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<title>Section G - Introduction</title>

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<h1>Section G - Is individualist anarchism capitalistic?</h1>
</p><p>
The short answer is, no, it is not. While a diverse tendency, the individualist 
anarchists were opposed to the exploitation of labour, all forms of non-labour
income (such as profits, interest and rent) as well as capitalist property rights
(particularly in land). While aiming for a free market system, they considered 
laissez-faire capitalism to be based on various kinds of state enforced class 
monopoly which ensured that labour was subjected to rule, domination and 
exploitation by capital. As such it is deeply <b>anti</b>-capitalist and many 
individualist anarchists, including its leading figure Benjamin Tucker, explicitly
called themselves socialists (indeed, Tucker often referred to his theory as
<b><i>"Anarchistic-Socialism"</i></b>).
</p><p>
So, in this section of our anarchist FAQ we indicate why the individualist 
anarchists cannot be classified as "ancestors" of the bogus libertarians 
of the "anarcho"-capitalist school. Rather, they must be classified as
libertarian <b>socialists</b> due to their opposition to exploitation, critique
of capitalist property rights and concern for equality, albeit being on the 
liberal wing of anarchist thought. Moreover, while all wanted to have an economy 
in which all incomes were based on labour, many also opposed wage labour, i.e. 
the situation where one person sells their labour to another rather than the 
product of that labour (a position which, we argue, their ideas logically imply). 
So while <b>some</b> of their ideas do overlap with those of the "anarcho"-capitalist 
school they are not capitalistic, no more than the overlap between their 
ideas and anarcho-communism makes them communistic. 
</p><p>
In this context, the creation of "anarcho"-capitalism may be regarded as
yet another tactic by capitalists to reinforce the public's perception
that there are no viable alternatives to capitalism, i.e. by claiming that
"even anarchism implies capitalism." In order to justify this claim, they
have searched the history of anarchism in an effort to find some thread in
the movement that can be used for this purpose. They think that with the
individualist anarchists they have found such a thread. However, such an
appropriation requires the systematic ignoring or dismissal of key aspects
of individualist-anarchism (which, of course, the right-"libertarian" does).
Somewhat ironically, this attempt by right-"libertarians" to exclude 
individualist anarchism from socialism parallels an earlier attempt by
state socialists to do the same. Tucker furiously refuted such attempts in
an article entitled <i>"Socialism and the Lexicographers"</i>, arguing that
<i>"the Anarchistic Socialists are not to be stripped of one half of their 
title by the mere dictum of the last lexicographer."</i> [<b>Instead of a
Book</b>, p. 365]
</p><p>
Nevertheless, in the individualists we find anarchism coming closest to 
"classical" liberalism and being influenced by the ideas of Herbert Spencer, 
a forefather of "libertarian" capitalism (of the minimal state variety).
As Kropotkin summarised, their ideas were <i>"a combination of those of 
Proudhon with those of Herbert Spencer."</i> [<b>Anarchism</b>, p. 296]
What the "anarcho"-capitalist is trying to is to ignore Proudhon's
influence (i.e. the socialist aspect of their theories) which just leaves 
Spencer, who was a right-wing liberal. To reduce individualist anarchism 
so is to destroy what makes it a unique political theory and movement.
While both Kropotkin and Tucker praised Spencer as a synthetic philosopher 
and social scientist, they were both painfully aware of the limitations 
in his socio-political ideas. Tucker considered his attacks on all forms
of socialism (including Proudhon) as authoritarian as being, at best, 
misinformed or, at worse, dishonest. He also recognised the apologetic 
and limited nature of his attacks on state intervention, noting that <i>"amid 
his multitudinous illustrations . . . of the evils of legislation, he in 
every instance cites some law passed ostensibly at least to protect labour, 
alleviating suffering, or promote the people's welfare. But never once 
does he call attention to the far more deadly and deep-seated evils growing 
out of the innumerable laws creating privilege and sustaining monopoly."</i> 
Unsurprisingly, he considered Spencer as a <i>"champion of the capitalistic 
class."</i> [quoted by James J. Martin, <b>Men Against the State</b>, p. 240]
As we will discuss in <a href="secG3.html">section G.3</a>, it is likely 
that he would have drawn the same conclusion about "anarcho"-capitalism.
