I have some questions about Lysander Spooner. While he is cited as an individual anarchist on this website and the Lewrockwell.com website, the LysanderSpooner.org website says that he was a libertarian socialist, and disassociated him with the right-libertarians such as Murray Rothbard. How are these two conclusions consistant?
He was both. "Socialism" had much more broad of a meaning in Spooner's day. It's just that the various factions like to portray things more in their favor. Many social anarchists abuse Proudhon and deny that he ever had a propertarian side, while market anarchists may tend to emphasize his propertarian side. It's a matter of interpretation. Both sides want to claim them for themselves, but the truth is probably somewhere in between. Neither side legitimately has a monopoly on influence and historical tradition.
Contemporary market anarchism draws influence from individualist anarchism, and there is a clear historical line between them in my view. Many social anarchists tend to deny this historical connection and make an arguement from tradition that market anarchism has no place within anarchist tradition. But I personally see a historical connection, a rather clear line going from the mutualists to the individualists to contemporary anarcho-capitalism. The debate is mostly semantics.
Okay, Thank you for the clarification. I'm just wondering, what was this broad definition of socialism in his day? And, how could an anarchist promote socialism, given that there would be no government to enforce it?
shazam: Okay, Thank you for the clarification. I'm just wondering, what was this broad definition of socialism in his day? And, how could an anarchist promote socialism, given that there would be no government to enforce it?
"Socialism", in contemporary terminology, entails two contradictary definitions: government ownership of the means of production and public or worker ownership of the means of production. These inherently contradict eachother because government ownership negates ownership by the actual public. Seemingly paradoxically, to truly "privatize" would be to transfer ownership to the public, I.E. private individuals. Unfortunately, the state likes to portray property it controls as "public", which is disingenuous and deceptive because it is not actually directly controled or owned in any real sense by the public. So in this sense the contemporary definitions of "private" and "public" property is nonsensical.
In modern jargon, socialism usually refers to state-socialism, but individualist anarchists and many self-proclaimed "socialists" of the 19th century such as Benjamin Tucker were opposed to that. An anarchist can promote socialism in the non-statist sense of the term, I.E. voluntarily held common property and voluntary organization of labor. In the context of a free market, there is nothing to stop people from voluntarily forming into unions and worker-run buisinesses. It is theoretically possible to do this without government enforcement. The basic difference between socialism as it is commonly thought of and genuinely libertarian socialism is that truly libertarian socialism adheres to voluntaryism. So it's a question of means really.
The only significant difference between contemporary market anarchism and 19th century individualist anarchism is that the original individualist anarchists still held to the labor theory of value. However, if one looks at them closely, it becomes apparent that if they were socialists of any sort, they were "free market socialists", since they simultaneously supported laissez-faire. Benjamin Tucker thought that free competition would lead to an allocation of resources that fits the labor theory of value. He was wrong, but nonetheless he still fully supported laissez-faire. So the disagreement, if any, really is over what type of organization and allocation of resources a free market will lead to. And silly semantics over the definitions of "socialism" and "capitalism".
Okay, that all makes sense, for the most part. Thanks again for the explanation.
I recently spent some time with B. Tucker's work and I came away unimpressed with his economics. Really bad, and it would take quite some spin to improve my impressions. I think I understand why Murray liked his work but I couldn't muster the same enthusiasm.
Spooner is different. Really different.
I'm not sure that I understand why the 19th century American anarchists would call themselves socialists. Wasn't it perfectly obvious by the 1880s that socialism was a disaster waiting to happen? I don't know. Refutations of the socialists were around and in print, and they made a lot of sense. And yet I was recently reading Nock's work as late as 1920, when in the middle of an otherwise wonderful essay he sang the praises of Lenin and the Bolshevik Revolution. Go figure. Information was limited in those days. But apparently there was an impression that if someone enacted a revolution in the name of anarchism, this was a wonderful thing -- socialist, capitalist, or whatever.
I wish i knew more about the thinking of these generations--my friend BK Marcus is always trying to enlighten me--but I still have great trouble getting the hang of it.
As I said, however, Spooner is really much clearer than the rest.
Publisher, Laissez-Faire Books
jtucker: But apparently there was an impression that if someone enacted a revolution in the name of anarchism, this was a wonderful thing -- socialist, capitalist, or whatever.
But apparently there was an impression that if someone enacted a revolution in the name of anarchism, this was a wonderful thing -- socialist, capitalist, or whatever.
What was the publication of The Law by Bastiat in his day? Y'know was it popular? I heard some leninists get it. Was Lord Acton and Edmund Burke popular in some arenas and more than neglected in others.
Reading the classics I wonder, how did they get all that info without a great library like the internet. Also Melvil Dewey did not uniformalize until 1876.
I think alot of folks don't understand that most revolutions are only "the turning of wheel to replace one power with another power."
Someone on another thread made a good point "things will never change until more people understand that they do not need government."
Y'all thinkin' 'bout some W.G. Sumner? That is if y'all publish some that be nice. Some more Mencken would be fun, and when is volume 3,4,5,6,etc of the Hayek complete collection coming?
And mostly thanks so much for the new book, collection of spooner by rothbard, I am looking out for the mailman.
Individualism Rocks