Individualist anarchism
Encyclopedia
Individualist anarchism refers to several traditions of thought within the anarchist movement that emphasize the individual
and his or her will
over external determinants such as groups, society, traditions, and ideological systems. Individualist anarchism is not a single philosophy but refers to a group of individualistic
philosophies that sometimes are in conflict. From there it expanded through Europe and the United States
. Benjamin R. Tucker, a famous 19th century individualist anarchist, held that "if the individual has the right to govern himself, all external government is tyranny."
, Henry David Thoreau
(transcendentalism
), Josiah Warren
("sovereignty of the individual"), Lysander Spooner
("natural law
"), Pierre Joseph Proudhon (mutualism
), Anselme Bellegarrigue
, Herbert Spencer
("law of equal liberty
") and Max Stirner
(egoism
).
Individualist anarchism of different kinds have a few things in common. These are:
1. The concentration on the individual
and his/her will in preference to any construction such as morality
, ideology
, social custom, religion
, metaphysics, ideas
or the will of others.
2. The rejection of or reservations about the idea of revolution
, seeing it as a time of mass uprising which could bring about new hierarchies. Instead they favor more evolutionary methods of bringing about anarchy through alternative experiences and experiments and education which could be brought about today. This is also because it is not seen as desirable for individuals to wait for revolution to start experiencing alternative experiences outside what is offered in the current social system.
3. The view that relationships with other persons or things can be in one's own interest only and can be as transitory and without compromises as desired since in individualist anarchism sacrifice is usually rejected. In this way, Max Stirner recommended associations of egoists
. Individual experience and exploration therefore is emphasized.
The egoist form of individualist anarchism
, derived from the philosophy of Max Stirner
, supports the individual doing exactly what he pleases – taking no notice of God, state, or moral rules. To Stirner, rights were spooks
in the mind, and he held that society does not exist 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 American anarchist 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 independent 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 harm 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 first 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." It is for this reason that it has been suggested that in order to understand American 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 dominance of self-employment (artisan and peasant production). At the beginning of the 19th century, around 80% of the working (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 so "Individualist anarchism is clearly a form of artisan
al socialism
... while communist anarchism and anarcho-syndicalism
are forms of industrial (or proletarian) socialism."
In European individualist anarchism a different social context helped the rise of European individualist illegalism
and as such "The illegalists were proletarians who had nothing to sell but their labour power, and nothing to discard but their dignity; if they disdained waged-work, it was because of its compulsive nature. If they turned to illegality it was due to the fact that honest toil only benefited the employers and often entailed a complete loss of dignity, while any complaints resulted in the sack; to avoid starvation through lack of work it was necessary to beg or steal, and to avoid conscription into the army many of them had to go on the run." And so a European tendency of individualist anarchism advocated violent individual acts of individual reclamation
, propaganda by the deed and criticism of organization. Such individualist anarchist tendencies include French illegalism
and Italian anti-organizational 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 committed acts of terrorism that gave 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."
As such 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 Spanish individualist anarchism "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
intitution, 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, Emile Armand
, early Benjamin Tucker
), egoist
ic disrespect for "ghosts" such as private property and markets (Stirner, John Henry Mackay
, Lev Chernyi
, later Tucker), and adherents to anarcho-communism (Albert Libertad
, illegalism
, 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
".
William Godwin
can be considered an individualist anarchist and philosophical anarchist who was influenced by the ideas of the Age of Enlightenment
, and developed what many consider the first expression of modern anarchist thought
. Godwin was, according to Peter Kropotkin
, "the first to formulate the political and economical conceptions of anarchism, even though he did not give that name to the ideas developed in his work." Godwin advocated extreme individualism, proposing that all cooperation in labor be eliminated. Godwin was a utilitarian who believed that all individuals are not of equal value, with some of us "of more worth and importance' than others depending on our utility in bringing about social good. Therefore he does not believe in equal rights, but the person's life that should be favored that is most conducive to the general good. Godwin opposed government because it infringes on the individual's right to "private judgement" to determine which actions most maximize utility, but also makes a critique of all authority over the individual's judgement. This aspect of Godwin's philosophy, minus the utilitarianism, was developed into a more extreme form later by Stirner.
Godwin took individualism to the radical extent of opposing individuals performing together in orchestras, writing in Political Justice
that "everything understood by the term co-operation is in some sense an evil." The only apparent exception to this opposition to cooperation is the spontaneous association that may arise when a society is threatened by violent force. One reason he opposed cooperation is he believed it to interfere with an individual's ability to be benevolent for the greater good. Godwin opposes the idea of government, but wrote that a minimal state
as a present "necessary evil" that would become increasingly irrelevant and powerless by the gradual spread of knowledge. He expressly opposed democracy
, fearing oppression of the individual by the majority (though he believed it to be preferable to dictatorship
).
Godwin supported individual ownership of property, defining it as "the empire to which every man is entitled over the produce of his own industry." However, he also advocated that individuals give to each other their surplus property on the occasion that others have a need for it, without involving trade (e.g. gift economy
). Thus, while people have the right to private property, they should give it away as enlightened altruists. This was to be based on utilitarian principles; he said: "Every man has a right to that, the exclusive possession of which being awarded to him, a greater sum of benefit or pleasure will result than could have arisen from its being otherwise appropriated." However, benevolence was not to be enforced, being a matter of free individual "private judgement." He did not advocate a community of goods or assert collective ownership as is embraced in communism
, but his belief that individuals ought to share with those in need was influential on the later development of anarchist communism
.
Godwin's political views were diverse and do not perfectly agree with any of the ideologies that claim his influence; writers of the Socialist Standard
, organ of the Socialist Party of Great Britain
, consider Godwin both an individualist and a communist; anarcho-capitalist Murray Rothbard
did not regard Godwin as being in the individualist camp at all, referring to him as the "founder of communist anarchism"; and historian Albert Weisbord
considers him an individualist anarchist without reservation. Some writers see a conflict between Godwin's advocacy of "private judgement" and utilitarianism, as he says that ethics requires that individuals give their surplus property to each other resulting in an egalitarian society, but, at the same time, he insists that all things be left to individual choice. Many of Godwin's views changed over time, as noted by Kropotkin.
William Godwin
's influenced "the socialism of Robert Owen
and Charles Fourier
. After success of his British venture, Owen himself established a cooperative community within the United States at New Harmony, Indiana during 1825. One member of this commune was Josiah Warren
(1798-1874), considered to be the first individualist anarchist. After New Harmony failed Warren shifted his ideological loyalties from socialism to anarchism (which was no great leap, given that Owen's socialism had been predicated on Godwin's anarchism)."
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (1809–1865) was the first philosopher to label himself an "anarchist." Some consider Proudhon to be an individualist anarchist, while others regard him to be a social anarchist
. Some commentators do not identify Proudhon as an individualist anarchist due to his preference for association in large industries, rather than individual control. Nevertheless, he was influential among some of the American individualists; in the 1840s and 1850s, Charles A. Dana
, and William B. Greene introduced Proudhon's works to the United States
. Greene adapted Proudhon's mutualism to American conditions and introduced it to Benjamin R. Tucker.
Proudhon opposed government privilege that protects capitalist, banking and land interests, and the accumulation or acquisition of property (and any form of coercion
that led to it) which he believed hampers competition and keeps wealth in the hands of the few. Proudhon favoured a right of individuals to retain the product of their labour as their own property, but believed that any property beyond that which an individual produced and could possess was illegitimate. Thus, he saw private property as both essential to liberty and a road to tyranny, the former when it resulted from labour and was required for labour and the latter when it resulted in exploitation (profit, interest, rent, tax). He generally called the former "possession" and the latter "property." For large-scale industry, he supported workers associations to replace wage labour and opposed the ownership of land.
Proudhon maintained that those who labour should retain the entirety of what they produce, and that monopolies
on credit and land are the forces that prohibit such. He advocated an economic system that included private property as possession and exchange market but without profit, which he called mutualism
. It is Proudhon's philosophy that was explicitly rejected by Joseph Dejacque
in the inception of anarchist-communism, with the latter asserting directly to Proudhon in a letter that "it is not the product of his or her labour that the worker has a right to, but to the satisfaction of his or her needs, whatever may be their nature." An individualist rather than anarchist communist, Proudhon said that "communism...is the very denial of society in its foundation..." and famously declared that "property is theft!" in reference to his rejection of ownership rights to land being granted to a person who is not using that land.
After Dejacque and others split from Proudhon due to the latter's support of individual property and an exchange economy, the relationship between the individualists, who continued in relative alignment with the philosophy of Proudhon, and the anarcho-communists was characterised by various degrees of antagonism and harmony. For example, individualists like Tucker on the one hand translated and reprinted the works of collectivists
like Mikhail Bakunin
, while on the other hand rejected the economic aspects of collectivism and communism as incompatible with anarchist ideals.
, either individually or collectively, with trade representing equivalent amounts of labor in the free market
. Integral to the scheme was the establishment of a mutual-credit bank which would lend to producers at a minimal interest rate only high enough to cover the costs of administration. Mutualism is based on a labor theory of value
which holds that when labour or its product is sold, in exchange, it ought to receive goods or services embodying "the amount of labor necessary to produce an article of exactly similar and equal utility". Some mutualists believe that if the state did not intervene, as a result of increased competition in the marketplace, individuals would receive no more income than that in proportion to the amount of labor they exert. Mutualists oppose the idea of individuals receiving an income through loans, investments, and rent, as they believe these individuals are not labouring. Some of them argue that if state intervention ceased, these types of incomes would disappear due to increased competition in capital. Though Proudhon opposed this type of income, he expressed: "... I never meant to ... forbid or suppress, by sovereign decree, ground rent and interest on capital. I believe that all these forms of human activity should remain free and optional for all."
Insofar as they ensure the workers right to the full product of their labor, mutualists support market
s and private property
in the product of labor. However, they argue for conditional titles to land, whose private ownership is legitimate only so long as it remains in use or occupation (which Proudhon called "possession.") Proudhon's Mutualism supports labor-owned cooperative firms
and associations for "we need not hesitate, for we have no choice. . . it is necessary to form an ASSOCIATION among workers . . . because without that, they would remain related as subordinates and superiors, and there would ensue two . . . castes of masters and wage-workers, which is repugnant to a free and democratic society" and so "it becomes necessary for the workers to form themselves into democratic societies, with equal conditions for all members, on pain of a relapse into feudalism." As for capital goods (man-made, non-land, "means of production
"), mutualist opinion differs on whether these should be commonly managed public assets or private property.
Mutualists, following Proudhon, originally considered themselves to be libertarian socialists. However, "some mutualists have abandoned the labor theory of value, and prefer to avoid the term "socialist." But they still retain some cultural attitudes, for the most part, that set them off from the libertarian right
." Mutualists have distinguished themselves from state socialism
, and don't advocate social control over the means of production. Benjamin Tucker said of Proudhon, that "though opposed to socializing the ownership of capital, Proudhon aimed nevertheless to socialize its effects by making its use beneficial to all instead of a means of impoverishing the many to enrich the few...by subjecting capital to the natural law of competition, thus bringing the price of its own use down to cost."
Johann Kaspar Schmidt (October 25, 1806 – June 26, 1856), better known as Max Stirner (the nom de plume he adopted from a schoolyard nickname he had acquired as a child because of his high brow, in German
'Stirn'), was a German philosopher, who ranks as one of the literary fathers of nihilism
, existentialism
, post-modernism and anarchism
, especially of individualist anarchism. Stirner's main work is The Ego and Its Own
, also known as The Ego and His Own (Der Einzige und sein Eigentum in German, which translates literally as The Only One and his Property). This work was first published in 1844 in Leipzig
, and has since appeared in numerous editions and translations.
's philosophy, sometimes called "egoism," is the most extreme form of individualist anarchism. Max Stirner
was a Hegelian
philosopher whose "name appears with familiar regularity in historically oriented surveys of anarchist thought as one of the earliest and best-known exponents of individualist anarchism." In 1844, his The Ego and Its Own
(Der Einzige and sein Eigentum which may literally be translated as The Unique Individual and His Property) was published, which is considered to be "a founding text in the tradition of individualist anarchism." Stirner does not recommend that the individual try to eliminate the state but simply that they disregard the state when it conflicts with one's autonomous choices and go along with it when doing so is conducive to one's interests. He says that the egoist rejects pursuit of devotion to "a great idea, a good cause, a doctirine, a system, a lofty calling," saying that the egoist has no political calling but rather "lives themselves out" without regard to "how well or ill humanity may fare thereby." Stirner held that the only limitation on the rights of the individual is that individual's power to obtain what he desires. He proposes that most commonly accepted social institutions—including the notion of State, property as a right, natural rights in general, and the very notion of society—were mere spooks in the mind. Stirner wants to "abolish not only the state but also society as an institution responsible for its members." Stirner advocated self-assertion and foresaw Unions of Egoists, non-systematic associations, which Stirner proposed in as a form of organization in place of the state
. A Union is understood as a relation between egoists which is continually renewed by all parties' support through an act of will. Even murder is permissible "if it is right for me,", though it is claimed by egoist anarchists that egoism will foster genuine and spontaneous union between individuals.
For Stirner, property simply comes about through might: "Whoever knows how to take, to defend, the thing, to him belongs property." And, "What I have in my power, that is my own. So long as I assert myself as holder, I am the proprietor of the thing." He says, "I do not step shyly back from your property, but look upon it always as my property, in which I respect nothing. Pray do the like with what you call my property!". His concept of "egoistic property" not only a lack of moral restraint on how own obtains and uses things, but includes other people as well. His embrace of egoism
is in stark contrast to Godwin's altruism
. Stirner was opposed to communism, seeing it as a form of authority over the individual.
