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Men Against the State: The Expositors of Individualist Anarchism, 1827-1908
An acclaimed survey of 19th-century American anarchist and individualist thinkers, including Josiah Warren, Ezra Heywood, Lysander Spooner and Benjamin R. Tucker. This classic study by an outstanding libertarian-revisionist historian is valuable for an understanding of the intellectual pioneers of American libertarianism. Includes the foreword by Harry Elmer Barnes to the original (1953) edition.
315 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1970
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February 3, 2010
The author, James Martin, notes that the purpose of the book is to (Page ix): "Its evolution from the practical stages as a frontier experiment in individual sovereignty and 'equitable commerce' to the theoretical and intellectual pamphleteering of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries is the main concern here." The subject? American individualist anarchists. Their basic views? Martin observes that (Page x): "The individualist anarchists held that the collectivist society in any form was an impossibility without the eventuality of authoritarianism, sand ultimately, totalitarianism, and adhered resolutely to the concept of private property. . . ."
The book itself begins with Josiah Warren, who created a utopian society. He developed the concept of the "time store" as a central economic concept. Perhaps the first major figure in this line of thought. Several chapters outline his efforts to put theory into practice; the book also considers his relationship with allied thinkers, such as Stephen Pearl Andrews.
Other key thinkers covered who were active in the 1800s: Ezra Heywood, William Greene, J. K. Ingalls, Stephen Pearl Andrews, and Lysander Spooner. Spooner and Andrews are especially interesting thinkers.
The book concludes with the iconic Benjamin Tucker, whose publication, "Liberty," was one of his central contributions. Indeed, his major book, "Instead of a Book by a Man too Busy to Write One," is largely a collection of his essays from that publication. The book provides a good sense of Tucker, an original American thinker.
Want to get a sense of the individualist strain in American anarchism? This is a fine starting point. . . .
The book itself begins with Josiah Warren, who created a utopian society. He developed the concept of the "time store" as a central economic concept. Perhaps the first major figure in this line of thought. Several chapters outline his efforts to put theory into practice; the book also considers his relationship with allied thinkers, such as Stephen Pearl Andrews.
Other key thinkers covered who were active in the 1800s: Ezra Heywood, William Greene, J. K. Ingalls, Stephen Pearl Andrews, and Lysander Spooner. Spooner and Andrews are especially interesting thinkers.
The book concludes with the iconic Benjamin Tucker, whose publication, "Liberty," was one of his central contributions. Indeed, his major book, "Instead of a Book by a Man too Busy to Write One," is largely a collection of his essays from that publication. The book provides a good sense of Tucker, an original American thinker.
Want to get a sense of the individualist strain in American anarchism? This is a fine starting point. . . .
October 17, 2023
A DETAILED HISTORY OF VARIOUS AMERICAN ANARCHISTS AND INDIVIDUALISTS
Author James J. Martin wrote in the Introduction to this 1953 book, “The writing of a history or anarchism in the United States will run into the difficulties created by the necessity of establishing criteria for the purpose of separating anarchism from other expressions of radical social thought which may be allied to but are distinct from it. On the verbal level the most perplexing problem is that of definition of terms, beginning with the word itself. In one respect the obstruction may never be bridged. An almost insuperable barrier has been the matter of semantics. The use of the term as an identification for a social order characterized by the absence of the State is quite recent… However, its association with reprehensibility in this country has generally greatly restricted its use for descriptive purposes. European radicals have been far less inhibited in this way, hence the study of anarchism there is relatively unimpeded by hesitancy on the part of the radicals to disclose themselves. Their propaganda has been open and identified, and thus may be readily examined.” (Pg. iii)
He continues, “No pretense is made of exhaustively investigating the relationships between individualist anarchism and the large number of contemporary fragments of radicalism, regardless of rationale… There are distinct and noticeable limitations in the presentation of this monograph especially as a result of the sparse interpretation and the reluctance to throw the subject of anarchism against the broader backdrop of American social history in a more sweeping and dramatic manner. But it must be remembered that the object sought in this case has not been a comprehensive history of anarchism in America. The emphasis has been upon the careful documentation of its major phase. The basic assumption has been that since the thought and action of the movement has been so elusive and inaccessible, it must be put on record fully before its integration in a more comprehensive account of the intellectual and social history of American radicalism can be effectively undertaken.” (Pg. xii-xiii)
He notes, “It was at this time … that [Josiah Warren] observed [a] harassing element in the labor exchange operation. This was the problem of determining intensity of relative hours of labor, further complicated by the fact that the most repulsive types of labor were generally the poorest paid. This matter he wrestled with for the remainder of his life, and was never able to satisfy himself as to the best method of solution.” (Pg. 21) He continues, “Warren learned, as had [Robert] Owen before him, that the inertia of the status quo was a formidable antagonist to such a sweeping reorganization of human affairs as he entertained. He was too practical to think that such a plan as he proposed could succeed if supported only by the poor, the needy, and others at the bottom of the economic ladder, even though it was one of the principal reasons for starting in the first place, to eliminate the perpetuation of this by-product of what he called ‘legalized cannibalism.’” (Pg. 22-23)
