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Putting Liberty in Context*

Frank H. Brooks

T he American individualist anarchist newspaper, Liberty, Not the Daughter But the Mother of Order (1881-1908), edited by Benjamin R. Tucker, was "the long-

est-lived of any radical periodical of economic or political nature in the nation's history and certainly one of the world 's most interesting during the past two cen- turies." It provided "a forum for native American radicalism.., which earned the admiration of H.L. Mencken, George Bernard Shaw and Walt Whitman. "1 Besides the writings of its editor, Liberty published writers of high quality, including Ber- nard Shaw and Vilfredo Pareto, as well as a host of lesser-known individualists. The recent resurgence of interest in anarchism has led to renewed appreciation for Tucker and his journal. Liberty is now generally acknowledged to have been the most important anarchist periodical to appear in the United States: "It is impossible to overemphasize the influence Liberty had over the development of libertarian thought in America"; "arguably the finest libertarian periodical ever published in the English language. "2 Benjamin Tucker's own writings, after appearing in Liberty, were reprinted as pamphlets and in book form and have recently surfaced in anthologies of anarchism? Modern libertarians have been particularly interested, so much so that Stephen Newman, an analyst of libertarianism, refers to Tucker and his followers as their "true culture heroes. "4 Libertarians trying to reappropriate the radical thrust of classical liberalism naturally find historical al- lies in the individualists of late nineteenth-century America. Tucker and the con- tributors to Liberty confronted the early development of the centralized American state and the complicity of mainstream liberalism in this development by discuss- ing and criticizing laissez-faire economics, political reforms, and such theoretical issues as natural rights. Their critiques of reformers' reliance on the state have become newly relevant as the welfare state is increasingly criticized and Soviet- style communism continues to fragment.

Yet to locate Liberty's significance merely in its prophetic criticisms dramati- cally curtails and ultimately distorts the nature of the ideology it helped to define. Liberty was not just a t reasure trove of protol iber tar ianism, but the culmination of fifty years of radical individualism and labor reform. The pre- eminent analyst of American individualist anarchism, James J. Martin, refers to Tucker's newspaper as "theoretical anarchism matured. "s Even recognizing its historical roots, however, is insufficient, for Liberty also reflected, and partici-

* Reprinted in part from the book The Individualist Anarchists, edited by Frank H. Brooks. Copy- right �9 1994 by Transaction Publishers.

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pated in, the dramatic political and intellectual changes occurring around the turn of the century. The same newspaper that popularized the decades-old theo- ries of Josiah Warren, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, and Max Stirner was also one of the first American journals to print works by and about Bernard Shaw, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Henrik Ibsen. Tucker and his associates wrote perceptively about the Russian nihilists of the 1880s and the French bombthrowers of the 1890s, the development of anarchist communism, reformers such as Henry George and Edward Bellamy, and the temptations of Populist politics. Rooted in a radical past, reacting to (if not notably shaping) a dramatic present, and bearing lessons for the future, Liberty must be considered in several temporal contexts.

As the topics indicated above show, Liberty also cannot be constrained by its obvious connections to American life or to liberal theory. Although individualist anarchism was nowhere larger in scale than in the United States, the anarchism expressed in Liberty owed only a general debt to individualist thinkers in America such as Thoreau or Jefferson and a substantial debt only to one American thinker, Josiah Warren. 6 The major intellectual influences were British, French, and Ger- man: the "law of equal freedom" from Herbert Spencer, mutualist economics (especially the mutual bank) from Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, and egoist ethics from Max Stirner. Liberty's connection to liberalism is also more apparent than real, or rather more critical than thankful. Individualist anarchism shared liberalism's concern with individual liberty, but took that to extremes that liberals could not contemplate. For instance, under the influence of Proudhon, the labor theory of property became a critique of state-enforced property rights, while, under the influence of Stirner, contract became the basis for creating "rights," not the mecha- nism for enforcing preexisting natural rights. The economic and political fixa- tions of classical liberalism were transcended in Liberty as it went beyond even J.S. Mill and Mary Wollstonecraft in addressing the problems of women, chil- dren, and education in individualist terms.