This position on property is much different from the native American, natural law, form of individualist anarchism, which defends the inviolability of the private property that has been earned through labor and trade. However, in 1886 Benjamin Tucker rejected the natural rights philosophy and adopted Stirner's egoism, with several others joining with him. This split the American individualists into fierce debate, "with the natural rights proponents accusing the egoists of destroying libertarianism itself." Other egoists include James L. Walker
, Sidney Parker
, Dora Marsden
, John Beverly Robinson
, and Benjamin Tucker
(later in life).
In Russia, individualist anarchism inspired by Stirner combined with an appreciation for Friedrich Nietzsche
attracted a small following of bohemian artists and intellectuals such as Lev Chernyi
, as well as a few lone wolves who found self-expression in crime and violence. They rejected organizing, believing that only unorganized individuals were safe from coercion and domination, believing this kept them true to the ideals of anarchism. This type of individualist anarchism inspired anarcho-feminist Emma Goldman
Though Stirner's philosophy is individualist, it has influenced some libertarian communists and anarcho-communists. "For Ourselves Council for Generalized Self-Management" discusses Stirner and speaks of a "communist egoism," which is said to be a "synthesis of individualism and collectivism," and says that "greed in its fullest sense is the only possible basis of communist society." Forms of libertarian communism such as Situationism are influenced by Stirner. Anarcho-communist Emma Goldman
was influenced by both Stirner and Peter Kropotkin
and blended their philosophies together in her own, as shown in books of hers such as Anarchism And Other Essays.
Josiah Warren
is widely regarded as the first American anarchist, and the four-page weekly paper he edited during 1833, The Peaceful Revolutionist, was the first anarchist periodical published, an enterprise for which he built his own printing press, cast his own type, and made his own printing plates.
Warren was a follower of Robert Owen
and joined Owen's community at New Harmony, Indiana
. Josiah Warren termed the phrase "Cost the limit of price
," with "cost" here referring not to monetary price paid but the labor one exerted to produce an item. Therefore, "[h]e proposed a system to pay people with certificates indicating how many hours of work they did. They could exchange the notes at local time stores for goods that took the same amount of time to produce.". He put his theories to the test by establishing an experimental "labor for labor store" called the Cincinnati Time Store
where trade was facilitated by notes backed by a promise to perform labor. The store proved successful and operated for three years after which it was closed so that Warren could pursue establishing colonies based on mutualism
. These included "Utopia
" and "Modern Times." Warren said that Stephen Pearl Andrews
' The Science of Society, published in 1852, was the most lucid and complete exposition of Warren's own theories. Catalan historian Xavier Diez report that the intentional communal
experiments pioneered by Warren were influential in European individualist anarchists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries such as Emile Armand
and the intentional communities started by them.
Henry David Thoreau
(1817–1862) was an important early influence in individualist anarchist thought in the United States and Europe. Thoreau was an American author, poet, naturalist, tax resister, development critic
, surveyor, historian, philosopher, and leading transcendentalist. He is best known for his book Walden
, a reflection upon simple living
in natural surroundings, and his essay, Civil Disobedience
, an argument for individual resistance to civil government in moral opposition to an unjust state. His thought is an early influence on green anarchism
but with an emphasis on the individual experience of the natural world influencing later naturist
currents, simple living
as a rejection of a materialist
lifestyle and self-sufficiency
were Thoreau's goals, and the whole project was inspired by transcendentalist philosophy. "Many have seen in Thoreau one of the precursors of ecologism and anarcho-primitivism
represented today in John Zerzan
. For George Woodcock
this attitude can be also motivated by certain idea of resistance to progress and of rejection of the growing materialism which is the nature of American society in the mid 19th century."
The essay Civil Disobedience
(Resistance to Civil Government) was first published in 1849. It argues that people should not permit governments to overrule or atrophy their consciences, and that people have a duty to avoid allowing such acquiescence
to enable the government to make them the agents of injustice. Thoreau was motivated in part by his disgust with slavery
and the Mexican-American War. The essay later influenced Mohandas Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr.
, Martin Buber
and Leo Tolstoy
through its advocacy of nonviolent resistance
. It is also the main precedent for anarcho-pacifism
. The American version of individualist anarchism has a strong emphasis on the non-aggression principle
and individual sovereignty
. Some individualist anarchists, such as Thoreau, do not speak of economics but simply the right of "disunion" from the state, and foresee the gradual elimination of the state through social evolution.
An important current within individualist anarchism is free love
. Free love advocates sometimes traced their roots back to Josiah Warren
and to experimental communities, and viewed sexual freedom as a clear, direct expression of an individual's self-ownership. Free love particularly stressed women's rights
since most sexual laws, such as those governing marriage and use of birth control, discriminated against women. The most important American free love journal was Lucifer the Lightbearer
(1883–1907) edited by Moses Harman
and Lois Waisbrooker
but also there existed Ezra Heywood
and Angela Heywood's The Word
(1872–1890, 1892–1893). Also M. E. Lazarus
was an important American individualist anarchist who promoted free love. Later John William Lloyd
, a collaborator of Benjamin Tucker
´s periodical Liberty, published in 1931 a sex manual that he called The Karezza Method: Or Magnetation, the Art of Connubial Love.
In Europe, the main propagandist of free love within individualist anarchism was Emile Armand
. He proposed the concept of la camaraderie amoureuse to speak of free love as the possibility of voluntary sexual encounter between consenting adults. He was also a consistent proponent of polyamory
. In France, there was also feminist activity inside individualist anarchism as promoted by individualist feminists Marie Küge, Anna Mahé, Rirette Maitrejean
, and Sophia Zaïkovska.
The Brazil
ian individualist anarchist Maria Lacerda de Moura
lectured on topics such as education, women's rights
, free love
, and antimilitarism
. Her writings and essays garnered her attention not only in Brazil, but also in Argentina
and Uruguay
. She also wrote for the Spanish individualist anarchist magazine Al Margen alongside Miguel Gimenez Igualada
In Germany, the Stirner
ists Adolf Brand
and John Henry Mackay
were pioneering campaigners for the acceptance of male bisexuality
and homosexuality
.
In the United States "freethought was a basically anti-christian, anti-clerical movement, whose purpose was to make the individual politically and spiritually free to decide for himself on religious matters. A number of contributors to Liberty were prominent figures in both freethought and anarchism. The individualist anarchist George MacDonald was a co-editor of Freethought and, for a time, The Truth Seeker. E.C. Walker was co-editor of the excellent free-thought / free love journal Lucifer, the Light-Bearer". "Many of the anarchists were ardent freethinkers; reprints from freethought papers such as Lucifer, the Light-Bearer, Freethought and The Truth Seeker appeared in Liberty...The church was viewed as a common ally of the state and as a repressive force in and of itself".
In Europe a similar development occurred in French and Spanish individualist anarchist circles. "Anticlericalism, just as in the rest of the libertarian movement, in another of the frequent elements which will gain relevance related to the measure in which the (French) Republic begins to have conflicts with the church...Anti-clerical discourse, frequently called for by the french individualist André Lorulot, will have its impacts in Estudios (an spanish individualist anarchist publication). There will be an attack on institutionalized religion for the responsibility that it had in the past on negative developments, for its irrationality which makes it a counterpoint of philosophical and scientific progress. There will be a criticism of proselitism and ideological manipulation which happens on both believers and agnostics.". This tendencies will continue in French individualist anarchism in the work and activism of Charles-Auguste Bontemps
and others. In the Spanish individualist anarchist magazine Ética and Iniciales
"there is a strong interest in publishing scientific news, usually linked to a certain atheist and anti-theist obsession, philosophy which will also work for pointing out the incompatibility between science and religion, faith and reason. In this way there will be a lot of talk on Darwin´s theories or on the negation of the existence of the soul.".
. Naturism promoted an ecological worldview, small ecovillage
s, and most prominently nudism as a way to avoid the artificiality of the industrial mass society
of modernity. Naturist individualist anarchists saw the individual in his biological, physical and psychological aspects and avoided, and tried to eliminate, social determinations."EL NATURISMO LIBERTARIO EN LA PENÍNSULA IBÉRICA (1890-1939)" by Josep Maria Rosell An early influence in this vein was Henry David Thoreau
and his famous book Walden
Important promoters of this were Henri Zisly
and Emile Gravelle
who collaborated in La Nouvelle Humanité followed by Le Naturien, Le Sauvage, L'Ordre Naturel, & La Vie Naturelle.
This relationship between anarchism and naturism was quite important at the end of the 1920s in Spain. "The linking role played by the ‘Sol y Vida’ group was very important. The goal of this group was to take trips and enjoy the open air. The Naturist athenaeum, ‘Ecléctico’, in Barcelona, was the base from which the activities of the group were launched. First Etica and then Iniciales
, which began in 1929, were the publications of the group, which lasted until the Spanish Civil War
. We must be aware that the naturist ideas expressed in them matched the desires that the libertarian youth had of breaking up with the conventions of the bourgeoisie of the time. That is what a young worker explained in a letter to ‘Iniciales’ He writes it under the odd pseudonym of ‘silvestre del campo’, (wild man in the country). “I find great pleasure in being naked in the woods, bathed in light and air, two natural elements we cannot do without. By shunning the humble garment of an exploited person, (garments which, in my opinion, are the result of all the laws devised to make our lives bitter), we feel there no others left but just the natural laws. Clothes mean slavery for some and tyranny for others. Only the naked man who rebels against all norms, stands for anarchism, devoid of the prejudices of outfit imposed by our money-oriented society.”". "The relation between Anarchism and Naturism gives way to the Naturist Federation, in July 1928, and to the lV Spanish Naturist Congress, in September 1929, both supported by the Libertarian Movement. However, in the short term, the Naturist and Libertarian movements grew apart in their conceptions of everyday life. The Naturist movement felt closer to the Libertarian individualism of some French theoreticians such as Henri Ner (real name of Han Ryner
) than to the revolutionary goals proposed by some Anarchist organisations such as the FAI, (Federación Anarquista Ibérica
)".
has been influential in individualist anarchism specifically in thinkers such as the French Emile Armand
, the Italian Renzo Novatore
, the Colombian Biofilo Panclasta
, and also "translations of Nietzsche's writings in the United States very likely appeared first in Liberty, the anarchist journal edited by Benjamin Tucker
".
and Stephen Pearl Andrews
...William B. Greene presented this Proudhonian Mutualism in its purest and most systematic form.". William Batchelder Greene
(1819–1878) is best known for the works Mutual Banking(1850), which proposed an interest-free banking system, and Transcendentalism, a critique of the New England philosophical school. He saw mutualism as the synthesis of "liberty and order." His "associationism...is checked by individualism..."Mind your own business," "Judge not that ye be not judged." Over matters which are purely personal, as for example, moral conduct, the individual is sovereign, as well as over that which he himself produces. For this reason he demands "mutuality" in marriage—the equal right of a woman to her own personal freedom and property."
feminist, & spiritualist tendencies. "
Contemporary american anarchist Hakim Bey reports that "Steven Pearl Andrews
...was not a fourierist (see Charles Fourier
), but he lived through the brief craze for phalansteries
in America & adopted a lot of fourierist principles & practices...a maker of worlds out of words. He syncretized Abolitionism
, Free Love
, spiritual universalism, (Josiah) Warren
, & (Charles) Fourier
into a grand utopian scheme he called the Universal Pantarchy...He was instrumental in founding several “intentional communities,” including the “Brownstone Utopia” on 14th St. in New York, & “Modern Times” in Brentwood, Long Island. The latter became as famous as the best-known fourierist communes (Brook Farm in Massachusetts & the North American Phalanx in New Jersey) — in fact, Modern Times became downright notorious (for “Free Love
”) & finally foundered under a wave of scandalous publicity. Andrews (& Victoria Woodhull
) were members of the infamous Section 12 of the 1st International, expelled by Marx for its anarchist, feminist, & spiritualist tendencies. "
Another form of individualist anarchism was found in the United States, as advocated by the "Boston anarchists." By default, American individualists had no difficulty accepting the concepts that "one man employ another" or that "he direct him," in his labor but rather demanded that "all natural opportunities requisite to the production of wealth be accessible to all on equal terms and that monopolies arising from special privileges created by law be abolished."
They believed state monopoly capitalism
(defined as a state-sponsored monopoly) prevented labor from being fully rewarded. Voltairine de Cleyre
, summed up the philosophy by saying that the anarchist individualists "are firm in the idea that the system of employer and employed, buying and selling, banking, and all the other essential institutions of Commercialism, centred upon private property, are in themselves good, and are rendered vicious merely by the interference of the State."
Even among the 19th century American individualists, there was not a monolithic doctrine, as they disagreed amongst each other on various issues including intellectual property
rights and possession versus property
in land. A major schism occurred later in the 19th century when Tucker and some others abandoned their traditional support of natural rights -as espoused by Lysander Spooner
- and converted to an "egoism" modeled upon Stirner's philosophy
. Lysander Spooner besides his individualist anarchist activism was also an important anti-slavery activist and became a member of the First International.
Some "Boston anarchists", including Benjamin Tucker, identified themselves as "socialists", which in the 19th century was often used in the sense of a commitment to improving conditions of the working class (i.e. "the labor problem
"). By the turn of the 20th century, the heyday of individualist anarchism had passed, although aspects of the individualist anarchist tradition were later revived with modifications by Murray Rothbard
and his anarcho-capitalism
in the mid-20th century, as a current of the broader libertarian
movement.
