Liberty was a nineteenth century anarchist

Anarchism

Anarchism is generally defined as the political philosophy which holds the state to be undesirable, unnecessary, and harmful, or alternatively as opposing authority in the conduct of human relations...

 periodical published in the United States by 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...

, from August 1881 to April 1908. The periodical was instrumental in developing and formalizing the 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...

 philosophy through publishing essays and serving as a format for debate.

Contributors included 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...

, 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...

, Auberon Herbert

Auberon Herbert

Auberon Edward William Molyneux Herbert was a writer, theorist, philosopher, and "19th-century individualist anarchist." A member of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, Herbert was the son of the 3rd Earl of Carnarvon, brother of Henry Herbert, the 4th Earl, and father of the 9th Baron Lucas...

, 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...

, Joshua K. Ingalls

Joshua K. Ingalls

Joshua K. Ingalls , born in Swansea, MA, was an inventor, and land reformer who influenced contemporary individualist anarchists despite never self-identifying as one. He was an associate of Benjamin Tucker and the "Boston anarchists." He believed that government protection of idle land was the...

, 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...

, 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....

, Wordsworth Donisthorpe

Wordsworth Donisthorpe

Wordsworth Donisthorpe was an English individualist anarchist and inventor, pioneer of cinematography and chess enthusiast. His father was George E...

, 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...

, J. William Lloyd, Florence Finch Kelly, 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...

, 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...

, 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...

, Jo Labadie, Lillian Harman, and Henry Appleton

Henry Appleton

Henry Appleton was a 19th-century American individualist anarchist. He was an editorial assistant to Benjamin Tucker, and a significant contributor to Liberty. Appleton was a graduate of Brown University.-External links:* by Henry Appleton...

. Included in its masthead, is a quote from Pierre 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...

 saying that liberty is "Not the Daughter But the Mother of Order."

Purpose

Benjamin Tucker was an individualist anarchist and made it clear that the purpose of the journal was to further his point of view, saying in the first issue that the
However, the journal did become a forum for argumentation about diverse views, and Tucker credited both 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 the social anarchist

Social anarchism

Social anarchism is a term originally used in 1971 by Giovanni Baldelli as the title of his book where he discusses the organization of an ethical society from an anarchist point of view...

 Proudhon as influences for Liberty. He says of Proudhon: "Liberty is…a journal brought into existence almost as a direct consequences of the teachings of Proudhon…" (Liberty I). He later said that Liberty was "the foremost organ of Josiah Warren's doctrines" (Liberty IX).

Revival

In 1974, an attempt to revive Tucker's Liberty was undertaken by some of Laurance Labadie's associates. Edited by Earl Foley and Walter Carroll, it billed itself as "The Revival of Liberty." The first issue contained articles by 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....

, Lynne Farrow, and Earl Foley. Its editorial says: "We align ourselves with the Individualist Anarchist tradition of Josiah Warren and Benjamin Tucker." The revival did not survive past the first issue.

In 2007, mutualist archivist Shawn P. Wilbur used microfiche obtained from Libertarian Microfiche Publishing

John Zube

John Zube is a German-Australian libertarian activist and founder of the Libertarian Microfiche Publishing project.Born in Germany, Zube was introduced to libertarianism by his father, Kurt Zube, a prominent individualist anarchist persecuted under the Nazis...

 to release the first full-text digital archive of Liberty.

External links

• Individual Liberty a collection of many of Tucker's publications from Liberty
• Comprehensive Index to LIBERTY
• Benjamin Tucker, Liberty, and Individualist Anarchism by 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:...
  
  
• Benjamin R Tucker & the Champions of Liberty: A Centenary Anthology edited by Edited by Michael E. Coughlin, Charles H. Hamilton and Mark A. Sullivan
• The English Individualists As They Appear In Liberty by Carl Watner
• Benjamin Tucker and His Periodical, Liberty by Carl Watner
  Carl Watner
  Carl Watner is an American author and historian of libertarian studies, and a voluntaryist. He has written articles for Reason magazine, The Libertarian Forum, and The Journal of Libertarian Studies....
  
  
• Benjamin Tucker, Liberty and Taxation
• Complete archive of Liberty and Libertas at the Libertarian Labyrinth