American personal anarchism of American personal anarchism

Joshua Warren is often considered the first American personal anarchist. His journal The Peaceful Revolutionist, which he began in 1833, is then considered the first anarchist-issued journal. In 1825, Warren participated in an immigrant community experiment led by Robert Owen in an attempt to create a harmonious collectivist community, an experiment that later ended in failure. In the conclusion of his review of the experiment's failure, he vehemently argued for the adoption of a system of individualism and private property instead. He summarized his review of the failed collectivist experiment in Practical Details, in which he outlined his radical individualism and argued strongly for the negative liberty of the individual:

Society must be changed to protect the sovereignty of each individual from violation. All institutions which may connect or unite men with each other, and all other institutions which may render the individual incapable of free action at all times, and of free disposition of property-so long as such action does not interfere with the equal rights of others-must be avoided.

In True Civilization, Warren equated "individual sovereignty" with the "inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" espoused in the American Declaration of Independence. He asserts that the sovereignty of the individual is "inherent" and "cannot be separated or transferred by the organism" and therefore "this nature cannot be altered, and every man has the same absolute right to pursue his convictions or his own peculiarities, wherever they may lead him. Every man has the same absolute right to pursue his own convictions or his own peculiarities, to whatever extent they may be attained, so long as they do not interfere with others." Warren also coined the phrase "cost is the price limit" to describe his interpretation of the labor theory of value.

The labor theory of value asserts that the price of a good is determined by the amount of labor used to produce it. From this argument, Warren argues that it is immoral to raise the price of a good above the cost of production. He called his benchmark maxim "cost is the price limit". Warren also argued that if labor itself is the ultimate value, then two different individuals performing equal amounts of labor must equal equalize the value.

In 1827, Warren based his theory on the creation of an experimental store, called the "Cincinnati Time Store" (Cincinnati Time Store), to assist the store's labor issued by the proof of the ticket as a currency, people can hold the ticket to buy the store's products. This experiment with labor certificates can be regarded as the first practice of Proudhon's economic theory of mutualism. Both Warren and Proudhon, who belonged to the United States and Europe, developed similar philosophies, yet they never worked together and never heard of each other. Benjamin Tucker argued that the theory of profit as exploitation, rooted in the value of labor, was first developed by Warren, then by Proudhon, then by Marx.

Like all later American individualists, Warren was a strong proponent of the right of individuals to keep the products of their labor, including the means of production, as private property. He was also an early opponent of state ownership of land, believing that it would create special privileged classes and monopolies, though as he later presented in Equitable Commerce, he also accepted the right to own, buy, and sell land. But he only supported land trafficking where no profit was generated. This position was also adopted by some subsequent anarchists such as Stephen Peel Andrews.

Warren declared, "By removing government, we remove the greatest threat to human rights." American historian James J. Martin has said, "The basic structure of American anarchism is undoubtedly derived from the social and economic experiments and writings of Joshua Warren," and American anarchists after Warren have honored his influence. Stephen Peel Andrews was a personal anarchist and a close friend of Joshua Warren. Originally involved in the Fourierist movement, Andrews became a radical individualist after reading much of Warren's work. He insisted on the supremacy of the principle of "individual sovereignty".

Andrews argued that when individuals acted in their own self-interest, they inadvertently benefited society as a whole. He argues that it was a "mistake" for humans to create a "state, church, or public **** ethic" because these institutions and traditions emphasize that individuals should serve the group rather than pursue their own happiness. In Love, Marriage and Divorce, and the Sovereignty of the Individual, he states, "Let's give up the problem of solving the evils created by the original government with more government. The solution should be- toward individualism and liberty without government...It is nature that created man, not the state; and as long as there are states in the world, the liberty of the individual must be violated."

