Were the Individualist Anarchists Really Socialists? Share This:





Were the Individualist Anarchists Really Socialists?



In his book Equality, William B. Greene commented on the system of Socialism, â€œIn socialism, there is but one master, which is the state; but the state is not a living person, capable of suffering and happiness. Socialism benefits none but demagogues, and is, emphatically, the organization of universal misery . . . socialism gives us but one class, a class of slaves.â€ (90)



And yet it was commonplace for nineteenth-century Individualist Anarchists to call themselves â€œSocialists.â€ Their wide-spread adoption of the labor theory of value and dislike for capitalismâ€”often considered to be hallmarks of Socialismâ€”only strengthened their apparent connection with the left. Moreover, Josiah Warrenâ€”arguably the founding figure of the traditionâ€”had ideological roots deep within the socialistic Fourierite movement, and was a student of Owenâ€™s. These ties continued well into the days of Liberty. For example, the First Workingmanâ€™s International consisted largely of Bakuninists (Communist Anarchists) and Individualist Anarchists. Despite their many attacks upon capitalism, however, the Individualist Anarchists consistently advocated the free market as the remedy for the capitalist system.



We have never advocated the abolition of private property. We have always maintained that the development of the highest and truest individualism in human character requires the possession and therefore the existence of personal property. But while stoutly maintaining the right of each individual to his own earningsâ€”the right of each individual to an equitable share of natural material upon which to create property by laborâ€”we have also contended for the principle of Mutualism, the principle of Co-operative Communism. (91)



One reason why Individualist Anarchists sometimes adopted the label â€œSocialistâ€ is that the meaning of the term has changed with time. In the nineteenth century, a common meaning of the term â€œSocialistâ€ was â€œone who advocated an organization of society that allowed laborers to receive the full product of their labor.â€ Within Individualist Anarchism, this goal was stated as Cost the Limit of Price.



But Individualist Anarchists also advocated Sovereignty of the Individualâ€”that is, they were committed to creating a voluntary society in which the basic unit was the autonomous individual. Indeed, in the theoretical construction of Individualist Anarchism, Sovereignty of Individual preceded Cost is the Limit of Price and served as its foundation. Thus, although the Liberty circle agreed that profit was theft and big business had allied with government to promote usury, their primary commitment was to a voluntary society and to the right of contract. Tucker described the ideal society as â€œsociety by contract.â€



This commitment to contract led the Individualist Anarchists to vigorously oppose State-supported usuries, such as interest and, yet, defend the practice of charging interest in the context of a free market. Paying interest on a loan might be foolishness and akin to helping a thief rob your house, butâ€”as long as the interest resulted from a voluntary contractâ€”they defended the practice.



Tucker wrote,



The monster that Liberty invites true reformers to help battle down and exterminate is the State, whose purpose is, first, to enforce unjust contracts through forcible defense of monopoly, and, second, to make effectual protest impossible by defending ill-gotten property from the natural retribution which attends tyranny and theft.



â€œLiberty, therefore, must defend the right of individuals to make contracts involving usury, rum, marriage, prostitution, and many other things which it believes to be wrong in princi-ple and opposed to human well-being. The right to do wrong involves the essence of all rights.(92)



All that Tucker required was that the â€œwrongâ€ result from contract and not from force. In the presence of a contract, everyone had the right to make a foolish, self-destructive decision, and no one had the right to interfere in the voluntary process.



Although the Individualist Anarchists sometimes referred to themselves as Socialists, they adamantly rejected the school of Socialism that rose to dominance and which is almost a synonym for Socialism proper today: State Socialism. In an essay entitled â€œState Socialism and Anarchism: How Far They Agree, and Wherein They Differ,â€ Tucker captured the difference be-tween Individualist Anarchism and State Socialism.



Tucker opened by stating that there were two extremes battling within the Socialist tradition, each of which adhered to a principle antithetic to the other. â€œThe two principles referred to are AUTHORITY and LIBERTY, and the names of the two schools of Socialistic thought . . . are, respectively, State Socialism and Anarchism. . . . [T]here is no half-way house between State Socialism and Anarchism.â€ (93) These two forces were flowing from the very center of the Socialist tradition and an ultimate conflict between them was inevitable. On one side would stand the State Socialists who wished to use government to institute justice for labor: these factions included the eight-hour men, the trade-unionists, the Knights of Labor, the land nationalists, and the greenbackers. On the other side would stand the Anarchists who wished first and foremost to eliminate the State.



