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<title>G.5 Benjamin Tucker: Capitalist or Anarchist?</title>

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<h1>G.5 Benjamin Tucker: Capitalist or Anarchist?</h1>
<p>
Benjamin Tucker, like all genuine anarchists, was against both the state and 
capitalism, against both oppression and exploitation. While not against the 
market and property he was firmly against capitalism as it was, in his eyes, 
a state-supported monopoly of social capital (tools, machinery, etc.) which 
allows owners to exploit their employees, i.e., to avoid paying workers the 
full value of their labour. He thought that the <i>"labouring classes are 
deprived of their earnings by usury in its three forms, interest, rent and 
profit."</i> [quoted by James J. Martin, <b>Men Against the State</b>, 
p. 210f] Therefore <i>"Liberty will abolish interest; it will abolish profit; 
it will abolish monopolistic rent; it will abolish taxation; it will abolish 
the exploitation of labour; it will abolish all means whereby any labourer
can be deprived of any of his product."</i> [<b>The Individualist Anarchists</b>, 
p. 157]
</p><p>
This stance puts him squarely in the libertarian socialist tradition
and, unsurprisingly, Tucker referred to himself many times as a socialist
and considered his philosophy to be <i>"Anarchistic socialism."</i> For
Tucker, capitalist society was exploitative and stopped the full development 
of all and so had to be replaced:
</p><p><blockquote>
<i>"[This] society is fundamentally anti-social. The whole so-called social 
fabric rests on privilege and power, and is disordered and strained 
in every direction by the inequalities that necessarily result 
therefrom. The welfare of each, instead of contributing to that 
of all, as it naturally should and would, almost invariably detracts
from that of all. Wealth is made by legal privilege a hook with which
to filch from labour's pockets. Every man who gets rich thereby makes
his neighbours poor. The better off one is, the worse the rest are . . . 
Labour's Deficit is precisely equal to the Capitalist's Efficit.
</p><p> 
"Now, Socialism wants to change all this. Socialism says . . . that no man 
shall be able to add to his riches except by labour; that is adding
to his riches by his labour alone no man makes another man poorer;
that on the contrary every man this adding to his riches makes every
other man richer; . . . that every increase in capital in the hands of
the labourer tends, in the absence of legal monopoly, to put more products,
better products, cheaper products, and a greater variety of products
within the reach of every man who works; and that this fact means the
physical, mental, and moral perfecting of mankind, and the realisation
of human fraternity."</i> [<b>Instead of a Book</b>, pp. 361-2]
</blockquote></p><p>
It is true that he also sometimes railed against "socialism," but in those 
cases it is clear that he was referring to <b>state</b> socialism. Like many 
anarchists (including Proudhon, Bakunin and Kropotkin), he argued that there 
are two kinds of socialism based upon two different principles:
</p><p><blockquote>
<i>"The two principles referred to are Authority and Liberty, and the names 
of the two schools of Socialistic thought which fully and unreservedly
represent one or the other of them are, respectively, State Socialism and
Anarchism. Whoso knows what these two schools want and how they propose to
get it understands the Socialistic movement. For, just as it has been said
that there is no half-way house between Rome and Reason, so it may be said
that there is no half-way house between State Socialism and Anarchism."</i>
[<b>The Anarchist Reader</b>, p. 150]
</blockquote>
Like other socialists, Tucker argued that profits <i>"to a few mean robbery 
of others, -- monopoly. Andrews and Warren, realising this, make individual 
sovereignty <b>and</b> the cost principle the essential conditions of a true 
civilisation."</i> [<b>Liberty</b>, no. 94, p. 1] Like Proudhon, he argued that 
<i>"property, in the sense of individual possession, is liberty."</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b>, 
no. 122, p. 4] However, unlike state socialists and communist-anarchists, Tucker 
saw a key role for a market system under socialism. In this he followed Proudhon 
who also argued that competition was required to ensure that prices reflected the 
labour costs involved in producing it and so interest, rent and profit were opposed 
because they did not reflect actual costs but simply usury paid to the wealthy 
for being allowed to use part of their wealth, a part the rich could comfortably 
lend out to others as they were not using it. Once capitalism was abolished, the 
market would be able to reach its full promise and become a means of enriching 
