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The Journal of Libertarian Studies, Vol. V, No. 3 (Summer 1981)

The Culture of Individualist Anarchism
in Late Nineteenth-Century America

by Wendy McElroy
Los Angeles

Individualist anarchism in America of the late nineteenth century revolved
around and was expressed through Liberty, a periodical published and
edited by Benjamin R. Tucker from 1881 to 1908.! During its twenty-seven
year publication, Liberty chronicled the intellectual development of the
libertarian movement. It served as a conduit for foreign thought, particu-
larly that of Proudhon and Spencer; it introduced Max Stirner and egoism
to America;? it was the forum for lengthy, high-caliber debate on issues
such as children’s rights, intellectual property, natural rights and econom-
ics. Liberty was the first American paper to publish Nietzsche,? and when
George Bernard Shaw’s first article appeared in America, it appeared in
Liberty.4 Since Tucker and the majority of the writers for Liberty —includ-
ing Victor Yarros, George Schumm, E. C. Walker, James L. Walker,
Henry Appleton and A. P. Kelly — were professional journalists, its quality
was consistently high. Its contributors were so diverse as to include
Lysander Spooner and Vilfredo Pareto, J. K. Ingalls and Dyer D. Lum.

Because Liberty mirrored the controversies and the personalities of its
time, and because its editor — Benjamin R. Tucker — was the most influen-
tial of the individualist anarchists, it is natural to use Liberty as a textbook
of libertarian culture of the late nineteenth century.

By the culture of individualist anarchism, I mean the unique assump-
tions and attitudes with which the anarchists viewed the world and society.
This included: a sense of internationalism; an emphasis upon social reform;
and opposition to the political means of achieving social goals.

1

A prominent aspect of the internationalism of the anarchists was the
immense influence that foreign thinkers exerted upon the movement. One
of the most important of these influences was the French political philos-
opher Pierre Joseph Proudhon, whose words — “Liberty, the mother not the
daughter of Order” —appeared as a motto on Liberty’s masthead. Tucker,
in fact, dedicated Liberty to Proudhon: “Liberty is...a journal brought
into existence almost as a direct consequence of the teachings of

291


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292 THE JOURNAL OF LIBERTARIAN STUDIES Summer

Proudhon.” He continued by proclaiming Proudhon “the profoundest
political philosopher that has ever lived.”s Almost all of Tucker’s editorial
columns were headed by quotations from the French philosopher. One of
the two quotations employed was: “In abolishing rent and interest, the last
vestiges of old time slavery, the Revolution abolishes at one stroke. . .all
those insights of Politics, which young Liberty grinds beneath her heel.Ӣ

This quote typifies the influence of Proudhon, which was most
conspicuous in economic areas. As an advocate of the labor theory of value,
Proudhon condemned rent and interest as usury and championed free bank-
ing, which he believed would virtually eliminate all interest. Tucker pointed
to Proudhon’s experimental bank, The Bank of the People, as a successful
example of a labor bank (a bank in which labor rather than a commodity
such as gold was the standard of value).” Proudhon’s theory of banking was
popularized among the anarchists through William Greene—a personal
friend of Proudhon—and especially through Greene’s pamphlet Mutual
Banking,® which Tucker called “the most important work on finance ever
published in this country.” The Americans’ acceptance of the labor theory
of value was to become one of their main points of departure from their
counterparts, the British individualists.

Another major foreign influence was the German philosopher Max
Stirner. Stirner’s book, Der Einzige und Sein Eigenthum (The Ego and His
Own), was translated by Steven Byington and published in English in 1907
with an introduction by James L. Walker. !® Although this translation came
fairly late in the movement’s history, the first article on egoism appeared in
Liberty in 1886 by Tak Kak, the pseudonym of James L.. Walker. The
ensuing controversy caused the most significant rift that was to occur in the
individualist anarchist movement. When, in 1887, Tucker rejected natural
rights as the basis of libertarianism and adopted Stirnerite egoism in its
stead, the natural rights advocates claimed that he was destroying not only
the idea of rights but also the individualist anarchist movement itself. !!

