Individualist anarchism in the United States
Encyclopedia
Individualist anarchism
in the United States was strongly influenced by Josiah Warren
, Ralph Waldo Emerson
, Lysander Spooner
, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
, Max Stirner
, Herbert Spencer
Henry David Thoreau
The first American anarchist publication was The Peaceful Revolutionist, edited by Josiah Warren
, whose earliest experiments and writings predate Pierre Proudhon
Other important individualist anarchists in the United States
were Stephen Pearl Andrews
, William Batchelder Greene
, Ezra Heywood
, M. E. Lazarus
, John Beverley Robinson
, James L. Walker
, Joseph Labadie
, Steven Byington
, Albert Jay Nock
and Laurance Labadie
, humanitarianism
, and romanticism
of the first part of the nineteenth century, the economic type in the pioneer life of the West during the same period, but more favorably after the Civil War."
It is for this reason that it has been suggested that in order to understand American individualist anarchism one must take into account "the social context of their ideas, namely the transformation of America from a pre-capitalist to a capitalist society...the non-capitalist nature of the early U.S. can be seen from the early dominance of self-employment (artisan and peasant production). At the beginning of the 19th century, around 80% of the working (non-slave) male population were self-employed. The great majority of Americans during this time were farmers working their own land, primarily for their own needs." and so "Individualist anarchism is clearly a form of artisan
al socialism
... while communist anarchism and anarcho-syndicalism
are forms of industrial (or proletarian) socialism."
Historian Wendy McElroy
reports that american individualist anarchism received an important influence of 3 european thinkers. "One of the most important of these influences was the french political philosopher Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
whose words "Liberty is not the Daughter But the Mother of Order" appeared as a motto on Liberty´s masthead" (influential individualist anarchist publication of Benjamin Tucker
). "Another major foreign influence was the german philosopher Max Stirner
". "The third foreign thinker with great impact was the british philosopher Herbert Spencer
" Other influences to consider include William Godwin
's "anarchism (which) exerted an ideological influence on some of this, but more so the socialism of Robert Owen
and Charles Fourier
. After success of his British venture, Owen himself established a cooperative community within the United States at New Harmony, Indiana during 1825. One member of this commune was Josiah Warren
(1798-1874), considered to be the first individualist anarchist. After New Harmony failed Warren shifted his ideological loyalties from socialism to anarchism (which was no great leap, given that Owen's socialism had been predicated on Godwin's anarchism)."
Josiah Warren
is widely regarded as the first American anarchist, and the four-page weekly paper he edited during 1833, The Peaceful Revolutionist, was the first anarchist periodical published, an enterprise for which he built his own printing press, cast his own type, and made his own printing plates.
Warren was a follower of Robert Owen
and joined Owen's community at New Harmony, Indiana
. Josiah Warren termed the phrase "Cost the limit of price
," with "cost" here referring not to monetary price paid but the labor one exerted to produce an item. Therefore, "[h]e proposed a system to pay people with certificates indicating how many hours of work they did. They could exchange the notes at local time stores for goods that took the same amount of time to produce.". He put his theories to the test by establishing an experimental "labor for labor store" called the Cincinnati Time Store
where trade was facilitated by notes backed by a promise to perform labor. The store proved successful and operated for three years after which it was closed so that Warren could pursue establishing colonies based on mutualism
. These included "Utopia
" and "Modern Times." Warren said that Stephen Pearl Andrews
' The Science of Society, published in 1852, was the most lucid and complete exposition of Warren's own theories. Catalan historian Xavier Diez report that the intentional communal
experiments pioneered by Warren were influential in European individualist anarchists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries such as Emile Armand
and the intentional communities started by them.
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
, do not speak of economics but simply the right of "disunion" from the state , and foresee the gradual elimination of the state through social evolution.
Civil Disobedience
(Resistance to Civil Government) is an essay by Henry David Thoreau
that was first published in 1849. It argues that people should not permit governments to overrule or atrophy their consciences, and that people have a duty to avoid allowing such acquiescence
to enable the government to make them the agents of injustice. Thoreau was motivated in part by his disgust with slavery
and the Mexican-American War. It will influence Mohandas Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr.
, Martin Buber
and Leo Tolstoy
through its advocacy of Nonviolent resistance
. It is also the main prescedent for anarcho-pacifism
.
Anarchism started to have an ecological view
mainly in the writings of American individualist anarchist and transcendentalist
Henry David Thoreau
. In his book Walden
he advocates simple living
and self-sufficiency
among natural surroundings in resistance to the advancement of industrial civilization. "Many have seen in Thoreau one of the precursors of ecologism and anarcho-primitivism
represented today in John Zerzan
. For George Woodcock
this attitude can be also motivated by certain idea of resistance to progress and of rejection of the growing materialism which is the nature of American society in the mid XIX century." John Zerzan
himself included the text "Excursions" (1863) by Thoreau in his edited compilation of anti-civilization writings called Against Civilization: Readings and Reflections
from 1999. Walden made Thoreau influential in the european individualist anarchist green current of anarcho-naturism
.
William Batchelder Greene (1819–1878) was a 19th century mutualist individualist anarchist, Unitarian
minister, soldier and promotor of free banking
in the United States
. Greene is best known for the works Mutual Banking(1850), which proposed an interest-free banking system, and Transcendentalism, a critique of the New England philosophical school. For American anarchist historian Eunice Minette Schuster "It is apparent...that Proudhonian Anarchism was to be found in the United States at least as early as 1848 and that it was not conscious of its affinity to the Individualist Anarchism of Josiah Warren
and Stephen Pearl Andrews
...William B. Greene presented this Proudhonian Mutualism in its purest and most systematic form.".
After 1850 he became active in labor reform. "He was elected vice-president of the New England Labor Reform League, the majority of the members holding to Proudhon's scheme of mutual banking, and in 1869 president of the Massachusetts Labor Union." He then publishes Socialistic, Mutualistic, and Financial Fragments (1875). He saw mutualism as the synthesis of "liberty and order." His "associationism...is checked by individualism..."Mind your own business," "Judge not that ye be not judged." Over matters which are purely personal, as for example, moral conduct, the individual is sovereign, as well as over that which he himself produces. For this reason he demands "mutuality" in marriage—the equal right of a woman to her own personal freedom and property."
Stephen Pearl Andrews
was an individualist anarchist and close associate of Josiah Warren. Andrews was formerly associated with the Fourierist
movement, but converted to radical individualism after becoming acquainted with the work of Warren. Like Warren, he held the principle of "individual sovereignty" as being of paramount importance.
Andrews said that when individuals act in their own self-interest, they incidentally contribute to the well-being of others. He maintained that it is a "mistake" to create a "state, church or public morality
" that individuals must serve rather than pursuing their own happiness. In Love, Marriage and Divorce, and the Sovereignty of the Individual he says: "Give up...the search after the remedy for the evils of government in more government. The road lies just the other way--toward individualism and freedom from all government...Nature made individuals, not nations; and while nations exist at all, the liberties of the individual must perish."
Contemporary american anarchist Hakim Bey reports that "Steven Pearl Andrews...was not a fourierist (see Charles Fourier
), but he lived through the brief craze for phalansteries
in America & adopted a lot of fourierist principles & practices...a maker of worlds out of words. He syncretized Abolitionism
, Free Love
, spiritual universalism, (Josiah) Warren
, & Fourier into a grand utopian scheme he called the Universal Pantarchy...He was instrumental in founding several “intentional communities,” including the “Brownstone Utopia” on 14th St. in New York, & “Modern Times” in Brentwood, Long Island. The latter became as famous as the best-known fourierist communes (Brook Farm in Massachusetts & the North American Phalanx in New Jersey) — in fact, Modern Times became downright notorious (for “Free Love
”) & finally foundered under a wave of scandalous publicity. Andrews (& Victoria Woodhull) were members of the infamous Section 12 of the 1st International, expelled by Marx for its anarchist, feminist, & spiritualist tendencies. "
. Free love advocates sometimes traced their roots back to Josiah Warren
and to experimental communities, viewed sexual freedom as a clear, direct expression of an individual's self-ownership. Free love particularly stressed women's rights
since most sexual laws discriminated against women: for example, marriage laws and anti-birth control measures.
The most important American free love journal was Lucifer the Lightbearer
(1883–1907) edited by Moses Harman
and Lois Waisbrooker
but also there existed Ezra Heywood
and Angela Heywood's The Word
(1872–1890, 1892–1893).
M. E. Lazarus
was an important American individualist anarchist who promoted free love. Hutchins Hapgood
was an U.S. journalist, author, individualist anarchist/philosophical anarchist who was well known within the Bohemian
environment of turn of the century New York City
. He advocated free love
and committed adultery frequently. Hapgood was a follower of the German philosophers Max Stirner
and Friedrich Nietzsche
.
The mission of Lucifer the Lightbearer
was, according to Harman, "to help woman to break the chains that for ages have bound her to the rack of man-made law, spiritual, economic, industrial, social and especially sexual, believing that until woman is roused to a sense of her own responsibility on all lines of human endeavor, and especially on lines of her special field, that of reproduction of the race, there will be little if any real advancement toward a higher and truer civilization
." The name was chosen because "Lucifer
, the ancient name of the Morning Star, now called Venus
, seems to us unsurpassed as a cognomen for a journal whose mission is to bring light to the dwellers in darkness."
In February 1887, the editors and publishers of Lucifer were arrested after the journal ran afoul of the Comstock Act for the publication of a letter condemning forced sex within marriage, which the author identified as rape
. The Comstock Act specifically prohibited the discussion of marital rape
. A Topeka district attorney
eventually handed down 216 indictments. In February 1890, Harman, now the sole producer of Lucifer, was again arrested on charges resulting from a similar article written by a New York
physician. As a result of the original charges, Harman would spend large portions of the next six years in prison
.
In 1896, Lucifer was moved to Chicago; however, legal harassment continued. The United States Postal Service
seized and destroyed numerous issues of the journal and, in May 1905, Harman was again arrested and convicted for the distribution of two articles - "The Fatherhood Question" and "More Thoughts on Sexology” by Sara Crist Campbell. Sentenced to a year of hard labor
, the 75-year-old editor's health deteriorated greatly. After 24 years in production, Lucifer ceased publication in 1907 and became the more scholarly American Journal of Eugenics.
They also had many opponents, and Moses Harman spent two years in jail after a court determined that a journal he published was "obscene" under the notorious Comstock Law
. In particular, the court objected to three letters to the editor, one of which described the plight of a woman who had been raped by her husband, tearing stitches from a recent operation after a difficult childbirth and causing severe hemorrhaging. The letter lamented the woman's lack of legal recourse
. Ezra Heywood, who had already been prosecuted under the Comstock Law for a pamphlet attacking marriage, reprinted the letter in solidarity with Harman and was also arrested and sentenced to two years in prison.
's philosophy was instrumental in furthering individualist anarchist ideas through his extensive pamphleteering and reprinting of works of Josiah Warren
, author of True Civilization (1869), and William B. Greene. In 1872, at a convention of the New England Labor Reform League in Boston, Heywood introduced Greene and Warren to eventual Liberty publisher Benjamin Tucker
. Heywood saw what he believed to be a disproportionate concentration of capital in the hands of a few as the result of a selective extension of government-backed privileges to certain individuals and organizations.
was an individualist anarchist free love
magazine
edited by Ezra Heywood
and Angela Heywood's from (1872–1890, 1892–1893), issued first from Princeton and then from Cambridge, Massachusetts. The Word was subtitled "A Monthly Journal of Reform," and it included contributions from Josiah Warren
, Benjamin Tucker
, and J.K. Ingalls. Initially, The Word presented free love as a minor theme which was expressed within a labor reform format. But the publication later evolved into an explicitly free love periodical. At some point Tucker became an important contributor but lated became dissatisfied with the journal's focus on free love since he desired a concentration on economics.
