Individualist anarchism in the United States

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Individualist anarchism in the United States is strongly influenced by Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, Henry David Thoreau, and Ralph Waldo Emerson.

The first American anarchist publication was The Peaceful Revolutionist, edited by Josiah Warren, whose earliest experiments and writings predate Pierre Proudhon

Individualist forms of anarchism have appeared most often in the United States among such figures as Henry David Thoreau,^[1][2] Josiah Warren, Benjamin Tucker, Lysander Spooner, Ezra Heywood, Stephen Pearl Andrews, and Murray Rothbard.^[3]

Contents 1 Origins 2 The "Boston Anarchists" 3 Anarcho-capitalism 3.1 Agorism 4 References 5 See also 6 Further reading

[edit] Origins

The American version of individualist anarchism has a strong emphasis on the non-aggression principle and individual sovereignty.^[4] Some individualist anarchists, such as Henry David Thoreau^[5][6], do not speak of economics but simply the right of "disunion" from the state^{[citation needed]}, and foresee the gradual elimination of the state through social evolution.^{[citation needed]} However, most of the individualists are market anarchists, and therefore support provision of defense of the individual and his property being supplied by multiple competing providers in a free market. Their doctrines may be seen as classical liberalism "taken to the extreme,"^[7] stresses the importance of individual liberty, the sovereignty of the individual, private property or possession, and opposes all monopolies (which they believe can only arise through state intervention^[8]).^[7]

This may further be broadly divided into those who hold to a labor theory of value and those who do not.^{[citation needed]} Some of the latter are often referred to as anarcho-capitalists,^{[citation needed]} who do not oppose things such as profit, rent, loans or interest.^{[citation needed]} They also do not object to workplace hierarchy or boss-worker economic relationship so long as such relationship is seen as non-coerced or in existence through non-aggression.^{[citation needed]} Among the market anarchists, there is a strong advocacy of private property in the product of labor, and a competitive free market economy.^{[citation needed]} Unlike social(ist) anarchists, individualists do not advocate the socialization or collectivization of the means or production.^{[citation needed]}

An early individualist anarchist who was very influential was Josiah Warren^{[citation needed]}, who had participated in a failed collective "utopian socialist" experiment headed by Robert Owen called "New Harmony" and came to the conclusion that such a system is inferior to one that respects the "sovereignty^[9] of the individual" and his right to dispose of his property as his own self-interest prescribes. According to Warren, there should be absolutely no community of property; all property should be individualized, and "those who advocated any type of communism with connected property, interests, and responsibilities were doomed to failure because of the individuality of the persons involved in such as experiment."^[10] In a much cited^{[citation needed]} quotation from Practical Details, where he discusses his conclusions in regard to the experiment, he makes a vehement assertion of individual negative liberty:

“	Society must be so converted as to preserve the SOVEREIGNTY OF EVERY INDIVIDUAL inviolate. That it must avoid all combinations and connections of persons and interests, and all other arrangements which will not leave every individual at all times at liberty to dispose of his or her person, and time, and property in any manner in which his or her feelings or judgment may dictate, WITHOUT INVOLVING THE PERSONS OR INTERESTS OF OTHERS.	”
—Josiah Warren, Practical Details (1852).[11]

Warren supported private property and trade.^{[citation needed]} However, he held the labor theory of value^{[citation needed]}, and from that he concluded that labor should always trade for an equal amount of labor. He believed that exchanges of unequal amounts of labor, or of goods that required unequal amounts of labor to produce, were always exploitative or unfair to the trader having to sacrifice more of his own labor than the other trader.^{[citation needed]} His motto became "Cost the limit of price," with "cost" referring to the actual labor that was expended. He opposed what he called "value being made the limit of price," where individuals make exchanges of goods and services based on simply on how much they value what they are purchasing.^[12] To ensure that labor received what he believed to be its just price—an equal amount of labor—he advocated that a form of money called "labor notes" be used, which represented labor times. In this way, labor would always be exchanged with an equal amount of labor and goods would always be purchased with an equal amount of labor that was exerted to produce those goods. But, he did not confine this to theory. He put labor notes into exercise in experimental communities which he set up.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] The "Boston Anarchists"

