live on this earth."

"We have long understood that if the worker is chained to his work for ten, twelve, or fourteen hours, he cannot possibly muster the energy necessary for his intellectual development. It is for this reason that the reduction of working hours has played such a prominent role in the modern labor movement, and I would argue that in addition to fighting for the recognition of the worker’s human dignity, the reduction of working hours has been the most important result of the international workers’ movement to this day."

"“Yes, if woman would only think,” a good comrade once told me, “but she thinks too little and maybe not at all.” — Well, I think that woman thinks too much, way too much, but that her whole thinking continues to be turned toward the most trivial little things, so that her brain is consumed with and exhausted by them. Her entire life is filled with a plethora of banal things, but hardly ever to deal with the issues of the day. Since the entire management of the household almost exclusively weighs upon her, and her funds are meted extremely scarcely in most cases — I am speaking of course of the women of the working class — so she is always forced to speculate on every last penny. Under these circumstances, is it all too understandable that she is left with little time to focus her mind on other things, so that many women feel no desire at all for intellectual development."

"My friends Rudolf and Milly Rocker"

"We have to take things as they are, and we must already accept the need to seek out women in their hiding places, bringing the necessary enlightenment to them there. This work needs to be done and should be our most sacred task. This work needs to be done and should be our most sacred task. Certainly, the task is not easy and pleasant, but it must be embraced and pursued all the more energetically in so far as we have come to the conclusion that the need to win woman for our cause outweighs any concerns."

"Ibsen and others had loudly and fearlessly proclaimed that the liberation of women in the family was bound to fail if men did not thoroughly correct their previous attitude towards women. For the philistines and blockheads, however, this constituted a monstrous crime, to which, in their petty meanness, they attributed the most ignoble motives. [...] Until his death, Ibsen lashed out at the existing family and tried to convince us that without women’s intellectual liberation, a true co-existence between man and woman is unthinkable, that the women’s emancipation is an issue not only for women, but also for the world, for children, for men, for all humanity, and that the resolution of this question could no longer be avoided."

"It is truly already high time that woman should stop playing the role of a mere breeding machine, the accidental victim of a multiplication of her family. A child should only see the light of day if it is wanted by the parents and it can be provided with the material conditions for healthy and humane development. As things stand today, however, the birth of every new child in a proletarian’s family means a greater austerity in the most necessary necessities of life and very often the destitution and slow languishing of all family members."

"The more the proletarians’ strength is exhausted and depleted in the daily struggle for existence, the less they are tempted to express outrage against the yoke that has been imposed on them, and the more they are forced to dully endure their misery. Big proletarian families mean cheap material for the entrepreneur to exploit and less risk in the inevitable economic battles between labor and management — and the State welcomes cannon fodder in case of a war."

"I am convinced that out time will and must come. Yet we must look facts in the face, and admit, whether we like it or not that, the dictatorship over, the masses will not vanish with the vanishing of Hitler and Mussolini. The so called dictatorship of the “proletariat” will keep the world in captivity for quite a long time after Hitler and Mussolini will vanish and be forgotten."

"We came from different worlds, worlds as unrelated and strange to each other as the little town of Slotopol in the Ukraine and the ancient city on the Rhine where I was born. As to how and why life brought us together, a whole story could be written about it without getting closer to the truth. The how may perhaps be explained; the why is as unfathomable as life itself...We found each other, and although each came from an entirely different world, we built a world of our own together. This, alone, was the essence of our union...I lived with her for fifty-eight years. We knew bitter privations and experienced many hardships, but none of them could destroy our quiet happiness. There was something in our life that can hardly be described, a hidden temple which we alone could enter...We had to endure many a malicious thrust of fate, but we also experienced many joyful hours, such as are granted to few and cannot be bought. When we were alone together in our free evenings, I would read aloud to Milly many of the world’s great books. Over the years we enjoyed hundreds of works by writers of every nationality and every period. A unique atmosphere pervaded then our home, exhilarating and purifying...We were never bored with each other, and always found that which was worth while and made life more beautiful. Had Milly been in accord with everything I said, this would not have been possible. But her native intelligence allowed her to form her own opinions on everything, and she was able to express them with skill. When, on such occasions, the discussion became heated, she would suddenly smile, put her arms around me and say: “We really are a funny couple.” At that we would both burst out into happy laughter. We never had to seek the blue bird of happiness afar; it was in our midst...When two people whom fate brought together share a companionship as long as ours, they gradually become inseparable. This happened with us, too. Whenever the name of one was mentioned, the name of the other was echoed. Thus we became the “romantic pair,” as our Spanish friend Tarrida del Marmol once called us in jest."