Category Archives: anarchy

Save the Post Office? I think not.

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Few people can envision a society that can function without force, monopoly and government. Our job, as anarchists, however, is to talk about, and, when possible, to show how free people could get things done fairly, equitably, and without coercion. Our arguments, however, are often dismissed as naive and impractical, and most contemporary anarchists projects are poor examples of how things might work in a libertarian society.

In light of the current discussion of how the government postal monopoly should or should not function, I think the writings and actions of an old New England anarchist should be remembered. Lysander Spooner and his associates challenged the idea that only the state can–and should–deliver the mail by setting up a competing private postal company. The American Letter Mail Company provided cheaper and more efficient delivery than the the government’s postal service and threatened to outcompete it. While the state responded, as it usually does, with force–arresting Spooner and eventually forcing him out of business using its courts–it was forced, by Spooner’s example, to lower its rates and increase its efficiency.

Anyone interested in learning more about this example of anarchy in action should check out this link: https://fee.org/articles/lysander-spooner-the-anarchist-who-single-handedly-took-on-the-us-post-office/.

Affinity and the Passional Conspiracy

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“Liberated desire is an expansive energy—an opening of possibilities—and wants to share projects and actions, joys and pleasures, love and revolt.  Insurrection of one may indeed be possible.  I would even argue that it is the necessary first step towards a shared insurrectional project.  But an insurrection of two, three, many increases courage and enjoyment and opens a myriad of passional possibilities.” Wolfi Landstreicher “Against the Logic of Submission,” Willful Disobedience (95)

The notion that there is an impossible conflict between the individual and the social remains on a shallow level.  A tension, certainly, but not a contradiction.  It is through just these sorts of tensions that greater levels can be achieved.  Shallow thinkers have proposed that one must choose between individualism and the communal.  Yet it is possible to have community, friendship, and alliances while still remaining individualist.  These are the good things that communism supposedly brings, but really it doesn’t.  Communism is an ideology based on a shallow reification of these values.  Actually, my individualism is enhanced by the presence of others whom I value.  This doesn’t invalidate the sentiments of pessimism towards others that is so easy to feel, merely negates the universality of the proposition.  William Burroughs called the sort of person who one can find affinity with, but is able to mind their own business and not manipulate others, a Johnson.  He said “Yes, you found a Johnson, but you waded through shitville to find him.  You always do.  Just when you think the world is exclusively populated by shits, you find a Johnson” (Burroughs x).  Much of the time it does feel like every person encountered is terrible, but there are always people to connect with through bonds of friendship and affinity.  There is no need for a mass or majority in order to begin the war.  In fact, it is an impossible place to start.

When individuals come together based on affinity, they are able to accomplish greater things than alone.  These bonds of affinity take the form of synergistic mutuality: the combination of forces do not function together as arithmetic, but as a gestalt greater than the sum of their parts.  When these connections are based on affinity they are the opposite of the herd.  Instead, they are an amplification of the individual, the union of self-owning ones.  Contrasting his preferred view of individualist organization against the hive society and the state, Max Stirner said “For me, the egoist, the welfare of this ‘human society’ is not in my heart. I sacrifice nothing for it, I only use it, but to be able to use it completely, I transform it instead into my property and my creation; in other words, I destroy it and in its place form the association of egoists” (Stirner 192).  In a way I like the more archaic translation that was used by Stephen Byington: the “Union of Egoists,” as it more directly contrasts this view of affinity to leftist collectivism.

It isn’t always easy to find these connections (Nietzsche said: “I had reason to look about me for scholarly, bold, and industrious comrades (I am still looking)” (21)).  The desire for affinity and community can take the form of a selfish one.  “If I write, it is not as they say, ‘for others,’”  said Raoul Vaneigem, “I have no wish to exorcise other people’s ghosts.  I string words together as a way of getting out of the well of isolation, because I need others to pull me out” (Vaneigem 111).  The best way to look at this selfish affinity is as friendship.  Passionate friendship can take a form that is extreme, intense.  Or, as George Orwell described a soldier in the Spanish Civil War, “It was the face of a man who would commit murder and throw away his life for a friend” (3).

The notion that the needs of the individual and the social are irreconcilable is a miserabilist notion.  One does not need to choose between being an individualist or a communist.  Bob Black suggests the reconciliation take the form of “Marxism-Stirnerism,” through which “every orthodoxy prating of freedom or liberation is called into question, anarchism included” (Black Abolition 130).  It might be said that one could be an egoist communist, but even this is misleading.  Individualists have always desired affinity, compassion, and mutuality.  In short, a communal structure.  The communal structure must be flexible and malleable to do this, a sort of chaotic system.  This is intrinsic to the anarchist project to begin with.  The classical anarcho-communists were individualists.  The classical individualist anarchists believed in community.  Yet even though this is intrinsic, both sides unfortunately forget in practice.  Anarcho-communists become ideologues for the organized collective (now more than ever).  Individual anarchists fall into atomized alienation.  Bob Black, expanding from his concept “Marxism-Stirnerism,” proposed the idea of “Type 3” anarchism—both communist and egoist: “the Type 3 anarchist categorically rejects categorization” and “takes more out of anarchism than anarchism takes out of her” (Black Defacing 54-55).  It is leftist dogma that a moral person who desires liberation must reject selfishness.  With this they throw away a great weapon and draw to them the chains of a reified notion of liberation.  My selfishness includes the selfishness for a world where my friends and loved ones are free, vital, and feral.  My selfishness might, like James Walker’s selfishness, “hope better things from you” (Walker 5).

