          G.4 Why do social anarchists reject individualist anarchism?

   As James J. Martin notes, "paralleling" European social anarchism
   "chronologically was a kindred but nearly unconnected phenomenon in
   America, seeking the same ends through individualistic rather than
   collectivistic dynamics." [Men Against the State, p. ix]

   When the two movements meet in American in the 1880s, the similarities
   and differences of both came into sharp relief. While both social and
   individualist anarchists reject capitalism as well as the state and
   seek an end to the exploitation of labour by capital (i.e. to usury in
   all its forms), both schools of anarchism rejected each others
   solutions to the social problem. The vision of the social anarchists
   was more communally based, urging social ownership of the means of
   life. In contrast, reflecting the pre-dominantly pre-capitalist nature
   of post-revolution US society, the Individualist Anarchists urged
   possession of the means of life and mutual banking to end profit,
   interest and rent and ensure every worker access to the capital they
   needed to work for themselves (if they so desired). While social
   anarchists placed co-operatives (i.e., workers' self-management) at the
   centre of their vision of a free society, many individualist anarchists
   did not as they thought that mutual banking would end exploitation by
   ensuring that workers received the full product of their labour.

   Thus their vision of a free society and the means to achieve it were
   somewhat different (although, we stress, not mutually exclusive as
   communist anarchists supported artisan possession of the means of
   possession for those who rejected communism and the Individualist
   Anarchists supported voluntary communism). Tucker argued that a
   communist could not be an anarchist and the communist-anarchists argued
   that Individualist Anarchism could not end the exploitation of capital
   by labour. Here we indicate why social anarchists reject individualist
   anarchism (see [1]section G.2 for a summary of why Individualist
   Anarchists reject social anarchism).

   Malatesta summarises the essential points of difference as well as the
   source of much of the misunderstandings:

     "The individualists assume, or speak as if they assumed, that the
     (anarchist) communists wish to impose communism, which of course
     would put them right outside the ranks of anarchism.

     "The communists assume, or speak as if they assumed, that the
     (anarchist) individualists reject every idea of association, want
     the struggle between men, the domination of the strongest -- and
     this would put them not only outside the anarchist movement but
     outside humanity.

     "In reality those who are communists are such because they see in
     communism freely accepted the realisation of brotherhood, and the
     best guarantee for individual freedom. And individualists, those who
     are really anarchists, are anti-communist because they fear that
     communism would subject individuals nominally to the tyranny of the
     collectivity and in fact to that of the party or caste which, with
     the excuse of administering things, would succeed in taking
     possession of the power to dispose of material things and thus of
     the people who need them. Therefore they want each individual, or
     each group, to be in a position to enjoy freely the product of their
     labour in conditions of equality with other individuals and groups,
     with whom they would maintain relations of justice and equity.

     "In which case it is clear that there is no basic difference between
     us. But, according to the communists, justice and equity are, under
     natural conditions impossible of attainment in an individualistic
     society, and thus freedom too would not be attained.

     "If climatic conditions throughout the world were the same, if the
     land were everywhere equally fertile, if raw materials were evenly
     distributed and within reach of all who needed them, if social
     development were the same everywhere in the world . . . then one
     could conceive of everyone . . . finding the land, tools and raw
     materials needed to work and produce independently, without
     exploiting or being exploited. But natural and historical conditions
     being what they are, how is it possible to establish equality and
     justice between he who by chance finds himself with a piece of arid
     land which demands much labour for small returns with him who has a
     piece of fertile and well sited land?" Of between the inhabitant of
     a village lost in the mountains or in the middle of a marshy area,
     with the inhabitants of a city which hundreds of generations of man
     have enriched with all the skill of human genius and labour?
     [Errico Malatesta: His Life and Ideas, pp. 31-2]

   The social anarchist opposition to individualist anarchism, therefore,
   resolves around the issues of inequality, the limitations and negative
   impact of markets and whether wage-labour is consistent with anarchist
   principles (both in general and in terms of individualist anarchism
   itself). We discuss the issue of wage labour and anarchist principles
   in the [2]next section and argue in [3]section G.4.2 that Tucker's
   support for wage-labour, like any authoritarian social relationship,
   ensures that this is an inconsistent form of anarchism. Here we
   concentration on issues of inequality and markets.

   First, we must stress that individualist anarchism plays an important
   role in reminding all socialists that capitalism does not equal the
   market. Markets have existed before capitalism and may, if we believe
   market socialists like David Schweickart and free market socialists
   like Benjamin Tucker and Kevin Carson, even survive it. While some
   socialists (particularly Leninists echoing, ironically, supporters of
   capitalism) equate capitalism with the market, this is not the case.
   Capitalism is a specific form of market economy based on certain kinds
   of property rights which result in generalised wage labour and
   non-labour incomes (exploitation). This means that the libertarian
   communist critique of capitalism is to a large degree independent of
   its critique of markets and their negative impact. Equally, the
   libertarian communist critique of markets, while applicable to
   capitalism, applies to other kinds of economy. It is fair to say,
   though, that capitalism tends to intensify and worsen the negative
   effects of markets.

   Second, we must also note that social anarchists are a diverse grouping
   and include the mutualism of Proudhon, Bakunin's collectivism and
   Kropotkin's communism. All share a common hostility to wage labour and
   recognise, to varying degrees, that markets tend to have negative
   aspects which can undermine the libertarian nature of a society. While
   Proudhon was the social anarchist most in favour of competition, he was
   well aware of the need for self-managed workplaces to federate together
   to protect themselves from its negative aspects -- aspects he discussed
   at length. His "agro-industrial federation" was seen as a means of
   socialising the market, of ensuring that competition would not reach
   such levels as to undermine the freedom and equality of those within
   it. Individualist anarchists, in contrast, tended not to discuss the
   negative effects of markets in any great depth (if at all), presumably
   because they thought that most of the negative effects would disappear
   along with capitalism and the state. Other anarchists are not so
   optimistic.

   So, two key issues between social and individualist anarchism are the
   related subjects of property and competition. As Voltairine de Cleyre
   put it when she was an individualist anarchist:

     "She and I hold many differing views on both Economy and Morals . .
     . Miss Goldmann [sic!] is a communist; I am an individualist. She
     wishes to destroy the right of property, I wish to assert it. I make
     my war upon privilege and authority, whereby the right of property,
     the true right in that which is proper to the individual, is
     annihilated. She believes that co-operation would entirely supplant
     competition; I hold that competition in one form or another will
     always exist, and that it is highly desirable it should." [The
     Voltairine de Cleyre Reader, p. 9]

   The question of "property" is subject to much confusion and distortion.
   It should be stressed that both social and individualist anarchists
   argue that the only true property is that produced by labour (mental
   and physical) and capitalism results in some of that being diverted to
   property owners in the form of interest, rent and profits. Where they
   disagree is whether it is possible and desirable to calculate an
   individual's contribution to social production, particularly within a
   situation of joint labour. For Tucker, it was a case of creating "the
   economic law by which every man may get the equivalent of his product."
   [quoted by George Woodcock and Ivan Avakumovic, The Anarchist Prince,
   p. 279] Social anarchists, particularly communist ones, question
   whether it is possible in reality to discover such a thing in any
   society based on joint labour ("which it would be difficult to imagine
   could exist in any society where there is the least complexity of
   production." [George Woodcock and Ivan Avakumovic, Op. Cit., p. 280]).

   This was the crux of Kropotkin's critique of the various schemes of
   "labour money" and "labour vouchers" raised by other schools of
   socialism (like mutualism, collectivism and various state socialist
   systems). They may abolish wage labour (or, at worse, create state
   capitalism) but they did not abolish the wages system, i.e., payment
   according to work done. This meant that a system of individualist
   distribution was forced upon a fundamentally co-operative system of
   production and so was illogical and unjust (see Kropotkin's "The
   Collectivist Wage System" in The Conquest of Bread). Thus Daniel
   Gurin:

     "This method of remuneration, derived from modified individualism,
     is in contradiction to collective ownership of the means of
     production, and cannot bring about a profound revolutionary change
     in man. It is incompatible with anarchism; a new form of ownership
     requires a new form of remuneration. Service to the community cannot
     be measured in units of money. Needs will have to be given
     precedence over services, and all the products of the labour of all
     must belong to all, each to take his share of them freely. To each
     according to his need should be the motto of libertarian communism."
     [Anarchism, p. 50]

   Simply put, wages rarely reflect the actual contribution of a specific
   person to social well-being and production nor do they reflect their
   actual needs. To try and get actual labour income to reflect the actual
   contribution to society would be, communist-anarchists argued,
   immensely difficult. How much of a product's price was the result of
   better land or more machinery, luck, the willingness to externalise
   costs, and so on? Voltairine de Cleyre summarised this problem and the
   obvious solution:

     "I concluded that as to the question of exchange and money, it was
     so exceedingly bewildering, so impossible of settlement among the
     professors themselves, as to the nature of value, and the
     representation of value, and the unit of value, and the numberless
     multiplications and divisions of the subject, that the best thing
     ordinary workingmen or women could do was to organise their industry
     so as to get rid of money altogether. I figured it this way: Im not
     any more a fool than the rest of ordinary humanity; Ive figured and
     figured away on this thing for years, and directly I thought myself
     middling straight, there came another money reformer and showed me
     the hole in that scheme, till, at last , it appears that between
     'bills of credit,' and 'labour notes' and 'time checks,' and 'mutual
     bank issues,' and 'the invariable unit of value,' none of them have
     any sense. How many thousands of years is it going to get this sort
     of thing into peoples heads by mere preaching of theories. Let it be
     this way: Let there be an end of the special monopoly on securities
     for money issues. Let every community go ahead and try some member's
     money scheme if it wants; - let every individual try it if he
     pleases. But better for the working people let them all go. Let them
     produce together, co-operatively rather than as employer and
     employed; let them fraternise group by group, let each use what he
     needs of his own product, and deposit the rest in the
     storage-houses, and let those others who need goods have them as
     occasion arises." [Exquisite Rebel, p. 62]

   And, obviously, it must be stressed that "property" in the sense of
   personal possessions would still exist in communist-anarchism. As the
   co-founder of Freedom put it:

     "Does Anarchism, then, it may be asked, acknowledge no Meum or Tuum,
     no personal property? In a society in which every man is free to
     take what he requires, it is hardly conceivable that personal
     necessaries and conveniences will not be appropriated, and difficult
     to imagine why they should not . . . When property is protected by
     no legal enactments, backed by armed force, and is unable to buy
     personal service, it resuscitation on such a scale as to be
     dangerous to society is little to be dreaded. The amount
     appropriated by each individual, and the manner of his
     appropriation, must be left to his own conscience, and the pressure
     exercised upon him by the moral sense and distinct interests of his
     neighbours." [Charlotte Wilson, Anarchist Essays, p. 24]

   To use an appropriate example, public libraries are open to all local
   residents and they are free to borrow books from the stock available.
   When the book is borrowed, others cannot come along and take the books
   from a person's home. Similarly, an individual in a communist society
   can take what they like from the common stocks and use it as they see
   fit. They do not need permission from others to do so, just as people
   freely go to public parks without requiring a vote by the local
   community on whether to allow access or not. Communism, in other words,
   does not imply community control of personal consumption nor the denial
   of individuals to appropriate and use the common stock of available
   goods. Socialised consumption does not mean "society" telling people
   what to consume but rather ensuring that all individuals have free
   access to the goods produced by all. As such, the issue is not about
   "property" in the sense of personal property but rather "property" in
   the sense of access to the means of life by those who use them. Will
   owner occupiers be able to exclude others from, say, their land and
   workplaces unless they agree to be their servants?