all rather than the few:
</p><p><blockquote><i>
"Liberty's aim -- universal happiness -- is that of all Socialists, in contrast 
with that of the Manchester men -- luxury fed by misery. But its principle -- 
individual sovereignty -- is that of the Manchester men, in contrast with that 
of the Socialists -- individual subordination. But individual sovereignty, 
<b>when logically carried out</b>, leads, not to luxury fed by misery, but to 
comfort for all industrious persons and death for all idle ones."</i> [<b>Liberty</b>, 
no. 89, p. 1]
</blockquote></p><p>
As other anarchists have also argued, likewise for Tucker -- the state is the 
<i>"protector"</i> of the exploiter. <i>"Usury is the serpent gnawing at labour's
vitals, and only liberty can detach and kill it. Give labourers their liberty 
and they will keep their wealth."</i> [<b>The Individualist Anarchists</b>, p. 89]
From this it is clear that he considered laissez-faire capitalism to be opposed
to genuine individual sovereignty. This was because it was based on the state
interfering in the market by enforcing certain restrictions on competition in 
favour of the capitalist class and certain types of private property. Thus his
opposition to the state reflected his opposition to capitalist property rights
and the abolition of the state automatically meant their abolition as well.
</p><p>
Tucker spent considerable time making it clear that he was against capitalist 
private property rights, most notably in land and what was on it. He supported 
Proudhon's argument that <i>"property is theft,"</i> even translating many of 
Proudhon's works including the classic <i>"What is Property?"</i> where that 
phrase originated. Tucker advocated <b>possession</b> (or <i>"occupancy and use,"</i>
to use his preferred expression for the concept) but not private property, 
believing that empty land, houses, and so on should be squatted by those who could 
use them, as labour (i.e. use) would be the only title to "property" (Tucker 
opposed all non-labour income as usury). For Tucker, the true <i>"Anarchistic 
doctrine"</i> was <i>"occupancy and use as the basis and limit of land ownership."</i> 
Supporting the current property rights regime meant <i>"departing from Anarchistic 
ground."</i> It was <i>"Archism"</i> and <i>"all Anarchists agree in viewing [it] 
as a denial of equal liberty"</i> and <i>"utterly inconsistent with the Anarchistic 
doctrine of occupancy and use as the limit of property in land."</i> [<b>Liberty</b>, 
no. 180, p. 4 and p. 6] He looked forward to the day when <i>"the Anarchistic view 
that occupancy and use should condition and limit landholding becomes the prevailing 
view."</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b>, no. 162, p. 5]
</p><p>
This was because Tucker did not believe in a <i>"natural right"</i> to property 
nor did he approve of unlimited holdings of scarce goods and <i>"in the case of 
land, or of any other material the supply of which is so limited that all cannot 
hold it in unlimited quantities, Anarchism undertakes to protect no titles except 
such as are based on actual occupancy and use."</i> [<b>Instead of a Book</b>, 
p. 61] He clearly recognised that allowing "absolute" rights to private property 
in land would result in the liberty of non-owners being diminished and so <i>"I 
put the right of occupancy and use above the right of contract . . . principally 
by my interest in the right of contract. Without such a preference the theory of 
occupancy and use is utterly untenable; without it . . . it would be possible for 
an individual to acquire, and hold simultaneously, virtual titles to innumerable 
parcels of land, by the merest show of labour performed thereon.</i> This would 
lead to <i>"the virtual ownership of the entire world by a small fraction of its 
inhabitants"</i> which would result in <i>"the right of contract, if not destroyed 
absolutely, would surely be impaired in an intolerable degree."</i> [<b>Liberty</b>, 
no. 350, p. 4] Thus <i>"[i]t is true . . . that Anarchism does not recognise the 
principle of human rights. But it recognises human equality as a necessity of 
stable society."</i> [<b>Instead of a Book</b>, p. 64]
</p><p>
So Tucker considered private property in land use (which he called the <i>"land 
monopoly"</i>) as one of the four great evils of capitalism. According to Tucker, 
<i>"the land monopoly . . . consists in the enforcement by government of land 
titles which do not rest upon personal occupancy and cultivation . . . the 
individual should no longer be protected by their fellows in anything but personal 
occupation and cultivation of land."</i> <i>"Rent"</i>, he argued, <i>"is due to 
the denial of liberty which takes the shape of the land monopoly, vesting titles 
