| Benjamin Tucker | |
| Birth Name: | Benjamin Ricketson Tucker |
| Birth Date: | April 17, 1854 |
| Birth Place: | South Dartmouth, Massachusetts, United States |
| Death Place: | Monaco |
| Occupation: | Editor, publisher, writer |
| Main Interests: | Politics, economics |
| School Tradition: | Individualist anarchism Libertarian socialism Mutualism |
| Signature: | Benjamin_Tucker_signature.png |
| Region: | Western philosophy |
| Era: | Modern philosophy |
Benjamin Ricketson Tucker (; 1854–1939) was an American individualist anarchist and self-identified socialist.[1] Tucker was the editor and publisher of the American individualist anarchist periodical Liberty (1881–1908). Tucker described his form of anarchism as "consistent Manchesterism" and "unterrified Jeffersonianism".[2]
Tucker looked upon anarchism as a part of the broader socialist movement. Tucker harshly opposed state socialism and was a supporter of free-market socialism[3] and libertarian socialism[4] which he termed anarchist or anarchistic socialism.[5] He connected the classical economics of Adam Smith and the Ricardian socialists as well as that of Josiah Warren, Karl Marx and Pierre-Joseph Proudhon to socialism.[6] Some modern commentators have described Tucker as an anarcho-capitalist,[7] [8] although this has been disputed by others.[9] [10] During his lifetime, Tucker opposed capitalism[11] and considered himself a socialist due to his belief in the labor theory of value and disputed many of the dictionary definitions of the term which he believed were inaccurate.[12]
Tucker made his editorial debut in anarchist circles in 1876, when Ezra Heywood published Tucker's English translation of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon's classic work What is Property? In 1877, he published his first original journal Radical Review, but it ran for only four issues. From August 1881 to April 1908, Tucker published Liberty, a major individualist-anarchist periodical.[13]
The periodical was instrumental in developing and formalizing the individualist anarchist philosophy through publishing essays and serving as a format for debate. Beside Tucker, contributors also included Lysander Spooner, Gertrude Kelly, Auberon Herbert, Dyer Lum, Joshua K. Ingalls, John Henry Mackay, Victor Yarros, Wordsworth Donisthorpe, James L. Walker, J. William Lloyd, Florence Finch Kelly, Voltairine de Cleyre, Steven T. Byington, John Beverley Robinson, Jo Labadie, Lillian Harman and Henry Appleton. Included in its masthead is a quote from Proudhon saying that liberty is "Not the Daughter But the Mother of Order".[13]
In 1939, Tucker died in the company of his family in Monaco and carried his beliefs to his deathbed.[14]
Towards the end of Tucker's life, anarchist Victor Yarros described him as a "forceful and clear writer, but a poor speaker" who considered writing for bourgeois newspapers to be "the worst form of prostitution".
Tucker's influences include Ricardo Mella.[15]
Tucker said that he became an anarchist at the age of eighteen.[16] In the anarchist periodical Liberty, he published the original work of Stephen Pearl Andrews, Joshua K. Ingalls, Lysander Spooner, Auberon Herbert, Dyer Lum, Victor Yarros and Lillian Harman (daughter of free love anarchist Moses Harman) as well as his own writing. After the French libertarian communist Joseph Déjacque,[17]
According to Frank Brooks, an historian of American individualist anarchism, it is easy to misunderstand Tucker's claim to socialism. Before Marxists established a hegemony over definitions of socialism, "the term socialism was a broad concept". Tucker as well as most of the writers and readers of Liberty understood socialism to refer to one or more of various theories aimed at solving the labor problem through radical changes in the capitalist economy. Descriptions of the problem, explanations of its causes and proposed solutions (abolition of private property and support of cooperatives or public ownership) varied among socialist philosophies.[18]
Not all modern economists believe Marxists established a hegemony over definitions of socialism.[19]
Tucker said socialism was the claim that "labor should be put in possession of its own" while holding that what he respectively termed state socialism and anarchistic socialism had in common was the labor theory of value.[20]
Instead of asserting that common ownership was the key to eroding differences of economic power and appealing to social solidarity, as did many social anarchists, Tucker's individualist anarchism advocated distribution of property in an undistorted natural free market as a mediator of egoistic impulses and a source of social stability rooted in a free-market socialist system.[21]