(February 6, 1822 1895 or 1896) was an American individualist anarchist from Guntersville, AL. He is the author of several essays and anarchist pamphlettes including Land Tenure: Anarchist View (1889). A famous quote from Lazarus is "Every vote for a governing office is an instrument for enslaving me." Lazarus was also an intellectual contributor to Fourierism and the Free Love
movement of the 1850s, a social reform group that called for, in its extreme form, the abolition of institutionalized marriage.
In Lazarus' 1852 essay, Love vs Marriage, he argued that marriage as an institution was akin to "legalized prostitution," oppressing women and men by allowing loveless marriages contracted for economic or utilitarian reasons to take precedence over true love.
Another form of individualist anarchism was found in the United States, as advocated by the "Boston anarchists." By default, American individualists had no difficulty accepting the concepts that "one man employ another" or that "he direct him," in his labor but rather demanded that "all natural opportunities requisite to the production of wealth be accessible to all on equal terms and that monopolies arising from special privileges created by law be abolished."
They believed state monopoly capitalism
(defined as a state-sponsored monopoly) prevented labor from being fully rewarded. 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, centred upon private property, are in themselves good, and are rendered vicious merely by the interference of the State."
Even among the 19th century American individualists, there was not a monolithic doctrine, as they disagreed amongst each other on various issues including intellectual property
rights and possession versus property
in land. A major schism occurred later in the 19th century when Tucker and some others abandoned their traditional support of natural rights -as espoused by Lysander Spooner
- and converted to an "egoism" modeled upon Stirner's philosophy
. Lysander Spooner besides his individualist anarchist activism was also an important anti-slavery activist and became a member of the First International.
Some "Boston anarchists", including Benjamin Tucker
, identified themselves as "socialists", which in the 19th century was often used in the sense of a commitment to improving conditions of the working class (i.e. "the labor problem
"). By the turn of the 20th century, the heyday of individualist anarchism had passed, although aspects of the individualist anarchist tradition were later revived with modifications by Murray Rothbard
and his anarcho-capitalism
in the mid-20th century, as a current of the broader libertarian
movement.
Joseph Labadie
(April 18, 1850 – October 7, 1933) was an American labor organizer, individualist anarchist, social activist, printer, publisher, essayist, and poet. In 1883 Labadie embraced individualist anarchism, a non-violent doctrine. 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, he supported community cooperation, as he supported community control of water utilities, streets, and railroads .. 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 perpetators. In 1888, Labadie organized the Michigan Federation of Labor, became its first president, and forged an alliance with Samuel Gompers
.
Dyer Lum
was a 19th-century American individualist anarchist labor activist and poet. A leading anarcho-syndicalist and a prominent left-wing intellectual
of the 1880s, he is remembered as the lover and mentor of early anarcha-feminist Voltairine de Cleyre
. Lum was a prolific writer who wrote a number of key anarchist texts, and contributed to publications including Mother Earth
, Twentieth Century, Liberty
(Benjamin Tucker
's individualist anarchist
journal), The Alarm (the journal of the International Working People's Association
) and The Open Court among others. Lum's political philosophy
was a fusion of individualist anarchist economics
– "a radicalized form of laissez-faire
economics" inspired by the Boston anarchists– with radical labor organization similar to that of the Chicago anarchists of the time.Herbert Spencer
and Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
influenced Lum strongly in his individualist tendency. He developed a "mutualist
" theory of unions and as such was active within the Knights of Labor
and later promoted anti-political
strategies in the American Federation of Labor
. Frustration with abolitionism
, spiritualism
, and labor reform caused Lum to embrace anarchism and radicalize workers, as he came to believe that revolution
would inevitably involve a violent struggle between the working class
and the employing class. Convinced of the necessity of violence to enact social change he volunteered to fight in the American Civil War
, hoping thereby to bring about the end of slavery
. Kevin Carson has praised Lum's fusion of individualist laissez-faire economics with radical labor activism as "creative" and described him as "more significant than any in the Boston group".
Some of the American individualist anarchists later in this era, such as Benjamin Tucker
, abandoned natural rights positions and converted to Max Stirner
's Egoist anarchism
. 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." In adopting Stirnerite egoism (1886), Tucker rejected natural rights which had long been considered the foundation of libertarianism. This rejection galvanized the movement into fierce debates, with the natural rights proponents accusing the egoists of destroying libertarianism itself. So bitter was the conflict that a number of natural rights proponents withdrew from the pages of Liberty in protest even though they had hitherto been among its frequent contributors. Thereafter, Liberty championed egoism although its general content did not change significantly."
"Several periodicals were undoubtedly influenced by Libertys presentation of egoism. They included: I published by C.L. Swartz, edited by W.E. Gordak and J.W. Lloyd (all associates of Liberty); The Ego and The Egoist, both of which were edited by Edward H. Fulton. Among the egoist papers that Tucker followed were the German Der Eigene
, edited by Adolf Brand
, and The Eagle and The Serpent, issued from London. The latter, the most prominent English-language egoist journal, was published from 1898 to 1900 with the subtitle 'A Journal of Egoistic Philosophy and Sociology.
Among those American anarchists who adhered to egoism include Benjamin Tucker
, John Beverley Robinson
, Steven T. Byington
, Hutchins Hapgood
, James L. Walker
, Victor Yarros
and E.H. Fulton. John Beverley Robinson wrote an essay called "Egoism" in which he states that "Modern egoism, as propounded by Stirner and Nietzsche, and expounded by Ibsen
, Shaw
and others, is all these; but it is more. It is the realization by the individual that they are an individual; that, as far as they are concerned, they are the only individual."
Steven T. Byington
was a one-time proponent of Georgism
who later converted to egoist stirnerist positions after associating with Benjamin Tucker
. He is known for translating two important anarchist works into English from German: Max Stirner
's The Ego and Its Own
and Paul Eltzbacher
's Anarchism; exponents of the anarchist philosophy (also published by Dover with the title The Great Anarchists: Ideas and Teachings of Seven Major Thinkers). James L. Walker
(sometimes known by the pen name "Tak Kak") was one of the main contributors to Benjamin Tucker
's Liberty. He published his major philosophical work called Philosophy of Egoism in the May 1890 to September 1891 in issues of the publication Egoism.
." He adds "Tucker preferred the strategy of exploiting his writings, but proceeding with due caution: 'Nietzsche says splendid things, – often, indeed, Anarchist things, – but he is no Anarchist. It is of the Anarchists, then, to intellectually exploit this would-be exploiter. He may be utilized profitably, but not prophetably.'"
and others who advocated for violent propaganda by the deed there. Anarchist historian George Woodcock
reports the incident in which the important Italian social anarchist Errico Malatesta
became involved "in a dispute with the individualist anarchists of Paterson
, who insisted that anarchism implied no organization at all, and that every man must act solely on his impulses. At last, in one noisy debate, the individual impulse of a certain Ciancabilla directed him to shoot Malatesta, who was badly wounded but obstinately refused to name his assailant."
individualist anarchist Lathe operator, house painter, bricklayer, dramatist and political activist influenced by the work of Max Stirner
. He took the pseudonym "Brand" from a fictional character in one of Henrik Ibsen
´s plays. In the 1910s he started becoming involved in anarchist and anti-war activism around Milan. From the 1910s until the 1920s he participated in anarchist activities and popular uprisings in various countries including Switzerland, Germany, Hungary, Argentina and Cuba. He lived from the 1920s onwards in New York City and there he edited the individualist anarchist eclectic journal Eresia in 1928. He also wrote for other american anarchist publications such as L' Adunata dei refrattari
, Cultura Obrera, Controcorrente and Intessa Libertaria. During the Spanish Civil War
, he went to fight with the anarchists but was imprisoned and was helped on his release by Emma Goldman
. Afterwards Arrigoni became a longtime member of the Libertarian Book Club in New York City. He died in New York City when he was 90 years old on December 7, 1986.
has identified post-left anarchy
as a form of individualist anarchism in Social Anarchism or Lifestyle Anarchism: An Unbridgeable Chasm
where he says he identifies "a shift among Euro-American anarchists away from social anarchism and toward individualist or lifestyle anarchism. Indeed, lifestyle anarchism today is finding its principal expression in spray-can graffiti, post-modernist nihilism
, antirationalism, neoprimitivism, anti-technologism, neo-Situationist `cultural terrorism,' mysticism, and a `practice' of staging Foucauldian
`personal insurrections.'". Post-left anarchist Bob Black
in his long critique of Bookchin´s philosophy called Anarchy after leftism said about post-left anarchy that "It is, unlike Bookchinism, “individualistic” in the sense that if the freedom and happiness of the individual — i.e., each and every really existing person, every Tom, Dick and Murray — is not the measure of the good society, what is?".
A strong relationship does exist with post-left anarchism and the work of individualist anarchist Max Stirner
. Jason McQuinn
says that "when I (and other anti-ideological anarchists) criticize ideology, it is always from a specifically critical, anarchist perspective rooted in both the skeptical, individualist-anarchist philosophy of Max Stirner. Also Bob Black
and Feral Faun/Wolfi Landstreicher
strongly adhere to stirnerist egoist anarchism
. Bob Black has humorously suggested the idea of "marxist stirnerism".
Hakim Bey has said "From Stirner's "Union of Self-Owning Ones" we proceed to Nietzsche's circle of "Free Spirits" and thence to Charles Fourier
's "Passional Series", doubling and redoubling ourselves even as the Other multiplies itself in the eros of the group." Bey also wrote that "The Mackay Society, of which Mark & I are active members, is devoted to the anarchism of Max Stirner, Benj. Tucker
& John Henry Mackay
...The Mackay Society, incidentally, represents a little-known current of individualist thought which never cut its ties with revolutionary labor. Dyer Lum
, Ezra
& Angela Haywood represent this school of thought; Jo Labadie, who wrote for Tucker’s Liberty
, made himself a link between the american “plumb-line” anarchists, the “philosophical” individualists, & the syndicalist or communist branch of the movement; his influence reached the Mackay Society through his son, Laurance. Like the Italian Stirnerites (who influenced us through our late friend Enrico Arrigoni
) we support all anti-authoritarian currents, despite their apparent contradictions."
As far as posterior individualist anarchists Jason McQuinn
for some time used the pseudonym Lev Chernyi
in honor of the Russian individualist anarchist of the same name while Feral Faun has quoted Italian individualist anarchist Renzo Novatore
and has translated both Novatore. and the young Italian individualist anarchist Bruno Filippi
Egoism has had a strong influence on insurrectionary anarchism
, as can be seen in the work of the American insurrectionist Wolfi Landstreicher
.
Lansdstreicher writing as Feral Faun wrote in 1995 that:
Kevin Carson is a contemporary mutualist and author of Studies in Mutualist Political Economy
. Another important current mutualist is Joe Peacott
. Contemporary mutualists are among those involved in the Alliance of the Libertarian Left and in the Voluntary Cooperation Movement. A recent mutualist collective was the Boston Anarchist Drinking Brigade.