Max Stirner explained this affinity by stating “if the world is ours, it no longer attempts any violence against us, but only with us.  My selfishness has an interest in the liberation of the world, so that it will become my property” (Stirner 318).  Alienation does nothing for the health of my subjectivity.  It craves the nourishment of the subjectivities of others.  Bob Black described this expansive egoism: “The radically and rationally (self)conscious egoist, appreciating this, enriches him-self in and through other subjectivities.  In social life at its (con)sensual and satisfying best—sex, conversation, creation—taking from and giving to others constitutes a single play-activity rich with multiplier effects.  For the lucid and ludic egoist, anything less than generalized egoism is just not enough” (Black Abolition 129).

Stephen Duncombe provided a model of how such a union of self-owning ones might function in the form of the zine network (which still defiantly exists, despite the technocracy’s frantic pleas that we believe in its death): “a zine network proposes something different: a community of people linked via bonds of difference, each sharing their originality… This model is the very essence of a libertarian community: individuals free to be who they want and to cultivate their own interests, while simultaneously sharing in each other’s difference” (Duncombe 58).  In this way it can be an example of an unfolding heterotopia, a community of difference.  Other examples of such structures based on radical difference might be found in queer communities, particularly in examples like radical faeries.  Radical faeries are particularly notable in this regard, as they arose as the opposition party within the opposition party of gay liberation.  They adopted a stance of being intrinsically different, rather than a marginal political group that would be just like anyone else if afforded political protections.  Instead they tended towards a chaotic paganism for spirituality and the anarchic for politics.  Most importantly they embrace the dropout ethics, trying to build rural land bases that could serve as a point of escape, even if on a temporary basis.  Jack Davis, participant, provided this definition: “Radical Faeries tend to be the people who don’t fit into any mainstream—gay or otherwise.  When I went to my first Radical Faerie gathering, I saw all these other fags didn’t fit in, either.  They were political, they did ritual, and they were funny.  It felt like ‘coming home’—finding all these other weird people who only did the same crazy things I did—they appreciated that I did them” (Vale and Sulak 189).

The informal organization of the anarchist hunter gatherer societies exhibits many of the traits I have been talking about. There is a strong sense of sharing, gift giving, and reciprocation.  Yet there is not a formal sense of obligation, or a permanent tie to one relationship.  One anthropology text described how “social density always seems in a state of flux as people spend more or less time away from camp and as they move to other camps, either on visits or more permanently” (Haviland 160).  This can be for external reasons, such as resource shortage, or for internal reasons, such as conflicts that can’t be resolved or just getting on each other’s nerves.  Either way, this is one way to preserve the community, by not making the ties rigid and permanent.

A strong resistance, an insurrectionary situation, can often be actualized when a multitude comes together.  The anonymous tract At Daggers Drawn said “to say we are the only rebels in a sea of submission is reassuring because it puts an end to the game in advance.  We are simply saying that we do not know who our accomplices are and we need a social tempest to discover them” (23).  Sometimes an isolated individual is capable of only a futile thrashing out, a meaningless violence.  A multitude can apply strong pressure with the use of almost no violence and break down structures of domination.  The multitude is capable of some level of success, the individual capable only of becoming a martyr.  Ideally this works synergistically, with individual acts leading to a spreading affinity.  This union further valorizes the individual.  Ideally this creates a feedback loop “in the spreading revolt we will really be able to perceive a marvelous conspiracy of egos aimed at creating society without bosses or domination.  A society of free and unique individuals” (At Daggers Drawn 29).

To be clear though, the multitude are often highly problematic.  Even though structures and processes are presented as non-authoritarian alternatives, such as consensus decision-making, these processes can be dangerous in that they conceal power dynamics which have been internalized.  They also encourage abstractions such as “the consent of the people,” which are highly destructive.  There is no such thing as “the people,” only specific groupings of people.  To gain consent of such a massive grouping is functionally impossible.  Those who claim to have such are fooling themselves with illusion.  The structures of mass society have rendered a large portion of people into a herd or cog state (as many, or more, of these people can be found among the anarchist subcultural scene).  The class struggle social democrat faction of anarchism does nothing to alleviate this problem, merely attempting to manipulate the masses into their organization federation pyramid/ponzi schemes.  If they were to succeed it would be an even more dehumanizing scenario than our current corporate state.  Luckily the average person hasn’t been destroyed enough (even after school and work!) to fall for these federation schemes.

