                 G.5 Benjamin Tucker: Capitalist or Anarchist?

   Benjamin Tucker, like all genuine anarchists, was against both the
   state and capitalism, against both oppression and exploitation. While
   not against the market and property he was firmly against capitalism as
   it was, in his eyes, a state-supported monopoly of social capital
   (tools, machinery, etc.) which allows owners to exploit their
   employees, i.e., to avoid paying workers the full value of their
   labour. He thought that the "labouring classes are deprived of their
   earnings by usury in its three forms, interest, rent and profit."
   [quoted by James J. Martin, Men Against the State, p. 210f] Therefore
   "Liberty will abolish interest; it will abolish profit; it will abolish
   monopolistic rent; it will abolish taxation; it will abolish the
   exploitation of labour; it will abolish all means whereby any labourer
   can be deprived of any of his product." [The Individualist Anarchists,
   p. 157]

   This stance puts him squarely in the libertarian socialist tradition
   and, unsurprisingly, Tucker referred to himself many times as a
   socialist and considered his philosophy to be "Anarchistic socialism."
   For Tucker, capitalist society was exploitative and stopped the full
   development of all and so had to be replaced:

     "[This] society is fundamentally anti-social. The whole so-called
     social fabric rests on privilege and power, and is disordered and
     strained in every direction by the inequalities that necessarily
     result therefrom. The welfare of each, instead of contributing to
     that of all, as it naturally should and would, almost invariably
     detracts from that of all. Wealth is made by legal privilege a hook
     with which to filch from labour's pockets. Every man who gets rich
     thereby makes his neighbours poor. The better off one is, the worse
     the rest are . . . Labour's Deficit is precisely equal to the
     Capitalist's Efficit.

     "Now, Socialism wants to change all this. Socialism says . . . that
     no man shall be able to add to his riches except by labour; that is
     adding to his riches by his labour alone no man makes another man
     poorer; that on the contrary every man this adding to his riches
     makes every other man richer; . . . that every increase in capital
     in the hands of the labourer tends, in the absence of legal
     monopoly, to put more products, better products, cheaper products,
     and a greater variety of products within the reach of every man who
     works; and that this fact means the physical, mental, and moral
     perfecting of mankind, and the realisation of human fraternity."
     [Instead of a Book, pp. 361-2]

   It is true that he also sometimes railed against "socialism," but in
   those cases it is clear that he was referring to state socialism. Like
   many anarchists (including Proudhon, Bakunin and Kropotkin), he argued
   that there are two kinds of socialism based upon two different
   principles:

     "The two principles referred to are Authority and Liberty, and the
     names of the two schools of Socialistic thought which fully and
     unreservedly represent one or the other of them are, respectively,
     State Socialism and Anarchism. Whoso knows what these two schools
     want and how they propose to get it understands the Socialistic
     movement. For, just as it has been said that there is no half-way
     house between Rome and Reason, so it may be said that there is no
     half-way house between State Socialism and Anarchism." [The
     Anarchist Reader, p. 150]

   Like other socialists, Tucker argued that profits "to a few mean
   robbery of others, -- monopoly. Andrews and Warren, realising this,
   make individual sovereignty and the cost principle the essential
   conditions of a true civilisation." [Liberty, no. 94, p. 1] Like
   Proudhon, he argued that "property, in the sense of individual
   possession, is liberty." [Op. Cit., no. 122, p. 4] However, unlike
   state socialists and communist-anarchists, Tucker saw a key role for a
   market system under socialism. In this he followed Proudhon who also
   argued that competition was required to ensure that prices reflected
   the labour costs involved in producing it and so interest, rent and
   profit were opposed because they did not reflect actual costs but
   simply usury paid to the wealthy for being allowed to use part of their
   wealth, a part the rich could comfortably lend out to others as they
   were not using it. Once capitalism was abolished, the market would be
   able to reach its full promise and become a means of enriching all
   rather than the few:

