Individualist anarchism
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Individualist anarchism (or anarchist individualism, anarcho-individualism, individualistic anarchism, philosophical anarchism or scientific anarchism) is an anarchist philosophical tradition that has a strong emphasis on the non-aggression principle and individual sovereignty.[1] Individualist anarchists believe that "individual conscience and the pursuit of self-interest should not be constrained by any collective body or public authority."[2] Individualist anarchism is considered to be one of the two main branches of anarchism, with the other being collectivist or social anarchism. Individualist anarchism is not a single philosophy but refers to a group of individualistic philosophies; there are "several traditions of individualist anarchism."[3] Individualist forms of anarchism appear most often in the United States.[4][5]. Virtually all individualist anarchists are market anarchists - they believe that the the institutions necessary for the function of a free market, such as money, police, and courts, should be supplied by the market itself. But, beyond this there is disagreement among different market anarchists in regard to particular issues. Some contemporary individualist anarchists are Kevin Carson, Joe Peacott, Fred Woodworth, Wendy McElroy and David Friedman. Individualist anarchists use the term "capitalism" in different ways; some to mean state collusion in the market, others to mean "free market." Thus they self-label as both anti-capitalist and pro-capitalist. Voltairine de Cleyre was an individualist anarchist who, in later life, rejected the label, calling herself an anarchist without adjectives.
Individualist anarchism is sometimes seen as an evolution of classical liberalism, and hence, has been called "liberal anarchism"[6]. Benjamin Tucker, for example, was influenced by Herbert Spencer, as he took up Spencer's "law of equal liberty." Anarcho-capitalism is a form of individualist anarchism that emerged in the middle of the 20th century, through the writings of Murray Rothbard. However, a small revival of individualist anarchism based in the labor theory of value has emerged in the 21st century, largely through the writings of Kevin Carson.
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[edit] Anarchists
While individualist anarchism is often seen as including William Godwin and Max Stirner, it is most often associated with the market anarchism found in the American Tradition, which advocates individual ownership of the produce of labor and a market economy where this property may be bought and sold. However, this form of individualist anarchism is not exclusive to the Americans. It is also found in the philosophy of other radical individualists, such as those in England and France though almost all were influenced by the early American individualists. Individualist anarchism of this type is in contrast to social(ist) anarchism which holds that productive property should be in the control of the society at large in various forms of worker collectives and that the produce of labor should be collectivized. Most of the individualist anarchists in the 19th and 18th centuries adhered to a labor theory of value, and hence, saw profit as subverting natural law. However, there have been a few theorists in the 19th and 18th centuries that did not adhere to labor-value. These include Jakob Mauvillon, Julius Faucher, Gustave de Molinari, Auberon Herbert, and Herbert Spencer. By the 20th century, many rejected the labor theory of value for the mainstream "supply and demand" subjective theory of value: Albert Jay Nock, Murray Rothbard and David Friedman among others.
[edit] William Godwin
William Godwin, of England, wrote essays advocating an eventual society with minimal government that are considered by many to be 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, or indeed, an anarchist rather than a minarchist. 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."[7]
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 idea of government, but writes that it may be necessary until people are educated and nurtured sufficiently. He 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 also advocates 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). Thus, while people have the right to private property, they should give it away as enlightened altruists. 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.
Some consider Godwin both an individualist and a communist rather than a strict individualist for this reason. [8]Some, such as Murray Rothbard, do not regard Godwin as being in the individualist camp at all[9](Some restrict "individualist anarchism" to the market anarchists). Others consider him an individualist anarchist without reservation. [10] Some writers see a conflict between Godwin's advocacy of "private judgement" and utilitarianism, as he says that ethics requires that individuals give their surplus property to each other resulting in an egalitarian society, but, at the same time, he insists that all things be left to individual choice.[11] 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).