He recounts, ‘Josiah Warren’s second time store created a memorable impression upon the town of New Harmony… but for the second time Warren had to bow before the expedient use of his methods by a group which understood the immediate results of such a system but preferred to ignore the original impulse responsible for it in the first place. Warren once again admitted failure after having demonstrated on the simplest practical level in the hopes of setting up in the nearby area another equitable colony… he found that the ‘community people’ of New Harmony were not interested in his activities other than taking advantage of their effectiveness against the incipient local monopolies of their own merchants… the attempt to found a mutualist community in the environs of New Harmony was slowly strangled by apathy. If the Owenite communities of property disintegrated as a result of indecision after a brief period of great promise, a parallel can be seen in the disposition of Warrenism in hesitancy and inaction.” (Pg. 43-44)
He notes, “Ezra Heywood is best remembered for his efforts in the propagation of native anti-government thought and literature during a period of transition when radicalism was receding almost to the vanishing point before a wave of post-war sentiment for continued conformity. Although not particularly important as an original thinker, his services as a publisher in reprinted the works of Warren and [W.B.] Greene served to keep their ideas current, resulting in the widespread interest in the economics of the free society on the part of a later generation… The revival of the mutual money theories of Greene is particularly noteworthy from the standpoint of anarchist economic thought, in this respect Heywood’s work being an important rediscovery.” (Pg. 125)
He says, “It was a source of annoyance to [J.K. Ingalls] to see organized labor engrossed over wages and hours, to the exclusion of so vital a matter as land. He could not understand why it was not plain to all that private ownership of the soil by a few had supplanted slavery as the device whereby one man garnered wealth produced by the many. He believed that it was now time for the laboring man to become concerned with the sources of wealth, its production, and its distribution… The issue was… whether it was time to attempt a ‘truly scientific solution’ of the problem of production and the inequalities of distribution.” (Pg. 146)
He reports, “It was a pernicious statue, warned [Lysander] Spooner, which allowed one man to borrow enough capital to employ a hundred laborers the facility of borrowing enough to employ themselves independently.” (Pg. 173)
He continues on Spooner, “Looking at the United States Constitution, he declared that the convention delegates represented only one-twentieth of the whole population in the country, and that statutory legislation was produced by men who represented only half of that number… He charged constitutional and statutory law were ‘manufactured in a ridiculous and fraudulent manner,’ and especially so when they invaded or destroyed ‘the natural rights of large bodies of the people.’ The judges who presided over their enforcement he considered hardly above the level of ‘felons.’ This attack upon representative government he incorporated almost intact in avowedly anarchist writings after the Civil War.” (Pg. 184-185)
He acknowledges, “In spite of the extremity of provocativeness of his attacks upon both the theory and practice of government in the United States, it is unlikely that Lysander Spooner’s writings excited more than local intellectual curiosity… his writings in defense of anarchism were buried in a number of treatises on free banking… it is probable that Spooner might have remained in obscurity for the remainder of his time had not the great increase of anarchist writing and periodical publication of the period after 1880 brought some of his defenses of anti-statism to the attention of a wide international reading audience of radical bent.” (Pg. 197)
Of Benjamin Tucker’s journal ‘Liberty,’ he states, “It is true that an examination of ‘Liberty’ during its long period of publication reveals that this ideal was only partially realized. Tucker proved to be easily stimulated into argumentation, and numerous pages of ‘Liberty’ were henceforth to be devoted to disputes of many kinds. Much of it was wrangling and hair-splitting of little or no value which in the later days gave the paper the tenor of a debating society. Despite its shortcomings, however, Liberty preserved sufficient vitality to become the longest-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 centuries.” (Pg. 208)
Later, he adds, “Of the prominent American anarchist writers, Tucker was the most careful in defining his terms, especially the expressions ‘the State,’ and ‘government.’ ‘The anarchist defines government as invasion, nothing more or less,’ he stated flatly, while considering the impasse resulting from critics failing to understand anarchist terminology.” (Pg. 215) He goes on, ‘On a wide variety of issues, Tucker was notable for his negative stand. He was implacably opposed to the public school system, and curiously enough, as an atheist, became a defended of the Roman Catholic parochial schools as a force which served to produce a ‘real increase or freedom,’ to determine the nature of education on a private basis.” (Pg. 232)
He summarizes, “The world-wide intellectual struggle of the anarchist against the state has occasionally been complicated by recourse to violence and assassination, the motives of which have been obscure. In some cases idealism has been the underlying incentive, especially in political killings where the belief that a tyrant is being eliminated dominates the assassin. Whatever may have been the attending circumstances, anarchism and violence have become popularly understood as interchangeable as a result of a spectacular series of such actions between 180 and 1905 in particular. The anarchist argument that mere brushes between the armed forces of two states often cause more loss of life than the total of all anarchist-inspired slayings has not obtained any notable attention., and by and large the concern of non-revolutionary anarchists has generally been to disavow their relation with those implicated in the killing of politically prominent persons.” (Pg. 265)
He concludes, “In the United States of Europe, anarchist thought appears under three forms: (1) as an intellectual distillate, found principally among the avant garde of literature, philosophy and art; (2) as an expression of the syndicalist movement, which continues to support a vigorous English and foreign language press; (3) as a reflection of many small libertarian groups ranging from experimental educators to exponents of social decentralization… Many of these are pacifists, already shocked by the conduct of total war.” (Pg. 277)
This history will be of great interest to anyone studying American anarchism.
