              Section G - Is individualist anarchism capitalistic?

   The short answer is, no, it is not. While a diverse tendency, the
   individualist anarchists were opposed to the exploitation of labour,
   all forms of non-labour income (such as profits, interest and rent) as
   well as capitalist property rights (particularly in land). While aiming
   for a free market system, they considered laissez-faire capitalism to
   be based on various kinds of state enforced class monopoly which
   ensured that labour was subjected to rule, domination and exploitation
   by capital. As such it is deeply anti-capitalist and many individualist
   anarchists, including its leading figure Benjamin Tucker, explicitly
   called themselves socialists (indeed, Tucker often referred to his
   theory as "Anarchistic-Socialism").

   So, in this section of our anarchist FAQ we indicate why the
   individualist anarchists cannot be classified as "ancestors" of the
   bogus libertarians of the "anarcho"-capitalist school. Rather, they
   must be classified as libertarian socialists due to their opposition to
   exploitation, critique of capitalist property rights and concern for
   equality, albeit being on the liberal wing of anarchist thought.
   Moreover, while all wanted to have an economy in which all incomes were
   based on labour, many also opposed wage labour, i.e. the situation
   where one person sells their labour to another rather than the product
   of that labour (a position which, we argue, their ideas logically
   imply). So while some of their ideas do overlap with those of the
   "anarcho"-capitalist school they are not capitalistic, no more than the
   overlap between their ideas and anarcho-communism makes them
   communistic.

   In this context, the creation of "anarcho"-capitalism may be regarded
   as yet another tactic by capitalists to reinforce the public's
   perception that there are no viable alternatives to capitalism, i.e. by
   claiming that "even anarchism implies capitalism." In order to justify
   this claim, they have searched the history of anarchism in an effort to
   find some thread in the movement that can be used for this purpose.
   They think that with the individualist anarchists they have found such
   a thread. However, such an appropriation requires the systematic
   ignoring or dismissal of key aspects of individualist-anarchism (which,
   of course, the right-"libertarian" does). Somewhat ironically, this
   attempt by right-"libertarians" to exclude individualist anarchism from
   socialism parallels an earlier attempt by state socialists to do the
   same. Tucker furiously refuted such attempts in an article entitled
   "Socialism and the Lexicographers", arguing that "the Anarchistic
   Socialists are not to be stripped of one half of their title by the
   mere dictum of the last lexicographer." [Instead of a Book, p. 365]

   Nevertheless, in the individualists we find anarchism coming closest to
   "classical" liberalism and being influenced by the ideas of Herbert
   Spencer, a forefather of "libertarian" capitalism (of the minimal state
   variety). As Kropotkin summarised, their ideas were "a combination of
   those of Proudhon with those of Herbert Spencer." [Anarchism, p. 296]
   What the "anarcho"-capitalist is trying to is to ignore Proudhon's
   influence (i.e. the socialist aspect of their theories) which just
   leaves Spencer, who was a right-wing liberal. To reduce individualist
   anarchism so is to destroy what makes it a unique political theory and
   movement. While both Kropotkin and Tucker praised Spencer as a
   synthetic philosopher and social scientist, they were both painfully
   aware of the limitations in his socio-political ideas. Tucker
   considered his attacks on all forms of socialism (including Proudhon)
   as authoritarian as being, at best, misinformed or, at worse,
   dishonest. He also recognised the apologetic and limited nature of his
   attacks on state intervention, noting that "amid his multitudinous
   illustrations . . . of the evils of legislation, he in every instance
   cites some law passed ostensibly at least to protect labour,
   alleviating suffering, or promote the people's welfare. But never once
   does he call attention to the far more deadly and deep-seated evils
   growing out of the innumerable laws creating privilege and sustaining
   monopoly." Unsurprisingly, he considered Spencer as a "champion of the
   capitalistic class." [quoted by James J. Martin, Men Against the State,
   p. 240] As we will discuss in [1]section G.3, it is likely that he
   would have drawn the same conclusion about "anarcho"-capitalism.

   This does not mean that the majority thread within the anarchist
   movement is uncritical of individualist anarchism. Far from it! Social
   anarchists have argued that this influence of non-anarchist ideas means
   that while its "criticism of the State is very searching, and [its]
   defence of the rights of the individual very powerful," like Spencer it
   "opens . . . the way for reconstituting under the heading of 'defence'
   all the functions of the State." [Kropotkin, Op. Cit., p. 297] This
   flows, social anarchists argue, from the impact of liberal principles
   and led some individualist anarchists like Benjamin Tucker to support
   contract theory in the name of freedom, without being aware of the
   authoritarian social relationships that could be implied by it, as can
   be seen under capitalism (other individualist anarchists were more
   aware of this contradiction as we will see). Therefore, social
   anarchists tend to think of individualist anarchism as an inconsistent
   form of anarchism, one which could become consistent by simply
   logically applying its own principles (see [2]section G.4). On their
   part, many individualist anarchists simply denied that social
   anarchists where anarchists, a position other anarchists refute (see
   [3]section G.2). As such, this section can also be considered, in part,
   as a continuation of the discussion begun in [4]section A.3.