     "Liberty's aim -- universal happiness -- is that of all Socialists,
     in contrast with that of the Manchester men -- luxury fed by misery.
     But its principle -- individual sovereignty -- is that of the
     Manchester men, in contrast with that of the Socialists --
     individual subordination. But individual sovereignty, when logically
     carried out, leads, not to luxury fed by misery, but to comfort for
     all industrious persons and death for all idle ones." [Liberty, no.
     89, p. 1]

   As other anarchists have also argued, likewise for Tucker -- the state
   is the "protector" of the exploiter. "Usury is the serpent gnawing at
   labour's vitals, and only liberty can detach and kill it. Give
   labourers their liberty and they will keep their wealth." [The
   Individualist Anarchists, p. 89] From this it is clear that he
   considered laissez-faire capitalism to be opposed to genuine individual
   sovereignty. This was because it was based on the state interfering in
   the market by enforcing certain restrictions on competition in favour
   of the capitalist class and certain types of private property. Thus his
   opposition to the state reflected his opposition to capitalist property
   rights and the abolition of the state automatically meant their
   abolition as well.

   Tucker spent considerable time making it clear that he was against
   capitalist private property rights, most notably in land and what was
   on it. He supported Proudhon's argument that "property is theft," even
   translating many of Proudhon's works including the classic "What is
   Property?" where that phrase originated. Tucker advocated possession
   (or "occupancy and use," to use his preferred expression for the
   concept) but not private property, believing that empty land, houses,
   and so on should be squatted by those who could use them, as labour
   (i.e. use) would be the only title to "property" (Tucker opposed all
   non-labour income as usury). For Tucker, the true "Anarchistic
   doctrine" was "occupancy and use as the basis and limit of land
   ownership." Supporting the current property rights regime meant
   "departing from Anarchistic ground." It was "Archism" and "all
   Anarchists agree in viewing [it] as a denial of equal liberty" and
   "utterly inconsistent with the Anarchistic doctrine of occupancy and
   use as the limit of property in land." [Liberty, no. 180, p. 4 and p.
   6] He looked forward to the day when "the Anarchistic view that
   occupancy and use should condition and limit landholding becomes the
   prevailing view." [Op. Cit., no. 162, p. 5]

   This was because Tucker did not believe in a "natural right" to
   property nor did he approve of unlimited holdings of scarce goods and
   "in the case of land, or of any other material the supply of which is
   so limited that all cannot hold it in unlimited quantities, Anarchism
   undertakes to protect no titles except such as are based on actual
   occupancy and use." [Instead of a Book, p. 61] He clearly recognised
   that allowing "absolute" rights to private property in land would
   result in the liberty of non-owners being diminished and so "I put the
   right of occupancy and use above the right of contract . . .
   principally by my interest in the right of contract. Without such a
   preference the theory of occupancy and use is utterly untenable;
   without it . . . it would be possible for an individual to acquire, and
   hold simultaneously, virtual titles to innumerable parcels of land, by
   the merest show of labour performed thereon. This would lead to "the
   virtual ownership of the entire world by a small fraction of its
   inhabitants" which would result in "the right of contract, if not
   destroyed absolutely, would surely be impaired in an intolerable
   degree." [Liberty, no. 350, p. 4] Thus "[i]t is true . . . that
   Anarchism does not recognise the principle of human rights. But it
   recognises human equality as a necessity of stable society." [Instead
   of a Book, p. 64]