Before detailing the battle to come, Tucker explored the common ground shared by the opposing groups. â€œThe economic principles of Modern Socialism are a logical deduction from the principle laid down by Adam Smith in the early chapters of his â€˜Wealth of Nationsâ€™,â€”namely, that labor is the true measure of price.â€ But Smith never examined the social and political implications of that observation. That task was left to â€œJosiah Warren, an American; Pierre J. Proudhon, a Frenchman; Karl Marx, a German Jew.â€ Each of them reached common conclusions that led them to condemn usury, especially in its three most dominant formsâ€”interest, rent, and profit. Moreover, they each rec-ognized that usury survived due to an alliance between busi-ness and the State, which resulted in monopoly privileges being granted to an elite class of society. This point of agreement, however, was also the juncture at which State Socialism and Anarchism parted ways. â€œHere the road forked. They found that they must turn either to the right or to the left,â€”follow either the path of Authority or the path of Liberty. Marx went one way; Warren and Proudhon the other. Thus were born State Socialism and Anarchism.â€



State Socialism became the doctrine â€œthat all the affairs of men should be managed by the government, regardless of individual choice.â€ Marxâ€™s solution to the various monopolies was to create one vast monopoly known as the State, which would absolutely control individual action. Although State Socialists maintained that only the economic sphere would be controlled and not the private sphere, Tucker disputed the very possibility of limiting State intrusion. In a passage predicting the Commu-nist State, he wrote that State Socialism was â€œdoomedâ€ to end in â€œa State system of hygiene, prescribing what all must and must not eat, drink, wear, and doâ€; a code of State morals, schools, hospitals, nurseries that raised children at public expense, and finally â€œa State family.â€ The latter would consist of â€œscientific breeding, in which no man and woman will be al-lowed to have children if the State prohibits them.â€



This stood in stark contrast to Anarchism, the doctrine â€œthat all the affairs of men should be managed by individuals or voluntary associations, and that the State should be abolished.â€ Thus, Individualist Anarchism can be said to have branched off economically from the Socialist tradition and become an ideological movement in its own right. What made it branch away was the fact that its basis was not economic, but moral, and it was a morality of radical Individualism.



In the final analysis, it is not clear that Individualist Anarchism ever had a rightful place within the Socialist tradition as we use the word â€œSocialismâ€ today. Indeed, a philosophy of Individualism that was so radical as to deny the very existence of society cannot be considered collectivist in any politically meaningful sense. With its stress upon contracts and voluntary society, Individualist Anarchism constituted an entirely original and distinct tradition upon the American landscape. Back to category overview Back to news overview Older News Newer News