Individualist anarchism
Individualist anarchism refers to several traditions of thought within the anarchist movement that emphasize the individual and his or her will over external determinants such as groups, society, traditions, and ideological systems. Individualist anarchism is not a single philosophy but refers to a...
in the United States was strongly influenced by Josiah Warren
Josiah Warren
Josiah Warren was an individualist anarchist, inventor, musician, and author in the United States. He is widely regarded as the first American anarchist, and the four-page weekly paper he edited during 1833, The Peaceful Revolutionist, was the first anarchist periodical published, an enterprise...
, Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson was an American essayist, lecturer, and poet, who led the Transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century...
, Lysander Spooner
Lysander Spooner
Lysander Spooner was an American individualist anarchist, political philosopher, Deist, abolitionist, supporter of the labor movement, legal theorist, and entrepreneur of the nineteenth century. He is also known for competing with the U.S...
, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon was a French politician, mutualist philosopher and socialist. He was a member of the French Parliament, and he was the first person to call himself an "anarchist". He is considered among the most influential theorists and organisers of anarchism...
, Max Stirner
Max Stirner
Johann Kaspar Schmidt , better known as Max Stirner , was a German philosopher, who ranks as one of the literary fathers of nihilism, existentialism, post-modernism and anarchism, especially of individualist anarchism...
, Herbert Spencer
Herbert Spencer
Herbert Spencer was an English philosopher, biologist, sociologist, and prominent classical liberal political theorist of the Victorian era....
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau was an American author, poet, philosopher, abolitionist, naturalist, tax resister, development critic, surveyor, historian, and leading transcendentalist...
The first American anarchist publication was The Peaceful Revolutionist, edited by Josiah Warren
Josiah Warren
Josiah Warren was an individualist anarchist, inventor, musician, and author in the United States. He is widely regarded as the first American anarchist, and the four-page weekly paper he edited during 1833, The Peaceful Revolutionist, was the first anarchist periodical published, an enterprise...
, whose earliest experiments and writings predate Pierre Proudhon
Other important individualist anarchists in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
were Stephen Pearl Andrews
Stephen Pearl Andrews
Stephen Pearl Andrews was an American individualist anarchist and author of several books on Individualist anarchism.-Early life and work:...
, William Batchelder Greene
William Batchelder Greene
William Batchelder Greene was a 19th century individualist anarchist, Unitarian minister, soldier and promotor of free banking in the United States.-Biography:...
, Ezra Heywood
Ezra Heywood
Ezra Heywood was a 19th century North American individualist anarchist, slavery abolitionist, and feminist.-Philosophy:Heywood saw what he believed to be a disproportionate concentration of capital in the hands of a few as the result of a selective extension of government-backed privileges to...
, M. E. Lazarus
M. E. Lazarus
Dr. Marx Edgeworth Lazarus was an American individualist anarchist from Guntersville, AL where he owned a small farm. Lazarus wrote under the pseudonym "Edgeworth." He is the author of several essays and anarchist pamphlettes including Land Tenure: Anarchist View...
, John Beverley Robinson
John Beverley Robinson (anarchist)
John Beverley Robinson , was an American anarchist author, publisher, translator, and architect.He was for a time publisher of the Free Soiler the newsletter of the Georgist American Free Soil Society...
, James L. Walker
James L. Walker
James L. Walker , sometimes known by the pen name Tak Kak, was an American individualist anarchist of the Egoist school. He was one of the main contributors to Benjamin Tucker's Liberty. He worked out Egoism on his own some years before encountering the Egoist writings of Max Stirner, and was...
, Joseph Labadie
Joseph Labadie
Charles Joseph Antoine Labadie was an American labor organizer, anarchist, social activist, printer, publisher, essayist, and poet.-Biography:...
, Steven Byington
Steven T. Byington
Steven Tracy Byington was a noted intellectual, translator, and American individualist anarchist. He was born in Westford, Vermont, and later moved to Ballardvale section of Andover, Massachusetts. A one-time proponent of Georgism, he converted to individualist anarchism after associating with...
, Albert Jay Nock
Albert Jay Nock
Albert Jay Nock was an influential United States libertarian author, educational theorist, and social critic of the early and middle 20th century.- Life and work :...
and Laurance Labadie
Laurance Labadie
Laurance Labadie was an American individualist anarchist and author. He was the son of American individualist anarchist Joseph Labadie.His writings include Origin and Nature of Government and Anarchism Applied to Economics....
Overview
For American anarchist historian Eunice Minette Schuster, american individualist anarchism "stresses the isolation of the individual—his right to his own tools, his mind, his body, and to the products of his labor. To the artist who embraces this philosophy it is "aesthetic" anarchism, to the reformer, ethical anarchism, to the independent mechanic, economic anarchism. The former is concerned with philosophy, the latter with practical demonstration. The economic anarchist is concerned with constructing a society on the basis of anarchism. Economically he sees no harm whatever in the private possession of what the individual produces by his own labor, but only so much and no more. The aesthetic and ethical type found expression in the transcendentalismTranscendentalism
Transcendentalism is a philosophical movement that developed in the 1830s and 1840s in the New England region of the United States as a protest against the general state of culture and society, and in particular, the state of intellectualism at Harvard University and the doctrine of the Unitarian...
, humanitarianism
Humanitarianism
In its most general form, humanitarianism is an ethic of kindness, benevolence and sympathy extended universally and impartially to all human beings. Humanitarianism has been an evolving concept historically but universality is a common element in its evolution...
, and romanticism
Romanticism
Romanticism was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution...
of the first part of the nineteenth century, the economic type in the pioneer life of the West during the same period, but more favorably after the Civil War."
It is for this reason that it has been suggested that in order to understand American individualist anarchism one must take into account "the social context of their ideas, namely the transformation of America from a pre-capitalist to a capitalist society...the non-capitalist nature of the early U.S. can be seen from the early dominance of self-employment (artisan and peasant production). At the beginning of the 19th century, around 80% of the working (non-slave) male population were self-employed. The great majority of Americans during this time were farmers working their own land, primarily for their own needs." and so "Individualist anarchism is clearly a form of artisan
Artisan
An artisan is a skilled manual worker who makes items that may be functional or strictly decorative, including furniture, clothing, jewellery, household items, and tools...
al socialism
Socialism
Socialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy; or a political philosophy advocating such a system. "Social ownership" may refer to any one of, or a combination of, the following: cooperative enterprises,...
... while communist anarchism and anarcho-syndicalism
Anarcho-syndicalism
Anarcho-syndicalism is a branch of anarchism which focuses on the labour movement. The word syndicalism comes from the French word syndicat which means trade union , from the Latin word syndicus which in turn comes from the Greek word σύνδικος which means caretaker of an issue...
are forms of industrial (or proletarian) socialism."
Historian Wendy McElroy
Wendy McElroy
Wendy McElroy is a Canadian individualist anarchist and individualist feminist. She was a co-founder along with Carl Watner and George H. Smith of The Voluntaryist in 1982.-Sex-positive:...
reports that american individualist anarchism received an important influence of 3 european thinkers. "One of the most important of these influences was the french political philosopher Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon was a French politician, mutualist philosopher and socialist. He was a member of the French Parliament, and he was the first person to call himself an "anarchist". He is considered among the most influential theorists and organisers of anarchism...
whose words "Liberty is not the Daughter But the Mother of Order" appeared as a motto on Liberty´s masthead" (influential individualist anarchist publication of Benjamin Tucker
Benjamin Tucker
Benjamin Ricketson Tucker was a proponent of American individualist anarchism in the 19th century, and editor and publisher of the individualist anarchist periodical Liberty.-Summary:Tucker says that he became an anarchist at the age of 18...
). "Another major foreign influence was the german philosopher Max Stirner
Max Stirner
Johann Kaspar Schmidt , better known as Max Stirner , was a German philosopher, who ranks as one of the literary fathers of nihilism, existentialism, post-modernism and anarchism, especially of individualist anarchism...
". "The third foreign thinker with great impact was the british philosopher Herbert Spencer
Herbert Spencer
Herbert Spencer was an English philosopher, biologist, sociologist, and prominent classical liberal political theorist of the Victorian era....
" Other influences to consider include William Godwin
William Godwin
William Godwin was an English journalist, political philosopher and novelist. He is considered one of the first exponents of utilitarianism, and the first modern proponent of anarchism...
's "anarchism (which) exerted an ideological influence on some of this, but more so the socialism of Robert Owen
Robert Owen
Robert Owen was a Welsh social reformer and one of the founders of utopian socialism and the cooperative movement.Owen's philosophy was based on three intellectual pillars:...
and Charles Fourier
Charles Fourier
François Marie Charles Fourier was a French philosopher. An influential thinker, some of Fourier's social and moral views, held to be radical in his lifetime, have become main currents in modern society...
. After success of his British venture, Owen himself established a cooperative community within the United States at New Harmony, Indiana during 1825. One member of this commune was Josiah Warren
Josiah Warren
Josiah Warren was an individualist anarchist, inventor, musician, and author in the United States. He is widely regarded as the first American anarchist, and the four-page weekly paper he edited during 1833, The Peaceful Revolutionist, was the first anarchist periodical published, an enterprise...
(1798-1874), considered to be the first individualist anarchist. After New Harmony failed Warren shifted his ideological loyalties from socialism to anarchism (which was no great leap, given that Owen's socialism had been predicated on Godwin's anarchism)."
Josiah Warren
Josiah Warren
Josiah Warren was an individualist anarchist, inventor, musician, and author in the United States. He is widely regarded as the first American anarchist, and the four-page weekly paper he edited during 1833, The Peaceful Revolutionist, was the first anarchist periodical published, an enterprise...
is widely regarded as the first American anarchist, and the four-page weekly paper he edited during 1833, The Peaceful Revolutionist, was the first anarchist periodical published, an enterprise for which he built his own printing press, cast his own type, and made his own printing plates.
Warren was a follower of Robert Owen
Robert Owen
Robert Owen was a Welsh social reformer and one of the founders of utopian socialism and the cooperative movement.Owen's philosophy was based on three intellectual pillars:...
and joined Owen's community at New Harmony, Indiana
New Harmony, Indiana
New Harmony is a historic town on the Wabash River in Harmony Township, Posey County, Indiana, United States. It lies north of Mount Vernon, the county seat. The population was 916 at the 2000 census. It is part of the Evansville metropolitan area. Many of the old Harmonist buildings still stand...
. Josiah Warren termed the phrase "Cost the limit of price
Cost the limit of price
Cost the limit of price was a maxim coined by Josiah Warren, indicating a version of the labor theory of value. Warren maintained that the just compensation for labor could only be an equivalent amount of labor . Thus, profit, rent, and interest were considered unjust economic arrangements...
," with "cost" here referring not to monetary price paid but the labor one exerted to produce an item. Therefore, "[h]e proposed a system to pay people with certificates indicating how many hours of work they did. They could exchange the notes at local time stores for goods that took the same amount of time to produce.". He put his theories to the test by establishing an experimental "labor for labor store" called the Cincinnati Time Store
Cincinnati Time Store
The Cincinnati Time Store was a successful retail store that was created by American individualist anarchist Josiah Warren to test his theories that were based on his strict interpretation of the labor theory of value. The experimental store operated from May 18, 1827 until May 1830...
where trade was facilitated by notes backed by a promise to perform labor. The store proved successful and operated for three years after which it was closed so that Warren could pursue establishing colonies based on mutualism
Mutualism (economic theory)
Mutualism is an anarchist school of thought that originates in the writings of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, who envisioned a society where each person might possess a means of production, either individually or collectively, with trade representing equivalent amounts of labor in the free market...