Although the actual proponents of egoism in Liberty were James L.
Walker and J. B. Robinson, Tucker was bitterly criticized because it was
known that he privately sanctioned their position. Gertrude B. Kelly wrote
to Tucker: “we might well be led to suppose that you had been ‘hired by the
enemy’ to bring disgrace upon. . . Anarchism by allowing such distortions of
their principles as Tak Kak has presented to appear in the columns of
Liberty with little or no comment from you.” She ended this attack: “My
friends, my friends have you completely lost your heads? Cannot you see
that without morality, without the recognition of other’s rights, Anarchy, in
any other than the vulgar sense, could not last a single day?”!? This contro-
versy ceased when the natural rights side of the debate (Gertrude B. Kelly
and her brother John F. Kelly) dissociated themselves from Liberty. 1314

The third foreign thinker with great impact was the British philosopher
Herbert Spencer. The foremost Spencerian in Liberty, in terms of longevity,


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1981 INDIVIDUALIST ANARCHISM 293

was unquestionably Victor Yarros, although Gertrude Kelly and John Kelly
were also conduits.

There were two ways in which Spencer’s impact was experienced. First,
his philosophy provided a foundation for an integrated, scientific approach
to individualism. It was Spencer's emphasis on science, particularly on
evolution, that largely accounts for his tremendous success in this country.
Evolution was a key concept to the individualists who tried to incorporate
the theories of Spencer and Darwin into their moral system; and it is with
the Spencerians that one finds an attempt to establish scientific ethics. The
Spencerian periodical Popular Science Monthiy's is an illustration of this
blending. Articles on individualism are interspersed with, for example, dia-
grams of the inner workings of a telescope, for the Spencerians believed that
the functioning of a telescope and that of morality were equally scientific.

Secondly, Spencer’s impact provided a point of departure. His early
article “The Proper Sphere of Government,”!s which appeared in the Non-
conformist, so limited government that it was stripped of the power to de-
clare war. Spencer’s early work, Social Statics, contained the later deleted
chapter “The Right to Ignore the State,” which was a justification of an-
archy without ever using that label.}” A large part of Liberty’s discussion of
Spencer revolved around a comparison of the young Spencer with the cur-
rent Spencer, who was considered a heretic because of his alleged
conservatism.

The anarchists seemed especially angered by Spencer’s offhanded dis-
missal of Proudhon!® and by an article entitled “The Coming Slavery”
which appeared in the Contemporary Review.'® This article commented
upon what Spencer termed “the undeserving poor” and enraged Gertrude
Kelly who interpreted it as an attack on the workingman. In her response to
this article, Kelly typified Liberty's approach to Spencer. She wrote: “The
only true advocates of laissez-faire in modern times are the Anarchists.
They are Mr. Spencer’s true disciples, more true to his teachings than he is
himself.,”2¢

Less prominent figures were also noteworthy, especially Auberon
Herbert, Kropotkin, Bakunin and John Henry Mackay, but the overwhelm-
ing foreign influences were Proudhon, Stirner and Spencer. This influence
was an important factor behind the many translations and reprints that
flowed from the movement. One example of this widespread activity was
Benjamin Tucker’s translation of the works of Proudhon, at a time when
the complete works of Lysander Spooner were not available.?! Often,
translations appeared in Liberty in the form of serialized novels. Sophie
Kropotkin’s autobiographical novel, The Wife of Number 4,237, chronicled
her husband’s imprisonment by the French government.?? The literature
translated was usually French or Russian and often was translated by Sarah
Holmes (who also published a number of individualist works in book
form). Columns from contemporary foreign newspapers such as


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294 THE JOURNAL OF LIBERTARIAN STUDIES Summer

Clemenceau’s La Justice and La Revolte by Kropotkin were frequent addi-
tions to Liberty, though the bulk of reprinted material came from Britain.

When Tucker traveled to England and Europe in 1889, he met a number
of the foreign radicals, and thereafter the British individualists began to
appear frequently in Liberty. Wordsworth Donisthorpe, the London corre-
spondent for Liberty, contributed lengthy articles and reported on the activ-
ities of British organizations, such as the Liberty and Property Defense
League. The American anarchists and the British individualists often
debated issues such as the charging of interest and children’s rights. Gener-
ally, the Americans were more radical in areas such as government, while
the British, who did not so widely accept the labor theory of value, were
better in economics.?4

Other correspondents for Liberty were: Vilfredo Pareto, who wrote sev-
eral reports on Italy; David Andrade, who contributed several excellent
articles on Australia; and John Henry Mackay, who wrote from Germany.

