Milly Witkop Quotes

The mass is a tremendous giant with a very loyal brain ad without initiative Sasha. Give that giant the possibility to stuff his stomach, no matter with what, and a roof over his head, and just leave him in peace and he will not bother at all. Yes he can also under given circumstances be lashed into doing things, but no matter what you can use him for good, you can for evil. You can have him for Czarism, for Bolsehvism, for Hitlerism and for Fascism. That’s why war is inevitable Sasha. He will be ordered to fight his “enemy” and he will fight that fool. Yes, he also makes revolutions, if he is driven to it, but just make and leave it to the others to rip the fruit. You may think that I am pessimistic dear friend, but I am not, I just see things as they are, and by realising the bitter reality, I assure myself how much there is to do in order to turn that lazy giant to an active individual, a thinking giant, instead of being always a means to an end, to all those who are determined to use that dynamic of force. I am convinced that we will succeed in our efforts one day, but there is a tremendous task indeed in front of us. We are the only group of people who keep on telling the lazy giant that he has to begin to think for himself using his brain or he will never achieve anything worthwhile, and therefore we have so few to follow us. All the other parties or schools make it easy for him, by telling him: you just follow us and we the thinking part of humanity will do all there is to be done to bring you all the happiness you desire. They all try to make it easy for him but we.

We have long understood that if the worker is chained to his work for ten, twelve, or fourteen hours, he cannot possibly muster the energy necessary for his intellectual development. It is for this reason that the reduction of working hours has played such a prominent role in the modern labor movement, and I would argue that in addition to fighting for the recognition of the worker’s human dignity, the reduction of working hours has been the most important result of the international workers’ movement to this day.

The family is no artificial creation, arbitrarily called into being and always wearing the same forms. It has assumed different forms in different times and places, and also its present form will not remain the same; they will continue to evolve and adopt new forms, keeping pace with economic and social changes and with the ethical and intellectual needs of the people. To this day, it has been the most significant and influential institution for the individual lives of human beings, and it will undoubtedly remain for a long time. It is probably within the circle of the family, especially in youth, that people receive the deepest impressions, impressions that very often give their later lives a decisive direction. It should therefore be done everything possible to give this narrow circle a character that is as pleasant as possible and mentally appealing, especially one in which the child can experience well-being.

The organization of women on the basis of anarcho-syndicalism is as necessary as the organization of male workers on the same basis. That’s why we have to support each other and go hand in hand in our work.

We must never forget that woman was ignored, seen and treated as intellectually inferior, for so long that we can hardly expect the sudden and surprising success of our activities for the time being. The inevitable consequences of a thousand years of slavery cannot be undone at once. Its repercussions are sure to be felt for a long time, felt at any rate more than we should like. Those who expect something different in this regard have failed to grasp the enormity of the problem; the great tragedy of woman has slipped past them without a trace.

We should support woman both mentally and morally, pointing her the way to freedom, which she must naturally find for herself.

The more the proletarians’ strength is exhausted and depleted in the daily struggle for existence, the less they are tempted to express outrage against the yoke that has been imposed on them, and the more they are forced to dully endure their misery. Big proletarian families mean cheap material for the entrepreneur to exploit and less risk in the inevitable economic battles between labor and management — and the State welcomes cannon fodder in case of a war.

The strike is proving more and more to be an insufficient means which must be supplemented by other means in order to continue to be the workers’ most effective weapon

By no means you should work too hard, and thereby ruin your health. Your health is more important than any book in the world.

I am convinced that out time will and must come. Yet we must look facts in the face, and admit, whether we like it or not that, the dictatorship over, the masses will not vanish with the vanishing of Hitler and Mussolini. The so called dictatorship of the “proletariat” will keep the world in captivity for quite a long time after Hitler and Mussolini will vanish and be forgotten.

It is truly already high time that woman should stop playing the role of a mere breeding machine, the accidental victim of a multiplication of her family. A child should only see the light of day if it is wanted by the parents and it can be provided with the material conditions for healthy and humane development. As things stand today, however, the birth of every new child in a proletarian’s family means a greater austerity in the most necessary necessities of life and very often the destitution and slow languishing of all family members.

Let us show them that we did not willingly bear the yoke that was imposed on us, and that we rebelled against the violence done to us so that the gates of freedom may be opened for them.

Let us show that we are not only willing to feed on the harvests of the past, but that we also feel the courage and the excitement in ourselves to lend a hand, to push the wheel of time forward and to open the gates to a new becoming.

Well then, sisters, young or old, girls and women, manual or intellectual laborers, come to us and join our covenant, so that the great work of social liberation may reach its consummation. Unite with us to foster a brighter future for us and our children, in which the exploitation and domination of the broad masses by privileged minorities will be a thing of the past. Let no one tell you that you are not capable of contributing to this grandiose work. Each of you, but also everyone, without exception, can contribute their mite to the common goal. We only have to want it. Let us want it, then, so that our children will not to throw the accusation in our faces that we live as slaves and brought them into the world as slaves, so that they too can wander through life laden with the curse of bondage.

Our worst enemy is not Fascism or even Hitlerism but the so called communism. It is not so terrible difficult to convince honest thinking people of the danger and the …. of other dictatorships but very different indeed to make people see any danger at all in the Russian despotism in Bolshevist dictatorship. Communism became a fad also here and people are taking to it very much because it is getting more and more respectable and is going into fashion.