to land in individuals and associations which do not use it, and thereby compelling 
the non-owning users to pay tribute to the non-using owners as a condition of 
admission to the competitive market."</i> the land <i>"should be free to all, and no 
one would control more than he [or she] used."</i> [<b>The Individualist Anarchists</b>, 
p. 85, p. 130 and p. 114] Ending this monopoly would, he thought, reduce the evils 
of capitalism and increase liberty (particularly in predominantly agricultural
societies such as the America of his era). For those who own no property have 
no room for the soles of their feet unless they have the permission of those 
who do own property, hardly a situation that would increase, never mind protect, 
freedom for all. Significantly, Tucker extended this principle to what was on 
the land, and so Tucker would <i>"accord the actual occupant and user of land 
the right to that which is upon the land, who left it there when abandoning the 
land."</i> [<b>Liberty</b>, no. 350, p. 4] The freedom to squat empty land and buildings
would, in the absence of a state to protect titles, further contribute to the 
elimination of rent:
</p><p><blockquote>
<i>"Ground rent exists only because the State stands by to collect it and to
protect land titles rooted in force or fraud. Otherwise land would be free
to all, and no one could control more than he used."</i> [quoted by James J.
Martin, <b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 210]
</blockquote></p><p>
This would lead to <i>"the abolition of landlordism and the annihilation of rent."</i> 
[<b>Instead of a Book</b>, p. 300] Significantly, Tucker considered the <b>Irish Land 
League</b> (an organisation which used non-payment of rent to secure reforms against
the British state) as <i>"the nearest approach, on a large scale, to perfect 
Anarchistic organisation that the world has yet seen. An immense number of local 
groups . . . each group autonomous, each free . . . each obeying its own judgement 
. . . all co-ordinated and federated."</i> [<b>The Individualist Anarchists</b>, 
p. 263]
</p><p>
The other capitalist monopolies were based on credit, tariffs and patents and all 
were reflected in (and supported by) the law. As far as tariffs went, this was 
seen as a statist means of <i>"fostering production at high prices"</i> which 
the workers paid for. Its abolition <i>"would result in a great reduction in the
prices of all articles taxed.</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 85 and p. 86] With 
capitalists in the protected industries being unable to reap high profits, they
would be unable to accumulate capital to the same degree and so the market would 
also become more equal. As for patents, Tucker considered that there was <i>"no 
more justification for the claim of the discoverer of an idea to exclusive use 
of it than there would have been for a claim on the part of the man who first 
'struck oil' to ownership of the entire oil region or petroleum product . . . 
The central injustice of copyright and patent law is that it compels the race 
to pay an individual through a long term of years a monopoly price for knowledge 
that he has discovered today, although some other man or men might, and in many 
cases very probably would, have discovered it tomorrow."</i> [<b>Liberty</b>,
no. 173, p. 4] The state, therefore, protects the inventors (or, these days,
the company the inventors work for) <i>"against competition for a period long
enough to enable them to extort from the people a reward enormously in excess
of the labour measure of their services -- in other words, in giving certain
people a right of property for a term of years in laws and facts of Nature, and
the power to extract tribute from others for the use of this natural wealth, 
which should be open to all."</i> [<b>The Individualist Anarchists</b>, p. 86]
</p><p>
However, the key monopoly was the credit monopoly. Tucker believed that bankers 
monopoly of the power to create credit and currency was the linchpin of capitalism. 
Although he thought that all forms of monopoly are detrimental to society, he 
maintained that the banking monopoly is the worst, since it is the root from which 
both the industrial-capitalist and landlordist monopolies grow and without which
they would wither and die. For, if credit were not monopolised, its price (i.e. 
interest rates) would be much lower, which in turn would drastically lower the 
price of capital goods and buildings -- expensive items that generally cannot be 
purchased without access to credit. This would mean that the people currently
<i>"deterred from going into business by the ruinously high rates they must pay
for capital with which to start and carry on business will find their difficulties
removed"</i> (they would simply <i>"pay for the labour of running the banks"</i>).