Benjamin Tucker, and a series of other anarchists centered in the Boston area, were influenced by Warren and also a proponent of this interpretation of the labor theory of value.^{[citation needed]} Tucker believed that it was unjust for individuals to receive greater income while performing less labor than others.^{[citation needed]} Tucker asserted that the solution to bring wages up to be their proper level was for the state to cease interfering in the economy and protecting monopolies from competition.^{[citation needed]} Like Warren, he saw income derived without labor to be exploitative (with the exception of gifts and inheritance^[13]). He argued that lending money for interest involved no labor on the part of the lender and therefore saw interest charges as usurious.^{[citation needed]} Rent was also seen as unjust because it involved obtaining an income without labor.^{[citation needed]} To Tucker and most of his contemporary individualists, rent of land is only made possible by government-backed "monopoly" and "privilege" that restricts competition in the marketplace and concentrates wealth in the hands of a few.^{[citation needed]} Tucker contended that private control of land should be supported only if the possessor of that land is using it, otherwise, the possessor would be able to charge rent to others without laboring to produce something.^{[citation needed]} Tucker envisioned an individualist anarchist society as "each man reaping the fruits of his labour and no man able to live in idleness on an income from capital....become[ing] a great hive of Anarchistic workers, prosperous and free individuals [combining] to carry on their production and distribution on the cost principle."^[14] However, not all of the early individualist anarchists held this philosophy of land ownership. Warren and Lysander Spooner placed no restrictions on occupancy and use for ownership. Steven T. Byington also opposed Tucker's ideas on occupancy and use requirements for land titles.^[15]

Tucker and other nineteenth century individualists in his circle supported replacing the security functions of the state with private defense that charges for its services of protecting liberty and property.^{[citation needed]} Benjamin Tucker says: :

“

"defense is a service like any other service; that it is labor both useful and desired, and therefore an economic commodity subject to the law of supply and demand; that in a free market this commodity would be furnished at the cost of production; that, competition prevailing, patronage would go to those who furnished the best article at the lowest price; that the production and sale of this commodity are now monopolized by the State; and that the State, like almost all monopolists, charges exorbitant prices"[16]

”

He said that anarchism "does not exclude prisons, officials, military, or other symbols of force. It merely demands that non-invasive men shall not be made the victims of such force. Anarchism is not the reign of love, but the reign of justice. It does not signify the abolition of force-symbols but the application of force to real invaders."^[17] But Spooner argued that a society with unequal conditions would lead to a society of unfree associations. He argued for the right of everyone to hold land and have access to defence association^{[clarification needed]}, arguing that without such, "[a]ny number of scoundrels, having money enough to start with, can establish themselves as a 'government'; because, with money, they can hire soldiers, and with soldiers extort more money; and also compel general obedience to their will."^[18] As far as a judicial system, many of these individualists such as Lysander Spooner supported a jury trial with the right of the jury to nullify law, "Honesty, justice, natural law, is usually a very plain and simple matter, . . . made up of a few simple elementary principles, of the truth and justice of which every ordinary mind has an almost intuitive perception,"^[19] however some such as Steven T. Byington opposed such a system saying that there is a "need for certainty in some kinds of laws." Byington suggested that adjudications be done by judges "on a business basis" through private arbitration.^[20]

Voltairine de Cleyre, summed up the philosophy by saying that the anarchist individualists "are firm in the idea that the system of employer and employed, buying and selling, banking, and all the other essential institutions of Commercialism, centered upon private property, are in themselves good, and are rendered vicious merely by the interference of the State."^[21] According to Charles A. Madison, Stephen Pearl Andrews "spoke for all" of the nineteenth century individualist anarchists when he said, "It is right that one man employ another, it is right that he pay him wages, and it is right that he direct him absolutely, arbitrarily in the performance of labor."^[22] Andrews said, "It is not in any, nor in all of these features combined, that the wrong of our present system is to be sought and found. It is in the simply failure to do Equity. It is not that men are employed and paid, but that they are not paid justly..."^[23] For Andrews, to be paid justly was to be paid according to the "Cost Principle," which held that individuals should be paid according to the amount of labor they exert. To simplify this process, he, after Josiah Warren, advocated an economy that uses "labor notes." Labor notes are money marked in labor hours (adjusted for different types of labor based on their difficulty or repugnance). In this way, it is the amount, difficulty, and danger of labor that determines the pay of the employee, rather than the worth of the labor in the eyes of the employer.^[24]

