Individualist anarchism Totally Explained

Everything about Individualist Anarchism totally explained

Individualist anarchism (also anarchist individualism, anarcho-individualism, individualistic anarchism, libertarian anarchism) refers to any of several traditions that hold that "individual conscience and the pursuit of self-interest shouldn't be constrained by any collective body or public authority" and that the imposition of "the system of democracy, of majority decision" over the decision of the individual "is held null and void." Individualist anarchism is seen by many as one of two main categories or wings of anarchism — the other has been called social, socialist, collectivist, or communitarian anarchism. One view is that the individualist wing of anarchism emphasises negative liberty, for example opposition to state or social control over the individual, while those in the collectivist wing emphasise positive liberty to achieve one's potential and argue that humans have needs that society ought to fulfill, "recognizing equality of entitlement". Another distinction is that unlike the social/socialist/collectivist/communitarian wing which advocates common ownership as a means to eliminate unequal economic power, individualist anarchism is supportive of property being held privately, and in the case of the most prevalent strain of anarcho-individualism, advocates that this property be distributed through markets. Philosophical anarchism, for example anarchism that doesn't advocate revolution to eliminate the state, "is a component especially of individualist anarchism." Individualist anarchism isn't a single philosophy but refers to a group of individualistic philosophies; there are "several traditions of individualist anarchism." Early individualist anarchists were motivated by progressive rationalism (in the case of William Godwin), Max Stirner's rational egoism, and Herbert Spencer's view that social evolution will render the state redundant. Individualist forms of anarchism have appeared most often in the United States among such figures as Henry David Thoreau, Josiah Warren, Benjamin Tucker, Lysander Spooner, Ezra Heywood, Stephen Pearl Andrews, and Murray Rothbard. Notable contemporary individualist anarchists include Kevin Carson, Joe Peacott, Wendy McElroy, David D. Friedman, and Robert Paul Wolff.
According to Christopher Morris, individualist anarchism which supports a market society such as that of Friedman and Rothbard has had a greater level of revived interest, especially in the U.S., than has communitarian anarchism which is more widespread in Europe.

Overview

While individualist anarchism is often seen as including William Godwin and Max Stirner, it's 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 isn't exclusive to the Americas. 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 contrasts with 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 didn't 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, especially its just price interpretation, for the mainstream marginal utility theory of value: Albert Jay Nock, Murray Rothbard and David D. Friedman among others.
   There is a pure egoist form of individualist anarchism, derived from the writings of Max Stirner, which supports the individual doing exactly what he pleases, taking no notice of God, state, or moral rules. Stirner preached self-assertion and foresaw a "Union of Egoists" who are drawn together by respect for each other's ruthlessness. However, individualist anarchists are typically market anarchists. Their essential objection to the state is that it's a monopoly on the use of force in that it punishes those who would (personally, or through mutual aid or contract) enforce their own rights, and because it requires purchase of that monopoly service through coercive taxation. They believe that the institutions necessary for the function of a free market, which may include money, police, and courts, should be supplied by the market itself. But, beyond this there's disagreement among different market anarchists in regard to particular issues.
   Individualist anarchists use the term "capitalism" in different ways: Some, such as Josiah Warren, Benjamin Tucker, and Kevin Carson use "capitalism" to mean the monopolization of capital, while others, such as Murray Rothbard, David Friedman, and Wendy McElroy define "capitalism" as a laissez-faire free market capitalist economy. Anarcho-capitalism is a political philosophy that emerged in the middle of the 20th century, through the writings of Murray Rothbard with his rejection of the nineteenth century individualists' labor theory of value. Agorism is a form of market anarchism popularized by the late Samuel Edward Konkin III, which emphasizes counter-economic activity, and is described by agorists as left-libertarian.
   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."

Anarchists and traditions

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." He is regarded by some as one of the first individualist anarchists, although his philosophy had some communist-like characteristics. He advocated 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 was to such a radical degree that he even opposed 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 opposed cooperation is he believed it to interfere with an individual's ability to be benevolent for the greater good. Godwin opposes the idea of government, but wrote that it may be necessary until people are educated and nurtured sufficiently. He expressly opposed democracy, fearing oppression of the individual by the majority (though he believes democracy to be preferable to dictatorship).
   Godwin supported 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 advocated 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 said: "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 wasn't to be enforced but a matter of free individual "private judgement." He didn't 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.
   Godwin's political views were diverse and don't perfectly agree with any of the ideologies that claim his influence. Writers of the Socialist Standard consider Godwin both an individualist and a communist. Murray Rothbard didn't regard Godwin as being in the individualist camp at all, and refers to him as the "founder of communist anarchism." Historian Albert Weisbord considers him an individualist anarchist without reservation. 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. Many of Godwin's views changed over time, as noted by Peter Kropotkin.

