Anarchism in the United States

Anarchism in the United States spans a wide range of anarchist philosophy, from individualist anarchism to anarchist communism and other less known forms. Individualist anarchism in the United States is strongly influenced by Thomas Jefferson, Henry David Thoreau, the mutualist Proudhon, as well as the egoist Max Stirner. Major thinkers, such as Josiah Warren, Lysander Spooner, Benjamin Tucker, and Murray Rothbard belong to this camp.

Background

More than any other regional variety of Anarchism, American Anarchism is marked by a sharp schism between Mutualist, Communist, and Indigenous strains inside socialist views and also sui generis forms of capitalism. There is also an ongoing debate about definitions with many anarchist-capitalists declaring that they are the only true "individualist" anarchists and all others are "collectivists", and others arguing that the anarcho-capitalists are not anarchists at all. While at times the distinction between these four groups have been blurry and many individuals have at times been identified with more than one of them, they are briefly summarized here in the American context. Refer to the articles on each school for a broader more general discussion.

Indigenous Anarchism

The best known modern Indiginist writer is Ward Churchill. In general, indigenous anarchism describes the majority of pre-Columbian native North American societies as anarchist in structure and function. Such claims are easiest to document among indigenous people's in some parts of what is now California, but the Iroquois League, the Mohawk Federation, and many other indigenous tribal governing structures throughout North America have been described as anarchist in structure. Despite this, many Native groups were far from an anarchist ideal. Cultures like the Mississippian, Aztec and Maya had social hierarchies and inequality, and, in the two latter cases, were state-level societies.

More recently, many participants in the American Indian Movement have described themselves as anarchist and cooperation between anarchist and indiginist groups has been a key feature of movements such as the Minihaha Free State in Minneapolis, Minnesota - (which is build on an Ojibowe Reservation) - and at Big Mountain.

Outside of indigenous communities, Green Anarchists have been the most vocal in declaring solidarity with ongoing indigenous struggles, but Social Anarchists in general are supportive as well.

Individualist Anarchism

The U.S., with its tradition of radical individualism, which is "enshrined in the Declaration of Independence", was a congenial environment for individualist anarchism. Josiah Warren cited the Declaration of Independence and Benjamin Tucker said that "Anarchists are simply unterrified Jeffersonian Democrats." In 1833 Josiah Warren began publishing "the first explicitly anarchist newspaper in the United States",, called "The Peaceful Revolutionist." Beginning in 1881, Benjamin Tucker began publishing "Liberty" which was a forum to propagate individualist anarchist ideas. By that time, anarcho-communism and propaganda by the deed was arriving in America, "both of which Tucker detested."

Individualist Anarchism has historically been split between Mutualist, egoist and natural-rights schools, with Anarcho-Capitalist emerging in the 20th century. Some modern Green Anarchists describe themselves as individualists as well.

Social Anarchism

The social anarchist current within Anarchism is by far the largest and most influential globally and within the contemporary United States and has roots tracing back to well before the American Civil War. Early leaders included Albert Parsons, his wife Lucy Parsons, and Voltairine DeCleyre, along with many immigrants who brought their radicalism with them such as Johan Mohst, Emma Goldman, and Big Bill Haywood, and many others. Their influence on the early American labor movement was dramatic, with the execution of Albert Parsons and the other Haymarket Martyrs providing a key rallying cry for the early American labor movement and spurring the creation of radical unions throughout the country. The most powerful and notorious of these, the Industrial Workers of the World, was founded in 1905.

Social Anarchism includes Anarcho-Communism, Anarcho-Syndicalism, Libertarian Socialism, and other forms of anarchism that take the creation of social goods as their first priority.

Insurrectionary Anarchism

Insurrectionary anarchism is a revolutionary theory, practice and tendency within the anarchist movement which opposes formal anarchist organizations such as labor unions and federations that are based on a political program and periodic congresses. Instead, insurrectionary anarchists advocate direct action (violent or otherwise), informal organization, including small affinity groups and mass organizations which include non-anarchist individuals of the exploited or excluded class.

