Politics & Power Quote by Buenaventura Durruti

Durruti’s line detonates like a match in a marble hallway: a deliberate insult to the idea that grandeur is owned by the people who fund it or rule from it. He seizes the language of national achievement and flips the authorship. Palaces and cities aren’t symbols of enlightened leadership; they’re receipts for exploited labor. The “we” isn’t rhetorical decoration, it’s a claim of title.

The intent is double. First, it’s a confidence trick aimed at workers themselves, a psychological emancipation: if you built the world you’re told to admire, you can also unbuild it. Second, it’s a warning to elites and moderates who treat “order” as sacred. Durruti refuses the usual hostage situation where stability is the price of survival. “Ruins” becomes a propaganda word for the ruling class - the nightmare used to discipline anyone tempted by change. He answers: fine. We can live with rubble.

The subtext is even harsher: those palaces deserve to fall because they are materialized hierarchy, not neutral architecture. When he promises “better ones,” he’s not fantasizing about nicer buildings; he’s promising a different social arrangement, with beauty and comfort redistributed upward from the factory floor.

Context matters: Durruti is speaking out of the Spanish Civil War’s revolutionary moment, when anarchist militants and unions weren’t lobbying for reforms but attempting to reorganize life itself. The quote works because it refuses sentimental gradualism. It treats destruction not as nihilism, but as a clearing function - the courage to stop mistaking what exists for what is necessary.