Author James J. Martin wrote in the Introduction to this 1953 book, “The writing of a history or anarchism in the United States will run into the difficulties created by the necessity of establishing criteria for the purpose of separating anarchism from other expressions of radical social thought which may be allied to but are distinct from it. On the verbal level the most perplexing problem is that of definition of terms, beginning with the word itself. In one respect the obstruction may never be bridged. An almost insuperable barrier has been the matter of semantics. The use of the term as an identification for a social order characterized by the absence of the State is quite recent… However, its association with reprehensibility in this country has generally greatly restricted its use for descriptive purposes. European radicals have been far less inhibited in this way, hence the study of anarchism there is relatively unimpeded by hesitancy on the part of the radicals to disclose themselves. Their propaganda has been open and identified, and thus may be readily examined.” (Pg. iii)
He continues, “No pretense is made of exhaustively investigating the relationships between individualist anarchism and the large number of contemporary fragments of radicalism, regardless of rationale… There are distinct and noticeable limitations in the presentation of this monograph especially as a result of the sparse interpretation and the reluctance to throw the subject of anarchism against the broader backdrop of American social history in a more sweeping and dramatic manner. But it must be remembered that the object sought in this case has not been a comprehensive history of anarchism in America. The emphasis has been upon the careful documentation of its major phase. The basic assumption has been that since the thought and action of the movement has been so elusive and inaccessible, it must be put on record fully before its integration in a more comprehensive account of the intellectual and social history of American radicalism can be effectively undertaken.” (Pg. xii-xiii)
He notes, “It was at this time … that [Josiah Warren] observed [a] harassing element in the labor exchange operation. This was the problem of determining intensity of relative hours of labor, further complicated by the fact that the most repulsive types of labor were generally the poorest paid. This matter he wrestled with for the remainder of his life, and was never able to satisfy himself as to the best method of solution.” (Pg. 21) He continues, “Warren learned, as had [Robert] Owen before him, that the inertia of the status quo was a formidable antagonist to such a sweeping reorganization of human affairs as he entertained. He was too practical to think that such a plan as he proposed could succeed if supported only by the poor, the needy, and others at the bottom of the economic ladder, even though it was one of the principal reasons for starting in the first place, to eliminate the perpetuation of this by-product of what he called ‘legalized cannibalism.’” (Pg. 22-23)
He recounts, ‘Josiah Warren’s second time store created a memorable impression upon the town of New Harmony… but for the second time Warren had to bow before the expedient use of his methods by a group which understood the immediate results of such a system but preferred to ignore the original impulse responsible for it in the first place. Warren once again admitted failure after having demonstrated on the simplest practical level in the hopes of setting up in the nearby area another equitable colony… he found that the ‘community people’ of New Harmony were not interested in his activities other than taking advantage of their effectiveness against the incipient local monopolies of their own merchants… the attempt to found a mutualist community in the environs of New Harmony was slowly strangled by apathy. If the Owenite communities of property disintegrated as a result of indecision after a brief period of great promise, a parallel can be seen in the disposition of Warrenism in hesitancy and inaction.” (Pg. 43-44)
He notes, “Ezra Heywood is best remembered for his efforts in the propagation of native anti-government thought and literature during a period of transition when radicalism was receding almost to the vanishing point before a wave of post-war sentiment for continued conformity. Although not particularly important as an original thinker, his services as a publisher in reprinted the works of Warren and [W.B.] Greene served to keep their ideas current, resulting in the widespread interest in the economics of the free society on the part of a later generation… The revival of the mutual money theories of Greene is particularly noteworthy from the standpoint of anarchist economic thought, in this respect Heywood’s work being an important rediscovery.” (Pg. 125)
He says, “It was a source of annoyance to [J.K. Ingalls] to see organized labor engrossed over wages and hours, to the exclusion of so vital a matter as land. He could not understand why it was not plain to all that private ownership of the soil by a few had supplanted slavery as the device whereby one man garnered wealth produced by the many. He believed that it was now time for the laboring man to become concerned with the sources of wealth, its production, and its distribution… The issue was… whether it was time to attempt a ‘truly scientific solution’ of the problem of production and the inequalities of distribution.” (Pg. 146)
He reports, “It was a pernicious statue, warned [Lysander] Spooner, which allowed one man to borrow enough capital to employ a hundred laborers the facility of borrowing enough to employ themselves independently.” (Pg. 173)