   Which brings us to a key issue between certain forms of individualist
   anarchism and social anarchism, namely the issue of wage labour. As
   capitalism has progressed, the size of workplaces and firms have
   increased. This has lead to a situation were ownership and use has
   divorced, with property being used by a group of individuals distinct
   from the few who are legally proclaimed to be its owners. The key
   problem arises in the case of workplaces and how do non-possessors gain
   access to them. Under social anarchism, any new members of the
   collective automatically become part of it, with the same rights and
   ability to participate in decision making as the existing ones. In
   other words, socialised production does not mean that "society" will
   allocate individuals work tasks but rather it ensures that all
   individuals have free access to the means of life. Under individualist
   anarchism, however, the situation is not as clear with some (like
   Tucker) supporting wage labour. This suggests that the holders of
   workplaces can exclude others from the means of life they possess and
   only allow them access only under conditions which create hierarchical
   social relationships between them. Thus we could have a situation in
   which the owners who actually manage their own workplaces are, in
   effect, working capitalists who hire others to do specific tasks in
   return for a wage.

   The problem is highlighted in Tucker's description of what would
   replace the current system of statism (and note he calls it "scientific
   socialism" thus squarely placing his ideas in the anti-capitalist
   camp):

     "we have something very tangible to offer , . . We offer
     non-compulsive organisation. We offer associative combination. We
     offer every possible method of voluntary social union by which men
     and women may act together for the furtherance of well-being. In
     short, we offer voluntary scientific socialism in place of the
     present compulsory, unscientific organisation which characterises
     the State and all of its ramifications." [quoted by Martin, Op.
     Cit., p. 218]

   Yet it is more than possible for voluntary social unions to be
   authoritarian and exploitative (we see this every day under
   capitalism). In other words, not every form of non-compulsive
   organisation is consistent with libertarian principles. Given Tucker's
   egoism, it is not hard to conclude that those in stronger positions on
   the market will seek to maximise their advantages and exploit those who
   are subject to their will. As he put it, "[s]o far as inherent right is
   concerned, might is the only measure. Any man . . . and any set of men
   . . . have the right, if they have the power, to kill or coerce other
   men and to make the entire world subservient to their ends. Society's
   right to enslave the individual and the individual's right to enslave
   society are only unequal because their powers are unequal." In the
   market, all contracts are based ownership of resources which exist
   before any specific contracts is made. If one side of the contract has
   more economic power than the other (say, because of their ownership of
   capital) then it staggers belief that egoists will not seek to maximise
   said advantage and so the market will tend to increase inequalities
   over time rather than reduce them. If, as Tucker argued, "Anarchic
   associations would recognise the right of individual occupants to
   combine their holdings and work them under any system they might agree
   upon, the arrangement being always terminable at will, with reversion
   to original rights" then we have the unfortunate situation where
   inequalities will undermine anarchism and defence associations arising
   which will defend them against attempts by those subject to them to use
   direct action to rectify the situation. [The Individualist Anarchists,
   p. 25 and p. 162]

   Kropotkin saw the danger, arguing that such an idea "runs against the
   feelings of equality of most of us" and "brings the would-be
   'Individualists' dangerously near to those who imagine themselves to
   represent a 'superior breed' -- those to whom we owe the State . . .
   and all other forms of oppression." [Evolution and Environment, p. 84]
   As we discuss in the [4]next section, it is clear that wage labour
   (like any hierarchical organisation) is not consistent with general
   anarchist principles and, furthermore, in direct contradiction to
   individualist anarchist principles of "occupancy and use." Only if
   "occupancy and use" is consistently applied and so wage labour replaced
   by workers associations can the inequalities associated with market
   exchanges not become so great as to destroy the equal freedom of all
   required for anarchism to work.

   Individualist anarchists reply to this criticism by arguing that this
   is derived from a narrow reading of Stirner's ideas and that they are
   in favour of universal egoism. This universal egoism and the increase
   in competition made possible by mutual banking will ensure that workers
   will have the upper-hand in the market, with the possibility of setting
   up in business themselves always available. In this way the ability of
   bosses to become autocrats is limited, as is their power to exploit
   their workers as a result. Social anarchists argue, in response, that
   the individualists tend to underestimate the problems associated with
   natural barriers to entry in an industry. This could help generate
   generalised wage labour (and so a new class of exploiters) as workers
   face the unpleasant choice of working for a successful firm, being
   unemployed or working for low wages in an industry with lower barriers
   to entry. This process can be seen under capitalism when co-operatives
   hire wage workers and not include them as members of the association
   (i.e. they exercise their ownership rights to exclude others). As
   Proudhon argued:

     "I have shown the contractor, at the birth of industry, negotiating
     on equal terms with his comrades, who have since become his workmen.
     It is plain, in fact, that this original equality was bound to
     disappear through the advantageous position of the master and the
     dependent position of the wage-workers. In vain does the law assure
     the right of each to enterprise . . . When an establishment has had
     leisure to develop itself, enlarge its foundations, ballast itself
     with capital, and assure itself a body of patrons, what can a
     workman do against a power so superior?" [System of Economical
     Contradictions, p. 202]

   Voltairine de Cleyre also came to this conclusion. Discussing the
   limitations of the Single Tax land reform, she noted that "the stubborn
   fact always came up that no man would employ another to work for him
   unless he could get more for his product than he had to pay for it, and
   that being the case, the inevitable course of exchange and re-exchange
   would be that the man having received less than the full amount, could
   buy back less than the full amount, so that eventually the unsold
   products must again accumulate in the capitalist's hands; and again the
   period of non-employment arrives." This obviously applied to
   individualist anarchism. In response to objections like this,
   individualists tend to argue that competition for labour would force
   wages to equal output. Yet this ignores natural barriers to
   competition: "it is well enough to talk of his buying hand tools, or
   small machinery which can be moved about; but what about the gigantic
   machinery necessary to the operation of a mine, or a mill? It requires
   many to work it. If one owns it, will he not make the others pay
   tribute for using it?" [Op. Cit., p. 60 and p. 61]

   As such, a free market based on wage labour would be extremely unlikely
   to produce a non-exploitative society and, consequently, it would not
   be socialist and so not anarchist. Moreover, the successful business
   person would seek to secure his or her property and power and so employ
   police to do so. "I confess that I am not in love with all these little
   states," proclaimed de Cleyre, "and it is . . . the thought of the
   anarchist policeman that has driven me out of the individualist's camp,
   wherein I for some time resided." [quoted by Eugenia C. Delamotte,
   Gates of Freedom, p. 25] This outcome can only be avoided by
   consistently applying "occupancy and use" in such as way as to
   eliminate wage labour totally. Only this can achieve a society based on
   freedom of association as well as freedom within association.

   As we noted in [5]section G.2, one of the worries of individualist
   anarchists is that social anarchism would subject individuals to group
   pressures and concerns, violating individual autonomy in the name of
   collective interests. Thus, it is argued, the individual will become of
   slave of the group in practice if not in theory under social anarchism.
   However, an inherent part of our humanity is that we associate with
   others, that we form groups and communities. To suggest that there are
   no group issues within anarchism seems at odds with reality. Taken
   literally, of course, this implies that such a version of "anarchy"
   there would be no forms of association at all. No groups, no families,
   no clubs: nothing bar the isolated individual. It implies no economic
   activity beyond the level of peasant farming and one-person artisan
   workplaces. Why? Simply because any form of organisation implies "group
   issues." Two people deciding to live together or one hundred people
   working together becomes a group, twenty people forming a football club
   becomes a group. And these people have joint interests and so group
   issues. In other words, to deny group issues is implying a social
   situation that has never existed nor ever will. Thus Kropotkin:

     "to reason in this way is to pay . . . too large a tribute to
     metaphysical dialectics, and to ignore the facts of life. It is
     impossible to conceive a society in which the affairs of any one of
     its members would not concern many other members, if not all; still
     less a society in which a continual contact between its members
     would not have established an interest of every one towards all
     others, which would render it impossible to act without thinking of
     the effects which our actions may have on others." [Evolution and
     Environment, p. 85]

   Once the reality of "group issues" is acknowledged, as most
   individualist anarchists do, then the issue of collective decision
   making automatically arises. There are two ways of having a group. You
   can be an association of equals, governing yourselves collectively as
   regards collective issues. Or you can have capitalists and wage slaves,
   bosses and servants, government and governed. Only the first, for
   obvious reasons, is compatible with anarchist principles. Freedom, in
   other words, is a product of how we interact with each other, not of
   isolation. Simply put, anarchism is based on self-management of group
   issues, not in their denial. Free association is, in this perspective,
   a necessary but not sufficient to guarantee freedom. Therefore, social
   anarchists reject the individualists' conception of anarchy, simply
   because it can, unfortunately, allow hierarchy (i.e. government) back
   into a free society in the name of "liberty" and "free contracts."
   Freedom is fundamentally a social product, created in and by community.
   It is a fragile flower and does not fare well when bought and sold on
   the market.

   Moreover, without communal institutions, social anarchists argue, it
   would be impossible to specify or supply group or public goods. In
   addition, occupancy and use would, on the face of it, preclude such
   amenities which are utilised by members of a community such as parks,
   roads or bridges -- anything which is used but not occupied
   continually. In terms of roads and bridges, who actually occupies and
   uses them? The drivers? Those who maintain it? The occupiers of the
   houses which it passes? Those who funded it construction? If the last,
   then why does this not apply to housing and other buildings left on
   land? And how are the owners to collect a return on their investment
   unless by employing police to bar access to non-payers? And would such
   absentee owners not also seek to extend their appropriations to other
   forms of property? Would it not be far easier to simply communalise
   such forms of commonly used "property" rather than seek to burden
   individuals and society with the costs of policing and restricting
   access to them?

   After all, social anarchists note, for Proudhon there was a series of
   industries and services that he had no qualms about calling "public
   works" and which he considered best handled by communes and their
   federations. Thus "the control undertaking such works will belong to
   the municipalities, and to districts within their jurisdiction" while
   "the control of carrying them out will rest with the workmen's
   associations." This was due to both their nature and libertarian values
   and so the "direct, sovereign initiative of localities, in arranging
   for public works that belong to them, is a consequence of the
   democratic principle and the free contract: their subordination to the
   State is . . . a return to feudalism." Workers' self-management of such
   public workers was, again, a matter of libertarian principles for "it
   becomes necessary for the workers to form themselves into democratic
   societies, with equal conditions for all members, on pain of a relapse
   into feudalism." [The General Idea of the Revolution, p. 276 and p.
   277]

   In the case of a park, either it is open to all or it is fenced off and
   police used to bar access. Taking "occupancy and use" as our starting
   point then it becomes clear that, over time, either the community
   organises itself communally or a park becomes private property. If a
   group of people frequent a common area then they will have to discuss
   how to maintain it -- for example, arrange for labour to be done on it,
   whether to have a play-ground for children or to have a duck pond,
   whether to increase the numbers and types of trees, and so forth. That
   implies the development of communal structures. In the case of new
   people using the amenity, either they are excluded from it (and have to
   pay for access) or they automatically join the users group and so the
   park is, in effect, common property and socialised. In such
   circumstances, it would be far easier simply to ignore the issue of
   individual contributions and base access on need (i.e., communistic
   principles). However, as already indicated in [6]section G.2.1, social
   anarchists reject attempts to coerce other workers into joining a
   co-operative or commune. Freedom cannot be given, it must be taken and
   social anarchism, like all forms of anarchy, cannot be imposed. How
   those who reject social anarchism will gain access to common property
   will depend, undoubtedly, on specific circumstances and who exactly is
   involved and how they wish to utilise it. As such, it will be difficult
   to generalise as each commune will determine what is best and reach the
   appropriate contracts with any individualist anarchists in their midst
   or vicinity.

   It should also be pointed out (and this may seem ironic), wage labour
   does have the advantage that people can move to new locations and work
   without having to sell their old means of living. Often moving
   somewhere can be a hassle if one has to sell a shop or home. Many
   people prefer not to be tied down to one place. This is a problem in a
   system based on "occupancy and use" as permanently leaving a property
   means that it automatically becomes abandoned and so its users may be
   forced to stay in one location until they find a buyer for it. This is
   not an issue in social anarchism as access to the means of life is
   guaranteed to all members of the free society.