Tucker first favored a natural rights philosophy in which an individual had a right to own the fruits of his labor, but then abandoned it in favor of egoist anarchism (influenced by Max Stirner) in which he believed that only the right of might exists until overridden by contract. According to Charles A. Madison, Tucker promoted full individual liberty and disdained communism in any form, believing that even a stateless communist society must encroach upon the liberty of individuals, insisting instead on the voluntary nature of all association and rejecting majority rule, organized religion and the institution of marriage due to their compulsory nature.[22]
Tucker connected his libertarian socialist economic views which included his opposition to non-labor income in the form of profit, interest and rent with those of Adam Smith, Josiah Warren, Proudhon and Marx while arguing against American anti-socialists who declared socialism as imported.[23]
Tucker disapproved of government ownership because to him state control was the most complete and most obnoxious form of monopoly, "a tyrant living by theft ... wasteful, careless, clumsy, and short-sighted". Tucker maintained that all forms of authoritarian activities imply the resort to force and nothing good or lasting was ever accomplished by compulsion. Thus, he refused to condone the overthrow of the state by violent means, arguing that abolishing government would likely result in physical conflicts over land and a reaction to restore the old regime. Hence, Tucker preached widespread education and ultimately a passive resistance that was to take forms such as refusal to pay taxes, the evasion of jury duty and military service and the non-observance of compulsion. Once society reached this state, individual liberty for all would prevail as a matter of course.[22]
Tucker envisioned an individualist anarchist society with "each man reaping the fruits of his labour and no man able to live in idleness on an income from capital ... become[ing] a great hive of Anarchistic workers, prosperous and free individuals [combining] to carry on their production and distribution on the cost principle"[24] rather than a bureaucratic organization of workers organized into rank and file unions. However, he did hold a genuine appreciation for labor unions (which he called trades-union socialism) and saw it as "an intelligent and self-governing socialism", and praised their "substitution of industrial socialism for usurping legislative mobism".[25]
According to Peter Marshall, "the egalitarian implications of traditional individualist anarchists" such as Tucker and Lysander Spooner have been overlooked.[26]
Tucker rejected the legislative programs of labor unions, laws imposing a short day, minimum wage laws, forcing businesses to provide insurance to employees and compulsory pension systems.
Tucker was opposed to compulsion and vehemently opposed reform movements with paternalistic goals such as state aid. He did not have a utopian vision of anarchy in which individuals would refrain from coercing others.[27]
Tucker argued that the poor condition of American workers resulted from four legal monopolies based in the authoritarianism of the state:
Tucker believed that his contemporary millionaires received their wealth through the exploitation of monopolies.
For several decades, his focus became the state's economic control of how trade could take place and what currency counted as legitimate. He saw interest and profit as a form of exploitation, made possible by the banking monopoly, in turn maintained through coercion and invasion. Tucker called any such interest and profit usury and saw it as the basis of the oppression of the workers. In his words, "interest is theft, Rent Robbery, and Profit Only Another Name for Plunder".[28]
Tucker opposed protectionism, believing that tariffs caused high prices by preventing national producers from having to compete with foreign competitors. He believed that free trade would help keep prices low and therefore would assist laborers in receiving what he called their "natural wage". Tucker objected to the exploitation of individuals and explained that only under anarchism will man be truly free, saying: "When interest, rent, and profit disappear under the influence of free money, free land, and free trade, it will make no difference whether men work for themselves, or are employed, or employ others. In any case they can get nothing but that wage for their labor which free competition determines".[22]
Tucker came to hold the position that no rights exist until they are created by contract. This led him to controversial positions such as claiming that infants had no rights and were the property of their parents because they did not have the ability to contract. He said that a person, who physically tries to stop a mother from throwing her "baby into the fire", should be punished for violating her property rights. For example, he said that children would shed their status as property when they became old enough to contract "to buy or sell a house", noting that the precocity varies by age and would be determined by a jury in the case of a complaint.[29]