   So Tucker considered private property in land use (which he called the
   "land monopoly") as one of the four great evils of capitalism.
   According to Tucker, "the land monopoly . . . consists in the
   enforcement by government of land titles which do not rest upon
   personal occupancy and cultivation . . . the individual should no
   longer be protected by their fellows in anything but personal
   occupation and cultivation of land." "Rent", he argued, "is due to the
   denial of liberty which takes the shape of the land monopoly, vesting
   titles to land in individuals and associations which do not use it, and
   thereby compelling the non-owning users to pay tribute to the non-using
   owners as a condition of admission to the competitive market." the land
   "should be free to all, and no one would control more than he [or she]
   used." [The Individualist Anarchists, p. 85, p. 130 and p. 114] Ending
   this monopoly would, he thought, reduce the evils of capitalism and
   increase liberty (particularly in predominantly agricultural societies
   such as the America of his era). For those who own no property have no
   room for the soles of their feet unless they have the permission of
   those who do own property, hardly a situation that would increase,
   never mind protect, freedom for all. Significantly, Tucker extended
   this principle to what was on the land, and so Tucker would "accord the
   actual occupant and user of land the right to that which is upon the
   land, who left it there when abandoning the land." [Liberty, no. 350,
   p. 4] The freedom to squat empty land and buildings would, in the
   absence of a state to protect titles, further contribute to the
   elimination of rent:

     "Ground rent exists only because the State stands by to collect it
     and to protect land titles rooted in force or fraud. Otherwise land
     would be free to all, and no one could control more than he used."
     [quoted by James J. Martin, Op. Cit., p. 210]

   This would lead to "the abolition of landlordism and the annihilation
   of rent." [Instead of a Book, p. 300] Significantly, Tucker considered
   the Irish Land League (an organisation which used non-payment of rent
   to secure reforms against the British state) as "the nearest approach,
   on a large scale, to perfect Anarchistic organisation that the world
   has yet seen. An immense number of local groups . . . each group
   autonomous, each free . . . each obeying its own judgement . . . all
   co-ordinated and federated." [The Individualist Anarchists, p. 263]

   The other capitalist monopolies were based on credit, tariffs and
   patents and all were reflected in (and supported by) the law. As far as
   tariffs went, this was seen as a statist means of "fostering production
   at high prices" which the workers paid for. Its abolition "would result
   in a great reduction in the prices of all articles taxed. [Op. Cit., p.
   85 and p. 86] With capitalists in the protected industries being unable
   to reap high profits, they would be unable to accumulate capital to the
   same degree and so the market would also become more equal. As for
   patents, Tucker considered that there was "no more justification for
   the claim of the discoverer of an idea to exclusive use of it than
   there would have been for a claim on the part of the man who first
   'struck oil' to ownership of the entire oil region or petroleum product
   . . . The central injustice of copyright and patent law is that it
   compels the race to pay an individual through a long term of years a
   monopoly price for knowledge that he has discovered today, although
   some other man or men might, and in many cases very probably would,
   have discovered it tomorrow." [Liberty, no. 173, p. 4] The state,
   therefore, protects the inventors (or, these days, the company the
   inventors work for) "against competition for a period long enough to
   enable them to extort from the people a reward enormously in excess of
   the labour measure of their services -- in other words, in giving
   certain people a right of property for a term of years in laws and
   facts of Nature, and the power to extract tribute from others for the
   use of this natural wealth, which should be open to all." [The
   Individualist Anarchists, p. 86]

   However, the key monopoly was the credit monopoly. Tucker believed that
   bankers monopoly of the power to create credit and currency was the
   linchpin of capitalism. Although he thought that all forms of monopoly
   are detrimental to society, he maintained that the banking monopoly is
   the worst, since it is the root from which both the
   industrial-capitalist and landlordist monopolies grow and without which
   they would wither and die. For, if credit were not monopolised, its
   price (i.e. interest rates) would be much lower, which in turn would
   drastically lower the price of capital goods and buildings -- expensive
   items that generally cannot be purchased without access to credit. This
   would mean that the people currently "deterred from going into business
   by the ruinously high rates they must pay for capital with which to
   start and carry on business will find their difficulties removed" (they
   would simply "pay for the labour of running the banks"). This "facility
   of acquiring capital will give an unheard of impetus to business, and
   consequently create an unprecedented demand for labour -- a demand
   which will always be in excess of the supply, directly to the contrary
   of the present condition of the labour market . . . Labour will then be
   in a position to dictate its wages." [Op. Cit., p. 84 and p. 85]