</p><p>
This does not mean that the majority thread within the anarchist movement
is uncritical of individualist anarchism. Far from it! Social anarchists
have argued that this influence of non-anarchist ideas means that while
its <i>"criticism of the State is very searching, and [its] defence of 
the rights of the individual very powerful,"</i> like Spencer it <i>"opens 
. . . the way for reconstituting under the heading of 'defence' all the 
functions of the State."</i> [Kropotkin, <b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 297] This 
flows, social anarchists argue, from the impact of liberal principles and led 
some individualist anarchists like Benjamin Tucker to support contract 
theory in the name of freedom, without being aware of the authoritarian 
social relationships that could be implied by it, as can be seen under 
capitalism (other individualist anarchists were more aware of this 
contradiction as we will see). Therefore, social anarchists tend to think
of individualist anarchism as an inconsistent form of anarchism, one 
which could become consistent by simply logically applying its own 
principles (see <a href="secG4.html">section G.4</a>). On their part, 
many individualist anarchists simply denied that social anarchists 
where anarchists, a position other anarchists refute (see 
<a href="secG2.html">section G.2</a>). As such, this section can also be 
considered, in part, as a continuation of the discussion begun in 
<a href="secA3.html">section A.3</a>.
</p><p>
Few thinkers are completely consistent. Given Tucker's adamant anti-statism 
and anti-capitalism, it is likely that had he realised the authoritarian 
social relationships which contract theory tends to produce (and justify)
when involving employing labour, he would have modified his views in such 
a way as to eliminate the contradiction (particularly as contracts involving 
wage labour directly contradicts his support for "occupancy and use"). It is 
understandable why he failed to do so, however, given the social context in 
which he lived and agitated. In Tucker's America, self-employment was still 
a possibility on a wide scale (in fact, for much of the nineteenth century 
it was the dominant form of economic activity). His reforms were aimed at 
making it easier for workers to gain access to both land and machinery, 
so allowing wage workers to become independent farmers or artisans. 
Unsurprisingly, therefore, he viewed individualist anarchism as a society 
of workers, not one of capitalists and workers. Moreover, as we will argue 
in <a href="secG4.html#secg41">section G.4.1</a>, his love 
for freedom and opposition to usury logically implies artisan and 
co-operative labour -- people selling the products of their labour, as 
opposed to the labour itself -- which itself implies self-management in 
production (and society in general), not authoritarianism within the workplace
(this was the conclusion of Proudhon as well as Kropotkin). Nevertheless, 
it is this inconsistency -- the non-anarchist aspect of individualist 
anarchism -- which right "libertarians" like Murray Rothbard select 
and concentrate on, ignoring the anti-capitalist context in which 
this aspect of individualist thought exists within. As David Wieck 
pointed out: 
</p><p><blockquote>
<i>"Out of the history of anarchist thought and action Rothbard has pulled 
forth a single thread, the thread of individualism, and defines that 
individualism in a way alien even to the spirit of a Max Stirner or a 
Benjamin Tucker, whose heritage I presume he would claim -- to say 
nothing of how alien is his way to the spirit of Godwin, Proudhon, 
Bakunin, Kropotkin, Malatesta, and the historically anonymous persons 
who through their thoughts and action have tried to give anarchism a 
living meaning. Out of this thread Rothbard manufactures one more 
bourgeois ideology."</i> [<b>Anarchist Justice</b>, pp. 227-228]
</blockquote></p><p>
It is with this in mind that we discuss the ideas of people like Tucker.