Pierre Proudhon

France's Pierre-Joseph Proudhon was the first philosopher to label himself an "anarchist." Though Proudhon himself isn't always considered an individualist anarchist (some say he's a social(ist) anarchist. / communitarian anarchist), he was influential among the American individualists, mainly by way of William Greene and Benjamin Tucker who had studied and translated his works. Proudhon opposed 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 believed hampers competition and keeps wealth in the hands of the few. Proudhon favoured 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 maintained that those who labor should retain the entirety of what they produce, and that monopolies on credit and land are the forces that prohibit 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 isn't 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 his rejection of ownership rights to land being granted to a person who isn't using that land.
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 rejected the economic aspects of collectivism and communism as incompatible with anarchist ideals.

Max Stirner

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." In 1844, his The Ego and Its Own (Der Einzige and sein Eigentum which may literally be translated as The Unique Individual and His Property) was published, which is considered to be "a founding text in the tradition of individualist anarchism." Stirner held that the only limitation on the rights of the individual is his power to obtain what he desires. He 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 spooks in the mind. Stirner wants to "abolish not only the state but also society as an institution responsible for its members."
   Property simply comes about through might: "Whoever knows how to take, to defend, the thing, to him belongs property." And, "What I've in my power, that's my own. So long as I assert myself as holder, I'm the proprietor of the thing." He says, "I don't 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!". His embrace of egoism is in stark contrast to Godwin's altruism. Stirner was opposed to communism, seeing it as a form of authority over the individual.
   This position on property is much different from the native American, natural law, form of individualist anarchism, which defends the inviolability of the private property that has been earned through labor and trade. However, in 1886 Benjamin Tucker rejected the natural rights philosophy and adopted Stirner's egoism, with several others joining with him. This split the American individualists into fierce debate, "with the natural rights proponents accusing the egoists of destroying libertarianism itself." Other Egoists include James L. Walker, Sidney Parker, and Dora Marsden.
   In Russia, individualist anarchism inspired by Stirner and Friedrich Nietzsche attracted a small following of bohemian artists and intellectuals, as well as a few lone-wolf's who found self-expression in crime and violence. They rejected organizing, believing that only unorganized individuals were safe from coercion and domination, believing this kept them true to the ideals of anarchism.
   Stirner's philosophy has also influenced some libertarian communists and anarcho-communists. "For Ourselves Council for Generalized Self-Management" discusses Stirner and speaks of a "communist egoism," which is said to be a "synthesis of individualism and collectivism," and says that "greed in its fullest sense is the only possible basis of commmunist society." Forms of libertarian communism such as Situationism are strongly Egoist in nature. Anarcho-communist Emma Goldman was influenced by both Stirner and Peter Kropotkin and blended their philosophies together in her own, as shown in books of hers such as Anarchism And Other Essays.

The American traditions

The American version of individualist anarchism has a strong emphasis on the non-aggression principle and individual sovereignty. Some individualist anarchists, such as Henry David Thoreau, don't speak of economics but simply the right of "disunion" from the state, and foresee the gradual elimination of the state through social evolution. 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," stresses the importance of individual liberty, the sovereignty of the individual, private property or possession, and opposes all monopolies (which they believe are state created and/or maintained).
This may further be broadly divided into those who hold to a labor theory of value and those who do not. Some of the latter are often referred to as "anarcho-capitalists." Those referred to as 'anarcho-capitalists', don't oppose things such as profit, rent, loans or interest. They also don't 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. Among the market anarchists, there's a strong advocacy of private property in the product of labor, and a competitive free market economy. Unlike social(ist) anarchists, individualists don't advocate the socialization or collectivization of the means or production.
An early individualist anarchist who was very influential was Josiah Warren, 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 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." In a much cited quotation from Practical Details, where he discusses his conclusions in regard to the experiment, he makes a vehement assertion of individual negative liberty:
Warren supported private property and trade. However, he held the labor theory of value, 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. (Proudhon was to also later to come to a similar conclusion.) 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're purchasing. 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 didn't confine this to theory. He put labor notes into exercise in experimental communities which he set up.

