Imagine Yourself Being Well-Governed, by Bush or CCP

While reading in the library, I came across the following quotations of early anarchist thinkers. They are taken from "Anarchism" by David Miller, London: 1984.

Proudhon's denunciation of the State's intrusion of citizen's life as independent individuals:

“To be GOVERNED is to be at every operation, at every transaction, noted, registered, enrolled, taxed, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed, licensed, authorized, admonished, forbidden, reformed, corrected, punished. It is, under pretext of public utility, and in the name of the general interest, to be placed under contribution, trained, ransomed, exploited, monopolized, extorted, squeezed, mystified, robbed; then, at the slightest resistance, the first word of complaint, to be repressed, fined, despised, harassed, tracked, abused, clubbed, disarmed, choked, imprisoned, judged, condemned, shot, deported, sacrificed, sold, betrayed; and, to crown all, mocked, ridiculed, outraged, dishonoured. That is government; that is its justice; that is its morality.” [P.J. Proudhon, General Idea of the Revolution in the Nineteenth Century, trans. J.B. Robinson (London, Freedom Press, 1923), p. 294. Quoted from Miller, p.6.]

And Bakunin's critique of a future socialist state [all below from Miller, p.10]:

“This government will not content itself with administering and governing the masses politically, as all governments do today. It will also administer the masses economically, concentrating in the hands of the State the production and division of wealth, the cultivation of land, the establishment and development of factories, the organization and direction of commerce, and finally the application of capital to production by the only banker – the State. All that will demand an immense knowledge and many heads ‘overflowing with brains’ in this government. It will be the reign of scientific intelligence, the most aristocratic, despotic, arrogant, and elitist of all regimes. There will be a new class, a new hierarchy of real and counterfeit scientists and scholars, and the world will be divided into a minority ruling in the name of knowledge, and an immense ignorant majority.” [S. Dolgoff(ed.), Bakunin on Anarchy (New York, Vintage Books, 1972), p. 319. ]

Moreover,

“. . . for the proletariat this will, in reality, be nothing but a barracks: a regime, where regimented working men and women will sleep, wake, work, and live to the beat of a drum . . .” [note: ibid., p. 284.]