WEBVTT NOTE The Anarchists 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:09.640 Considering modern socialist thought, we have to begin in the latter half of the 18th century. 2 00:00:09.640 --> 00:00:18.440 The first organized branch of socialist theory began to emerge in that period of time, and 3 00:00:18.440 --> 00:00:24.400 the man who wins credit for being the father of anarchy is a British subject named William 4 00:00:24.400 --> 00:00:35.520 from Godwin. Godwin was born in 1756 and lived a long and active life. He became a 5 00:00:35.520 --> 00:00:43.440 very prominent and popular novelist and wrote a number of works that brought him wide recognition 6 00:00:43.440 --> 00:00:51.200 and acclaim. In the midst of his writing these novels, he began to detect certain things 7 00:00:51.200 --> 00:00:55.600 which caused him to become, in a sense, a social theorist. 8 00:00:55.600 --> 00:01:01.640 Godwin found that human beings were capuchins and acting upon them. 9 00:01:01.640 --> 00:01:07.700 And he also thought that he detected that human beings are, by nature, creatures who 10 00:01:07.700 --> 00:01:09.520 seek the good. 11 00:01:09.520 --> 00:01:12.360 They want things to be better. 12 00:01:12.360 --> 00:01:15.240 Human beings do not seek evil. 13 00:01:15.240 --> 00:01:19.880 And yet, as he looked about him and as he wrote his novels, Godwin became very conscious 14 00:01:19.880 --> 00:01:27.200 A great deal of evil existed in the world, and this was evil that had been caused by 15 00:01:27.200 --> 00:01:33.480 people, and these are the same people, capable of acting upon their own decisions, who want 16 00:01:33.480 --> 00:01:41.640 good, and yet evil abounds. Why? This was the dominant question that puzzled him and 17 00:01:41.640 --> 00:01:47.720 that caused him to theorize as to what in the world could be wrong. Keep in mind that 18 00:01:47.720 --> 00:01:58.040 Godwin began writing in the latter half of the 18th century, so that along about 1870-1880, 19 00:01:58.040 --> 00:02:07.240 in that period he began to have his works published, and he thought he detected a constant 20 00:02:07.240 --> 00:02:12.240 problem that human beings were confronted with, and as he studied it, it seemed to him 21 00:02:12.240 --> 00:02:19.080 It seemed to him that all evil sprang from that one point, and that point was the private 22 00:02:19.080 --> 00:02:25.300 ownership of property. As he looked at it, it seemed to him that all the evil that came 23 00:02:25.300 --> 00:02:33.300 in the world was evil arising from the question of who is to control which property. You had 24 00:02:33.300 --> 00:02:39.520 wars fought over property, you had crimes committed over property, you had animosity 25 00:02:39.520 --> 00:02:45.840 that took people into courts and brought jail sentences, and virtually the whole bit was 26 00:02:45.840 --> 00:02:54.040 over property. And as Godwin considered this facet of his understanding of the way society 27 00:02:54.040 --> 00:03:00.960 is formed, it became increasingly apparent to him that the only way to resolve the problem 28 00:03:00.960 --> 00:03:09.920 was to eliminate private ownership of property. Now, that became the cornerstone of modern 29 00:03:09.920 --> 00:03:16.800 socialist theory, and it was, of course, the base upon which anarchistic theory rested. 30 00:03:16.800 --> 00:03:23.400 In other words, private property ought to be abolished. Specifically, private ownership 31 00:03:23.400 --> 00:03:32.920 of Property. Godwin went on to consider this problem still further, and as he did so, he 32 00:03:32.920 --> 00:03:39.000 became aware of the fact, which had been brought to his attention by many other social theories 33 00:03:39.000 --> 00:03:45.680 of this time, that about two percent of the people of England owned about eighty percent 34 00:03:45.680 --> 00:03:51.920 of the wealth, the wealth consisting primarily of land and other properties connected to 35 00:03:51.920 --> 00:03:52.920 to the Land. 36 00:03:52.920 --> 00:03:56.760 Well, that's where Godwin had his brainstorm. 