Two individualist anarchists who wrote in Benjamin Tucker
´s Liberty
were also important labor organizers of the time. Joseph Labadie
(April 18, 1850 – October 7, 1933) was an American labor organizer, individualist anarchist, social activist, printer, publisher, essayist, and poet. In 1883 Labadie embraced a non-violent version of individualist anarchism. Without the oppression of the state, Labadie believed, humans would choose to harmonize with "the great natural laws...without robbing [their] fellows through interest, profit, rent and taxes." However, he supported community cooperation, as he supported community control of water utilities, streets, and railroads. Although he did not support the militant anarchism of the Haymarket anarchists, he fought for the clemency of the accused because he did not believe they were the perpetators. In 1888, Labadie organized the Michigan Federation of Labor, became its first president, and forged an alliance with Samuel Gompers
. On the other hand Dyer Lum
was a 19th-century American individualist anarchist labor activist and poet. A leading anarcho-syndicalist and a prominent left-wing intellectual
of the 1880s, he is remembered as the lover and mentor of early anarcha-feminist Voltairine de Cleyre
. Lum was a prolific writer who wrote a number of key anarchist texts, and contributed to publications including Mother Earth
, Twentieth Century, and, The Alarm (the journal of the International Working People's Association
) and The Open Court among others. Lum's political philosophy
was a fusion of individualist anarchist economics
– "a radicalized form of laissez-faire
economics" inspired by the Boston anarchists– with radical labor organization similar to that of the Chicago anarchists of the time.Herbert Spencer
and Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
influenced Lum strongly in his individualist tendency. He developed a "mutualist
" theory of unions and as such was active within the Knights of Labor
and later promoted anti-political
strategies in the American Federation of Labor
. Frustration with abolitionism
, spiritualism
, and labor reform caused Lum to embrace anarchism and radicalize workers, as he came to believe that revolution
would inevitably involve a violent struggle between the working class
and the employing class. Convinced of the necessity of violence to enact social change he volunteered to fight in the American Civil War
, hoping thereby to bring about the end of slavery
. Kevin Carson has praised Lum's fusion of individualist laissez-faire economics with radical labor activism as "creative" and described him as "more significant than any in the Boston group".
Some of the American individualist anarchists later in this era, such as Benjamin Tucker
, abandoned natural rights positions and converted to Max Stirner
's Egoist anarchism
. Rejecting the idea of moral rights, Tucker said that there were only two rights, "the right of might" and "the right of contract." He also said, after converting to Egoist individualism, "In times past...it was my habit to talk glibly of the right of man to land. It was a bad habit, and I long ago sloughed it off....Man's only right to land is his might over it." In adopting Stirnerite egoism (1886), Tucker rejected natural rights which had long been considered the foundation of libertarianism. This rejection galvanized the movement into fierce debates, with the natural rights proponents accusing the egoists of destroying libertarianism itself. So bitter was the conflict that a number of natural rights proponents withdrew from the pages of Liberty in protest even though they had hitherto been among its frequent contributors. Thereafter, Liberty championed egoism although its general content did not change significantly."
"Several periodicals were undoubtedly influenced by Libertys presentation of egoism. They included: I published by C.L. Swartz, edited by W.E. Gordak and J.W. Lloyd (all associates of Liberty); The Ego and The Egoist, both of which were edited by Edward H. Fulton. Among the egoist papers that Tucker followed were the German Der Eigene, edited by Adolf Brand
, and The Eagle and The Serpent, issued from London. The latter, the most prominent English-language egoist journal, was published from 1898 to 1900 with the subtitle 'A Journal of Egoistic Philosophy and Sociology.
American anarchists who adhered to egoism include Benjamin Tucker
, John Beverley Robinson
, Steven T. Byington
, Hutchins Hapgood
, James L. Walker
and Victor Yarros
and E.H. Fulton. John Beverley Robinson wrote an essay called "Egoism" in which he states that "Modern egoism, as propounded by Stirner and Nietzsche, and expounded by Ibsen
, Shaw
and others, is all these; but it is more. It is the realization by the individual that they are an individual; that, as far as they are concerned, they are the only individual."
Italian anti-organizationalist individualist anarchism was brought to the United States by Italian born individualists such as Giuseppe Ciancabilla
and others who advocated for violent propaganda by the deed there. Anarchist historian George Woodcock
reports the incident in which the important Italian social anarchist Errico Malatesta
became involved "in a dispute with the individualist anarchists of Paterson
, who insisted that anarchism implied no organization at all, and that every man must act solely on his impulses. At last, in one noisy debate, the individual impulse of a certain Ciancabilla directed him to shoot Malatesta, who was badly wounded but obstinately refused to name his assailant."
Enrico Arrigoni
(pseudonym: Frank Brand) was an Italian American
individualist anarchist Lathe operator, house painter, bricklayer, dramatist and political activist influenced by the work of Max Stirner
. He took the pseudonym "Brand" from a fictional character in one of Henrik Ibsen
´s plays. In the 1910s he started becoming involved in anarchist and anti-war activism around Milan. From the 1910s until the 1920s he participated in anarchist activities and popular uprisings in various countries including Switzerland, Germany, Hungary, Argentina and Cuba. He lived from the 1920s onwards in New York City and there he edited the individualist anarchist eclectic journal Eresia in 1928. He also wrote for other american anarchist publications such as L' Adunata dei refrattari
, Cultura Obrera, Controcorrente and Intessa Libertaria. During the Spanish Civil War
, he went to fight with the anarchists but was imprisoned and was helped on his release by Emma Goldman
. Afterwards Arrigoni became a longtime member of the Libertarian Book Club in New York City. His written works include The totalitarian nightmare (1975), The lunacy of the Superman (1977), Adventures in the country of the monoliths (1981) and Freedom: my dream (1986).
19th century individualist anarchists espoused the labor theory of value
. Some believe that the modern movement of anarcho-capitalism is the result of simply removing the labor theory of value from ideas of the 19th century American individualist anarchists: "Their successors today, such as Murray Rothbard, having abandoned the labor theory of value, describe themselves as anarcho-capitalists." As economic theory changed, the popularity of the labor theory of classical economics
was superseded by the subjective theory of value
of neo-classical economics. According to Kevin Carson (himself a mutualist
), "most people who call themselves "individualist anarchists" today are followers of Murray Rothbard's Austrian economics."
Murray Rothbard
, a student of Ludwig von Mises
, combined the Austrian school
economics of his teacher with the absolutist views of human rights and rejection of the state he had absorbed from studying the individualist American anarchists of the 19th century such as Lysander Spooner and Benjamin Tucker.
In the mid-1950s Rothbard wrote an article under a pseudonym, saying that "we are not anarchists...but not archists either...Perhaps, then, we could call ourselves by a new name: nonarchist," concerned with differentiating himself from communist and socialistic economic views of other anarchists (including the individualist anarchists of the 19th century). However, Rothbard later chose the term "anarcho-capitalism" for his philosophy and referred to himself as an anarchist.
Agorism is a radical left-libertarian
form of anarchism, developed from anarcho-capitalism in the late 20th-century by Samuel Edward Konkin III
(a.k.a. SEK3). The goal of agorists is a society in which all "relations between people are voluntary exchanges
– a free market
." Agorists are market anarchists
. Most Agorists consider that property rights are natural rights deriving from the primary right of self-ownership. Because of this they are not opposed in principle to collectively held property if individual owners of the property consent to collective ownership by contract or other voluntary mutual agreement. However, Agorists are divided on the question of intellectual property
rights.
Though anarcho-capitalism has been regarded as a form of individualist anarchism, some writers deny that it is a form of anarchism, or that capitalism itself is compatible with anarchism.
has identified post-left anarchy
as a form of individualist anarchism in Social Anarchism or Lifestyle Anarchism: An Unbridgeable Chasm
where he identifies "a shift among Euro-American anarchists away from social anarchism and toward individualist or lifestyle anarchism. Indeed, lifestyle anarchism today is finding its principal expression in spray-can graffiti, post-modernist nihilism
, antirationalism, neo-primitivism, anti-technologism, neo-Situationist 'cultural terrorism', mysticism, and a 'practice' of staging Foucauldian
'personal insurrections'." Post-left anarchist Bob Black
in his long critique of Bookchin´s philosophy called Anarchy after leftism said about post-left anarchy that "It is, unlike Bookchinism, “individualistic” in the sense that if the freedom and happiness of the individual — i.e., each and every really existing person, every Tom, Dick and Murray — is not the measure of the good society, what is?".
A strong relationship does exist between post-left anarchism and the work of individualist anarchist Max Stirner
. Jason McQuinn
says that "when I (and other anti-ideological anarchists) criticize ideology, it is always from a specifically critical, anarchist perspective rooted in both the skeptical, individualist-anarchist philosophy of Max Stirner. Also Bob Black
and Feral Faun/Wolfi Landstreicher
strongly adhere to stirnerist egoist anarchism
. Bob Black has humorously suggested the idea of "marxist stirnerism".
Hakim Bey has said "From Stirner's "Union of Self-Owning Ones
" we proceed to Nietzsche's circle of "Free Spirits" and thence to Charles Fourier
's "Passional Series", doubling and redoubling ourselves even as the Other multiplies itself in the eros of the group." Bey also wrote that "The Mackay Society, of which Mark & I are active members, is devoted to the anarchism of Max Stirner, Benj. Tucker
& John Henry Mackay
...The Mackay Society, incidentally, represents a little-known current of individualist thought which never cut its ties with revolutionary labor. Dyer Lum
, Ezra
& Angela Haywood represent this school of thought; Jo Labadie, who wrote for Tucker’s Liberty
, made himself a link between the american “plumb-line” anarchists, the “philosophical” individualists, & the syndicalist or communist branch of the movement; his influence reached the Mackay Society through his son, Laurance. Like the Italian Stirnerites (who influenced us through our late friend Enrico Arrigoni
) we support all anti-authoritarian currents, despite their apparent contradictions."
As far as posterior individualist anarchists, Jason McQuinn
for some time used the pseudonym Lev Chernyi
in honor of the Russian individualist anarchist of the same name while Feral Faun has quoted Italian individualist anarchist Renzo Novatore
and has translated both Novatore. and the young Italian individualist anarchist Bruno Filippi
Kevin Carson is a contemporary mutualist economist and author of Studies in Mutualist Political Economy
. Another important current mutualist is Joe Peacott
. Contemporary mutualists are among those involved in the Alliance of the Libertarian Left and in the Voluntary Cooperation Movement. A recent mutualist collective was the Boston Anarchist Drinking Brigade.
Egoism has had a strong influence on insurrectionary anarchism
, as can be seen in the work of Wolfi Landstreicher
. Feral Faun wrote in 1995 that:
European individualist anarchism proceeded from the roots laid by William Godwin
, Pierre Joseph Proudhon and Max Stirner
. Proudhon was an early pioneer of anarchism
as well as of the important individualist anarchist current of mutualism
. Stirner became a central figure of individualist anarchism through the publication of his seminal work The Ego and Its Own
which is considered to be "a founding text in the tradition of individualist anarchism." Another early figure was Anselme Bellegarrigue
. IA expanded and diversified through Europe, incorporating influences from North American individualist anarchism
.
European individualist anarchists include Albert Libertad
, Bellegarrigue, Oscar Wilde
, Émile Armand
, Lev Chernyi
, John Henry Mackay
, Han Ryner
, Adolf Brand
, Miguel Gimenez Igualada
, Renzo Novatore
, and currently Michel Onfray
. Important currents within it include free love
, anarcho-naturism
, and illegalism
.
From the legacy of Proudhon and Stirner there emerged a strong tradition of French individualist anarchism
. An early important individualist anarchist was Anselme Bellegarrigue
. He participated in the French Revolution of 1848
, was author and editor of 'Anarchie, Journal de l'Ordre and Au fait ! Au fait ! Interprétation de l'idée démocratique' and wrote the important early Anarchist Manifesto
in 1850. Catalan historian of individualist anarchism Xavier Diez reports that during his travels in the United States "he at least contacted (Henry David) Thoreau
and, probably (Josiah) Warren
."Autonomie Individuelle was an individualist anarchist publication that ran from 1887 to 1888. It was edited by Jean-Baptiste Louiche, Charles Schæffer and Georges Deherme.
Later, this tradition continued with such intellectuals as Albert Libertad
, André Lorulot, Emile Armand
, Victor Serge
, Zo d'Axa
and Rirette Maitrejean
, who developed theory in the main individualist anarchist journal in France, L'Anarchie in 1905. Outside this journal, Han Ryner
wrote Petit Manuel individualiste (1903). Later appeared the journal L'EnDehors created by Zo d'Axa in 1891.
French individualist anarchists exposed a diversity of positions (per example, about violence and non-violence). For example, Emile Armand rejected violence
and embraced mutualism while becoming an important propagandist for free love
, while Albert Libertad
and Zo d'Axa
were influential in violentists circles and championed violent propaganda by the deed while adhering to communitarianism
or anarcho-communism and rejecting work
. Han Ryner on the other side conciled anarchism with stoicism
. Nevertheless French individualist circles had a strong sense of personal libertarianism and experimentation. Naturism
and free love
contents started to have a strong influence in individualist anarchist circles and from there it expanded to the rest of anarchism also appearing in Spanish individualist anarchist groups. "Along with feverish activity against the social order, (Albert) Libertad
was usually also organizing feasts, dances and country excursions, in consequence of his vision of anarchism as the “joy of living” and not as militant sacrifice and death instinct, seeking to reconcile the requirements of the individual (in his need for autonomy) with the need to destroy authoritarian society."
Anarchist naturism was promoted by Henri Zisly
, Emile Gravelle
and Georges Butaud. Butaud was an individualist "partisan of the milieux libres, publisher of "Flambeau" ("an enemy of authority") in 1901 in Vienna. Most of his energies were devoted to creating anarchist colonies (communautés expérimentales) in which he participated in several.