It is interesting to note that this attention to the foreign press and for-
eign writers was not totally one-sided. Columns from Liberty were trans-
lated and reprinted abroad. For instance, the Spanish A Vida, a communist-
anarchist periodical, translated an article by Steven Byington from a French
journal which had been previously translated and reprinted from Liberty. A
Vida then proceeded to take Byington to task for his interpretation of anar-
chism. Byington in turn translated the Spanish article and responded to it in
Liberty. 2

Another feature of this internationalism was the anarchists’ tendency to
champion distinctly foreign causes. The individualist anarchists became so
involved in the Irish no-rent movement, for example, that Henry Appleton
and Sidney Morse contributed columns to the main no-rent paper, Irish
World.?s This controversy was more hotly discussed in the first volume of
Liberty than were most distinctively American concerns. Similarly, the
persecution of the Russian nihilists in the early 1880’s was a major focus of
Liberty’s first three years. Issue one, page one, in fact, was dominated by a
portrait of and a poem to Sophie Perovskaya, the assassin of Czar Alexan-
der II.

It is interesting to speculate on the reason for this sense of international-
ism. Although the movement was fortunate to include Byington, a fine pro-
fessional translator, and although many of the anarchists were bilingual,
the major factor lay in the flood of immigration into this country and into
the anarchist movement. Paul Avrich comments on this influx in his book,
An American Anarchist: The Life of Voltairine de Cleyre: “There were by
Voltairine’s estimate [circa 1900] between 400 to S00 anarchists in Philadel-
phia, of whom 145 were regulars. Seventy-five of these were Russian Jews,
40 were native Americans, 24 Germans, 3 Italians, 2 Cubans and one
Frenchman.”?” Anarchism everywhere in America felt the impact of this
immigration in terms of translations, foreign language papers published in


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1981 INDIVIDUALIST ANARCHISM 295

America, the infusion of foreign thought, and a concern with foreign af-
fairs. Writers dealing specifically with individualist anarchism included:
Gertrude and John Kelly, from Ireland; Victor Yarros, who emigrated from
the Ukraine to avoid political arrest; James L. Walker and William Han-
son, born in Britain; and George Schumm, from Germany.?® Unfortunate-
ly, this immigration was sharply cut off by the repressive anti-anarchist
immigration laws of the early 1900’s.2° It is with these laws that libertarian-
ism lost much of its international flavor.3°

II

Another defining aspect of individualist anarchism was its insistence upon
individual rights in the social realm. This insistence made its advocates, to a
large extent, fellow travelers with the social reformers of two prominent
movements of the day —freethought and free love.

American freethought was a basically anti-Christian, anti-clerical move-
ment whose purpose was to make the individual politically and spiritually
free to decide for himself on religious matters. A number of the contribu-
tors to Liberty were prominent figures in both freethought and anarchism.
The individualist anarchist George MacDonald was a co-editor of Free-
thought and, for a time, the Truth Seeker. E. C. Walker was co-editor of
the excellent frecthought/free-love periodical, Lucifer, the Light Bearer.3!

Although the anarchists agreed with the goals of freethought, they were
often critical of the major figures of the movement. Robert Ingersoll was
heavily criticized for his refusal to extend individual liberty into economic
areas such as banking. In speaking of Ingersoll’s advocacy of protectionism,
one of the kinder things Tucker had to say was: “justice requires me to state
that Ingersoll’s sins are due rather to his shallowness and ignorance than to
any desire to bolster up the iniquities of the plutocracy.”? In turn,
Ingersoll’s supporters termed Tucker “the self-appointed corrector of the
human race.”?? To paraphrase Tucker’s criticism: although the individualist
anarchists shared freethought goals, they insisted on carrying individual
choice further than the majority of freethinkers. They wished to fundamen-
tally change society rather than to merely reform it.

This was a recurring conflict. A more extreme instance, in which many
freethinkers refused to extend liberty even in religious matters, occurred
when the government began to persecute the Mormons for the religious
practice of polygamy. Horace Seaver, co-editor of the freethought paper
The Boston Investigator, refused to defend the Mormons, falling back on
the argument: “Would you like to see your daughter living in polygamy?”
Tucker’s response to Seaver exemplified the individualist anarchist ap-
proach. “It does not now occur to the Mormon hater that the wishes of the
daughters themselves should be consulted,” observed Tucker. “Every honest


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296 THE JOURNAL OF LIBERTARIAN STUDIES Summer

father, whatever he may desire to see his daughter do or not do, will strive
to secure her in the right of choice —that is, Liberty.”35 This debate ended
with Seaver accusing Tucker of advocating polygamy and Tucker accusing
Seaver of being “a peevish old man.”36

