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Individualist anarchism (or philosophical anarchism) is an anarchist philosophical tradition that has a strong emphasis on equality of liberty and individual sovereignty. The tradition appears most often in the United States. The roots of individualist anarchism include Europeans such as William Godwin, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Emile Armand, Oscar Wilde, Han Ryner and Max Stirner and the individualist anarchist tradition draws heavily on American thinkers, including Josiah Warren, Benjamin Tucker, Lysander Spooner, Ezra Heywood, Stephen Pearl Andrews, and Henry David Thoreau. The writer and poet John Henry Mackay is also considered an individualist anarchist. Contemporary individualist anarchists include Robert Anton Wilson, Joe Peacott, Daniel Burton, Kevin Carson, and Keith Preston. Individualist anarchism is sometimes seen as an evolution of classical liberalism, and hence, has been called "liberal anarchism." Benjamin Tucker, for example, was influenced by Herbert Spencer, as he took up Spencer's "law of equal liberty."

Origins

William Godwin

William Godwin, of England, wrote essays advocating a society without government that are considered some of the first, if not the first, anarchist treatises. As such, some consider the liberal British writer to be the "father of philosophical anarchism." There is a lack of consensus as to whether Godwin was an individualist or a communist. He is regarded by some as one of the first individualist anarchists, although his philosophy has some communist-like characteristics. He advocates an extreme form of individualism, proposing that all sorts of cooperation in labor should be eliminated; he says: "everything understood by the term co-operation is in some sense an evil." Godwin's individualism is to such a radical degree that he even opposes individuals performing together in orchestras. The only apparent exception to this opposition to cooperation is the spontaneous association that may arise when a society is threatened by violent force. One reason he opposes cooperation is he believes it to interfere with an individual's ability to be benevolent for the greater good. Godwin opposes the existence of government and expressly opposes democracy, fearing oppression of the individual by the majority (though he believes democracy to be preferable to dictatorship). Godwin supports individual ownership of property, defining it as "the empire to which every man is entitled over the produce of his own industry." However, he does advocate that individuals give to each other their surplus property on the occasion that others have a need for it, without involving trade (see gift economy). This was to be based on utilitarian principles; he says: "Every man has a right to that, the exclusive possession of which being awarded to him, a greater sum of benefit or pleasure will result than could have arisen from its being otherwise appropriated." However, benevolence was not to be enforced but a matter of free individual "private judgement." He does not advocate a community of goods or assert collective ownership as is embraced in communism, but his belief that individuals ought to share with those in need was influential on anarchist communism later. Communist-anarchist Peter Kropotkin says in the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica that Godwin "entirely rewrote later on his chapter on property and mitigated his communist views in the second edition of Political Justice." Godwin's basis in utilitarianism and ethical altruism contrasts with later individualists, such as Max Stirner and Benjamin Tucker, who ground their philosophy on egoism or self-interest (though not all are egoists). Also, Godwin's aversion to cooperation and a market economy is not typical among the individualists.

Max Stirner

While individualists typically assert property as a right, Germany's Max Stirner held that a "right" to property is an illusion, or "ghost"; property is only a matter of control --it is not based in any moral right but solely in the right of might: "Whoever knows how to take, to defend, the thing, to him belongs property." Stirner considers the world and everything in it, including other persons, available to one's taking or use without moral constraint --that rights do not exist in regard to objects at all. He sees no rationality in taking the interests of others into account unless doing so furthers one's self-interest, which he believes is the only legitimate reason for acting. His embrace of egoism is in stark contrast to Godwin's altruism. He denies society as being an actual entity, calling society a "spook" and that "the individuals are its reality" (The Ego and Its Own). Whether individualist anarchism is properly justified by self-interest (egoism) or natural law has been a subject of debate among the individualists. For example, Lysander Spooner holds that there are natural property rights, but egoists such as Benjamin Tucker agree with Stirner that there are no natural property rights but hold that property can come only about by contract between individuals.