37 00:03:56.760 --> 00:04:04.400 If it was true that evil in the world came as a result of private ownership of property, 38 00:04:04.400 --> 00:04:11.440 then it followed that private ownership of property was the evil that it was because 39 00:04:11.440 --> 00:04:15.500 the property was in the hands of a privileged class. 40 00:04:15.500 --> 00:04:17.480 And who was the privileged class? 41 00:04:17.480 --> 00:04:23.480 Well, the privileged class was that group of persons who held political power and used 42 00:04:23.480 --> 00:04:29.680 the political power to acquire the property. Therefore, as Godwin looked at the world of 43 00:04:29.680 --> 00:04:36.560 his day, it seemed to him that all the evil in the world came from the private ownership 44 00:04:36.560 --> 00:04:43.120 of property and that the private ownership of property was only possible because of the 45 00:04:43.120 --> 00:04:51.640 Ergo came his conclusion. If you want to eliminate the evil in the world, to wit, private ownership 46 00:04:51.640 --> 00:04:57.480 of property, there is only one way to begin. Abolish the government. 47 00:04:57.480 --> 00:05:05.040 Now to his credit, Godwin did not advocate any violent method here. He simply argued 48 00:05:05.040 --> 00:05:11.000 and fundamentally keep in mind he was a novelist and he put these ideas and these themes into 49 00:05:11.000 --> 00:05:18.520 the novels that he wrote. He wrote a few serious tracks, but fundamentally he was engaged 50 00:05:18.520 --> 00:05:26.080 in romances. And all the way through his later stories, you'll find this theme that the evil 51 00:05:26.080 --> 00:05:34.800 that is existent in the world is the product of a privileged class of political power holders 52 00:05:34.800 --> 00:05:44.600 who use their power both to acquire property and to then use it to exploit it and to exploit 53 00:05:44.600 --> 00:05:49.960 the non-privileged class which don't have property and can't get it because the privileged 54 00:05:49.960 --> 00:05:51.720 group is in control. 55 00:05:51.720 --> 00:05:58.840 So says Godwin, we ought to begin by abolishing the government, and if we do, then all property 56 00:05:58.840 --> 00:06:00.720 will be unowned. 57 00:06:00.720 --> 00:06:08.320 It would simply be available to society at large on the basis of need. Now that is fundamentally 58 00:06:08.320 --> 00:06:16.600 the anarchist position. The anarchists were the first modern socialists as such. That is, 59 00:06:16.600 --> 00:06:23.680 they were concerned with socialist theory, the idea of what is good for everyone in society, 60 00:06:23.680 --> 00:06:30.440 and Godwin theorized here that the best way to maximize well-being in society would be 61 00:06:30.440 --> 00:06:49.360 Godwin was followed shortly after the beginning of the 19th century by a French thinker, Pierre 62 00:06:49.360 --> 00:06:57.440 Joseph Proudhon, who was born in 1809 and lived actually a very short life but an extremely 63 00:06:57.440 --> 00:07:08.240 influential one. He died in 1865. But Proudhon, who was a scholar and not a novelist, who worked 64 00:07:08.240 --> 00:07:14.720 in a university and had the opportunities of having his mind come in direct contact with 65 00:07:14.720 --> 00:07:20.880 other people who were engaged in using their minds, began to refine the ideas of Godwin. 66 00:07:20.880 --> 00:07:28.720 Design, and he of course accepted Godwin's basic premise to it that private ownership 67 00:07:28.720 --> 00:07:34.260 of property is the great evil, and that it must be abolished, and the only way to get 68 00:07:34.260 --> 00:07:40.740 at it is to first begin by destroying the state. Proudhon's most famous work carries 69 00:07:40.740 --> 00:07:46.880 the French title A Quelle Properté? What is Property? And Proudhon's answer to his 70 00:07:46.880 --> 00:07:55.040 His own rhetorical question here was, property is robbery. Anyone who owns anything privately 71 00:07:55.040 --> 00:08:02.960 has robbed society of it. And like Godwin, Proudhon was not a violent man. He did not 72 00:08:02.960 --> 00:08:09.680 advocate any kind of warfare or any kind of destruction tactics employed against those 73 00:08:09.680 --> 00:08:17.240 Having Power, he, as Godwin before him, championed the idea of general education, that if people 74 00:08:17.240 --> 00:08:22.160 once understood that this was the evil, and that this was the source of the evil, well 75 00:08:22.160 --> 00:08:26.780 then they would just naturally move to correct it, and presently we wouldn't have to have 76 00:08:26.780 --> 00:08:32.300 a government, and we wouldn't have to have the control of property in private hands. 