It is useful to dwell upon these conflicts in order to distinguish individ-
ualist anarchism from freethought, but the movement was generally sympa-
thetic to freethought. Many of the anarchists were ardent freethinkers;
reprints from freethought papers such as Lucifer, the Light Bearer, Free-
thought, and the Truth Seeker appeared in Liberty; and, most importantly,
the anarchists agreed with the political/educational goals of freethought
and with the anti-Christian, anti-clerical bias. The church was viewed as a
common ally of the State and as a repressive force in and of itself. The most
notable exception to this was Byington who defended Christianity, accu-
rately pointing out that Christians had played a significant role in libertar-
1an causes of the past. In this stand, however, Byington was almost unique,
and Tucker’s opinion seemed to be that he would outgrow it.3” To Tucker’s
credit, he even printed Byington’s defense of missionaries with which he
must have violently disagreed.3®

The individualist anarchists also participated in the free-love movement.
The purpose of this movement was to separate the State from sexual
matters, to leave sexual matters to the consciences of the participating indi-
viduals. These sexual matters included birth control, marriage, adultery,
divorce, age of consent laws, and legitimacy claims. As a rule, the radicals
involved in this movement were puritanical in their views and behavior; free
love, therefore, should not be equated with promiscuity. The spirit of free
love was similar to the crusading moral spirit of abolitionism from which
many of the free-love advocates sprang. As Ezra Heywood stated: “Reliev-
ing one from outer restraint does not lessen but increases this Personal
Accountability; for by making him FREE, we devolve on him the necessity
of self-government; and he must respect the rights of others, or suffer the
consequences of being an invader.”

Much of the association that free love has with promiscuity is the result
of a propaganda campaign by free-love opponents who sought to discredit
the movement. This propaganda was so effective that many freethinkers —
who would seem natural allies of the free-love advocates — condemned the
movement in order to escape guilt by association. The arrest of D. M. Ben-
nett, editor of the most influential American freethought paper The Truth
Seeker, occurred in 1878 for violation of the Comstock obscenity laws. This
caused a great controversy in the freethought ranks. Some wanted to sup-
port Bennett, while the majority wanted nothing to do with his free-love
activities. The hostility of most freethinkers toward free love was expressed
at the 1879 convention of the Liberal League, a main organ of freethought.
The convention opposed Bennett and voted to support the obscenity laws,
while Ingersoll attempted to ban free-love advocates from membership in


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1981 INDIVIDUALIST ANARCHISM 297

the League. He argued: “Let them spend their time examining each other’s
sexual organs, and in letting ours alone,”4?

Significantly, the individualist anarchists were the link between the two
movements. They were the radical faction in both movements because they
viewed both positions as two points on the same continuum — that of indi-
vidual liberty.

There are significant differences between the anarchist participation in
freethought and in free love. As with freethought, a number of the individu-
alist anarchists—Ezra Heywood, E. C. Walker, Lillian Harman — were
prominent in both movements. And, again, significant differences arose
between Tucker and the major figures in the free-love movement. But here
the similarity ends. The disagreements were not moral but strategic, and the
individualist anarchists themselves were largely critical of Tucker’s stand on
these disagreements. This is one of the few areas in which Tucker’s name is
not a synonym for the movement as a whole.

An example of a disagreement over strategy occurred when Moses Har-
man, the editor of Lucifer, the Light Bearer, was sentenced under the Com-
stock laws. Moses Harman and Ezra Heywood set themselves up for prose-
cution by the State by mailing and printing material on birth control and the
injustice caused by current sexual laws. Although Tucker was clear that
both men had the right to publish and distribute whatever they wished, he
loudly condemned them as “rash comrades who precipitate an irresistible
onslaught upon our whole line which is liable to result in our annihila-
tion.”#! Tucker feared that they would spark further repression which
would endanger the right to discuss anarchism.

Needless to say, many of the individualist anarchists severely criticized
Tucker, declaring that this was a time to support the accused men, not to
condemn them. These recurring conflicts over strategy caused an impor-
tant, though temporary, rift in the movement, particularly between E. C.
Walker and Tucker. The issue in question was the non-State, non-church
marriage of Walker and Lillian Harman, which they insisted the State
should recognize as a valid marriage. Tucker thought it was absurd and
dangerous to appeal to the State and, as he saw it, extend its grasp even fur-
ther into sexual matters. Walker and Harman believed that State recogni-
tion of their union would deal a severe blow to the laws and traditions of
marriage. When Walker and Harman were imprisoned for their stand,
Tucker continued to criticize them despite the indignation and sympathy
expressed by the radical community.4? In fairness to Tucker, it should be
pointed out that he printed both sides of the issue and advocated contribut-
ing money to their defense.