"In this sense, the theoretical positions and the vital experiences of french individualism are deeply iconoclastic and scandalous, even within libertarian circles. The call of nudist naturism
, the strong defence of bith control methods, the idea of "unions of egoists
" with the sole justification of sexual practices, that will try to put in practice, not without difficulties, will establish a way of thought and action, and will result in symphathy within some, and a strong rejection within others."
French individualist anarchists grouped behind Emile Armand
, published L'Unique after World War II
. L'Unique went from 1945 to 1956 with a total of 110 numbers. Within the synthesist
anarchist organization, the Fédération Anarchiste, there existed an individualist anarchist tendency alongside anarcho-communist and anarchosyndicalist currents. Individualist anarchists participating inside the Fédération Anarchiste included Charles-Auguste Bontemps
, Georges Vincey and André Arru. The new base principles of the francophone Anarchist Federation were written by Charles-Auguste Bontemps and the anarcho-communist Maurice Joyeux which established an organization with a plurality of tendencies and autonomy of federated groups organized around synthesist principles. Charles-Auguste Bontemps was a prolific author mainly in the anarchist, freethinking, pacifist and naturist
press of the time. His view on anarchism was based around his concept of "Social Individualism" on which he wrote extensively. He defended an anarchist perspective which consisted on "a collectivism of things and an individualism of persons."
In 2002, an anarchist, Libertad organized a new version of the L'EnDehors, collaborating with Green Anarchy
and including several contributors, such as Lawrence Jarach
, Patrick Mignard, Thierry Lodé
, Ron Sakolsky
, and Thomas Slut. Numerous articles about capitalism, human rights, free love
and social fights were published. The EnDehors continues now as a website, EnDehors.org.
The prolific contemporary French philosopher Michel Onfray
has been writing from an individualist anarchist perspective influenced by Nietzsche, French post-structuralists thinkers such as Michel Foucault
and Gilles Deleuze
; and Greek classical schools of philosophy such as the Cynics and Cyrenaics
. Among the books which best expose Onfray´s individualist anarchist perspective include La sculpture de soi : la morale esthétique (The sculpture of oneself: aesthetic morality), La philosophie féroce : exercices anarchistes, La puissance d'exister and Physiologie de Georges Palante, portrait d'un nietzchéen de gauche which focuses on French individualist philosopher Georges Palante
.
. The illegalists embraced direct action
and propaganda of the deed
.
Influenced by theorist Max Stirner's egoism
as well as Proudhon (his view that Property is theft!
), Clément Duval
and Marius Jacob
proposed the theory of la reprise individuelle (Eng: individual reclamation
) which justified robbery on the rich and personal direct action against exploiters and the system.,
Illegalism first rose to prominence among a generation of Europeans inspired by the unrest of the 1890s, during which Ravachol
, Émile Henry
, Auguste Vaillant
, and Caserio committed daring crimes in the name of anarchism, in what is known as propaganda of the deed
. France's Bonnot Gang
was the most famous group to embrace illegalism.
In Italy individualist anarchism had a strong tendency towards illegalism
and violent propaganda by the deed similar to French individualist anarchism but perhaps more extreme which emphazised criticism of organization be it anarchist or of other type. In this respect we can consider notorious magnicides carried out or attempted by individualists Giovanni Passannante, Sante Caserio, Michele Angiolillo
, Luigi Luccheni, Gaetano Bresci
who murdered king Umberto I. Caserio lived in France and coexisted within French illegalism and later assassinated French president Sadi Carnot
. The theoretical seeds of current Insurrectionary anarchism
were already laid out at the end of 19th century Italy in a combination of individualist anarchism criticism of permanent groups and organization with a socialist class struggle worldview. During the rise of fascism this thought also motivated Gino Lucetti
, Michele Schirru and Angelo Sbardellotto in attempting the assassination of Benito Mussolini
.
During the early 20th century, the intellectual work of individualist anarchist Renzo Novatore
came to importance; he was influenced by Stirner, Friedrich Nietzsche
, Georges Palante
, Oscar Wilde
, Henrik Ibsen
, Arthur Schopenhauer
and Charles Baudelaire
. He collaborated in numerous anarchist journals and participated in futurism
avant-garde currents. In his thought, he adhered to Stirnerist disrespect for private property, only recognizing property of one's own spirit. Novatore collaborated in the individualist anarchist journal Iconoclasta! alongside the young stirner
ist illegalist
Bruno Filippi
The individualist philosopher and poet Renzo Novatore
belonged to the leftist section of the avant-garde
movement of Futurism
alongside other individualist anarcho-futurists such as Dante Carnesecchi
, Leda Rafanelli, Auro d'Arcola, and Giovanni Governato. Also there was Pietro Bruzzi who published the journal L'Individualista in the 1920s alongside Ugo Fedeli and Francesco Ghezzi but who fell to fascist forces later. Pietro Bruzzi also collaborated with the Italian American
individualist anarchist publication Eresia of New York City
edited by Enrico Arrigoni
.
In Italy in 1945, during the Founding Congress of the Italian Anarchist Federation, there was a group of individualist anarchists led by Cesare Zaccaria who was an important anarchist of the time. Later, during the IX Congress of the Italian Anarchist Federation in Carrara
in 1965, a group decided to split off from this organization and created the Gruppi di Iniziativa Anarchica. In the seventies, it was mostly composed of "veteran individualist anarchists with an of pacifism
orientation, naturism
, etc,...".
In the famous Italian insurrectionary anarchist essay written by an anonymous writer, "At Daggers Drawn with the Existent, its Defenders and its False Critics", there reads "The workers who, during a wildcat strike, carried a banner saying, 'We are not asking for anything' understood that the defeat is in the claim itself ('the claim against the enemy is eternal'). There is no alternative but to take everything. As Stirner said: 'No matter how much you give them, they will always ask for more, because what they want is no less than the end of every concession'." The contemporary imprisoned Italian insurrectionary anarchist philosopher Michele Fabiani writes from an explicit individualist anarchist perspective in such essays as "Critica individualista anarchica alla modernità" (Individualist anarchist critique of modernity)
was influenced by American individualist anarchism, it was more closely related to the French currents. At the turn of the century, individualism in Spain gathered force through the efforts of people such as Dorado Montero, Ricardo Mella
, Federico Urales, Miguel Gimenez Igualada
, Mariano Gallardo, and J. Elizalde who translated French and American individualists. Important in this respect were also magazines such as La Idea Libre, La revista blanca
, Etica, Iniciales
, Al margen, Estudios and Nosotros. The most influential thinkers there were Max Stirner
, Emile Armand
and Han Ryner
. Just as in France, the spread of Esperanto
and anationalism
had importance just as naturism
and free love
currents. Later, Armand and Ryner themselves started writing in the Spanish invidualist press. Armand's concept of amorous camaraderie had an important role in motivating polyamory
as realization of the individual.
Catalan historian Xavier Diez reports that the Spanish individualist anarchist press was widely read by members of anarcho-communist groups and by members of the anarcho-syndicalist trade union CNT
. There were also the cases of prominent individualist anarchists such as Federico Urales and Miguel Gimenez Igualada
who were members of the CNT
and J. Elizalde who was a founding member and first secretary of the Iberian Anarchist Federation.
Spanish individualist anarchist Miguel Giménez Igualada
wrote the lengthy theory book called Anarchism espousing his individualist anarchism. Between October, 1937 and February, 1938 he was editor of the individualist anarchist magazine Nosotros, in which many works of Han Ryner
and Émile Armand
appeared. He also participated in the publishing of another individualist anarchist maganize Al Margen: Publicación quincenal individualista. In his youth he engaged in illegalist activities. His thought was deeply influenced by Max Stirner
, of which he was the main popularizer in Spain through his own writings. He published and wrote the preface to the fourth edition in Spanish of The Ego and Its Own
from 1900. He proposed the creation of a Union of Egoists
, to be a Federation of Individualist Anarchists in Spain, but did not succeed. In 1956 he published an extensive treatise on Stirner, dedicated to fellow individualist anarchist Emile Armand
Afterwards he traveled and lived in Argentina, Uruguay and Mexico.
Federico Urales was an important individualist anarchist who edited La Revista Blanca
. The individualist anarchism of Urales was influenced by Auguste Comte
and Charles Darwin
. He saw science and reason as a defense against blind servitude to authority. He was critical of influential individualist thinkers such as Nietzsche and Stirner
for promoting an asocial egoist individualism and instead promoted an individualism with solidarity seen as a way to guarantee social equality and harmony. He was highly critical of anarcho-syndicalism
, which he viewed as plagued by excessive bureaucracy, and thought that it tended towards reformism. Instead he favored small groups based on ideological alignement. He supported and participated in the establishment of the Iberian Anarchist Federation (FAI)
in 1927.
In 1956, on exile escaping from Franco´s dictatorship
Miguel Giménez Igualada
published an extensive treatise on Stirner which he dedicated to fellow individualist anarchist Emile Armand
On the subject of individualist anarchist theory, he publisheds Anarchism in 1968, during his exile in Mexico from Franco's dictatorship in Spain. He was present in the First Congress of the Mexican Anarchist Federation in 1945.
In 2000, in Spain Ateneo Libertario Ricardo Mella, Ateneo libertario Al Margen, Ateneu Enciclopèdic Popular, Ateneo Libertario de Sant Boi, Ateneu Llibertari Poble Sec y Fundació D'Estudis Llibertaris i Anarcosindicalistes republished Emile Armand's writings on Free Love and individualist anarchism in a compilation titled Individualist anarchism and Amorous camaraderie. Recently Catalan
historian Xavier Diez has dedicated extensive research on Spanish individualist anarchism as can be seen in his books El anarquismo individualista en España: 1923-1938 and Utopia sexual a la premsa anarquista de Catalunya. La revista Ética-Iniciales(1927–1937) (which deals with free love thought as present in the Spanish individualist anarchist magazine Iniciales
).
In Germany
, the Scottish-German John Henry McKay became the most important propagandist for individualist anarchist ideas. He fused Stirnerist egoism with the positions of Benjamin Tucker and actually translated Tucker into German. Two semi-fictional writings of his own, Die Anarchisten
and Der Freiheitsucher, contributed to individualist theory through an updating of egoist themes within a consideration of the anarchist movement. English translations of these works arrived in the United Kingdom and in individualist American circles led by Tucker. McKay is also known as an important European early activist for Gay
rights.
Using the pseudonym
Sagitta, Mackay wrote a series of works for pederastic
emancipation
, titled Die Buecher der namenlosen Liebe (Books of the Nameless Love). This series was conceived in 1905 and completed in 1913 and included the Fenny Skaller, a story of a pederast. Under the same pseudonym he also published fiction, such as Holland (1924) and a pederastic novel of the Berlin
boy-bars, Der Puppenjunge (The Hustler) (1926).
Adolf Brand
(1874–1945) was a German
writer
, stirner
ist anarchist
and pioneering campaigner for the acceptance of male bisexuality
and homosexuality
. Brand published a German homosexual periodical, Der Eigene
in 1896. This was the first ongoing homosexual publication in the world. The name was taken from writings of egoist philosopher Max Stirner
, who had greatly influenced the young Brand, and refers to Stirner's concept of "self-ownership
" of the individual. Der Eigene
concentrated on cultural and scholarly material, and may have had an average of around 1500 subscribers per issue during its lifetime, although the exact numbers are uncertain. Contributors included Erich Mühsam
, Kurt Hiller
, John Henry Mackay
(under the pseudonym Sagitta) and artists Wilhelm von Gloeden
, Fidus
and Sascha Schneider
. Brand contributed many poems and articles himself. Benjamin Tucker
followed this journal from the United States.
Der Einzige
was a German individualist anarchist magazine. It appeared in 1919, as a weekly, then sporadically until 1925 and was edited by cousins Anselm Ruest (pseud. for Ernst Samuel) and Mynona (pseud. for Salomo Friedlaender). Its title was adopted from the book Der Einzige und sein Eigentum (engl. trans. The Ego and Its Own
) by Max Stirner
. Another influence was the thought of German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche
. The publication was connected to the local expressionist
artistic current and the transition from it towards dada
.
The English
enlightenment
political theorist William Godwin
was an important influence as mentioned before. The Irish anarchist
writer of the Decadent movement
Oscar Wilde
influenced individualist anarchists such as Renzo Novatore
and gained the admiration of Benjamin Tucker
. In his important essay The Soul of Man under Socialism
from 1891 he defended socialism as the way to guarantee individualism and so he saw that "With the abolition of private property, then, we shall have true, beautiful, healthy Individualism. Nobody will waste his life in accumulating things, and the symbols for things. One will live. To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all." For anarchist historian George Woodcock
"Wilde's aim in The Soul of Man under Socialism
is to seek the society most favorable to the artist...for Wilde art is the supreme end, containing within itself enlightenment and regeneration, to which all else in society must be subordinated...Wilde represents the anarchist as aesthete." Woodocock finds that "The most ambitious contribution to literary anarchism during the 1890's was undoubtedly Oscar Wilde The Soul of Man under Socialism
" and finds that it is influenced mainly by the thought of William Godwin
.
In the late 19th century in the United Kingdom, there existed individualist anarchists such as Wordsworth Donisthorpe
, Joseph Hiam Levy, Joseph Greevz Fisher, John Badcock, Jr., Albert Tarn, and Henry Seymour who were close to the United States group around Benjamin Tucker
´s magazine Liberty. In the mid 1880's Seymour published a journal called The Anarchist. and also later took a special interest in free love
as he participated in the journal The Adult: A Journal for the Advancement of Freedom in Sexual Relationships. "The Serpent, issued from London...the most prominent English-language egoist journal, was published from 1898 to 1900 with the subtitle 'A Journal of Egoistic Philosophy and Sociology'". Henry Meulen
was another British anarchist, he was notable for his support of free banking
.