   Most social anarchists also are critical of the means which
   individualists anarchists support to achieve anarchy, namely to abolish
   capitalism by the creation of mutual banks which would compete
   exploitation and oppression away. While mutual banks could aid the
   position of working class people under capitalism (which is why Bakunin
   and other social anarchists recommended them), they cannot undermine or
   eliminate it. This is because capitalism, due to its need to
   accumulate, creates natural barriers to entry into a market (see
   [7]section C.4). Thus the physical size of the large corporation would
   make it immune to the influence of mutual banking and so usury could
   not be abolished. Even if we look at the claimed indirect impact of
   mutual banking, namely an increase in the demand of labour and so
   wages, the problem arises that if this happens then capitalism would
   soon go into a slump (with obvious negative effects on small firms and
   co-operatives). In such circumstances, the number of labourers seeking
   work would rise and so wages would fall and profits rise. Then it is a
   case of whether the workers would simply tolerate the slump and let
   capitalism continue or whether they would seize their workplaces and
   practice the kind of expropriation individualist anarchists tended to
   oppose.

   This problem was recognised by many individualist anarchists themselves
   and it played a significant role in its decline as a movement. By 1911
   Tucker had come to the same conclusions as communist-anarchists on
   whether capitalism could be reformed away. As we noted in [8]section
   G.1.1, he "had come to believe that free banking and similar measures,
   even if inaugurated, were no longer adequate to break the monopoly of
   capitalism or weaken the authority of the state." [Paul Avrich,
   Anarchist Voices, p. 6] While admitted that political or revolutionary
   action was required to destroy the concentrations of capital which made
   anarchy impossible even with free competition, he rejected the
   suggestion that individualist anarchists should join in such activity.
   Voltairine de Cleyre came to similar conclusions earlier and started
   working with Emma Goldman before becoming a communist-anarchist
   sometime in 1908. Perhaps unsurprisingly, one historian argues that as
   the "native American variety of anarchism dissolved in the face of
   increasing State repression and industrialisation, rationalisation, and
   concentration of capital, American anarchists were forced either to
   acquiesce or to seek a more militant stain of anarchism: this latter
   presented itself in the form of Communist Anarchism . . . Faith in
   peaceful evolution toward an anarchist society seemed archaic and
   gradually faded." [Kline, The Individualist Anarchists, p. 83]

   So while state action may increase the degree of monopoly in an
   industry, the natural tendency for any market is to place barriers
   (natural ones) to new entries in terms of set-up costs and so on. This
   applies just as much to co-operatives as it does to companies based on
   wage-labour. It means that if the relation between capital and labour
   was abolished within the workplace (by their transformation into
   co-operatives) but they remained the property of their workers, it
   would only be a matter of time before the separation of the producers
   from their means of production reproduced itself. This is because,
   within any market system, some firms fail and others succeed. Those
   which fail will create a pool of unemployed workers who will need a
   job. The successful co-operatives, safe behind their natural barriers
   to entry, would be in a stronger position than the unemployed workers
   and so may hire them as wage labourers -- in effect, the co-operative
   workers would become "collective capitalists" hiring other workers.
   This would end workers' self-management (as not all workers are
   involved in the decision making process) as well as workers' ownership,
   i.e. "occupancy and use," (as not all workers' would own the means of
   production they used). The individual workers involved may "consent" to
   becoming wage slaves, but that is because it is the best option
   available rather than what they really want. Which, of course, is the
   same as under capitalism.

   This was why Proudhon argued that "every worker employed in the
   association" must have "an undivided share in the property of the
   company" in order to ensure workers' self-management. [Op. Cit., p.
   222] Only this could ensure "occupancy and use" and so self-management
   in a free society (i.e. keep that society free). Thus in anarchism, as
   de Cleyre summarised, it is "a settled thing that to be free one must
   have liberty of access to the sources and means of production" Without
   socialisation of the means of life, liberty of access could be denied.
   Little wonder she argued that she had become "convinced that a number
   of the fundamental propositions of individualistic economy would result
   in the destruction of equal liberty." The only logical anarchist
   position is "that some settlement of the whole labour question was
   needed which would not split up the people again into land possessors
   and employed wage-earners." Hence her movement from individualism
   towards, first, mutualism and then communism -- it was the only logical
   position to take in a rapidly industrialising America which had made
   certain concepts of individualism obsolete. It was her love of freedom
   which made her sensitive to the possibility of any degeneration back
   into capitalism: "the instinct of liberty naturally revolted not only
   at economic servitude, but at the outcome of it, class-lines." [Op.
   Cit., p. 58, p. 105, p. 61 and p. 55] As we argue in [9]section G.4.2
   such a possibility can be avoided only by a consistent application of
   "occupancy and use" which, in practice, would be nearly identical to
   the communalisation or socialisation of the means of life.

   This issue is related to the question of inequality within a market
   economy and whether free exchanges tend to reduce or increase any
   initial inequalities. While Individualist Anarchists argue for the
   "cost principle" (i.e. cost being the limit of price) the cost of
   creating the same commodity in different areas or by different people
   is not equal. Thus the market price of a good cannot really equal the
   multitude of costs within it (and so price can only equal a workers'
   labour in those few cases where that labour was applied in average
   circumstances). This issue was recognised by Tucker, who argued that
   "economic rent . . . is one of nature's inequalities. It will probably
   remain with us always. Complete liberty will every much lessen it; of
   that I have no doubt." ["Why I am an Anarchist", pp. 132-6, Man!, M.
   Graham (ed.), pp. 135-6] However, argue social anarchists, the logic of
   market exchange produces a situation where the stronger party to a
   contract seeks to maximise their advantage. Given this, free exchange
   will tend to increase differences in wealth and income over time, not
   eliminate them. As Daniel Gurin summarised:

     "Competition and the so-called market economy inevitably produce
     inequality and exploitation, and would do so even if one started
     from complete equality. They could not be combined with workers'
     self-management unless it were on a temporary basis, as a necessary
     evil, until (1) a psychology of 'honest exchange' had developed
     among the workers; (2) most important, society as a whole had passed
     from conditions of shortage to the stage of abundance, when
     competition would lose its purpose . . . The libertarian communist
     would condemn Proudhon's version of a collective economy as being
     based on a principle of conflict; competitors would be in a position
     of equality at the start, only to be hurled into a struggle which
     would inevitably produce victors and vanquished, and where goods
     would end up by being exchanged according to the principles of
     supply and demand." [Op. Cit., pp. 53-4]

   Thus, even a non-capitalist market could evolve towards inequality and
   away from fair exchange. It was for this reason that Proudhon argued
   that a portion of income from agricultural produce be paid into a
   central fund which would be used to make equalisation payments to
   compensate farmers with less favourably situated or less fertile land.
   As he put it, economic rent "in agriculture has no other cause than the
   inequality in the quality of land . . . if anyone has a claim on
   account of this inequality . . . [it is] the other land workers who
   hold inferior land. That is why in our scheme for liquidation [of
   capitalism] we stipulated that every variety of cultivation should pay
   a proportional contribution, destined to accomplish a balancing of
   returns among farm workers and an assurance of products." [Op. Cit., p.
   209] His advocacy of federations of workers' associations was,
   likewise, seen as a means of abolishing inequalities.

   Unlike Proudhon, however, individualist anarchists did not propose any
   scheme to equalise income. Perhaps Tucker was correct and the
   differences would be slight, but in a market situation exchanges tend
   to magnify differences, not reduce them as the actions of
   self-interested individuals in unequal positions will tend to
   exacerbate differences. Over time these slight differences would become
   larger and larger, subjecting the weaker party to relatively
   increasingly worse contracts. Without equality, individualist anarchism
   would quickly become hierarchical and non-anarchist. As the
   communist-anarchist paper Freedom argued in the 1880s:

     "Are not the scandalous inequalities in the distribution of wealth
     today merely the culminate effect of the principle that every man is
     justified in securing to himself everything that his chances and
     capacities enable him to lay hands on?

     "If the social revolution which we are living means anything, it
     means the destruction of this detestable economic principle, which
     delivers over the more social members of the community to the
     domination of the most unsocial and self-interested."
     [Freedom, vol. 2, no. 19]

   Freedom, it should be noted, is slightly misrepresenting the position
   of individualist anarchists. They did not argue that every person could
   appropriate all the property he or she could. Most obviously, in terms
   of land they were consistently opposed to a person owning more of it
   than they actually used. They also tended to apply this to what was on
   the land as well, arguing that any buildings on it were abandoned when
   the owner no longer used them. Given this, individualist anarchists
   have stressed that such a system would be unlikely to produce the
   inequalities associated with capitalism (as Kropotkin noted, equality
   was essential and was implicitly acknowledged by individualists
   themselves who argued that their system "would offer no danger, because
   the rights of each individual would have been limited by the equal
   rights of all others." [Evolution and Environment, p. 85]). Thus
   contemporary individualist anarchist Joe Peacott:

     "Although individualists envision a society based on private
     property, we oppose the economic relationships of capitalism, whose
     supporters misuse words like private enterprise and free markets to
     justify a system of monopoly ownership in land and the means of
     production which allows some to skim off part or even most of the
     wealth produced by the labour of others. Such a system exists only
     because it is protected by the armed power of government, which
     secures title to unjustly acquired and held land, monopolises the
     supply of credit and money, and criminalises attempts by workers to
     take full ownership of the means of production they use to create
     wealth. This state intervention in economic transactions makes it
     impossible for most workers to become truly independent of the
     predation of capitalists, banks, and landlords. Individualists argue
     that without the state to enforce the rules of the capitalist
     economy, workers would not allow themselves to be exploited by these
     thieves and capitalism would not be able to exist . . .

     "One of the criticisms of individualist economic proposals raised by
     other anarchists is that a system based on private ownership would
     result in some level of difference among people in regard to the
     quality or quantity of possessions they have. In a society where
     people are able to realise the full value of their labour, one who
     works harder or better than another will possess or have the ability
     to acquire more things than someone who works less or is less
     skilled at a particular occupation . . .

     "The differences in wealth that arise in an individualist community
     would likely be relatively small. Without the ability to profit from
     the labour of others, generate interest from providing credit, or
     extort rent from letting out land or property, individuals would not
     be capable of generating the huge quantities of assets that people
     can in a capitalist system. Furthermore, the anarchist with more
     things does not have them at the expense of another, since they are
     the result of the owner's own effort. If someone with less wealth
     wishes to have more, they can work more, harder, or better. There is
     no injustice in one person working 12 hours a day and six days a
     week in order to buy a boat, while another chooses to work three
     eight hour days a week and is content with a less extravagant
     lifestyle. If one can generate income only by hard work, there is an
     upper limit to the number and kind of things one can buy and own."
     [Individualism and Inequality]

   However, argue social anarchists, market forces may make such an ideal
   impossible to achieve or maintain. Most would agree with Peter
   Marshall's point that "[u]ndoubtedly real difficulties exist with the
   economic position of the individualists. If occupiers became owners
   overnight as Benjamin Tucker recommended, it would mean in practice
   that those with good land or houses would merely become better off than
   those with bad. Tucker's advocacy of 'competition everywhere and
   always' among occupying owners, subject to the only moral law of
   minding your own business might will encourage individual greed rather
   than fair play for all." [Demanding the Impossible, p. 653]

   Few social anarchists are convinced that all the problems associated
   with markets and competition are purely the result of state
   intervention. They argue that it is impossible to have most of the
   underlying pre-conditions of a competitive economy without the logical
   consequences of them. It is fair to say that individualist anarchists
   tend to ignore or downplay the negative effects of markets while
   stressing their positive ones.

   While we discuss the limitations of markets in [10]section I.1.3,
   suffice to say here that competition results in economic forces
   developing which those within the market have to adjust to. In other
   words, the market may be free but those within it are not. To survive
   on the market, firms would seek to reduce costs and so implement a host
   of dehumanising working practices in order to compete successfully on
   the market, things which they would resist if bosses did it. Work hours
   could get longer and longer, for example, in order to secure and
   maintain market position. This, in turn, affects our quality of life
   and our relationship with our partners, children, parents, friends,
   neighbours and so on. That the profits do not go to the executives and
   owners of businesses may be a benefit, it matters little if people are
   working longer and harder in order to invest in machinery to ensure
   market survival. Hence survival, not living, would be the norm within
   such a society, just as it is, unfortunately, in capitalism.