Thus, if one examines Liberty closely, a complex, interesting, and potentially confusing phenomenon emerges: an American newspaper with European sen- sibilities and concerns, an individualist organ whose primary concern was with the "labor problem," and an anarchist project that aimed not to destroy the state, but rather, in Proudhon's suggestion, to dissolve it within a transformed economy. The standard selections from Benjamin Tucker's work only hint at this complexity, while his own anthology, Instead of a Book, represents only the first twelve years of Liberty's publication and, as James Martin points out, is unacceptable as a representative collection because "significant material was omitted from its contents. "7

Liberty and American Individualist Anarchism

While Liberty was the most interesting and significant of American anarchist newspapers, it was neither the first one nor the only one in existence at the time.

56 Publishing Research Quarterly / Winter 1994/95

The first explicitly anarchist newspaper in the United States, The Peaceful Revolu- tionist, was published fifty years before by Josiah Warren. Even Warren, however, was not the first reformer to demonstrate anarchistic tendencies. Religious dissidents like Anne Hutchinson exhibited such tendencies already in the sev- enteenth century, and political radicals such as Thomas Paine verged on anarchism in their thoroughgoing liberal critiques of government. Analysts of American anarchism such as Reichert, Schuster, DeLeon, and Rocker s have made much of these early roots of the anarchist movement. However, American anarchism, like its European counterpart, is best seen as a nineteenth-century development, an ideology that, like socialism generally, responded to the growth of industrial capitalism, republican government, and nationalism. Although this is clearest in the more collectivistic anarchist theorists and movements of the late nineteenth century (Bakunin, Kropotkin, Malatesta, communist anarchism, anarcho-syndicalism), it also helps to explain anarchists of early- to midcentury such as Proudhon, Stirner and, in America, Warren. For all of these theorists, a primary concern was the "labor problem"--the increasing dependence and immiseration of manual workers in industrializing economies. Thus, as James Martin insists, while it is interesting to point out anarchist tendencies in religious and political radicalism, American anarchism as a movement and an ideology was primarily directed toward economic reform and thus did not come into its own (in Europe or America) until the 1830s, when Warren and Proudhon began developing the theory. 9

The initial concerns of American anarchism were money and land reform, issues that were addressed by antebellum anarchists such as Warren, Will- iam B. Greene, Stephen Pearl Andrews, and Joshua K. Ingalls. Their concerns were part of the broader labor movement and continued to be promoted after the Civil War in the New England Labor Reform League. In the 1870s, anarchists were also prominent in the "free love" movement, which criticized the institution of marriage (with its legal and social barriers for women) and insisted on the availability of birth control. It was into this milieu that Benjamin Tucker, born in 1854 near New Bedford, Massachusetts, was introduced. Raised in a liberal Unitarian environment and falling under the spell of Victoria Woodhull (a controversial free-love speaker, member of the First International, and spiritualist), Tucker met several of the antebellum anarchists at meetings of the New England Labor Reform League. He began to write for The Word, edited by Ezra Heywood (an officer of the NELRL and a free-love activist), and became its associate editor in 1875. By December of 1876, however, Tucker resigned from the Word, complaining that it was more interested in love reform than labor reform. He established his own newspaper, the Radical Review, which in its short run (1877-78), featured articles by most of the major American anarchists. He quit his own venture in order to take charge of the Word when Heywood was jailed for running afoul of the rampaging censor, Anthony Comstock, in August 1878. Between 1879 and

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1881, however, Tucker was not directly engaged in anarchist publishing, working instead as a journalist in Boston.