In the United Kingdom
, Herbert Read
was influenced highly by egoism
as he later approached existentialism
(see existentialist anarchism
). Albert Camus
devoted a section of The Rebel to Stirner. "Although throughout his book Camus is concerned to present "the rebel" as a preferred alternative to "the revolutionary" he nowhere acknowledges that this distinction is taken from the one that Stirner makes between "the revolutionary" and "the insurrectionist
". Sidney Parker
is a British
egoist individualist anarchist who wrote articles and edited anarchist journals from 1963 to 1993 such as Minus One, Egoist, and Ego.
In the hybrid of post-structuralism
and anarchism called post-anarchism
the British
Saul Newman
has written a lot on Stirner and his similarities to post-structuralism. He writes:
Newman has published several essays on Stirner. "War on the State: Stirner and Deleuze's Anarchism" and "Empiricism, pluralism, and politics in Deleuze and Stirner" discusses what he sees are similarities between Stirner's thought and that of Gilles Deleuze
. In "Spectres of Stirner: a Contemporary Critique of Ideology" he discusses the conception of ideology in Stirner. In "Stirner and Foucault: Toward a Post-Kantian Freedom" similarities between Stirner and Michel Foucault
. Also he wrote "Politics of the ego: Stirner's critique of liberalism".
Individualist anarchism was one of the three categories of anarchism in Russia
, along with the more prominent anarchist communism
and anarcho-syndicalism
. The ranks of the Russian individualist anarchists were predominantly drawn from the intelligentsia
and the working class
. For anarchist historian Paul Avrich
"The two leading exponents of individualist anarchism, both based in Moscow
, were Aleksei Alekseevich Borovoi
and Lev Chernyi
(Pavel Dmitrievich Turchaninov). From Nietzsche, they inherited the desire for a complete overturn of all values accepted by bourgeois societypolitical, moral, and cultural. Furthermore, strongly influenced by Max Stirner
and Benjamin Tucker
, the German and American theorists of individualist anarchism, they demanded the total liberation of the human personality from the fetters of organized society."
Some Russian individualists anarchists "found the ultimate expression of their social alienation
in violence and crime, others attached themselves to avant-garde literary and artistic circles, but the majority remained "philosophical" anarchists
who conducted animated parlor discussions and elaborated their individualist theories in ponderous journals and books."
Lev Chernyi
was an important individualist anarchist involved in resistance against the rise to power of the Bolchevik Party. He adhered mainly to Stirner and the ideas of Benjamin Tucker
. In 1907, he published a book entitled Associational Anarchism, in which he advocated the "free association of independent individuals.". On his return from Siberia in 1917 he enjoyed great popularity among Moscow workers as a lecturer. Chernyi was also Secretary of the Moscow Federation of Anarchist Groups, which was formed in March 1917. He was an advocate "for the seizure of private homes", which was an activity seen by the anarchists after the October revolution as direct expropriation on the bourgoise. He died after being accused of participation in an episode in which this group bombed the headquarters of the Moscow Committee of the Communist Party. Although most likely not being really involved in the bombing, he might have died of torture.
Chernyi advocated a Nietzschean overthrow of the values
of bourgeois Russian society, and rejected the voluntary communes of anarcho-communist Peter Kropotkin
as a threat to the freedom of the individual. Scholars including Avrich and Allan Antliff have interpreted this vision of society to have been greatly influenced by the individualist anarchists Max Stirner
, and Benjamin Tucker
. Subsequent to the book's publication, Chernyi was imprisoned in Siberia
under the Russian Czarist regime for his revolutionary activities.
On the other hand Aleksei Borovoi
(1876?-1936)., was a professor of philosophy at Moscow University, "a gifted orator and the author of numerous books, pamphlets, and articles which attempted to reconcile individualist anarchism with the doctrines of syndicallism". He wrote among other theoretical works, Anarkhizm in 1918 just after the October revolution and Anarchism and Law. For him "the chief importance is given not to Anarchism as the aim but to Anarchy
as the continuous quest for the aim". He manifests there that "No social ideal, from the point of view of anarchism, could be referred to as absolute in a sense that supposes it’s the crown of human wisdom, the end of social and ethical quest of man."
reports that in Argentina "Among the workers that came from Europe in the 2 first decades of the century, there was curiously some stirnerian individualists influenced by the philosophy of Nietzsche, that saw syndicalism as a potential enemy of anarchist ideology. They established...affinity groups that in 1912 came to, according to Max Nettlau
, to the number of 20. In 1911 there appeared, in Colón
, the periodical El Único, that defined itself as ´Publicación individualista´".
Vicente Rojas Lizcano whose pseudonym was Biófilo Panclasta
, was a Colombian
individualist anarchist writer and activist. In 1904 he begins using the name Biofilo Panclasta. "Biofilo" in Spanish stands for "lover of life" and "Panclasta" for "enemy of all". He visited more than fifty countries propagandizing for anarchism which in his case was highly influenced by the thought of Max Stirner
and Friedrich Nietszche. Among his written works there are Siete años enterrado vivo en una de las mazmorras de Gomezuela: Horripilante relato de un resucitado(1932) and Mis prisiones, mis destierros y mi vida (1929) which talk about his many adventures while living his life as an adventurer, activist and vagabond
, as well as his thought and the many times he was imprisoned in different countries.
Maria Lacerda de Moura
was a Brazil
ian teacher
, journalist
, anarcha-feminist, and individualist anarchist. Her ideas regarding education were largely influenced by Francisco Ferrer. She later moved to São Paulo
and became involved in journalism for the anarchist and labor press. There she also lectured on topics including education, women's rights
, free love
, and antimilitarism
. Her writings and essays garnered her attention not only in Brazil, but also in Argentina
and Uruguay
. In February 1923, she launched Renascença, a periodical linked with the anarchist, progressive
, and freethinking
circles of the period. Her thought was mainly influenced by individualist anarchists such as Han Ryner
and Emile Armand
. She maintained contact with Spanish individualist anarchist circles.
During the 1990s in Argentina, there appeared a stirner
ist publication called El Único: publicacion periódica de pensamiento individualista.
Prior to abandoning anarchism, libertarian socialist Murray Bookchin
criticized individualist anarchism for its opposition to democracy
and its embrace of "lifestylism
" at the expense of class struggle
. Bookchin claimed that individualist anarchism supports only negative liberty
and rejects the idea of positive liberty
. Anarcho-communist Albert Meltzer
proposed that individualist anarchism differs radically from revolutionary anarchism, and that it "is sometimes too readily conceded 'that this is, after all, anarchism'." He claimed that Benjamin Tucker
's acceptance of the use of a private police force (including to break up violent strikes to protect the "employer's 'freedom'") is contradictory to the definition of anarchism as "no government." Meltzer opposed anarcho-capitalism
for similar reasons, arguing that since it supports "private armies", it actually supports a "limited State." He contends that it "is only possible to conceive of Anarchism which is free, communistic and offering no economic necessity for repression of countering it."
According to Gareth Griffith, George Bernard Shaw
initially had flirtations with individualist anarchism before coming to the conclusion that it was "the negation of socialism, and is, in fact, unsocialism carried as near to its logical conclusion as any sane man dare carry it." Shaw's argument was that even if wealth was initially distributed equally, the degree of laissez-faire
advocated by Tucker would result in the distribution of wealth becoming unequal because it would permit private appropriation and accumulation. According to academic Carlotta Anderson, American individualist anarchists accept that free competition results in unequal wealth distribution, but they "do not see that as an injustice." Tucker explained, "If I go through life free and rich, I shall not cry because my neighbor, equally free, is richer. Liberty will ultimately make all men rich; it will not make all men equally rich. Authority may (and may not) make all men equally rich in purse; it certainly will make them equally poor in all that makes life best worth living."
There is also criticism between contemporary individualist anarchism currents. American mutualist Joe Peacott
has criticized anarcho-capitalists for trying to hegemonize the label "individualist anarchism", as this makes it appear as if all individualist anarchists are pro-capitalism. He has stated that "some individualists, both past and present, agree with the communist anarchists that present-day capitalism is based on economic coercion, not on voluntary contract. Rent and interest are mainstays of modern capitalism, and are protected and enforced by the state. Without these two unjust institutions, capitalism could not exist." In this way he adheres to mutualist anti-capitalism
.
use the classification "social anarchism
/ individualist anarchism". Some see individualist anarchism as distinctly non-socialist, and use the classification "socialist anarchism / individualist anarchism" accordingly. Other classifications include "mutualist/communal" anarchism.
β Michael Freeden identifies four broad type
s of individualist anarchism. He says the first is the type associated with William Godwin
that advocates self-government with a "progressive rationalism
that included benevolence to others." The second type 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 Donisthorpe
, foreseeing the redundancy of the state in the source of social evolution." The fourth type retains a moderated form of egoism and accounts for social cooperation through the advocacy of market relationships.
γSee, for example, the Winter 2006 issue of the Journal of Libertarian Studies, dedicated to reviews of Kevin Carson's Studies in Mutualist Political Economy. Mutualists compose one bloc, along with agorists and geo-libertarians, in the recently formed Alliance of the Libertarian Left.
δThough this term is non-standard usage – by "left", agorists mean "left" in the general sense used by left-libertarians
, as defined by Roderick T. Long, as "... an integration, or I'd argue, a reintegration of libertarianism with concerns that are traditionally thought of as being concerns of the left. That includes concerns for worker empowerment, worry about plutocracy, concerns about feminism and various kinds of social equality."
εKonkin wrote the article "Copywrongs" in opposition to the concept and Schulman countered SEK3's arguments in "Informational Property: Logorights."
ζ Individualist anarchism is also known by the terms "anarchist individualism", "anarcho-individualism", "individualistic anarchism", "libertarian anarchism", "anarcho-libertarianism", "anarchist libertarianism" and "anarchistic libertarianism".
Individual
An individual is a person or any specific object or thing in a collection. Individuality is the state or quality of being an individual; a person separate from other persons and possessing his or her own needs, goals, and desires. Being self expressive...
and his or her will
Will (philosophy)
Will, in philosophical discussions, consonant with a common English usage, refers to a property of the mind, and an attribute of acts intentionally performed. Actions made according to a person's will are called "willing" or "voluntary" and sometimes pejoratively "willful"...
over external determinants such as groups, society, traditions, and ideological systems. Individualist anarchism is not a single philosophy but refers to a group of individualistic
Individualism
Individualism is the moral stance, political philosophy, ideology, or social outlook that stresses "the moral worth of the individual". Individualists promote the exercise of one's goals and desires and so value independence and self-reliance while opposing most external interference upon one's own...
philosophies that sometimes are in conflict. From there it expanded through Europe and the United States
Individualist anarchism in the United States
Individualist anarchism in the United States was strongly influenced by Josiah Warren, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Lysander Spooner, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Max Stirner, Herbert SpencerHenry David Thoreau...
. Benjamin R. Tucker, a famous 19th century individualist anarchist, held that "if the individual has the right to govern himself, all external government is tyranny."
Overview
Among the early influences on individualist anarchism were William GodwinWilliam Godwin
William Godwin was an English journalist, political philosopher and novelist. He is considered one of the first exponents of utilitarianism, and the first modern proponent of anarchism...
, Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau was an American author, poet, philosopher, abolitionist, naturalist, tax resister, development critic, surveyor, historian, and leading transcendentalist...
(transcendentalism
Transcendentalism
Transcendentalism is a philosophical movement that developed in the 1830s and 1840s in the New England region of the United States as a protest against the general state of culture and society, and in particular, the state of intellectualism at Harvard University and the doctrine of the Unitarian...
), Josiah Warren
Josiah Warren
Josiah Warren was an individualist anarchist, inventor, musician, and author in the United States. He is widely regarded as the first American anarchist, and the four-page weekly paper he edited during 1833, The Peaceful Revolutionist, was the first anarchist periodical published, an enterprise...
("sovereignty of the individual"), Lysander Spooner
Lysander Spooner
Lysander Spooner was an American individualist anarchist, political philosopher, Deist, abolitionist, supporter of the labor movement, legal theorist, and entrepreneur of the nineteenth century. He is also known for competing with the U.S...
("natural law
Natural law
Natural law, or the law of nature , is any system of law which is purportedly determined by nature, and thus universal. Classically, natural law refers to the use of reason to analyze human nature and deduce binding rules of moral behavior. Natural law is contrasted with the positive law Natural...
"), Pierre Joseph Proudhon (mutualism
Mutualism (economic theory)
Mutualism is an anarchist school of thought that originates in the writings of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, who envisioned a society where each person might possess a means of production, either individually or collectively, with trade representing equivalent amounts of labor in the free market...
), Anselme Bellegarrigue
Anselme Bellegarrigue
Anselme Bellegarrigue was a French individualist anarchist, born between 1820 and 1825 in Toulouse and presumed dead around the end of the 19th century in Central America...
, Herbert Spencer
Herbert Spencer
Herbert Spencer was an English philosopher, biologist, sociologist, and prominent classical liberal political theorist of the Victorian era....
("law of equal liberty
Law of equal liberty
The law of equal liberty , or equal liberty, is a doctrine first named, though not first conceived, by Herbert Spencer in Social Statics which says "…that every man may claim the fullest liberty to exercise his faculties compatible with the possession of like liberty to every other man." Or,...