This <i>"facility of acquiring capital will give an unheard of impetus to business, 
and consequently create an unprecedented demand for labour -- a demand which will 
always be in excess of the supply, directly to the contrary of the present condition 
of the labour market . . . Labour will then be in a position to dictate its wages."</i> 
[<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 84 and p. 85]
</p><p>
Following Proudhon, Tucker argued that if any group of people could legally form a 
"mutual bank" and issue credit based on any form of collateral they saw fit to 
accept, the price of credit would fall to the labour cost of the paperwork involved 
in running the bank. He claimed that banking statistics show this cost to be less 
than one percent of principal, and hence, that a one-time service fee which covers
this cost and no more is the only <b>non-usurious</b> charge a bank can make for 
extending credit. This charge should not be called "interest" since, as it represented 
the labour-cost in providing, it is non-exploitative. This would ensure that workers
could gain free access to the means of production (and so, in effect, be the 
individualist equivalent of the communist-anarchist argument for socialisation).
</p><p>
Tucker believed that under mutual banking, capitalists' ability to extract surplus 
value from workers in return for the use of tools, machinery, etc. would be eliminated 
because workers would be able to obtain zero-interest credit and use it to buy their 
own instruments of production instead of "renting" them, as it were, from capitalists.
<i>"Make capital free by organising credit on a mutual plan,"</i> stressed Tucker, 
<i>"and then these vacant lands will come into use . . . operatives will be able to 
buy axes and rakes and hoes, and then they will be independent of their employers, 
and then the labour problem will solved."</i> [<b>Instead of a Book</b>, p. 321] 
Easy access to mutual credit would result in a huge increase in the purchase of 
capital goods, creating a high demand for labour, which in turn would greatly 
increase workers' bargaining power and thus raise their wages toward equivalence 
with the value their labour produces. 
</p><p>
For Tucker, reforms had to be applied at the heart of the system and so he rejected 
the notion of setting up intentional communities based on anarchist principles in
the countryside or in other countries. <i>"Government makes itself felt alike in 
city and in country,"</i> he argued, <i>"capital has its usurious grip on the farm 
as surely as on the workshop, and the oppression and exactions of neither government 
nor capital can be avoided by migration. The State is the enemy, and the best means 
of fighting it can be found in communities already existing."</i> He stressed that 
<i>"I care nothing for any reform that cannot be effected right here in Boston 
among the every day people whom I meet in the streets."</i> [quoted by Martin, 
<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 249 and p. 248]
</p><p>
It should be noted that while his social and political vision remained mostly
the same over his lifetime, Tucker's rationale for his system changed significantly.
Originally, like the rest of the American individualist anarchist tradition he
subscribed to a system of natural rights. Thus he advocated "occupancy and use"
based on a person's right to have access to the means of life as well as its
positive effects on individual liberty. However, under the influence of Max
Stirner's book <b>The Ego and Its Own</b>, Tucker along with many of his 
comrades, became egoists (see <a href="secG6.html">next section</a> for a
discussion of Stirner). This resulted in Tucker arguing that while previously
<i>"it was my habit to talk glibly of the right of man to land"</i> this was
<i>"a bad habit, and I long ago sloughed it off."</i> Now a person's <i>"only
right over the land is his might over it."</i> [<b>Instead of a Book</b>, p. 350]
Contracts were seen as the means of securing the peaceful preservation of
the ego's personality as it would be against a person's self-interest to
aggress against others (backed-up, of course, by means of freely joined defence 
associations). It should be noted that the issue of egoism split the individualist
anarchist movement and lead to its further decline.