In 1851, Andrews, along with Warren, founded an individual anarchist community on Long Island, New York, called Modern Times. Speaking of Andrews' contribution to personal anarchism, Benjamin Tucker said, "Anarchists will remember him especially for having left the best written defense of anarchist principles in the English language. William Green did not transform himself into a full-fledged anarchist until the last decade before his death, although he was involved in the anarchist movement for much longer, and he made a considerable contribution to the development of individualist economic theory. Warren advocated the individualist economic philosophy of "cost-as-price limitation," while Glynn is best known for his concept of "mutual banking" (although Lysander Spooner had developed the concept of such banking in earlier writings, he did not collaborate with other anarchists at the time). (although Lysander Spooner had developed it in his earlier writings, he did not work with other anarchists at the time). Green is sometimes called the "American Proudhon" because his concept of mutual banking was quite similar to that of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon in France.

He is best known and most widely circulated for a paper entitled Mutual Banking. Benjamin Tucker said, "I am indebted to Glynn's Mutual Banking for documenting more financial knowledge than in all my similar books and journals-it is the most succinct, straightforward, and yet lucid treatise on the theory of mutual money."

Green saw an urgent need for a bank to serve as an intermediary where those with surplus capital could lend it to those in need. He believed that the government requirement of a license to establish a bank was a serious impediment to those interested in establishing mutual interest banks. Glynn recognized that interest rates were set by supply and demand, but he believed that if lending and interest rates were allowed to compete freely, the market would produce some degree of "natural rate of interest," under which he believed banks could not make any profit.

He argued that such mutual banks should allow individuals to use any of their property as the currency of trade. He strongly criticized the government for making its own official currency the only "legal tender" and monopolizing the right of others to issue it. Glynn and several other prominent individualists also worked together to obtain a license to create a bank, but were rejected because they were pursuing a mutual bank. But all this only strengthened the resolve of the individual anarchists to oppose the "bank monopoly". Ezra Haywood, another individual anarchist influenced by Warren, was also a radical abolitionist and feminist. He also wrote one of the earliest essays on anarcho-feminism. Haywood believed that the excessive aggregation of capital in the hands of a few in society at the time was due to the privileges granted by the government to a few individuals and corporations.

He said, "Government, like the northeast wind, blew property into the hands of a few aristocrats, and the price paid was a serious erosion of the foundations of democracy. Through cunning legislative acts...the privileged class is then able to steal the property of the majority, using the laws of the government as a backstop."

He thinks it is perverse to make a profit on the rent of buildings. He wasn't opposed to rent, but he didn't think the total amount of rent should exceed the sum of the costs of relocating, insuring, and repairing the home that the homeowner was paying. He even argued that if the tenant kept the house in better condition while it was occupied than when it was unoccupied, the owner should in turn pay the tenant rent. While other individual anarchists such as Warren, Andrews, and Green supported the idea that unoccupied land could be used by someone to gain ownership, Haywood thought it was evil to title unused land.

Haywood clashed with Warren on this and other issues, but the two remained friendly. Haywood's philosophy was popularized through the wide range of pamphlets and articles he wrote, and he also republished many of Warren's and Green's works, further expanding the idea of personal anarchism. Influenced by Warren (whom Tucker called the "first light" in his life), Green, Heywood, as well as Proudhon in France and Max Stirner in Germany, Benjamin Tucker is perhaps the best known of the American individualists. Tucker defined anarchism as "the idea that all human affairs should be self-managed or spontaneously organized by individuals, and that the state should be abolished."

Like the individualists who inspired him, he rejected the notion that "society" has rights in and of itself, arguing that only individuals can have rights. At the same time, like all anarchists, he rejected the exercise of democracy by government because it could result in majority rule over minorities. Tucker's main concern, however, was economic. He opposed profit, believing that it could only be produced if government "suppresses or restricts competition" and if there was an extreme concentration of wealth.

He believed that restrictions on competition came with four "monopolies": banking monopolies, land monopolies, tariff monopolies, and patent and copyright monopolies. According to Tucker, he believed that the most detrimental of these was the monopoly on money, because it would impose restrictions on competitors who wanted to enter the banking industry and issue money. Monopolization of unused land was also harmful because it concentrated wealth in the hands of a privileged few.

Tucker clearly rejected the notion of collectivism - economic egalitarianism, for example - and argued that the unequal distribution of wealth was an inevitable consequence of a free environment.