77 00:08:32.300 --> 00:08:38.320 Of course, if the government weren't there, then there would be no private property anyway, 78 00:08:38.320 --> 00:08:46.520 In the minds of these early anarchists, private property was the product of the force of political 79 00:08:46.520 --> 00:08:51.560 control. If you took that force away, then there would be no privileged class. That's 80 00:08:51.560 --> 00:08:53.640 the way they looked at it. 81 00:08:53.640 --> 00:08:58.800 Proudhon is particularly influential, and we have to remember him not only for his theories 82 00:08:58.800 --> 00:09:06.840 in this area, but also for the fact that he was the man who inspired Karl Marx. Karl Marx, 83 00:09:06.840 --> 00:09:36.840 became the best known of all of the nineteenth century economic theorists. Marx began his career by drinking at the intellectual fountains of Proudhon, and for a short while, at the beginning of his career, as Marx was toying with various philosophies, he became an anarchist, and his first writings are in praise of Proudhon. More on Marx later. But we do remember Proudhon as the man who inspired Marx. 84 00:09:36.840 --> 00:09:37.840 Marks. 85 00:09:37.840 --> 00:09:44.280 Meanwhile, Proudhon, in testing various theories as to how he could bring about this kind of 86 00:09:44.280 --> 00:09:51.440 a social change to it, the abolition of private ownership of property via the means of getting 87 00:09:51.440 --> 00:10:00.960 rid of the state, Proudhon hit upon the idea of profit sharing, that is anybody that makes 88 00:10:00.960 --> 00:10:03.960 a profit ought to share it with the workers. 89 00:10:03.960 --> 00:10:11.080 He also hit upon the idea of the labor unions. He organized or he theorized first, and then 90 00:10:11.080 --> 00:10:19.260 others really did the organizational work, that the workers ought to be the ones to manage 91 00:10:19.260 --> 00:10:25.900 the productive property. Characteristically, with all socialists, Proudhon held the view 92 00:10:25.900 --> 00:10:31.460 that you don't have to worry about production. We know how to produce anything that we need. 93 00:10:31.460 --> 00:10:37.060 What you have to worry about is distribution. And as he saw it, the distribution was not 94 00:10:37.060 --> 00:10:43.860 being effectively managed since the distribution was left in the hands of the selfish, large 95 00:10:43.860 --> 00:10:49.660 property owners who naturally would give the bulk of what they got their hands on to themselves. 96 00:10:49.660 --> 00:10:56.620 And that way the rest of society would suffer. And so he advocated what was called syndicalism, 97 00:10:56.620 --> 00:11:03.940 And the syndicalist movement spread primarily through France, although it blossomed out 98 00:11:03.940 --> 00:11:11.500 in other places as well, including Germany, Italy, Portugal, and Spain. The idea was that 99 00:11:11.500 --> 00:11:19.460 the workers would elect the managers of each plant. And nothing is said in Proudhon's writing 100 00:11:19.460 --> 00:11:26.100 as to how you would launch a new plant. The plants already exist, everything that we need 101 00:11:26.100 --> 00:11:31.620 According to Proudhon has already been produced, that is, in the form of productive tools, 102 00:11:31.620 --> 00:11:38.440 but we simply have to manage the ones that exist by having councils of workers set them 103 00:11:38.440 --> 00:11:41.440 up and elect the managers from their own number. 104 00:11:41.440 --> 00:11:47.120 You have democratic management of the tools of production, and then the managers in a 105 00:11:47.120 --> 00:11:54.080 given district would meet and set up the hours of work and the wages and so on, and this 106 00:11:54.080 --> 00:11:59.760 would be all managed by the workers themselves. There would be no one representing capital because 107 00:11:59.760 --> 00:12:06.160 you see capital would be something that belonged to society and nothing ever would belong to anybody 108 00:12:06.160 --> 00:12:13.920 as a person. Now these are some of Proudhon's ideas and there's no question as to the very profound 109 00:12:43.920 --> 00:12:54.480 Bakunin is the man who gave it that complexion. 