</p><p>
Tucker's ideal society was one of small entrepreneurs, farmers, artisans, 
independent contractors and co-operative associations based around a 
network of mutual banks. He looked to alternative institutions such as 
co-operative banks and firms, schools and trade unions, combined
with civil disobedience in the form of strikes, general strikes, tax and 
rent strikes and boycotts to bring anarchism closer. He was firm supporter
of the labour movement and <i>"strikes, whenever and wherever inaugurated, 
deserve encouragement from all the friends of labour . . . They show that 
people are beginning to know their rights, and knowing, dare to maintain 
them."</i> Echoing Bakunin's thoughts on the subject, Tucker maintained 
that strikes should be supported and encouraged because <i>"as an awakening 
agent, as an agitating force, the beneficent influence of a strike is 
immeasurable . . . with our present economic system almost every strike is 
just. For what is justice in production and distribution? That labour, which 
creates all, shall have <b>all.</b>"</i> [<b>Liberty</b>, no. 19, p. 7] While 
critical of certain aspects of trade unionism, Tucker was keen to stress that 
<i>"it is not to be denied for a moment that workingmen are obliged to unite 
and act together in order, not to successfully contend with, but to defend 
themselves at least to some extent from, the all-powerful possessors of 
natural wealth and capital."</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b>, no. 158, p. 1]
</p><p>
Like the anarcho-syndicalists and many other social anarchists, Tucker
considered Labour unions as a positive development, being a <i>"crude step 
in the direction of supplanting the State"</i> and involved a <i>"movement 
for self-government on the part of the people, the logical outcome of which 
is ultimate revolt against those usurping political conspiracies which manifest 
themselves in courts and legislatures. Just as the [Irish] Land League has 
become a formidable rival of the British State, so the amalgamated trades 
unions may yet become a power sufficiently strong to defy the legislatures 
and overthrow them."</i> Thus unions were <i>"a potent sign of emancipation."</i> 
Indeed, he called the rise of the unions <i>"trades-union socialism,"</i> saw 
in it a means of <i>"supplanting"</i> the state by <i>"an intelligent and 
self-governing socialism"</i> and indicated that <i>"imperfect as they are, 
they are the beginnings of a revolt against the authority of the political 
State. They promise the coming substitution of industrial socialism for 
usurping legislative mobism."</i> [<b>The Individualist Anarchists</b>, 
pp. 283-284] Hence we see the co-operative nature of the voluntary 
organisations supported by Tucker and a vision of socialism being based 
on self-governing associations of working people.
</p><p>
In this way working people would reform capitalism away by non-violent 
social protest combined with an increase in workers' bargaining power by 
alternative voluntary institutions and free credit. Exploitation would be 
eliminated and workers would gain economic liberty. His ideal society would
be classless, with <i>"each man reaping the fruit of his labour and no man 
able to live in idleness on an income from capital"</i> and society <i>"would 
become a great hive of Anarchistic workers, prosperous and free individuals."</i> 
While, like all anarchists, he rejected <i>"abolute equality"</i> he did 
envision an egalitarian society whose small differences in wealth were 
rooted in labour, not property, and so liberty, while abolishing exploitation, 
would <i>"not abolish the limited inequality between one labourer's product 
and another's . . . Liberty will ultimately make all men rich; it will not 
make all men equally rich."</i> [<b>The Individualist Anarchists</b>, p. 276, 
p. 156 and p. 157] He firmly believed that the <i>"most perfect Socialism is 
possible only on the condition of the most perfect individualism."</i> [quoted 
by Peter Marshall, <b>Demanding the Impossible</b>, p. 390]
</p><p>
As we noted in <a href="secG1.html#secg13">section G.1.3</a>, there is one
apparent area of disagreement between Tucker and most other socialists, namely
the issue of wage labour. For almost all anarchists the employer/employee social 
relationship does not fit in well with Tucker's statement that <i>"if the 
individual has the right to govern himself, all external government is tyranny."</i> 
[<b>The Individualist Anarchists</b>, p. 86] However, even here the differences 
are not impossible to overcome. It is important to note that because of Tucker's 
proposal to increase the bargaining power of workers through access to mutual 
credit, his individualist anarchism is not only compatible with workers' control 
but would in fact <b>promote</b> it (as well as logically requiring it -- see 
<a href="secG4.html#secg41">section G.4.1</a>). 