[edit] Pierre Proudhon
France's Pierre-Joseph Proudhon was the first philosopher to label himself an "anarchist." He was particularly influential among the American individualists, mainly by way of Benjamin Tucker who had translated and studied his works. Proudhon opposes government privilege that protects capitalist, banking and land interests, and the accumulation or acquisition of property (and any form of coercion that led to it) 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 was required for labor and the latter when it resulted in exploitation (profit, interest, rent, tax). He generally called the former "possession" and the latter "property." For large-scale industry, he supported workers associations to replace wage labour and opposed the ownership of land.
Proudhon maintains that those who labor should retain the entirety of what they produce, and that monopolies on credit and land are the forces that prohibiting 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 rejected 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 that "communism...is the very denial of society in its foundation..." (Philosophy of Poverty) and was famous for declaring that "property is theft" in reference to the capitalist practices of his time.
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 translating 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.
[edit] Egoist Individualist Anarchism
Max Stirner was a philosopher whose "name appears with familiar regularity in historically-orientated surveys of anarchist thought as one of the earliest and best-known exponents of individualist anarchism."[12] In 1844, his The Ego and Its Own (sometimes translated as "The Individual and His Property") was published, which is considered to be "a founding text in the tradition of individualist anarchism."[13] Stirner proposes that most commonly accepted social institutions - including the notion of State, property as a right, natural rights in general, and the very notion of society - were mere illusions or ghosts in the mind, saying of society that "the individuals are its reality." Stirner wants to "abolish not only the state but also society as an institution responsible for its members."[14]
He advocated egoism and a form of amoralism, in which individuals would unite in 'associations of egoists' only when it was in their self interest to do so. For him, property simply comes about through might: "Whoever knows how to take, to defend, the thing, to him belongs property." And, "What I have in my power, that is my own. So long as I assert myself as holder, I am the proprietor of the thing." He says, "I do not step shyly back from your property, but look upon it always as my property, in which I respect nothing. Pray do the like with what you call my property!" [15] 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).
[edit] The American Traditions
The American version of individualist anarchism supports provision of defense of the individual and his property being supplied by multiple competing providers in a free market. This may further be broad divided into those who have a labor theory of value and those who don't. Some of the latter are often referred to as "anarcho-capitalists." However, there are still others such as Henry David Thoreau who do not speak of markets but simply of the right of "disunion" from the state. Among the market anarchists, is a 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 that respects the "sovereignty [16] of the individual" and his right to dispose of his property as his own self-interest prescribes. In Practical Details, where he discusses his conclusions in regard to the experiment. In a much 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." Also, unlike in social anarchism, individualists do not advocate the socialization (collectivization) of the means or production.
[edit] The "Boston Anarchists"
However, Warren held the labor theory of value and saw the profit reaped by the merchant that covered more than the cost of his labor as being exploitative. (Proudhon was to also later to come to a similar conclusion.) Accepting that the value of a good is the amount of labor undertaking in producing it, he 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" he advocated that a commodity should be purchased with an amount of labor that is equivalent to the amount of labor undertaken in producing that commodity. 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. Profiting from lending money for interest is generally seen as usurious as an income is seen as being derived without labor. To the individualists, profit from interest, an individual not receiving his "full product" in accordance with the labor theory of value, and rental 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. Also, most of the nineteenth century individualists believed 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. However, not all of the early individualist anarchists held this philosophy of land ownership. Warren and Lysander Spooner who placed no restrictions on occupancy and use for ownership.
American individualist anarchists support replacing the security functions of the state with private defense that charges for its services of protecting liberty and property. Benjamin Tucker says: :
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"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"[17] |
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."[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, 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.[19]
Voltairine de Cleyre, speaking as an ex-individualist anarchist summed up the philosophy by saying that the 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."[20]
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. Abandoning the idea of moral rights, Tucker said that there were only two rights, "the right of might" and "the right of contract."
[edit] Anarcho-capitalism
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(Rothbard circa 1955).
