4
<title>G.7 Lysander Spooner: right-"libertarian" or libertarian socialist? </title>
9
<h1>G.7 Lysander Spooner: right-"libertarian" or libertarian socialist?</h1>
11
Murray Rothbard and others on the "libertarian" right have argued that
12
Lysander Spooner is another individualist anarchist whose ideas support
13
"anarcho"-capitalism's claim to be part of the anarchist tradition. It
14
is fair to say that Spooner's critique of the state, rooted in <i>"natural
15
rights"</i> doctrine, was quoted favourably by Rothbard on many occasions,
16
making Spooner the 19th century anarchist most likely to be referenced by
17
him. This is understandable as Spooner was undoubtedly the closest to
18
liberalism of the individualist anarchists, making him more amenable to
19
appropriation than the others (particularly those, like Tucker, who
20
called themselves socialists).
22
As will be shown below, however, any claim that Spooner provides retroactive
23
support for "anarcho"-capitalist claims of being a form of anarchism is untrue.
24
This is because, regardless of his closeness to liberalism, Spooner's vision
25
of a free society was fundamentally anti-capitalist. It is clear that Spooner
26
was a left-libertarian who was firmly opposed to capitalism. The ignoring (at
27
best) or outright dismissal (at worse) of Spooner's economic ideas and vision
28
of a free society by right-"libertarians" should be more than enough to show
29
that Spooner cannot be easily appropriated by the right regardless of his
30
(from an anarchist position) unique, even idiosyncratic, perspective on
33
That Spooner was against capitalism can be seen in his opposition to wage
34
labour, which he wished to eliminate by turning capital over to those who
35
work it. Like other anarchists, he wanted to create a society of associated
36
producers -- self-employed farmers, artisans and co-operating workers --
37
rather than wage-slaves and capitalists. For example, Spooner writes:
39
<i>"every man, woman, and child. . . could . . . go into business for himself,
40
or herself -- either singly, or in partnerships -- and be under no necessity to
41
act as a servant, or sell his or her labour to others. All the great establishments,
42
of every kind, now in the hands of a few proprietors, but employing a great number
43
of wage labourers, would be broken up; for few, or no persons, who could hire
44
capital, and do business for themselves, would consent to labour for wages for
45
another."</i> [<b>A Letter to Grover Cleveland</b>, p. 41]
47
Wage-labour, Spooner argued, meant that workers did not labour for their own
48
benefit <i>"but only for the benefit of their employers."</i> The workers are
49
<i>"mere tools and machines in the hands of their employers."</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b>,
50
p. 50] Thus he considered that <i>"it was necessary that every man be his own
51
employer or work for himself in a direct way, since working for another resulted
52
in a portion being diverted to the employer. To be one's own employer, it was
53
necessary for one to have access to one's own capital."</i> [James J. Martin,
54
<b>Men Against the State</b>, p. 172] This was because wage labour resulted in
56
</p><p><blockquote><i>
57
"When a man knows that he is to have <b>all</b> the fruits of his labour,
58
he labours with more zeal, skill, and physical energy, than when he
59
knows -- as in the case of one labouring for wages -- that a portion
60
of the fruits of his labour are going to another. . . In order that
61
each man may have the fruits of his own labour, it is important, as
62
a general rule, that each man should be his own employer, or work
63
directly for himself, and not for another for wages; because, in the
64
latter case, a part of the fruits of his labour go to his employer,
65
instead of coming to himself . . . That each man may be his own employer,
66
it is necessary that he have materials, or capital, upon which to bestow
67
his labour."</i> [<b>Poverty: Its Illegal Causes and Legal Cure</b>,
70
This preference for a system based on simple commodity production in which
71
capitalists and wage slaves are replaced by self-employed and co-operating
72
workers puts Spooner squarely in the <b>anti-capitalist</b> camp with other
73
anarchists. And, we may add, the egalitarianism he expected to result from
74
his system indicates the left-libertarian nature of his ideas, turning the
75
present <i>"wheel of fortune"</i> into <i>"an extended surface, varied
76
somewhat by inequalities, but still exhibiting a general level, affording
77
a safe position for all, and creating no necessity, for either force or
78
fraud, on the part of anyone, to enable him to secure his standing."</i>
79
[quoted by Peter Marshall, <b>Demanding the Impossible</b>, pp. 388-9]
81
</p><p><blockquote><i>
82
"That the principle of allowing each man to have, (so far as it is
83
consistent with the principles of natural law that he can have,) all
84
the fruits of his own labour, would conduce to a more just and equal
85
distribution of wealth than now exists, is a proposition too
86
self-evident almost to need illustration. It is an obvious principle
87
of natural justice, that each man should have the fruits of his own
88
labour . . . It is also an obvious fact, that the property produced
89
by society, is now distributed in very unequal proportions among
90