</p><p>
For if access to mutual credit were to increase the bargaining power of 
workers to the extent that Tucker claimed it would, they would then 
be able to: (1) demand and get workplace democracy; and (2) pool their 
credit to buy and own companies collectively. This would eliminate the 
top-down structure of the firm and the ability of owners to pay themselves 
unfairly large salaries as well as reducing capitalist profits to zero by 
ensuring that workers received the full value of their labour. Tucker himself 
pointed this out when he argued that Proudhon (like himself) <i>"would 
individualise and associate"</i> workplaces by mutualism, which would 
<i>"place the means of production within the reach of all."</i> [quoted by 
Martin, <b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 228] Proudhon used the word <i>"associate"</i> 
to denote co-operative (i.e. directly democratic) workplaces (and given 
Proudhon's comments  -- quoted in <a href="secG4.html#secg42">section G.4.2</a> 
-- on capitalist firms we can dismiss any attempt to suggest that the term 
<i>"individualise"</i> indicates support for capitalist rather than 
artisan/peasant production, which is the classic example of individualised 
production). For as Proudhon recognised, only a system without wage slavery 
(and so exploitation) would ensure the goal of all anarchists: <i>"the greatest 
amount of liberty compatible with equality of liberty."</i> [Tucker, <b>Instead 
of a Book</b>, p. 131] 
</p><p>
Thus the logical consequence of Tucker's proposals would be a system equivalent 
in most important respects to the kind of system advocated by other left 
libertarians. In terms of aspirations, Tucker's ideas reflected those of 
social anarchists -- a form of socialism rooted in individual liberty. His
fire was directed against the same targets, exploitation and oppression and
so state and capital. He aimed for a society without inequalities of wealth
where it would be impossible to exploit another's labour and where free access
to the means of life were secured by mutual banking and "occupancy and use"
applied to land and what was on it. He considered laissez-faire capitalism to
be a system of state-supported privilege rather than as an ideal to be aimed
for. He argued extensively that getting rid of the state would mean getting
rid of capitalist property rights and so, like other anarchists, he did not
artificially divide economic and political issues. In other words, like social
anarchists, he was against the state because it protected specific kinds of 
private property, kinds which allowed its owners to extract tribute from labour.
</p><p>
In summary, then, Tucker <i>"remained a left rather than a right-wing libertarian."</i> 
[Marshall, <b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 391] When he called himself a socialist he knew well
what it meant and systematically fought those (usually, as today, Marxists and 
capitalists) who sought to equate it with state ownership. John Quail, in his 
history of British Anarchism, puts his finger on the contextual implications and 
limitations of Tucker's ideas when he wrote: 
</p><p><blockquote>
<i>"Tucker was a Proudhonist and thus fundamentally committed to a society based 
on small proprietorship. In the American context, however, where the small 
landowner was often locked in battle with large capitalist interests, this did 
not represent the reactionary position it often did later where it could easily
degenerate into an 'Anarchism for small business-men.' Tucker had a keen 
sense of the right of the oppressed to struggle against oppression."</i> 
[<b>The Slow Burning Fuse</b>, p. 19]
</blockquote></p><p>
As we stressed in <a href="secG1.html#secg14">section G.1.4</a>, many of Tucker's
arguments can only be fully understood in the context of the society in which he
developed them, namely the transformation of America from a pre-capitalist into
a capitalist one by means of state intervention (the process of <i>"primitive 
accumulation"</i> to use Marx's phrase -- see <a href="secF8.html#secf85">section F.8.5</a>).
At that time, it was possible to argue that access to credit would allow workers
to set-up business and undermine big business. However, eventually Tucker had come
to argue that this possibility had effectively ended and even the freest market
would not be able to break-up the economic power of corporations and trusts (see 
<a href="secG1.html#secg11">section G.1.1</a>). 
</p><p>
In this, ironically, Tucker came to the same conclusion as his old enemy Johann 
Most had done three decades previously. In the 1880s, Tucker had argued that
wage labour would be non-exploitative under individualist anarchy. This was part
of the reason why Most had excommunicated Tucker from anarchism, for he thought 
that Tucker's system could not, by definition, end exploitation due to its 
tolerance of wage labour, an argument Tucker disputed but did not disprove (see 
<a href="secG4.html">section G.4.1</a> for more discussion on this issue). In
1888 Tucker had speculated that <i>"the question whether large concentrations 
of capital for production on the large scale confronts us with the disagreeable 
alternative of either abolishing private property or continuing to hold labour 
under the capitalistic yoke."</i> [<b>Liberty</b>, no. 122, p. 4] By 1911, he
had come to the conclusion that the latter had come to pass and considered
revolutionary or political action as the only means of breaking up such 
concentrations of wealth (although he was against individualists anarchists
participating in either strategy). [Martin, <b>Op. Cit.</b>, pp. 273-4] 
In other words, Tucker recognised that economic power existed and, as a 
consequence, free markets were not enough to secure free people in conditions 
of economic inequality.
