“The poor have been rebels, but they have never been anarchists"

[FarLeftFist]

“The poor have been rebels, but they have never been anarchists; they have more interest than anyone else in there being some decent government. The poor man really has a stake in the country. The rich man hasn’t; he can go away to New Guinea in a yacht. The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all. Aristocrats were always anarchists.” (G. K. Chesterton)

[Threedifferentones]

1. I'd like to see the definition of anarchists here.

Seeing as how anarchy doesn't involve private property, I've never considered it a rich man's philosophy.

A rich man is an oppressive authority by anarchist standards.

This definition of anarchy seems to mean no government, without recognizing the hierarchy and control that comes with society's rich.

[LoveIsNow]

2. I think he was using the more commonly understood definition

of anarchy as lack of government, rather than the communitarian, egalitarian Anarchism of Emma Goldman and Noam Chomsky.

[happyslug]

3. C.K. Chesterton, a Catholic Radical Conservative (What a combo)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._K._Chesterton

Chesterton, as a political thinker, cast aspersions on both progressivism and conservatism, saying, "The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of the Conservatives is to prevent the mistakes from being corrected."

Some of his work on Project GuttenbergL
http://www.gutenberg.org/browse/authors/c

Interesting writer, more pro poor, pro working class, then Liberal, Progressive or Conservative.

A more complete list of his works on the net:
http://www.cse.dmu.ac.uk/~mward/gkc/books/index.html

One of Chesterton's most famous essays, one he did as a "throw away" i.e. he was making comments in an article about Indian Nationalists articles that he thought were stupid and thus a mistake for the cause of Indian Independence. Gandhi read the Article and transformed his view of Indian Nationalism from some sort of Indian version of English society (which is what Chesterton was attacking as stupid for India) to a more traditional Indian form of Indian Nationalism.

http://americanchestertonsociety.blogspot.com/2009/01/gandhi-reference.html