As this section of the FAQ will indicate, even at its most liberal, 
individualist, extreme anarchism was fundamentally <b>anti</b>-capitalist. 
Any concepts which "anarcho"-capitalism imports from the individualist
tradition ignore both the theoretical underpinnings of their ideas as
well as the social context of self-employment and artisan production 
within which those concepts arose, thus turning them into something 
radically different from what was intended by their originators. As
we discuss in <a href="secG1.html#secg14">section G.1.4</a> the social
context in which individualist anarchism developed is essential to
understanding both its politics and its limitations (<i>"Anarchism in 
America is not a <b>foreign importation</b> but a product of the 
social conditions of this country and its historical traditions,"</i>
although it is <i>"true that American anarchism was also influenced 
later by European ideas."</i> [Rudolf Rocker, <b>Pioneers of American Freedom</b>,
p. 163]).
</p><p>
Saying that, it would be a mistake to suggest (as some writers have)
that individualist anarchism can be viewed purely in American terms.
While understanding the nature of American society and economy at the 
time is essential to understanding individualist anarchism, it would
be false to imply that only individualist anarchism was the product of 
America conditions and subscribed to by Americans while social anarchism 
was imported from Europe by immigrants. After all, Albert and Lucy 
Parsons were both native-born Americans who became communist-anarchists 
while Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman only become anarchists once 
they had arrived in America. Native-born Voltairine de Cleyre moved from 
individualist to communist anarchism. Josiah Warren may have been
born in Boston, but he developed his anarchism after his experiences 
in a experimental community set up by Welsh socialist Robert Owen
(who, in turn, was inspired by William Godwin's ideas). While
Warren and Proudhon may have developed their ideas independently,
American libertarians became aware of Proudhon and other European
socialists as radical journals had correspondents in France during 
the 1848 revolution and partial translations of radical writings from 
Europe appeared as quickly as they could be transmitted and translated. 
Individualist anarchists like William Greene and Tucker were 
heavily influenced by the ideas of Proudhon and so imported 
aspects of European anarchism into American individualist anarchism
while the likes of the French individualist E. Armand brought 
aspects of American anarchism into the European movement. Similarly, 
both Spooner and Greene had been members of the First International 
while individualist anarchists Joseph Labadie and Dyer Lum where 
organisers of the <b>Knights of Labor</b> union along with Albert 
and Lucy Parsons. Lum later joined the anarcho-communist inspired 
<b>International Working People's Association</b> (IWPA) and edited 
its English language paper (the <b>Alarm</b>) when Parson was imprisoned 
awaiting execution. All forms of anarchism were, in other words, a 
combination of European and American influences, both in terms of ideas 
and in terms of social experiences and struggles, even organisations.
</p><p>
While red-baiting and cries of "Un-American" may incline some to stress 
the "native-born" aspect of individualist anarchism  (particularly those 
seeking to appropriate that tendency for their own ends), both wings of 
the US movement had native-born and foreign members, aspects and influences
(and, as Rocker noted, the <i>"so-called white civilisation of [the American] 
continent is the work of European immigrants."</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 163]). 