Pierre Proudhon

France's Pierre-Joseph Proudhon was the first philosopher to label himself an "anarchist." Proudhon opposes government privilege that protects capitalism in banking and land interests, and any form of coercion that led to the accumulation or acquisition of property, which he believes hampers competition and keeps wealth in the hands of the few. Proudhon favors a right of individuals to retain the product of their labor as their own property, but believed that any property beyond that which an individual produced and could possess was illegitimate. Thus, he saw private property as both essential to liberty and a road to tyranny, the former when it resulted from labor and the latter when it resulted from extortion (interest, tax, etc). He says: "Where shall we find a power capable of counter-balancing the... State? There is none other than property... The absolute right of the State is in conflict with the absolute right of the property owner. Property is the greatest revolutionary force which exists." Proudhon maintains that those who labor should retain the entirety of what they produce, and that the institution of profit on capital prohibits such. He advocated an economic system that included private property as possession and exchange market but without profit, which he called mutualism. It is Proudhon's philosophy that was explicitly amended by Joseph Dejacque in the inception of anarchist-communism, with the latter asserting directly to Proudhon in a letter that "it is not the product of his or her labor that the worker has a right to, but to the satisfaction of his or her needs, whatever may be their nature." Proudhon said harshly criticised both communism and capitalism, "If the organization is to be of the hierarchical type, we reenter the system of monopoly; if of the democratic, we return to the point of departure, for the compensated industries will fall into the public domain, — that is, into competition, — and gradually will become monopolies again; if, finally, of the communistic, we shall simply have passed from one impossibility to another, for, as we shall demonstrate at the proper time, communism, like competition and monopoly, is antinomical, impossible."

After Dejacque and others split from Proudhon due to the latter's support of individual property and an exchange economy, the relationship between the individualists, who continued in relative alignment with the philosophy of Proudhon, and the anarcho-communists was characterised by various degrees of antagonism and harmony. For example, individualists like Tucker on the one hand translated and reprinted the works of collectivists like Mikhail Bakunin, while on the other hand rejecting the economic aspects of collectivism and communism as incompatible with anarchist ideals.

The American tradition

Individualist anarchism in America is noted for its strong advocacy of private property in the product of labor, and a competitive free market economy . Josiah Warren, who is the first individualist anarchist in the American tradition, had participated in a failed collectivist experiment headed by Robert Owen called "New Harmony" and came to the conclusion that such a system is inferior to one where individualism and private property is respected. In Practical Details, he discusses his conclusions in regard to the experiment. In a cited quotation from that text, 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.

Though Warren and Proudhon did not associate with each other, working on separate continents, they both came to like conclusions in regard to labor theory of value and property. However, according to Benjamin Tucker, that profiting by violating the labor theory of value is exploitative "was Proudhon's position before it was Marx's, and Josiah Warren's before it was Proudhon's" (Liberty or Authority).

While Warren based his philosophy on natural law, Benjamin Tucker grew to accept egoism as a result of his reading of Max Stirner. Many individualists followed in his footsteps in this respect. Tucker maintained that there were two rights, "the right of might" and "the right of contract" and that moral rights do not exist until they are devised by contract initiated out of the self-interest of the contracting parties. However, this was a source of conflict among the individualists as many continued to assert natural law.

The individualists' economic theory (mutualism) is based on the labor theory of value. Accepting that the value of a good is related to the amount of labor undertaking in producing it, they conclude that it is unethical to charge a higher price for a commodity than the cost of producing or acquiring and bringing it to market (Cost the limit of price). To ensure that labor receives its "full produce" they advocate that a commodity should be purchased with an amount of labor that is equivalent to the amount of labor undertaken in producing that commodity. As a result, equal amounts, type, and degree of labor would receive equal pay; those that did not labor would not be paid. In the area of employment, this would obviate the possibility of an employer profiting from the labor of an employee, which they opposed as being exploitative, since the employee must receive the "full produce" of his labor. With the exception of Warren, this led to their position that private ownership 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 anything (Warren does not oppose ownership of land but does advocate that it be sold at cost). Profiting from lending money for interest is generally seen as usurious as this income is seen as being derived without labor. To the individualists, profit from interest, profit from wages, and rental of land is only made possible by "monopoly" and "privilege" that restricts competition in the marketplace and concentrates wealth in the hands of a few.