Despite its seemingly conservative stand on the imprisonment of Moses
Harman and Ezra Heywood, Liberty itself flouted the Comstock laws. Walt
Whitman, much admired by Tucker, was the object of censorship when the
Boston Post Office suppressed Leaves of Grass in 1882 owing to one of its


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298 THE JOURNAL OF LIBERTARIAN STUDIES Summer

poems entitled To a Common Prostitute. Tucker openly republished the
book#** and offered it for sale through the mails, taunting the postal author-
ities with an advertisement that declared:

To Oliver Stevens, District Attorney. ... You are hereby notified. . .
that I have in my possession, and do now offer for sale, copies of the
work advertised above.... And, to avoid unnecessary trouble and
make the evidence of sale indisputable, 1 offer, on receipt for any one of
you of an order for a copy of the work, to deliver a copy to you in my
own person, at such place in Boston as you may designate. 4

The invitation was never accepted.

Although individualist anarchism was distinct from freethought and
free love, it may be viewed as a minority faction within these movements. It
functioned as a radical minority that pushed constantly for hard-line advo-
cacy of individual rights.

III

The integrating theme behind individualist anarchism was the primacy of
the individual and the desire to eliminate all but defensive force from soci-
ety. The anarchists proposed a society by contract to replace the society by
force which they saw around them. And the kind of force they most loudly
opposed was political activity, i.e., voting and electoral politics. They con-
sidered any participation in electoral politics to be a violation of libertarian
principles. In Tucker’s words: “If Liberty has a weak-kneed friend who is
contemplating a violation of his anarchist principles by voting just for once,
may these golden words from John Morley’s ‘Compromise’ recall him to his
better self: ‘A principle, if it be sound, represents one of the larger expedien-
cies. To abandon that for the sake of some seeming expediency of the hour
is to sacrifice the greater good for the less on no more creditable ground
than that the less is nearer.””43

On the issue of holding political office, Lysander Spooner was one of
the clearest of the individualist anarchists. In A Letter to Thomas Bayard,
he framed his objection to the holding of political office, irrespective of
who the particular holder may be. By what right, Spooner asked, can one
person occupy a position of power over another’s life? What circumstance
would make this a proper situation? If you have the natural right to protect
your life and property and if you delegate this right to another person, then
his position is contractual and thereby in accord with libertarian principles.
But what does this delegation entail? It means, according to Spooner, that
you possess the right which is being delegated; that the delegation was ex-
plicit and not merely assumed, for a contract may not be assumed; and, that
you can withdraw your delegation and reclaim the exercise of your natural
rights, for to say that you cannot withdraw your delegation is to say that
you have given away not the exercise of a particular right but your entire lib-


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1981 INDIVIDUALIST ANARCHISM 299

erty. In Spooner’s words: “No man can delegate, or give away his own
natural right to liberty. ..or to give to another, any right of arbitrary
dominion over himself; for that would be giving himself away as a slave.
And this no one can do. Any contract to do so is necessarily an absurd one
and has no validity.”*¢

Voltairine de Cleyre expressed a similar view in a lecture delivered
before the Boston Secular Society in 1890 and subsequently reprinted in
Liberty. “1 go to the White House” de Cleyre stated, “I say [President]
Harrison, are you the government?’ ‘No madam, I am its representative.’
‘Well, then, where is the principal? — Who is the government?’ “The people
of the United States.” “The whole people?’ ‘The whole people.” ‘You, then
are the representative of the people of the United States. May I see your
certificate of authorization?’” De Cleyre went on to define what she meant
by authorization and why she morally opposed political office and the
process of voting. “A body of voters cannot give into your charge any rights
but their own. By no possible jugglery of logic can they delegate the exercise
of any function which they themselves do not control. If any individual on
earth has a right to delegate his powers to whomsoever he chooses, then
every other individual has an equal right: and if each has an equal right,
then none can choose an agent for another, without the other’s consent.
Therefore, if the power of government resides in the whole people and out
of that whole all but one elected you as their agent, you would still have no
authority whatever to act for that one.”

Spooner was also opposed to voting. In No Treason,*® Spooner attacked
the idea that by voting one is giving sanction to the State. He argues con-
vincingly that voting can be viewed as a means of self-defense. It is not
clear, however, that by attacking the idea of voting as implied consent that
Spooner is supporting electoral politics. Arguing against a negative is not
the logical equivalent of advocating a positive. Fortunately, Spooner was
much clearer about voting elsewhere. In a letter dated 1845, written by
Spooner to his friend George Bradburn of the Liberty Party, Spooner
states: “I do not rely upon political machinery. . . for the principle of it is
wrong; for it admits. ..that under a constitution, the law depends on the
will of the majorities, for the time being, as indicated by the acts of the leg-
islature.”#® Spooner was something of an annoyance to Bradburn because,
although he was an abolitionist, he refused to vote for the Liberty Party.