Tucker believed that monopolization of the economy forced almost everyone to engage in usurious practices. But by the same token, he believed that the problem could be solved by abolishing the monopoly on banking. The "prime culprit" of the banking monopoly was the state -- because it was the state that created the monopoly -- and the "prime usurers" were those who enjoyed the privileges of the monopoly, not ordinary profit-seeking individuals. Although Tucker considered the taking of profits to be "usurious," he argued against prohibiting people from taking profits, believing that individuals should have the right to enter into any contract so long as it did not go so far as to harm or kill human beings: "We are defending the right to take usurious profits, not the right of usury itself," he said. we are defending the right to take usury's profits, not the right to usury itself." He believed that everyone should be allowed to make loans without a government license, and he believed that as competition increased, it would become increasingly difficult to make a profit from making loans. Tucker believed that if the banking industry was deregulated, labor wages would rise. He believes that if the banking industry competes with each other, it will lower bank interest rates and further stimulate entrepreneurship. He believes that this would dramatically reduce the number of individuals seeking wage jobs, allowing them to start their own businesses, and that the ensuing increased competition would further raise labor wages. "Therefore, pulling interest rates down would also trigger a wave of wage increases."

Tucker opposes the protection of unused land, arguing that land should be granted ownership only when it is occupied or used. He believes that if all "monopolies" were broken up, private ownership of capital would be more widely distributed throughout society. This would increase competition in the lending and hiring markets, making profit almost impossible. Tucker initially placed his philosophy on natural law, but after reading the egoistic writings of Max Stirner, he came to believe that morality and rights could not exist until a contract was made, and that therefore the contract was necessarily the same as the morality and the rights themselves, guided by human self-interest, which is the foundation of private law.

Tucker published a journal called Liberty, which is widely regarded as the best journal of personal anarchism ever published in the English-speaking world. Tucker has also described his philosophy as "fearless Jeffersonian democracy."

Like many individualists, Tucker did not believe that the utopian ideal of peace would be realized in anarchy. So he argued that individual liberty and property should be left in the hands of private security agencies, but he opposed a state monopoly on security services, arguing that private firms providing security services should compete with each other in the free market, saying, "Security services, like other services, are labor that is useful and in demand, and therefore should be economically compatible with the principles of need and supply. Therefore, it should be a commodity that is economically compatible with the principles of demand and supply. In a free market commodities would be priced at the cost of production, competition would be quite universal, and the consumer would choose the lowest price and the best quality; but at present the production and buying and selling of such commodities is still monopolized by the State; and the State, like all monopolies, charges exorbitant fees... and in the end the State charges more than all other monopolies, because it is able to enjoy the benefits of the monopoly, and because it has the power of the State. monopolists, because it can sit on the privilege of forcing everyone to buy its products, whether people really want to or not."

In Tucker's later years Tucker said, "Capitalism is at least tolerable; socialism and ****productivism, however, are absolutely not." According to Susan Love Brown, this theory "further expanded into the anarcho-capitalism that emerged in the 1970s." Lysander Spooner spent most of his life working little with other individualists, and it was not until he published his most recognizable papers in his later years that he began to make an impact. At the time, his philosophy ranged from advocating limits on the role of the state to outright opposition to state institutions. Spooner was a strong supporter of "natural law," the idea that all individuals have a "natural right" to do whatever they want, as long as it does not infringe on the bodies or property of others.

With natural rights came the right to contract, which Spooner thought was very important. He believed that governments should not create laws because laws already existed naturally; any government action that violated natural law (using coercion) was illegal. Since governments do not enter into contracts with the individuals they rule, he believed that governments themselves violate natural law because they use a system of taxation to force individuals who have not entered into contracts with them to pay for them. He also rejected the fairly widespread concept of majority rule, and as far as democracy was concerned, he argued that democracy also required the consent of the minority, and that the majority had to abide by the limits of the natural law, which applied to all individuals, and could not use coercion: "No matter how many majorities there may be, or how many people may enter into a constitutional contract with the government, if they undermine or violate anyone, the contract of government is absolutely illegitimate! contract of government is absolutely illegitimate and void."