Tucker continued to work at least part-time as a mainstream journalist through- out the period that he published Liberty, whose first issue came out on August 6, 1881. From the beginning, Liberty was under the firm editorial direction of Tucker, who sought to make it a "plumb-line" journal of individualist anarchism:

It may be well to state at the outset that this journal will be edited to suit its editor, not its readers. He hopes that what suits h im will suit them; but if not, it will make no difference. No subscriber, or body of subscribers, will be al lowed to govern his course, dictate his policy, or prescribe his methods. Liberty is published for the very definite purpose of spreading certain ideas, and no claim will be admit ted on any pretext of freedom of speech, to waste its limited space in hindering the attainment of that object. 1~

Actually, this statement was more bark than bite, for Tucker al lowed a wide variety of views to be expressed in Liberty, always reserving, and often exercis- ing, his editorial right to criticize, amplify, or clarify any that did not suit him. Tucker's theoretical views were probably mature by the time he began publishing Liberty, but there is still a discernible hardening of the "plumb-line" over the years. Partly this was because Tucker's own attitudes became more fixed, but the radical m o v e m e n t also u n d e r w e n t significant changes. For this reason, Liberty's stable of writers also shifted several times over the years, reflecting the broader shifts in the reform, radical, and anarchist movements.

In the first three or four years, there was considerable ideological fluidity in Liberty, as the socialist and labor parties that had been active in the late 1870s gave way to a smaller radical movement overall, but one with a growing anarchist tendency. In 1881, Liberty was officially designated as the English-language journal of a nascent anarchist federation21 Although not controlled by this federation, Tucker allowed wide, and often sympathetic, coverage of anarehism's various tendencies, notably to the communist anarchism of Kropotkin. Liberty was also quite favorable to quasi-anarchistic movements such as the Russian nihilists and the Irish No-Rent movement.

By the time of the Pittsburgh organizing congress of the International Work- ing-People's Association (the anarchist successor of the First International) in 1883, however, Tucker had become estranged from the organized anarchist:movement. Liberty began to sharpen its line against the left of the anarchist movement , insist ing on the inviolabili ty of private proper ty and crit icizing the authoritarianism that it saw as inherent in communism. By the mid-1880s, there were several major anarchistic newspapers in the field, in several languages. On the west coast, Burnette Haskell published Truth, a rather confusing amalgam of Marxism and anarchism. In Kansas, Moses Harman published Lucifer, the Light Bearer, a free-love paper with significant anarchist leanings. In Chicago, the En-


glish-language paper of the IWPA, the Alarm, supplemented a German-language paper, the Chicagoer Arbeiter-Zeitung and a Bohemian paper, Budoucnost. In De- troit, Robert Reitzel was publishing Der Arme Teufel and in New York, Johann Most published Freiheit. Of course, Ezra Heywood continued to publish the Word. In this expanded universe of anarchist journalism, Tucker tried to define individualist anarchism more narrowly in order to distinguish it from its cousins, or in some cases, its pretenders. This process was hastened by the uproar surround- ing the Haymarket incident in 1886. Although the fatal bombing of a police con- tingent about to break up an anarchist meeting in Chicago brought unprecedented interest in anarchism, the public tended to identify anarchism with violent, for- eign, communistic bombthrowers. Tucker and his writers tried to differentiate individualist anarchism theoretically, economically, and strategically from the "Chicago anarchism" represented by the defendants in the Haymarket case.

By 1888 or so, a third stage in the "plumb-line" had been reached, where the theoretical uniqueness and consistency of individualist anarchism had been established, but still had to be defended against narrower, and more theoretical, objections. Typically, these objections were raised by reformers, such as Hugh Pentecost, editor of Twentieth Century, who claimed to be anarchists, or by individualists, such as Wordsworth Donisthorpe or Auberon Herbert, who were al- most anarchists. Other objections came from those who were not convinced by details of Liberty's economic reforms, such as Hugo Bilgram's criticisms of the theory of money it espoused. Still others objected to the implications of the egoist theory of ethics which had effectively become doctrine in Liberty in the mid- 1880s. In short, Liberty after 1888, with the exception of reactions to incidents such as Alexander Berkman's attempted assassination of Henry Frick or to newly emerging movements such as Populism or Bellamy's Nationalism, became primarily a theoretical journal for clarifying the fine points of individualist anarchism. The only major exception to this trend was Tucker's growing interest in European avant-garde literature and drama, which were increasingly discussed in Liberty and sold by Tucker in his capacity as a publisher and bookseller.