Many anarchist communists, such as the publishers of Barricada magazine in the United States and foreign immigrants to the US such as Luigi Galleani and Johann Most have been insurrectionary anarchists.

Re-emergence of anarchism in the U.S.

At the beginning of the 20th century, there were millions of anarchists in the United States. Over the course of the first two decades of the 20th century, the number of anarchists dropped for a variety of reasons, including: 1) the rise of the labor movement; 2) the Russian Revolution and its influence on American left politics; and 3) government repression, which included deportation of anarchists, imprisonment, and criminalization of anarchist organizations. Anarchism dwindled into obscurity until the 1960s.

Anarchism started making a comeback in the United States in the early 1960s, primarily through the influence of the Beat artists. Later in the 1960s, activists such as Abbie Hoffman and the Diggers identified with anarchism and were notable for the spectacular ways they put anarchist ideas into practice. In the late 60s, Murray Rothbard and Karl Hess published Left and Right: A Journal of Libertarian Thought. In 1969, The Match!, which bills itself as a "Journal of Ethical Anarchism" began publication and has published continuously since then.

In the 1970s, anarchist ideas caught on in the anti-nuclear, feminist, and environmental movements. Murray Bookchin was a widely read anarchist thinker whose books on the environment were influential on the environmental movement. Anarchist tactics such as the affinity group were adopted by women involved in the radical feminist movement.

Anarchists became more visible in the 1980s, as a result of publishing, protests and conventions. In 1980, the First International Symposium on Anarchism was held in Portland, Oregon. In 1986, the Haymarket Remembered conference was held in Chicago, to observe the centennial of the infamous Haymarket Riot. This conference was followed by annual, continental conventions in Minneapolis (1987), Toronto (1988), and San Francisco (1989).

In the 1990s, a group of anarchists formed the Love and Rage Network, which was one of several new groups and projects formed in the U.S. during the decade. American anarchists increasingly became noticeable at protests, especially through a tactic known as the Black bloc. U.S. anarchists became more prominent in 1999 as a result of the anti-WTO protests in Seattle.

Notable anarchists

Josiah Warren

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Josiah Warren

Main article: Josiah Warren

Josiah Warren published a periodical called The Peaceful Revolutionist in 1833, which some believe to be the first anarchist newspaper. Warren had participated in a failed collectivist experiment headed by Robert Owen called "New Harmony," but was disappointed in its failure. He stressed the need for individual sovereignty. In True Civilization Warren equates "Sovereignty of the Individual" with the Declaration of Independence's assertion of the inalienable rights. He claims that every person has an "instinct" for individual sovereignty, making individual rights inalienable and inviolate.

Basing his economics on the labor theory of value, Warren's economic principle was "cost the limit of price," with "cost" referring to the amount of labor incurred in producing a commodity and bringing it to market. He opposed what he called "value the limit of price," where prices paid are determined simply by subjective valuation irrespective of labor costs, as being inequitable or unfair. In 1827, Warren put his theories into practice by starting a business called the Cincinnati Time Store where the trade of goods was facilitated by private currency denominated in hours of labor. Warren was a strong supporter of the right of individuals to retain the product of their labor as private possessions. This position was shared by fellow anarchist Stephen Pearl Andrews.

Henry David Thoreau

Henry David Thoreau

Main article: Henry David Thoreau

Henry David Thoreau (July 12, 1817 – May 6, 1862; was an American author, development critic, naturalist, transcendentalist, pacifist, tax resister and philosopher who is famous for Walden, on simple living amongst nature, and Civil Disobedience. In 1849, Henry David Thoreau wrote "I heartily accept the motto, 'That government is best which governs least'; and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which also I believe -- 'That government is best which governs not at all'; and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which we will have." Thoreau never described himself as an anarchist, despite having many anarchists as contemporaries, so despite his vocal anti-statism his classification as such remains controversial.