those whose labour produced it, and with very little regard to the
91
actual value of each one�s labour in producing it."</i> [<b>Poverty:
92
Its Illegal Causes and Legal Cure</b>, p. 7]
94
For Spooner, as with other left-libertarians, equality was seen as the
95
necessary basis for liberty. As he put it, the <i>"practice of each man's
96
labouring for himself, instead of labouring for another for wages"</i>
97
would <i>"be greatly promoted by a greater equality of wealth."</i> Not
98
only that, it <i>"would also contribute to the increase of labour-saving
99
inventions -- because when a man is labouring for himself, and is to have
100
all the proceeds of his labour, he applies his mind, with his hands, much
101
more than when he is labouring for another."</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 42]
102
As he stressed equality will have many positive outcomes beyond the
103
abolition of wage labour and increased productiveness:
104
</p><p><blockquote><i>
105
"Extremes of difference, in their pecuniary circumstances, divide society
106
into castes; set up barriers to personal acquaintance; prevent or suppress
107
sympathy; give to different individuals a widely different experience, and
108
thus become the fertile source of alienation, contempt, envy, hatred, and
109
wrong. But give to each man all the fruits of his own labour, and a comparative
110
equality with others in his pecuniary condition, and caste is broken down;
111
education is given more equally to all; and the object is promoted of placing
112
each on a social level with all: of introducing each to the acquaintance of
113
all; and of giving to each the greatest amount of that experience, wealth,
114
being common to all, enables him to sympathise with all, and insures to himself
115
the sympathy of all. And thus the social virtues of mankind would be greatly
116
increased."</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b>, pp. 46-7]
118
Independence in producing would lead to independence in all aspects of life,
119
for it was a case of the <i>"higher self-respect also, which a man feels, and
120
the higher social position he enjoys, when he is master of his own industry,
121
than when he labours for another."</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 35] It is quite
122
apparent, then, that Spooner was against wage labour and, therefore, was no
123
supporter of capitalism. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Spooner (like William Greene)
124
had been a member of the <b>First International</b>. [George Woodcock,
125
<b>Anarchism</b>, p. 393]
127
Whether Spooner's ideas are relevant now, given the vast amount of capital needed
128
to start companies in established sectors of the economy, is another question.
129
Equally, it seems unlikely that a reversion to pre-industrial forms of economy
130
is feasible even if we assume that Spooner's claims about the virtues
131
of a free market in credit are correct. But one thing is clear: Spooner was
132
opposed to the way America was developing in the 19th century. He had no
133
illusions about tariffs, for example, seeing them as a means of accumulating
134
capital as they <i>"enable[d] the home producers . . . to make fortunes by
135
robbing everybody else in the prices of their goods."</i> Such protectionism
136
<i>"originated with the employers"</i> as the workers <i>"could not have had
137
no hope of carrying through such a scheme, if they alone were to profit;
138
because they could have had no such influence with governments."</i> [<b>A
139
Letter to Grover Cleveland</b> p. 20 and p. 44] He had no illusions that the
140
state was anything else than a machine run by and for the wealthy.
142
Spooner viewed the rise of capitalism with disgust and suggested a way for
143
non-exploitative and non-oppressive economic relationships to become the norm
144
again in US society, a way based on eliminating a root feature of capitalism --
145
wage-labour -- through a system of easy credit, which he believed would enable
146
artisans and farmers to obtain their own means of production and work for
147
themselves. As we stressed in <a href="secG1.html#secg12">section G.1.2</a>
148
capitalism is based not on property as such but rather property which is not
149
owned by those who use it (i.e., Proudhon's distinction between property and
150
possession which was echoed by, among others, Marx). Like more obvious socialists
151
like Proudhon and Marx, Spooner was well aware that wage labour resulted in
152
exploitation and, as a result, urged its abolition to secure the worker the
153
full produce of their labour.
155
As such, Spooner's analysis of capitalism was close to that of social anarchists
156
and Marxists. This is confirmed by an analysis of his famous works <b>Natural
157
Law</b> (unless otherwise indicated, all subsequent quotes are from this work).
159
Spooner's support of "Natural Law" has also been taken as "evidence" that
160
Spooner was a proto-right-"libertarian." Most obviously, this ignores the
161
fact that support for "Natural Law" is not limited to right-"libertarians"
162
and has been used to justify, among other things, feudalism, slavery, theocracy,
163
liberty, fascism as well as communism. As such, "natural rights" justification
164
for property need not imply a support for capitalism or suggest that those who
165
hold similar views on them will subscribe to the same vision of a good society.