. These included "Utopia
Utopia, Ohio
Utopia is an unincorporated town in far southern Franklin Township, Clermont County, Ohio, United States, along the banks of the Ohio River. Utopia has been referred to as a "ghost town" although there are still people who live there.- Geography :...
" and "Modern Times." Warren said that Stephen Pearl Andrews
Stephen Pearl Andrews
Stephen Pearl Andrews was an American individualist anarchist and author of several books on Individualist anarchism.-Early life and work:...
' The Science of Society, published in 1852, was the most lucid and complete exposition of Warren's own theories. Catalan historian Xavier Diez report that the intentional communal
Intentional community
An intentional community is a planned residential community designed to have a much higher degree of teamwork than other communities. The members of an intentional community typically hold a common social, political, religious, or spiritual vision and often follow an alternative lifestyle. They...
experiments pioneered by Warren were influential in European individualist anarchists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries such as Emile Armand
Emile Armand
Emile Armand was the most influential French individualist anarchist at the beginning of the 20th century and also a dedicated free love/polyamory, intentional community, and pacifist/antimilitarist writer, propagandist and activist...
and the intentional communities started by them.
Henry David Thoreau
Non-aggression principle
The non-aggression principle , or NAP for short, is a moral stance which asserts that aggression is inherently illegitimate...
and individual sovereignty
Self-ownership
Self-ownership is the concept of property in one's own person, expressed as the moral or natural right of a person to be the exclusive controller of his own body and life. According to G...
. Some individualist anarchists, such as Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau was an American author, poet, philosopher, abolitionist, naturalist, tax resister, development critic, surveyor, historian, and leading transcendentalist...
, do not speak of economics but simply the right of "disunion" from the state , and foresee the gradual elimination of the state through social evolution.
Civil Disobedience
Civil Disobedience (Thoreau)
Civil Disobedience is an essay by American transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau that was first published in 1849...
(Resistance to Civil Government) is an essay by Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau was an American author, poet, philosopher, abolitionist, naturalist, tax resister, development critic, surveyor, historian, and leading transcendentalist...
that was first published in 1849. It argues that people should not permit governments to overrule or atrophy their consciences, and that people have a duty to avoid allowing such acquiescence
Acquiescence
Acquiescence is a legal term used to describe an act where a person knowingly stands by without raising any objection to the infringement of their rights, while someone else unknowingly and without malice aforethought makes a claim on their rights...
to enable the government to make them the agents of injustice. Thoreau was motivated in part by his disgust with slavery
Slavery
Slavery is a system under which people are treated as property to be bought and sold, and are forced to work. Slaves can be held against their will from the time of their capture, purchase or birth, and deprived of the right to leave, to refuse to work, or to demand compensation...
and the Mexican-American War. It will influence Mohandas Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Martin Luther King, Jr. was an American clergyman, activist, and prominent leader in the African-American Civil Rights Movement. He is best known for being an iconic figure in the advancement of civil rights in the United States and around the world, using nonviolent methods following the...
, Martin Buber
Martin Buber
Martin Buber was an Austrian-born Jewish philosopher best known for his philosophy of dialogue, a form of religious existentialism centered on the distinction between the I-Thou relationship and the I-It relationship....
and Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy was a Russian writer who primarily wrote novels and short stories. Later in life, he also wrote plays and essays. His two most famous works, the novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina, are acknowledged as two of the greatest novels of all time and a pinnacle of realist...
through its advocacy of Nonviolent resistance
Nonviolent resistance
Nonviolent resistance is the practice of achieving goals through symbolic protests, civil disobedience, economic or political noncooperation, and other methods, without using violence. It is largely synonymous with civil resistance...
. It is also the main prescedent for anarcho-pacifism
Anarcho-pacifism
Anarcho-pacifism is a tendency within the anarchist movement which rejects the use of violence in the struggle for social change. The main early influences were the thought of Henry David Thoreau and Leo Tolstoy while later the ideas of Mohandas Gandhi gained importance...
.
Anarchism started to have an ecological view
Green anarchism
Green anarchism, or ecoanarchism, is a school of thought within anarchism which puts a particular emphasis on environmental issues. An important early influence was the thought of the American anarchist Henry David Thoreau and his book Walden...
mainly in the writings of American individualist anarchist and transcendentalist
Transcendentalism
Transcendentalism is a philosophical movement that developed in the 1830s and 1840s in the New England region of the United States as a protest against the general state of culture and society, and in particular, the state of intellectualism at Harvard University and the doctrine of the Unitarian...
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau was an American author, poet, philosopher, abolitionist, naturalist, tax resister, development critic, surveyor, historian, and leading transcendentalist...
. In his book Walden
Walden
Walden is an American book written by noted Transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau...
he advocates simple living
Simple living
Simple living encompasses a number of different voluntary practices to simplify one's lifestyle. These may include reducing one's possessions or increasing self-sufficiency, for example. Simple living may be characterized by individuals being satisfied with what they need rather than want...
and self-sufficiency
Self-sufficiency
Self-sufficiency refers to the state of not requiring any outside aid, support, or interaction, for survival; it is therefore a type of personal or collective autonomy...
among natural surroundings in resistance to the advancement of industrial civilization. "Many have seen in Thoreau one of the precursors of ecologism and anarcho-primitivism
Anarcho-primitivism
Anarcho-primitivism is an anarchist critique of the origins and progress of civilization. According to anarcho-primitivism, the shift from hunter-gatherer to agricultural subsistence gave rise to social stratification, coercion, and alienation...
represented today in John Zerzan
John Zerzan
John Zerzan is an American anarchist and primitivist philosopher and author. His works criticize agricultural civilization as inherently oppressive, and advocate drawing upon the ways of life of prehistoric humans as an inspiration for what a free society should look like...
. For George Woodcock
George Woodcock
George Woodcock was a Canadian writer of political biography and history, an anarchist thinker, an essayist and literary critic. He was also a poet, and published several volumes of travel writing. He founded in 1959 the journal Canadian Literature, the first academic journal specifically...
this attitude can be also motivated by certain idea of resistance to progress and of rejection of the growing materialism which is the nature of American society in the mid XIX century." John Zerzan
John Zerzan
John Zerzan is an American anarchist and primitivist philosopher and author. His works criticize agricultural civilization as inherently oppressive, and advocate drawing upon the ways of life of prehistoric humans as an inspiration for what a free society should look like...
himself included the text "Excursions" (1863) by Thoreau in his edited compilation of anti-civilization writings called Against Civilization: Readings and Reflections
Against Civilization: Readings and Reflections
Against Civilization: Readings and Reflections is a book edited by John Zerzan. The book provides an insight on the harmful effects of civilization and describes the ideas that have given the rise to anarcho-primitivism....
from 1999. Walden made Thoreau influential in the european individualist anarchist green current of anarcho-naturism
Anarcho-naturism
Anarcho-naturism appeared in the late 19th century as the union of anarchist and naturist philosophies. Mainly it had importance within individualist anarchist circles in Spain, France, Portugal...
.
William Batchelder Greene
Unitarianism
Unitarianism is a Christian theological movement, named for its understanding of God as one person, in direct contrast to Trinitarianism which defines God as three persons coexisting consubstantially as one in being....
minister, soldier and promotor of free banking
Free banking
Free banking refers to a monetary arrangement in which banks are subject to no special regulations beyond those applicable to most enterprises, and in which they also are free to issue their own paper currency...
in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
. Greene is best known for the works Mutual Banking(1850), which proposed an interest-free banking system, and Transcendentalism, a critique of the New England philosophical school. For American anarchist historian Eunice Minette Schuster "It is apparent...that Proudhonian Anarchism was to be found in the United States at least as early as 1848 and that it was not conscious of its affinity to the Individualist Anarchism of Josiah Warren
Josiah Warren
Josiah Warren was an individualist anarchist, inventor, musician, and author in the United States. He is widely regarded as the first American anarchist, and the four-page weekly paper he edited during 1833, The Peaceful Revolutionist, was the first anarchist periodical published, an enterprise...
and Stephen Pearl Andrews
Stephen Pearl Andrews
Stephen Pearl Andrews was an American individualist anarchist and author of several books on Individualist anarchism.-Early life and work:...
...William B. Greene presented this Proudhonian Mutualism in its purest and most systematic form.".
After 1850 he became active in labor reform. "He was elected vice-president of the New England Labor Reform League, the majority of the members holding to Proudhon's scheme of mutual banking, and in 1869 president of the Massachusetts Labor Union." He then publishes Socialistic, Mutualistic, and Financial Fragments (1875). He saw mutualism as the synthesis of "liberty and order." His "associationism...is checked by individualism..."Mind your own business," "Judge not that ye be not judged." Over matters which are purely personal, as for example, moral conduct, the individual is sovereign, as well as over that which he himself produces. For this reason he demands "mutuality" in marriage—the equal right of a woman to her own personal freedom and property."
Stephen Pearl Andrews
Stephen Pearl Andrews
Stephen Pearl Andrews was an American individualist anarchist and author of several books on Individualist anarchism.-Early life and work:...
was an individualist anarchist and close associate of Josiah Warren. Andrews was formerly associated with the Fourierist
Charles Fourier
François Marie Charles Fourier was a French philosopher. An influential thinker, some of Fourier's social and moral views, held to be radical in his lifetime, have become main currents in modern society...
movement, but converted to radical individualism after becoming acquainted with the work of Warren. Like Warren, he held the principle of "individual sovereignty" as being of paramount importance.
Andrews said that when individuals act in their own self-interest, they incidentally contribute to the well-being of others. He maintained that it is a "mistake" to create a "state, church or public morality
Morality
Morality is the differentiation among intentions, decisions, and actions between those that are good and bad . A moral code is a system of morality and a moral is any one practice or teaching within a moral code...
" that individuals must serve rather than pursuing their own happiness. In Love, Marriage and Divorce, and the Sovereignty of the Individual he says: "Give up...the search after the remedy for the evils of government in more government. The road lies just the other way--toward individualism and freedom from all government...Nature made individuals, not nations; and while nations exist at all, the liberties of the individual must perish."
Contemporary american anarchist Hakim Bey reports that "Steven Pearl Andrews...was not a fourierist (see Charles Fourier
Charles Fourier
François Marie Charles Fourier was a French philosopher. An influential thinker, some of Fourier's social and moral views, held to be radical in his lifetime, have become main currents in modern society...
), but he lived through the brief craze for phalansteries
Phalansterium
Phalansterium is a genus of single-celled organisms comprising several species. Phalansterium produces tetraspores.Phalansterium is hard to classify; it has a distinctive ultrastructure of its pericentriolar material. Molecular evidence places it in the Amoebozoa.It has been suggested that it is...
in America & adopted a lot of fourierist principles & practices...a maker of worlds out of words. He syncretized Abolitionism
Abolitionism
Abolitionism is a movement to end slavery.In western Europe and the Americas abolitionism was a movement to end the slave trade and set slaves free. At the behest of Dominican priest Bartolomé de las Casas who was shocked at the treatment of natives in the New World, Spain enacted the first...
, Free Love
Free Love
Free Love may refer to:*Free love, a social movement that rejects marriage, which is seen as a form of social bondage, especially for women*"Free Love", a song by Morphine from their 1995 album Yes...