This isn’t necessarily the most cynical view.  Organization can easily be temporary and pragmatic.  Renzo Novatore stated that he intended to find struggles that he felt affinity with but after the struggle was complete continue on a line of flight: “When you will be ready—God, what an endless wait!—it won’t nauseate me to go along the road a while with you!  But when you stop, I shall continue on my mad and triumphant march toward the great and sublime conquest of nothing!” (135).  This isn’t against affinity or action, this is against permanence and rigid organization.

What this leaves is the affinity group.  The majority will never change anything, but a small group of dissatisfied weirdos who come together based on affinity could throw off the constraints of authority and liberate their desires.  They would be an irresistible force, totally seductive.  This conspiracy might even actualize our wildest dreams, an abolition of the mass because the mass refused to be herded.  They could become autonomous individuals, a rising of free spirits!  And even if this fails, it’s better than a lifetime of misery.

Works cited:

Anonymous.  At Daggers Drawn.  Trans. Jean Weir.  Portland OR: Eberhardt Press, 2009.

Black, Bob.  The Abolition of Work and Other Essays.  Port Townsend, WA: Loompanics Unlimited, 1986.

Black, Bob.  Defacing the Currency.  Berkeley CA: LBC books, 2012.

Burroughs, William S.  Queer.  NY: Penguin, 1985, 1987.

Duncombe, Stephen.  Notes from Underground: Zines and the Politics of Alternative Culture.  Bloomington, IN: Microcosm, 1997, 2008.

Haviland, William.  Cultural Anthropology (10th edition).  Fort Worth, TX: Harcourt, 2002.

Landstreicher, Wolfi.  Willful Disobedience.  Berkeley, CA: Ardent Press, 2009.

Nietzsche, Friedrich.  The Genealogy of Morals & Ecce Homo.  Trans. Walter Kaufman.  NY: Vintage, 1967, 1989.

Novatore, Renzo.  The Collected Works of Renzo Novatore.  Trans. Wolfi Landstreicher.  Berkeley, CA: Ardent 2012.

Orwell, George.  Homage to Catalonia.  NY: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1952.

Stirner, Max.  The Unique and Its Property.  Trans. Wolfi Landstreicher.  Baltimore, MD: Underworld Amusements, 2017.

Vale, V and John Sulak.  RE/Search: Modern Pagans.  San Francisco: RE/Search Publications, 2001.

Vaneigem, Raoul.  The Revolution of Everyday Life.  Trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith, London: Rebel Press.  1983, 1993, 2006.Walker, James L.  “What is Justice?” Enemies of Society: An Anthology of Individualist and Egoist Thought.  Berkeley CA: Ardent Press, 2011.

Against Sustainability

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Recently I’ve found myself wishing—when I hear the word “sustainability”—that I had a revolver to reach for.  “Sustainability” has become a coded mask for a cause I detest—the salvation of Capitalism.  Obviously, Too-Late Kapital is running down the road to “global” ragnarok, and has been doing so since the great take-off of the Technopathocracy in about 1830 (when, according to HG Wells, “the first superfluous human was born”)—ie, the Industrial Revolution, the triumph of the Machine over Nature.  Nietzsche dated the birth of the Terminal Human to about this same date; so the first shall be the last.

The whole point of sustainability is to save cars, but re-design them to run on sunshine or salad oil—to save highways, parking lots, jet planes, suburban lawns, bourgeois yuppie liberal smug self-satisfaction and “first world” entitlement—but to transform them all into something beige, crunchy, “ecological,” “organic,” smiley–faced, goodygoody—and to go on like this forever—“sustainably.”  To avoid the Fall, even if it means abandoning huge swathes of the human race and its habitat, so as to salvage the part that counts—US—or put another way, US (of A).  To escape to Mars with Mr Musk in a driverless spaceship “shared” by other billionaires, and fuck all hoi polloi and their degraded junkfood “lifestyle.”

Solar power and wind power, the panaceae of sustainability, are themselves source of vast hellscapes of aesthetic filth and poisonous pollution—the factories (in Mexico, of course) to produce those ubiquitous alien-gray panels and war-of-the-worlds-style windmills (impervious to any poor Don Quixote)—to cover the deserts with black glass, the seas with whining avicidal behemoths—so that WE can go on enjoying our horrid health-food, our idiotic iPhones, our crapulous computers, our tedious televisions—not to mention our armies and police forces, our bureaucrats, politicians, lawyers, silicon-valley “disruptors” and all the other parasites and oppressor-class scumbags who take but never give.

Forget sustainability.  Forget efficiency.  Efficiency is the devil’s shit.  Fuck “green capitalism” and its neat corporate cornucopia of consumer garbage and badly-designed “designer” crapola.  Technology will not solve the “problems” that technology created in the first place, any more than heroin will cure morphine addiction, or arsenic will save you from arsenic poisoning.  The only way to free ourselves from the rule of sick machines is to smash the machines.  The Luddites saw the light already in 1812.  A sledgehammer is the sole solution.

