4
<title>Section G - Introduction</title>
9
<h1>Section G - Is individualist anarchism capitalistic?</h1>
11
The short answer is, no, it is not. While a diverse tendency, the individualist
12
anarchists were opposed to the exploitation of labour, all forms of non-labour
13
income (such as profits, interest and rent) as well as capitalist property rights
14
(particularly in land). While aiming for a free market system, they considered
15
laissez-faire capitalism to be based on various kinds of state enforced class
16
monopoly which ensured that labour was subjected to rule, domination and
17
exploitation by capital. As such it is deeply <b>anti</b>-capitalist and many
18
individualist anarchists, including its leading figure Benjamin Tucker, explicitly
19
called themselves socialists (indeed, Tucker often referred to his theory as
20
<b><i>"Anarchistic-Socialism"</i></b>).
22
So, in this section of our anarchist FAQ we indicate why the individualist
23
anarchists cannot be classified as "ancestors" of the bogus libertarians
24
of the "anarcho"-capitalist school. Rather, they must be classified as
25
libertarian <b>socialists</b> due to their opposition to exploitation, critique
26
of capitalist property rights and concern for equality, albeit being on the
27
liberal wing of anarchist thought. Moreover, while all wanted to have an economy
28
in which all incomes were based on labour, many also opposed wage labour, i.e.
29
the situation where one person sells their labour to another rather than the
30
product of that labour (a position which, we argue, their ideas logically imply).
31
So while <b>some</b> of their ideas do overlap with those of the "anarcho"-capitalist
32
school they are not capitalistic, no more than the overlap between their
33
ideas and anarcho-communism makes them communistic.
35
In this context, the creation of "anarcho"-capitalism may be regarded as
36
yet another tactic by capitalists to reinforce the public's perception
37
that there are no viable alternatives to capitalism, i.e. by claiming that
38
"even anarchism implies capitalism." In order to justify this claim, they
39
have searched the history of anarchism in an effort to find some thread in
40
the movement that can be used for this purpose. They think that with the
41
individualist anarchists they have found such a thread. However, such an
42
appropriation requires the systematic ignoring or dismissal of key aspects
43
of individualist-anarchism (which, of course, the right-"libertarian" does).
44
Somewhat ironically, this attempt by right-"libertarians" to exclude
45
individualist anarchism from socialism parallels an earlier attempt by
46
state socialists to do the same. Tucker furiously refuted such attempts in
47
an article entitled <i>"Socialism and the Lexicographers"</i>, arguing that
48
<i>"the Anarchistic Socialists are not to be stripped of one half of their
49
title by the mere dictum of the last lexicographer."</i> [<b>Instead of a
52
Nevertheless, in the individualists we find anarchism coming closest to
53
"classical" liberalism and being influenced by the ideas of Herbert Spencer,
54
a forefather of "libertarian" capitalism (of the minimal state variety).
55
As Kropotkin summarised, their ideas were <i>"a combination of those of
56
Proudhon with those of Herbert Spencer."</i> [<b>Anarchism</b>, p. 296]
57
What the "anarcho"-capitalist is trying to is to ignore Proudhon's
58
influence (i.e. the socialist aspect of their theories) which just leaves
59
Spencer, who was a right-wing liberal. To reduce individualist anarchism
60
so is to destroy what makes it a unique political theory and movement.
61
While both Kropotkin and Tucker praised Spencer as a synthetic philosopher
62
and social scientist, they were both painfully aware of the limitations
63
in his socio-political ideas. Tucker considered his attacks on all forms
64
of socialism (including Proudhon) as authoritarian as being, at best,
65
misinformed or, at worse, dishonest. He also recognised the apologetic
66
and limited nature of his attacks on state intervention, noting that <i>"amid
67
his multitudinous illustrations . . . of the evils of legislation, he in
68
every instance cites some law passed ostensibly at least to protect labour,
69
alleviating suffering, or promote the people's welfare. But never once
70
does he call attention to the far more deadly and deep-seated evils growing
71
out of the innumerable laws creating privilege and sustaining monopoly."</i>
72
Unsurprisingly, he considered Spencer as a <i>"champion of the capitalistic
73
class."</i> [quoted by James J. Martin, <b>Men Against the State</b>, p. 240]
74
As we will discuss in <a href="secG3.html">section G.3</a>, it is likely
75
that he would have drawn the same conclusion about "anarcho"-capitalism.