, spiritual universalism, (Josiah) Warren
Josiah Warren
Josiah Warren was an individualist anarchist, inventor, musician, and author in the United States. He is widely regarded as the first American anarchist, and the four-page weekly paper he edited during 1833, The Peaceful Revolutionist, was the first anarchist periodical published, an enterprise...
, & Fourier into a grand utopian scheme he called the Universal Pantarchy...He was instrumental in founding several “intentional communities,” including the “Brownstone Utopia” on 14th St. in New York, & “Modern Times” in Brentwood, Long Island. The latter became as famous as the best-known fourierist communes (Brook Farm in Massachusetts & the North American Phalanx in New Jersey) — in fact, Modern Times became downright notorious (for “Free Love
Free Love
Free Love may refer to:*Free love, a social movement that rejects marriage, which is seen as a form of social bondage, especially for women*"Free Love", a song by Morphine from their 1995 album Yes...
”) & finally foundered under a wave of scandalous publicity. Andrews (& Victoria Woodhull) were members of the infamous Section 12 of the 1st International, expelled by Marx for its anarchist, feminist, & spiritualist tendencies. "
Free Love
An important current within American individualist anarchism is Free loveFree love
The term free love has been used to describe a social movement that rejects marriage, which is seen as a form of social bondage. The Free Love movement’s initial goal was to separate the state from sexual matters such as marriage, birth control, and adultery...
. Free love advocates sometimes traced their roots back to Josiah Warren
Josiah Warren
Josiah Warren was an individualist anarchist, inventor, musician, and author in the United States. He is widely regarded as the first American anarchist, and the four-page weekly paper he edited during 1833, The Peaceful Revolutionist, was the first anarchist periodical published, an enterprise...
and to experimental communities, viewed sexual freedom as a clear, direct expression of an individual's self-ownership. Free love particularly stressed women's rights
Women's rights
Women's rights are entitlements and freedoms claimed for women and girls of all ages in many societies.In some places these rights are institutionalized or supported by law, local custom, and behaviour, whereas in others they may be ignored or suppressed...
since most sexual laws discriminated against women: for example, marriage laws and anti-birth control measures.
The most important American free love journal was Lucifer the Lightbearer
Lucifer the Lightbearer
Lucifer the Lightbearer was an individualist-anarchist journal published by Moses Harman in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Originally produced by a local branch of the National Liberal League as the Valley Falls Liberal , Harman changed the title after he assumed sole editorship in...
(1883–1907) edited by Moses Harman
Moses Harman
Moses Harman was an American schoolteacher and publisher notable for his staunch support for women's rights. He was prosecuted under the Comstock Law for content published in his anarchist periodical Lucifer the Lightbearer. He was arrested and jailed multiple times for publishing allegedly...
and Lois Waisbrooker
Lois Waisbrooker
Lois Waisbrooker was an American feminist author, editor, publisher, and campaigner of the later nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries. She wrote extensively on issues of sex, marriage, birth control, and women's rights, plus related areas of radical thought like free speech, anarchism, and...
but also there existed Ezra Heywood
Ezra Heywood
Ezra Heywood was a 19th century North American individualist anarchist, slavery abolitionist, and feminist.-Philosophy:Heywood saw what he believed to be a disproportionate concentration of capital in the hands of a few as the result of a selective extension of government-backed privileges to...
and Angela Heywood's The Word
The Word (free love)
The Word was an individualist anarchist free love magazine edited by Ezra Heywood and Angela Heywood's from , issued first from Princeton and then from Cambridge, Massachusetts. The Word was subtitled "A Monthly Journal of Reform," and it included contributions from Josiah Warren, Benjamin Tucker,...
(1872–1890, 1892–1893).
M. E. Lazarus
M. E. Lazarus
Dr. Marx Edgeworth Lazarus was an American individualist anarchist from Guntersville, AL where he owned a small farm. Lazarus wrote under the pseudonym "Edgeworth." He is the author of several essays and anarchist pamphlettes including Land Tenure: Anarchist View...
was an important American individualist anarchist who promoted free love. Hutchins Hapgood
Hutchins Hapgood
Hutchins Hapgood was an U.S. journalist, author, individualist anarchist/philosophical anarchist....
was an U.S. journalist, author, individualist anarchist/philosophical anarchist who was well known within the Bohemian
Bohemianism
Bohemianism is the practice of an unconventional lifestyle, often in the company of like-minded people, with few permanent ties, involving musical, artistic or literary pursuits...
environment of turn of the century New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
. He advocated free love
Free love
The term free love has been used to describe a social movement that rejects marriage, which is seen as a form of social bondage. The Free Love movement’s initial goal was to separate the state from sexual matters such as marriage, birth control, and adultery...
and committed adultery frequently. Hapgood was a follower of the German philosophers Max Stirner
Max Stirner
Johann Kaspar Schmidt , better known as Max Stirner , was a German philosopher, who ranks as one of the literary fathers of nihilism, existentialism, post-modernism and anarchism, especially of individualist anarchism...
and Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was a 19th-century German philosopher, poet, composer and classical philologist...
.
Lucifer the Lightbearer
Lucifer the Lightbearer
Lucifer the Lightbearer was an individualist-anarchist journal published by Moses Harman in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Originally produced by a local branch of the National Liberal League as the Valley Falls Liberal , Harman changed the title after he assumed sole editorship in...
was, according to Harman, "to help woman to break the chains that for ages have bound her to the rack of man-made law, spiritual, economic, industrial, social and especially sexual, believing that until woman is roused to a sense of her own responsibility on all lines of human endeavor, and especially on lines of her special field, that of reproduction of the race, there will be little if any real advancement toward a higher and truer civilization
Civilization
Civilization is a sometimes controversial term that has been used in several related ways. Primarily, the term has been used to refer to the material and instrumental side of human cultures that are complex in terms of technology, science, and division of labor. Such civilizations are generally...
." The name was chosen because "Lucifer
Lucifer
Traditionally, Lucifer is a name that in English generally refers to the devil or Satan before being cast from Heaven, although this is not the original meaning of the term. In Latin, from which the English word is derived, Lucifer means "light-bearer"...
, the ancient name of the Morning Star, now called Venus
Venus
Venus is the second planet from the Sun, orbiting it every 224.7 Earth days. The planet is named after Venus, the Roman goddess of love and beauty. After the Moon, it is the brightest natural object in the night sky, reaching an apparent magnitude of −4.6, bright enough to cast shadows...
, seems to us unsurpassed as a cognomen for a journal whose mission is to bring light to the dwellers in darkness."
In February 1887, the editors and publishers of Lucifer were arrested after the journal ran afoul of the Comstock Act for the publication of a letter condemning forced sex within marriage, which the author identified as rape
Rape
Rape is a type of sexual assault usually involving sexual intercourse, which is initiated by one or more persons against another person without that person's consent. The act may be carried out by physical force, coercion, abuse of authority or with a person who is incapable of valid consent. The...
. The Comstock Act specifically prohibited the discussion of marital rape
Spousal rape
Marital rape, also known as spousal rape, is non-consensual sex in which the perpetrator is the victim's spouse. As such, it as a form of partner rape, of domestic violence, and of sexual abuse. Once widely condoned or ignored by law, spousal rape is now repudiated by international conventions and...
. A Topeka district attorney
District attorney
In many jurisdictions in the United States, a District Attorney is an elected or appointed government official who represents the government in the prosecution of criminal offenses. The district attorney is the highest officeholder in the jurisdiction's legal department and supervises a staff of...
eventually handed down 216 indictments. In February 1890, Harman, now the sole producer of Lucifer, was again arrested on charges resulting from a similar article written by a New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
physician. As a result of the original charges, Harman would spend large portions of the next six years in prison
Prison
A prison is a place in which people are physically confined and, usually, deprived of a range of personal freedoms. Imprisonment or incarceration is a legal penalty that may be imposed by the state for the commission of a crime...
.
In 1896, Lucifer was moved to Chicago; however, legal harassment continued. The United States Postal Service
United States Postal Service
The United States Postal Service is an independent agency of the United States government responsible for providing postal service in the United States...
seized and destroyed numerous issues of the journal and, in May 1905, Harman was again arrested and convicted for the distribution of two articles - "The Fatherhood Question" and "More Thoughts on Sexology” by Sara Crist Campbell. Sentenced to a year of hard labor
Penal labour
Penal labour is a form of unfree labour in which prisoners perform work, typically manual labour. The work may be light or hard, depending on the context. Forms of sentence which involve penal labour include penal servitude and imprisonment with hard labour...
, the 75-year-old editor's health deteriorated greatly. After 24 years in production, Lucifer ceased publication in 1907 and became the more scholarly American Journal of Eugenics.
They also had many opponents, and Moses Harman spent two years in jail after a court determined that a journal he published was "obscene" under the notorious Comstock Law
Comstock Law
The Comstock Act, , enacted March 3, 1873, was a United States federal law which amended the Post Office Act and made it illegal to send any "obscene, lewd, and/or lascivious" materials through the mail, including contraceptive devices and information. In addition to banning contraceptives, this...
. In particular, the court objected to three letters to the editor, one of which described the plight of a woman who had been raped by her husband, tearing stitches from a recent operation after a difficult childbirth and causing severe hemorrhaging. The letter lamented the woman's lack of legal recourse
Legal recourse
A legal recourse is an action that can be taken by an individual or a corporation to attempt to remedy a legal difficulty.* A lawsuit if the issue is a matter of civil law* Many contracts require mediation or arbitration before a dispute can go to court...
. Ezra Heywood, who had already been prosecuted under the Comstock Law for a pamphlet attacking marriage, reprinted the letter in solidarity with Harman and was also arrested and sentenced to two years in prison.
Ezra Heywood
Ezra HeywoodEzra Heywood
Ezra Heywood was a 19th century North American individualist anarchist, slavery abolitionist, and feminist.-Philosophy:Heywood saw what he believed to be a disproportionate concentration of capital in the hands of a few as the result of a selective extension of government-backed privileges to...
's philosophy was instrumental in furthering individualist anarchist ideas through his extensive pamphleteering and reprinting of works of Josiah Warren
Josiah Warren
Josiah Warren was an individualist anarchist, inventor, musician, and author in the United States. He is widely regarded as the first American anarchist, and the four-page weekly paper he edited during 1833, The Peaceful Revolutionist, was the first anarchist periodical published, an enterprise...
, author of True Civilization (1869), and William B. Greene. In 1872, at a convention of the New England Labor Reform League in Boston, Heywood introduced Greene and Warren to eventual Liberty publisher Benjamin Tucker
Benjamin Tucker
Benjamin Ricketson Tucker was a proponent of American individualist anarchism in the 19th century, and editor and publisher of the individualist anarchist periodical Liberty.-Summary:Tucker says that he became an anarchist at the age of 18...
. Heywood saw what he believed to be a disproportionate concentration of capital in the hands of a few as the result of a selective extension of government-backed privileges to certain individuals and organizations.
