Staughton Lynd > Quotes

“In a family, when I as son, husband, or father, express love toward you, I do not do so in order to assure myself of love in return. I do not help my son in order to be able to claim assistance from him when I am old; I do it because he and I are in the world together, we are one flesh. Similarly in a workplace, persons who work together form families-at-work. When you and I are working together, and the foreman suddenly discharges you, and I find myself putting down my tools or stopping my machine before I have had time to think—why do I do this? Is it not because, as I actually experience the event, your discharge does not happen only to you but also happens to us?3”
― Staughton Lynd, Solidarity Unionism: Rebuilding the Labor Movement from Below

“[A]ll of the experiments in government from below, whether during the U.S. Revolution or recently in Oaxaca, were shortlived. They would be deemed to be failures by many but the very fact that they happened at all makes them small victories. [W]e must maintain the necessary humility to work out how to make these dreams more lasting, first of all by working together and combining what is best from the anarchist and Marxist traditions. Yet it is still important to remember the victories and the people who made them.”
― Staughton Lynd, Wobblies and Zapatistas: Conversations on Anarchism, Marxism, and Radical History