Randolph Bourne

"The members of the working-classes... live habitually in an industrial serfdom, by which though nominally free, they are in practice as a class bound to a system of a machine-production, the implement…"

"It cannot be too firmly realized that war…is the chief function of States.  …  War cannot exist without a military establishment, and a military establishment cannot exist without a State organization…"

"War is the health of the State and it is during war that one best understands the nature of that institution."

"All of which goes to show that the State represents all the autocratic, arbitrary, coercive, belligerent forces within a social group, it is a sort of complexus of everything most distasteful to the m…"

"Those who are not in some sense of the younger generation will hardly realize what poignancy there is for us in the news of the death of Randolph Bourne.  …  Randolph Bourne belonged to us, and stood …"

"War is the health of the State.  It automatically sets in motion throughout society those irresistible forces for uniformity, for passionate cooperation with the Government in coercing into obedience …"

"Youth is the leaven that keeps all these questioning, testing attitudes fermenting in the world.  If it were not for this troublesome activity of youth, with its hatred of sophisms and glosses, its in…"

"Secondly, war has always been the occasion for a huge, catastrophic leap into statism, a leap that occurs during the war and lasts as a permanent legacy afterwards.  As the great libertarian Randolph …"