77
This does not mean that the majority thread within the anarchist movement
78
is uncritical of individualist anarchism. Far from it! Social anarchists
79
have argued that this influence of non-anarchist ideas means that while
80
its <i>"criticism of the State is very searching, and [its] defence of
81
the rights of the individual very powerful,"</i> like Spencer it <i>"opens
82
. . . the way for reconstituting under the heading of 'defence' all the
83
functions of the State."</i> [Kropotkin, <b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 297] This
84
flows, social anarchists argue, from the impact of liberal principles and led
85
some individualist anarchists like Benjamin Tucker to support contract
86
theory in the name of freedom, without being aware of the authoritarian
87
social relationships that could be implied by it, as can be seen under
88
capitalism (other individualist anarchists were more aware of this
89
contradiction as we will see). Therefore, social anarchists tend to think
90
of individualist anarchism as an inconsistent form of anarchism, one
91
which could become consistent by simply logically applying its own
92
principles (see <a href="secG4.html">section G.4</a>). On their part,
93
many individualist anarchists simply denied that social anarchists
94
where anarchists, a position other anarchists refute (see
95
<a href="secG2.html">section G.2</a>). As such, this section can also be
96
considered, in part, as a continuation of the discussion begun in
97
<a href="secA3.html">section A.3</a>.
99
Few thinkers are completely consistent. Given Tucker's adamant anti-statism
100
and anti-capitalism, it is likely that had he realised the authoritarian
101
social relationships which contract theory tends to produce (and justify)
102
when involving employing labour, he would have modified his views in such
103
a way as to eliminate the contradiction (particularly as contracts involving
104
wage labour directly contradicts his support for "occupancy and use"). It is
105
understandable why he failed to do so, however, given the social context in
106
which he lived and agitated. In Tucker's America, self-employment was still
107
a possibility on a wide scale (in fact, for much of the nineteenth century
108
it was the dominant form of economic activity). His reforms were aimed at
109
making it easier for workers to gain access to both land and machinery,
110
so allowing wage workers to become independent farmers or artisans.
111
Unsurprisingly, therefore, he viewed individualist anarchism as a society
112
of workers, not one of capitalists and workers. Moreover, as we will argue
113
in <a href="secG4.html#secg41">section G.4.1</a>, his love
114
for freedom and opposition to usury logically implies artisan and
115
co-operative labour -- people selling the products of their labour, as
116
opposed to the labour itself -- which itself implies self-management in
117
production (and society in general), not authoritarianism within the workplace
118
(this was the conclusion of Proudhon as well as Kropotkin). Nevertheless,
119
it is this inconsistency -- the non-anarchist aspect of individualist
120
anarchism -- which right "libertarians" like Murray Rothbard select
121
and concentrate on, ignoring the anti-capitalist context in which
122
this aspect of individualist thought exists within. As David Wieck
125
<i>"Out of the history of anarchist thought and action Rothbard has pulled
126
forth a single thread, the thread of individualism, and defines that
127
individualism in a way alien even to the spirit of a Max Stirner or a
128
Benjamin Tucker, whose heritage I presume he would claim -- to say
129
nothing of how alien is his way to the spirit of Godwin, Proudhon,
130
Bakunin, Kropotkin, Malatesta, and the historically anonymous persons
131
who through their thoughts and action have tried to give anarchism a
132
living meaning. Out of this thread Rothbard manufactures one more
133
bourgeois ideology."</i> [<b>Anarchist Justice</b>, pp. 227-228]
135
It is with this in mind that we discuss the ideas of people like Tucker.
136
As this section of the FAQ will indicate, even at its most liberal,
137
individualist, extreme anarchism was fundamentally <b>anti</b>-capitalist.