166
Of course, most anarchists do not find theories of "natural law," be they those
167
of right-"libertarians", fascists or whatever, to be particularly compelling.
168
Certainly the ideas of "Natural Law" and "Natural Rights," as existing
169
independently of human beings in the sense of the ideal Platonic Forms, are
170
difficult for most anarchists to accept <b>per se</b>, because such ideas are
171
inherently authoritarian as they suggest a duty to perform certain actions for
172
no other reason than obedience to some higher authority regardless of their
173
impact on individuals and personal goals. Most anarchists would agree with
174
Tucker when he called such concepts <i>"religious"</i> (Robert Anton Wilson's
175
<b>Natural Law: or don't put a rubber on your willy</b> is an excellent
176
discussion of the flaws of such concepts).
178
Spooner, unfortunately, did subscribe to the cult of <i>"immutable and
179
universal"</i> Natural Laws. If we look at his "defence" of Natural Law we
180
can see how weak (and indeed silly) it is. Replacing the word <i>"rights"</i>
181
with the word <i>"clothes"</i> in the following passage shows the inherent
182
weakness of his argument:
184
<i>"if there be no such principle as justice, or natural law, then every
185
human being came into the world utterly destitute of rights; and coming
186
so into the world destitute of rights, he must forever remain so. For if
187
no one brings any rights with him into the world, clearly no one can ever
188
have any rights of his own, or give any to another. And the consequence
189
would be that mankind could never have any rights; and for them to talk of
190
any such things as their rights, would be to talk of things that had, never
191
will, and never can have any existence."</i>
193
And, we add, unlike the "Natural Laws" of <i>"gravitation, . . . of light,
194
the principles of mathematics"</i> to which Spooner compares them, he
195
is perfectly aware that his "Natural Law" can be <i>"trampled upon"</i>
196
by other humans. However, unlike gravity (which does not need enforcing)
197
it is obvious that Spooner's "Natural Law" has to be enforced by human beings
198
as it is within human nature to steal. In other words, it is a moral code,
199
<b>not</b> a "Natural Law" like gravity. Appeals to make this specific moral
200
code to be considered the universal one required by nature are unconvincing,
201
particularly as such absolutist schemes generally end up treating the rights
202
in question (usually property related ones) as more important than actual
203
people. Hence we find, for example, supporters of "natural rights" to property
204
(like Murray Rothbard) willing to deny economic power, the restrictions
205
of liberty it creates and its similarity to the state in the social relations
206
it creates simply because property is sacred (see <a href="secF1.html">section F.1</a>).
208
Interestingly, Spooner did come close to a <b>rational,</b> non-metaphysical source
209
for rights when he pointed out that <i>"Men living in contact with each other, and
210
having intercourse together, cannot avoid learning natural law."</i> This indicates
211
the <b>social</b> nature of rights, of our sense of right and wrong, and so rights
212
and ethics can exist without believing in religious concepts as "Natural Law." In
213
addition, we can say that his support for juries indicates an unconscious recognition
214
of the <b>social</b> nature (and so evolution) of any concepts of human rights. In
215
other words, by arguing strongly for juries to judge human conflict, he implicitly
216
recognises that the concepts of right and wrong in society are <b>not</b> indelibly
217
inscribed in law tomes as the "true law," but instead change and develop as society
218
does (as reflected in the decisions of the juries). In addition, he states that
219
<i>"[h]onesty, justice, natural law, is usually a very plain and simple matter,"</i>
220
which is <i>"made up of a few simple elementary principles, of the truth and justice
221
of which every ordinary mind has an almost intuitive perception,"</i> thus indicating
222
that what is right and wrong exists in "ordinary people" and not in "prosperous judges"
223
or any other small group claiming to speak on behalf of "truth."