The Word
The WordThe Word (free love)
The Word was an individualist anarchist free love magazine edited by Ezra Heywood and Angela Heywood's from , issued first from Princeton and then from Cambridge, Massachusetts. The Word was subtitled "A Monthly Journal of Reform," and it included contributions from Josiah Warren, Benjamin Tucker,...
was an individualist anarchist free love
Free love
The term free love has been used to describe a social movement that rejects marriage, which is seen as a form of social bondage. The Free Love movement’s initial goal was to separate the state from sexual matters such as marriage, birth control, and adultery...
magazine
Magazine
Magazines, periodicals, glossies or serials are publications, generally published on a regular schedule, containing a variety of articles. They are generally financed by advertising, by a purchase price, by pre-paid magazine subscriptions, or all three...
edited by Ezra Heywood
Ezra Heywood
Ezra Heywood was a 19th century North American individualist anarchist, slavery abolitionist, and feminist.-Philosophy:Heywood saw what he believed to be a disproportionate concentration of capital in the hands of a few as the result of a selective extension of government-backed privileges to...
and Angela Heywood's from (1872–1890, 1892–1893), issued first from Princeton and then from Cambridge, Massachusetts. The Word was subtitled "A Monthly Journal of Reform," and it included contributions from Josiah Warren
Josiah Warren
Josiah Warren was an individualist anarchist, inventor, musician, and author in the United States. He is widely regarded as the first American anarchist, and the four-page weekly paper he edited during 1833, The Peaceful Revolutionist, was the first anarchist periodical published, an enterprise...
, Benjamin Tucker
Benjamin Tucker
Benjamin Ricketson Tucker was a proponent of American individualist anarchism in the 19th century, and editor and publisher of the individualist anarchist periodical Liberty.-Summary:Tucker says that he became an anarchist at the age of 18...
, and J.K. Ingalls. Initially, The Word presented free love as a minor theme which was expressed within a labor reform format. But the publication later evolved into an explicitly free love periodical. At some point Tucker became an important contributor but lated became dissatisfied with the journal's focus on free love since he desired a concentration on economics.
M. E. Lazarus
M. E. LazarusM. E. Lazarus
Dr. Marx Edgeworth Lazarus was an American individualist anarchist from Guntersville, AL where he owned a small farm. Lazarus wrote under the pseudonym "Edgeworth." He is the author of several essays and anarchist pamphlettes including Land Tenure: Anarchist View...
(February 6, 1822 1895 or 1896) was an American individualist anarchist from Guntersville, AL. He is the author of several essays and anarchist pamphlettes including Land Tenure: Anarchist View (1889). A famous quote from Lazarus is "Every vote for a governing office is an instrument for enslaving me." Lazarus was also an intellectual contributor to Fourierism and the Free Love
Free Love
Free Love may refer to:*Free love, a social movement that rejects marriage, which is seen as a form of social bondage, especially for women*"Free Love", a song by Morphine from their 1995 album Yes...
movement of the 1850s, a social reform group that called for, in its extreme form, the abolition of institutionalized marriage.
In Lazarus' 1852 essay, Love vs Marriage, he argued that marriage as an institution was akin to "legalized prostitution," oppressing women and men by allowing loveless marriages contracted for economic or utilitarian reasons to take precedence over true love.
Freethought
Freethought as a philosophical position and as activism was important in north american individualist anarchism. In the United States "freethought was a basically anti-christian, anti-clerical movement, whose purpose was to make the individual politically and spiritually free to decide for himself on religious matters. A number of contributors to Liberty were prominent figures in both freethought and anarchism. The individualist anarchist George MacDonald was a co-editor of Freethought and, for a time, The Truth Seeker. E.C. Walker was co-editor of the excellent free-thought / free love journal Lucifer, the Light-Bearer".. "Many of the anarchists were ardent freethinkers; reprints from freethought papers such as Lucifer, the Light-Bearer, Freethought and The Truth Seeker appeared in Liberty...The church was viewed as a common ally of the state and as a repressive force in and of itself".The "Boston Anarchists"
They believed state monopoly capitalism
State monopoly capitalism
The theory of state monopoly capitalism was initially a Marxist doctrine popularised after World War II. Lenin had claimed in 1916 that World War I had transformed laissez-faire capitalism into monopoly capitalism, but he did not publish any extensive theory about the topic...
(defined as a state-sponsored monopoly) prevented labor from being fully rewarded. Voltairine de Cleyre
Voltairine de Cleyre
Voltairine de Cleyre was an American anarchist writer and feminist. She was a prolific writer and speaker, opposing the state, marriage, and the domination of religion in sexuality and women's lives. She began her activist career in the freethought movement...
, 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, centred upon private property, are in themselves good, and are rendered vicious merely by the interference of the State."
Even among the 19th century American individualists, there was not a monolithic doctrine, as they disagreed amongst each other on various issues including intellectual property
Intellectual property
Intellectual property is a term referring to a number of distinct types of creations of the mind for which a set of exclusive rights are recognized—and the corresponding fields of law...
rights and possession versus property
Property
Property is any physical or intangible entity that is owned by a person or jointly by a group of people or a legal entity like a corporation...
in land. A major schism occurred later in the 19th century when Tucker and some others abandoned their traditional support of natural rights -as espoused by Lysander Spooner
Lysander Spooner
Lysander Spooner was an American individualist anarchist, political philosopher, Deist, abolitionist, supporter of the labor movement, legal theorist, and entrepreneur of the nineteenth century. He is also known for competing with the U.S...
- and converted to an "egoism" modeled upon Stirner's philosophy
Philosophy of Max Stirner
The philosophy of Max Stirner is credited as an influence on the development of nihilism, existentialism, post-modernism and anarchism, especially of individualist anarchism, postanarchism and post-left anarchy...
. Lysander Spooner besides his individualist anarchist activism was also an important anti-slavery activist and became a member of the First International.
Some "Boston anarchists", including Benjamin Tucker
Benjamin Tucker
Benjamin Ricketson Tucker was a proponent of American individualist anarchism in the 19th century, and editor and publisher of the individualist anarchist periodical Liberty.-Summary:Tucker says that he became an anarchist at the age of 18...
, identified themselves as "socialists", which in the 19th century was often used in the sense of a commitment to improving conditions of the working class (i.e. "the labor problem
The labor problem
"The labor problem" is an economics term widely used toward the turn of the twentieth century with various applications. It has been defined in various ways, such as "the problem of improving the conditions of employment of the wage-earning classes." However, its cause is universal: failure to...
"). By the turn of the 20th century, the heyday of individualist anarchism had passed, although aspects of the individualist anarchist tradition were later revived with modifications by Murray Rothbard
Murray Rothbard
Murray Newton Rothbard was an American author and economist of the Austrian School who helped define capitalist libertarianism and popularized a form of free-market anarchism he termed "anarcho-capitalism." Rothbard wrote over twenty books and is considered a centrally important figure in the...
and his anarcho-capitalism
Anarcho-capitalism
Anarcho-capitalism is a libertarian and individualist anarchist political philosophy that advocates the elimination of the state in favour of individual sovereignty in a free market...
in the mid-20th century, as a current of the broader libertarian
Libertarianism
Libertarianism, in the strictest sense, is the political philosophy that holds individual liberty as the basic moral principle of society. In the broadest sense, it is any political philosophy which approximates this view...
movement.
American individualist anarchism and the labor movement
Two individualist anarchists who wrote in Benjamin Tucker´s Liberty were also important labor organizers of the time.Joseph Labadie
Joseph Labadie
Charles Joseph Antoine Labadie was an American labor organizer, anarchist, social activist, printer, publisher, essayist, and poet.-Biography:...
(April 18, 1850 – October 7, 1933) was an American labor organizer, individualist anarchist, social activist, printer, publisher, essayist, and poet. In 1883 Labadie embraced individualist anarchism, a non-violent doctrine. He became closely allied with Benjamin Tucker
Benjamin Tucker
Benjamin Ricketson Tucker was a proponent of American individualist anarchism in the 19th century, and editor and publisher of the individualist anarchist periodical Liberty.-Summary:Tucker says that he became an anarchist at the age of 18...
, 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, he supported community cooperation, as he supported community control of water utilities, streets, and railroads .. 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 perpetators. In 1888, Labadie organized the Michigan Federation of Labor, became its first president, and forged an alliance with Samuel Gompers
Samuel Gompers
Samuel Gompers was an English-born American cigar maker who became a labor union leader and a key figure in American labor history. Gompers founded the American Federation of Labor , and served as that organization's president from 1886 to 1894 and from 1895 until his death in 1924...
.
Dyer Lum
Dyer Daniel Lum was a 19th-century American anarchist labor activist and poet. A leading anarcho-syndicalist and a prominent left-wing intellectual of the 1880s, he is remembered as the lover and mentor of early anarcha-feminist Voltairine de Cleyre.Lum was a prolific writer who wrote a number of...
was a 19th-century American individualist anarchist labor activist and poet. A leading anarcho-syndicalist and a prominent left-wing intellectual
Intellectual
An intellectual is a person who uses intelligence and critical or analytical reasoning in either a professional or a personal capacity.- Terminology and endeavours :"Intellectual" can denote four types of persons:...
of the 1880s, he is remembered as the lover and mentor of early anarcha-feminist Voltairine de Cleyre
Voltairine de Cleyre
Voltairine de Cleyre was an American anarchist writer and feminist. She was a prolific writer and speaker, opposing the state, marriage, and the domination of religion in sexuality and women's lives. She began her activist career in the freethought movement...
. Lum was a prolific writer who wrote a number of key anarchist texts, and contributed to publications including Mother Earth
Mother Earth (journal)
This version of Mother Earth was an anarchist periodical aimed at bringing up progressive issues, and discuss these. It was in circulation among people in the radical community in the United States from 1933 - 1934....
, Twentieth Century, Liberty
Liberty (1881-1908)
Liberty was a nineteenth century anarchist periodical published in the United States by Benjamin Tucker, from August 1881 to April 1908. The periodical was instrumental in developing and formalizing the individualist anarchist philosophy through publishing essays and serving as a format for...
(Benjamin Tucker
Benjamin Tucker
Benjamin Ricketson Tucker was a proponent of American individualist anarchism in the 19th century, and editor and publisher of the individualist anarchist periodical Liberty.-Summary:Tucker says that he became an anarchist at the age of 18...
's individualist anarchist
Individualist anarchism
Individualist anarchism refers to several traditions of thought within the anarchist movement that emphasize the individual and his or her will over external determinants such as groups, society, traditions, and ideological systems. Individualist anarchism is not a single philosophy but refers to a...
journal), The Alarm (the journal of the International Working People's Association
International Working People's Association
The International Working People's Association , sometimes known as the "Black International," was an international anarchist political organization established in 1881 at a convention held in London, England...
) and The Open Court among others. Lum's political philosophy
Political philosophy
Political philosophy is the study of such topics as liberty, justice, property, rights, law, and the enforcement of a legal code by authority: what they are, why they are needed, what, if anything, makes a government legitimate, what rights and freedoms it should protect and why, what form it...
was a fusion of individualist anarchist economics
Anarchist economics
Anarchist economics is the set of theories and practices of economics and economic activity within the political philosophy of anarchism.-Early views:...
– "a radicalized form of laissez-faire
Laissez-faire
In economics, laissez-faire describes an environment in which transactions between private parties are free from state intervention, including restrictive regulations, taxes, tariffs and enforced monopolies....
economics" inspired by the Boston anarchists– with radical labor organization similar to that of the Chicago anarchists of the time.Herbert Spencer
Herbert Spencer
Herbert Spencer was an English philosopher, biologist, sociologist, and prominent classical liberal political theorist of the Victorian era....
and Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon was a French politician, mutualist philosopher and socialist. He was a member of the French Parliament, and he was the first person to call himself an "anarchist". He is considered among the most influential theorists and organisers of anarchism...
influenced Lum strongly in his individualist tendency. He developed a "mutualist
Mutualism (economic theory)
Mutualism is an anarchist school of thought that originates in the writings of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, who envisioned a society where each person might possess a means of production, either individually or collectively, with trade representing equivalent amounts of labor in the free market...
