The following quotations are from:
Ricardo Flores-Magón, Dreams of Freedom, pp. 111-116, 185-195, 244-245, 150-157, 176-177, 259-260, 267-268, 275-277.
“We must give the lands to the people in the course of the revolution, because in this manner they won’t be swindled. There’s not a single government anywhere that can benefit the people contrary to the interests of the bourgeoisie… We must also give the people possession of the factories, mines, etc…
We shouldn’t wait for hunger to arrive; therefore as soon as work stops on a hacienda, a factory closes its doors, a mine ceases to extract metal, etc., we’ll invoke the public necessity that work not stop, whatever the pretext of the bosses for suspending it, and with the reason that it’s necessary to renew work, to impede pauperis, we’ll give to the workers the businesses that have been closed by the bourgeoisie, so that they can continue to produce on the footing of equality.
To avoid that the workers who benefit will not try to turn themselves in turn into the bourgeoisie, we’ll prescribe that everyone who enters to work in these businesses will have an equal right to participate. The workers themselves will administer these businesses…” 111-112
“The interest of the rich is that the poor be poor eternally, because the poverty of the masses is the guarantee of their riches.” 157
“The Mexican people hate, by instinct, authority and the bourgeoisie. Everyone who has lived in Mexico can assure us that there is no one more cordially hated than the policeman, that the word ‘government’ fills the simple people with uneasiness, that the soldier, admired and applauded in all other places, is seen with antipathy and contempt, and that anyone who doesn’t make his living with his hands is hated.
This in itself is enough for a social revolution which is economic in nature and anti-authoritarian, but there is more. Four million Indians live in Mexico who, until twenty or twenty-five years ago, lived in communities possessing the lands, the waters, and the forests in common. Mutual aid was the rule in these communities, in which authority was felt only when the tax collector appeared periodically or when ‘recruiters’ showed up in search of men to force into the army. In these communities there were no judges, mayors, jailers, in fact no bothersome people at all of this type. Everyone had the right to the land, to the water to irrigate it, to the forests for firewood, and to the wood from the forests for the construction of small houses…
We see, then, that the Mexican people are suited for communism, because they’ve practiced it, at east in part, for many centuries, and this explains why, even when the majority are illiterate, they comprehend that rather than take part in electoral farces that elect thugs, it’s better to take possession of the lands—and this taking is what scandalizes the thieving bourgeoisie.
All that’s left to be done is that the workers take possession of the factory, the workshop, the mine, the foundry, the railroad, the ship, in a word, everything—that they recognize no bosses of any type. And this will be the culmination of the present movement.” 177
“The sower of ideals must struggle against the masses, who are conservative, against institutions, which are likewise conservative; and alone, surrounded by the comings and goings of a herd that does not understand him, he walks through the world not hoping for any reward more than fools slapping him in the face, tyrants throwing him in jail and, at any moment, the scaffold. Yet nevertheless, as long as he can sow, sow, sow, the sower of seeds will continue sowing, sowing, sowing.” 245
“To want rulers and at the same time to want to be free is to want the impossible. One must choose definitively one or the other: to be free, entirely free, refusing all authority, or to be slaves, perpetuating man’s command over man.
A ruler or governor is necessary only under a system of economic inequality.” 259
“A man can have good intentions prior to being a ruler, but it’s very difficult for him to conserve those intentions upon reaching power, and it’s impossible that he’ll still have them when he’s a ruler.”