225
As can be seen, Spooner's account of how "natural law" will be administered is radically
226
different from, say, Murray Rothbard's and indicates a strong egalitarian context
227
foreign to right-libertarianism. As we noted in <a href="secG3.html">section G.3</a>,
228
Rothbard explicitly rejected Spooner's ideas on the importance of jury driven law
229
(for Spooner, <i>"the jurors were to judge the law, and the justice of the law."</i>
230
[<b>Trial by Jury</b>, p. 134]). As far as "anarcho"-capitalism goes, one wonders how
231
Spooner would regard the "anarcho"-capitalist "protection firm," given his comment
232
that <i>"[a]ny number of scoundrels, having money enough to start with, can establish
233
themselves as a 'government'; because, with money, they can hire soldiers, and with
234
soldiers extort more money; and also compel general obedience to their will."</i>
235
[<b>No Treason</b>, p. 22] This is the use of private police to break strikes and
236
unions in a nutshell. Compare this to Spooner's description of his voluntary justice
239
<i>"it is evidently desirable that men should associate, so far as they
240
freely and voluntarily can do so, for the maintenance of justice among
241
themselves, and for mutual protection against other wrong-doers. It is
242
also in the highest degree desirable that they should agree upon some plan
243
or system of judicial proceedings"</i>
245
At first glance, one may be tempted to interpret Spooner's justice organisations
246
as a subscription to "anarcho"-capitalist style protection firms. A more careful
247
reading suggests that Spooner's actual conception is more based on the concept of
248
mutual aid, whereby people provide such services for themselves and for others
249
rather than buying them on a fee-per-service basis. A very different concept. As
250
he put it elsewhere, <i>"[a]ll legitimate government is a mutual insurance
251
company"</i> in which <i>"insured persons are shareholders of a company."</i>
252
It is likely that this would be a co-operative as the <i>"free administration
253
of justice . . . must necessarily be a part of every system of government which
254
is not designed to be an engine in the hands of the rich for the oppression of
255
the poor."</i> It seems unlikely that Spooner would have supported unequal
256
voting rights based on wealth particularly as <i>"all questions as to the
257
<b>rights</b> of the corporation itself, must be determined by members of the
258
corporation itself . . . by the unanimous verdict of a tribunal fairly
259
representing the whole people"</i> such as a jury [<b>Trial by Jury</b>, p. 223,
262
These comments are particularly important when we consider Spooner's
263
criticisms of finance capitalists, like the Rothschilds. Here he departs
264
even more strikingly from right-"libertarian" positions. For he believes
265
that sheer wealth has intrinsic power, even to the extent of allowing the
266
wealthy to coerce the government into behaving at their behest. For
267
Spooner, governments are <i>"the merest hangers on, the servile, obsequious,
268
fawning dependants and tools of these blood-money loan-mongers, on whom
269
they rely for the means to carry on their crimes."</i> Thus the wealthy can
270
<i>"make [governments] and use them"</i> as well as being able to <i>"unmake
271
them . . . the moment they refuse to commit any crime we require of them, or
272
to pay over to us such share of the proceeds of their robberies as we see fit
273
to demand."</i> Indeed, Spooner considers <i>"these soulless blood-money
274
loan-mongers"</i> as <i>"the real rulers,"</i> not the government (who are
275
simply their agents). Thus governments are <i>"little or nothing else
276
than mere tools, employed by the wealthy to rob, enslave, and (if need be)
277
murder those who have less wealth, or none at all."</i> [<b>No Treason</b>,
278
p. 50, p. 51, p. 52 and p. 47] This is an extremely class conscious analysis
279
of the state, one which mirrors the standard socialist one closely.
281
If one grants that highly concentrated wealth has intrinsic power and may
282
be used in such a Machiavellian manner as Spooner claims, then simple
283
opposition to the state is not sufficient. Logically, any political theory
284
claiming to promote liberty should also seek to limit or abolish the
285
institutions that facilitate large concentrations of wealth. As shown
286
above, Spooner regarded wage labour under capitalism as one of these
287
institutions, because without it <i>"large fortunes could rarely be made at
288
all by one individual."</i> Hence for Spooner, as for social anarchists, to
289
be anti-statist also necessitates being anti-capitalist.
291
This can be clearly seen for his analysis of history, when he asks: <i>"Why
292
is it that [Natural Law] has not, ages ago, been established throughout the
293
world as the one only law that any man, or all men, could rightfully be
294
compelled to obey?"</i> Spooner's answer is given in his interpretation of
295
how the State evolved, where he postulates that it was formed through
296
the initial ascendancy of a land-holding, slave-holding class by military
297
conquest and oppressive enslavement of the peasantry:
299
<i>"These tyrants, living solely on plunder, and on the labour of their slaves,
300
and applying all their energies to the seizure of still more plunder, and the
301
enslavement of still other defenceless persons; increasing, too, their numbers,
302
perfecting their organisations, and multiplying their weapons of war, they extend
303
their conquests until, in order to hold what they have already got, it becomes
304
necessary for them to act systematically, and co-operate with each other in holding
305
their slaves in subjection.