The Anarchist in the Cancer Center

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There are certainly frustrations associated with being an anarchist and working as a nurse.  The entire health care system, like the rest of society, is riddled with authoritarian relationships, corporate penny-pinching and profit-taking, and intrusive government regulations.  The state believes that individuals are not capable of taking care of themselves so it requires licensing of healthcare providers and institutions and prevents people from purchasing most drugs without a doctor’s note.  Besides restricting the number of health care providers and limiting people’s choices in seeking treatment, licensing and prescribing laws institutionalize the hierarchical relationships between doctors and nurses, nurses and patient care techs, and, perhaps most importantly, between those providing care and those receiving it.

I had evolved into an anarchist and individualist before I graduated from nursing school, so I knew what I was up against from the beginning of my career.  But, 40 years later, I remain happy with my choice of an occupation.  I love the work I do and enjoy my relationships with most of my patients and some of my co-workers, including physicians and even some of the administrators.  Besides enjoying my day-to-day work duties and the interactions with patients, I find my areas of specialty, cancer care and infusion nursing, intellectually stimulating, as well.  I get to work in a chemotherapy infusion center, a radiation oncology department and in the office of a group of gynecologic oncologists.  In these various roles I do all sorts of nursing work: I educate, counsel and comfort patients; I support and educate other health care workers: and I work closely—largely collegially—with physicians, nurse practitioners and physician assistants in planning and managing patient care.  This job works for me.

Promoting Autonomy

Over the years I have tried to live out, as well as I can within the constraints of statist health care, my individualist and anarchist values.  In my relationships with my patients, this largely takes the form of making sure the people I care for are knowledgeable enough about their illness and their care options to play a role in determining their treatment.  All too often patients blindly follow the orders of their physicians, simply because they are physicians.  While their treatment plans are generally ones I agree with, I believe people should know why they are getting the drugs or radiation they are receiving, how the treatment works, and what the side effects or other downsides are.

Patients sign form after form declaring they are giving informed consent to this or that treatment or procedure, but most of them are ill-informed, at best.  This is usually not the fault of any individual, but the result of a combination of things: physicians unable to take the time to fully explain treatments, other health care workers who are not knowledgeable enough to answer patient’s questions, and patients who are overwhelmed by their diagnosis and really do not hear or understand what they are being told.  I see it as my job to make sure patients get the information they need when they are most ready to absorb it, so they can understand what is happening to them and make truly educated decisions.

I spend a lot of time explaining to people how to prevent or treat symptoms caused either by their disease or by the treatment they receive from me and others.  Again, whether because they weren’t told how to respond to them or didn’t “hear” what they were told, patients often tolerate treatable conditions, including significant pain, without seeking help from their physician or other healthcare workers.  Something that complicates this piece of my work are the widespread myths about pain medication and addiction, made much worse recently by the so-called “opioid epidemic” which I wrote about in this zine last year.  It is not uncommon for doctors to undertreat people’s pain and for patients to avoid taking narcotic analgesics because they are afraid they will become “addicted.”   This is largely because of the crap the government has been peddling for years about “dangerous” drugs, as well as the punitive laws which sometimes scare well-meaning physicians into denying their patients adequate treatment.  I consider counteracting misconceptions about pain relievers to be a key part of serving my patients well.

I like to think that by encouraging patients to be active participants in treatment planning, enabling them to take charge of maintaining their own health and comfort, and prompting them to question the prevailing myths and “expert” opinions with which they are presented, I promote their independence and autonomy, even if it is only in this one area of their lives.

Nurses as Workers

The other part of my working life where I try to put at least a little anarchy into action is as a union activist.  When I was a grievance officer in my chapter, I spent a fair amount of time advocating for nurses who had gotten into some form of trouble with the boss.  I sat in on disciplinary meetings with nurses and managers, filed grievances as needed and helped people navigate the human resources and payroll bureaucracy when errors were made or people’s contractual rights were violated.  There is a huge disparity in power between management and labor, and unions, for all their faults, add a bit of protection for workers so that some limits can be placed on the ability of managers to discipline, discharge, and generally beat up on workers.  While I no longer work as an “official” grievance officer, I still take part in particularly difficult grievance cases, and continue to be on the union team during contract negotiations and related discussions.  Helping folks out and standing up to the powers that be can be enjoyable. 

But there are also problems with traditional trade unions.  For one thing the contract we sign with the hospital enshrines management rights and the power differential between those who own and run the hospital and the rest of us.  The union is left in the position of just making sure that the boss doesn’t go too far.  We can never challenge, at least through contractual means, the hospital’s power to manage and give orders to the people who do the real work.

Perhaps the biggest problem is that few members actually take part in the life of the union.  A few of us do all the work and negotiating and phone calls, while most people never do any more than vote for officers or participate in contract ratification, if they do even that.  Unions, even traditional AFL-CIO organizations, often have relatively democratic structures, at least on the local level, and have the potential to be a means to fight hierarchical organization and increase the power of individual workers, but they never seem to actually achieve this.  Just as in other institutions and organizations in society at large, there are those in the unions who seek to wield power and influence over others while fattening off the (often mandatory) dues of members, and those who are unwilling or unable to speak truth to power and stand up for themselves.  Corrupt union officials and passive, apathetic members are both to blame for the sorry, hierarchical internal state of most unions.