110 00:12:54.480 --> 00:13:00.680 He began, interestingly, as a disciple of Marx after Marx had founded the communist 111 00:13:00.680 --> 00:13:01.680 idea. 112 00:13:01.680 --> 00:13:08.600 So Bakunin began as a communist, and then he transferred back into the anarchist position, 113 00:13:08.600 --> 00:13:14.900 And so he is often called the father of communistic anarchy or, if you like, the father of anarchistic 114 00:13:14.900 --> 00:13:17.880 communism, depending on how you want to put it. 115 00:13:17.880 --> 00:13:24.700 Anyway, Bakunin, it was, who at one time gave a very provocative speech in which he praised 116 00:13:24.700 --> 00:13:31.320 both Godwin and Proudhon for their pioneer social theories relating to the abolition 117 00:13:31.320 --> 00:13:33.240 of private property. 118 00:13:33.240 --> 00:13:37.820 And of course, followed with the idea that naturally you have to get rid of the government 119 00:13:37.820 --> 00:13:40.420 if you're going to get rid of private property. 120 00:13:40.420 --> 00:13:46.620 But then he came up with his idea, which was to mark the anarchist movement, at least in 121 00:13:46.620 --> 00:13:49.820 the public mind, virtually from that time forward. 122 00:13:49.820 --> 00:13:57.020 He said, in effect, these men who have preceded me, Godwin and Proudhon, they are fine, amiable 123 00:13:57.020 --> 00:14:02.520 gentlemen, but they are talking peace and education, and they are just dreamers. 124 00:14:02.520 --> 00:14:04.180 They are impractical. 125 00:14:04.180 --> 00:14:10.140 If you want to accomplish the great movement that we have in mind, says Bakunin, what 126 00:14:10.140 --> 00:14:17.360 we have to do is to take our guns and take our bombs and kill the leading capitalists 127 00:14:17.360 --> 00:14:23.580 and the leading politicians, because remember now, in Bakunin's mind, that's the same fellow. 128 00:14:23.580 --> 00:14:31.120 The man who holds the capital and the man who controls the government is the same fellow. 129 00:14:31.120 --> 00:14:35.680 He may wear two different hats, or he might actually be two different men. 130 00:14:35.680 --> 00:14:41.320 It would be two men working together, creating a privileged class and managing the property 131 00:14:41.320 --> 00:14:45.840 while the bulk of humanity is shut out and unable to do anything. 132 00:14:45.840 --> 00:14:53.060 And again, keep in mind that that point of view was undoubtedly valid prior to the Industrial 133 00:14:53.060 --> 00:14:54.060 Revolution. 134 00:14:54.060 --> 00:15:00.260 Of course, the Industrial Revolution, even as Bakunin was making his statements and as 135 00:15:00.260 --> 00:15:05.180 As many of these early anarchists were writing, the Industrial Revolution was uprooting all 136 00:15:05.180 --> 00:15:11.000 their theories, but they didn't understand it. In fact, characteristic of all socialists, 137 00:15:11.000 --> 00:15:16.280 including the anarchists, they have never understood the necessary theories of production. 138 00:15:16.280 --> 00:15:22.040 They fail to grasp, in fact, they fail to grapple with it. They simply make an assumption 139 00:15:22.040 --> 00:15:27.060 that production is no problem, that we've solved all of that, and the major problem 140 00:15:27.060 --> 00:15:37.700 Bakunin gave this name to his particular theory. He said, I bring you the propaganda of the 141 00:15:37.700 --> 00:15:44.380 deed or the propaganda of action, whereas those ahead of me have brought the propaganda 142 00:15:44.380 --> 00:15:50.860 of the word or the propaganda of the idea. Bakunin therefore claimed himself to be the 143 00:15:50.860 --> 00:15:57.580 The first of the practical anarchists and the only practical way that you had to accomplish 144 00:15:57.580 --> 00:16:05.420 his objective would be to use violence, notably to go after the individuals who held political 145 00:16:05.420 --> 00:16:14.820 power or who held capital and eliminate them. Bakunin was a colorful figure and during most 146 00:16:14.820 --> 00:16:22.260 Most of his