Spooner was also clear in Against Women Suffrage, an article reprinted
in Liberty. “Women are human beings and consequently have all the natural
rights that any human beings have,” Spooner argued. “They have just as
good a right to make laws as men have, and no better; and that is just no
right at all.” As an alternative to voting, Spooner admonished women to
go to the State House and throw the existing statute books on the fire.

The individualist anarchists overwhelmingly believed that voting and the
holding of political office were direct violations of libertarian morality.


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300 THE JOURNAL OF LIBERTARIAN STUDIES Summer

This issue was debated only twice in Liberty.5! The first instance occurred
when Henry Appleton attempted to infiltrate and use the Knights of Labor
to achieve certain labor goals through that organization’s participation in
politics. Appleton accepted political activity as compromise. He wrote:
“Tucker has yet to learn that compromise is a true scientific principle under
Anarchism.”%? He then proceeded to defend compromise against the rigid
“plumb-line” approach of Tucker. After Tucker’s harsh reply entitled
“Plumb-line or Corkscrew?”,53 Appleton backed down by stating: “Such a
course of action [political activity], I do not regard as compromise. ...”
Appleton made it clear that he was fighting for liberty by “trying to get a
little nearer to the head and horns of the beast and finish up my work on
that end.”s¢ Although Appleton’s integrity was never questioned, the ensu-
ing dispute was so bitter that Appleton —hitherto Liberty’s most frequent
contributor — chose to disappear from its pages.

Victor Yarros also locked horns with Tucker. In one of his many articles
for Liberty, Yarros opposed voting on strategic rather than on moral
grounds. He wrote: “A friend and reader of Liberty recently put this query
to me: When some practical, immediate good can be accomplished by the
election of a particular man or the victory of a particular party, is it not the
part of wisdom and propriety. ..to aid and abet such election?” Yarros
replied: “The real question is whether the immediate and practical good
which, by our hypothesis, can be secured is not overbalanced by indirect
and remote injury to the essential aims and purpose of Anarchism. Answer
this question in the negative, and all reasons for boycotting politics van-
ish. ... Anarchists have no religious or moral objection to voting and party
warfare.”sS Somewhat contradictorally, Yarros added “anarchists would
not deem it ethically proper to use the ballot (which means aggression) for
the purpose of furthering the cause of freedom.”$¢ Tucker responded: “For
my part, when I say that I would use the ballot if I thought thereby I could
best help the cause of freedom, I make the declaration in precisely the same
sense. . .as when I declare. . .that I would dynamite if 1 thought that there-
by I could best help the cause of freedom.”*’

Yarros contested the claim that ballots or bullets were, in principle, the
same. “How absurd, then it is to say that there is no difference in principle
between using the ballot. . . and using dynamite. Dynamite deprives man of
life and limb; the use of the ballot for the purpose of securing freedom
interferes with no one’s exercise of his faculties.”*® Tucker noted Yarros’
inconsistency: “He now tacitly premises such a transformation of politics
that invasion is eliminated, and concludes therefrom that Anarchists may,
on special occasions, participate in them without aggression.”*® In response,
Yarros shifted ground again by defending not electoral politics but voting in
referendums. This contradictory and temporary defense of political activity
is the closest statement in Liberty that, under special circumstances, polit-
ical activity does not compromise libertarian morality.


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1981 INDIVIDUALIST ANARCHISM 301

Individualist anarchism was overwhelmingly anti-political. One of
Liberty's themes was “power corrupts” and one of its regular columns, “The
Beauty of Government,” was devoted to this theme, especially regarding
police and the court system. If libertarianism of the late nineteenth century
stood for any one principle it was opposition to the political solution to
social problems.

From this refusal to grant validity to government, it is natural that a
sense of internationalism developed. With the rejection of statism, national
boundaries became pretensions of statist grandeur; the only boundaries to
be respected were those of private property.

From the rejection of political activity, the anarchists directed their
energy into social reform movements. They wrote and lectured. They joined
organizations that sought to repeal laws. They championed strikes, boy-
cotts, unions and other peaceful means of economic restructuring.%® They
experimented with alternative education systems such as that offered in the
Modern School Movement and with alternative communities such as New
Harmony. Moreover, the anarchists preached and practiced civil disobedi-
ence, especially in regard to freedom of speech and freedom of the press.

Iv

An inevitable question which confronts any radical movement is whether or
not it is a success. The standard of success is usually the extent to which the
movement influences the laws and governmental structure of its time. By
this standard individualist anarchism cannot be deemed a success.