   Few thinkers are completely consistent. Given Tucker's adamant
   anti-statism and anti-capitalism, it is likely that had he realised the
   authoritarian social relationships which contract theory tends to
   produce (and justify) when involving employing labour, he would have
   modified his views in such a way as to eliminate the contradiction
   (particularly as contracts involving wage labour directly contradicts
   his support for "occupancy and use"). It is understandable why he
   failed to do so, however, given the social context in which he lived
   and agitated. In Tucker's America, self-employment was still a
   possibility on a wide scale (in fact, for much of the nineteenth
   century it was the dominant form of economic activity). His reforms
   were aimed at making it easier for workers to gain access to both land
   and machinery, so allowing wage workers to become independent farmers
   or artisans. Unsurprisingly, therefore, he viewed individualist
   anarchism as a society of workers, not one of capitalists and workers.
   Moreover, as we will argue in [5]section G.4.1, his love for freedom
   and opposition to usury logically implies artisan and co-operative
   labour -- people selling the products of their labour, as opposed to
   the labour itself -- which itself implies self-management in production
   (and society in general), not authoritarianism within the workplace
   (this was the conclusion of Proudhon as well as Kropotkin).
   Nevertheless, it is this inconsistency -- the non-anarchist aspect of
   individualist anarchism -- which right "libertarians" like Murray
   Rothbard select and concentrate on, ignoring the anti-capitalist
   context in which this aspect of individualist thought exists within. As
   David Wieck pointed out:

     "Out of the history of anarchist thought and action Rothbard has
     pulled forth a single thread, the thread of individualism, and
     defines that individualism in a way alien even to the spirit of a
     Max Stirner or a Benjamin Tucker, whose heritage I presume he would
     claim -- to say nothing of how alien is his way to the spirit of
     Godwin, Proudhon, Bakunin, Kropotkin, Malatesta, and the
     historically anonymous persons who through their thoughts and action
     have tried to give anarchism a living meaning. Out of this thread
     Rothbard manufactures one more bourgeois ideology." [Anarchist
     Justice, pp. 227-228]

   It is with this in mind that we discuss the ideas of people like
   Tucker. As this section of the FAQ will indicate, even at its most
   liberal, individualist, extreme anarchism was fundamentally
   anti-capitalist. Any concepts which "anarcho"-capitalism imports from
   the individualist tradition ignore both the theoretical underpinnings
   of their ideas as well as the social context of self-employment and
   artisan production within which those concepts arose, thus turning them
   into something radically different from what was intended by their
   originators. As we discuss in [6]section G.1.4 the social context in
   which individualist anarchism developed is essential to understanding
   both its politics and its limitations ("Anarchism in America is not a
   foreign importation but a product of the social conditions of this
   country and its historical traditions," although it is "true that
   American anarchism was also influenced later by European ideas."
   [Rudolf Rocker, Pioneers of American Freedom, p. 163]).

   Saying that, it would be a mistake to suggest (as some writers have)
   that individualist anarchism can be viewed purely in American terms.
   While understanding the nature of American society and economy at the
   time is essential to understanding individualist anarchism, it would be
   false to imply that only individualist anarchism was the product of
   America conditions and subscribed to by Americans while social
   anarchism was imported from Europe by immigrants. After all, Albert and
   Lucy Parsons were both native-born Americans who became
   communist-anarchists while Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman only
   become anarchists once they had arrived in America. Native-born
   Voltairine de Cleyre moved from individualist to communist anarchism.
   Josiah Warren may have been born in Boston, but he developed his
   anarchism after his experiences in a experimental community set up by
   Welsh socialist Robert Owen (who, in turn, was inspired by William
   Godwin's ideas). While Warren and Proudhon may have developed their
   ideas independently, American libertarians became aware of Proudhon and
   other European socialists as radical journals had correspondents in
   France during the 1848 revolution and partial translations of radical
   writings from Europe appeared as quickly as they could be transmitted
   and translated. Individualist anarchists like William Greene and Tucker
   were heavily influenced by the ideas of Proudhon and so imported
   aspects of European anarchism into American individualist anarchism
   while the likes of the French individualist E. Armand brought aspects
   of American anarchism into the European movement. Similarly, both
   Spooner and Greene had been members of the First International while
   individualist anarchists Joseph Labadie and Dyer Lum where organisers
   of the Knights of Labor union along with Albert and Lucy Parsons. Lum
   later joined the anarcho-communist inspired International Working
   People's Association (IWPA) and edited its English language paper (the
   Alarm) when Parson was imprisoned awaiting execution. All forms of
   anarchism were, in other words, a combination of European and American
   influences, both in terms of ideas and in terms of social experiences
   and struggles, even organisations.