William B. Greene

Main article: William Batchelder Greene

William Batchelder Greene (1819-1878) was an author, soldier, Unitarian minister and philosopher, active in transcendentalist circles. In works such as Equality (1849) and Mutual Banking (1850) he synthesized the work of French socialists such as P.-J. Proudhon and Pierre Leroux with that of American currency reformers such as William Beck and Edward Kellogg. The result was a unique form of Christian mutualism, which attempted to harmonize elements of capitalism, communism and socialism. Greene was later involved with the New England Labor Reform League, and with the anti-death penalty work of The Prisoner's Friend. He was a regular contributor to Ezra Heywood's The Word until his death.

Benjamin Tucker

Main article: Benjamin Tucker

Benjamin Tucker

Benjamin Tucker, being influenced by Warren (who he credits as being his "first source of light"), Greene, Heywood, Proudhon's mutualism, and Stirner's egoism, is probably the most famous of the American individualists. Tucker defined anarchism as "the doctrine that all the affairs of men should be managed by individuals or voluntary associations, and that the State should be abolished" (State Socialism and Anarchism).

Like the individualists he was influenced by, he rejected the notion of society being a thing that has rights, insisting that only individuals can have rights. And, like all anarchists, he opposed the governmental practice of democracy, as it allows a majority to decide for a minority. Tucker's main focus, however, was on economics. He opposed profit, believing that it is only made possible by the "suppression or restriction of competition" by government and vast concentration of wealth.

He believed that restriction of competition was accomplished by the establishment of four "monopolies": the banking/money monopoly, the land monopoly, the tariff monopoly, and the patent and copyright monopoly - the most harmful of these, according to him, being the money monopoly. He believed that restrictions on who may enter the banking business and issue currency, as well as protection of unused land, were responsible for wealth being concentrated in the hands of a privileged few.

Joseph Labadie

Main article: Joseph Labadie

Joseph Labadie was an American labor organizer, individualist anarchist, social activist, printer, publisher, essayist, and poet. He first joined the Socialist Labor Party in Detroit at the age of 27. In 1883, disenchanted with socialism, Labadie embraced individualist anarchism. He became closely allied with Benjamin Tucker, the country's foremost exponent of that doctrine, and frequently wrote for the latter's publication, "Liberty." Without the oppression of the state, Labadie believed, humans would choose to harmonize with "the great natural laws...without robbing [their] fellows through interest, profit, rent and taxes." However, his opposition to the State was not complete, as he supported government control of water utilities, streets, and railroads (Martin). Although he did not support the militant anarchism of the Haymarket anarchists, he fought for the clemency of the accused because he did not believe they were the perpetrators.

In 1888, Labadie organized the Michigan Federation of Labor, became its first president, and forged an alliance with Samuel Gompers. At age fifty he began writing verse and publishing artistic hand-crafted booklets. In 1908, the city postal inspector banned his mail because it bore stickers with anarchist quotations. A month later the Detroit water board, where he was working as a clerk, dismissed him for expressing anarchist sentiments. In both cases, the officials were forced to back down in the face of massive public protest for the person well-known in Detroit as its "Gentle Anarchist".

Voltairine de Cleyre

Main article: Voltairine de Cleyre

Voltairine de Cleyre

Voltairine de Cleyre (November 17, 1866–June 20, 1912) was an individualist anarchist for several years before rejecting that label to embrace the philosophy of anarchism without adjectives. In explaining her views on anarchism she said: "Anarchism...teaches the possibility of a society in which the needs of life may be fully supplied for all, and in which the opportunities for complete development of mind and body shall be the heritage of all... teaches that the present unjust organization of the production and distribution of wealth must finally be completely destroyed, and replaced by a system which will insure to each the liberty to work, without first seeking a master to whom he must surrender a tithe of his product, which will guarantee his liberty of access to the sources and means of production... Out of the blindly submissive, it makes the discontented; out of the unconsciously dissatisfied, it makes the consciously dissatisfied... Anarchism seeks to arouse the consciousness of oppression, the desire for a better society, and a sense of the necessity for unceasing warfare against capitalism and the State."