   Ultimately, Individualist Anarchists lose sight of the fact that
   success and competition are not the same thing. One can set and reach
   goals without competing. That we may loose more by competing than by
   co-operating is an insight which social anarchists base their ideas on.
   In the end, a person can become a success in terms of business but lose
   sight of their humanity and individuality in the process. In contrast,
   social anarchists stress community and co-operation in order to develop
   us as fully rounded individuals. As Kropotkin put it, "the
   individualisation they so highly praise is not attainable by individual
   efforts." [Anarchism, p. 297]

   As we noted in [11]section D.1, the capitalist state intervenes into
   the economy and society to counteract the negative impact of market
   forces on social life and the environment as well as, of course,
   protecting and enhancing the position of itself and the capitalist
   class. As individualist anarchism is based on markets (to some degree),
   it seems likely that market forces would have similar negative impacts
   (albeit to a lesser degree due to the reduced levels of inequality
   implied by the elimination of non-labour incomes). Without communal
   institutions, social anarchists argue, individualist anarchism has no
   means of counteracting the impact of such forces except, perhaps, by
   means of continual court cases and juries. Thus social issues would not
   be discussed by all affected but rather by small sub-groups
   retroactively addressing individual cases.

   Moreover, while state action may have given the modern capitalist an
   initial advantage on the market, it does not follow that a truly free
   market will not create similar advantages naturally over time. And if
   it did, then surely a similar system would develop? As such, it does
   not follow that a non-capitalist market system would remain such. In
   other words, it is true that extensive state intervention was required
   to create capitalism but after a time economic forces can usually be
   relied upon to allow wage workers to be exploited. The key factor is
   that while markets have existed long before capitalism, that system has
   placed them at the centre of economic activity. In the past, artisans
   and farmers produced for local consumers, with the former taking their
   surplus to markets. In contrast, capitalism has produced a system where
   producers are primarily geared to exchanging all goods they create on
   an extensive market rather simply a surplus locally. This implies that
   the dynamics of a predominantly market system may be different from
   those in the past in which the market played a much smaller role and
   where self-sufficiency was always a possibility. It is difficult to see
   how, for example, car workers or IT programmers could produce for their
   own consumption using their own tools.

   So in a market economy with a well developed division of labour it is
   possible for a separation of workers from their means of production to
   occur. This is particularly the case when the predominant economic
   activity is not farming. Thus the net effect of market transactions
   could be to re-introduce class society simply by their negative
   long-term consequences. That such a system developed without state aid
   would make it no less unfree and unjust. It is of little use to point
   out that such a situation is not what the Individualist Anarchists
   desired for it is a question of whether their ideas would actually
   result in what they wanted. Social anarchists have fears that it will
   not. Significantly, as we noted in [12]section G.3, Tucker was sensible
   enough to argue that those subject to such developments should rebel
   against it.

   In response, individualist anarchists could argue that the alternative
   to markets would be authoritarian (i.e., some form of central planning)
   and/or inefficient as without markets to reward effort most people
   would not bother to work well and provide for the consumer. So while
   markets do have problems with them, the alternatives are worse.
   Moreover, when social anarchists note that there is a remarkable
   correlation between competitiveness in a society and the presence of
   clearly defined "have" and "have-not" groups individualist anarchists
   would answer that the causation flows not from competitiveness to
   inequality but from inequality to competitiveness. In a more equal
   society people would be less inclined to compete as ruthlessly as under
   capitalism and so the market would not generate as many problems as it
   does today. Moreover, eliminating the artificial barriers erected by
   the state would allow a universal competition to develop rather than
   the one sided form associated with capitalism. With a balance of market
   power, competition would no longer take the form it currently does.

   Yet, as noted above, this position ignores natural barriers to
   competition The accumulation needs of a competitive market economy do
   not disappear just because capitalism has been replaced by
   co-operatives and mutual credit banks. In any market economy, firms
   will try to improve their market position by investing in new
   machinery, reducing prices by improving productivity and so on. This
   creates barriers to new competitors who have to expend more money in
   order to match the advantages of existing firms. Such amounts of money
   may not be forthcoming from even the biggest mutual bank and so certain
   firms would enjoy a privileged position on the market. Given that
   Tucker defined a monopolist as "any person, corporation, or institution
   whose right to engage in any given pursuit of life is secured, either
   wholly or partially, by any agency whatsoever -- whether the nature of
   things or the force of events or the decree of arbitrary power --
   against the influence of competition" we may suggest that due to
   natural barriers, an individualist anarchist society would not be free
   of monopolists and so of usury. [quoted by James J. Martin, Men Against
   the State, p. 210]

   For this reason, even in a mutualist market certain companies would
   receive a bigger slice of profits than (and at the expense of) others.
   This means that exploitation would still exist as larger companies
   could charge more than cost for their products. It could be argued that
   the ethos of an anarchist society would prevent such developments
   happening but, as Kropotkin noted, this has problems, firstly because
   of "the difficulty if estimating the market value" of a product based
   on "average time" or cost necessary to produce it and, secondly, if
   that could be done then to get people "to agree upon such an estimation
   of their work would already require a deep penetration of the Communist
   principles into their ideas." [Environment and Evolution, p. 84] In
   addition, the free market in banking would also result in its market
   being dominated by a few big banks, with similar results. As such, it
   is all fine and well to argue that with rising interest rates more
   competitors would be drawn into the market and so the increased
   competition would automatically reduce them but that is only possible
   if there are no serious natural barriers to entry.

   This obviously impacts on how we get from capitalism to anarchism.
   Natural barriers to competition limit the ability to compete
   exploitation away. So as to its means of activism, individualist
   anarchism exaggerates the potential of mutual banks to fund
   co-operatives. While the creation of community-owned and -managed
   mutual credit banks would help in the struggle for a free society, such
   banks are not enough in themselves. Unless created as part of the
   social struggle against capitalism and the state, and unless combined
   with community and strike assemblies, mutual banks would quickly die,
   because the necessary social support required to nurture them would not
   exist. Mutual banks must be part of a network of other new
   socio-economic and political structures and cannot be sustained in
   isolation from them. This is simply to repeat our earlier point that,
   for most social anarchists, capitalism cannot be reformed away. As
   such, social anarchists would tend to agree with the summary provided
   by this historian:

     "If [individualist anarchists] rejected private ownership of
     property, they destroyed their individualism and 'levelled' mankind.
     If they accepted it, they had the problem of offering a solution
     whereby the inequalities [of wealth] would not amount to a tyranny
     over the individual. They meet the same dilemma in 'method.' If they
     were consistent libertarian individualists they could not force from
     'those who had' what they had acquired justly or unjustly, but if
     they did not force it from them, they perpetuated inequalities. They
     met a stone wall." [Eunice Minette Schuster, Native American
     Anarchism, p. 158]

   So while Tucker believed in direct action, he opposed the "forceful"
   expropriation of social capital by the working class, instead favouring
   the creation of a mutualist banking system to replace capitalism with a
   non-exploitative system. Tucker was therefore fundamentally a
   reformist, thinking that anarchy would evolve from capitalism as mutual
   banks spread across society, increasing the bargaining power of labour.
   And reforming capitalism over time, by implication, always means
   tolerating boss's control during that time. So, at its worse, this is a
   reformist position which becomes little more than an excuse for
   tolerating landlord and capitalist domination.

   Also, we may note, in the slow transition towards anarchism, we would
   see the rise of pro-capitalist "defence associations" which would
   collect rent from land, break strikes, attempt to crush unions and so
   on. Tucker seemed to have assumed that the anarchist vision of
   "occupancy-and-use" would become universal. Unfortunately, landlords
   and capitalists would resist it and so, ultimately, an Individualist
   Anarchist society would have to either force the minority to accept the
   majority wishes on land use (hence his comments on there being "no
   legal power to collect rent") or the majority are dictated to by the
   minority who are in favour of collecting rent and hire "defence
   associations" to enforce those wishes. With the head start big business
   and the wealthy have in terms of resources, conflicts between pro- and
   anti-capitalist "defence associations" would usually work against the
   anti-capitalist ones (as trade unions often find out). In other words,
   reforming capitalism would not be as non-violent or as simple as Tucker
   maintained. The vested powers which the state defends will find other
   means to protect themselves when required (for example, when
   capitalists and landlords backed fascism and fascist squads in Italy
   after workers "occupied and used" their workplaces and land workers and
   peasants "occupied and used" the land in 1920). We are sure that
   economists will then rush to argue that the resulting law system that
   defended the collection of rent and capitalist property against
   "occupancy and use" was the most "economically efficient" result for
   "society."

   In addition, even if individualist mutualism did result in an increase
   in wages by developing artisan and co-operative ventures that decreased
   the supply of labour in relation to its demand, this would not
   eliminate the subjective and objective pressures on profits that
   produce the business cycle within capitalism (see [13]section C.7). In
   fact, it was increase the subjective pressures considerably as was the
   case under the social Keynesian of the post-war period. Unsurprisingly,
   business interests sought the necessary "reforms" and ruthlessly fought
   the subsequent strikes and protests to achieve a labour market more to
   their liking (see [14]section C.8.2 for more on this). This means that
   an increase in the bargaining power of labour would soon see capital
   moving to non-anarchist areas and so deepening any recession caused by
   a lowering of profits and other non-labour income. This could mean that
   during an economic slump, when workers' savings and bargaining position
   were weak, the gains associated with mutualism could be lost as
   co-operative firms go bust and mutual banks find it hard to survive in
   a hostile environment.

   Mutual banks would not, therefore, undermine modern capitalism, as
   recognised by social anarchists from Bakunin onward. They placed their
   hopes in a social revolution organised by workplace and community
   organisations, arguing that the ruling class would be as unlikely to
   tolerate being competed away as they would be voted away. The collapse
   of social Keynesianism into neo-liberalism shows that even a moderately
   reformed capitalism which increased working class power will not be
   tolerated for too long. In other words, there was a need for social
   revolution which mutual banks do not, and could not, eliminate.

   However, while social anarchists disagree with the proposals of
   individualist anarchists, we do still consider them to be a form of
   anarchism -- one with many flaws and one perhaps more suited to an
   earlier age when capitalism was less developed and its impact upon
   society far less than it is now (see [15]section G.1.4). Individualist
   and social anarchism could co-exist happily in a free society and
   neither believes in forcing the other to subscribe to their system. As
   Paul Nursey-Bray notes "linking all of these approaches . . . is not
   just the belief in individual liberty and its corollary, the opposition
   to central or state authority, but also a belief in community, and an
   equality of community members." The "discussion over forms of property
   . . . should not be allowed to obscure the commonality of the idea of
   the free community of self-regulating individuals." And so "there are
   meeting points in the crucial ideas of individual autonomy and
   community that suggest, at least, a basis for the discussion of
   equality and property relations." [Anarchist Thinkers and Thought, p.
   xvi]

G.4.1 Is wage labour consistent with anarchist principles?

