I recently dis­cov­ered John Henry Mackay and read­ing chap­ter 5 of his book “The Anar­chist” has allowed me to bet­ter under­stand things that I had in my mind but that I was not able to put into words. I find in his words what I think should be man’s true ideals and he has enlighten me as to why I just can­not swal­low the ideals of social­ism or communinism.

I think that as chil­dren we know these things as if by intu­ition. But so much ingnorance, superstitions and lies are piled up in the heads of indi­vid­u­als, through soci­ety and the poi­so­nous edu­ca­tion of fam­ily life that we are made to work against our own interests.

Let me add some quo­ta­tions from the book.

“Lib­erty is noth­ing but inde­pen­dence of one another: the pos­si­bil­ity for each for being free in his own fashion”

“I claim the right of free con­trol over my per­son”… “I nei­ther demand nor expect of the comu­nity a bestowal of rights, and I con­sider myself under no oblig­a­tion to it. Put in place of the word ‘com­mu­nity’ what­ever you wish: ‘State’, ‘soci­ety’, ‘father­land’, ‘com­mon­wealth’, ‘mankind’, — it is all the same”

I invite you to read the book and if you already know about Mr. Mackay and hap­pen to live in Berlin, I rec­om­mend to check out the folow­ing link for a Bike tour to his grave.