life, so far as I've been able to find, he didn't himself actively participate 147 00:16:22.260 --> 00:16:29.260 in affairs of violence. And he died in 1876, right about the time that his theories were 148 00:16:29.260 --> 00:16:37.660 beginning to take hold. It was in that same decade that the first of the anarchist excesses 149 00:16:37.660 --> 00:16:46.300 began in Russia where Tsar Alexander II was assassinated during a parade in St. Petersburg 150 00:16:46.300 --> 00:16:51.180 by anarchists who were in the crowd. Someone tossed a bomb into the Tsar's carriage and 151 00:16:51.180 --> 00:16:56.980 it blew up. The Tsar fell to the street mortally wounded and a little anarchist girl, about 152 00:16:56.980 --> 00:17:03.380 17, rushed out of the crowd with a .44 and pumped several shots directly into the Tsar 153 00:17:03.380 --> 00:17:14.380 The assumption was, as Bakunin had taught his followers, that if you can kill the leading 154 00:17:14.380 --> 00:17:17.300 politicians, you destroy government. 155 00:17:17.300 --> 00:17:22.340 And if you can kill the leading capitalists, you destroy capitalism. 156 00:17:22.340 --> 00:17:29.660 But what happened, of course, was that as Tsar Alexander II expired, Alexander III became 157 00:17:29.660 --> 00:17:30.660 the Tsar. 158 00:17:30.660 --> 00:17:37.020 Bakunin had never explained that the death of a leading figure politically or economically 159 00:17:37.020 --> 00:17:39.980 simply leads to the promotion of a vice president. 160 00:17:39.980 --> 00:17:44.180 And that's, of course, one of the failures of his idea. 161 00:17:44.180 --> 00:17:51.460 In any case, Bakunin's ideas of violence began to take hold during the last quarter of the 162 00:17:51.460 --> 00:17:53.380 19th century. 163 00:17:53.380 --> 00:18:00.620 There were a number of anarchist excesses, including the famous Haymarket bombing in Chicago, 164 00:18:00.620 --> 00:18:07.060 and the assassination of a number of leading political heads as well as capitalist prominent 165 00:18:07.060 --> 00:18:11.860 figures, as well as a number of attempts at the lives of several of them, which attempts 166 00:18:11.860 --> 00:18:13.260 did not come off. 167 00:18:13.260 --> 00:18:20.220 You may recall that President Humbert of Italy was assassinated, President Carnot of France, 168 00:18:20.220 --> 00:18:27.180 President McKinley of the United States, all of these died at the hands of anarchist assassins. 169 00:18:27.180 --> 00:18:31.220 were made on the lives of the German princes, but they failed. 170 00:18:31.220 --> 00:18:38.400 And I think you may even recall that on one occasion, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 171 00:18:38.400 --> 00:18:44.380 at that time President-elect, was sitting in Bayfront Park in Miami when an anarchist 172 00:18:44.380 --> 00:18:50.900 decided to kill him and took a shot at him, but missed and killed Mayor Cermak of Chicago, 173 00:18:50.900 --> 00:18:54.420 who happened to be sitting next to Roosevelt at the time. 174 00:18:54.420 --> 00:19:03.380 We have had a number of anarchist actions of that nature in this country. Bakunin could 175 00:19:03.380 --> 00:19:09.500 be said to be fundamentally responsible for the violent element. Then in addition to Bakunin 176 00:19:09.500 --> 00:19:16.300 and coming after him, we have another Russian named Kropotkin. I'm only naming here in this 177 00:19:16.300 --> 00:19:24.200 brief period some of the most prominent. Peter Kropotkin, another Russian born actually into 178 00:19:24.200 --> 00:19:33.160 to a noble family and thoroughly disgusted with the conditions that existed in Russia 179 00:19:33.160 --> 00:19:41.320 during his childhood. Incidentally, he was born in 1842, and the industrialization of 180 00:19:41.320 --> 00:19:48.080 England and America had begun to change the world, but Russia had had no industrialization. 