Anarcho-capitalism

While the claim is controversial, some scholars regard anarcho-capitalism as being a form of individualism anarchism. However, other scholars, and many individualist anarchists themselves, do not accept anarcho-capitalism as a form of individualist anarchism, individualist or not, as they assert that anarchism is fundamentally opposed to capitalism. As individualist anarchist Joe Peacott says:

there is, however, another group within the anarchist movement that rejects both communal and capitalist economic arrangements. These are the individualists, who originated in the United States in the 1800s.

Individualist anarchists have continued to espouse the labor theory of value, finding profit to be unnatural and exploitative. In the mainstream, however, the popularity of the labor theory of value of classical economics was superseded by greater acceptance of the subjective theory of value of neo-classical economics. Eventually, in the 1950s, Murray Rothbard coined the term "anarcho-capitalism" to define his anti-statist, laissez-faire capitalist philosophy.

Rothbard noted that while "strongly tempted," he could not call his ideology "individualist anarchism" because "Spooner and Tucker have in a sense preempted that name for their doctrine and that from that doctrine I have certain differences." Rothbard sought to introduce Lockean property rights and marginalism into individualist anarchism:

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.

References

1. ^ Madison, Charles A. (1945). "Anarchism in the United States". Journal of the History of Ideas. 6 (1): 46–66.
2. Liberal Anarchism Chapter 8 of Conquest of Power by Albert Weisbord.
3. Proudhon, Pierre-Joseph (1847) "The Philosophy of Poverty"
4. Madison, Charles A. (1943). "Benjamin R. Tucker: Individualist and Anarchist". New England Quarterly. 16 (3): 444–467.
5. 1) Tormey, Simon. Anti-Capitalism, One World, 2004. 2)Perlin, Terry M. Contemporary Anarchism, Transaction Books, NJ 1979. 3) Raico, Ralph. Authentic German Liberalism of the 19th Century, Ecole Polytechnique, Centre de Recherce en Epistemologie Appliquee, Unité associée au CNRS, 2004. 4) Levy, Carl. Anarchism, MS Encarta Encyclopedia. 5) Heider, Ulrike. Anarchism:Left, Right, and Green, City Lights, 1994.
6. "Anarchism," Microsoft® Encarta® Online Encyclopedia 2006
7. Carson, Kevin A. (2001) "The Iron Fist Behind the Invisible Hand" Red Lion Press
8. Peacott, Joe "An Overview of Individualist Anarchist Thought" (Libertarian Alliance (2003) ISBN 1 85637 564 1
9. "The Spooner-Tucker Doctrine: An Economist's View"

See also

• Individualism
• Anarchism
• Anarchism in the United States
• Christian anarchism
• Geolibertarianism

External links

• Individualist Anarchist Resources
• A Vindication of Natural Society: or, a View of the Miseries and Evils arising to Mankind from every Species of Artificial Society by Edmund Burke - some regard this liberal essay to be the first to advocate anarchy
• Enquiry Concerning Political Justice by William Godwin
• The Ego and his Own by Max Stirner, translated by Christian individualist anarchist Steven T. Byington
• Manifesto by Josiah Warren
• Equitable Commerce by Josiah Warren
• State Socialism and Anarchism: How far they agree, and wherein they differ. by Benjamin Tucker (1886)
• Anarchist Individualism as Life and Activity by E. Armand (1907)
• I. Liberal-Anarchism VIII. Libertarianism from The Conquest of Power, by Albert Weisbord discusses individualism of Godwin and Stirner
• American Liberal-Anarchism from The Conquest of Power, by Albert Weisbord
• American Anarchism by Wendy McElroy 19th Century Individualist Anarchism in America
• A critique of Individualist Anarchism by Murray Bookchin
• Bad Press Contemporary Individualist Anarchist Publications
• Individualist-Anarchist.Net
• The Schism Between Individualist and Communist Anarchism
• Proudhon and Anarchism by Larry Gambone
• Individualist Anarchist Society at UC Berkeley

• Political theories
• Anarchism