And finally, the relationship between union and management is regulated extensively by the government, so both sides can appeal to the state to settle disputes when they can’t come to an agreement on their own.  Sometimes the resolution favors the hospital and sometimes it works to the advantage of the union, but in either case it serves to reinforce the control of the process by government, something that is anathema to this anarchist.

What I Would Change?

Inasmuch as I think that the philosophy and scientific basis of allopathic medicine are largely valid, I would hope that much of the work I do would still be done in some form in a free society.  People will still get cancer and require treatment, and, however ineffective allopathic therapies are at times, there is no system of healing that works better.  Of course, preventing illness in the first place works even better at preserving health, but that requires effort on the part of individuals.  While I like to think that free people might take more responsibility for their own well-being and live more healthily in order to stay well and avoid having to deal with physicians and nurses, I’ll believe it only when I see it.

What must change, however is the hierarchical way in which this care is provided.  That will require getting rid of professional licensure and other barriers to entering the healing occupations.  Eliminating licensing by the state and regulation of practice by government boards would do away with the enforced doctor‑nurse-technician-patient hierarchy and allow consumers and providers of health care to contract for services however, wherever, whenever and with whomever they like.  It would also allow providers to team up and practice jointly without one or some giving orders and others simply obeying.

We also have to eliminate the prescription system which keeps individuals from choosing and using the treatments they would like.  This system forces patient to see state-licensed providers for even the simplest and safest medications, driving up costs and bolstering the image of the physician or other provider as parent or priest.  People should be free to ingest, inject or smoke whatever they like without having to get the approval of a state-appointed expert before doing so.  This would include all drugs, including narcotics, stimulants, hallucinogens and other medications which are and have been irrationally demonized by the state, the news media and much of the medical establishment.  Besides freeing up access to medicines in this way, we should also do away with laws granting patent protection and other intellectual “property” rights.  These statutes allow drug manufacturers to charge exorbitant fees for the medicines they produce, an expense which is a key driver in the ever-increasing cost of health care.

Labor laws should be abolished, as well, so that in situations where there are bosses and bossed, the bossed would not be prevented by the government and its police from really taking on the powers that be.  This society and its laws have institutionalized the concept that some people involved in a business should have the legal right to own it and run it, while everyone else is relegated to the status of mere employees who can be dismissed at will.  This idea that some stake-holders in an enterprise should have powers and privileges that are denied to others, including the ones who do the actual work and bring in the money which the bosses pocket disproportionately, is widely believed in this society.  This belief needs to be challenged by anarchists so that people begin to question and reject it.  Once people have come to see the injustice of capitalist ownership and management, the legal framework and enforcement mechanisms which uphold and defend this economic system can be confronted and defeated by those who are its victims.

Until Then

I have laid out above a few basic components of a strategy for changing the current model of health care in the united states into one more suited to free, autonomous individuals, whether they are receiving or providing care.  I recognize that it is unlikely any or all of these changes could take place without a more widespread, revolutionary, change in the rest of society.  Abolishing government, and with it the hierarchy and inequality it enforces, is the only way I can see any real, sustainable change taking place.  Meanwhile, I intend to keep on caring for and empowering my patients and their families, and doing my best to make people think about how health care could be provided in a more humane, respectful, and libertarian way.

A Brief Review of Wm Gary Kline’s The Individualist Anarchists: A Critique of Liberalism

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Kline wrote a very interesting book called The Individualist Anarchists and it does have some useful information that can improve understanding of the philosophy of the 19th century Individualist Anarchists. He mentions Stephen Pearl Andrews, Lysander Spooner, William Greene, Benjamin Tucker and others and portrays them in an accurate light.  He correctly refers to them as Voluntary Socialists or Socialists as he states:

“…but Voluntary Socialists were in unanimity concerning the issue of monopolies in general…”[i]

He also stated Tucker considered Josiah Warren, who was an Individualist Anarchist, to be a Socialist.[ii] 

However in a very interesting (and confusing) twist he considers the Individualists Anarchists to be liberals rather than what they truly are: socialists.  He refers to the Individualist Anarchist philosophy as liberal many times.  Some examples include: 

“The brand of liberalism to which these libertarians adhered had some uncommon strengths and weaknesses.”[iii]

 “The point is that the Individualist Anarchists challenged not the premises of the Classical Liberal tradition, but only those practical aspects which they considered to be perversions or distortions of the values at the core at that tradition.”[iv]

 “Though they were a radical variant of the predominant liberal tradition in America, rather than a radical alternative…”[v]

It seems to me Kline considers any market system as liberal whether it is actually socialist or not.

Of course Kline’s view on markets does not reflect reality.  Markets can be socialist.  Kline would have to ignore the entire socialist movement when making such a claim.

For instance, Proudhon, the first to call himself an anarchist, spoke of a socialist system of Mutualism based on co-operatives in a competitive market.  Many individualist anarchists would agree with Proudhon and his view of co-operatives in a competitive market.  Would Kline consider Proudhon a liberal?  It appears it could be so if his definition of liberalism is any system that contains competitive markets.