No, it is not. This can be seen from social anarchism, where opposition to wage
labour as hierarchical and exploitative is taken as an obvious and logical
aspect of anarchist principles. However, ironically, this conclusion must also
be drawn from the principles expounded by individualist anarchism. However, as
noted in [16]section G.1.3, while many individualist anarchists opposed wage
labour and sought it end not all did. Benjamin Tucker was one of the latter. To
requote him:

     "Wages is not slavery. Wages is a form of voluntary exchange, and
     voluntary exchange is a form of Liberty." [Liberty, no. 3, p. 1]

The question of wage labour was one of the key differences between Tucker and
communist-anarchist Johann Most. For Most, it signified that Tucker supported
the exploitation of labour. For Tucker, Most's opposition to it signified that
he was not a real anarchist, seeking to end freedom by imposing communism onto
all. In response to Most highlighting the fact that Tucker supported wage
labour, Tucker argued as followed:

     "If the men who oppose wages -- that is, the purchase and sale of
     labour -- were capable of analysing their thought and feelings, they
     would see that what really excites their anger is not the fact that
     labour is bought and sold, but the fact that one class of men are
     dependent for their living upon the sale of their labour, while
     another class of men are relieved of the necessity of labour by
     being legally privileged to sell something that is not labour, and
     that, but for the privilege, would be enjoyed by all gratuitously.
     And to such a state of things I am as much opposed as any one. But
     the minute you remove privilege, the class that now enjoy it will be
     forced to sell their labour, and then, when there will be nothing
     but labour with which to buy labour, the distinction between
     wage-payers and wage-receivers will be wiped out, and every man will
     be a labourer exchanging with fellow-labourers. Not to abolish
     wages, but to make every man dependent upon wages and secure to
     every man his whole wages is the aim of Anarchistic Socialism. What
     Anarchistic Socialism aims to abolish is usury. It does not want to
     deprive labour of its reward; it wants to deprive capital of its
     reward. It does not hold that labour should not be sold; it holds
     that capital should not be hired at usury." [Liberty, no. 123, p. 4]

   Social anarchists, in reply, would argue that Tucker is missing the
   point. The reason why almost all anarchists are against wage labour is
   because it generates social relationships based on authority and, as
   such, it sets the necessary conditions for the exploitation of labour
   to occur. If we take the creation of employer-employee relationships
   within an anarchy, we see the danger of private statism arising (as in
   "anarcho"-capitalism) and so the end of anarchy. Such a development can
   be seen when Tucker argued that if, in an anarchy, "any labourers shall
   interfere with the rights of their employers, or shall use force upon
   inoffensive 'scabs,' or shall attack their employers' watchmen . . . I
   pledge myself that, as an Anarchist and in consequence of my
   Anarchistic faith, I will be among the first to volunteer as a member
   of a force to repress these disturbers of order, and, if necessary,
   sweep them from the earth." [Op. Cit., p. 455] Tucker's comments were
   provoked by the Homestead strike of 1892, where the striking
   steelworkers fought with, and defeated, their employer's Pinkerton
   thugs sent to break the strike (Tucker, it should be stressed supported
   the strikers but not their methods and considered the capitalist class
   as responsible for the strike by denying workers a free market).

   In such a situation, these defence associations would be indeed
   "private states" and here Tucker's ideas unfortunately do parallel
   those of the "anarcho"-capitalists (although, as Tucker thought that
   the employees would not be exploited by the employer, this does not
   suggest that Tucker can be considered a forefather of
   "anarcho"-capitalism). As Kropotkin warned, "[f]or their self-defence,
   both the citizen and group have a right to any violence [within
   individualist anarchy] . . . Violence is also justified for enforcing
   the duty of keeping an agreement. Tucker . . . opens . . . the way for
   reconstructing under the heading of the 'defence' all the functions of
   the State." [Anarchism, p. 297]

   Such an outcome is easy to avoid, however, by simply consistently
   applying individualist anarchist principles and analysis to wage
   labour. To see why, it is necessary simply to compare private property
   with Tucker's definition of the state.

   How did Tucker define the state? All states have two common elements,
   "aggression" and "the assumption of sole authority over a given area
   and all within it, exercised generally for the double purpose of more
   complete oppression of its subjects and extension of its boundaries."
   This monopoly of authority is important, as "I am not aware that any
   State has ever tolerated a rival State within its borders." So the
   state, Tucker stated, is "the embodiment of the principle of invasion
   in an individual, or a band of individuals, assuming to act as
   representatives or masters of the entire people within a given area."
   The "essence of government is control, or the attempt to control. He
   who attempts to control another is a governor, an aggressor, an invader
   . . . he who resists another's attempt to control is not an aggressor,
   an invader, a governor, but simply a defender, a protector." In short,
   "the Anarchistic definition of government: the subjection of the
   non-invasive individual to an external will." [The Individualist
   Anarchists, p. 24]

   The similarities with capitalist property (i.e., one based on wage
   labour) is obvious. The employer assumes and exercises "sole authority
   over a given area and all within it," they are the boss after all and
   so capitalists are the "masters of the entire people within a given
   area." That authority is used to control the employees in order to
   maximise the difference between what they produce and what they get
   paid (i.e., to ensure exploitation). As August Spies, one of the
   Haymarket Martyrs, noted:

     "I was amazed and was shocked when I became acquainted with the
     condition of the wage-workers in the New World.

     "The factory: the ignominious regulations, the surveillance, the spy
     system, the servility and lack of manhood among the workers and the
     arrogant arbitrary behaviour of the boss and his associates -- all
     this made an impression upon me that I have never been able to
     divest myself of. At first I could not understand why the workers,
     among them many old men with bent backs, silently and without a sign
     of protest bore every insult the caprice of the foreman or boss
     would heap upon them. I was not then aware of the fact that the
     opportunity to work was a privilege, a favour, and that it was in
     the power of those who were in the possession of the factories and
     instruments of labour to deny or grant this privilege. I did not
     then understand how difficult it was to find a purchaser for ones
     labour, I did not know then that there were thousands and thousands
     of idle human bodies in the market, ready to hire out upon most any
     conditions, actually begging for employment. I became conscious of
     this, very soon, however, and I knew then why these people were so
     servile, whey suffered the humiliating dictates and capricious whims
     of their employers."
     [The Autobiographies of the Haymarket Martyrs, pp. 66-7]

   That this is a kind of state-like authority becomes clear when we
   consider company towns. As Ward Churchill notes, the "extent of company
   power over workers included outright ownership of the towns in which
   they lived, a matter enabling employers to garner additional profits by
   imposing exorbitant rates of rent, prices for subsistence commodities,
   tools, and such health care as was available. Conditions in these
   'company towns' were such that, by 1915, the Commission on Industrial
   Relations was led to observe that they displayed 'every aspect of
   feudalism except the recognition of special duties on the part of the
   employer.' The job of the Pinkertons -- first for the railroads, then
   more generally -- was to prevent workers from organising in a manner
   that might enable them to improve their own circumstances, thus
   reducing corporate profits." ["From the Pinkertons to the PATRIOT Act:
   The Trajectory of Political Policing in the United States, 1870 to the
   Present", pp. 1-72, CR: The New Centennial Review, vol. 4, No. 1, pp.
   11-2] In the words of one historian of the Pinkerton Agency "[b]y the
   mid-1850s a few businessmen saw the need for greater control over their
   employees; their solution was to sponsor a private detective system. In
   February 1855, Allan Pinkerton, after consulting with six midwestern
   railroads, created such an agency in Chicago." [Frank Morn, quoted by
   Churchill, Op. Cit., p. 4] As we have noted in [17]section F.7.1, such
   regimes remained into the 1930s, with corporations having their own
   well armed private police to enforce the propertarian hierarchy (see
   also [18]section F.6.2).

   So, in terms of monopoly of authority over a given area the capitalist
   company and the state share a common feature. The reason why wage
   labour violates Individualist Anarchist principles is clear. If the
   workers who use a workplace do not own it, then someone else will (i.e.
   the owner, the boss). This in turn means that the owner can tell those
   who use the resource what to do, how to do it and when. That is, they
   are the sole authority over the workplace and those who use it.
   However, according to Tucker, the state can be defined (in part) as
   "the assumption of sole authority over a given area and all within it."
   Tucker considered this element as "common to all States" and so
   opposition to the state logically implies support for workers'
   self-management for only in this case can people govern themselves
   during the working day (see [19]section B.4 for more discussion). Even
   with Tucker's other aspect, "aggression", there are issues. Competition
   is inherently aggressive, with companies seeking to expand their market
   share, go into new markets, drive their competitors out of business,
   and so forth. Within the firm itself, bosses always seek to make
   workers do more work for less, threatening them with the sack if they
   object.

   Tucker's comments on strikers brings to light an interesting
   contradiction in his ideas. After all, he favoured a system of
   "property" generally defined by use and occupancy, that is whoever uses
   and possesses is to be consider the owner. As we indicated in
   [20]section G.1.2, this applied to both the land and what was on it. In
   particular, Tucker pointed to the example of housing and argued that
   rent would not be collected from tenants nor would they be evicted for
   not paying it. Why should this position change when it is a workplace
   rather than a house? Both are products of labour, so that cannot be the
   criteria. Nor can it be because one is used for work as Tucker
   explicitly includes the possibility that a house could be used as a
   workplace.

   Thus we have a massive contradiction between Tucker's "occupancy and
   use" perspective on land use and his support for wage labour. One
   letter to Liberty (by "Egoist") pointed out this contradiction. As the
   letter put it, "if production is carried on in groups, as it now is,
   who is the legal occupier of the land? The employer, the manager, or
   the ensemble of those engaged in the co-operative work? The latter
   appearing the only rational answer." [Op. Cit., no. 143, p. 4] Sadly,
   Tucker's reply did not address this particular question and so we are
   left with an unresolved contradiction.

   Looking at the Homestead strike which provoked Tucker's rant against
   strikers, the similarities between wage labour and statism become even
   clearer. The 3,800 workers locked out by Carnegie at Homestead in 1892
   definitely occupied and used the works from which they were barred
   entry by the owners. The owners, obviously, did not use the workplace
   themselves -- they hired others to occupy and use it for them. Now, why
   should "occupancy and use" be acceptable for land and housing but not
   for workplaces? There is no reason and so wage labour, logically,
   violates "occupancy and use" -- for under wage labour, those who occupy
   and use a workplace do not own or control it. Hence "occupancy and use"
   logically implies workers' control and ownership.

   The Homestead lockout of 1892, ironically enough, occurred when the
   owners of the steel mill provoked the union in order to break its
   influence in the works. In other words, the property owners practised
   "aggression" to ensure their "sole authority over a given area and all
   within it" (to use Tucker's words). As such, the actions of the
   capitalist property owners meets Tucker's definition of the state
   exactly. According to the Carnegie Steel Company, it had "a legal right
   to the enjoyment of our property, and to operate it as we please . . .
   But for years our works have been managed . . . by men who do not own a
   dollar in them. This will stop right here. The Carnegie Steel Company
   will hereafter control their works in the employment of labour."
   Secretary Lovejoy of the corporation was clear on this, and its wider
   impact, arguing that "[t]his outbreak will settle one matter forever,
   and that is that the Homestead mill hereafter will be run non-union . .
   . other mills heretofore union [will] become non-union and thus free
   their owners from the arbitrary dictation of labour unions." [quoted by
   Peter Krause, The Battle for Homestead 1880-1892, p. 12 and pp. 39-40]

   In other words, the workers will henceforth be submit to the arbitrary
   dictation of the owners, who would be free to exercise their authority
   without hindrance of those subject to it. Unsurprisingly, for the
   workers, the strike was over their freedom and independence, of their
   ability to control their own labour. As one historian notes, the
   "lockout crushed the largest trade union in America . . . the victory
   at Homestead gave Carnegie and his fellow steelmasters carte blanche in
   the administration of their works. The lockout put 'the employers in
   the saddle' -- precisely where they would remain, without union
   interference, for four decades." The Pinkerton agents "were preparing
   to enforce the authority putatively designated to them by Henry Clay
   Frick" (although Frick "had been counting on the ultimate authority of
   the state from the outset."). [Peter Krause, Op. Cit., p. 13, p. 14 and
   p. 25]