Most pre-20th century individualist anarchists espoused the labor theory of value, however "their successors today, such as Murray Rothbard, having abandoned the labor theory of value, describe themselves as anarcho-capitalists."[21] As economic theory advanced, the popularity of the of the labor theory of classical economics was superseded by much greater acceptance of the subjective theory of value of neo-classical economics. According to Kevin Carson, "most people who call themselves "individualist anarchists" today are followers of Murray Rothbard's Austrian economics."[22]
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.[23] Rothbard said:
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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 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.[24] |
As in 19th century individualist anarchism, in an anarcho-capitalist society, no authority would prohibit anyone from providing, through the free market, any service - even those services traditionally provided by state monopoly such as police, courts, and defense. However, unlike classical individualist anarchism that accepts the labor theory of value, 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.[25] 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.[26] Its leading proponents are Murray Rothbard and David Friedman and it has been influenced by non-anarchist libertarians such as Frederic Bastiat, Ayn Rand and Robert Nozick.
Rothbard did say "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." However, a number of scholars do call anarcho-capitalism a capitalist form of individualist anarchism.[27]
[edit] Notes
- Spooner on Property: "The only way, in which ['the wealth of nature'] can be made useful to mankind, is by their taking possession of it individually, and thus making it private property." - Lysander Spooner, Law of Intellectual Property.
- "That there is an entity known as the community which is the rightful owner of all land anarchists deny. I...maintain that the community is a non-entity, that it has no existence, and is simply a combination of individuals having no prerogative beyond those of the individuals themselves." - Benjamin Tucker, Liberty.
- The communist anarchist Kropotkin, a critic of individualism, agrees that individualist anarchism is opposed to collectivism: "The individualist anarchism of the American Proudhonians finds, however, but little sympathy amongst the working masses. Those who profess it - they are chiefly 'intellectuals' - soon realize that the individualization they so highly praise is not attainable by individual efforts, and either abandon the ranks of the anarchists, and are driven into the liberal individualism of the classical economist or they retire into a sort of Epicurean amoralism, or superman theory, similar to that of Stirner and Nietzsche. The great bulk of the anarchist working men prefer the anarchist-communist ideas which have gradually evolved out of the anarchist collectivism of the International Working Men's Association." [28]
- Tucker on Liberty: Benjamin Tucker, Liberty And Individualist Anarchism, by Wendy McElroy
- re Liberal Anarchism: Liberal Anarchism Chapter 8 of Conquest of Power by Albert Weisbord.
[edit] References
- ^ Madison, Charles A. (1945). "Anarchism in the United States". Journal of the History of Ideas 6 (1): 46-66.
- ^ Heywood, Andrew, Key Concepts in Politics, Palgrave, ISBN 0-312-23381-7, 2000, p. 46
- ^ Ward, Colin. Anarchism: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press, 2004, p. 2
- ^ Historical individualist anarchists include Max Stirner, Josiah Warren, Benjamin Tucker, Lysander Spooner, Ezra Heywood, Stephen Pearl Andrews, Emile Armand, and Murray Rothbard
- ^ "Murray N. Rothbard (1926-1995), American economist, historian, and individualist anarchist." Avrich, Paul. Anarchist Voices: An Oral History of Anarchism in America, Abridged Paperback Edition (1996), p. 282
- ^ Liberal Anarchism Chapter 8 of Conquest of Power by Albert Weisbord. Also, "Whereas collectivist anarchists derive their ideas from socialism, individualist anarchists derive their ideas largely from classical liberal thinking." Grant, Moyra. Key Ideas in Politics, Nelson Thornes (2003), p. 3
- ^ Godwin, William. (2006). In Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. Retrieved December 7, 2006, from Encyclopædia Britannica Online: http://www.britannica.com/ebc/article-9037183