He continues on Spooner, “Looking at the United States Constitution, he declared that the convention delegates represented only one-twentieth of the whole population in the country, and that statutory legislation was produced by men who represented only half of that number… He charged constitutional and statutory law were ‘manufactured in a ridiculous and fraudulent manner,’ and especially so when they invaded or destroyed ‘the natural rights of large bodies of the people.’ The judges who presided over their enforcement he considered hardly above the level of ‘felons.’ This attack upon representative government he incorporated almost intact in avowedly anarchist writings after the Civil War.” (Pg. 184-185)
He acknowledges, “In spite of the extremity of provocativeness of his attacks upon both the theory and practice of government in the United States, it is unlikely that Lysander Spooner’s writings excited more than local intellectual curiosity… his writings in defense of anarchism were buried in a number of treatises on free banking… it is probable that Spooner might have remained in obscurity for the remainder of his time had not the great increase of anarchist writing and periodical publication of the period after 1880 brought some of his defenses of anti-statism to the attention of a wide international reading audience of radical bent.” (Pg. 197)
Of Benjamin Tucker’s journal ‘Liberty,’ he states, “It is true that an examination of ‘Liberty’ during its long period of publication reveals that this ideal was only partially realized. Tucker proved to be easily stimulated into argumentation, and numerous pages of ‘Liberty’ were henceforth to be devoted to disputes of many kinds. Much of it was wrangling and hair-splitting of little or no value which in the later days gave the paper the tenor of a debating society. Despite its shortcomings, however, Liberty preserved sufficient vitality to become the longest-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 centuries.” (Pg. 208)
Later, he adds, “Of the prominent American anarchist writers, Tucker was the most careful in defining his terms, especially the expressions ‘the State,’ and ‘government.’ ‘The anarchist defines government as invasion, nothing more or less,’ he stated flatly, while considering the impasse resulting from critics failing to understand anarchist terminology.” (Pg. 215) He goes on, ‘On a wide variety of issues, Tucker was notable for his negative stand. He was implacably opposed to the public school system, and curiously enough, as an atheist, became a defended of the Roman Catholic parochial schools as a force which served to produce a ‘real increase or freedom,’ to determine the nature of education on a private basis.” (Pg. 232)
He summarizes, “The world-wide intellectual struggle of the anarchist against the state has occasionally been complicated by recourse to violence and assassination, the motives of which have been obscure. In some cases idealism has been the underlying incentive, especially in political killings where the belief that a tyrant is being eliminated dominates the assassin. Whatever may have been the attending circumstances, anarchism and violence have become popularly understood as interchangeable as a result of a spectacular series of such actions between 180 and 1905 in particular. The anarchist argument that mere brushes between the armed forces of two states often cause more loss of life than the total of all anarchist-inspired slayings has not obtained any notable attention., and by and large the concern of non-revolutionary anarchists has generally been to disavow their relation with those implicated in the killing of politically prominent persons.” (Pg. 265)
He concludes, “In the United States of Europe, anarchist thought appears under three forms: (1) as an intellectual distillate, found principally among the avant garde of literature, philosophy and art; (2) as an expression of the syndicalist movement, which continues to support a vigorous English and foreign language press; (3) as a reflection of many small libertarian groups ranging from experimental educators to exponents of social decentralization… Many of these are pacifists, already shocked by the conduct of total war.” (Pg. 277)
This history will be of great interest to anyone studying American anarchism.
December 23, 2019
Josiah Warren, Lysander Spooner and Benjamin Tucker are the main characters in here.
The communist anarchists rejected private property, and taught the ideal of the collective autonomous commune. A portion of their number advocated the overthrow of the State by violence. The individualist anarchists held that the collective society in any form was an impossibility without the eventuality of authoritarianism, and ultimately, totalitarianism, and adhered resolutely to the concept of private property insofar as the term could be defined as the total product of a given individual’s labor, but not more broadly than this. They abandoned the idea of an equalitarian utopia, and worked for a world free from arbitrary restrictions on opportunity and legal privilege, which breakdowns they claimed “laissez faire” really produced. No other radical group denounced the prevailing system more vigorously than the spokesmen for individualist anarchism.
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September 23, 2010"Men Against the State : The Expositors of Individualist Anarchism, 1827-1908 by James J. Martin (1970)"
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