While both sides tended to denounce and attack the other (particularly after 
the Haymarket events), they had more in common than the likes of Benjamin 
Tucker and Johann Most would have been prepared to admit and each tendency, 
in its own way, reflected aspects of American society and the drastic 
transformation it was going through at the time. Moreover, it was changes 
in American society which lead to the steady rise of social anarchism and 
its eclipse of individualist anarchism from the 1880s onwards. While
there has been a tendency to stress individualist tendency in accounts
of American anarchism due to its unique characteristics, only those
<i>"without a background in anarchist history"</i> would think <i>"that 
the individualist anarchists were the larger segment of the anarchist 
movement in the U.S. at the time. Nothing could be farther from the
truth. The collectivist branch of anarchism was much stronger among 
radicals and workers during the late nineteenth century and early 
twentieth century than the individualist brand. Before the Civil War,
the opposite would be true."</i> [Greg Hall, <b>Social Anarchism</b>,
no. 30, pp. 90-91]
</p><p>
By the 1880s, social anarchism had probably exceeded the size of the 
"home-grown" individualists in the United States. The IWPA had some 
five thousand members at its peak with perhaps three times as many 
supporters. [Paul Avrich, <b>The Haymarket Tragedy</b>, p. 83] Its
journals had  an aggregate circulation of over 30,000. [George Woodcock,
<b>Anarchism</b>, p. 395] In contrast, the leading individualist newspaper 
<b>Liberty</b> <i>"probably never had more than 600 to 1000 subscribers, 
but it was undoubtedly read by more than that."</i> [Charles H. Hamilton, 
<i>"Introduction"</i>, p. 1-19, <b>Benjamin R. Tucker and the Champions of 
Liberty</b>, Coughlin, Hamilton and Sullivan (eds.), p. 10] The repression 
after Haymarket took its toll and the progress of social anarchism was 
hindered for a decade. However, <i>"[b]y the turn of the century, the 
anarchist movement in America had become predominantly communist in 
orientation."</i> [Paul Avrich, <b>Anarchist Voices</b>, p. 5] As 
an added irony for those who stress the individualist nature of anarchism 
in America while dismissing social anarchism as a foreign import, the first 
American newspaper to use the name <b>"An-archist"</b> was published in Boston 
in 1881 by anarchists within the social revolutionary branch of the movement. 
[Paul Avrich, <b>The Haymarket Tragedy</b>, p. 57] Equally ironic, given 
the appropriation of the term by the American right, the first anarchist 
journal to use the term "libertarian" (<b>La Libertaire, Journal du Mouvement 
Social</b>) was published in New York between 1858 and 1861 by French 
communist-anarchist Joseph Déjacque. [Max Nettlau, <b>A Short History of 
Anarchism</b>, pp. 75-6]
</p><p>
All this is not to suggest that individualist anarchism does not 
have American roots nor that many of its ideas and visions were not 
significantly shaped by American social conditions and developments.
Far from it! It is simply to stress that it did not develop in 
complete isolation of European anarchism during the latter half of
the nineteenth century and that the social anarchism which overtook 
by the end of that century was also a product of American conditions
(in this case, the transformation of a pre-capitalist society into
a capitalist one). In other words, the rise of communist anarchism and 
the decline of individualist anarchism by the end of the nineteenth 
century reflected American society just as much as the development 
of the latter in the first place. Thus the rise of capitalism in 
America meant the rise of an anarchism more suitable to the social 
conditions and social relationships produced by that change. 
Unsurprisingly, therefore, individualist anarchism remains the 
minority trend in American anarchism to this day with such comrades
as Joe Peacott (see his pamphlet <b>Individualism Reconsidered</b>),
Kevin Carson (see his book <b>Studies in Mutualist Political 
Economy</b>) and Shawn Wilbur (who has painstakingly placed many rare
early individualist and mutualist anarchist works onto the internet) keeping 
its ideas alive.
</p><p>
So like social anarchism, individualist anarchism developed as a 
response to the rise of capitalism and the transformation of 
American society this produced. As one academic put it, the 
<i>"early anarchists, though staunchly individualistic, did 
not entertain a penchant for . . . capitalism. Rather, they saw 
themselves as socialists opposed to the state socialism of Karl 
Marx. The individualist anarchists saw no contradiction between 
their individualist stance and their rejection of capitalism."</i> 
She stresses that they were <i>"fervent anti-capitalists"</i> and 
thought that <i>"workers created value through their labour, a value 
appropriated by owners of businesses . . . The individualist anarchists
blamed capitalism for creating inhumane working conditions and for 
increasing  inequalities of wealth. Their self-avowed 'socialism' 
was rooted in their firm belief in equality, material as well as legal."</i> 
This, however, did not stop her asserting that <i>"contemporary 
anarcho-capitalists are descendants of nineteenth-century individualist 
anarchists such as Josiah Warren, Lysander Spooner, and Benjamin Tucker."</i> 
[Susan Love Brown, pp. 99-128, <i>"The Free Market as Salvation from Government"</i>, 
<b>Meanings of the Market</b>, James G. Carrier (ed.), p. 104, p. 107, p. 104 
and p. 103] Trust an academic to ignore the question of how related <b>are</b> 
two theories which differ on such a key issue as whether to be anti-capitalist 
or not!