However, in analyzing individualist anarchism it is necessary to put it in
historical context. The Civil War and the growth of government which
accompanied and followed it shaped America of the late nineteenth cen-
tury. The post-Civil War period ushered in compulsory education, persecu-
tion of the Mormons, severe immigration restrictions, the Comstock laws,
woman’s suffrage, and the Spanish-American war. The tide of the time was
pro-State and anti-individualist.é! As Charles Burgess commented: “During
that era of blood and in the decades that followed grew the first effective
consensus about nationhood —and the widespread use of compulsion to
transform that consensus into operational reality.”s2

The idea of society as a collective organism became dominant, and with
this idea the individual was relegated to being merely one aspect of a more
important whole. The rights of the individual were juxtaposed with the
rights of society. The popular political theory advocated a scientific admin-
istration of that organism. This theory had the great attraction of never
having been tried. Against this pro-State tide, the individualist anarchists
were instrumental in preserving—and in some instances increasing —the
religious and sexual freedom of their time. In the areas of freedom of
speech and freedom of the press, they acted as a counterfoil to the Com-


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302 THE JOURNAL OF LIBERTARIAN STUDIES Summer

stock laws. Given their context, they were as successful as any pro-
individualist cause could have been.

A more complicated question is whether or not their ideas were success-
ful, for it is difficult to assess the impact of an idea or a tradition. The true
impact of Locke’s Second Treatise on Government — a key book in libertar-
ianism — was not realized until long after its publication when it was used by
the revolutionaries of the War of Independence. Ideas have life-spans far in
excess of any individual or any phase of a tradition. The true success of
individualist anarchism lies in the current libertarian movement for which it
forms the necessary historical and theoretical foundation.

NOTES

1. Liberty was published in Boston from August 1881 to February 1892, and thereafter in
New York until April 1908, shortly after which its offices were destroyed by fire, and it
never resumed publication. There were two associate editors: A. P. Kelly (May 1884 to
May 1888) and Victor Yarros (June 1890 to February 1892).

2. Liberty 3 (March 6, 1886): 8. The article was by Tak Kak, the pseudonym of James L.
Walker.

3. Liberty 9 (December 17, 1892): 1, 4.

4. Liberty 11 (July 27, 1895): 2-10. Originally entitled A Degenerate’s View of Nordau, this
was later reprinted as The Sanity of Art.

5. Liberty 1 (January 1882): 4,

6. This quotation was used from Liberty 4 (August 21, 1886) onward. The quotation used
prior to this issue was “A free man is one who enjoys the use of his reason and his faculties;
who is neither blinded by passion, nor hindered or driven by oppression, nor deceived by
erroneous opinions.”

7. Liberty 9 (February 24, i894): 5.

8. Mutual Banking was one of the pamphlets Liberty offered for sale as Liberty’s Library;
advertisements for it appeared throughout the twenty-seven years of publication.

9. Liberty 15 (February 1906): 7.

10. Egoism, a periodical published by Georgia and Henry Replogle, ran the first twelve chap-
ters of J. L. Walker’s The Philosophy of Egoism between May 1890 and September 1891.

11. Technically, Tucker did not repudiate rights. He claimed that they were a useful social
construct with which to organize society. He attempted to base rights in contract rather
than in the nature of man.

12. Liberty 5 (August 13, 1887): 7.

13. Gertrude Kelly's last article was in Liberty 5 (September 10, 1887); John Kelly's last
appearance was through a letter to the editor, Liberty 5 (March 31, 1888): 4. The Kellys
and Lazarus (the pseudonym of Sidney H. Morse), who also left over the egoism contro-
versy, wrote thereafter for several publications, most notably the Nemesis.

14. For a detailed discussion of egoism and the Liberty controversy see James J. Martin, Men
Against the State (Colorado Springs, Colo.: Ralph Myles, 1970), which is still the defini-
tive source on this matter.

15. Edited by Edward L. Youmans, Popular Science Monthly was the leading Spencerian
periodical in America,

16. This article appeared in the Nonconformist in twelve parts beginning June 15, 1842,

17. Spencer repudiated this chapter in 1892.

18. Spencer admitted to never having read Proudhon. Liberty 8 (June 25, 1892): 1.

19. This article was part of a series of papers printed in The Contemporary Review and later
republished in Man Versus the State.

