Anarchist Sampler: The Nature of Power

El Fascinante Rey del Petroleo (The Fascinating Oil King)
by Josep Renau, 1957
[Take a look at the Renau exhibit at the BURN! site.]

The instinct to command others, in its primitive essence, is a carnivorous, altogether bestial and savage instinct. Under the influence of the mental development of man, it takes on a somewhat more ideal form and becomes somewhat ennobled, presenting itself as the instrument of reason and the devoted servant of that abstraction, or political fiction, which is called the public good. But in its essence it remains just as baneful, and it becomes even more so when, with the application of science, it extends its scope and intensifies the power of its action. If there is a devil in history, it is this power principle.
Mikhail Bakunin, Protestation of the Alliance
Does it follow that I reject all authority? Far from my mind is such a thought. In the matter of boots, I refer to the authority of the bootmaker; concerning houses, canals, or railroads, I consult that of the architect or engineer. For such and such knowledge I apply to such and such a specialist. But I allow neither the bootmaker nor the architect nor the specialist to impose his authority on me. I listen to them freely and with all the respect merited by their intelligence, their character, and their knowledge, though reserving always my incontestable right of criticism and censure.
Mikhail Bakunin, God and the State
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.
Rudolph Rocker, Anarchosyndicalism, ch. 1
The whole of human history has up to now been a constant struggle between the cultural, creative forces of society and the power aims of particular castes whose leaders put definite bounds to cultural efforts, or at least tried to do so. Culture gives man consciousness of his humanity and creative strength, but power deepens in him the sense of dependence and of slavish bondage.
Rudolph Rocker, Nationalism and Culture, Part I, ch. 15
The strongest bulwark of authority is uniformity; the least divergence from it is the greatest crime.
Emma Goldman, The Place of the Individual in Society

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