138
Any concepts which "anarcho"-capitalism imports from the individualist
139
tradition ignore both the theoretical underpinnings of their ideas as
140
well as the social context of self-employment and artisan production
141
within which those concepts arose, thus turning them into something
142
radically different from what was intended by their originators. As
143
we discuss in <a href="secG1.html#secg14">section G.1.4</a> the social
144
context in which individualist anarchism developed is essential to
145
understanding both its politics and its limitations (<i>"Anarchism in
146
America is not a <b>foreign importation</b> but a product of the
147
social conditions of this country and its historical traditions,"</i>
148
although it is <i>"true that American anarchism was also influenced
149
later by European ideas."</i> [Rudolf Rocker, <b>Pioneers of American Freedom</b>,
152
Saying that, it would be a mistake to suggest (as some writers have)
153
that individualist anarchism can be viewed purely in American terms.
154
While understanding the nature of American society and economy at the
155
time is essential to understanding individualist anarchism, it would
156
be false to imply that only individualist anarchism was the product of
157
America conditions and subscribed to by Americans while social anarchism
158
was imported from Europe by immigrants. After all, Albert and Lucy
159
Parsons were both native-born Americans who became communist-anarchists
160
while Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman only become anarchists once
161
they had arrived in America. Native-born Voltairine de Cleyre moved from
162
individualist to communist anarchism. Josiah Warren may have been
163
born in Boston, but he developed his anarchism after his experiences
164
in a experimental community set up by Welsh socialist Robert Owen
165
(who, in turn, was inspired by William Godwin's ideas). While
166
Warren and Proudhon may have developed their ideas independently,
167
American libertarians became aware of Proudhon and other European
168
socialists as radical journals had correspondents in France during
169
the 1848 revolution and partial translations of radical writings from
170
Europe appeared as quickly as they could be transmitted and translated.
171
Individualist anarchists like William Greene and Tucker were
172
heavily influenced by the ideas of Proudhon and so imported
173
aspects of European anarchism into American individualist anarchism
174
while the likes of the French individualist E. Armand brought
175
aspects of American anarchism into the European movement. Similarly,
176
both Spooner and Greene had been members of the First International
177
while individualist anarchists Joseph Labadie and Dyer Lum where
178
organisers of the <b>Knights of Labor</b> union along with Albert
179
and Lucy Parsons. Lum later joined the anarcho-communist inspired
180
<b>International Working People's Association</b> (IWPA) and edited
181
its English language paper (the <b>Alarm</b>) when Parson was imprisoned
182
awaiting execution. All forms of anarchism were, in other words, a
183
combination of European and American influences, both in terms of ideas
184
and in terms of social experiences and struggles, even organisations.
186
While red-baiting and cries of "Un-American" may incline some to stress
187
the "native-born" aspect of individualist anarchism (particularly those
188
seeking to appropriate that tendency for their own ends), both wings of
189
the US movement had native-born and foreign members, aspects and influences
190
(and, as Rocker noted, the <i>"so-called white civilisation of [the American]
191
continent is the work of European immigrants."</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 163]).