   While red-baiting and cries of "Un-American" may incline some to stress
   the "native-born" aspect of individualist anarchism (particularly those
   seeking to appropriate that tendency for their own ends), both wings of
   the US movement had native-born and foreign members, aspects and
   influences (and, as Rocker noted, the "so-called white civilisation of
   [the American] continent is the work of European immigrants." [Op.
   Cit., p. 163]). While both sides tended to denounce and attack the
   other (particularly after the Haymarket events), they had more in
   common than the likes of Benjamin Tucker and Johann Most would have
   been prepared to admit and each tendency, in its own way, reflected
   aspects of American society and the drastic transformation it was going
   through at the time. Moreover, it was changes in American society which
   lead to the steady rise of social anarchism and its eclipse of
   individualist anarchism from the 1880s onwards. While there has been a
   tendency to stress individualist tendency in accounts of American
   anarchism due to its unique characteristics, only those "without a
   background in anarchist history" would think "that the individualist
   anarchists were the larger segment of the anarchist movement in the
   U.S. at the time. Nothing could be farther from the truth. The
   collectivist branch of anarchism was much stronger among radicals and
   workers during the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century
   than the individualist brand. Before the Civil War, the opposite would
   be true." [Greg Hall, Social Anarchism, no. 30, pp. 90-91]

   By the 1880s, social anarchism had probably exceeded the size of the
   "home-grown" individualists in the United States. The IWPA had some
   five thousand members at its peak with perhaps three times as many
   supporters. [Paul Avrich, The Haymarket Tragedy, p. 83] Its journals
   had an aggregate circulation of over 30,000. [George Woodcock,
   Anarchism, p. 395] In contrast, the leading individualist newspaper
   Liberty "probably never had more than 600 to 1000 subscribers, but it
   was undoubtedly read by more than that." [Charles H. Hamilton,
   "Introduction", p. 1-19, Benjamin R. Tucker and the Champions of
   Liberty, Coughlin, Hamilton and Sullivan (eds.), p. 10] The repression
   after Haymarket took its toll and the progress of social anarchism was
   hindered for a decade. However, "[b]y the turn of the century, the
   anarchist movement in America had become predominantly communist in
   orientation." [Paul Avrich, Anarchist Voices, p. 5] As an added irony
   for those who stress the individualist nature of anarchism in America
   while dismissing social anarchism as a foreign import, the first
   American newspaper to use the name "An-archist" was published in Boston
   in 1881 by anarchists within the social revolutionary branch of the
   movement. [Paul Avrich, The Haymarket Tragedy, p. 57] Equally ironic,
   given the appropriation of the term by the American right, the first
   anarchist journal to use the term "libertarian" (La Libertaire, Journal
   du Mouvement Social) was published in New York between 1858 and 1861 by
   French communist-anarchist Joseph Djacque. [Max Nettlau, A Short
   History of Anarchism, pp. 75-6]

   All this is not to suggest that individualist anarchism does not have
   American roots nor that many of its ideas and visions were not
   significantly shaped by American social conditions and developments.
   Far from it! It is simply to stress that it did not develop in complete
   isolation of European anarchism during the latter half of the
   nineteenth century and that the social anarchism which overtook by the
   end of that century was also a product of American conditions (in this
   case, the transformation of a pre-capitalist society into a capitalist
   one). In other words, the rise of communist anarchism and the decline
   of individualist anarchism by the end of the nineteenth century
   reflected American society just as much as the development of the
   latter in the first place. Thus the rise of capitalism in America meant
   the rise of an anarchism more suitable to the social conditions and
   social relationships produced by that change. Unsurprisingly,
   therefore, individualist anarchism remains the minority trend in
   American anarchism to this day with such comrades as Joe Peacott (see
   his pamphlet Individualism Reconsidered), Kevin Carson (see his book
   Studies in Mutualist Political Economy) and Shawn Wilbur (who has
   painstakingly placed many rare early individualist and mutualist
   anarchist works onto the internet) keeping its ideas alive.