In regard to intellectual property there were varying opinions. "Spooner favored intellectual property laws, James L. Walker ("Tak Kak") opposed them, and others such as Tucker took an intermediate position that copyrights are legitimate only if created by contract."^[25] Spooner's reasoning was that ideas are the product of "intellectual labor" and therefore private property.^[26]

Some of the American individualist anarchists later in this era, such as Benjamin Tucker, abandoned this form of anarchism and converted to Stirner's Egoism. Rejecting the idea of moral rights, Tucker said that there were only two rights, "the right of might" and "the right of contract." He also said, after converting to Egoist individualism, "In times past...it was my habit to talk glibly of the right of man to land. It was a bad habit, and I long ago sloughed it off....Man's only right to land is his might over it."^[27]

Most early individualist anarchists, in the words of anarcho-communist writer L. Susan Brown, considered themselves "fervent anti-capitalists… [who saw] no contradiction between their individualist stance and their rejection of capitalism."'^[28] These early individualist anarchists, however, defined "capitalism" as the state-maintained monopolization of capital.^[29] Nevertheless, the early individualist anarchists did object to the profit-making aspect of capitalism, believing under the labor theory of value that making profit through capital was exploitative.^[30] But, they would not forcibly prevent profit making, believing it to be freedom of contract. They simply thought that profit would be eliminated through competition if the state did not protect monopolies. Some of their descendents,^[31] such as anarcho-capitalists,^[31] do not agree with this prediction, as they believe labor theories of value to be fallacious and do not have an objection to profit regardless.

However, the individualist branch of Tucker did not consider themselves to be capitalistic, claiming "not Socialist Anarchism against Individualist Anarchism, but of Communist Socialism against Individualist Socialism."^[32] John Beverly Johnson argued "[there] are two kinds of land ownership, proprietorship or property, by which the owner is absolute lord of the land, to use it or to hold it out of use, as it may please him; and possession, by which he is secure in the tenure of land which he uses and occupies, but has no claim upon it at all if he ceases to use it."^[33] They believe that markets should be operated freely by property-owning workers, such as illustrated in his debate with Auberon Herbert, "When we come to the question of the ethical basis of property, Mr. Herbert refers us to 'the open market'. But this is an evasion. The question is not whether we should be able to sell or acquire 'in the open market' anything which we rightfully possess, but how we come into rightful possession."^[34]

By the turn of the 20th century, the heyday of individualist anarchism had passed,^[35] Contemporary individualist anarchist Wendy McElroy suggests that the reason for the decline of individualist anarchism by the end of the twentieth century is that that the movement "hindered itself" and became "stagnant" by clinging to the labor theory of value and refusing to "incorporate the economic theories that were rising within other branches of Individualist thought, theories such as marginal utility."^[36] Incorporation of these theories into individualist anarchism was not to occur until after the middle of the next century by Murray Rothbard, thus spurring a revival of anarchism of the individualist persuasion.

[edit] Anarcho-capitalism

19th century individualist anarchists espoused the labor theory of value. Some believe that the modern movement of anarcho-capitalism is the result of simply removing the labor theory of value from ideas of the 19th century American individualist anarchists: "Their successors today, such as Murray Rothbard, having abandoned the labor theory of value, describe themselves as anarcho-capitalists."^[37] As economic theory changed, the popularity of the labor theory of classical economics was superseded by the subjective theory of value of neo-classical economics. According to Kevin Carson (himself a mutualist), "most people who call themselves "individualist anarchists" today are followers of Murray Rothbard's Austrian economics."^[38]

Murray Rothbard, a student of Ludwig von Mises, combined the Austrian school economics of his teacher with the absolutist views of human rights and rejection of the state he had absorbed from studying the individualist American anarchists of the nineteenth century such as Lysander Spooner and Benjamin Tucker.^[39] In the winter of 1949, influenced by several nineteenth-century individualists anarchists, decided to reject minimal state laissez-faire and embrace individualist anarchism.^[40] In 1965, Rothbard wrote:

“

Lysander Spooner and Benjamin T. Tucker were unsurpassed as political philosophers and nothing is more needed today than a revival and development of the largely forgotten legacy they left to political philosophy...There is, in the body of thought known as 'Austrian economics', a scientific explanation of the workings of the free market (and of the consequences of government intervention in that market) which individualist anarchists could easily incorporate into their political and social Weltanschauung. But to do this, they must throw out the worthless excess baggage of money-crankism and reconsider the nature and justification of the economic categories of interest, rent and profit.[41]

”

Anarcho-capitalists claim that in an anarcho-capitalist society no authority would prohibit anyone from providing, through the free market, services traditionally provided by state monopoly such as police, courts, and defense. Unlike the nineteenth century individualist anarchists,^[38] they do not believe that there is anything unjust about individuals receiving more income with laboring less. As opposed to advocating "labor for labor" trade, as advocated by Tucker and others, they support trade "on the basis of value for value."^[42] Moreover, unlike Tucker, they do not see any reason why labor costs would match up in a free market in the first place (economics inclined anarcho-capitalists believe that prices correspond to marginal utility rather than labor). Anarcho-capitalism does not believe that laissez-faire would cause profit to disappear, nor does it consider profit, rent, interest to be exploitative but natural and beneficial.^[43] Rothbard holds that land can only become property by using or occupying it (he does not require that land be in continual use to remain owned), and that after this it can only legitimately change hands by trade or gift.^[44] Anarcho-capitalists support the liberty of individuals to be self-employed or to contract to be employees of others, whichever they prefer. David Friedman has expressed preference for a society where "almost everyone is self-employed."^[45] Anarcho-capitalism's leading proponents are Murray Rothbard and David D. Friedman and it has been influenced by non-anarchist libertarians such as Frederic Bastiat and Robert Nozick, and also by Ayn Rand (although she rejected both libertarianism and anarchism)

Rothbard wrote,

“

I am...strongly tempted to call myself an 'individualist anarchist', except for the fact that Spooner and Tucker have in a sense preempted that name for their doctrine and that from that doctrine I have certain differences.

”

Though anarcho-capitalism has been regarded as a form of individualist anarchism,^[7][46] some writers, particularly anarcho-communists^[47], deny that it is a form of anarchism,^[48] or that capitalism itself is compatible with anarchism.^[49]

[edit] Agorism

Agorism is a radical left-libertarian^[δ] form of anarchism, developed from anarcho-capitalism in the late 20th-century by Samuel Edward Konkin III (a.k.a. SEK3). The goal of agorists is a society in which all "relations between people are voluntary exchanges – a free market."^[50] Agorists are propertarian market anarchists who consider that property rights are natural rights deriving from the primary right of self-ownership and are not opposed in principle to collectively held property if individual owners of the property consent to collective ownership by contract or other voluntary mutual agreement. However, Agorists are divided on the question of intellectual property rights.^[δ]

Agorists consider their ideas to be an evolution and superation of those of Murray Rothbard; Konkin described agorists as "strict Rothbardians…and even more Rothbardian than Rothbard."^[51] The characteristic distinguishing it from other forms of market anarchism is its strategic emphasis on "counter-economics"—untaxed "black" market activity. Agorism advocates achieving a market anarchist society through advocacy and growth of the underground economy or "black market"—the "counter-economy" as Konkin put it. This process is intended to continue until the State's perceived moral authority and outright power have been so thoroughly undermined that revolutionary market anarchist legal and security enterprises are able to arise from underground and ultimately suppress government as a criminal activity. In this sense, agorism is "revolutionary market anarchism".^[52]

[edit] References

[edit] See also

• Individualist anarchism in Europe

[edit] Further reading

• Rothbard, Murray (February 26, 2009). "The Origins of Individualist Anarchism in America" (PDF). Invisible Molotov. http://invisiblemolotov.files.wordpress.com/2009/02/oia5.pdf.