</p><p>
Needless to say, some "anarcho"-capitalists are well aware of the
fact that individualist anarchists were extremely hostile to
capitalism while supporting the "free market." Unsurprisingly,
they tend to downplay this opposition, often arguing that the
anarchists who point out the anti-capitalist positions of the
likes of Tucker and Spooner are quoting them out of context.
The truth is different. In fact, it is the "anarcho"-capitalist
who takes the ideas of the individualist anarchists from both
the historical and theoretical context. This can be seen from 
the "anarcho"-capitalist dismissal of the individualist anarchists'
"bad" economics as well as the nature of the free society wanted
by them.
</p><p>
It is possible, no doubt, to trawl through the many issues of, say, 
<b>Liberty</b> or the works of individualist anarchism to find a few 
comments which may be used to bolster a claim that anarchism need
not imply socialism. However, a few scattered comments here and
there are hardly a firm basis to ignore the vast bulk of anarchist
theory and its history as a movement. This is particularly the case
when applying this criteria consistently would mean that communist
anarchism, for example, would be excommunicated from anarchism simply 
because of the opinions of <b>some</b> individualist anarchists. 
Equally, it may be possible to cobble together all the non-anarchist
positions of individualist anarchists and so construct an ideology
which justified wage labour, the land monopoly, usury, intellectual
property rights, and so on but such an ideology would be nothing more 
than a mockery of individualist anarchism, distinctly at odds with 
its spirits and aims. It would only convince those ignorant of the 
anarchist tradition.
</p><p>
It is not a fitting tribute to the individualist anarchists that their
ideas are today being associated with the capitalism that they so clearly
despised and wished to abolish. As one modern day Individualist Anarchist
argues:
</p><p><blockquote><i>
"It is time that anarchists recognise the valuable contributions
of . . . individualist anarchist theory and take advantage of its
ideas. It would be both futile and criminal to leave it to the 
capitalist libertarians, whose claims on Tucker and the others 
can be made only by ignoring the violent opposition they had to
capitalist exploitation and monopolistic 'free enterprise' 
supported by the state."</i> [J.W. Baker, <i>"Native American Anarchism,"</i>
pp. 43-62, <b>The Raven</b>, vol. 10, no. 1, pp. 61-2]
</blockquote>
</p><p>
We hope that this section of the FAQ will go some way to explaining the
ideas and contributions of individualist anarchism to a new generation 
of rebels. Given the diversity of individualist anarchism, it is hard
to generalise about it (some are closer to classical liberalism than 
others, for example, while a few embraced revolutionary means of change
such as Dyer Lum). However, we will do our best to draw out the common 
themes of the movement, indicating where certain people differed from 
others. Similarly, there are distinct differences between European and 
American forms of mutualism, regardless of how often Tucker invoked
Proudhon's name to justify his own interpretations of anarchism and 
we will indicate these (these differences, we think, justify calling 
the American branch individualist anarchism rather than mutualism). We 
will also seek to show why social anarchism rejects individualist 
anarchism (and vice versa) as well as giving a critical evaluation of 
both positions. Given the diverse nature of individualist anarchism, 
we are sure that we will not cover all the positions and individuals 
associated with it but we hope to present enough to indicate why the 
likes of Tucker, Labadie, Yarros and Spooner deserve better than 
to be reduced to footnotes in books defending an even more extreme
version of the capitalism they spent their lives fighting.</p>

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