"Anarchism is founded on the observation that since few men are wise enough to rule themselves, even fewer are wise enough to rule others"
About this Quote
Abbey’s line isn’t a kumbaya pitch for chaos; it’s a desert-dry insult aimed at the managerial class. He starts with a blunt premise about human limitation: most people aren’t “wise enough” to govern even their own impulses, habits, and appetites. Then he tightens the screw: if self-rule is hard, the idea that someone can competently rule strangers - at scale, through bureaucracy, law, and force - is not just optimistic but perversely arrogant. The sentence is structured like a trap: it grants the reader a commonsense critique of personal weakness, then flips it into a more dangerous critique of political authority.
The subtext is Abbey’s signature suspicion of institutions that claim moral clarity while running on incentives, ego, and distance from consequences. “Wise” here is doing double duty: it means ethical restraint and practical judgment, the two traits power reliably corrodes. His anarchism isn’t presented as a utopian blueprint; it’s framed as a skeptical conclusion drawn from observation, like a naturalist noting how a species behaves when cornered.
Context matters: Abbey wrote in an America swelling with postwar administrative confidence, then bruised by Vietnam, Watergate, and the expanding reach of the security state. Against that backdrop, the quote reads as a rebuttal to technocratic faith. He’s not arguing that people are good; he’s arguing that power doesn’t make them better, just more consequential.
The subtext is Abbey’s signature suspicion of institutions that claim moral clarity while running on incentives, ego, and distance from consequences. “Wise” here is doing double duty: it means ethical restraint and practical judgment, the two traits power reliably corrodes. His anarchism isn’t presented as a utopian blueprint; it’s framed as a skeptical conclusion drawn from observation, like a naturalist noting how a species behaves when cornered.
Context matters: Abbey wrote in an America swelling with postwar administrative confidence, then bruised by Vietnam, Watergate, and the expanding reach of the security state. Against that backdrop, the quote reads as a rebuttal to technocratic faith. He’s not arguing that people are good; he’s arguing that power doesn’t make them better, just more consequential.
Quote Details
| Topic | Freedom |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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