" theory of unions and as such was active within the Knights of Labor
Knights of Labor
The Knights of Labor was the largest and one of the most important American labor organizations of the 1880s. Its most important leader was Terence Powderly...
and later promoted anti-political
Apolitical
The state or quality of being apolitical can be the apathy and/or the antipathy towards all political affiliations. Being apolitical can also refer to situations in which people take an unbiased position in regard to political matters.-References:...
strategies in the American Federation of Labor
American Federation of Labor
The American Federation of Labor was one of the first federations of labor unions in the United States. It was founded in 1886 by an alliance of craft unions disaffected from the Knights of Labor, a national labor association. Samuel Gompers was elected president of the Federation at its...
. Frustration with abolitionism
Abolitionism
Abolitionism is a movement to end slavery.In western Europe and the Americas abolitionism was a movement to end the slave trade and set slaves free. At the behest of Dominican priest Bartolomé de las Casas who was shocked at the treatment of natives in the New World, Spain enacted the first...
, spiritualism
Spiritualism
Spiritualism is a belief system or religion, postulating the belief that spirits of the dead residing in the spirit world have both the ability and the inclination to communicate with the living...
, and labor reform caused Lum to embrace anarchism and radicalize workers, as he came to believe that revolution
Revolution
A revolution is a fundamental change in power or organizational structures that takes place in a relatively short period of time.Aristotle described two types of political revolution:...
would inevitably involve a violent struggle between the working class
Working class
Working class is a term used in the social sciences and in ordinary conversation to describe those employed in lower tier jobs , often extending to those in unemployment or otherwise possessing below-average incomes...
and the employing class. Convinced of the necessity of violence to enact social change he volunteered to fight in the American Civil War
American Civil War
The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...
, hoping thereby to bring about the end of slavery
Slavery
Slavery is a system under which people are treated as property to be bought and sold, and are forced to work. Slaves can be held against their will from the time of their capture, purchase or birth, and deprived of the right to leave, to refuse to work, or to demand compensation...
. Kevin Carson has praised Lum's fusion of individualist laissez-faire economics with radical labor activism as "creative" and described him as "more significant than any in the Boston group".
American egoism
Benjamin Tucker
Benjamin Ricketson Tucker was a proponent of American individualist anarchism in the 19th century, and editor and publisher of the individualist anarchist periodical Liberty.-Summary:Tucker says that he became an anarchist at the age of 18...
, abandoned natural rights positions and converted to Max Stirner
Max Stirner
Johann Kaspar Schmidt , better known as Max Stirner , was a German philosopher, who ranks as one of the literary fathers of nihilism, existentialism, post-modernism and anarchism, especially of individualist anarchism...
's Egoist anarchism
Egoist anarchism
Egoist anarchism is a school of anarchist thought that originated in the philosophy of Max Stirner, a nineteenth century Hegelian philosopher whose "name appears with familiar regularity in historically orientated surveys of anarchist thought as one of the earliest and best-known exponents of...
. 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." In adopting Stirnerite egoism (1886), Tucker rejected natural rights which had long been considered the foundation of libertarianism. This rejection galvanized the movement into fierce debates, with the natural rights proponents accusing the egoists of destroying libertarianism itself. So bitter was the conflict that a number of natural rights proponents withdrew from the pages of Liberty in protest even though they had hitherto been among its frequent contributors. Thereafter, Liberty championed egoism although its general content did not change significantly."
"Several periodicals were undoubtedly influenced by Libertys presentation of egoism. They included: I published by C.L. Swartz, edited by W.E. Gordak and J.W. Lloyd (all associates of Liberty); The Ego and The Egoist, both of which were edited by Edward H. Fulton. Among the egoist papers that Tucker followed were the German Der Eigene
Der Eigene
Der Eigene was the first gay journal in the world, published from 1896 to 1932 by Adolf Brand in Berlin. Brand contributed many poems and articles himself...
, edited by Adolf Brand
Adolf Brand
Adolf Brand was a German writer, individualist anarchist and pioneering campaigner for the acceptance of male bisexuality and homosexuality.-Biography:...
, and The Eagle and The Serpent, issued from London. The latter, the most prominent English-language egoist journal, was published from 1898 to 1900 with the subtitle 'A Journal of Egoistic Philosophy and Sociology.
Among those American anarchists who adhered to egoism include Benjamin Tucker
Benjamin Tucker
Benjamin Ricketson Tucker was a proponent of American individualist anarchism in the 19th century, and editor and publisher of the individualist anarchist periodical Liberty.-Summary:Tucker says that he became an anarchist at the age of 18...
, John Beverley Robinson
John Beverley Robinson (anarchist)
John Beverley Robinson , was an American anarchist author, publisher, translator, and architect.He was for a time publisher of the Free Soiler the newsletter of the Georgist American Free Soil Society...
, Steven T. Byington
Steven T. Byington
Steven Tracy Byington was a noted intellectual, translator, and American individualist anarchist. He was born in Westford, Vermont, and later moved to Ballardvale section of Andover, Massachusetts. A one-time proponent of Georgism, he converted to individualist anarchism after associating with...
, Hutchins Hapgood
Hutchins Hapgood
Hutchins Hapgood was an U.S. journalist, author, individualist anarchist/philosophical anarchist....
, James L. Walker
James L. Walker
James L. Walker , sometimes known by the pen name Tak Kak, was an American individualist anarchist of the Egoist school. He was one of the main contributors to Benjamin Tucker's Liberty. He worked out Egoism on his own some years before encountering the Egoist writings of Max Stirner, and was...
, Victor Yarros
Victor Yarros
Victor Yarros was an American anarchist and author. He was a prolific contributor to the individualist anarchist periodical in the United States called Liberty....
and E.H. Fulton. John Beverley Robinson wrote an essay called "Egoism" in which he states that "Modern egoism, as propounded by Stirner and Nietzsche, and expounded by Ibsen
Henrik Ibsen
Henrik Ibsen was a major 19th-century Norwegian playwright, theatre director, and poet. He is often referred to as "the father of prose drama" and is one of the founders of Modernism in the theatre...
, Shaw
George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw was an Irish playwright and a co-founder of the London School of Economics. Although his first profitable writing was music and literary criticism, in which capacity he wrote many highly articulate pieces of journalism, his main talent was for drama, and he wrote more than 60...
and others, is all these; but it is more. It is the realization by the individual that they are an individual; that, as far as they are concerned, they are the only individual."
Steven T. Byington
Steven T. Byington
Steven Tracy Byington was a noted intellectual, translator, and American individualist anarchist. He was born in Westford, Vermont, and later moved to Ballardvale section of Andover, Massachusetts. A one-time proponent of Georgism, he converted to individualist anarchism after associating with...
was a one-time proponent of Georgism
Georgism
Georgism is an economic philosophy and ideology that holds that people own what they create, but that things found in nature, most importantly land, belong equally to all...
who later converted to egoist stirnerist positions after associating with Benjamin Tucker
Benjamin Tucker
Benjamin Ricketson Tucker was a proponent of American individualist anarchism in the 19th century, and editor and publisher of the individualist anarchist periodical Liberty.-Summary:Tucker says that he became an anarchist at the age of 18...
. He is known for translating two important anarchist works into English from German: Max Stirner
Max Stirner
Johann Kaspar Schmidt , better known as Max Stirner , was a German philosopher, who ranks as one of the literary fathers of nihilism, existentialism, post-modernism and anarchism, especially of individualist anarchism...
's The Ego and Its Own
The Ego and Its Own
The Ego and Its Own is a philosophical work by German philosopher Max Stirner . This work was first published in 1845, although with a stated publication date of "1844" to confuse the Prussian censors.-Content:...
and Paul Eltzbacher
Paul Eltzbacher
Paul Eltzbacher, , was a Jewish German law professor.From 1890 to 1895 he was a junior lawyer for the regional court districts of Cologne and Frankfurt , with a year off in 1891-92 for military service...
's Anarchism; exponents of the anarchist philosophy (also published by Dover with the title The Great Anarchists: Ideas and Teachings of Seven Major Thinkers). James L. Walker
James L. Walker
James L. Walker , sometimes known by the pen name Tak Kak, was an American individualist anarchist of the Egoist school. He was one of the main contributors to Benjamin Tucker's Liberty. He worked out Egoism on his own some years before encountering the Egoist writings of Max Stirner, and was...
(sometimes known by the pen name "Tak Kak") was one of the main contributors to Benjamin Tucker
Benjamin Tucker
Benjamin Ricketson Tucker was a proponent of American individualist anarchism in the 19th century, and editor and publisher of the individualist anarchist periodical Liberty.-Summary:Tucker says that he became an anarchist at the age of 18...
's Liberty. He published his major philosophical work called Philosophy of Egoism in the May 1890 to September 1891 in issues of the publication Egoism.
The influence of Friedrich Nietzsche
Nietzsche and Stirner were frequently compared by French "literary anarchists" and anarchist interpretations of Nietzschean ideas appear to have also been influential in the United States. One researcher notes "Indeed, translations of Nietzsche's writings in the United States very likely appeared first in Liberty, the anarchist journal edited by Benjamin TuckerBenjamin Tucker
Benjamin Ricketson Tucker was a proponent of American individualist anarchism in the 19th century, and editor and publisher of the individualist anarchist periodical Liberty.-Summary:Tucker says that he became an anarchist at the age of 18...
." He adds "Tucker preferred the strategy of exploiting his writings, but proceeding with due caution: 'Nietzsche says splendid things, – often, indeed, Anarchist things, – but he is no Anarchist. It is of the Anarchists, then, to intellectually exploit this would-be exploiter. He may be utilized profitably, but not prophetably.'"
Italian american individualist anarchism
Italian anti-organizationalist individualist anarchism was brought to the United States by Italian born individualists such as Giuseppe CiancabillaGiuseppe Ciancabilla
Giuseppe Ciancabilla was one of the important figures of the anarchist movement who immigrated to the United States in the late 19th century, along with F. Saverio Merlino, Pietro Gori, Carlo Tresca, and Luigi Galleani.- Life :...
and others who advocated for violent propaganda by the deed there. Anarchist historian George Woodcock
George Woodcock
George Woodcock was a Canadian writer of political biography and history, an anarchist thinker, an essayist and literary critic. He was also a poet, and published several volumes of travel writing. He founded in 1959 the journal Canadian Literature, the first academic journal specifically...
reports the incident in which the important Italian social anarchist Errico Malatesta
Errico Malatesta
Errico Malatesta was an Italian anarcho-communist. He was an insurrectionary anarchist early in his life. He spent much of his life exiled from his homeland of Italy and in total spent more than ten years in prison. He wrote and edited a number of radical newspapers and was also a friend of...
became involved "in a dispute with the individualist anarchists of Paterson
Paterson, New Jersey
Paterson is a city serving as the county seat of Passaic County, New Jersey, United States. As of the 2010 United States Census, its population was 146,199, rendering it New Jersey's third largest city and one of the largest cities in the New York City Metropolitan Area, despite a decrease of 3,023...
, who insisted that anarchism implied no organization at all, and that every man must act solely on his impulses. At last, in one noisy debate, the individual impulse of a certain Ciancabilla directed him to shoot Malatesta, who was badly wounded but obstinately refused to name his assailant."