307
"But all this they can do only by establishing what they call a government, and
308
making what they call laws . . . Thus substantially all the legislation of the
309
world has had its origin in the desires of one class of persons to plunder and
310
enslave others, <b>and hold them as property.</b>"</i>
312
Nothing too provocative here, simply Spooner's view of government as a tool of the
313
wealth-holding, slave-owning class. What is more interesting is Spooner's view of
314
the subsequent development of (post-slavery) socio-economic systems:
315
</p><p><blockquote><i>
316
"In process of time, the robber, or slaveholding, class -- who had seized all the
317
lands, and held all the means of creating wealth -- began to discover that the
318
easiest mode of managing their slaves, and making them profitable, was <b>not</b>
319
for each slaveholder to hold his specified number of slaves, as he had done before,
320
and as he would hold so many cattle, but to give them so much liberty as would
321
throw upon themselves (the slaves) the responsibility of their own subsistence,
322
and yet compel them to sell their labour to the land-holding class -- their former
323
owners -- for just what the latter might choose to give them."</i>
325
Here Spooner echoes the standard anarchist critique of capitalism. Note that he is
326
no longer talking about slavery but rather about economic relations between a
327
wealth-holding class and a 'freed' class of workers and tenant farmers. Clearly he
328
does <b>not</b> view this relation --wage labour -- as a voluntary association,
329
because the former slaves have little option but to be employed by members of the
330
wealth-owning class. As he put it elsewhere, their wealth ensures that they have
331
<i>"control of those great armies of servants -- the wage labourers -- from whom
332
all their wealth is derived, and whom they can now coerce by the alternative of
333
starvation, to labour for them."</i> [<b>A Letter to Grover Cleveland</b>, p. 48]
334
Thus we have the standard socialist analysis that economic power, wealth itself,
335
is a source of coercion.
337
Spooner points out that by monopolising the means of wealth creation while
338
at the same time requiring the newly 'liberated' slaves to provide for
339
themselves, the robber class thus continues to receive the benefits of the
340
labour of the former slaves while accepting none of the responsibility for
341
their welfare. <i>"Of course,"</i> Spooner continued <i>"these liberated
342
slaves, as some have erroneously called them, having no lands, or other
343
property, and no means of obtaining an independent subsistence, had no
344
alternative -- to save themselves from starvation -- but to sell their
345
labour to the landholders, in exchange only for the coarsest necessaries
346
of life; not always for so much even as that."</i> Thus while technically
347
"free," the apparently liberated working class lack the ability to provide
348
for their own needs and hence remain dependent on the wealth-owning class.
349
This echoes not right-"libertarian" analysis of capitalism, but left-libertarian
350
and other socialist viewpoints:
352
<i>"These liberated slaves, as they were called, were now scarcely less
353
slaves than they were before. Their means of subsistence were perhaps even
354
more precarious than when each had his own owner, who had an interest to
355
preserve his life."</i>
357
This is an interesting comment. Spooner suggests that the liberated slave
358
class were perhaps <b>better off as slaves.</b> Most anarchists would not go
359
so far, although we would agree that employees are subject to the power of
360
those who employ them and so are no long self-governing individuals -- in
361
other words, that capitalist social relationships deny self-ownership and
362
freedom. Spooner denounced the power of the economically dominant class,
363
noting that the workers <i>"were liable, at the caprice or interest of the
364
landholders, to be thrown out of home, employment, and the opportunity of
365
even earning a subsistence by their labour."</i> Lest the reader doubt that
366
Spooner is actually discussing employment here (and not slavery), he explicitly
367
includes being made unemployed as an example of the arbitrary nature of wage
368
labour and indicates that this is a source of class conflict and danger for
369
the ruling class: <i>"They were, therefore, in large numbers, driven to the
370
necessity of begging, stealing, or starving; and became, of course, dangerous
371
to the property and quiet of their late masters."</i> And so the <i>"consequence
372
was, that these late owners found it necessary, for their own safety and the safety
373
of their property, to organise themselves more perfectly as a government <b>and
374
make laws for keeping these dangerous people in subjection.</b>"</i>
376
In other words, the robber class creates legislation which will protect its power,
377
namely its property, against the dispossessed. Hence we see the creation of "law
378
code" by the wealthy which serves to protect their interests while effectively
379
making attempts to change the status quo illegal. This process is in effect
380
similar to the right-"libertarian" concept of a judge interpreted and developed
381
"general libertarian law code" which exercises a monopoly over a given area and
382
which exists to defend the "rights" of property against "initiation of force,"
383
i.e. attempts to change the system into a new one. Spooner goes on:
385
<i>"The purpose and effect of these laws have been to maintain, in the hands
386
of robber, or slave holding class, a monopoly of all lands, and, as far as
387
possible, of all other means of creating wealth; and thus to keep the great
388
body of labourers in such a state of poverty and dependence, as would
389
compel them to sell their labour to their tyrants for the lowest prices at
390
which life could be sustained."</i>
392
Thus Spooner identified the underlying basis for legislation (as well as
393
the source of much misery, exploitation and oppression throughout history)
394
as the result of the monopolisation of the means of wealth creation by an
395
elite class. We doubt he would have considered that calling these laws
396
"libertarian" would in any change their oppressive and class-based
397
nature. The state was an instrument of the wealthy few, not some neutral
398
machine which furthered its own interests, and so <i>"the whole business
399
of legislation, which has now grown to such gigantic proportions, had its
400
origin in the conspiracies, which have always existed among the few, for
401
the purpose of holding the many in subjection, and extorting from them
402
their labour, and all the profits of their labour."</i> Characterising
403
employment as extortion may seem rather extreme, but it makes sense given
404
the exploitative nature of profit under capitalism, as left libertarians
405
have long recognised (see <a href="secC2.html">section C.2</a>).
