Kropotkin - The State, The Church And Taxation

 'In Paris, Moscow, Madrid and Prague you see the Church bending over the cradle of royalty, a lighted torch in her hand, the executioner by her side.'

'And it was only by the stake, the wheel and the gibbet, by the massacre of a hundred thousand peasants in a few years, that royal or imperial power, allied to that of Papal or Reformed Church - Luther encouraging the massacre of peasants with more virulence than the pope - that put an end to those uprisings which had for a period threatened the consolidation of the nascent states.
Lutheran Reform, which had sprung from popular Anabaptism, was supported by the State, massacred the people and crushed the movement from which it had drawn its strength in the beginning.'

'But the State, by its very nature, cannot tolerate a free federation. The State cannot recognize a freely-formed union operating within itself; it alone recognizes subjects. the State and its sister the Church, arrogate to themselves alone the right to serve as the link between men.'

'State is synonymous with war. Wars devastated Europe and managed to finish off the towns which the State had not yet directly destroyed.'

'Observe taxation - an institution originating purely with the State - this formidable weapon used by the State, in Europe as in the young societies of the two Americas, to keep the masses under its heel, to favour its minions, to ruin the majority for the benefit of the rulers and maintain the old divisions and castes.'

'And finally, what is even worse .......is the fact that the education we all receive from the State, at school and after, has so warped our minds that the very notion of freedom ends up being lost, and disguised in servitude.'

EITHER the State for ever, crushing individual and local life, taking over in all fields of human activity, bringing with it all its wars and domestic struggles for power, its palace revolutions which only replace one tyrant by another, and inevitably at the end of this development is ......death!
OR the destruction of States, and new life starting again in thousands of centres on the principles of the lively initiative of the individual and groups and that of free agreement.
The choice lies with you!'