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. Tucker believed that it was unjust for individuals to receive greater income while performing less labor than others. 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. Like Warren, he saw income derived without labor to be exploitative (with the exception of gifts and inheritance). He argued that lending money for interest involved no labor on the part of the lender and therefore saw interest charges as usurious. Rent was also seen as unjust because it involved obtaining an income without labor. 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. 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. 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." 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.
   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. Benjamin Tucker says: :
   He said that anarchism "does not exclude prisons, officials, military, or other symbols of force. It merely demands that non-invasive men shan't be made the victims of such force. Anarchism isn't the reign of love, but the reign of justice. It doesn't signify the abolition of force-symbols but the application of force to real invaders." 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, 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." 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," however some such as Steven T. Byington opposed such a system saying that there's a "need for certainty in some kinds of laws." Byington suggested that adjudications be done by judges "on a business basis" through private arbitration. 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." 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's right that he pay him wages, and it's right that he direct him absolutely, arbitrarily in the performance of labor." Andrews said, "It isn't 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 isn't that men are employed and paid, but that they're not paid justly..." 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's 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.
   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." Spooner's reasoning was that ideas are the product of "intellectual labor" and therefore private property.
   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."
   Most early individualist anarchists considered themselves "fervent anti-capitalists… [whosee] no contradiction between their individualist stance and their rejection of capitalism." These early individualist anarchists, however, defined "capitalism" as the state-maintained monopolization of capital. 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. But, they wouldn't forcibly prevent profit making, believing it to be freedom of contract. They simply thought that profit would be eliminated through competition if the state didn't protect monopolies. Some of their descendents, such as anarcho-capitalists, don't subscribe to the labor theory of value and have no objection to profit.

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." 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." 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'd absorbed from studying the individualist American anarchists of the nineteenth century such as Lysander Spooner and Benjamin Tucker. Rothbard said:
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, they don't believe that there's 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." Moreover, unlike Tucker, they don't 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 doesn't believe that laissez-faire would cause profit to disappear, nor does it consider profit, rent, interest to be exploitative but natural and beneficial. Rothbard holds that land can only become property by using or occupying it (he doesn't require that land be in continual use to remain owned), and that after this it can only legitimately change hands by trade or gift. 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." 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 libertarianism and anarchism). Rothbard wrote, Today there's a great deal of controversy over the status of anarcho-capitalism, with some writers claiming it to be a form of individualist anarchism, while others deny that it's even a form of anarchism, or deny that capitalism itself is compatible with anarchism.

Agorism

Agorism is a radical left-libertarian 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." 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.
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." 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".

Criticisms

Anarcho-communist Murray Bookchin is critical of individualist anarchism for its opposition to democracy and its embrace of "lifestylism" at the expense of class struggle. He also claims that it supports only negative liberty and rejects the idea of positive liberty. Anarcho-communist Albert Meltzer says that individualist anarchism differs radically from revolutionary anarchism, and it "is sometimes too readily conceded 'that this is, after all, anarchism'." He says Benjamin Tucker accepting the use of a private police force (including to break up violent strikes to protect the "employer's 'freedom'") is contradictory to the definition of anarchism of "no government." Meltzer also opposes the anarcho-capitalist form for similar reasons. He argues that since it supports "private armies" that's actually supports a "limited State." He contends that it "is only possible to conceive of Anarchism which is free, communistic and offering no economic necessity for repression of countering it."
According to Gareth Griffith, George Bernard Shaw initially had flirtations with individualist anarchism but came to the conclusion that it was "the negation of socialism, and is, in fact, unsocialism carried as near to its logical conclusion as any sane man dare carry it." Shaw's argument was that even if wealth distribution was initially distributed equally, the amount of laissez-faire advocated by Benjamin Tucker would result in the distribution of wealth becoming unequal because it allows private appropriation and accumulation. Individualist anarchism has never aimed for equal wealth distribution. Benjamin Tucker explained, "If I go through life free and rich, I shan't cry because my neighbor, equally free, is richer. Liberty will ultimately make all men rich; it won't make all men equally rich. Authority may (and may not) make all men equally rich in purse; it certainly will make them equally poor in all that makes life best worth living."

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