De Cleyre was held in high esteem by many anarchists. Emma Goldman called her "the most gifted and brilliant anarchist woman America ever produced", and de Cleyre argued in Goldman's defense after Goldman was imprisoned for urging the hungry to expropriate food. In this speech, she condoned a right to take food when hungry but stopped short of advocating it: "I do not give you that advice... not that I do not think one little bit of sensitive human flesh is worth all the property rights in New York City... I say it is your business to decide whether you will starve and freeze in sight of food and clothing, outside of jail, or commit some overt act against the institution of property and take your place beside Timmermann and Goldman."

Her stance as an individualist versus a collectivist is controversial, with both sides claiming her as an adherent. In an 1894 article defending Emma Goldman, she states, "Miss Goldman is a communist; I am an individualist." Conversely, in a 1911 article entitled "The Mexican Revolution" she wrote that "The communistic customs of these people are very interesting and very instructive too...," in regards to Mexican Indian revolutionaries. Similarly, she instructs in "Why I am an Anarchist," that "the best thing ordinary workingmen or women could do was to organize their industry to get rid of money altogether . . . Let them produce together, co-operatively rather than as employer and employed; let them fraternize 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." When she embraced "anarchism without adjectives", de Cleyre reasoned that: "Socialism and Communism both demand a degree of joint effort and administration which would beget more regulation than is wholly consistent with ideal Anarchism; Individualism and Mutualism, resting upon property, involve a development of the private policeman not at all compatible with my notion of freedom."

Albert Jay Nock

Main article: Albert Jay Nock

Albert Jay Nock (October 13, 1870 - August 19, 1945) was an influential American individualist anarchist, libertarian author, educational theorist, and social critic of the early and middle 20th century. He was editor of the first version of The Freeman magazine, and author of many works, including Our Enemy, the State, often cited by modern intellectuals and pundits like Murray Rothbard as a pivotal example of the ideology of individual liberty. Albert Jay Nock, a self described "philosophical anarchist", called for a laissez faire vision of society free from the influence of the political state. He described the state as that which "claims and exercises the monopoly of crime". He opposed centralization, regulation, the income tax, and mandatory education, along with what he saw as the degradation of society. He denounced in equal terms all forms of totalitarianism, including "Bolshevism, Fascism, Hitlerism, Marxism, [and] Communism", but was also harshly critical of democracy. Nock argued instead that, "[t]he practical reason for freedom is that freedom seems to be the only condition under which any kind of substantial moral fiber can be developed -- we have tried law, compulsion and authoritarianism of various kinds, and the result is nothing to be proud of."

Murray Rothbard

Main article: Murray Rothbard

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(Rothbard circa 1955).

Murray Rothbard (March 2, 1926 – January 7, 1995) was an American economist and political philosopher who is best known for theorizing anarcho-capitalism (also known as free-market anarchism and libertarianism), a form of individualist anarchism that opposes the state and supports a free market. Rothbard was "a student and disciple of the Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises, [who] combined the laissez-faire 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." Like the nineteenth century individualists, believed that security should be provided by multiple competing businesses rather than by a tax-funded central agency. However, he rejected their labor theory of value in favor of the modern neo-classical marginalist view. Thus, like most modern economists, he did not believe that prices in a free market would, or should be, proportional to labor (nor that "usury" or "exploitation" necessarily occurs where they are disproportionate). Instead, he believed that different prices of goods and services in a market, whether completely free or not, are ultimately the result of goods and services having different marginal utilities rather than the fact they contain differing amounts of labor - and that there is nothing unjust about this. Rothbard also disagreed with Tucker that interest would disappear with unregulated banking and money issuance. Rothbard believed that people in general do not wish to lend their money to others without compensation, so there is no reason why this would change where banking is unregulated. Nor, did he agree that unregulated banking would increase the supply of money because he believed the supply of money in a truly free market is self-regulating. And, he believed that it is good that it would not increase the supply or inflation would result. Few individualist anarchists still agree with the labor theory of value of the nineteenth century individualists or their theories on money, and as a result, according to mutualist Kevin Carson, "most people who call themselves 'individualist anarchists' today are followers of Murray Rothbard's Austrian economics." Rothbard strongly opposed communism in all its forms and other related ideologies that demand that wealth be distributed collectively instead of held individually. In anarcho-capitalism, the individual has no obligation to any other member of the community that he does not impose on himself other than to refrain from aggressing against others or defrauding them. It is important to mention that many social anarchists do not consider anarcho-capitalism to be "true" anarchism, believing that capitalism, no matter how voluntary, is intrinsically coercive.

