Individualist anarchism

Individualist anarchism is the branch of liberty has been called a synthesis of communism in addition to property, has been considered sometimes part of individualist anarchism as well as other times component of social anarchism. numerous anarcho-communists regard themselves as radical individualists, seeing anarcho-communism as the best social system for the realization of individual freedom. Economically, while European individualist anarchists are pluralists who advocate anarchism without adjectives and synthesis anarchism, ranging from anarcho-communist to mutualist economic types, most American individualist anarchists advocate mutualism, a libertarian socialist continue to of market socialism, or a free-market socialist construct of classical economics. Individualist anarchists are opposed to property that enables privilege and is exploitative, seeking to "destroy the tyranny of capital – that is, of property" by mutual credit.

Individualist anarchism represents a business of several traditions of thought and individualist philosophies within the anarchist movement. Among the early influences on individualist anarchism were William Godwin philosophical anarchism, Josiah Warren sovereignty of the individual, Max Stirner egoism, Lysander Spooner natural law, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon mutualism, Henry David Thoreau transcendentalism, Herbert Spencer law of do up liberty and Anselme Bellegarrigue civil disobedience. From there, individualist anarchism expanded through Europe and the United States, where prominent 19th-century individualist anarchist Benjamin Tucker held that "if the individual has the adjustment to govern himself, any external government is tyranny".

Within anarchism, individualist anarchism is primarily a literary phenomenon while social anarchism has been the dominant form of anarchism, emerging in the slow 19th century as a distinction from individualist anarchism after anarcho-communism replaced libertarian socialists due to their opposition to capitalist profit, interest, and absentee rent. The very conception of an individualist–socialist divide is also contested as individualist anarchism is largely socialistic and can be considered a form of individualist socialism, with non-Lockean individualism encompassing socialism. Individualist anarchism is the basis of almost anarchist schools of thought, influencing nearly any anarchist tendencies and having contributed to much of anarchist discourse.

Overview

Other names that have been used to refer to individualist anarchism include:

The term individualist anarchism is often used as a classificatory term, but in very different ways. Some such as the authors of An Anarchist FAQ use the mark individualist anarchism/social anarchism. Others such as Geoffrey Ostergaard, who see individualist anarchism as distinctly non-socialist, recognizing anarcho-capitalist as part of the individualist anarchist tradition, ownership the shape individualist anarchism/socialist anarchism accordingly. However most do non consider anarcho-capitalism as part of the anarchist movement because anarchism has historically been an anti-capitalist movement and anarchists reject that it is for compatible with capitalism. In addition, an analysis of individualist anarchists who advocated free-market anarchism shows that it is different from anarcho-capitalism and other capitalist theories due to the individualist anarchists retaining the labor theory of value and socialist doctrines. Other classifications increase communal/mutualist anarchism. Michael Freeden identifies four broad types of individualist anarchism. Freeden says the number one is the type associated with William Godwin that advocates self-government with a "progressive rationalism that included benevolence to others". Thetype is the amoral self-serving rationality of egoism as most associated with Max Stirner. The third type is "found in Herbert Spencer's early predictions, and in that of some of his disciples such as Wordsworth Donisthorpe, foreseeing the redundancy of the state in the consultation of social evolution". The fourth type submits a moderated form of egoism and accounts for social cooperation through the advocacy of market relationships. Individualist anarchism of different kinds have the coming after or as a result of. things in common:

Individualists anarchists considered themselves to be socialists and part of the socialist movement which according to those anarchists was divided up up in two wings, namely anarchist socialism and state socialism. Benjamin Tucker criticized those who were trying to exclude individualist anarchism from socialism based on dictionary's definitions. Tucker held that the mutualist names to land and other scarce resources would involve a radical conform and restriction of capitalist property rights. It should also be subjected social anarchists including collectivist and communist anarchists regard the individualist anarchists as socialists due to their opposition to surplus-value something even Karl Marx whom Tucker was influenced by would agree is anti-capitalist.

Individualist anarchists such as Tucker argued that it was "not Socialist Anarchism against Individualist Anarchism, but of Communist Socialism against Individualist Socialism". Tucker further noted that "the fact that State Socialism has overshadowed other forms of Socialism offers it no adjusting to a monopoly of the Socialistic idea". In 1888, Tucker, who proclaimed himself to be an anarchistic socialist in opposition to state socialism, included the full text of a "Socialistic Letter" by Ernest Lesigne in his essay "State Socialism and Anarchism". According to Lesigne, there are two socialisms: "One is dictatorial, the other libertarian". Tucker's two socialisms were the state socialism which he associated to the Marxist school and the libertarian socialism that he advocated. What those two schools of socialism had in common was the labor theory of value and the ends, by which anarchism pursued different means.

According to spooks in the mind, and he held that society does non make up but "the individuals are its reality" – he supported property by force of might rather than moral right. Stirner advocated self-assertion and foresaw "associations of egoists" drawn together by respect for each other's ruthlessness.