192
While both sides tended to denounce and attack the other (particularly after
193
the Haymarket events), they had more in common than the likes of Benjamin
194
Tucker and Johann Most would have been prepared to admit and each tendency,
195
in its own way, reflected aspects of American society and the drastic
196
transformation it was going through at the time. Moreover, it was changes
197
in American society which lead to the steady rise of social anarchism and
198
its eclipse of individualist anarchism from the 1880s onwards. While
199
there has been a tendency to stress individualist tendency in accounts
200
of American anarchism due to its unique characteristics, only those
201
<i>"without a background in anarchist history"</i> would think <i>"that
202
the individualist anarchists were the larger segment of the anarchist
203
movement in the U.S. at the time. Nothing could be farther from the
204
truth. The collectivist branch of anarchism was much stronger among
205
radicals and workers during the late nineteenth century and early
206
twentieth century than the individualist brand. Before the Civil War,
207
the opposite would be true."</i> [Greg Hall, <b>Social Anarchism</b>,
210
By the 1880s, social anarchism had probably exceeded the size of the
211
"home-grown" individualists in the United States. The IWPA had some
212
five thousand members at its peak with perhaps three times as many
213
supporters. [Paul Avrich, <b>The Haymarket Tragedy</b>, p. 83] Its
214
journals had an aggregate circulation of over 30,000. [George Woodcock,
215
<b>Anarchism</b>, p. 395] In contrast, the leading individualist newspaper
216
<b>Liberty</b> <i>"probably never had more than 600 to 1000 subscribers,
217
but it was undoubtedly read by more than that."</i> [Charles H. Hamilton,
218
<i>"Introduction"</i>, p. 1-19, <b>Benjamin R. Tucker and the Champions of
219
Liberty</b>, Coughlin, Hamilton and Sullivan (eds.), p. 10] The repression
220
after Haymarket took its toll and the progress of social anarchism was
221
hindered for a decade. However, <i>"[b]y the turn of the century, the
222
anarchist movement in America had become predominantly communist in
223
orientation."</i> [Paul Avrich, <b>Anarchist Voices</b>, p. 5] As
224
an added irony for those who stress the individualist nature of anarchism
225
in America while dismissing social anarchism as a foreign import, the first
226
American newspaper to use the name <b>"An-archist"</b> was published in Boston
227
in 1881 by anarchists within the social revolutionary branch of the movement.
228
[Paul Avrich, <b>The Haymarket Tragedy</b>, p. 57] Equally ironic, given
229
the appropriation of the term by the American right, the first anarchist
230
journal to use the term "libertarian" (<b>La Libertaire, Journal du Mouvement
231
Social</b>) was published in New York between 1858 and 1861 by French
232
communist-anarchist Joseph D�jacque. [Max Nettlau, <b>A Short History of
233
Anarchism</b>, pp. 75-6]
235
All this is not to suggest that individualist anarchism does not
236
have American roots nor that many of its ideas and visions were not
237
significantly shaped by American social conditions and developments.
238
Far from it! It is simply to stress that it did not develop in
239
complete isolation of European anarchism during the latter half of
240
the nineteenth century and that the social anarchism which overtook
241
by the end of that century was also a product of American conditions
242
(in this case, the transformation of a pre-capitalist society into
243
a capitalist one). In other words, the rise of communist anarchism and
244
the decline of individualist anarchism by the end of the nineteenth
245
century reflected American society just as much as the development
246
of the latter in the first place. Thus the rise of capitalism in
247
America meant the rise of an anarchism more suitable to the social
248
conditions and social relationships produced by that change.
249
Unsurprisingly, therefore, individualist anarchism remains the
250
minority trend in American anarchism to this day with such comrades
251
as Joe Peacott (see his pamphlet <b>Individualism Reconsidered</b>),
252
Kevin Carson (see his book <b>Studies in Mutualist Political
253
Economy</b>) and Shawn Wilbur (who has painstakingly placed many rare
254
early individualist and mutualist anarchist works onto the internet) keeping
257
So like social anarchism, individualist anarchism developed as a
258
response to the rise of capitalism and the transformation of
259
American society this produced. As one academic put it, the
260
<i>"early anarchists, though staunchly individualistic, did
261
not entertain a penchant for . . . capitalism. Rather, they saw
262
themselves as socialists opposed to the state socialism of Karl
263
Marx. The individualist anarchists saw no contradiction between
264
their individualist stance and their rejection of capitalism."</i>
265
She stresses that they were <i>"fervent anti-capitalists"</i> and
266
thought that <i>"workers created value through their labour, a value
267
appropriated by owners of businesses . . . The individualist anarchists
268
blamed capitalism for creating inhumane working conditions and for
269
increasing inequalities of wealth. Their self-avowed 'socialism'
270
was rooted in their firm belief in equality, material as well as legal."</i>
271
This, however, did not stop her asserting that <i>"contemporary
272
anarcho-capitalists are descendants of nineteenth-century individualist
273
anarchists such as Josiah Warren, Lysander Spooner, and Benjamin Tucker."</i>
274
[Susan Love Brown, pp. 99-128, <i>"The Free Market as Salvation from Government"</i>,
275
<b>Meanings of the Market</b>, James G. Carrier (ed.), p. 104, p. 107, p. 104
276
and p. 103] Trust an academic to ignore the question of how related <b>are</b>
277
two theories which differ on such a key issue as whether to be anti-capitalist
280
Needless to say, some "anarcho"-capitalists are well aware of the
281
fact that individualist anarchists were extremely hostile to
282
capitalism while supporting the "free market." Unsurprisingly,
283
they tend to downplay this opposition, often arguing that the
284
anarchists who point out the anti-capitalist positions of the
285
likes of Tucker and Spooner are quoting them out of context.