Insight into this seeming contradiction within nineteenth-century Individualist Anarchism can be gleaned from the words of key figures of that tradition. Moses Harman, for example, answered whether he was a Communist with the words,One reason why Individualist Anarchists sometimes adopted the label â€œSocialistâ€ is that the meaning of the term has changed with time. In the nineteenth century, a common meaning of the term â€œSocialistâ€ was â€œone who advocated an organization of society that allowed laborers to receive the full product of their labor.â€ Within Individualist Anarchism, this goal was stated as Cost the Limit of Price.But Individualist Anarchists also advocated Sovereignty of the Individualâ€”that is, they were committed to creating a voluntary society in which the basic unit was the autonomous individual. Indeed, in the theoretical construction of Individualist Anarchism, Sovereignty of Individual preceded Cost is the Limit of Price and served as its foundation. Thus, although the Liberty circle agreed that profit was theft and big business had allied with government to promote usury, their primary commitment was to a voluntary society and to the right of contract. Tucker described the ideal society as â€œsociety by contract.â€This commitment to contract led the Individualist Anarchists to vigorously oppose State-supported usuries, such as interest and, yet, defend the practice of charging interest in the context of a free market. Paying interest on a loan might be foolishness and akin to helping a thief rob your house, butâ€”as long as the interest resulted from a voluntary contractâ€”they defended the practice.Tucker wrote,All that Tucker required was that the â€œwrongâ€ result from contract and not from force. In the presence of a contract, everyone had the right to make a foolish, self-destructive decision, and no one had the right to interfere in the voluntary process.Although the Individualist Anarchists sometimes referred to themselves as Socialists, they adamantly rejected the school of Socialism that rose to dominance and which is almost a synonym for Socialism proper today: State Socialism. In an essay entitled â€œState Socialism and Anarchism: How Far They Agree, and Wherein They Differ,â€ Tucker captured the difference be-tween Individualist Anarchism and State Socialism.Tucker opened by stating that there were two extremes battling within the Socialist tradition, each of which adhered to a principle antithetic to the other. â€œThe two principles referred to are AUTHORITY and LIBERTY, and the names of the two schools of Socialistic thought . . . are, respectively, State Socialism and Anarchism. . . . [T]here is no half-way house between State Socialism and Anarchism.â€ (93) These two forces were flowing from the very center of the Socialist tradition and an ultimate conflict between them was inevitable. On one side would stand the State Socialists who wished to use government to institute justice for labor: these factions included the eight-hour men, the trade-unionists, the Knights of Labor, the land nationalists, and the greenbackers. On the other side would stand the Anarchists who wished first and foremost to eliminate the State.Before detailing the battle to come, Tucker explored the common ground shared by the opposing groups. â€œThe economic principles of Modern Socialism are a logical deduction from the principle laid down by Adam Smith in the early chapters of his â€˜Wealth of Nationsâ€™,â€”namely, that labor is the true measure of price.â€ But Smith never examined the social and political implications of that observation. That task was left to â€œJosiah Warren, an American; Pierre J. Proudhon, a Frenchman; Karl Marx, a German Jew.â€ Each of them reached common conclusions that led them to condemn usury, especially in its three most dominant formsâ€”interest, rent, and profit. Moreover, they each rec-ognized that usury survived due to an alliance between busi-ness and the State, which resulted in monopoly privileges being granted to an elite class of society. This point of agreement, however, was also the juncture at which State Socialism and Anarchism parted ways. â€œHere the road forked. They found that they must turn either to the right or to the left,â€”follow either the path of Authority or the path of Liberty. Marx went one way; Warren and Proudhon the other. Thus were born State Socialism and Anarchism.â€State Socialism became the doctrine â€œthat all the affairs of men should be managed by the government, regardless of individual choice.â€ Marxâ€™s solution to the various monopolies was to create one vast monopoly known as the State, which would absolutely control individual action. Although State Socialists maintained that only the economic sphere would be controlled and not the private sphere, Tucker disputed the very possibility of limiting State intrusion. In a passage predicting the Commu-nist State, he wrote that State Socialism was â€œdoomedâ€ to end in â€œa State system of hygiene, prescribing what all must and must not eat, drink, wear, and doâ€; a code of State morals, schools, hospitals, nurseries that raised children at public expense, and finally â€œa State family.â€ The latter would consist of â€œscientific breeding, in which no man and woman will be al-lowed to have children if the State prohibits them.â€This stood in stark contrast to Anarchism, the doctrine â€œthat all the affairs of men should be managed by individuals or voluntary associations, and that the State should be abolished.â€ Thus, Individualist Anarchism can be said to have branched off economically from the Socialist tradition and become an ideological movement in its own right. What made it branch away was the fact that its basis was not economic, but moral, and it was a morality of radical Individualism.In the final analysis, it is not clear that Individualist Anarchism ever had a rightful place within the Socialist tradition as we use the word â€œSocialismâ€ today. Indeed, a philosophy of Individualism that was so radical as to deny the very existence of society cannot be considered collectivist in any politically meaningful sense. With its stress upon contracts and voluntary society, Individualist Anarchism constituted an entirely original and distinct tradition upon the American landscape. Printer Friendly Wendy McElroy - Sunday 10 August 2008 - 15:14:20 - Permalink It is commonplace for left historians to refer to 19th century individualist anarchists, including those surrounding Benjamin Tucker's Liberty, as socialists. The following excerpt from my much lengthier essay entitled "Economics: The Money Debate" examines and dismisses that claim. (The essay is accessible in the archive by clicking articles on the toolbar and, then, proceeding to "Individualist Anarchism -- History." Or, click here. The indicated footnotes are from the longer essay.)In his book Equality, William B. Greene commented on the system of Socialism, â€œIn socialism, there is but one master, which is the state; but the state is not a living person, capable of suffering and happiness. Socialism benefits none but demagogues, and is, emphatically, the organization of universal misery . . . socialism gives us but one class, a class of slaves.â€ (90)And yet it was commonplace for nineteenth-century Individualist Anarchists to call themselves â€œSocialists.â€ Their wide-spread adoption of the labor theory of value and dislike for capitalismâ€”often considered to be hallmarks of Socialismâ€”only strengthened their apparent connection with the left. Moreover, Josiah Warrenâ€”arguably the founding figure of the traditionâ€”had ideological roots deep within the socialistic Fourierite movement, and was a student of Owenâ€™s. These ties continued well into the days of Liberty. For example, the First Workingmanâ€™s International consisted largely of Bakuninists (Communist Anarchists) and Individualist Anarchists. Despite their many attacks upon capitalism, however, the Individualist Anarchists consistently advocated the free market as the remedy for the capitalist system.