   Nor was the 1892 lockout an isolated event. There had been a long
   history of labour disputes at Homestead. In 1882, for example, a strike
   occurred over the "question of complete and absolute submission on the
   part of manufacturers to the demands of their men," in the words of one
   ironmaster. [quoted by Krause, Op. Cit., p. 178] It was a question of
   power, whether bosses would have sole and total authority over a given
   area and all within it. The workers won that strike, considering it "a
   fight for freedom." As such, the 1892 lockout was the end result of
   years of management attempts to break the union and so "in creating and
   fortifying the system that had, over the years, produced the conditions
   for this violence, Carnegie's role cannot be denied. What provoked the
   apparently 'barbaric' and 'thankless' workers of Homestead was not, as
   an account limited to that day might indicate, the sudden intrusion of
   Pinkerton agents into their dispute but the slow and steady erosion of
   their rights and their power, over which Carnegie and his associates in
   steel and politics had presided for years, invisibly but no less
   violently." [Krause, Op. Cit., p. 181 and p. 43]

   The conflict at Homestead was thus directly related to the issue of
   ensuring that the "sole authority over a given area and all within it"
   rested in the hands of the capitalists. This required smashing the
   union for, as Tucker noted, no state "has ever tolerated a rival State
   within its borders." The union was a democratic organisation, whose
   "basic organisation . . . was the lodge, which elected its own
   president and also appointed a mill committee to enforce union rules
   within a given department of the steelworks. The union maintained a
   joint committee of the entire works." Elected union officials who
   "act[ed] without the committee's authorisation" were "replaced. Over
   and above the Advisory Committee stood the mass meeting" which was
   "often open to all workers," not just union members. This union
   democracy was the key to the strike, as Carnegie and his associates
   "were deeply troubled by its effects in the workplace. So troubled, in
   fact, that beyond the issue of wages or any issues related to it, it
   was unionism itself that was the primary target of Carnegie's concern."
   [Krause, Op. Cit., p. 293]

   Instead of a relatively libertarian regime, in which those who did the
   work managed it, the lockout resulted in the imposition of a
   totalitarian regime for the "purpose of more complete oppression of its
   subjects" and by its competitive advantage on the market, the
   "extension of its boundaries" (to use Tucker's description of the
   state). "Without the encumbrance of the union," notes Krause, "Carnegie
   was able to slash wages, impose twelve-hour workdays, eliminate five
   hundred jobs, and suitably assuage his republican conscience with the
   endowment of a library." And so "the labour difficulties that
   precipitated the Homestead Lockout had less to do with quantifiable
   matter such as wages and wage scales than with the politics of the
   workers' claim to a franchise within the mill -- that is, the
   legitimacy, authority, and power of the union." [Op. Cit., p. 361 and
   p. 294]

   The contradictions in wage labour become clear when Secretary Lovejoy
   stated that with the lockout the owners had declared that "we have
   decided to run our Homestead Mill ourselves." [quoted by Krause, Op.
   Cit., p. 294] Except, of course, they did no such thing. The workers
   who occupied and used the steel mills still did the work, but without
   even the smallest say in their labour. A clearer example of why wage
   labour violates the individualist anarchist principle of "occupancy and
   use" would be harder to find. As labour historian David Montgomery put
   it, the Homestead lockout was a "crisp and firm declaration that
   workers' control was illegal -- that the group discipline in the
   workplace and community by which workers enforced their code of
   mutualism in opposition to the authority and power of the mill owners
   was tantamount to insurrection against the republic -- clearly
   illuminated the ideological and political dimensions of workplace
   struggles." [The Fall of the House of Labour, p. 39] This defeat of
   America's most powerful trade union was achieved by means of a private
   police, supported by the State militia.

   Thus we have numerous contradictions in Tucker's position. On the one
   hand, occupancy and use precludes landlords renting land and housing
   but includes capitalists hiring workers to "occupancy and use" their
   land and workplaces; the state is attacked for being a monopoly of
   power over a given area while the boss can have the same authority;
   opposing voluntary wage labour shows that you are an authoritarian, but
   opposing voluntary landlordism is libertarian. Yet, there is no logical
   reason for workplaces to be excluded from "occupancy and use." As
   Tucker put it:

     "Occupancy and use is the only title to land in which we will
     protect you; if you attempt to use land which another is occupying
     and using, we will protect him against you; if another attempts to
     use land to which you lay claim, but which you are not occupying and
     using, we will not interfere with him; but of such land as you
     occupy and use you are the sole master, and we will not ourselves
     take from you, or allow anyone else to take from you, whatever you
     may get out of such land." [Liberty, no. 252, p. 3]

   Needless to say, neither Carnegie nor Frick were occupying and using
   the Homestead steel-mills nor were any of the other shareholders. It
   was precisely the autocratic authority of the owners which their
   private army and the state militia sought to impose on those who used,
   but did not own, the steel-mills (as the commander of the state troops
   noted, others "can hardly believe the actual communism of these people.
   They believe the works are theirs quite as much as Carnegie's." [quoted
   by Jeremy Brecher, Strike!, p. 60] As we discuss in the [21]next
   section, this is precisely why most anarchists have opposed wage labour
   as being incompatible with general anarchist principles. In other
   words, a consistent anarchism precludes all forms of authoritarian
   social relationships.

   There is another reason why wage labour is at odds with anarchist
   principles. This is to do with our opposition to exploitation and
   usury. Simply put, there are the problems in determining what are the
   "whole wages" of the employer and the employee. The employer, of
   course, does not simply get his "share" of the collectively produced
   output, they get the whole amount. This would mean that the employer's
   "wages" are simply the difference between the cost of inputs and the
   price the goods were sold on the market. This would imply that the
   market wage of the labour has to be considered as equalling the
   workers' "whole wage" and any profits equalling the bosses "whole wage"
   (some early defences of profit did argue precisely this, although the
   rise of shareholding made such arguments obviously false). The problem
   arises in that the employer's income is not determined independently of
   their ownership of capital and their monopoly of power in the
   workplace. This means that the boss can appropriate for themselves all
   the advantages of co-operation and self-activity within the workplace
   simply because they owned it. Thus, "profits" do not reflect the labour
   ("wages") of the employer.

   It was this aspect of ownership which made Proudhon such a firm
   supporter of workers associations. As he put it, a "hundred men,
   uniting or combining their forces, produce, in certain cases, not a
   hundred times, but two hundred, three hundred, a thousand times as
   much. This is what I have called collective force. I even drew from
   this an argument, which, like so many others, remains unanswered,
   against certain forms of appropriation: that it is not sufficient to
   pay merely the wages of a given number of workmen, in order to acquire
   their product legitimately; that they must be paid twice, thrice or ten
   times their wages, or an equivalent service rendered to each one of
   them." Thus, "all workers must associate, inasmuch as collective force
   and division of labour exist everywhere, to however slight a degree."
   Industrial democracy, in which "all positions are elective, and the
   by-laws subject to the approval of the members, would ensure that "the
   collective force, which is a product of the community, ceases to be a
   source of profit to a small number of managers" and becomes "the
   property of all the workers." [The General Idea of the Revolution, pp.
   81-2, p. 217, p. 222 and p. 223]

   Proudhon had first expounded this analysis in What is Property? in 1840
   and, as K. Steven Vincent notes, this was "[o]one of the reasons
   Proudhon gave for rejecting 'property' [and] was to become an important
   motif of subsequent socialist thought." Thus "collective endeavours
   produced an additional value" which was "unjustly appropriated by the
   proprietaire." [Pierre-Joseph Proudhon the Rise of French Republican
   Socialism p. 64 and p. 65] Marx, it should be noted, concurred. Without
   mentioning Proudhon, he stressed how a capitalist buys the labour-power
   of 100 men and "can set the 100 men to work. He pays them the value of
   100 independent labour-powers, but does not pay them for the combined
   labour power of the 100." [Capital, Vol. 1, p. 451] Only co-operative
   workplaces can ensure that the benefits of co-operative labour are not
   monopolised by the few who happen to own, and so control, the means of
   production.

   If this is not done, then it becomes a case of simply renaming
   "profits" to "wages" and saying that they are the result of the
   employers work rather than their ownership of capital. However, this is
   not the case as some part of the "wages" of the employer is derived
   purely from their owning capital (and is usury, charging to allow use)
   while, for the workers, it is unlikely to equal their product in the
   short run. Given that the major rationale for the Homestead strike of
   1892 was to secure the despotism of the property owner, the results of
   breaking the union should be obvious. According to David Brody in his
   work The Steel Workers, after the union was broken "the steel workers
   output doubled in exchange for an income rise of one-fifth . . . The
   accomplishment was possible only with a labour force powerless to
   oppose the decisions of the steel men." [quoted by Jeremy Brecher, Op.
   Cit., p. 62] At Homestead, between 1892 and 1907 the daily earnings of
   highly-skilled plate-mill workers fell by a fifth while their hours
   increased from eight to twelve. [Brecher, Op. Cit., p. 63] Who would
   dare claim that the profits this increased exploitation created somehow
   reflected the labour of the managers rather than their total monopoly
   of authority within the workplace?

   The logic is simple -- which boss would employ a worker unless they
   expected to get more out of their labour than they pay in wages? And
   why does the capitalist get this reward? They own "capital" and,
   consequently, their "labour" partly involves excluding others from
   using it and ordering about those whom they do allow in -- in exchange
   for keeping the product of their labour. As Marx put it, "the worker
   works under the control of the capitalist to whom his labour belongs"
   and "the product is the property of the capitalist and not that of the
   worker, its immediate producer." And so "[f]rom the instant he steps
   into the workshop, the use-value of his labour-power and therefore its
   use, which is labour, belongs to the capitalist." [Op. Cit., p. 291 and
   p. 292] This suggests that exploitation takes place within production
   and so a contract for wages made beforehand simply cannot be expected
   to anticipate the use-value extracted by the boss from the workers
   subjected to his authority. Thus wage labour and exploitation would go
   hand-in-hand -- and so Most's horror at Tucker's support for it.

   As best, it could be argued that such "wages" would be minimal as
   workers would be able to swap jobs to get higher wages and, possibly,
   set up co-operatives in competition. However, this amounts to saying
   that, in the long run, labour gets its full product and to say that is
   to admit in the short term that labour is exploited. Yet nowhere did
   Tucker argue that labour would get its full product eventually in a
   free society, rather he stressed that liberty would result in the end
   of exploitation. Nor should we be blind to the fact that a market
   economy is a dynamic one, making the long run unlikely to ever appear
   ("in the long run we are all dead" as Keynes memorably put it). Combine
   this with the natural barriers to competition we indicated in
   [22]section G.4 and we are left with problems of usury/exploitation in
   an individualist anarchist system.

   The obvious solution to these problems is to be found in Proudhon,
   namely the use of co-operatives for any workplace which cannot be
   operated by an individual. This was the also the position of the
   Haymarket anarchists, with August Spies (for example) arguing that
   "large factories and mines, and the machinery of exchange and
   transportation . . . have become too vast for private control.
   Individuals can no longer monopolise them." [contained in Albert
   Parsons, Anarchism: Its Philosophy and Scientific Basis, pp. 60-1]
   Proudhon denounced property as "despotism", for Albert Parsons the
   "wage system of labour is a despotism." [Op. Cit., p. 21]

   As Frank H. Brooks notes, "producer and consumer co-operatives were a
   staple of American labour reform (and of Proudhonian anarchism)." This
   was because they "promised the full reward of labour to the producer,
   and commodities at cost to the consumer." [The Individualist
   Anarchists, p. 110] This was the position of Voltairine de Cleyre
   (during her individualist phase) as well as her mentor Dyer Lum:

     "Lum drew from the French anarchist Proudhon . . . a radical
     critique of classical political economy and . . . a set of positive
     reforms in land tenure and banking . . . Proudhon paralleled the
     native labour reform tradition in several ways. Besides suggesting
     reforms in land and money, Proudhon urged producer co-operation."
     [Frank H. Brooks, "Ideology, Strategy, and Organization: Dyer Lum
     and the American Anarchist Movement", pp. 57-83, Labor History, Vol.
     34, No. 1, p. 72]

   So, somewhat ironically given his love of Proudhon, it was, in fact,
   Most who was closer to the French anarchist's position on this issue
   than Tucker. Kropotkin echoed Proudhon's analysis when he noted that
   "the only guarantee not to be robbed of the fruits of your labour is to
   possess the instruments of labour." [The Conquest of Bread, p. 145] In
   other words, for a self-proclaimed follower of Proudhon, Tucker ignored
   the French anarchist's libertarian arguments against wage labour. The
   key difference between the communist-anarchists and Proudhon was on the
   desirability of making the product of labour communal or not (although
   both recognised the right of people to share as they desired). However,
   it must be stressed that Proudhon's analysis was not an alien one to
   the individualist anarchist tradition. Joshua King Ingalls, for
   example, presented a similar analysis to Proudhon on the issue of joint
   production as well as its solution in the form of co-operatives (see
   [23]section G.1.3 for details) and Dyer Lum was a firm advocator of the
   abolition of wage labour. So integrating the insights of social
   anarchism on this issue with individualist anarchism would not be
   difficult and would build upon existing tendencies within it.