So what is Liberalism?  Liberalism is a philosophy that encourages property and free markets, as Kline rightly claims, but Liberalism contains a specific type of market, more specifically capitalist free markets.  Hence, Proudhon distinguished between property and possession in his What is Property?[vi]—in other words, the difference between capitalist markets and non-capitalist competitive markets with possession instead of property.

Kline points out correctly that profit and usury are essential aspects of capitalism which he points out are what the Individualist Anarchists critique.[vii]  Kline, however,  does not consider the fact that it is precisely that critique that makes the Individualist Anarchists Socialist. 

As Marx states, the essential aspect of Capitalism is called Surplus Value, or what amounts to making an income without working for it.  Surplus Value (called usury) is unearned profit, interest and rent.  However, even landlordism, while a form of surplus value, is not capitalist but a form of feudalism.  What specifically distinguishes Capitalism from other market systems, such as Mutualism and Individualist Anarchist socialist markets, is that within Capitalism employers pay their employees less than the full value of their labor and there is not equality of opportunity on the market. 

Within Capitalism labor in general is not factored into the price of the product.  Within the market socialism of the Individualist Anarchists labor is in general factored into the prices of products and there is equality of opportunity on the market through mutual banks, which would offer credit at a price of 1% or less to cover overhead.  The low rates offered by mutual banks would ensure that people would have the option of going into business for themselves.  Therefore, employers would have to raise their wages to entice workers to work for them.  Hence, wages would rise to the full product of a worker’s labor.[viii]

This is what distinguishes market socialism from capitalism.

As Marx states:

“The working day of 12 hours is represented in a monetary value of, for example, 6 shillings.  There are two alternatives.  Either equivalents are exchanged, and then the worker receives 6 shillings for 12 hours of labour; the price of his labour would be equal to the price of his product.  In that case he produces no surplus-value for the buyer of his labour, the 6 shillings are not transformed into capital, and the basis of capitalist production vanishes.”[ix]

The unearned income is called Surplus Value.  Markets do not equate capitalism which is why different market systems like market socialism and Mutualism exist. 

Tucker’s way of organizing business would be similar to a capitalist business with employers and employees.  However, the difference between a capitalist business and Tucker’s Individualist Anarchist business would be that in the Individualist Anarchist business, employers and employees would be paid the full value of their labor depending on the going rate of the occupation on the Individualist Anarchist market at the time.  In addition, the Individualist Anarchist market would have equality of opportunity on the market due to the Mutual Banks.[x]

Tucker agreed with Marx on his theory of surplus value which can be seen in his article ‘Karl Marx Friend and Foe.’[xi]  This is why Benjamin Tucker who supported non-exploitive employers (and whom Kline labeled the representative of Individualist Anarchism[xii]) called himself correctly an Anarchist-Socialist.[xiii]

While Kline gives a very good and accurate historical overview of Individualist Anarchist theory, at the same time, for reasons I am not aware of, he chooses to ignore socialist history and socialist theory (including that of Marx).  Instead, he dismisses market socialism and Individualist Anarchist theory in general by labeling the Individualist Anarchists incorrectly as liberal rather than what they truly are: market socialists.

[i] Kline, Wm Gary, The Individualist Anarchists.  University Press of America.  (1987) p 72

[ii] Ibid, p 72

[iii] Ibid, p 93 

[iv] Ibid. p 104

[v] Ibid, p 104

[vi] Proudhon, Pierre-Joseph, What is Property?

[vii] Marx, Karl, The Communist Manifesto

[viii] Tucker, Benjamin, State Socialism and Anarchism.

[ix] Marx, Karl, Capital Volume 1.  England: Penguin Classics (reprint).  (1990) p 676

[x] Tucker, Benjamin, Instead of a Book.  Forgotten Books.  (2012) p 3-18

[xi] Ibid, p 477

[xii] Kline, Wm Gary, The Individualist Anarchists.  University Press of America.  (1987) p 1

[xiii] Tucker, Instead of a Book.

Individualist Perspectives

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This essay was first published in Bulletin de SIA (Toulouse), 1957; this translation by Richard DeHaan first appeared in Views and Comments, Number 25, New York.

The anarchist individualists do not present themselves as proletarians, absorbed only in the search for material amelioration, tied to a class determined to transform the world and to substitute a new society for the actual one. They place themselves in the present; they disdain to orient the coming generations towards a form of society allegedly destined to assure their happiness, for the simple reason that from the individualist point of view happiness is a conquest, an individual’s internal realization.  

Even if I believed in the efficacy of a universal social transformation, according to a well-defined system, without direction, sanction, or obligation, I do not see by what right I could persuade others that it is the best.  For example, I want to live in a society from which the last vestige of authority has disappeared, but, to speak frankly, I am not certain that the “mass,” to call it what it is, is capable of dispensing with authority.  I want to live in a society in which the members think by and for themselves, but the attraction which is exercised on the mass by publicity, the press, frivolous reading and by State-subsidized distractions is such that I ask myself whether men will ever be able to reflect and judge with an independent mind.  

I may be told in reply that the solution of the social question will transform every man into a sage.  This is a gratuitous affirmation, the more so as there have been sages under all regimes. Since I do not know the social form which is most likely to create internal harmony and equilibrium in social unity, I refrain from theorizing.  