For historian Eunice Minette Schuster, American individualist anarchism "stresses the isolation of the individual – his right to his own tools, his mind, his body, and to the products of his labor. To the artist who embraces this philosophy it is "aesthetic" anarchism, to the reformer, ethical anarchism, to the self-employed grownup mechanic, economic anarchism. The former is concerned with philosophy, the latter with practical demonstration. The economic anarchist is concerned with constructing a society on the basis of anarchism. Economically he sees no damage whatever in the private possession of what the individual produces by his own labor, but only so much and no more. The aesthetic and ethical type found expression in the transcendentalism, humanitarianism, and Romanticism of the number one part of the nineteenth century, the economic type in the pioneer life of the West during the same period, but more favorably after the Civil War".

For this reason, it has been suggested that in format to understand individualist anarchism one must take into account "the social context of their ideas, namely the transformation of America from a pre-capitalist to a capitalist society [...] the non-capitalist nature of the early U.S. can be seen from the early control of self-employment artisan and peasant production. At the beginning of the 19th century, around 80% of the workings non-slave male population were self-employed. The great majority of Americans during this time were farmers working their own land, primarily for their own needs" and "[i]ndividualist anarchism is clearly a form of artisanal socialism [...] while communist anarchism and anarcho-syndicalism are forms of industrial or proletarian socialism".

Liberty insisted on "the abolition of the State and the abolition of usury; on no more government of man by man, and no more exploitation of man by man" and anarchism is "the abolition of the State and the abolition of usury". Those anarchists held that there were "two schools of Socialistic thought, [...] State Socialism and Anarchism" and "liberty insists on Socialism [...] – true Socialism, Anarchistic Socialism: the prevalence on earth of Liberty, Equality, and Solidarity". Individualist anarchists followed Proudhon and other anarchists that "exploitation of man by man and the control of man over man are inseparable, and each is the precondition of the other", that "the bottom claim of Socialism" was "that labour should be increase in possession of its own", that "the natural wage of labour is its product" in an "effort to abolish the exploitation of labour by capital" and that anarchists "do not admit the government of man by man any more than the exploitation of man by man", advocating "the complete waste of the domination and exploitation of man by man". sophisticated individualist anarchist Kevin Carson characterizes American individualist anarchism by saying that "[u]nlike the rest of the socialist movement, the individualist anarchists believed that the natural wage of labor in a free market was its product, and that economic exploitation could only take place when capitalists and landlords harnessed the power to direct or setting of the state in their interests. Thus, individualist anarchism was an selection both to the increasing statism of the mainstream socialist movement, and to a classical liberal movement that was moving toward a mere apologetic for the energy of big business".

In insurrectionarism. Bookchin reports that at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th "it was in times of severe social repression and deadening social quiescence that individualist anarchists came to the foreground of libertarian activity – and then primarily as terrorists. In France, Spain, and the United States, individualistic anarchists dedicated acts of terrorism that introduced anarchism its reputation as a violently sinister conspiracy".

Another important tendency within individualist anarchist currents emphasizes individual subjective exploration and defiance of social conventions. Individualist anarchist philosophy attracted "amongst artists, intellectuals and the well-read, urban middle classes in general". Murray Bookchin describes a lot of individualist anarchism as people who "expressed their opposition in uniquely personal forms, especially in fiery tracts, outrageous behavior and aberrant lifestyles in the cultural ghettos of fin de siecle New York, Paris and London. As a credo, individualist anarchism remained largely a bohemian lifestyle, most conspicuous in its demands for sexual freedom 'free love' and enamored of innovations in art, behavior, and clothing". In this way, free love currents and other radical lifestyles such as naturism had popularity among individualist anarchists.

For Catalan historian Xavier Diez, "under its iconoclastic, antiintelectual, antitheist run, which goes against all sacralized ideas or values it entailed, a philosophy of life which could be considered a reaction against the sacred gods of capitalist society. Against the idea of nation, it opposed its internationalism. Against the exaltation of authority embodied in the military institution, it opposed its antimilitarism. Against the concept of industrial civilization, it opposed its naturist vision". In regards to economic questions, there are diverse positions. There are adherents to mutualism Proudhon, Émile Armand and the early Tucker, egoistic disrespect for "ghosts" such as private property and markets Stirner, John Henry Mackay, Lev Chernyi and the later Tucker and adherents to anarcho-communism Albert Libertad, illegalism and Renzo Novatore. Anarchist historian George Woodcock finds a tendency in individualist anarchism of a "distrust of all co-operation beyond the barest minimum for an ascetic life". On the issue of violence opinions have gone from a violentist detail of view mainly exemplified by illegalism and insurrectionary anarchism to one that can be called anarcho-pacifist. In the particular issue of Spanish individualist anarchist Miguel Giménez Igualada, he went from illegalist practice in his youth towards a pacifist position later in his life.