   In summary, social anarchists argue that individualist anarchism does
   not solve the social question. If it did, then they would be
   individualists. They argue that in spite of Tucker's claims, workers
   would still be exploited in any form of individualist anarchism which
   retained significant amounts of wage labour as well as being a
   predominantly hierarchical, rather than libertarian, society. As we
   argue in the [24]next section, this is why most anarchists consider
   individualist anarchism as being an inconsistent form of anarchism.

G.4.2 Why do social anarchists think individualism is inconsistent anarchism?

From our discussion of wage labour in the [25]last section, some may consider
that Tucker's support for wage labour would place him outside the ranks of
anarchism. After all, this is one of the key reasons why most anarchists reject
"anarcho"-capitalism as a form of anarchism. Surely, it could be argued, if
Murray Rothbard is not an anarchist, then why is Tucker?

That is not the case and the reason is obvious -- Tucker's support for wage
labour is inconsistent with his ideas on "occupancy and use" while Rothbard's
are in line with his capitalist property rights. Given the key place
self-management holds in almost all anarchist thought, unsurprisingly we find
Chomsky summarising the anarchist position thusly:

     "A consistent anarchist must oppose private ownership of the means
     of production and the wage slavery which is a component of this
     system, as incompatible with the principle that labour must be
     freely undertaken and under the control of the producer . . . A
     consistent anarchist must oppose not only alienated labour but also
     the stupefying specialisation of labour that takes place when the
     means for developing production." ["Notes on Anarchism", Chomsky on
     Anarchism, p. 123]

Thus the "consistent anarchist, then, will be a socialist, but a socialist of a
particular sort." [Op. Cit., p. 125] Which suggests that Tucker's position is
one of inconsistent anarchism. While a socialist, he did not take his
libertarian positions to their logical conclusions -- the abolition of wage
labour. There is, of course, a certain irony in this. In response to Johann Most
calling his ideas "Manchesterism", Tucker wrote "what better can a man who
professes Anarchism want than that? For the principle of Manchesterism is
liberty, and consistent Manchesterism is consistent adherence to liberty. The
only inconsistency of the Manchester men lies in their infidelity to liberty in
some of its phases. And these infidelity to liberty in some of its phases is
precisely the fatal inconsistency of the 'Freiheit' school . . . Yes, genuine A
narchism is consistent Manchesterism, and Communistic or pseudo-Anarchism is
inconsistent Manchesterism." [Liberty, no. 123, p. 4]

   In other words, if individualist anarchism is, as Tucker claimed,
   "consistent Manchesterism" then, argue social anarchists, individualist
   anarchism is "inconsistent" anarchism. This means that some of Tucker's
   arguments contradict some of his own fundamental principles, most
   obviously his indifference to wage labour. This, as argued, violates
   "occupancy and use", his opposition to exploitation and, as it is a
   form of hierarchy, his anarchism.

   To see what we mean we must point out that certain individualist
   anarchists are not the only "inconsistent" ones that have existed. The
   most obvious example is Proudhon, whose sexism is well known, utterly
   disgraceful and is in direct contradiction to his other ideas and
   principles. While Proudhon attacked hierarchy in politics and
   economics, he fully supported patriarchy in the home. This support for
   a form of archy does not refute claims that Proudhon was an anarchist,
   it just means that certain of his ideas were inconsistent with his key
   principles. As one French anarcha-feminist critic of Proudhon put it in
   1869: "These so-called lovers of liberty, if they are unable to take
   part in the direction of the state, at least they will be able to have
   a little monarchy for their personal use, each in his own home . . .
   Order in the family seems impossible to them -- well then, what about
   in the state?" [Andr Lo, quoted by Carolyn J. Eichner, "'Vive La
   Commune!' Feminism, Socialism, and Revolutionary Revival in the
   Aftermath of the 1871 Paris Commune,", pp. 68-98, Journal of Women's
   History, Vol. 15, No.2, p. 75] Rejecting monarchy and hierarchy on the
   state level and within the workplace while supporting it -- in the form
   of rule by the father -- on the family level was simply illogical and
   inconsistent. Subsequent anarchists (from Bakunin onwards) solved this
   obvious contradiction by consistently applying anarchist principles and
   opposing sexism and patriarchy. In other words, by critiquing
   Proudhon's sexism by means of the very principles he himself used to
   critique the state and capitalism.

   Much the same applies to individualist anarchists. The key issue is
   that, given their own principles, individualist anarchism can easily
   become consistent anarchism. That is why it is a school of anarchism,
   unlike "anarcho"-capitalism. All that is required is to consistently
   apply "occupancy and use" to workplaces (as Proudhon advocated). By
   consistently applying this principle they can finally end exploitation
   along with hierarchy, so bringing all their ideas into line.

   Tucker's position is also in direct opposition to Proudhon's arguments,
   which is somewhat ironic since Tucker stressed being inspired by and
   following the French anarchist and his ideas (Tucker referred to
   Proudhon as being both "the father of the Anarchistic school of
   socialism" as well as "being the Anarchist par excellence" [Tucker,
   Instead of a Book, p. 391]). Tucker is distinctly at odds with Proudhon
   who consistently opposed wage-labour and so, presumably, was also an
   advocate of "pseudo-Anarchism" alongside Kropotkin and Most. For
   Proudhon, the worker has "sold and surrendered his liberty" to the
   proprietor, with the proprietor being "a man, who, having absolute
   control of an instrument of production, claims the right to enjoy the
   product of the instrument without using it himself." This leads to
   exploitation and if "the labourer is proprietor of the value which he
   creates, it follows" that "all production being necessarily collective,
   the labourer is entitled to a share of the products and profits
   commensurate with his labour" and that, "all accumulated capital being
   social property, no one can be its exclusive proprietor." [What is
   Property?, p. 130, p. 293 and p. 130] With "machinery and the workshop,
   divine right -- that is, the principle of authority -- makes its
   entrance into political economy. Capital . . . Property . . . are, in
   economic language, the various names of . . . Power, Authority." Thus,
   under capitalism, the workplace has a "hierarchical organisation."
   There are three alternatives, capitalism ("that is, monopoly and what
   follows"), state socialism ("exploitation by the State") "or else . . .
   a solution based on equality, -- in other words, the organisation of
   labour, which involves the negation of political economy and the end of
   property." [System of Economical Contradictions, pp. 203-4 and p. 253]

   For Proudhon, employees are "subordinated, exploited" and their
   "permanent condition is one of obedience." The wage worker is,
   therefore, a "slave." Indeed, capitalist companies "plunder the bodies
   and souls of wage workers" and they are "an outrage upon human dignity
   and personality." However, in a co-operative the situation changes and
   the worker is an "associate" and "forms a part of the producing
   organisation" and "forms a part of the sovereign power, of which he was
   before but the subject." Without co-operation and association, "the
   workers . . . would remain related as subordinates and superiors, and
   there would ensue two industrial castes of masters and wage-workers,
   which is repugnant to a free and democratic society." [The General Idea
   of the Revolution in the Nineteenth Century, p. 216, p. 219 and p. 216]
   As Robert Graham notes, "Proudhon's market socialism is indissolubly
   linked to his notions of industry democracy and workers'
   self-management." ["Introduction", Op. Cit.,, p. xxxii]

   This analysis lead Proudhon to call for co-operatives to end wage
   labour. This was most consistently advocated in his The General Idea of
   the Revolution but appears repeatedly in his work. Thus we find him
   arguing in 1851 that socialism is "the elimination of misery, the
   abolition of capitalism and of wage-labour, the transformation of
   property, . . . the effective and direct sovereignty of the workers, .
   . . the substitution of the contractual regime for the legal regime."
   [quoted by John Ehrenberg, Proudhon and his Age, p. 111] Fourteen years
   later, he argued the same, with the aim of his mutualist ideas being
   "the complete emancipation of the workers . . . the abolition of the
   wage worker." Thus a key idea of Proudhon's politics is the abolition
   of wage labour: "Industrial Democracy must. . . succeed Industrial
   Feudalism." [quoted by K. Steven Vincent, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and
   the Rise of French Republican Socialism p. 222 and p. 167] "In
   democratising us," Proudhon argued, "revolution has launched us on the
   path of industrial democracy." [Selected Writings of Pierre-Joseph
   Proudhon, p. 63]

   (As an aside, it is deeply significant how different Proudhon's
   analysis of hierarchy and wage-labour is to Murray Rothbard's. For
   Rothbard, both "hierarchy" and "wage-work" were part of "a whole slew
   of institutions necessary to the triumph of liberty" (others included
   "granting of funds by libertarian millionaires, and a libertarian
   political party"). He strenuously objected to those "indicting" such
   institutions "as non-libertarian or non-market". [Konkin on Libertarian
   Strategy] For Proudhon -- as well as Bakunin, Kropotkin, and others --
   both wage-labour and hierarchy were anti-libertarian by their very
   nature. How could hier-archy be "necessary" for the triumph of
   an-archy? Logically, it makes no sense. An-archy, by definition, means
   no-archy rather than wholehearted support for a specific form of archy,
   namely hier-archy! At best, Rothbard was a "voluntary archist" not an
   anarchist.)

   As Charles A. Dana put it (in a work published by Tucker and described
   by him as "a really intelligent, forceful, and sympathetic exposition
   of mutual banking"), "[b]y introducing mutualism into exchanges and
   credit we introduce it everywhere, and labour will assume a new aspect
   and become truly democratic." Labour "must be reformed by means of
   association as well as banking" for "if labour be not organised, the
   labourers will be made to toil for others to receive the fruit thereof
   as heretofore." These co-operatives "to a great extent abolish the
   exploitation of the employed worker by the employing capitalist, and
   make the worker his own employer; but, in order to completely gain that
   end, the associations must be associated, united in one body for mutual
   aid." This is "the Syndicate of Production." [Proudhon and His "Bank of
   the People", p. 45, p. 50 and p. 54] Tucker, however, asserted that
   Proudhon included the syndicate of production "to humour those of his
   associated who placed stress on these features. He did not consider
   them of any value." [Op. Cit., pp. 51-2] However, he was simply
   incorrect. Industrial democracy was a key aspect of Proudhon's ideas,
   as was the creation of an "agro-industrial federation" based on these
   self-managed associations. This can be seen from Tucker's own
   comparison of Marx and Proudhon made on the formers death:

     "For Karl Marx, the 'egalitaire', we feel the profoundest respect;
     as for Karl Marx, the 'authoritaire', we must consider him an enemy.
     . . . Proudhon was years before Marx [in discussing the struggle of
     the classes and the privileges and monopolies of capital]. . . . The
     vital difference between Proudhon and Marx [was] to be found in
     their respective remedies which they proposed. Man would nationalise
     the productive and distributive forces; Proudhon would individualise
     and associate them. Marx would make the labourers political masters;
     Proudhon would abolish political mastership entirely . . . Man
     believed in compulsory majority rule; Proudhon believed in the
     voluntary principle. In short, Marx was an 'authoritaire'; Proudhon
     was a champion of Liberty." [Liberty, no. 35, p. 2]

   Ironically, therefore, by Tucker placing so much stress in opposing
   capitalist exploitation, instead of capitalist oppression, he was
   actually closer to the "authoritaire" Marx than Proudhon and, like
   Marx, opened the door to various kinds of domination and restrictions
   on individual self-government within anarchism. Again we see a support
   for contract theory creating authoritarian, not libertarian,
   relationships between people. Simply out, the social relationships
   produced by wage labour shares far too much in common with those
   created by the state not to be of concern to any genuine libertarian.
   Arguing that it is based on consent is as unconvincing as those who
   defend the state in similar terms.