When “voluntary association” is spoken of, voluntary adhesion to a plan, a project, a given action, this implies the possibility of refusingthe association, adhesion or action.  Let us imagine the planet submitted to a singlesocial or economic life; how would I exist if this system did not please me?  There remains to me only one expedient: to integrate or to perish.  It is held that, “the social question” having been solved, there is no longer a place for non-conformism, recalcitrance, etc; but it is precisely when a question has been resolved that it is important to pose new ones or to return to an old solution, if only to avoid stagnation.  

If there is a “Freedom” standing over and above all individuals, it is surely nothing more than the expression of their thoughts, the manifestation and diffusion of their opinions.  The existence of a social organization founded on a single ideological unity interdicts all exercise of freedom of speech and of ideologically contrary thought. How would I be able to oppose the dominant system, proposing another, supporting a return to an older system, if the means of making my viewpoint known or of publicizing my critiques were in the possession of the agents of the regime in power?  This regime must either accept reproach when compared to other social solutions superior to its own, or, despite its termination in “ist,” it is no better than any other regime.  Either it will admit opposition, secession, schism, fractionalism, competition, or nothing will distinguish it significantly from a dictatorship.  This “ist” regime would undoubtedly claim that it has been invested with its power by the masses, that it does not exercise its power or control except by the delegation of assemblies or congresses; but as long as it did not allow the intransigents and refractories to express the reasons for their attitude and for their corresponding behavior, it would be only a totalitarian system.  The material benefits on which a dictatorship prides itself are of no importance. Regardless of whether there is scarcity or abundance, a dictatorship is always a dictatorship.  

It is asked of me why I call my individualism “anarchist individualism”? Simply because the State concretizes the best organized form of resistance to individual affirmation. What is the State?  An organism which bills itself as representative of the social body, to which power is allegedly delegated, this power expressing the will of an autocrat or of popular sovereignty.  This power has no reason for existing other than the maintenance of the extant social structure.  But individual aspirations are unable to come to term with the existence of the State, personification of Society, for, as Palante says: “All society is and will be exploitative, usurpacious, dominating, and tyrannical.  This it is not by accident but by essence.”  Yet the individualist would be neither exploited, usurped, dominated, tyrannized nor dispossessed of his sovereignty.  On the other hand, Society is able to exercise its constraint on the individual only thanks to the support of the State, administrator and director of the affairs of Society.  No matter which way he turns the individual encounters the State or its agents of execution, who do not care in the least whether the regulations which they enforce concur or not with the diversity of temperaments of the subjects upon whom they are administered.  From their aspirations as from their demands, the individualists of our school have eliminated the State.  That is why they call themselves “anarchists.” 

But we deceive ourselves if we imagine that the individualists of our school are anarchists (AN-ARCHY, etymologically, means only negation of the state, and does not pertain to other matters) only in relation to the State – such as the western democracies or the totalitarian systems.  This point cannot be overemphasized.  Against all that which is power, that is, economic as well as political domination, esthetic as well as intellectual, scientific as well as ethical, the individualists rebel and form such fronts as they are able, alone or in voluntary association.  In effect, a group or federation can exercise power as absolute as any State if it accepts in a given field all the possibilities of activity and realization.  

The only social body in which it is possible for an individualist to evolve and develop is that which admits a concurrent plurality of experiences and realizations, to which is opposed all groupings founded on an ideological exclusiveness, which, well-meant though they may be, threaten the integrity of the individual from the moment that this exclusiveness aims to extend itself to the non-adherents of the grouping.  To call this anti-statist would be doing no more than providing a mask for an appetite for driving a herd of human sheep.  

I have said above that it is necessary to insist on this point.  For example, anarchist communism denies, rejects and expels the State from its ideology; but it resuscitates it the moment that it substitutes social organization for personal judgment.  If anarchist individualism thus has in common with anarchist communism the political negation of the State, of the “Arche,” it only marks a point of divergence. Anarchist communism places itself on the economic plane, on the terrain of the class struggle, united with syndicalism, etc (this is its right), but anarchist individualism situates itself on the psychological plane, and on that of resistance to social totalitarianism, which is something entirely different.  (Naturally, anarchist individualism follows the many paths of activity and education: philosophy, literature, ethics, etc; but I have wanted to make precise here only some points of our attitude to the social environment.) 

I do not deny that this is not very new, but it is taking a position to which it is good to return from time to time.  

Benjamin Tucker American Mutualist, Addendum: Tucker Did Not Advocate Voting in Businesses

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In the articles Benjamin Tucker American Mutualist, Parts 1 & 2, it was suggested that voting by both employers and employees in a business could be one way to retain the labor theory of value within the Capitalist system.  It was just one potential option as a temporary measure to have non-exploitative employers in businesses within a Capitalist economy.  As alluded to in the previous articles, if the business was in an individualist anarchist market rather than a capitalist economy, voting by workers to receive their full value would no longer be needed as the market itself would decide the wages.[1] This series aims to present the ideas of Tucker in an accurate fashion, so this article will focus on how Tucker himself believed businesses should be operated.