   Following Proudhon, Tucker argued that if any group of people could
   legally form a "mutual bank" and issue credit based on any form of
   collateral they saw fit to accept, the price of credit would fall to
   the labour cost of the paperwork involved in running the bank. He
   claimed that banking statistics show this cost to be less than one
   percent of principal, and hence, that a one-time service fee which
   covers this cost and no more is the only non-usurious charge a bank can
   make for extending credit. This charge should not be called "interest"
   since, as it represented the labour-cost in providing, it is
   non-exploitative. This would ensure that workers could gain free access
   to the means of production (and so, in effect, be the individualist
   equivalent of the communist-anarchist argument for socialisation).

   Tucker believed that under mutual banking, capitalists' ability to
   extract surplus value from workers in return for the use of tools,
   machinery, etc. would be eliminated because workers would be able to
   obtain zero-interest credit and use it to buy their own instruments of
   production instead of "renting" them, as it were, from capitalists.
   "Make capital free by organising credit on a mutual plan," stressed
   Tucker, "and then these vacant lands will come into use . . .
   operatives will be able to buy axes and rakes and hoes, and then they
   will be independent of their employers, and then the labour problem
   will solved." [Instead of a Book, p. 321] Easy access to mutual credit
   would result in a huge increase in the purchase of capital goods,
   creating a high demand for labour, which in turn would greatly increase
   workers' bargaining power and thus raise their wages toward equivalence
   with the value their labour produces.

   For Tucker, reforms had to be applied at the heart of the system and so
   he rejected the notion of setting up intentional communities based on
   anarchist principles in the countryside or in other countries.
   "Government makes itself felt alike in city and in country," he argued,
   "capital has its usurious grip on the farm as surely as on the
   workshop, and the oppression and exactions of neither government nor
   capital can be avoided by migration. The State is the enemy, and the
   best means of fighting it can be found in communities already
   existing." He stressed that "I care nothing for any reform that cannot
   be effected right here in Boston among the every day people whom I meet
   in the streets." [quoted by Martin, Op. Cit., p. 249 and p. 248]

   It should be noted that while his social and political vision remained
   mostly the same over his lifetime, Tucker's rationale for his system
   changed significantly. Originally, like the rest of the American
   individualist anarchist tradition he subscribed to a system of natural
   rights. Thus he advocated "occupancy and use" based on a person's right
   to have access to the means of life as well as its positive effects on
   individual liberty. However, under the influence of Max Stirner's book
   The Ego and Its Own, Tucker along with many of his comrades, became
   egoists (see [1]next section for a discussion of Stirner). This
   resulted in Tucker arguing that while previously "it was my habit to
   talk glibly of the right of man to land" this was "a bad habit, and I
   long ago sloughed it off." Now a person's "only right over the land is
   his might over it." [Instead of a Book, p. 350] Contracts were seen as
   the means of securing the peaceful preservation of the ego's
   personality as it would be against a person's self-interest to aggress
   against others (backed-up, of course, by means of freely joined defence
   associations). It should be noted that the issue of egoism split the
   individualist anarchist movement and lead to its further decline.

   Tucker's ideal society was one of small entrepreneurs, farmers,
   artisans, independent contractors and co-operative associations based
   around a network of mutual banks. He looked to alternative institutions
   such as co-operative banks and firms, schools and trade unions,
   combined with civil disobedience in the form of strikes, general
   strikes, tax and rent strikes and boycotts to bring anarchism closer.
   He was firm supporter of the labour movement and "strikes, whenever and
   wherever inaugurated, deserve encouragement from all the friends of
   labour . . . They show that people are beginning to know their rights,
   and knowing, dare to maintain them." Echoing Bakunin's thoughts on the
   subject, Tucker maintained that strikes should be supported and
   encouraged because "as an awakening agent, as an agitating force, the
   beneficent influence of a strike is immeasurable . . . with our present
   economic system almost every strike is just. For what is justice in
   production and distribution? That labour, which creates all, shall have
   all." [Liberty, no. 19, p. 7] While critical of certain aspects of
   trade unionism, Tucker was keen to stress that "it is not to be denied
   for a moment that workingmen are obliged to unite and act together in
   order, not to successfully contend with, but to defend themselves at
   least to some extent from, the all-powerful possessors of natural
   wealth and capital." [Op. Cit., no. 158, p. 1]