") and Max Stirner
Max Stirner
Johann Kaspar Schmidt , better known as Max Stirner , was a German philosopher, who ranks as one of the literary fathers of nihilism, existentialism, post-modernism and anarchism, especially of individualist anarchism...
(egoism
Egoist anarchism
Egoist anarchism is a school of anarchist thought that originated in the philosophy of Max Stirner, a nineteenth century Hegelian philosopher whose "name appears with familiar regularity in historically orientated surveys of anarchist thought as one of the earliest and best-known exponents of...
).
Individualist anarchism of different kinds have a few things in common. These are:
1. The concentration on the individual
Individual
An individual is a person or any specific object or thing in a collection. Individuality is the state or quality of being an individual; a person separate from other persons and possessing his or her own needs, goals, and desires. Being self expressive...
and his/her will in preference to any construction such as morality
Morality
Morality is the differentiation among intentions, decisions, and actions between those that are good and bad . A moral code is a system of morality and a moral is any one practice or teaching within a moral code...
, ideology
Ideology
An ideology is a set of ideas that constitutes one's goals, expectations, and actions. An ideology can be thought of as a comprehensive vision, as a way of looking at things , as in common sense and several philosophical tendencies , or a set of ideas proposed by the dominant class of a society to...
, social custom, religion
Religion
Religion is a collection of cultural systems, belief systems, and worldviews that establishes symbols that relate humanity to spirituality and, sometimes, to moral values. Many religions have narratives, symbols, traditions and sacred histories that are intended to give meaning to life or to...
, metaphysics, ideas
Invention
An invention is a novel composition, device, or process. An invention may be derived from a pre-existing model or idea, or it could be independently conceived, in which case it may be a radical breakthrough. In addition, there is cultural invention, which is an innovative set of useful social...
or the will of others.
2. The rejection of or reservations about the idea of revolution
Revolution
A revolution is a fundamental change in power or organizational structures that takes place in a relatively short period of time.Aristotle described two types of political revolution:...
, seeing it as a time of mass uprising which could bring about new hierarchies. Instead they favor more evolutionary methods of bringing about anarchy through alternative experiences and experiments and education which could be brought about today. This is also because it is not seen as desirable for individuals to wait for revolution to start experiencing alternative experiences outside what is offered in the current social system.
3. The view that relationships with other persons or things can be in one's own interest only and can be as transitory and without compromises as desired since in individualist anarchism sacrifice is usually rejected. In this way, Max Stirner recommended associations of egoists
Union of egoists
Max Stirner's idea of the "Union of Egoists" , was first expounded in The Ego and Its Own. The Union is understood as a non-systematic association, which Stirner proposed in contradistinction to the state. The Union is understood as a relation between egoists which is continually renewed by all...
. Individual experience and exploration therefore is emphasized.
The egoist form of individualist anarchism
Egoist anarchism
Egoist anarchism is a school of anarchist thought that originated in the philosophy of Max Stirner, a nineteenth century Hegelian philosopher whose "name appears with familiar regularity in historically orientated surveys of anarchist thought as one of the earliest and best-known exponents of...
, derived from the philosophy of Max Stirner
Philosophy of Max Stirner
The philosophy of Max Stirner is credited as an influence on the development of nihilism, existentialism, post-modernism and anarchism, especially of individualist anarchism, postanarchism and post-left anarchy...
, supports the individual doing exactly what he pleases – taking no notice of God, state, or moral rules. To Stirner, rights were spooks
Reification (fallacy)
Reification is a fallacy of ambiguity, when an abstraction is treated as if it were a concrete, real event, or physical entity. In other words, it is the error of treating as a "real thing" something which is not a real thing, but merely an idea...
in the mind, and he held that society does not exist 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 American anarchist 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 independent 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 harm 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
Transcendentalism
Transcendentalism is a philosophical movement that developed in the 1830s and 1840s in the New England region of the United States as a protest against the general state of culture and society, and in particular, the state of intellectualism at Harvard University and the doctrine of the Unitarian...
, humanitarianism
Humanitarianism
In its most general form, humanitarianism is an ethic of kindness, benevolence and sympathy extended universally and impartially to all human beings. Humanitarianism has been an evolving concept historically but universality is a common element in its evolution...
, and romanticism
Romanticism
Romanticism was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution...
of the first 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." It is for this reason that it has been suggested that in order to understand American 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 dominance of self-employment (artisan and peasant production). At the beginning of the 19th century, around 80% of the working (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 so "Individualist anarchism is clearly a form of artisan
Artisan
An artisan is a skilled manual worker who makes items that may be functional or strictly decorative, including furniture, clothing, jewellery, household items, and tools...
al socialism
Socialism
Socialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy; or a political philosophy advocating such a system. "Social ownership" may refer to any one of, or a combination of, the following: cooperative enterprises,...
... while communist anarchism and anarcho-syndicalism
Anarcho-syndicalism
Anarcho-syndicalism is a branch of anarchism which focuses on the labour movement. The word syndicalism comes from the French word syndicat which means trade union , from the Latin word syndicus which in turn comes from the Greek word σύνδικος which means caretaker of an issue...
are forms of industrial (or proletarian) socialism."
In European individualist anarchism a different social context helped the rise of European individualist illegalism
Illegalism
Illegalism is an anarchist philosophy that developed primarily in France, Italy, Belgium, and Switzerland during the early 1900s as an outgrowth of individualist anarchism...
and as such "The illegalists were proletarians who had nothing to sell but their labour power, and nothing to discard but their dignity; if they disdained waged-work, it was because of its compulsive nature. If they turned to illegality it was due to the fact that honest toil only benefited the employers and often entailed a complete loss of dignity, while any complaints resulted in the sack; to avoid starvation through lack of work it was necessary to beg or steal, and to avoid conscription into the army many of them had to go on the run." And so a European tendency of individualist anarchism advocated violent individual acts of individual reclamation
Individual reclamation
Individual reclamation is a form of direct action, characterized by the individual theft of resources from the rich by the poor...
, propaganda by the deed and criticism of organization. Such individualist anarchist tendencies include French illegalism
Illegalism
Illegalism is an anarchist philosophy that developed primarily in France, Italy, Belgium, and Switzerland during the early 1900s as an outgrowth of individualist anarchism...
and Italian anti-organizational 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 committed acts of terrorism that gave 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."
As such Murray Bookchin
Murray Bookchin
Murray Bookchin was an American libertarian socialist author, orator, and philosopher. A pioneer in the ecology movement, Bookchin was the founder of the social ecology movement within anarchist, libertarian socialist and ecological thought. He was the author of two dozen books on politics,...
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
Bohemianism
Bohemianism is the practice of an unconventional lifestyle, often in the company of like-minded people, with few permanent ties, involving musical, artistic or literary pursuits...
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
Free love
The term free love has been used to describe a social movement that rejects marriage, which is seen as a form of social bondage. The Free Love movement’s initial goal was to separate the state from sexual matters such as marriage, birth control, and adultery...
currents and other radical lifestyles such as naturism
Naturism
Naturism or nudism is a cultural and political movement practising, advocating and defending social nudity in private and in public. It may also refer to a lifestyle based on personal, family and/or social nudism....
had popularity among individualist anarchists.
For Catalan historian Xavier Diez Spanish individualist anarchism "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
Nationalism
Nationalism is a political ideology that involves a strong identification of a group of individuals with a political entity defined in national terms, i.e. a nation. In the 'modernist' image of the nation, it is nationalism that creates national identity. There are various definitions for what...
, it opposed its internationalism
Cosmopolitanism
Cosmopolitanism is the ideology that all human ethnic groups belong to a single community based on a shared morality. This is contrasted with communitarian and particularistic theories, especially the ideas of patriotism and nationalism...
. Against the exaltation of authority embodied in the military
Military
A military is an organization authorized by its greater society to use lethal force, usually including use of weapons, in defending its country by combating actual or perceived threats. The military may have additional functions of use to its greater society, such as advancing a political agenda e.g...
intitution, it opposed its antimilitarism
Antimilitarism
Antimilitarism is a doctrine commonly found in the anarchist and, more globally, in the socialist movement, which may both be characterized as internationalist movements. It relies heavily on a critical theory of nationalism and imperialism, and was an explicit goal of the First and Second...
. 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
Mutualism (economic theory)
Mutualism is an anarchist school of thought that originates in the writings of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, who envisioned a society where each person might possess a means of production, either individually or collectively, with trade representing equivalent amounts of labor in the free market...
(Proudhon, Emile Armand
Emile Armand
Emile Armand was the most influential French individualist anarchist at the beginning of the 20th century and also a dedicated free love/polyamory, intentional community, and pacifist/antimilitarist writer, propagandist and activist...
, early Benjamin Tucker
Benjamin Tucker
Benjamin Ricketson Tucker was a proponent of American individualist anarchism in the 19th century, and editor and publisher of the individualist anarchist periodical Liberty.-Summary:Tucker says that he became an anarchist at the age of 18...
), egoist
Egoist anarchism
Egoist anarchism is a school of anarchist thought that originated in the philosophy of Max Stirner, a nineteenth century Hegelian philosopher whose "name appears with familiar regularity in historically orientated surveys of anarchist thought as one of the earliest and best-known exponents of...
ic disrespect for "ghosts" such as private property and markets (Stirner, John Henry Mackay
John Henry Mackay
John Henry Mackay was an individualist anarchist, thinker and writer. Born in Scotland and raised in Germany, Mackay was the author of Die Anarchisten and Der Freiheitsucher . Mackay was published in the United States in his friend Benjamin Tucker's magazine, Liberty...
, Lev Chernyi
Lev Chernyi
Pável Dimítrievich Turchanínov , known by the pseudonym Lev Chernyi , was a Russian anarchist theorist, activist and poet, and a leading figure of the Third Russian Revolution. His early thought was individualist, rejecting anarcho-communism as a threat to individual liberty...
, later Tucker), and adherents to anarcho-communism (Albert Libertad
Albert Libertad
Joseph Albert was an individualist anarchist militant and writer from France who edited the influential anarchist publication L’Anarchie.- Life and work :...
, illegalism
Illegalism
Illegalism is an anarchist philosophy that developed primarily in France, Italy, Belgium, and Switzerland during the early 1900s as an outgrowth of individualist anarchism...
, Renzo Novatore
Renzo Novatore
- Life :Abele Ricieri Ferrari was born in Arcola, Liguria, Italy on May 12, 1890 in a poor peasant family. He did not adjust to school discipline and quit in the first year never coming back after that. While he worked in his father's farm, he self educated himself with an emphasis in poetry and...
). Anarchist historian George Woodcock
George Woodcock
George Woodcock was a Canadian writer of political biography and history, an anarchist thinker, an essayist and literary critic. He was also a poet, and published several volumes of travel writing. He founded in 1959 the journal Canadian Literature, the first academic journal specifically...
finds a tendency in individualist anarchism of a "distrust (of) all co-operation beyond the barest minimum for an ascetic life
Simple living
Simple living encompasses a number of different voluntary practices to simplify one's lifestyle. These may include reducing one's possessions or increasing self-sufficiency, for example. Simple living may be characterized by individuals being satisfied with what they need rather than want...
".
William Godwin
William Godwin
William Godwin was an English journalist, political philosopher and novelist. He is considered one of the first exponents of utilitarianism, and the first modern proponent of anarchism...
can be considered an individualist anarchist and philosophical anarchist who was influenced by the ideas of the Age of Enlightenment
Age of Enlightenment
The Age of Enlightenment was an elite cultural movement of intellectuals in 18th century Europe that sought to mobilize the power of reason in order to reform society and advance knowledge. It promoted intellectual interchange and opposed intolerance and abuses in church and state...
, and developed what many consider the first expression of modern anarchist thought
Anarchist schools of thought
Anarchism is generally defined as the political philosophy which holds the state to be undesirable, unnecessary, and harmful, or alternatively as opposing authority in the conduct of human relations...
. Godwin was, according to Peter Kropotkin
Peter Kropotkin
Prince Pyotr Alexeyevich Kropotkin was a Russian zoologist, evolutionary theorist, philosopher, economist, geographer, author and one of the world's foremost anarcho-communists. Kropotkin advocated a communist society free from central government and based on voluntary associations between...
, "the first to formulate the political and economical conceptions of anarchism, even though he did not give that name to the ideas developed in his work." Godwin advocated extreme individualism, proposing that all cooperation in labor be eliminated. Godwin was a utilitarian who believed that all individuals are not of equal value, with some of us "of more worth and importance' than others depending on our utility in bringing about social good. Therefore he does not believe in equal rights, but the person's life that should be favored that is most conducive to the general good. Godwin opposed government because it infringes on the individual's right to "private judgement" to determine which actions most maximize utility, but also makes a critique of all authority over the individual's judgement. This aspect of Godwin's philosophy, minus the utilitarianism, was developed into a more extreme form later by Stirner.
Godwin took individualism to the radical extent of opposing individuals performing together in orchestras, writing in Political Justice
Political Justice
Enquiry Concerning Political Justice and its Influence on Modern Morals and Manners outlines the political philosophy of the 18th-century philosopher William Godwin....
that "everything understood by the term co-operation is in some sense an evil." The only apparent exception to this opposition to cooperation is the spontaneous association that may arise when a society is threatened by violent force. One reason he opposed cooperation is he believed it to interfere with an individual's ability to be benevolent for the greater good. Godwin opposes the idea of government, but wrote that a minimal state
Limited government
Limited government is a government which anything more than minimal governmental intervention in personal liberties and the economy is generally disallowed by law, usually in a written constitution. It is written in the United States Constitution in Article 1, Section 8...
as a present "necessary evil" that would become increasingly irrelevant and powerless by the gradual spread of knowledge. He expressly opposed democracy
Democracy
Democracy is generally defined as a form of government in which all adult citizens have an equal say in the decisions that affect their lives. Ideally, this includes equal participation in the proposal, development and passage of legislation into law...