- ^ http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache:iCK-K7dEYK4J:www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/overview/shelley.pdf
- ^ http://www.b.150m.com/writers/rothbard/burke.html
- ^ http://www.weisbord.org/conquest8.htm
- ^ http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/godwin/
- ^ Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
- ^ Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Max Stirner
- ^ Heider, Ulrike. Anarchism: Left, Right and Green, San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1994, pp. 95-96
- ^ Stirner, Max. The Ego and Its Own, p. 248
- ^ "Some portion, at least, of those who have attended the public meetings, know that EQUITABLE COMMERCE is founded on a principle exactly opposite to combination; this principle may be called that of Individuality. It leaves every one in undisturbed possession of his or her natural and proper sovereignty over its own person, time, property and responsibilities; & no one is acquired or expected to surrender any "portion" of his natural liberty by joining any society whatever; nor to become in any way responsible for the acts or sentiments of any one but himself; nor is there any arrangement by which even the whole body can exercise any government over the person, time property or responsibility of a single individual." - Josiah Warren, Manifesto
- ^ Tucker, Benjamin. "Instead of a Book" (1893)
- ^ Tucker, Benjamin. Liberty October 19, 1891
- ^ McElroy, Wendy. A Reconsideration of Trial by Jury, Forumulations, Winter 1998-1999, Free Nation Foundation
- ^ de Cleyre, Voltairine. Anarchism. Originally published in Free Society, 13 October 1901. Published in Exquisite Rebel: The Essays of Voltairine de Cleyre, SUNY Press 2005, p. 224
- ^ Outhwaite, William. The Blackwell Dictionary of Modern Social Thought, Anarchism entry, Blackwell Publishing, 2003, p. 13
- ^ Carson, Kevin. Mutualist Political Economy, Preface
- ^ Blackwell Encyclopaedia of Political Thought, 1987, ISBN 0-631-17944-5, p. 290
- ^ "The Spooner-Tucker Doctrine: An Economist's View" The Spooner-Tucker Doctrine: An Economist's View
- ^ Rothbard, Murray. The Spooner-Tucker Doctrine: An Economist's View The Spooner-Tucker Doctrine: An Economist's View
- ^ Rothbard, Murray (1969) Consfiscation and the Homestead Principle The Libertatian Forum Vol. I, No. VI (June 15, 1969) Retrieved 5 August 2006
- ^ Such accounts specifying anarcho-capitalism as a form of individualist anarchism include:
- Alan and Trombley, Stephen (Eds.) Bullock, The Norton Dictionary of Modern Thought, W. W. Norton & Company (1999), p. 30
- Outhwaite, William. The Blackwell Dictionary of Modern Social Thought, Anarchism entry, p. 21, 2002.
- Bottomore, Tom. Dictionary of Marxist Thought, Anarchism entry, 1991.
- Barry, Norman. Modern Political Theory, 2000, Palgrave, p. 70
- Adams, Ian. Political Ideology Today, Manchester University Press (2002) ISBN 0-7190-6020-6, p. 135
- Grant, Moyra. Key Ideas in Politics, Nelson Thomas 2003 ISBN 0-7487-7096-8, p. 91
- Heider, Ulrike. Anarchism: Left, Right, and Green, City Lights, 1994. p. 3.
- Geoffrey Ostergaard. Resisting the Nation State - the anarchist and pacifist tradition, Anarchism As A Tradition of Political Thought. Peace Pledge Union Publications
- Avrich, Paul. Anarchist Voices: An Oral History of Anarchism in America, Abridged Paperback Edition (1996), p. 282
- Sheehan, Sean. Anarchism, Reaktion Books, 2004, p. 39
- Tormey, Simon. Anti-Capitalism, One World, 2004. pp. 118-119
- Raico, Ralph. Authentic German Liberalism of the 19th Century, Ecole Polytechnique, Centre de Recherce en Epistemologie Appliquee, Unité associée au CNRS, 2004.
- Busky, Donald. Democratic Socialism: A Global Survey, Praeger/Greenwood (2000), p. 4
- Levy, Carl. Anarchism, Microsoft® Encarta® Online Encyclopedia 2006 [4] MS Encarta (UK).
- Heywood, Andrew. Politics: Second Edition, Palgrave (2002), p. 61
- Offer, John. Herbert Spencer: Critical Assessments, Routledge (UK) (2000), p. 243
- ^ http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_Archives/kropotkin/britanniaanarchy.html
[edit] See also
[edit] 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[1] discusses individualism of Godwin and Stirner
- American Liberal-Anarchism from The Conquest of Power, by Albert Weisbord[2]
- 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