   Like the anarcho-syndicalists and many other social anarchists, Tucker
   considered Labour unions as a positive development, being a "crude step
   in the direction of supplanting the State" and involved a "movement for
   self-government on the part of the people, the logical outcome of which
   is ultimate revolt against those usurping political conspiracies which
   manifest themselves in courts and legislatures. Just as the [Irish]
   Land League has become a formidable rival of the British State, so the
   amalgamated trades unions may yet become a power sufficiently strong to
   defy the legislatures and overthrow them." Thus unions were "a potent
   sign of emancipation." Indeed, he called the rise of the unions
   "trades-union socialism," saw in it a means of "supplanting" the state
   by "an intelligent and self-governing socialism" and indicated that
   "imperfect as they are, they are the beginnings of a revolt against the
   authority of the political State. They promise the coming substitution
   of industrial socialism for usurping legislative mobism." [The
   Individualist Anarchists, pp. 283-284] Hence we see the co-operative
   nature of the voluntary organisations supported by Tucker and a vision
   of socialism being based on self-governing associations of working
   people.

   In this way working people would reform capitalism away by non-violent
   social protest combined with an increase in workers' bargaining power
   by alternative voluntary institutions and free credit. Exploitation
   would be eliminated and workers would gain economic liberty. His ideal
   society would be classless, with "each man reaping the fruit of his
   labour and no man able to live in idleness on an income from capital"
   and society "would become a great hive of Anarchistic workers,
   prosperous and free individuals." While, like all anarchists, he
   rejected "abolute equality" he did envision an egalitarian society
   whose small differences in wealth were rooted in labour, not property,
   and so liberty, while abolishing exploitation, would "not abolish the
   limited inequality between one labourer's product and another's . . .
   Liberty will ultimately make all men rich; it will not make all men
   equally rich." [The Individualist Anarchists, p. 276, p. 156 and p.
   157] He firmly believed that the "most perfect Socialism is possible
   only on the condition of the most perfect individualism." [quoted by
   Peter Marshall, Demanding the Impossible, p. 390]

   As we noted in [2]section G.1.3, there is one apparent area of
   disagreement between Tucker and most other socialists, namely the issue
   of wage labour. For almost all anarchists the employer/employee social
   relationship does not fit in well with Tucker's statement that "if the
   individual has the right to govern himself, all external government is
   tyranny." [The Individualist Anarchists, p. 86] However, even here the
   differences are not impossible to overcome. It is important to note
   that because of Tucker's proposal to increase the bargaining power of
   workers through access to mutual credit, his individualist anarchism is
   not only compatible with workers' control but would in fact promote it
   (as well as logically requiring it -- see [3]section G.4.1).

   For if access to mutual credit were to increase the bargaining power of
   workers to the extent that Tucker claimed it would, they would then be
   able to: (1) demand and get workplace democracy; and (2) pool their
   credit to buy and own companies collectively. This would eliminate the
   top-down structure of the firm and the ability of owners to pay
   themselves unfairly large salaries as well as reducing capitalist
   profits to zero by ensuring that workers received the full value of
   their labour. Tucker himself pointed this out when he argued that
   Proudhon (like himself) "would individualise and associate" workplaces
   by mutualism, which would "place the means of production within the
   reach of all." [quoted by Martin, Op. Cit., p. 228] Proudhon used the
   word "associate" to denote co-operative (i.e. directly democratic)
   workplaces (and given Proudhon's comments -- quoted in [4]section G.4.2
   -- on capitalist firms we can dismiss any attempt to suggest that the
   term "individualise" indicates support for capitalist rather than
   artisan/peasant production, which is the classic example of
   individualised production). For as Proudhon recognised, only a system
   without wage slavery (and so exploitation) would ensure the goal of all
   anarchists: "the greatest amount of liberty compatible with equality of
   liberty." [Tucker, Instead of a Book, p. 131]