Sacco and Vanzetti

Bartolomeo Vanzetti (left) and Nicola Sacco (right)

Main article: Sacco and Vanzetti

Nicola Sacco (April 22, 1891 – August 23, 1927) and Bartolomeo Vanzetti (June 11, 1888 – August 23, 1927) were two Italian-born American anarchists, influenced by Luigi Galleani, that were arrested, tried, and executed via electrocution in the American state of Massachusetts. Sacco and Vanzetti were accused of the killings of Frederick Parmenter, a shoe factory paymaster, and Alessandro Berardelli, a security guard, and of robbery of $15,766.51 from the factory's payroll on April 15, 1920. Both Sacco and Vanzetti had alibis, but they were the only people accused of the crime. As a result of what many historians feel was a blatant disregard for political civil liberties, and a strong anti-Italian prejudice, Sacco and Vanzetti were denied a retrial. Judge Webster Thayer, who heard the case, allegedly described the two as "anarchist bastards". The song "Two good men" by Woody Guthrie recounts the tale.

Emma Goldman

Main article: Emma Goldman

Emma Goldman (June 27, 1869 – May 14, 1940) was Lithuanian born, but she immigrated to the United States at seventeen. Goldman played a pivotal role in the development of anarchism in the US and Europe throughout the first half of the twentieth century, and was a major contributor to the contemporary trade union and feminism movements in the US. She was imprisoned in 1893 at Blackwell's Island penitentiary for publicly urging unemployed workers that they should "Ask for work. If they do not give you work, ask for bread. If they do not give you work or bread, take bread."

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Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman in 1917

She was convicted of "inciting a riot" by a criminal court of New York, despite the testimonies of twelve witnesses in her defense. The jury based their verdict on the testimony of one individual, a Detective Jacobs. Voltairine de Cleyre gave the lecture In Defense of Emma Goldman as a response to this imprisonment. She was later deported to Russia for criticizing the US government during World War I (especially for the draft), where she witnessed the results of the Russian Revolution. Emma Goldman became one of the most prominent and respected representatives of anarchist communism worldwide.

Alexander Berkman

Main article: Alexander Berkman

Alexander Berkman (21 November 1870 - 28 June 1936) was a Russian writer and activist who, in 1892, attempted to assassinate Henry Clay Frick, a wealthy industrialist involved in a bitter dispute with steelworkers in Homestead, Pennsylvania, in the belief that a violent act was needed to electrify the anarchist movement. He was arrested, convicted of attempted murder and sentenced to twenty-two years' imprisonment, of which he served fourteen years, many of them in solitary confinement (an account of which is contained in his book Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist).

Upon regaining his freedom, Berkman — shattered and physically broken — joined Emma Goldman as one of the leading figures of the anarchist movement in the US. He was deported alongside Goldman and, with her, led the libertarian critique of the Soviet Communist Party, denouncing what they saw as the betrayal of the revolution. While they helped persuade the main organizations of the international anarchist and anarcho-syndicalist movement not to participate in the Third International controlled by the Russians, their impact on the wider world was only partially successful.

