Several people have recently said to me—half-jokingly—“You anarchists must be happy now that the Republicans are dismantling the government!”
I’m afraid I replied angrily and bitterly that such a remark (even half in jest) represents a serious misunderstanding about the nature of anarchism, which—in all its varieties—includes a strong critique of any form of hegemonic oppression by any kind of “authority.” Continue reading
The article titled Benjamin Tucker American Mutualist, Part 1 [in anchorage anarchy29], dealt with the economics of American Mutualists like Benjamin Tucker and Josiah Warren. To recap, rather than capitalism, which is a market based on the subjective theory of value, Tucker wanted a competitive market system based on the labor theory of value, ie, a free market with non-exploitative employers. Continue reading
The goal of every anarchist is the elimination of the state and all other forms of authority. From this common starting point, however, libertarians then take off in many different directions. Ideas about how people should or could interact with each other socially, economically, sexually or in any other way vary tremendously from person to person and from group to group. Continue reading
In an Individualist Mutualist market economy of Josiah Warren, Benjamin Tucker, or Stephen Pearl Andrews employers can indeed pay themselves more money than their employees for equal time worked. However, even though they can pay themselves more money than their employees for equal time worked they are still Mutualists and not Capitalists. Why is this? Continue reading
All too often anarchism as a movement and a discourse is oriented towards collectivist ideology. I mean this in a literal sense of an ideology. Much of what is called anarchism seems to be more of a form of Hegelianism. Possibly it becomes a way for Marxists to smooth out the more and more obvious contradictions of their ideology. Continue reading
The word anarchist has long been used to label various people and movements that often are and have been quite different from each other in their approaches, ideas and goals. People who have called themselves or been described by others as libertarians include individuals as diverse as Bakunin, Warren, Armand, Kropotkin, Michel, Stirner, Goldman, Mackay, Durruti, Arrigoni, Dolgoff, and Rothbard. What made all of these folks anarchists was their opposition to the state, to governments of all kinds. They all believed that the state was a pernicious force which crushed individual freedom and stood in the way of cooperation and mutual aid among equals. But their ideas about how to destroy or circumvent the state and their actions intended to accomplish their goals varied tremendously. Continue reading