Spooner, like other individual anarchists, was extremely focused on private property rights. He wrote, "...the principle of personal property...declares that all men have an absolute dominion over the product of his own labor, independently of any other person." He added two ways in which private property can be formed: "First, by simply taking possession of natural resources, or the products of nature's concoctions; and second, by producing other wealth by hand. "

He argues that it is not enough to simply take natural resources, but that a man must mix his own labor with them to make them his private property, and that in his view land can become private property through labor: "Before a man can claim possession of some of the natural resources of the earth, he must first perform the act of taking possession of them, in order to make them his own. before he can make it his own property. He must take possession of a certain piece of land before he can make it his property, before he can reap the harvest of that land, before he can settle on it." Unlike Tucker, Spooner did not have a "possession and use" restriction on land-he believed that as long as the land was mixed with a person's labor, the right to property arose, and even if the land was not used, the right would still be maintained.

He claimed that natural resources only become a person's private property through his labor, and thus overcome "primitive barbarism," saying, "The only way in which natural resources can be used for the benefit of mankind is if they are appropriated by the individual, and thus become the private property of the individual. private property." Unlike Tucker, Spooner supports the right to intellectual property, believing that concepts conceived by individuals should also be considered their private property. He said, "Whether an author wants to disseminate his concepts is entirely up to his private decision."

Spooner was not opposed to charging interest rates, but he believed that the high interest rates of the time were caused by government restrictions on opening banks. He said, "It is the natural right of a man to borrow capital and to mix it with labor, and all statutes which limit the rate of interest are arbitrary and despotic." Spooner argued that the government's legal restriction on interest rates would discourage those who had little access to capital, because lenders would not be able to compensate for the higher risk by raising interest rates because of the law, and would then be reluctant to lend to those with lower qualifications.14 Spooner also did not object to hiring/financing of workers. Spooner was also not opposed to the hire/hire mechanism: "If the laborer owns the stone, wood, iron, wool, and cotton, and mixes his labor with it, he is justly entitled to the value of the additional labor he has done on these articles. But if he does not own these articles, and mixes his labor with them, then he cannot possess the value of his additional labor with them, but must sell the value of his labor to the owner of them." Spooner did, however, encourage individuals to develop their own businesses so that they did not have to rely on employers for their paychecks. At the same time, he argued that if capital were exempted from government restrictions, then "no one who could afford to take capital and start his own business would be willing to work for others for wages."

One of Spooner's most famous exploits was his challenge to the government's postal monopoly. Interest rates at the U.S. Post Office were frighteningly high in the 1840s, so in 1844 Spooner founded the American Letter Mail Company, which lent itself to offering lower interest rates and cheaper stamps to fight the monopoly of the U.S. Postal Service (USPS). Although Spooner's postal company was ultimately a commercial success, the government sued him in order to maintain the forced monopoly, leaving him financially drained in the ensuing litigation just to defend his right to compete. Benjamin Tucker called Spooner "one of the greatest contributors to the political philosophical wisdom of mankind." Traditional individual anarchism, which originated in the 19th century, is usually opposed to profit, as well as to so-called "capitalism". However, anarcho-capitalism, which is not opposed to profit, is still seen by some as a form of personal anarchism. For example, contemporary anti-capitalist individualist Joe Peacott claims that individual anarchism is anti-capitalist and contrasts it with anarcho-capitalism. However, he does not deny that anarcho-capitalists are part of individual anarchists, and calls them "capital anarchists" and "individualists". Individualist Larry Gambone argues that anarchism itself is incompatible with capitalism, stating that "for anarchists, capitalism is the result of state production, and therefore all capitalism refers to state capitalism. " . However, Gambone points out that there are problems with this definition, stating that when "classical anarchists" refer to capitalists, they are usually referring to "those who acquire wealth by manipulating government privileges gained through government power," whereas modern free-market free-will advocates refer to capitalism. The modern free-market free-willist refers to capitalism as being in favor of "free trade" and against "collusion between business and government", and says that the mercantilism that the free-willist vigorously opposes is in fact the classical anarchist's "capitalism". capitalism". It follows that anarcho-capitalists must also oppose what classical anarchists call "capitalism". In addition, the individualist Wendy Moaloy says that when traditional individualists refer to the word "capitalism" they "mean state capitalism - collusion between the state and corporations".