These shifts in Liberty's emphases must be borne in mind when considering the arguments in any particular selection from Liberty. For example, articles on the strategy of "propaganda by deed" differed significantly, from sympathetic accounts of Russian nihilists in the early 1880s to more critical assessments of attentats in the 1890s and beyond.

One must also consider differences in emphasis due to the authors writing in Liberty. On theoretical, strategic, and rhetorical matters, Tucker's writers often deviated widely from the editor. The best example of this would be the changing relationship between Tucker and his prot6g6, Victor Yarros. Having emigrated from the Ukraine in the early 1880s, Yarros settled in New England and was initially attracted to the collectivist anarchists beginning to organize at that time. However, under Tucker's influence, he became one of the most prominent of the individualist anarchists writing for Liberty. In the mid-1880s, he was an advocate

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of both egoistic ethics and Spencerian sociology, but by the late 1880s, he had diverged from Tucker on the former and became the primary interpreter (and critic) of Spencer for the individualist anarchists. By the early 1890s, after he had moved to Chicago, he also began to differ from Tucker on strategic matters, tak- ing a more opportunistic stance toward election-related agitation in particular. Eventually, Tucker and Yarros drifted apart completely, so much so that Yarros disavowed anarchism altogether. 12

Other writers were not so dramatic in their shifts, but contributed greatly to the variety and interest of Liberty. 13 In the first stage of its publication, Liberty published many writers with backgrounds in the antebellum anarchist movement as well as many labor-oriented journalists. The former category includes Lysander Spooner, the venerable and radical lawyer best known for his demolition of the Constitution and of slavery from the vantage point of natural law and consent, and Joshua King Ingalls, the longtime land reformer. The latter included Joseph Labadie, a Detroit unionist who advocated broad cooperation between labor and radical activists and who wrote a column entitled "Cranky Notions." Henry Appleton, writ ing as "X," was a Providence, Rhode Island journalist and a forceful critic of collectivism, who eventually broke with Liberty because it did not offer enough of a positive program of reform. E.C. Walker, of Valley Falls, Kansas, promoted the issues of free love and birth control, both in Liberty and in his own newspaper, Lucifer, the Light Bearer. Another Walker, James. L (writing as "Tak Kak" to conceal his identity as the editor of the Galveston News), was the most forceful advocate of egoism in Liberty, although its readers were first introduced to Stirner by George Schumm, a German immigrant and close friend of Tucker's in Boston. In the later years, Tucker published frequent contributions from John Beverley Robinson, an anarchist with pacifist leanings, and Steven Byington, one of the few professing Christians in the movement, and a tireless activist who initiated the "Anarchist Letter-Writing Corps" and translated Stirner's The Ego and Its Own. This brief survey of Liberty's writers suggests the breadth of concerns and the nature of the activists d rawn to individualist anarchism. It also shows that individualist anarchism was not confined to New England, as the epithet "Boston anarchists" (first applied by the collectivist Burnette Haskell) suggests.

However, the other label given to these individualist radicals, "philosophical anarchism," may fit somewhat better. This term came into currency around the time of Haymarket and was a favorite insult of the collectivist anarchists, who meant to characterize Liberty's adherents as do-nothing, armchair anarchists, whose class origins belied their alleged sympathies wi th the working class. The ambivalence of Tucker to unions (and the outright hostility of some of his writers), as well as the individualists" allegiance to many of the tenets of antebellum labor reform and, more generally, to a (truly) free-market economy, led many workers and collectivist anarchists to suspect them as petit-bourgeois. Another nail in this coffin was their professed admiration for Proudhon and Stirner, two victims of Karl Marx's withering criticism.