   So like social anarchism, individualist anarchism developed as a
   response to the rise of capitalism and the transformation of American
   society this produced. As one academic put it, the "early anarchists,
   though staunchly individualistic, did not entertain a penchant for . .
   . capitalism. Rather, they saw themselves as socialists opposed to the
   state socialism of Karl Marx. The individualist anarchists saw no
   contradiction between their individualist stance and their rejection of
   capitalism." She stresses that they were "fervent anti-capitalists" and
   thought that "workers created value through their labour, a value
   appropriated by owners of businesses . . . The individualist anarchists
   blamed capitalism for creating inhumane working conditions and for
   increasing inequalities of wealth. Their self-avowed 'socialism' was
   rooted in their firm belief in equality, material as well as legal."
   This, however, did not stop her asserting that "contemporary
   anarcho-capitalists are descendants of nineteenth-century individualist
   anarchists such as Josiah Warren, Lysander Spooner, and Benjamin
   Tucker." [Susan Love Brown, pp. 99-128, "The Free Market as Salvation
   from Government", Meanings of the Market, James G. Carrier (ed.), p.
   104, p. 107, p. 104 and p. 103] Trust an academic to ignore the
   question of how related are two theories which differ on such a key
   issue as whether to be anti-capitalist or not!

   Needless to say, some "anarcho"-capitalists are well aware of the fact
   that individualist anarchists were extremely hostile to capitalism
   while supporting the "free market." Unsurprisingly, they tend to
   downplay this opposition, often arguing that the anarchists who point
   out the anti-capitalist positions of the likes of Tucker and Spooner
   are quoting them out of context. The truth is different. In fact, it is
   the "anarcho"-capitalist who takes the ideas of the individualist
   anarchists from both the historical and theoretical context. This can
   be seen from the "anarcho"-capitalist dismissal of the individualist
   anarchists' "bad" economics as well as the nature of the free society
   wanted by them.

   It is possible, no doubt, to trawl through the many issues of, say,
   Liberty or the works of individualist anarchism to find a few comments
   which may be used to bolster a claim that anarchism need not imply
   socialism. However, a few scattered comments here and there are hardly
   a firm basis to ignore the vast bulk of anarchist theory and its
   history as a movement. This is particularly the case when applying this
   criteria consistently would mean that communist anarchism, for example,
   would be excommunicated from anarchism simply because of the opinions
   of some individualist anarchists. Equally, it may be possible to cobble
   together all the non-anarchist positions of individualist anarchists
   and so construct an ideology which justified wage labour, the land
   monopoly, usury, intellectual property rights, and so on but such an
   ideology would be nothing more than a mockery of individualist
   anarchism, distinctly at odds with its spirits and aims. It would only
   convince those ignorant of the anarchist tradition.

   It is not a fitting tribute to the individualist anarchists that their
   ideas are today being associated with the capitalism that they so
   clearly despised and wished to abolish. As one modern day Individualist
   Anarchist argues:

     "It is time that anarchists recognise the valuable contributions of
     . . . individualist anarchist theory and take advantage of its
     ideas. It would be both futile and criminal to leave it to the
     capitalist libertarians, whose claims on Tucker and the others can
     be made only by ignoring the violent opposition they had to
     capitalist exploitation and monopolistic 'free enterprise' supported
     by the state." [J.W. Baker, "Native American Anarchism," pp. 43-62,
     The Raven, vol. 10, no. 1, pp. 61-2]

   We hope that this section of the FAQ will go some way to explaining the
   ideas and contributions of individualist anarchism to a new generation
   of rebels. Given the diversity of individualist anarchism, it is hard
   to generalise about it (some are closer to classical liberalism than
   others, for example, while a few embraced revolutionary means of change
   such as Dyer Lum). However, we will do our best to draw out the common
   themes of the movement, indicating where certain people differed from
   others. Similarly, there are distinct differences between European and
   American forms of mutualism, regardless of how often Tucker invoked
   Proudhon's name to justify his own interpretations of anarchism and we
   will indicate these (these differences, we think, justify calling the
   American branch individualist anarchism rather than mutualism). We will
   also seek to show why social anarchism rejects individualist anarchism
   (and vice versa) as well as giving a critical evaluation of both
   positions. Given the diverse nature of individualist anarchism, we are
   sure that we will not cover all the positions and individuals
   associated with it but we hope to present enough to indicate why the
   likes of Tucker, Labadie, Yarros and Spooner deserve better than to be
   reduced to footnotes in books defending an even more extreme version of
   the capitalism they spent their lives fighting.

References

   1. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secG3.html
   2. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secG4.html
   3. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secG2.html
   4. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secA3.html
   5. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secG4.html#secg41
   6. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secG1.html#secg14