   Thus the logical consequence of Tucker's proposals would be a system
   equivalent in most important respects to the kind of system advocated
   by other left libertarians. In terms of aspirations, Tucker's ideas
   reflected those of social anarchists -- a form of socialism rooted in
   individual liberty. His fire was directed against the same targets,
   exploitation and oppression and so state and capital. He aimed for a
   society without inequalities of wealth where it would be impossible to
   exploit another's labour and where free access to the means of life
   were secured by mutual banking and "occupancy and use" applied to land
   and what was on it. He considered laissez-faire capitalism to be a
   system of state-supported privilege rather than as an ideal to be aimed
   for. He argued extensively that getting rid of the state would mean
   getting rid of capitalist property rights and so, like other
   anarchists, he did not artificially divide economic and political
   issues. In other words, like social anarchists, he was against the
   state because it protected specific kinds of private property, kinds
   which allowed its owners to extract tribute from labour.

   In summary, then, Tucker "remained a left rather than a right-wing
   libertarian." [Marshall, Op. Cit., p. 391] When he called himself a
   socialist he knew well what it meant and systematically fought those
   (usually, as today, Marxists and capitalists) who sought to equate it
   with state ownership. John Quail, in his history of British Anarchism,
   puts his finger on the contextual implications and limitations of
   Tucker's ideas when he wrote:

     "Tucker was a Proudhonist and thus fundamentally committed to a
     society based on small proprietorship. In the American context,
     however, where the small landowner was often locked in battle with
     large capitalist interests, this did not represent the reactionary
     position it often did later where it could easily degenerate into an
     'Anarchism for small business-men.' Tucker had a keen sense of the
     right of the oppressed to struggle against oppression." [The Slow
     Burning Fuse, p. 19]

   As we stressed in [5]section G.1.4, many of Tucker's arguments can only
   be fully understood in the context of the society in which he developed
   them, namely the transformation of America from a pre-capitalist into a
   capitalist one by means of state intervention (the process of
   "primitive accumulation" to use Marx's phrase -- see [6]section F.8.5).
   At that time, it was possible to argue that access to credit would
   allow workers to set-up business and undermine big business. However,
   eventually Tucker had come to argue that this possibility had
   effectively ended and even the freest market would not be able to
   break-up the economic power of corporations and trusts (see [7]section
   G.1.1).

   In this, ironically, Tucker came to the same conclusion as his old
   enemy Johann Most had done three decades previously. In the 1880s,
   Tucker had argued that wage labour would be non-exploitative under
   individualist anarchy. This was part of the reason why Most had
   excommunicated Tucker from anarchism, for he thought that Tucker's
   system could not, by definition, end exploitation due to its tolerance
   of wage labour, an argument Tucker disputed but did not disprove (see
   [8]section G.4.1 for more discussion on this issue). In 1888 Tucker had
   speculated that "the question whether large concentrations of capital
   for production on the large scale confronts us with the disagreeable
   alternative of either abolishing private property or continuing to hold
   labour under the capitalistic yoke." [Liberty, no. 122, p. 4] By 1911,
   he had come to the conclusion that the latter had come to pass and
   considered revolutionary or political action as the only means of
   breaking up such concentrations of wealth (although he was against
   individualists anarchists participating in either strategy). [Martin,
   Op. Cit., pp. 273-4] In other words, Tucker recognised that economic
   power existed and, as a consequence, free markets were not enough to
   secure free people in conditions of economic inequality.