, fearing oppression of the individual by the majority (though he believed it to be preferable to dictatorship
Dictatorship
A dictatorship is defined as an autocratic form of government in which the government is ruled by an individual, the dictator. It has three possible meanings:...
).
Godwin supported individual ownership of property, defining it as "the empire to which every man is entitled over the produce of his own industry." However, he also advocated that individuals give to each other their surplus property on the occasion that others have a need for it, without involving trade (e.g. gift economy
Gift economy
In the social sciences, a gift economy is a society where valuable goods and services are regularly given without any explicit agreement for immediate or future rewards . Ideally, simultaneous or recurring giving serves to circulate and redistribute valuables within the community...
). Thus, while people have the right to private property, they should give it away as enlightened altruists. This was to be based on utilitarian principles; he said: "Every man has a right to that, the exclusive possession of which being awarded to him, a greater sum of benefit or pleasure will result than could have arisen from its being otherwise appropriated." However, benevolence was not to be enforced, being a matter of free individual "private judgement." He did not advocate a community of goods or assert collective ownership as is embraced in communism
Communism
Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...
, but his belief that individuals ought to share with those in need was influential on the later development of anarchist communism
Anarchist communism
Anarchist communism is a theory of anarchism which advocates the abolition of the state, markets, money, private property, and capitalism in favor of common ownership of the means of production, direct democracy and a horizontal network of voluntary associations and workers' councils with...
.
Godwin's political views were diverse and do not perfectly agree with any of the ideologies that claim his influence; writers of the Socialist Standard
Socialist Standard
The Socialist Standard is a monthly socialist magazine published without interruption since 1904 by the Socialist Party of Great Britain. The magazine is written in a simple, direct style and focuses mainly on socialist advocacy and Marxian analysis of current events, particularly those affecting...
, organ of the Socialist Party of Great Britain
Socialist Party of Great Britain
The Socialist Party of Great Britain , is a small Marxist political party within the impossibilist tradition. It is best known for its advocacy of using the ballot box for revolutionary purposes; opposition to reformism; and its early adoption of the theory of state capitalism to describe the...
, consider Godwin both an individualist and a communist; anarcho-capitalist Murray Rothbard
Murray Rothbard
Murray Newton Rothbard was an American author and economist of the Austrian School who helped define capitalist libertarianism and popularized a form of free-market anarchism he termed "anarcho-capitalism." Rothbard wrote over twenty books and is considered a centrally important figure in the...
did not regard Godwin as being in the individualist camp at all, referring to him as the "founder of communist anarchism"; and historian Albert Weisbord
Albert Weisbord
Albert Weisbord was an American political activist and union organizer. He is best remembered as one of the primary union organizers of the seminal 1926 Passaic Textile Strike and as the founder of a small Trotskyist political organization of the 1930s called the Communist League of...
considers him an individualist anarchist without reservation. Some writers see a conflict between Godwin's advocacy of "private judgement" and utilitarianism, as he says that ethics requires that individuals give their surplus property to each other resulting in an egalitarian society, but, at the same time, he insists that all things be left to individual choice. Many of Godwin's views changed over time, as noted by Kropotkin.
William Godwin
William Godwin
William Godwin was an English journalist, political philosopher and novelist. He is considered one of the first exponents of utilitarianism, and the first modern proponent of anarchism...
's influenced "the socialism of Robert Owen
Robert Owen
Robert Owen was a Welsh social reformer and one of the founders of utopian socialism and the cooperative movement.Owen's philosophy was based on three intellectual pillars:...
and Charles Fourier
Charles Fourier
François Marie Charles Fourier was a French philosopher. An influential thinker, some of Fourier's social and moral views, held to be radical in his lifetime, have become main currents in modern society...
. After success of his British venture, Owen himself established a cooperative community within the United States at New Harmony, Indiana during 1825. One member of this commune was Josiah Warren
Josiah Warren
Josiah Warren was an individualist anarchist, inventor, musician, and author in the United States. He is widely regarded as the first American anarchist, and the four-page weekly paper he edited during 1833, The Peaceful Revolutionist, was the first anarchist periodical published, an enterprise...
(1798-1874), considered to be the first individualist anarchist. After New Harmony failed Warren shifted his ideological loyalties from socialism to anarchism (which was no great leap, given that Owen's socialism had been predicated on Godwin's anarchism)."
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (1809–1865) was the first philosopher to label himself an "anarchist." Some consider Proudhon to be an individualist anarchist, while others regard him to be a social anarchist
Social anarchism
Social anarchism is a term originally used in 1971 by Giovanni Baldelli as the title of his book where he discusses the organization of an ethical society from an anarchist point of view...
. Some commentators do not identify Proudhon as an individualist anarchist due to his preference for association in large industries, rather than individual control. Nevertheless, he was influential among some of the American individualists; in the 1840s and 1850s, Charles A. Dana
Charles Anderson Dana
Charles Anderson Dana was an American journalist, author, and government official, best known for his association with Ulysses S. Grant during the American Civil War and his aggressive political advocacy after the war....
, and William B. Greene introduced Proudhon's works to the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
. Greene adapted Proudhon's mutualism to American conditions and introduced it to Benjamin R. Tucker.
Proudhon opposed government privilege that protects capitalist, banking and land interests, and the accumulation or acquisition of property (and any form of coercion
Coercion
Coercion is the practice of forcing another party to behave in an involuntary manner by use of threats or intimidation or some other form of pressure or force. In law, coercion is codified as the duress crime. Such actions are used as leverage, to force the victim to act in the desired way...
that led to it) which he believed hampers competition and keeps wealth in the hands of the few. Proudhon favoured a right of individuals to retain the product of their labour as their own property, but believed that any property beyond that which an individual produced and could possess was illegitimate. Thus, he saw private property as both essential to liberty and a road to tyranny, the former when it resulted from labour and was required for labour and the latter when it resulted in exploitation (profit, interest, rent, tax). He generally called the former "possession" and the latter "property." For large-scale industry, he supported workers associations to replace wage labour and opposed the ownership of land.
Proudhon maintained that those who labour should retain the entirety of what they produce, and that monopolies
Monopoly
A monopoly exists when a specific person or enterprise is the only supplier of a particular commodity...
on credit and land are the forces that prohibit such. He advocated an economic system that included private property as possession and exchange market but without profit, which he called mutualism
Mutualism (economic theory)
Mutualism is an anarchist school of thought that originates in the writings of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, who envisioned a society where each person might possess a means of production, either individually or collectively, with trade representing equivalent amounts of labor in the free market...
. It is Proudhon's philosophy that was explicitly rejected by Joseph Dejacque
Joseph Déjacque
Joseph Déjacque was a French anarcho-communist poet and writer. He sought to abolish "personal property, property in land, buildings, workshops, shops, property in anything that is an instrument of work, production or consumption."Déjacque was the first to employ the term libertarian in a...
in the inception of anarchist-communism, with the latter asserting directly to Proudhon in a letter that "it is not the product of his or her labour that the worker has a right to, but to the satisfaction of his or her needs, whatever may be their nature." An individualist rather than anarchist communist, Proudhon said that "communism...is the very denial of society in its foundation..." and famously declared that "property is theft!" in reference to his rejection of ownership rights to land being granted to a person who is not using that land.
After Dejacque and others split from Proudhon due to the latter's support of individual property and an exchange economy, the relationship between the individualists, who continued in relative alignment with the philosophy of Proudhon, and the anarcho-communists was characterised by various degrees of antagonism and harmony. For example, individualists like Tucker on the one hand translated and reprinted the works of collectivists
Collectivist anarchism
Collectivist anarchism is a revolutionary doctrine that advocates the abolition of both the state and private ownership of the means of production...
like Mikhail Bakunin
Mikhail Bakunin
Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin was a well-known Russian revolutionary and theorist of collectivist anarchism. He has also often been called the father of anarchist theory in general. Bakunin grew up near Moscow, where he moved to study philosophy and began to read the French Encyclopedists,...
, while on the other hand rejected the economic aspects of collectivism and communism as incompatible with anarchist ideals.
Mutualism
Mutualism is an anarchist school of thought which can be traced to the writings of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, who envisioned a society where each person might possess a means of productionMeans of production
Means of production refers to physical, non-human inputs used in production—the factories, machines, and tools used to produce wealth — along with both infrastructural capital and natural capital. This includes the classical factors of production minus financial capital and minus human capital...
, either individually or collectively, with trade representing equivalent amounts of labor in the free market
Free market
A free market is a competitive market where prices are determined by supply and demand. However, the term is also commonly used for markets in which economic intervention and regulation by the state is limited to tax collection, and enforcement of private ownership and contracts...
. Integral to the scheme was the establishment of a mutual-credit bank which would lend to producers at a minimal interest rate only high enough to cover the costs of administration. Mutualism is based on a labor theory of value
Labor theory of value
The labor theories of value are heterodox economic theories of value which argue that the value of a commodity is related to the labor needed to produce or obtain that commodity. The concept is most often associated with Marxian economics...
which holds that when labour or its product is sold, in exchange, it ought to receive goods or services embodying "the amount of labor necessary to produce an article of exactly similar and equal utility". Some mutualists believe that if the state did not intervene, as a result of increased competition in the marketplace, individuals would receive no more income than that in proportion to the amount of labor they exert. Mutualists oppose the idea of individuals receiving an income through loans, investments, and rent, as they believe these individuals are not labouring. Some of them argue that if state intervention ceased, these types of incomes would disappear due to increased competition in capital. Though Proudhon opposed this type of income, he expressed: "... I never meant to ... forbid or suppress, by sovereign decree, ground rent and interest on capital. I believe that all these forms of human activity should remain free and optional for all."
Insofar as they ensure the workers right to the full product of their labor, mutualists support market
Market
A market is one of many varieties of systems, institutions, procedures, social relations and infrastructures whereby parties engage in exchange. While parties may exchange goods and services by barter, most markets rely on sellers offering their goods or services in exchange for money from buyers...
s and private property
Private property
Private property is the right of persons and firms to obtain, own, control, employ, dispose of, and bequeath land, capital, and other forms of property. Private property is distinguishable from public property, which refers to assets owned by a state, community or government rather than by...
in the product of labor. However, they argue for conditional titles to land, whose private ownership is legitimate only so long as it remains in use or occupation (which Proudhon called "possession.") Proudhon's Mutualism supports labor-owned cooperative firms
Worker cooperative
A worker cooperative is a cooperative owned and democratically managed by its worker-owners. This control may be exercised in a number of ways. A cooperative enterprise may mean a firm where every worker-owner participates in decision making in a democratic fashion, or it may refer to one in which...
and associations for "we need not hesitate, for we have no choice. . . it is necessary to form an ASSOCIATION among workers . . . because without that, they would remain related as subordinates and superiors, and there would ensue two . . . castes of masters and wage-workers, which is repugnant to a free and democratic society" and so "it becomes necessary for the workers to form themselves into democratic societies, with equal conditions for all members, on pain of a relapse into feudalism." As for capital goods (man-made, non-land, "means of production
Means of production
Means of production refers to physical, non-human inputs used in production—the factories, machines, and tools used to produce wealth — along with both infrastructural capital and natural capital. This includes the classical factors of production minus financial capital and minus human capital...
"), mutualist opinion differs on whether these should be commonly managed public assets or private property.
Mutualists, following Proudhon, originally considered themselves to be libertarian socialists. However, "some mutualists have abandoned the labor theory of value, and prefer to avoid the term "socialist." But they still retain some cultural attitudes, for the most part, that set them off from the libertarian right
Libertarian Right
Libertarian Right was a national-conservative political party in Italy.The party was launched in November 2008 as a split from The Right led by Luciano Buonocore, who did not agree with the party's decision not to run within The People of Freedom joint list...
." Mutualists have distinguished themselves from state socialism
State socialism
State socialism is an economic system with limited socialist characteristics, such as public ownership of major industries, remedial measures to benefit the working class, and a gradual process of developing socialism through government policy...
, and don't advocate social control over the means of production. Benjamin Tucker said of Proudhon, that "though opposed to socializing the ownership of capital, Proudhon aimed nevertheless to socialize its effects by making its use beneficial to all instead of a means of impoverishing the many to enrich the few...by subjecting capital to the natural law of competition, thus bringing the price of its own use down to cost."
Max Stirner
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
'Stirn'), was a German philosopher, who ranks as one of the literary fathers of nihilism
Nihilism
Nihilism is the philosophical doctrine suggesting the negation of one or more putatively meaningful aspects of life. Most commonly, nihilism is presented in the form of existential nihilism which argues that life is without objective meaning, purpose, or intrinsic value...
, existentialism
Existentialism
Existentialism is a term applied to a school of 19th- and 20th-century philosophers who, despite profound doctrinal differences, shared the belief that philosophical thinking begins with the human subject—not merely the thinking subject, but the acting, feeling, living human individual...
, post-modernism and anarchism
Anarchism
Anarchism is generally defined as the political philosophy which holds the state to be undesirable, unnecessary, and harmful, or alternatively as opposing authority in the conduct of human relations...
, especially of individualist anarchism. Stirner's main work is The Ego and Its Own
The Ego and Its Own
The Ego and Its Own is a philosophical work by German philosopher Max Stirner . This work was first published in 1845, although with a stated publication date of "1844" to confuse the Prussian censors.-Content:...