181 00:19:48.080 --> 00:19:53.320 It was operating still under a feudal system, and the peasantry were virtually treated like 182 00:19:53.320 --> 00:20:23.320 of Money, The Theory of Money and State, The Theory of Money and State, The Theory 183 00:20:23.320 --> 00:20:33.080 Kropotkin sort of differed from Bakunin in the employment of violence. He felt that Bakunin 184 00:20:33.080 --> 00:20:38.640 was wrong in suggesting that you had to kill the leading capitalists and the leading governmental 185 00:20:38.640 --> 00:20:45.760 figures. Kropotkin may have been influenced in fact by Marx considerably because he advocated 186 00:20:45.760 --> 00:20:52.280 manning the barricades and taking them on as a class that you couldn't just do it individually. 187 00:20:52.280 --> 00:21:00.960 Let me mention another one of the famous European anarchists, a man who is called the father 188 00:21:00.960 --> 00:21:08.640 of Christian anarchy, Count Leo Tolstoy, a third important Russian on the scene. Tolstoy 189 00:21:08.640 --> 00:21:15.480 of course is very well known today as the author of War and Peace and other monumental 190 00:21:15.480 --> 00:21:23.480 Marx, Tolstoy believed that Christ was the greatest anarchist of all and that the greatest 191 00:21:23.480 --> 00:21:29.240 anarchist message is the Sermon on the Mount. He preached the idea of abject poverty for 192 00:21:29.240 --> 00:21:33.560 individuals feeling that—and of course he didn't want government at all, that government 193 00:21:33.560 --> 00:21:42.600 was entirely useless—he recommended that Christ be the only king and that we simply 194 00:21:42.600 --> 00:21:49.200 Neil in reverence to Christ and have no government in the meantime and certainly no property. 195 00:21:49.200 --> 00:21:55.000 So this was Tolstoy's position. A very peaceful, a very gentle man. Tolstoy is quite different 196 00:21:55.000 --> 00:21:58.360 from Bakunin, yet they are both anarchists. 197 00:21:58.360 --> 00:22:02.520 And I'll mention one more of the European anarchists who is particularly important. 198 00:22:02.520 --> 00:22:08.760 This man came considerably earlier. Actually his career in time parallels that of Proudhon. 199 00:22:08.760 --> 00:22:31.400 Max Sterner, the Founding Intellectual Argument for that particular branch of anarchy called 200 00:22:31.400 --> 00:22:33.840 called nihilism. 201 00:22:33.840 --> 00:22:40.160 Sterner took the view that virtually all human organization is wrong and ought to be abolished. 202 00:22:40.160 --> 00:22:46.260 Also that morality is a figment of the imagination, and there is no such thing as honor or integrity. 203 00:22:46.260 --> 00:22:50.760 Marriage should be abolished, so should the church, and so should everything else. 204 00:22:50.760 --> 00:22:54.720 His general theme is this, what is it that you want in life? 205 00:22:54.720 --> 00:22:56.220 Help yourself. 206 00:22:56.220 --> 00:22:57.220 How much can you get? 207 00:22:57.220 --> 00:22:58.560 Well, how strong are you? 208 00:22:58.560 --> 00:22:59.560 How long can you keep it? 209 00:22:59.560 --> 00:23:01.560 Well, how big are you? 210 00:23:01.560 --> 00:23:05.280 If it will help you to enter into a contract with someone, do so. 211 00:23:05.280 --> 00:23:08.480 If it will help you to break the contract, do that. 212 00:23:08.480 --> 00:23:09.660 Do anything you want. 213 00:23:09.660 --> 00:23:16.400 In other words, he elevated the concept of the ego to an ultimate, all-purpose mechanism 214 00:23:16.400 --> 00:23:18.800 and that was it. 215 00:23:18.800 --> 00:23:23.760 Stirner's writings at the present time have been enjoying somewhat of a comeback and we 216 00:23:23.760 --> 00:23:31.200 We find today on our campuses quite a few more sternerites than was true, say, a quarter 217 00:23:31.200 --> 00:23:32.700 of a century ago. 218 00:23:32.700 --> 00:23:35.200 Let me turn briefly now to American anarchists. 219 00:23:35.200 --> 00:23:38.720 I've mentioned six of the most prominent Europeans. 220 00:23:38.720 --> 00:23:41.920 There are a number of other Europeans that are deserving of mention. 221 00:23:41.920 --> 00:23:47.880 But we have had about five major anarchists in this country that operated independently 222 00:23:47.880 --> 00:23:50.680 of the European scene. 