407
Perhaps unsurprisingly, given Spooner's rhetorical denunciation of the
408
state as being a gang of murderers and thieves employed by the wealthy
409
few to oppress and exploit the many, he was not shy in similarly extreme
410
rhetoric in advocating revolution. In this (as in many other things) Spooner
411
was a very atypical individualist anarchist and his language could be, at
412
times, as extreme as Johann Most. Thus we find Spooner in 1880 <i>"advocat[ing]
413
that the Irish rise up and kill their British landlords since be believed
414
that when a person's life, liberty, and property -- his natural rights --
415
are denied, that person has a natural right to kill those who would deny
416
these rights. Spooner called for a class war."</i> [Wm. Gary Kline, <b>The
417
Individualist Anarchists</b>, p. 41] Elsewhere he thundered:
418
</p><p><blockquote><i>
419
"<b>Who</b> compose the real governing power in the country? . . . How shall we
420
find these men? How shall we know them from others? . . . Who, of our
421
neighbours, are members of this secret band of robbers and murderers? How
422
can we know which are <b>their</b> houses, that we may burn or demolish
423
them? Which <b>their</b> property, that we may destroy it? Which their
424
persons, that we may kill them, and rid the world and ourselves of such
425
tyrants and monsters?"</i> [<b>No Treason</b>, p. 46]
427
It should be noted that this fierce and militant rhetoric is never mentioned by
428
those who seek to associate social anarchism with violence.
430
Spooner's analysis of the root causes of social problems grew more radical
431
and consistent over time. Initially, he argued that there was a <i>"class of
432
employers, who now stand between the capitalist and labourer, and, by means
433
of usury laws, sponge money from the former, and labour from the latter, and
434
put the plunder into their own pockets."</i> These usury laws <i>"are the
435
contrivances, not of the retired rich men, who have capital to loan . . . but
436
of those few 'enterprising' 'business men,' as they are called, who, in and
437
out of legislatures, are more influential than either the rich or the poor;
438
who control the legislation of the country, and who, by means of usury laws,
439
can sponge money from those who are richer, and labour from those who are poorer
440
than themselves -- and thus make fortunes. . . . And they are almost the only
441
men who do make fortunes . . . large fortunes could rarely be made at all by
442
one individual, except by his sponging capital and labour from others."</i> If
443
<i>"free competition in banking were allowed, the rate of interest would be
444
brought very low, and bank loans would be within the reach of everybody."</i>
445
[<b>Poverty: Its Illegal Causes and Legal Cure</b>, p. 35, p. 11 and p. 15]
447
This is a wonderfully self-contradictory analysis, with Spooner suggesting
448
that industrial capitalists are both the only wealthy people around and,
449
at the same time, sponge money off the rich who have more money than
450
them! Equally, he seemed to believe that allowing interest rates to rise
451
without legal limit will, first, produce more people willing to take out
452
loans and then, when it fell below the legal limit, would produce more rich
453
people willing to loan their cash. And as the aim of these reforms was to
454
promote equality, how would paying interest payments to the already very
455
wealthy help achieve that goal? As can be seen, his early work was directed
456
at industrial capital only and he sought <i>"the establishment of a sort of
457
partnership relation between the capitalist and labourer, or lender and
458
borrower -- the former furnishing capital, the latter labour."</i> However,
459
he opposed the idea that debtors should pay their debts in case of failure,
460
stating <i>"the capitalist is made to risk his capital on the final success
461
of the enterprise, without any claim upon the debtor in case of failure"</i>
462
and this <i>"is the true relation between capital and labour, (or, what is
463
the same thing, between the lender and borrower.)"</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b>,
464
pp. 29-30] It is doubtful that rich lenders would concur with Spooner on
467
However, by the 1880s Spooner had lost his illusions that finance capital
468
was fundamentally different from industrial capital. Now it was a case, like
469
the wider individualist anarchist movement he had become aware of and joined,
470
of attacking the money monopoly. His mature analysis recognised that <i>"the
471
employers of wage labour"</i> were <i>"also the monopolists of money"</i>
472
and so both wings of the capitalist class aimed to <i>"reduce [the public]
473
to the condition of servants; and to subject them to all the extortions as
474
their employers -- the holders of privileged money -- may choose to practice
475
upon them."</i> <i>"The holders of this monopoly now rule and rob this nation;
476
and the government, in all its branches, is simply their tool."</i> [<b>A
477
Letter to Grover Cleveland</b>, p. 48, p. 39, p. 48] Thus Spooner came to see,
478
like other socialists that both finance and industrial capital share a common
479
goal in oppressing and exploiting the working class and that the state is
480
simply an organ of (minority) class rule. In this, his politics became more
481
in line with other individualist anarchists. This analysis is, needless to
482
say, a left-libertarian one rather than right-"libertarian."