 Within the American Mutualist economic system of Tucker, voting would not be needed as the market itself would decide the average wages for a particular job.[2]  This goes back to the days of Josiah Warren. In Men Against the Stateby James Martin, it is noted that the people living in the American Mutualist town of Utopia traded labor for labor upon the ‘cost principle’ by letting the market itself decide the wages and prices of goods without capitalist rent, interest, or profit.[3]  Tucker himself stated that, following the labor theory of value (the cost principle), wages would not need to be voted upon as the competitive market itself would decide the average labor time and prices of occupations and goods.

Tucker states regarding the Cost Principle:

“For my part, I do not believe that it is possible or highly important to realize it absolutely and completely.  But it is both possible and highly important to effect its approximate realization.  So much can be effected without compulsion,—in fact, can only be effected by at least partial abolition of compulsion,—and so much will be sufficient.”[4]

Therefore, while Tucker was not opposed to voting in businesses (ie, the co-ops of Proudhon) Tucker himself preferred a business with employers and employees where both received their wage amounts depending on the going wage rate at the time on the competitive market.[5]

Tucker opposed capitalist rent, interest and profit, which he believed to be a result of state intervention within the market which allowed one class of people to live without working while another class of people had to work for wages less than their full value.[6]  Tucker believed that state-enforced privilege allowed employers to extract a portion of the employees’ pay that would have been the employees’ had there been equality of opportunity on the market.  The lack of equality of opportunity on the market leads employees to accept lower wages just to live and hence employers can pay lower wages to their employees and they receive a wage less than the full value of their labor.[7]

Tucker believed the solution would be Mutual Banks. With Mutual banks that offered credit with interest at less than one percent, anyone could go into business for themselves and hence employers would raise their wages to their full value on the market to entice workers to work for them.  As a result, the class of people that made money without working for it (the Capitalist class) would disappear and employers would pay their employees the full value of their labor.[8]

Capitalism is an economic system where a class of employers make money without working for it while another class of people (employees) are paid less than their full value. Marx states:

 “The working day of 12 hours embodies itself, eg, in a money-value of 6 shillings. Either equivalents are exchanged, and then the labourer receives 6 shillings, for 12 hours’ labour; the price of his labour would be equal to the price of his product.  In this case he produces no surplus-value for the buyer of his labour, the 6 shillings are not transformed into capital, the basis of capitalist production vanishes.  But it is on this very basis that he sells his labour and that his labour is wage-labour.  Or else he receives for 12 hours’ labour less than 6 shillings, i.e., less than 12 hours’ labour.  Twelve hours’ labour are exchanged against 10, 6, &c, hours’ labour.  This equalisation of unequal quantities not merely does away with the determination of value.  Such a self-destructive contradiction cannot be in any way even enunciated or formulated as a law.”

The unearned income generated by paying workers less than the full value of their labor is called Surplus Value.   Markets do not equate to capitalism which is why different market systems like market socialism and mutualism exist.[9] 

Tucker’s way of organizing a business would be similar to that of a capitalist business with employers and employees.  However, the difference between a capitalist business and Tucker’s Individualist Anarchist business would be that in Tucker’s Individualist Anarchist way of doing business, employers and employees would be paid the full value of their labor depending on the going rate of the occupation on the Individualist Anarchist market at the time, and the Individualist Anarchist market would have equality of opportunity in the market due to the Mutual Banks.[10]            Tucker agreed with Marx on his theory of surplus value which can be seen in his article ‘Karl Marx Friend and Foe.’[11]  It is Tucker’s opposition to economic exploitation that led him to call his system Anarchistic Socialism.[12]For more information, see Tucker’s article State Socialism and Anarchism: How Far They Agree and Wherein They Differ.

[1]Evans, Nicholas. ‘Benjamin Tucker American Mutualist Part 1’. Anarchistnews.org. 2017. Available online at: https://anarchistnews.org/content/benjamin-tucker-american-mutualist; Evans, Nicholas. ‘Benjamin Tucker American Mutualist: Mutual Banking Part 3 and Final Conclusion Part 4’. Anarchistnews.org. 2017 Available online at: https://anarchistnews.org/content/benjamin-tucker-american-mutualist-mut…

[2]Tucker, Benjamin.  Instead of a Book.  Forgotten Books.  2012. Pp 3-18.

[3]James J. Martin.  Men Against the State.  Ralph Myles Publisher Inc, Colorado Springs. 1970.  Pp 57-64.

[4]Tucker, Benjamin.  Instead of a Book. Forgotten Books.  2012. Pp 332.

[5]Ibid. Pp 3-18.

[6]Ibid.

[7]Ibid.

[8]Ibid.

[9]Please see: Edwards, Stewart (Editor) Selected Writings of P.-J. Proudhon.  Garden City, New York: Anchor Books.  1969.     P 64; and Marx, Karl. Capital Volume 1.  England: Penguin Classics (reprint).  1990.  Pp. 676. And see also The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx.

[10]Tucker, op cit. Pp 3-18.

[11]Ibid. P 477.

[12]Ibid.