Enrico Arrigoni
Enrico Arrigoni (pseudonym: Frank Brand) was an Italian AmericanItalian American
An Italian American , is an American of Italian ancestry. The designation may also refer to someone possessing Italian and American dual citizenship...
individualist anarchist Lathe operator, house painter, bricklayer, dramatist and political activist influenced by the work of Max Stirner
Max Stirner
Johann Kaspar Schmidt , better known as Max Stirner , was a German philosopher, who ranks as one of the literary fathers of nihilism, existentialism, post-modernism and anarchism, especially of individualist anarchism...
. He took the pseudonym "Brand" from a fictional character in one of Henrik Ibsen
Henrik Ibsen
Henrik Ibsen was a major 19th-century Norwegian playwright, theatre director, and poet. He is often referred to as "the father of prose drama" and is one of the founders of Modernism in the theatre...
´s plays. In the 1910s he started becoming involved in anarchist and anti-war activism around Milan. From the 1910s until the 1920s he participated in anarchist activities and popular uprisings in various countries including Switzerland, Germany, Hungary, Argentina and Cuba. He lived from the 1920s onwards in New York City and there he edited the individualist anarchist eclectic journal Eresia in 1928. He also wrote for other american anarchist publications such as L' Adunata dei refrattari
L' Adunata dei refrattari
L'Adunata dei refrattari was an Italian American anarchist publication published between 1923 and 1940 in New York City. It was first edited by Osvaldo Maraviglia and later by Max Sartin. It was illegally distributed in Italy during its fascist period...
, Cultura Obrera, Controcorrente and Intessa Libertaria. During the Spanish Civil War
Spanish Civil War
The Spanish Civil WarAlso known as The Crusade among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War among Carlists, and The Rebellion or Uprising among Republicans. was a major conflict fought in Spain from 17 July 1936 to 1 April 1939...
, he went to fight with the anarchists but was imprisoned and was helped on his release by Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman was an anarchist known for her political activism, writing and speeches. She played a pivotal role in the development of anarchist political philosophy in North America and Europe in the first half of the twentieth century....
. Afterwards Arrigoni became a longtime member of the Libertarian Book Club in New York City. He died in New York City when he was 90 years old on December 7, 1986.
Since 1945
Murray BookchinMurray Bookchin
Murray Bookchin was an American libertarian socialist author, orator, and philosopher. A pioneer in the ecology movement, Bookchin was the founder of the social ecology movement within anarchist, libertarian socialist and ecological thought. He was the author of two dozen books on politics,...
has identified post-left anarchy
Post-left anarchy
Post-left anarchy is a recent current in anarchist thought that promotes a critique of anarchism's relationship to traditional leftism. Some post-leftists seek to escape the confines of ideology in general also presenting a critique of organizations and morality...
as a form of individualist anarchism in Social Anarchism or Lifestyle Anarchism: An Unbridgeable Chasm
Social Anarchism Or Lifestyle Anarchism: An Unbridgeable Chasm
Social Anarchism or Lifestyle Anarchism: An Unbridgeable Chasm is a polemical essay written by Murray Bookchin and published as a book in 1995. It is a critique of deep ecology, bio-centrism and lifestyle anarchism...
where he says he identifies "a shift among Euro-American anarchists away from social anarchism and toward individualist or lifestyle anarchism. Indeed, lifestyle anarchism today is finding its principal expression in spray-can graffiti, post-modernist nihilism
Nihilism
Nihilism is the philosophical doctrine suggesting the negation of one or more putatively meaningful aspects of life. Most commonly, nihilism is presented in the form of existential nihilism which argues that life is without objective meaning, purpose, or intrinsic value...
, antirationalism, neoprimitivism, anti-technologism, neo-Situationist `cultural terrorism,' mysticism, and a `practice' of staging Foucauldian
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault , born Paul-Michel Foucault , was a French philosopher, social theorist and historian of ideas...
`personal insurrections.'". Post-left anarchist Bob Black
Bob Black
Bob Black is an American anarchist. He is the author of The Abolition of Work and Other Essays, Beneath the Underground, Friendly Fire, Anarchy After Leftism, and numerous political essays.-Writing:Some of his work from the early 1980s includes...
in his long critique of Bookchin´s philosophy called Anarchy after leftism said about post-left anarchy that "It is, unlike Bookchinism, “individualistic” in the sense that if the freedom and happiness of the individual — i.e., each and every really existing person, every Tom, Dick and Murray — is not the measure of the good society, what is?".
Max Stirner
Johann Kaspar Schmidt , better known as Max Stirner , was a German philosopher, who ranks as one of the literary fathers of nihilism, existentialism, post-modernism and anarchism, especially of individualist anarchism...
. Jason McQuinn
Jason McQuinn
Jason McQuinn is an American anarchist, founder and co-editor of Alternative Press Review, and founder and former co-editor of the journal Anarchy: A Journal of Desire Armed from 1980 to 1995, when Tad Kepley took it over, and again from 1997 to 2006...
says that "when I (and other anti-ideological anarchists) criticize ideology, it is always from a specifically critical, anarchist perspective rooted in both the skeptical, individualist-anarchist philosophy of Max Stirner. Also Bob Black
Bob Black
Bob Black is an American anarchist. He is the author of The Abolition of Work and Other Essays, Beneath the Underground, Friendly Fire, Anarchy After Leftism, and numerous political essays.-Writing:Some of his work from the early 1980s includes...
and Feral Faun/Wolfi Landstreicher
Wolfi Landstreicher
Wolfi Landstreicher is the former nom de plume of a contemporary anarchist philosopher involved in theoretical and practical activity...
strongly adhere to stirnerist egoist anarchism
Egoist anarchism
Egoist anarchism is a school of anarchist thought that originated in the philosophy of Max Stirner, a nineteenth century Hegelian philosopher whose "name appears with familiar regularity in historically orientated surveys of anarchist thought as one of the earliest and best-known exponents of...
. Bob Black has humorously suggested the idea of "marxist stirnerism".
Hakim Bey has said "From Stirner's "Union of Self-Owning Ones" we proceed to Nietzsche's circle of "Free Spirits" and thence to Charles Fourier
Charles Fourier
François Marie Charles Fourier was a French philosopher. An influential thinker, some of Fourier's social and moral views, held to be radical in his lifetime, have become main currents in modern society...
's "Passional Series", doubling and redoubling ourselves even as the Other multiplies itself in the eros of the group." Bey also wrote that "The Mackay Society, of which Mark & I are active members, is devoted to the anarchism of Max Stirner, Benj. Tucker
Benjamin Tucker
Benjamin Ricketson Tucker was a proponent of American individualist anarchism in the 19th century, and editor and publisher of the individualist anarchist periodical Liberty.-Summary:Tucker says that he became an anarchist at the age of 18...
& John Henry Mackay
John Henry Mackay
John Henry Mackay was an individualist anarchist, thinker and writer. Born in Scotland and raised in Germany, Mackay was the author of Die Anarchisten and Der Freiheitsucher . Mackay was published in the United States in his friend Benjamin Tucker's magazine, Liberty...
...The Mackay Society, incidentally, represents a little-known current of individualist thought which never cut its ties with revolutionary labor. Dyer Lum
Dyer Lum
Dyer Daniel Lum was a 19th-century American anarchist labor activist and poet. A leading anarcho-syndicalist and a prominent left-wing intellectual of the 1880s, he is remembered as the lover and mentor of early anarcha-feminist Voltairine de Cleyre.Lum was a prolific writer who wrote a number of...
, Ezra
Ezra Heywood
Ezra Heywood was a 19th century North American individualist anarchist, slavery abolitionist, and feminist.-Philosophy:Heywood saw what he believed to be a disproportionate concentration of capital in the hands of a few as the result of a selective extension of government-backed privileges to...
& Angela Haywood represent this school of thought; Jo Labadie, who wrote for Tucker’s Liberty
Liberty
Liberty is a moral and political principle, or Right, that identifies the condition in which human beings are able to govern themselves, to behave according to their own free will, and take responsibility for their actions...
, made himself a link between the american “plumb-line” anarchists, the “philosophical” individualists, & the syndicalist or communist branch of the movement; his influence reached the Mackay Society through his son, Laurance. Like the Italian Stirnerites (who influenced us through our late friend Enrico Arrigoni
Enrico Arrigoni
Enrico Arrigoni was an Italian American individualist anarchist Lathe operator, house painter, bricklayer, dramatist and political activist influenced by the work of Max Stirner.- Life and activism :He took the pseudonym "Brand" from a fictional character in one of...
) we support all anti-authoritarian currents, despite their apparent contradictions."
As far as posterior individualist anarchists Jason McQuinn
Jason McQuinn
Jason McQuinn is an American anarchist, founder and co-editor of Alternative Press Review, and founder and former co-editor of the journal Anarchy: A Journal of Desire Armed from 1980 to 1995, when Tad Kepley took it over, and again from 1997 to 2006...
for some time used the pseudonym Lev Chernyi
Lev Chernyi
Pável Dimítrievich Turchanínov , known by the pseudonym Lev Chernyi , was a Russian anarchist theorist, activist and poet, and a leading figure of the Third Russian Revolution. His early thought was individualist, rejecting anarcho-communism as a threat to individual liberty...
in honor of the Russian individualist anarchist of the same name while Feral Faun has quoted Italian individualist anarchist Renzo Novatore
Renzo Novatore
- Life :Abele Ricieri Ferrari was born in Arcola, Liguria, Italy on May 12, 1890 in a poor peasant family. He did not adjust to school discipline and quit in the first year never coming back after that. While he worked in his father's farm, he self educated himself with an emphasis in poetry and...
and has translated both Novatore. and the young Italian individualist anarchist Bruno Filippi
Bruno Filippi
Bruno Filippi , was an Italian individualist anarchist writer and activist who collaborated in the Italian individualist anarchist magazine Iconoclasta! alongside Renzo Novatore....
Egoism has had a strong influence on insurrectionary anarchism
Insurrectionary anarchism
Insurrectionary anarchism is a revolutionary theory, practice and tendency within the anarchist movement which emphasizes the theme of insurrection within anarchist practice. It is critical of formal organizations such as labor unions and federations that are based on a political programme and...
, as can be seen in the work of the American insurrectionist Wolfi Landstreicher
Wolfi Landstreicher
Wolfi Landstreicher is the former nom de plume of a contemporary anarchist philosopher involved in theoretical and practical activity...
.
Lansdstreicher writing as Feral Faun wrote in 1995 that:
In the game of insurgence—a lived guerilla war game—it is strategically necessary to use identities and roles. Unfortunately, the context of social relationships gives these roles and identities the power to define the individual who attempts to use them. So I, Feral Faun, became ... an anarchist ... a writer ... a Stirner-influenced, post-situationist, anti-civilization theorist ... if not in my own eyes, at least in the eyes of most people who've read my writings.
Kevin Carson is a contemporary mutualist and author of Studies in Mutualist Political Economy
Studies in Mutualist Political Economy
Studies in Mutualist Political Economy is a book on political economy published on 2007 by american mutualist anarchist Kevin Carson. In its preface Carson describes this work as "an attempt to revive individualist anarchist political economy, to incorporate the useful developments of the last...
. Another important current mutualist is Joe Peacott
Joe Peacott
Joe Peacott is an individualist anarchist writer based in the United States. He is a leading figure at BAD Press, a publishing outlet for individualist anarchist philosophy. His work on economics and sociology has been published by the Libertarian Alliance and referenced favourably by leading...
. Contemporary mutualists are among those involved in the Alliance of the Libertarian Left and in the Voluntary Cooperation Movement. A recent mutualist collective was the Boston Anarchist Drinking Brigade.