484
Of course, it may be objected that Spooner was a right-Libertarian" because
485
he supported the market and private property. However, as we argued in
486
<a href="secG1.html#secg11">section G.1.1</a> support for the market does
487
not equate to support for capitalism (no matter how often the ideologues
488
of capitalism proclaim it so). As noted, markets are not the defining feature
489
of capitalism as there were markets long before capitalism existed. So the
490
fact that Spooner retained the concept of markets does not necessarily make
491
him a supporter of capitalism. As for "property", this question is more
492
complex as Spooner is the only individualist anarchist to apparently
493
reject the idea of "occupancy and use." Somewhat ironically, he termed
494
the doctrine that <i>"which holds that a man has a right to lay his hands
495
on any thing, which has no other man's hands upon it, no matter who may
496
have been the producer"</i> as <i>"absolute communism"</i> and contrasted
497
this with <i>"individual property . . . which says that each man has an
498
absolute dominion, as against all other men, over the products and
499
acquisitions of his own labour, whether he retains them in his actual
500
possession or not."</i> This Spooner subscribed to Locke's theory
501
and argued that the <i>"<b>natural</b> wealth of the world belongs to
502
those who <b>first</b> take possession of it . . . There is no limit,
503
fixed by the law of nature, to the amount of property one may acquire,
504
simply by taking possession of natural wealth, not already possessed, except
505
the limit fixed by power or ability to take such possession, without doing
506
violence to the person or property of others."</i> [<b>The Law of Intellectual
507
Property</b>, p. 88 and pp. 21-2] From this position he argued that the
508
inventor should have intellectual property rights forever, a position
509
in direct contradiction to the opinions of other anarchists (and even
510
capitalist law and right-"libertarians" like Murray Rothbard).
512
Unsurprisingly, Tucker called Spooner's work on Intellectual Property <i>"positively
513
foolish because it is fundamentally foolish, -- because, that is to say, its
514
discussion of the acquisition of the right of property starts with a basic
515
proposition that must be looked upon by all consistent Anarchists as obvious
516
nonsense."</i> This was because it <i>"defines taking possession of a thing as the
517
bestowing of valuable labour upon it, such, for instance, in the case of land, as
518
cutting down the trees or building a fence around it. What follows from this?
519
Evidently that a man may go to a piece of vacant land and fence it off; that he
520
may then go to a second piece and fence that off; then to a third, and fence that
521
off; then to a fourth, a fifth, a hundredth, a thousandth, fencing them all off;
522
that, unable to fence off himself as many as he wishes, he may hire other men to
523
do the fencing for him; and that then he may stand back and bar all other men
524
from using these lands, or admit them as tenants at such rental as he may
525
choose to extract.</i> According to Tucker, Spooner <i>"bases his opposition to
526
. . . landlords on the <b>sole</b> ground that they or their ancestors took their
527
lands <b>by the sword</b> from the original holders . . . I then asked him whether
528
if"</i> a landlord <i>"had found unoccupied the very lands that he now holds, and had
529
fenced them off, he would have any objection to raise against [his] title to
530
and leasing of these lands. He declared emphatically that he would not. Whereupon
531
I protested that his pamphlet, powerful as it was within its scope, did not go to
532
the bottom of the land question."</i> [<b>Liberty</b>, no. 182, p. 6] For Tucker,
533
the implications of Spooner's argument were such that he stressed that it was not,
534
in fact, anarchist at all (he called it <i>"Archist"</i>) and, as a result,
537
Thus we have a contradiction. Spooner attacked the government for it <i>"denies
538
the <b>natural</b> right of human beings to live on this planet. This it does
539
by denying their <b>natural</b> right to those things that are indispensable to
540
the maintenance of life."</i> [<b>A Letter to Grover Cleveland</b>, p. 33] Yet
541
what happens if, by market forces, all the land and capital becomes owned by
542
a few people? The socio-economic situation of the mass of the population is
543
in exactly the same situation as under a system founded by stealing the land
544
by the few. Equally, having to pay for access to the land results in just as
545
much a deduction from the product of work as wage labour. If property is a
546
"natural right" then they must be universal and so must be extended to everyone
547
-- like all rights -- and this implies an end to absolute property rights
548
(<i>"Because the right to live and to develop oneself fully is equal for all,"</i>
549
Proudhon argued, <i>"and because inequality of conditions is an obstacle to the
550
exercise of this right."</i> [quoted by John Enrenberg, <b>Proudhon and his Age</b>,
551
pp. 48-9]). However, saying that it is fair to suggest, given his arguments in favour
552
of universal self-employment, that Spooner did not think that his system of property
553
rights would be abused to produce a landlord class and, as such, did not see the
554
need to resolve the obvious contradictions in his ideology. Whether he was correct
555
in that assumption is another matter.