Was individualist anarchism a "petit-bourgeois" ideology? Although a loaded question, it is worth considering in order to gain further insight into Liberty's character. Certainly many of the writers for the paper were neither wage workers nor capitalists, but rather small proprietors and skilled artisans. However, this is not notably different from the case of many labor papers of the day, for those who have some economic security as well as leisure for reading and think- ing are the ones most likely to become active, particularly in reform or radical journalism. A better way of getting at this provocative question is to consider the readership of Liberty. Tucker's paper probably never had more than about one thousand subscribers, although its influence was widely felt. 14 Tucker did not leave any subscription lists and the characteristics of its readers can only be inferred from several pieces of evidence. 15 The only substantial glimpse into Liberty's readership comes in an article Tucker wrote around the time of Presi- dent McKinley's assassination, "Are Anarchists Thugs? "16 The ludicrous theo- ries of Cesare Lombroso (that anarchists and criminals were easily identified by their physiognomy) were current and Tucker took pains to indicate that his readership was quite respectable. He claimed that America's anarchists included "scores" of lawyers and physicians, "at least three professional librarians," "nu- merous teachers," "one or two college professors," "a large number of journalists," "perhaps a dozen inventors," as well as engineers, architects, bankers, brokers, manufacturers, merchants, government clerks, artists, "farmers by the score," "workmen in every craft," and "one or two millionaires." Discounting Tucker's intent, it remains clear that Liberty's appeal, in class terms, was broad (excluding perhaps only the least skilled of wage workers). Whether the major- ity of its readers were professionals, artisans, or "petit-bourgeois" is impossible to tell, but the prominence of these categories in Tucker's list suggests that the appeal of Liberty among the "proletariat" was probably quite limited.

Whatever its class, sectional, historical, or ideological characteristics, one thing remains: Liberty provides one of the richest sources for interesting, sophisticated, provocative, and, yes, occasionally hair-splitting and arcane, writing on issues that continue to be vital today. Although much has changed in society, politics, and the economy since the turn of the century, the theoretical rigor and penetrat- ing insights of Liberty make it relevant not merely to historians of intellectual trends and reform. It is also helpful to those grappling with the legacy, rather than the threat, of communism. For those trying to understand the temptations of democratic politics and its tendency to intervene in all realms of life, Liberty is significant. For those seeking a principled defense of individual liberty against its many enemies, Liberty is essential. The three short lines of John Hay's poetry that began every issue of Liberty sum up its mission:

For always in thine eyes, 0 Liberty! Shines that high light whereby the world is saved; And though thou slay us, we will trust in thee.

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Notes

1. James J. Martin, Men Against the State: The Expositors of Individualist Anarchism in America, 1827-1908, Colorado Springs: Ralph Myles, 1970 (DeKalb, ILlinois, 1953), p. 208; George Woodcock, Anarchism: A History of Libertarian Ideas and Movements (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1962), p. 434.

2. William O. Reichert, Partisans of Freedom. A Study in American Anarchism (Bowling Green: Bowling Green University Popular Press, 1976), p. 145; Wendy McElroy, ``Benjamin Tucker, Individualism, and Liberty: Not the Daughter but the Mother of Order," Literature of Liberty, W:3 (1981), p. 7.

3. Benjamin R. Tucker, Individual Liberty, C.L. Swartz, ed. (New York: Vanguard Press, 1972 [1926]); Ben- jamin R. Tucker, Instead of a Book; By a Man Too Busy to Write One, 2nd ed. (New York: Benjamin R. Tucker, 1897, reprinted New York: Arno Press, 1972); Benjamin R. Tucker, State Socialism and Anarchism and Other Essays (Colorado Springs: Ralph Myles, 1970); Benjamin Tucker, selections from "State Socialism and Anarchism" and "The Relation of the State to the Individual," in Leonard I. Krimerman and Lewis Perry, eds., Patterns of Anarchy (New York: Anchor Books, 1967), pp. 61-69, 251-259; Benjamin R. Tucker, "State Socialism and Libertarianism [Anarchism]," in Irving L. Horowitz, ed., The Anarchists (New York: Dell, 1964), pp. 169-182.