223 00:23:50.680 --> 00:24:04.960 The first one in this country would be called Josiah Warren. He was born in 1799 and lived 224 00:24:04.960 --> 00:24:13.020 until 1874, his life more or less paralleling that of Proudhon and his arguments as well. 225 00:24:13.020 --> 00:24:19.320 Warren began very much influenced by communistic ideas, but he put those aside and became an 226 00:24:19.320 --> 00:24:25.800 Anarchist, and then later on he went back to the idea of communal living. Josiah Warren 227 00:24:25.800 --> 00:24:35.520 was a peaceful man and had ideas that there should be labor certificates rather than money, 228 00:24:35.520 --> 00:24:43.560 and he worked kind of an experiment in a time store in Cincinnati where you paid the wholesale 229 00:24:43.560 --> 00:24:48.400 price of goods when you bought them from him, and in addition you paid for the salesman's 230 00:24:48.400 --> 00:24:53.920 time, who waited on you, and I believe he had about a seven percent markup generally. 231 00:24:53.920 --> 00:25:03.720 Even so, the store was not a financial success, and Warren found that he didn't get the patronage 232 00:25:03.720 --> 00:25:09.680 that he thought he deserved as a result of his generally lower prices. 233 00:25:09.680 --> 00:25:15.920 Be that as it may, Warren is a very interesting figure, an entirely a peaceful man who sort 234 00:25:15.920 --> 00:25:20.860 sort of felt that you could conduct small experiments in communities, and ultimately 235 00:25:20.860 --> 00:25:26.560 arrive at a kind of worker's paradise where money would be abolished, and there would 236 00:25:26.560 --> 00:25:32.680 be no government, and we would all live and share properties together. 237 00:25:32.680 --> 00:25:37.960 Probably the best known of all the American anarchists is Henry David Thoreau, who was 238 00:25:37.960 --> 00:25:47.400 Thoreau was born in 1817, died in 1862, and was, of course, the author of Walden Pond. 239 00:25:47.400 --> 00:25:52.880 Thoreau was obviously a very peaceful man and a brilliant writer, a man who has inspired 240 00:25:52.880 --> 00:25:58.960 millions of people with his kindness and his understanding of the importance of the individual. 241 00:25:58.960 --> 00:26:04.000 But of course, Thoreau, like most of the anarchists, completely fails to understand production, 242 00:26:04.000 --> 00:26:09.360 And economically speaking, he has that same problem with the other anarchists. They just 243 00:26:09.360 --> 00:26:15.360 don't grasp how you put the pieces together. Aside from that, a very fine, amiable and 244 00:26:15.360 --> 00:26:17.320 well-known man. 245 00:26:17.320 --> 00:26:25.200 Another rather well-known anarchist in this country is Benjamin Tucker, who lived up until 246 00:26:25.200 --> 00:26:32.840 1939 into this century, well along. He was born in 1854 and was the founder of Liberty 247 00:26:32.840 --> 00:26:38.720 magazine, which became a very popular magazine at one time and contained most of the literary 248 00:26:38.720 --> 00:26:47.120 figures of that period. Tucker, like the others, advocated freedom for the individual. He did 249 00:26:47.120 --> 00:26:54.760 not want to see governments intervening, but he was—well, actually, he, to be fair, favored 250 00:26:54.760 --> 00:27:00.680 some private property, but he was a little bit concerned about how much a person could 251 00:27:00.680 --> 00:27:07.360 have, and he is listed as an anarchist. He called himself an anarchist. Another well-known anarchist 252 00:27:07.360 --> 00:27:14.880 is Lysander Spooner of 1808 to 1887, a man who became a brilliant attorney and whose writings, 253 00:27:14.880 --> 00:27:20.720 again, are today enjoying a comeback. And the last man that I'll mention in this area would 254 00:27:20.720 --> 00:27:27.640 be Henry George. Some people don't call him an anarchist. George called himself a socialist, 255 00:27:27.640 --> 00:27:34.800 Post, but his enmity to the state as such, I think, classifies him in the anarchist column. 256 00:27:34.800 --> 00:27:41.320 He lived until 1897, at one time ran for mayor of New York City, which seems to be a popular 257 00:27:41.320 --> 00:27:48.440 pastime these days, and like most didn't make it. But George is another peaceful figure 258 00:27:48.440 --> 00:27:53.440 and rather brilliant in economics, excepting when it comes to the private ownership of 259 00:27:53.440 --> 00:27:59.680 of Land, which he objected to as about the only bit of private property that a person 260 00:27:59.680 --> 00:28:01.960 could not have.