</p><p>
There are, of course, many differences between the anarchism of, say, Bakunin 
and Kropotkin and that of Tucker. Tucker's system, for example, does retain 
some features usually associated with capitalism, such as competition between 
firms in a free market. However, the fundamental socialist objection to capitalism 
is not that it involves markets or "private property" but that it results in 
exploitation. Most socialists oppose private property and markets because they 
result in exploitation and have other negative consequences rather than an 
opposition to them as such. Tucker's system was intended to eliminate 
exploitation and involves a radical change in property rights, which is why he 
called himself a socialist and why most other anarchists concurred. This is why
we find Kropotkin discussing Tucker in his general accounts of anarchism, accounts 
which note that the anarchists <i>"constitute the left wing"</i> of the socialists
and which make no comment that Tucker's ideas were any different in this respect. 
[<b>Anarchism</b>, p. 285] A position, needless to say, Tucker also held as he 
considered his ideas as part of the wider socialist movement.
</p><p>
This fact is overlooked by "anarcho"-capitalists who, in seeking to make Tucker 
one of their "founding fathers," point to the fact that he spoke of the advantages 
of owning "property." But it is apparent that by "property" he was referring to 
simple "possession" of land, tools, etc. by independent artisans, farmers, and 
co-operating workers (he used the word property <i>"as denoting the labourer's 
individual possession of his product or his share of the joint product of himself 
and others."</i> [Tucker, <b>Instead of a Book</b>, p. 394]. For, since Tucker 
saw his system as eliminating the ability of capitalists to maintain exploitative 
monopolies over the means of production, it is therefore true <b>by definition</b> 
that he advocated the elimination of "private property" in the capitalist sense.
</p><p>
So while it is true that Tucker placed "property" and markets at the heart of his 
vision of anarchy, this does not make he a supporter of capitalism (see sections 
<a href="secG1.html#secg11">G.1.1</a> and <a href="secG1.html#secg12">G.1.2</a>). 
Unlike supporters of capitalism, the individualist anarchists identified "property" 
with simple "possession," or <i>"occupancy and use"</i> and considered profit, rent 
and interest as exploitation. Indeed, Tucker explicitly stated that <i>"all property 
rests on a labour title, and no other property do I favour."</i> [<b>Instead of a Book</b>, 
p. 400] Because of their critique of capitalist property rights and their explicit 
opposition to usury (profits, rent and interest) individualist anarchists like Tucker 
could and did consider themselves as part of the wider socialist movement, the 
libertarian wing as opposed to the statist/Marxist wing.
</p><p>
Thus, Tucker is clearly a left libertarian rather than a forefather of right-wing 
"libertarianism". In this he comes close to what today would be called a market 
socialist, albeit a non-statist variety. As can be seen, his views are directly 
opposed to those of right "libertarians" like Murray Rothbard on a number of key 
issues. Most fundamentally, he rejected "absolute" property rights in land which 
are protected by laws enforced either by private security forces or a "night 
watchman state." He also recognised that workers were exploited by capitalists,
who use the state to ensure that the market was skewed in their favour, and so
urged working people to organise themselves to resist such exploitation and, as
a consequence, supported unions and strikes. He recognised that while formal 
freedom may exist in an unequal society, it could not be an anarchy due to the
existence of economic power and the exploitation and limitations in freedom it 
produced. His aim was a society of equals, one in which wealth was equally
distributed and any differences would be minor and rooted in actual work done 
rather than by owning capital or land and making others produce it for them. 
This clearly indicates that Rothbard's claim to have somehow modernised Tucker's 
thought is <b>false</b> -- "ignored" or "changed beyond recognition" would be more 
appropriate.</p> 

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