4. Stephen L. Newman, Liberalism at Wits" End: The Libertarian Revolt Against the Modern State (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984), p. 24. See also the writings of economists such as Murray Rothbard and Gordon Tullock as well as, more specifically, Carl Watner, "Benjamin Tucker and His Periodical Liberty," Journal of Libertarian Studies, I:4 (1977), pp. 307-318; Carl Warner, "Benjamin Tucker's Liberty," Reason, 10:12 (1979), pp. 36-38; Richard E Hiskes, "Community in the Anarcho-Individualist Society: The Legacy of Benjamin Tucker," Social Anarchism, October 1980, pp. 41-52; and Michael E. Coughlin, Charles H. Hamilton, and Mark A. Sullivan, eds., Benjamin R. Tucker and The Champions of Liberty: A Centenary An- thology, St. Paul: Michael E. Coughlin, n.d. [1986]. Several dissertations have also appeared on Benjamin Tucker: Irving Levitas, "The Unterrified Jeffersonian, Benjamin R. Tucker: A Study of Native American Anarchism as Exemplified in His Life and Times," Ph.D.: New York University, 1974; David Ebner, "The Ideology of the Individualist Anarchist in America," Ph.D.: New York University, 1968; Dale Allen Johnston, "An American Anarchist: An Analysis of the Individualist Anarchism of Benjamin R. Tucker," Ph.D.: University of New Mexico, 1974.

5. Martin, Men Against the State, chapter 8. 6. A number of writers have insisted that anarchism is peculiarly suited to America, for example Voltairine

de Cleyre, "Anarchism and American Traditions," in Alexander Berkman, ed., Selected Works of Voltairine de Cleyre (New York: Mother Earth Publishing Co., 1914); Rudolf Rocker, Pioneers of American Freedom: Origin of Liberal and Radical Thought in America, Arthur Briggs, trans. (Los Angeles: Rocker Publications Committee, 1949); Eric Foner, "Radical Individualism in America: Revolution to Civil War," Literature of Liberty, I:3 (1978), pp. 5-31; David DeLeon, The American as Anarchist: Reflections on Indigenous Radicalism (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978); Eunice Minette Schuster, Native American Anarchism (New York: Da Capo Press, 1970); originally published in Smith College Studies in History, 17 (1931-32).

7. Martin, Men Against the State, p. 271. 8. Reichert, Partisans of Freedom; Schuster, Native American Anarchism; DeLeon, The American as Anarchist;

Rocker, Pioneers of American Freedom. For a more specific case, see Lewis Perry, Radical Abolitionism: Anarchy and the Government of God in Antislavery Thought (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1973).

9. Martin, Men against the State, introduction. 10. Liberty, August 6, 1881, p. 1. 11. Paul Avrich, The Haymarket Tragedy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), p. 60. 12. Martin, Men against the State, pp. 234-241; Yarros, ``Philosophical Anarchism: Its Rise, Decline and Eclipse,"

American Journal of Sociology, XLI (January 1936), pp. 470-483. 13. Martin, Men against the State, pp. 241-261. 14. Charles H. Hamilton, "The Evolution of a Subversive Tradition," in Coughlin et al., eds. Benjamin R.

Tucker and the Champions of Liberty, p. 10. 15. The earliest list is a subscription for aid to Russian Nihilist prisoners and exiles, begun on March 18,

1882. This of course would give a rather-too-broad picture of Liberty's readership. Another list are those who subscribed for "Fucker's compilation, Instead of a Book, in 1893. Unfortunately, this lists only names, cities, and number of books subscribed for. Byington's descriptions of the Letter-Writing Corps between 1894 and 1897 offer some fleeting glimpses, but only of course of the activists among the readers (and the most literate of them at that).

16. January 1899 (XIII:9, #359), pp. 3--4.

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