286
The truth is different. In fact, it is the "anarcho"-capitalist
287
who takes the ideas of the individualist anarchists from both
288
the historical and theoretical context. This can be seen from
289
the "anarcho"-capitalist dismissal of the individualist anarchists'
290
"bad" economics as well as the nature of the free society wanted
293
It is possible, no doubt, to trawl through the many issues of, say,
294
<b>Liberty</b> or the works of individualist anarchism to find a few
295
comments which may be used to bolster a claim that anarchism need
296
not imply socialism. However, a few scattered comments here and
297
there are hardly a firm basis to ignore the vast bulk of anarchist
298
theory and its history as a movement. This is particularly the case
299
when applying this criteria consistently would mean that communist
300
anarchism, for example, would be excommunicated from anarchism simply
301
because of the opinions of <b>some</b> individualist anarchists.
302
Equally, it may be possible to cobble together all the non-anarchist
303
positions of individualist anarchists and so construct an ideology
304
which justified wage labour, the land monopoly, usury, intellectual
305
property rights, and so on but such an ideology would be nothing more
306
than a mockery of individualist anarchism, distinctly at odds with
307
its spirits and aims. It would only convince those ignorant of the
310
It is not a fitting tribute to the individualist anarchists that their
311
ideas are today being associated with the capitalism that they so clearly
312
despised and wished to abolish. As one modern day Individualist Anarchist
314
</p><p><blockquote><i>
315
"It is time that anarchists recognise the valuable contributions
316
of . . . individualist anarchist theory and take advantage of its
317
ideas. It would be both futile and criminal to leave it to the
318
capitalist libertarians, whose claims on Tucker and the others
319
can be made only by ignoring the violent opposition they had to
320
capitalist exploitation and monopolistic 'free enterprise'
321
supported by the state."</i> [J.W. Baker, <i>"Native American Anarchism,"</i>
322
pp. 43-62, <b>The Raven</b>, vol. 10, no. 1, pp. 61-2]
325
We hope that this section of the FAQ will go some way to explaining the
326
ideas and contributions of individualist anarchism to a new generation
327
of rebels. Given the diversity of individualist anarchism, it is hard
328
to generalise about it (some are closer to classical liberalism than
329
others, for example, while a few embraced revolutionary means of change
330
such as Dyer Lum). However, we will do our best to draw out the common
331
themes of the movement, indicating where certain people differed from
332
others. Similarly, there are distinct differences between European and
333
American forms of mutualism, regardless of how often Tucker invoked
334
Proudhon's name to justify his own interpretations of anarchism and
335
we will indicate these (these differences, we think, justify calling
336
the American branch individualist anarchism rather than mutualism). We
337
will also seek to show why social anarchism rejects individualist
338
anarchism (and vice versa) as well as giving a critical evaluation of
339
both positions. Given the diverse nature of individualist anarchism,
340
we are sure that we will not cover all the positions and individuals
341
associated with it but we hope to present enough to indicate why the
342
likes of Tucker, Labadie, Yarros and Spooner deserve better than
343
to be reduced to footnotes in books defending an even more extreme
344
version of the capitalism they spent their lives fighting.</p>
b'\\ No newline at end of file'
added
removed
html/secGint.html