557
Which indicates why Spooner must be considered an anarchist regardless of his
558
unique position on property rights within the movement. As we argued in
559
<a href="secA3.html#seca31">section A.3.1</a>, only a system where the users of
560
land or a workplace own it can it be consistent with anarchist principles. Otherwise,
561
if there are bosses and landlords, then that society would be inherently hierarchical
562
and so <i><b>Archist</b></i>. Spooner's vision of a free society, rooted as it is in
563
self-employment, meets the criteria of being genuinely libertarian in spite of the
564
property rights used to justify it. Certain "anarcho"-capitalists may subscribe to
565
a similar theory of property but they use it to justify an economy rooted in wage
566
labour and so hierarchy.
568
Somewhat ironically, then, while certain of Spooner's ideas were closer to Rothbard's
569
than other individualist anarchists (most notably, a "natural rights" defence of
570
property) in terms of actual outcomes of applying his ideas, his vision is the
571
exact opposition of that of the "anarcho"-capitalist guru. For Spooner, rather
572
than being a revolt against nature, equality and liberty were seen to be mutually
573
self-enforcing; rather than a necessary and essential aspect of a (so-called)
574
free economy, wage labour was condemned as producing inequality, servitude and a
575
servile mentality. Moreover, the argument that capitalists deny workers <i>"all the
576
fruits"</i> of their labour is identical to the general <b>socialist</b> position
577
that capitalism is exploitative. All of which undoubtedly explains why Rothbard
578
only selectively quoted from Spooner's critique of the state rather and ignored
579
the socio-economic principles which underlay his political analysis and hopes
580
for a free society. Yet without those aspects of his ideas, Spooner's political
581
analysis is pressed into service of an ideology it is doubtful he would have
584
As such, we must agree with Peter Marshall, who notes that Spooner <i>"recommends
585
that every man should be his own employer, and he depicts an ideal society of
586
independent farmers and entrepreneurs who have access to easy credit. If every
587
person received the fruits of his own labour, the just and equal distribution of
588
wealth would result."</i> Because of this, he classifies Spooner as a <b>left</b>
589
libertarian as <i>"his concern with equality as well as liberty makes him a
590
left-wing individualist anarchist. Indeed, while his starting-point is the
591
individual, Spooner goes beyond classical liberalism in his search for a form
592
of rough equality and a community of interests.</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 389]
593
This is also noted by Stephan L. Newman, who writes that while right-"libertarians"
594
are generally <i>"sympathic to Spooner's individualist anarchism, they fail to
595
notice or conveniently overlook its egalitarian implications . . . They accept
596
inequality as the price of freedom"</i> and <i>"habour no reservations about
597
the social consequences of capitalism."</i> Spooner <i>"insist[s] that inequality
598
corrupts freedom. [His] anarchism is directed as much against inequality as
599
against tyranny."</i> Spooner <i>"attempt[s] to realise th[e] promise of social
600
harmony by recreating [a] rough equality of condition"</i> and so joins the
601
<i>"critics of modern capitalism and champions of the Jeffersonian idea of
602
the autonomous individual -- independent yeoman and the self-employed mechanic."</i>
603
<b>Liberalism at Wit's End</b>, p. 76, p. 74 and p. 91]
605
In summary, as can be seen, as with other individualist anarchists, there is a
606
great deal of commonality between Spooner's ideas and those of social anarchists.
607
Spooner perceives the same sources of exploitation and oppression inherent in
608
monopolistic control of the means of production by a wealth-owning class as do
609
social anarchists. His solutions may differ, but he observes exactly the same
610
problems. In other words, Spooner is a left libertarian, and his individualist
611
anarchism is just as anti-capitalist as the ideas of, say, Bakunin, Kropotkin or
612
Chomsky. Spooner, in spite of his closeness to classical liberalism, was no more
613
a capitalist than Rothbard was an anarchist.</p>
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