Murray Bookchin

Main article: Murray Bookchin

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Murray Bookchin

Murray Bookchin (January 14, 1921 – July 30, 2006) was an American libertarian socialist speaker and writer, and founder of the Social Ecology school of anarchist and ecological thought. He is the author of two dozen books on politics, philosophy, history, and urban affairs as well as ecology.

Contemporary anarchists

Contemporary anarchists in the United States include Michael Albert, Ashanti Alston, Jon Bekken, Jello Biafra, Alexis Buss, Kevin Carson, Noam Chomsky, Cindy Milstein, Jon Bekken, Jason McQuinn, David Watson, Liz Highleyman, Larry Gambone, David Graeber, James J. Martin, Chuck Munson, Joe Peacott, Keith Preston, Crispin Sartwell, Michael Webb, Fred Woodworth, John Zerzan, Howard Zinn, Starhawk, Rebecca Solnit, David Solnit, Judith Malina, Wayne Price, Jeff "Free" Luers, Sharon Pressley, Peter Coyote, Howard Ehrlich, Flint Jones, Wendy McElroy, and Lew Rockwell.

Recently deceased American anarchists include Murray Bookchin, Sam Dolgoff and Robert Anton Wilson.

Although he doesn't claim to be an anarchist, Ward Churchill incorporates elements of anarchist philosophy into his politics and has connections with the anarchist movement.

See also

• Henry David Thoreau
• classical liberalism
• libertarianism
• Mutualism (economic theory)
• Cincinnati Time Store
• Individualist anarchism
• Liberty (1881-1908)
• Anarchism in the English tradition
• Anarchism and anarcho-capitalism
• Labor theory of property

External links

• Anarchism Without Hyphens by Karl Hess
• The Collectivist Tradition by Jeff Stein
• State Socialism and Anarchism: How far they agree, and wherein they differ, Economic Rent and Liberty, Land, and Labor by Benjamin Tucker
• The Boston Anarchists by Henry Appleton
• The Twilight of Vanguardism by David Graeber
• Bibliographical Essay by James J. Martin from his book Men Against the State: The Expositors of Individualist Anarchism in America, 1827-1908
• Benjamin R Tucker & the Champions of Liberty: A Centenary Anthology edited by Michael E. Coughlin, Charles H. Hamilton and Mark A. Sullivan
• An Introduction to Anarchism by Liz A. Highleyman
• IWW Organizing in the 1970s by Mike Hargis
• N30 Acme Collective Communique by the Black Bloc
• Notes on Anarchism by Noam Chomsky
• Ingalls, Hanson, and Tucker: Nineteenth Century American Anarchists by Jack Schwartzman
• Manifesto, Plan of the Cincinnati Labor for Labor Store and Equitable Commerce by Josiah Warren
• Mutual Banking by William B. Greene
• Uncivil Liberty: An Essay to Show the Injustice and Impolicy of Ruling Woman Without Her Consent (1873) by Ezra Heywood
• The Law of Intellectual Property: or an essay on the right of authors and inventors to a perpetual property in their ideas. by Lysander Spooner, 1855
• Henry Bool’s Apology for His Jeffersonian Anarchism by Henry Bool, 1901
• Anarchist Socialism and Anarchist-Mutualism by John William Lloyd, contributor to Liberty and one-time individualist anarchist, who tried to reconcile individualist and communist anarchism
• Individualism Reconsidered and An Overview of Individualist Anarchist Thought by Joe Peacott
• The Iron Fist Behind the Invisible Hand: Corporate Capitalism As a State-Guaranteed System of Privilege by Kevin A. Carson
• Prophets of the New World: Noam Chomsky, Murray Bookchin, and Fredy Perlman by John Moore
• Some Thoughts on Building an Anarchist Movement by Jeff Stein
• Your Politics Are Boring As Fuck by Nadia C. (CrimethInc.)
• Individualist Anarchist Society of UC Berkeley