20. Liberty 3 (October 24, 1885): 7.

21. The Proudhon Library, as it was called, was first advertised in Liberty 4 (February 12,



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1981 INDIVIDUALIST ANARCHISM 303

1887): 8. The first work translated in this series was System of Economic Contradictions.
Unfortunately, Tucker never completed this series. Translating Proudhon was a long-
range concern of Tucker’s; at the age of 21, he had already translated Whar is Property?

22, Liberty 3 (March 6, 1886) through Liberty 4 (May 22, 1886).

23. Titles published by Sarah Holmes included Three Dreams in a Desert by Olive Schreiner
and The Science of Society by Stephen P. Andrews.

24. Examples of the difference between the Americans and the British on interest occur in Lib-
erty 10 (May 19, 1894): 8 and Liberty 10 (July 28, 1894): 8-9, between the American Hugo
Bilgram and the British J. Greevz Fisher.

25. Liberty 15 (August 1906): 24-34.

26. Henry Appleton wrote under the pseudonym of Honorius; Sidney H. Morse used Phillip.

27. Paul Avrich, An American Anarchist: The Life of Voltairine de Cleyre, (Princeton, N.J.:
Princeton University Press, 1978), p. 131.

28. George and Emma Schumm were instrumental in the publishing of Libertas, a German-
language version of Liberty first announced by Tucker in Liberty 5 (December 31, 1887): 4.

29. These laws were, in part, a reaction to the assassination of President McKinley by a self-
proclaimed anarchist.

30. In stressing the internationalism of this period, I do not mean to deny the unique and in-
digenous roots of American anarchism.

31. First published in 1880 under the title Valley Falls Liberal, Lucifer, the Light Bearer was
one of the most important libertarian publications of its time. Its co-editor, E. C. Walker,
was a prominent individualist anarchist. Lucifer, which changed its name to The American
Journal of Eugenics in 1907, outlasted Liberty.

32. Liberty 8 (June 27, 1891): 1,

33. Liberty 8 (July 25, 1891): I.

34. Liberty 3 (April 25, 1891): 4.

35. Ibid.

36. Ibid.

37. Tucker was mistaken in this hope. Byington went on to translate the Bible.

38. Byington’s defense of missionaries was in Liberty 11 (September 7, 1895): 6-8.

39. Ezra Heywood, Cupid's Yokes: or, The Binding Forces of Conjugal Life (Princeton,
Mass.: Co-operative Publishing Company, n.d.), p. 4.

40. Orvin Larson, American Infidel: Robert G. Ingersoll (Secaucus, N.J.: Citadel Press,

1962), p. 150.

41. Liberty 7 (May 24, 1890): 6.

42. For discussion of this matter and of free love in general, I would highly recommend Hal D.
Sears, The Sex Radicals (Lawrence, Kans.: Regents Press, 1977).

43. First advertised in Liberty 1 (July 22, 1882): 4.

44, Jbid.

45. Liberty 2 (August 23, 1884): 4.

46. Liberty 1 (May 27, 1882): 2.

47. Liberty 6 (February 15, 1890): 7.

48. Lewis Perry, Radical Abolitionism (Ithaca, N.Y. and London: Cornell University Press,

1973), p. 200.

49. Liberty 1 (June 10, 1882): 4.

50. There were individuals who were not “hard-line” about this issue {such as Joseph Labadie),
but they were exceptional and never made it a point of debate.

51. Liberty 4 (April 17, 1886): 4.

52. Ibid.

53. Liberty 4 (May 1, 1886): 5.

54, Liberty 4 (February 26, 1887): 4.

55. Liberty 12 (November 1896): 3.

56. Ibid.

57. Ibid. p. 5.

58. Liberty 12 (December 1896): 5.

59. Ibid., p. 3.


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304 THE JOURNAL OF LIBERTARIAN STUDIES Summer

60. Liberty’s response to the July 16, 1881 meeting of the Working People’s International
exemplified Tucker’s enthusiasm for such labor organizations. Tucker proclaimed it to be
“a momentous event, which marks an epoch in the progress of the great labor movement”
and commissioned a special correspondent whose reports may have been the first accounts
of that International published in America. Wm. B. Greene, one of Tucker’s mentors,
wrote a comprehensive exposition of the International’s principles, International Address,
which was widely advertised by Liberty. With the expulsion of Woodhull and the Interna-
tional’s hostility to anarchism, however, Tucker's interest waned and the organization was
mentioned with decreasing frequency. See Liberty 1 (August 20, 1881): 2,

61. For further discussion of this trend, I would recommend Murray Rothbard’s Left and
Right (San Francisco: Cato Institute, 1979).

62. Charles Burgess, Harvard Educational Review 46, no. 2 (May 1976): 201.