   And we must add that John Stuart Mill (who agreed with the Warrenite
   slogan "Individual Sovereignty") faced with the same problem that wage
   labour made a mockery of individual liberty came to the same conclusion
   as Proudhon. He thought that if "mankind is to continue to improve"
   (and it can only improve within liberty, we must add) then in the end
   one form of association will predominate, "not that which can exist
   between a capitalist as chief, and workpeople without a voice in
   management, but the association of the labourers themselves on terms of
   equality, collectively owning the capital with which they carry on
   their operations, and working under managers elected and removable by
   themselves." [quoted by Carole Pateman, Participation and Democratic
   Theory, p. 34]

   Tucker himself pointed out that "the essence of government is control.
   . . He who attempts to control another is a governor, an aggressor, an
   invader." [Instead of a Book, p. 23] So when Tucker suggests that
   (non-exploitative, and so non-capitalist) wage labour could exist in
   individualist anarchy there is a distinct contradiction. Unlike wage
   labour under capitalism, workers would employ other workers and all
   would (in theory) receive the full product of their labour. Be that as
   it may, such relationships are not libertarian and so contradict
   Tucker's own theories on individual liberty (as Proudhon and Mill
   recognised with their own, similar, positions). Wage labour is based on
   the control of the worker by the employer; hence Tucker's contract
   theory can lead to a form of "voluntary" and "private" government
   within the workplace. This means that, while outside of a contract an
   individual is free, within it he or she is governed. This violates
   Tucker's concept of "equality of liberty," since the boss has obviously
   more liberty than the worker during working hours.

   Therefore, logically, individualist anarchism must follow Proudhon and
   support co-operatives and self-employment in order to ensure the
   maximum individual self-government and labour's "natural wage." So
   Tucker's comments about strikers and wage labour show a basic
   inconsistency in his basic ideas. This conclusion is not surprising. As
   Malatesta argued:

     "The individualists give the greatest importance to an abstract
     concept of freedom and fail to take into account, or dwell on the
     fact, that real, concrete freedom is the outcome of solidarity and
     voluntary co-operation . . . They certainly believe that to work in
     isolation is fruitless and that an individual, to ensure a living as
     a human being and to materially and morally enjoy all the benefits
     of civilisation, must either exploit -- directly or indirectly --
     the labour of others . . . or associate with his [or her] fellows
     and share their pains and the joys of life. And since, being
     anarchists, they cannot allow the exploitation of one by another,
     they must necessarily agree that to be free and live as human beings
     they have to accept some degree and form of voluntary communism."
     [The Anarchist Revolution, p. 16]

   Occupancy and use, therefore, implies the collective ownership of
   resources used by groups which, in turn, implies associative labour and
   self-management. In other words, "some degree and form of voluntary
   communism." Ultimately, as John P. Clark summarised, opposition to
   authority which is limited to just the state hardly makes much sense
   from a libertarian perspective:

     "Neither . . . is there any reason to consider such a position a
     very consistent or convincing form of anarchism . . . A view of
     anarchism which seeks to eliminate coercion and the state, but which
     overlooks other ways in which people dominate other people, is very
     incomplete and quite contradictory type of anarchism. The most
     thorough-going and perceptive anarchist theories have shown that all
     types of domination are interrelated, all are destructive, and all
     must be eliminated . . . Anarchism may begin as a revolt against
     political authority, but if followed to its logical conclusion it
     becomes an all-encompassing critique of the will to dominate and all
     its manifestations." [Max Stirner's Egoism, pp. 92-3]

   Certain individualist anarchists were keenly aware of the fact that
   even free association need not be based on freedom for both parties.
   Take, for example, marriage. Marriage, correctly argued John Beverley
   Robinson, is based on "the promise to obey" and this results in "a very
   real subordination." As part of "the general progress toward freedom in
   all things," marriage will "become the union of those who are both
   equal and both free." [Liberty, no. 287, p. 2] Why should property
   associated subordination be any better than patriarchal subordination?
   Does the fact that one only lasts 8 or 12 hours rather than 24 hours a
   day really make one consistent with libertarian principles and the
   other not?

   Thus Tucker's comments on wage labour indicates a distinct
   contradiction in his ideas. It violates his support for "occupancy and
   use" as well as his opposition to the state and usury. It could, of
   course, be argued that the contradiction is resolved because the worker
   consents to the authority of the boss by taking the job. However, it
   can be replied that, by this logic, the citizen consents to the
   authority of the state as a democratic state allows people to leave its
   borders and join another one -- that the citizen does not leave
   indicates they consent to the state (this flows from Locke). When it
   came to the state, anarchists are well aware of the limited nature of
   this argument (as one individualist anarchist put it: "As well say that
   the government of New York or even of the United States is voluntary,
   and, if you don't like New York Sunday laws, etc., you can secede and
   go to -- South Carolina." [A. H. Simpson, The Individualist Anarchists,
   p. 287]). In other words, consent of and by itself does not justify
   hierarchy for if it did, the current state system would be anarchistic.
   This indicates the weakness of contract theory as a means of
   guaranteeing liberty and its potential to generate, and justify,
   authoritarian social relationships rather than libertarian and liberty
   enhancing ones.

   This explains anarchist opposition to wage labour, it undermines
   liberty and, as a result, allows exploitation to happen. Albert Parsons
   put it well. Under capitalism labour "is a commodity and wages is the
   price paid for it. The owner of this commodity -- of labour -- sells
   it, that is himself, to the owner of capital in order to live . . . The
   reward of the wage labourer's activity is not the product of his labour
   -- far from it." This implies exploitation and so class struggle as
   there is a "irreconcilable conflict between wage labourers and
   capitalists, between those who buy labour or sell its products, and the
   wage worker who sells labour (himself) in order to live." This is
   because the boss will seek to use their authority over the worker to
   make them produce more for the agreed wage. Given this, during a social
   revolution the workers "first act will, of necessity, be the
   application of communistic principles. They will expropriate all
   wealth; they will take possession of all foundries, workshops,
   factories, mines, etc., for in no other way could they be able to
   continue to produce what they require on a basis of equality, and be,
   at the same time, independent of any authority." [Anarchism: Its
   Philosophy and Scientific Basis, p. 99, p. 104 and p. 166] Hence
   Kropotkin's comment that "anarchism . . . refuses all hierarchical
   organisation and preaches free agreement." [Anarchism, p. 137] To do
   otherwise is to contradict the basic ideas of anarchism.

   Peter Kropotkin recognised the statist implications of some aspects of
   anarchist individualism which Tucker's strike example highlights.
   Tucker's anarchism, due to its uncritical support for contract theory,
   could result in a few people dominating economic life, because "no
   force" would result in the perpetuation of authority structures, with
   freedom simply becoming the "right to full development" of "privileged
   minorities." But, Kropotkin argued, "as such monopolies cannot be
   maintained otherwise than under the protection of a monopolist
   legislation and an organised coercion by the State, the claims of these
   individualists necessarily end up in a return to the State idea and to
   that same coercion which they so fiercely attack themselves. Their
   position is thus the same as that of Spencer and of the so-called
   'Manchester school' of economists, who also begin by a severe criticism
   of the State and end up in its full recognition in order to maintain
   the property monopolies, of which the State is the necessary
   stronghold." [Op. Cit., p. 162]

   Such would be the possible (perhaps probable) result of the
   individualists' contract theory of freedom without a social background
   of communal self-management and ownership. As can be seen from
   capitalism, a society based on the abstract individualism associated
   with contract theory would, in practice, produce social relationships
   based on power and authority (and so force -- which would be needed to
   back up that authority), not liberty. As we argued in [26]section
   A.2.14, voluntarism is not enough in itself to preserve freedom. This
   result, as noted in [27]section A.3, could only be avoided by workers'
   control, which is in fact the logical implication of Tucker's and other
   individualists' proposals. This is hardly a surprising implication,
   since as we've seen, artisan production was commonplace in 19th-century
   America and its benefits were extolled by many individualists. Without
   workers' control, individualist anarchism would soon become a form of
   capitalism and so statism -- a highly unlikely intention of
   individualists like Tucker, who hated both.

   Therefore, given the assumptions of individualist anarchism in both
   their economic and political aspects, it is forced along the path of
   co-operative, not wage, labour. In other words, individualist anarchism
   is a form of socialism as workers receive the full product of their
   labour (i.e. there is no non-labour income) and this, in turn,
   logically implies a society in which self-managed firms compete against
   each other on the free market, with workers selling the product of
   their labour and not the labour itself. As this unites workers with the
   means of production they use, it is not capitalism and instead a form
   of socialism based upon worker ownership and control of the places they
   work.

   For individualist anarchists not to support co-operatives results in a
   contradiction, namely that the individualist anarchism which aims to
   secure the worker's "natural wage" cannot in fact do so, while dividing
   society into a class of order givers and order takers which violates
   individual self-government. It is this contradiction within Tucker's
   thought which the self-styled "anarcho"-capitalists take advantage of
   in order to maintain that individualist anarchism in fact implies
   capitalism (and so private-statism), not workers' control. In order to
   reach this implausible conclusion, a few individualist anarchist ideas
   are ripped from their social context and applied in a way that makes a
   mockery of them.

   Given this analysis, it becomes clear why few social anarchists exclude
   individualist anarchism from the anarchist tradition while almost all
   do so for "anarcho"-capitalism. The reason is simple and lies in the
   analysis that any individualist anarchism which supports wage labour is
   inconsistent anarchism. It can easily be made consistent anarchism by
   applying its own principles consistently. In contrast,
   "anarcho"-capitalism rejects so many of the basic, underlying,
   principles of anarchism and has consistently followed the logical
   conclusions of such a rejection into private statism and support for
   hierarchical authority associated with private property that it cannot
   be made consistent with the ideals of anarchism. In constrast, given
   its own principles, individualist anarchism can easily become
   consistent anarchism. That is why it is a school of anarchism, unlike
   "anarcho"-capitalism. All that is required is to consistently apply
   "occupancy and use" to workplaces (as Proudhon advocated as did many
   individualist anarchists). By consistently applying this principle it
   finally ends exploitation along with hierarchy, so bringing all its
   ideals into line.

   As Malatesta argued, "anarchy, as understood by the anarchists and as
   only they can interpret it, is based on socialism. Indeed were it not
   for those schools of socialism which artificially divide the natural
   unity of the social question, and consider some aspects out of context
   . . . we could say straight out that anarchy is synonymous with
   socialism, for both stand for the abolition of the domination and
   exploitation of man by man, whether exercised at bayonet point or by a
   monopoly of the means of life." Without socialism, liberty is purely
   "liberty . . . for the strong and the property owners to oppress and
   exploit the weak, those who have nothing . . . [so] lead[ing] to
   exploitation and domination, in other words, to authority . . . for
   freedom is not possible without equality, and real anarchy cannot exist
   without solidarity, without socialism." [Anarchy, p. 48 and p. 47]

References

   1. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secG2.html
   2. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secG4.html#secg41
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   4. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secG4.html#secg41
   5. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secG2.html
   6. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secG2.html#secg21
   7. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secC4.html
   8. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secG1.html#secg11
   9. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secG4.html#secg42
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  16. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secG1.html#secg13
  17. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secF7.html#secf671
  18. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secF6.html#secf62
  19. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secB4.html
  20. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secG1.html#secg12
  21. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secG4.html#secg42
  22. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secG4.html
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  25. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secG4.html#secg41
  26. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secA2.html#seca214
  27. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secA3.html