   There are, of course, many differences between the anarchism of, say,
   Bakunin and Kropotkin and that of Tucker. Tucker's system, for example,
   does retain some features usually associated with capitalism, such as
   competition between firms in a free market. However, the fundamental
   socialist objection to capitalism is not that it involves markets or
   "private property" but that it results in exploitation. Most socialists
   oppose private property and markets because they result in exploitation
   and have other negative consequences rather than an opposition to them
   as such. Tucker's system was intended to eliminate exploitation and
   involves a radical change in property rights, which is why he called
   himself a socialist and why most other anarchists concurred. This is
   why we find Kropotkin discussing Tucker in his general accounts of
   anarchism, accounts which note that the anarchists "constitute the left
   wing" of the socialists and which make no comment that Tucker's ideas
   were any different in this respect. [Anarchism, p. 285] A position,
   needless to say, Tucker also held as he considered his ideas as part of
   the wider socialist movement.

   This fact is overlooked by "anarcho"-capitalists who, in seeking to
   make Tucker one of their "founding fathers," point to the fact that he
   spoke of the advantages of owning "property." But it is apparent that
   by "property" he was referring to simple "possession" of land, tools,
   etc. by independent artisans, farmers, and co-operating workers (he
   used the word property "as denoting the labourer's individual
   possession of his product or his share of the joint product of himself
   and others." [Tucker, Instead of a Book, p. 394]. For, since Tucker saw
   his system as eliminating the ability of capitalists to maintain
   exploitative monopolies over the means of production, it is therefore
   true by definition that he advocated the elimination of "private
   property" in the capitalist sense.

   So while it is true that Tucker placed "property" and markets at the
   heart of his vision of anarchy, this does not make he a supporter of
   capitalism (see sections [9]G.1.1 and [10]G.1.2). Unlike supporters of
   capitalism, the individualist anarchists identified "property" with
   simple "possession," or "occupancy and use" and considered profit, rent
   and interest as exploitation. Indeed, Tucker explicitly stated that
   "all property rests on a labour title, and no other property do I
   favour." [Instead of a Book, p. 400] Because of their critique of
   capitalist property rights and their explicit opposition to usury
   (profits, rent and interest) individualist anarchists like Tucker could
   and did consider themselves as part of the wider socialist movement,
   the libertarian wing as opposed to the statist/Marxist wing.

   Thus, Tucker is clearly a left libertarian rather than a forefather of
   right-wing "libertarianism". In this he comes close to what today would
   be called a market socialist, albeit a non-statist variety. As can be
   seen, his views are directly opposed to those of right "libertarians"
   like Murray Rothbard on a number of key issues. Most fundamentally, he
   rejected "absolute" property rights in land which are protected by laws
   enforced either by private security forces or a "night watchman state."
   He also recognised that workers were exploited by capitalists, who use
   the state to ensure that the market was skewed in their favour, and so
   urged working people to organise themselves to resist such exploitation
   and, as a consequence, supported unions and strikes. He recognised that
   while formal freedom may exist in an unequal society, it could not be
   an anarchy due to the existence of economic power and the exploitation
   and limitations in freedom it produced. His aim was a society of
   equals, one in which wealth was equally distributed and any differences
   would be minor and rooted in actual work done rather than by owning
   capital or land and making others produce it for them. This clearly
   indicates that Rothbard's claim to have somehow modernised Tucker's
   thought is false -- "ignored" or "changed beyond recognition" would be
   more appropriate.

References

   1. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secG6.html
   2. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secG1.html#secg13
   3. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secG4.html#secg41
   4. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secG4.html#secg42
   5. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secG1.html#secg14
   6. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secF8.html#secf85
   7. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secG1.html#secg11
   8. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secG4.html
   9. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secG1.html#secg11
  10. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secG1.html#secg12