, also known as The Ego and His Own (Der Einzige und sein Eigentum in German, which translates literally as The Only One and his Property). This work was first published in 1844 in Leipzig
Leipzig
Leipzig Leipzig has always been a trade city, situated during the time of the Holy Roman Empire at the intersection of the Via Regia and Via Imperii, two important trade routes. At one time, Leipzig was one of the major European centres of learning and culture in fields such as music and publishing...
, and has since appeared in numerous editions and translations.
Egoism
Max StirnerMax Stirner
Johann Kaspar Schmidt , better known as Max Stirner , was a German philosopher, who ranks as one of the literary fathers of nihilism, existentialism, post-modernism and anarchism, especially of individualist anarchism...
's philosophy, sometimes called "egoism," is the most extreme form of individualist anarchism. Max Stirner
Max Stirner
Johann Kaspar Schmidt , better known as Max Stirner , was a German philosopher, who ranks as one of the literary fathers of nihilism, existentialism, post-modernism and anarchism, especially of individualist anarchism...
was a Hegelian
Young Hegelians
The Young Hegelians, or Left Hegelians, were a group of Prussian intellectuals who in the decade or so after the death of Hegel in 1831, wrote and responded to his ambiguous legacy...
philosopher whose "name appears with familiar regularity in historically oriented surveys of anarchist thought as one of the earliest and best-known exponents of individualist anarchism." In 1844, his The Ego and Its Own
The Ego and Its Own
The Ego and Its Own is a philosophical work by German philosopher Max Stirner . This work was first published in 1845, although with a stated publication date of "1844" to confuse the Prussian censors.-Content:...
(Der Einzige and sein Eigentum which may literally be translated as The Unique Individual and His Property) was published, which is considered to be "a founding text in the tradition of individualist anarchism." Stirner does not recommend that the individual try to eliminate the state but simply that they disregard the state when it conflicts with one's autonomous choices and go along with it when doing so is conducive to one's interests. He says that the egoist rejects pursuit of devotion to "a great idea, a good cause, a doctirine, a system, a lofty calling," saying that the egoist has no political calling but rather "lives themselves out" without regard to "how well or ill humanity may fare thereby." Stirner held that the only limitation on the rights of the individual is that individual's power to obtain what he desires. He proposes that most commonly accepted social institutions—including the notion of State, property as a right, natural rights in general, and the very notion of society—were mere spooks in the mind. Stirner wants to "abolish not only the state but also society as an institution responsible for its members." Stirner advocated self-assertion and foresaw Unions of Egoists, non-systematic associations, which Stirner proposed in as a form of organization in place of the state
State (polity)
A state is an organized political community, living under a government. States may be sovereign and may enjoy a monopoly on the legal initiation of force and are not dependent on, or subject to any other power or state. Many states are federated states which participate in a federal union...
. A Union is understood as a relation between egoists which is continually renewed by all parties' support through an act of will. Even murder is permissible "if it is right for me,", though it is claimed by egoist anarchists that egoism will foster genuine and spontaneous union between individuals.
For Stirner, property simply comes about through might: "Whoever knows how to take, to defend, the thing, to him belongs property." And, "What I have in my power, that is my own. So long as I assert myself as holder, I am the proprietor of the thing." He says, "I do not step shyly back from your property, but look upon it always as my property, in which I respect nothing. Pray do the like with what you call my property!". His concept of "egoistic property" not only a lack of moral restraint on how own obtains and uses things, but includes other people as well. His embrace of egoism
Egotism
Egotism is "characterized by an exaggerated estimate of one's intellect, ability, importance, appearance, wit, or other valued personal characteristics" – the drive to maintain and enhance favorable views of oneself....
is in stark contrast to Godwin's altruism
Altruism
Altruism is a concern for the welfare of others. It is a traditional virtue in many cultures, and a core aspect of various religious traditions, though the concept of 'others' toward whom concern should be directed can vary among cultures and religions. Altruism is the opposite of...
. Stirner was opposed to communism, seeing it as a form of authority over the individual.
This position on property is much different from the native American, natural law, form of individualist anarchism, which defends the inviolability of the private property that has been earned through labor and trade. However, in 1886 Benjamin Tucker rejected the natural rights philosophy and adopted Stirner's egoism, with several others joining with him. This split the American individualists into fierce debate, "with the natural rights proponents accusing the egoists of destroying libertarianism itself." Other egoists include James L. Walker
James L. Walker
James L. Walker , sometimes known by the pen name Tak Kak, was an American individualist anarchist of the Egoist school. He was one of the main contributors to Benjamin Tucker's Liberty. He worked out Egoism on his own some years before encountering the Egoist writings of Max Stirner, and was...
, Sidney Parker
Sidney Parker (anarchist)
Sidney Parker, also known as S. E. Parker, is a British egoist individualist anarchist who wrote articles and edited anarchist journals from 1963-1993.- External links :...
, Dora Marsden
Dora Marsden
Dora Marsden was an English feminist editor of avant-garde literary journals, and an author of philosophical writings.-Early life:...
, John Beverly Robinson
John Beverley Robinson (anarchist)
John Beverley Robinson , was an American anarchist author, publisher, translator, and architect.He was for a time publisher of the Free Soiler the newsletter of the Georgist American Free Soil Society...
, and Benjamin Tucker
Benjamin Tucker
Benjamin Ricketson Tucker was a proponent of American individualist anarchism in the 19th century, and editor and publisher of the individualist anarchist periodical Liberty.-Summary:Tucker says that he became an anarchist at the age of 18...
(later in life).
In Russia, individualist anarchism inspired by Stirner combined with an appreciation for Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was a 19th-century German philosopher, poet, composer and classical philologist...
attracted a small following of bohemian artists and intellectuals such as Lev Chernyi
Lev Chernyi
Pável Dimítrievich Turchanínov , known by the pseudonym Lev Chernyi , was a Russian anarchist theorist, activist and poet, and a leading figure of the Third Russian Revolution. His early thought was individualist, rejecting anarcho-communism as a threat to individual liberty...
, as well as a few lone wolves who found self-expression in crime and violence. They rejected organizing, believing that only unorganized individuals were safe from coercion and domination, believing this kept them true to the ideals of anarchism. This type of individualist anarchism inspired anarcho-feminist Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman was an anarchist known for her political activism, writing and speeches. She played a pivotal role in the development of anarchist political philosophy in North America and Europe in the first half of the twentieth century....
Though Stirner's philosophy is individualist, it has influenced some libertarian communists and anarcho-communists. "For Ourselves Council for Generalized Self-Management" discusses Stirner and speaks of a "communist egoism," which is said to be a "synthesis of individualism and collectivism," and says that "greed in its fullest sense is the only possible basis of communist society." Forms of libertarian communism such as Situationism are influenced by Stirner. Anarcho-communist Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman was an anarchist known for her political activism, writing and speeches. She played a pivotal role in the development of anarchist political philosophy in North America and Europe in the first half of the twentieth century....
was influenced by both Stirner and Peter Kropotkin
Peter Kropotkin
Prince Pyotr Alexeyevich Kropotkin was a Russian zoologist, evolutionary theorist, philosopher, economist, geographer, author and one of the world's foremost anarcho-communists. Kropotkin advocated a communist society free from central government and based on voluntary associations between...
and blended their philosophies together in her own, as shown in books of hers such as Anarchism And Other Essays.
Josiah Warren
Josiah Warren
Josiah Warren was an individualist anarchist, inventor, musician, and author in the United States. He is widely regarded as the first American anarchist, and the four-page weekly paper he edited during 1833, The Peaceful Revolutionist, was the first anarchist periodical published, an enterprise...
is widely regarded as the first American anarchist, and the four-page weekly paper he edited during 1833, The Peaceful Revolutionist, was the first anarchist periodical published, an enterprise for which he built his own printing press, cast his own type, and made his own printing plates.
Warren was a follower of Robert Owen
Robert Owen
Robert Owen was a Welsh social reformer and one of the founders of utopian socialism and the cooperative movement.Owen's philosophy was based on three intellectual pillars:...
and joined Owen's community at New Harmony, Indiana
New Harmony, Indiana
New Harmony is a historic town on the Wabash River in Harmony Township, Posey County, Indiana, United States. It lies north of Mount Vernon, the county seat. The population was 916 at the 2000 census. It is part of the Evansville metropolitan area. Many of the old Harmonist buildings still stand...
. Josiah Warren termed the phrase "Cost the limit of price
Cost the limit of price
Cost the limit of price was a maxim coined by Josiah Warren, indicating a version of the labor theory of value. Warren maintained that the just compensation for labor could only be an equivalent amount of labor . Thus, profit, rent, and interest were considered unjust economic arrangements...
," with "cost" here referring not to monetary price paid but the labor one exerted to produce an item. Therefore, "[h]e proposed a system to pay people with certificates indicating how many hours of work they did. They could exchange the notes at local time stores for goods that took the same amount of time to produce.". He put his theories to the test by establishing an experimental "labor for labor store" called the Cincinnati Time Store
Cincinnati Time Store
The Cincinnati Time Store was a successful retail store that was created by American individualist anarchist Josiah Warren to test his theories that were based on his strict interpretation of the labor theory of value. The experimental store operated from May 18, 1827 until May 1830...
where trade was facilitated by notes backed by a promise to perform labor. The store proved successful and operated for three years after which it was closed so that Warren could pursue establishing colonies based on mutualism
Mutualism (economic theory)
Mutualism is an anarchist school of thought that originates in the writings of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, who envisioned a society where each person might possess a means of production, either individually or collectively, with trade representing equivalent amounts of labor in the free market...
. These included "Utopia
Utopia, Ohio
Utopia is an unincorporated town in far southern Franklin Township, Clermont County, Ohio, United States, along the banks of the Ohio River. Utopia has been referred to as a "ghost town" although there are still people who live there.- Geography :...
" and "Modern Times." Warren said that Stephen Pearl Andrews
Stephen Pearl Andrews
Stephen Pearl Andrews was an American individualist anarchist and author of several books on Individualist anarchism.-Early life and work:...
' The Science of Society, published in 1852, was the most lucid and complete exposition of Warren's own theories. Catalan historian Xavier Diez report that the intentional communal
Intentional community
An intentional community is a planned residential community designed to have a much higher degree of teamwork than other communities. The members of an intentional community typically hold a common social, political, religious, or spiritual vision and often follow an alternative lifestyle. They...
experiments pioneered by Warren were influential in European individualist anarchists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries such as Emile Armand
Emile Armand
Emile Armand was the most influential French individualist anarchist at the beginning of the 20th century and also a dedicated free love/polyamory, intentional community, and pacifist/antimilitarist writer, propagandist and activist...
and the intentional communities started by them.
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau was an American author, poet, philosopher, abolitionist, naturalist, tax resister, development critic, surveyor, historian, and leading transcendentalist...
(1817–1862) was an important early influence in individualist anarchist thought in the United States and Europe. Thoreau was an American author, poet, naturalist, tax resister, development critic
Development criticism
Development criticism refers to criticisms of technological development.-Notable development critics:*Edward Abbey*John Africa*Stafford Beer *Charles A...
, surveyor, historian, philosopher, and leading transcendentalist. He is best known for his book Walden
Walden
Walden is an American book written by noted Transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau...
, a reflection upon simple living
Simple living
Simple living encompasses a number of different voluntary practices to simplify one's lifestyle. These may include reducing one's possessions or increasing self-sufficiency, for example. Simple living may be characterized by individuals being satisfied with what they need rather than want...
in natural surroundings, and his essay, Civil Disobedience
Civil Disobedience (Thoreau)
Civil Disobedience is an essay by American transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau that was first published in 1849...
, an argument for individual resistance to civil government in moral opposition to an unjust state. His thought is an early influence on green anarchism
Green anarchism
Green anarchism, or ecoanarchism, is a school of thought within anarchism which puts a particular emphasis on environmental issues. An important early influence was the thought of the American anarchist Henry David Thoreau and his book Walden...
but with an emphasis on the individual experience of the natural world influencing later naturist
Anarcho-naturism
Anarcho-naturism appeared in the late 19th century as the union of anarchist and naturist philosophies. Mainly it had importance within individualist anarchist circles in Spain, France, Portugal...
currents, simple living
Simple living
Simple living encompasses a number of different voluntary practices to simplify one's lifestyle. These may include reducing one's possessions or increasing self-sufficiency, for example. Simple living may be characterized by individuals being satisfied with what they need rather than want...
as a rejection of a materialist
Economic materialism
Materialism is a mindset that views the consumption and acquisition of material goods as positive and desirable. It is often bound up with a value system which regards social status as being intrinsically linked to affluence as well as the perception that happiness can be increased through...
lifestyle and self-sufficiency
Self-sufficiency
Self-sufficiency refers to the state of not requiring any outside aid, support, or interaction, for survival; it is therefore a type of personal or collective autonomy...
were Thoreau's goals, and the whole project was inspired by transcendentalist philosophy. "Many have seen in Thoreau one of the precursors of ecologism and anarcho-primitivism
Anarcho-primitivism
Anarcho-primitivism is an anarchist critique of the origins and progress of civilization. According to anarcho-primitivism, the shift from hunter-gatherer to agricultural subsistence gave rise to social stratification, coercion, and alienation...
represented today in John Zerzan
John Zerzan
John Zerzan is an American anarchist and primitivist philosopher and author. His works criticize agricultural civilization as inherently oppressive, and advocate drawing upon the ways of life of prehistoric humans as an inspiration for what a free society should look like...
. For George Woodcock
George Woodcock
George Woodcock was a Canadian writer of political biography and history, an anarchist thinker, an essayist and literary critic. He was also a poet, and published several volumes of travel writing. He founded in 1959 the journal Canadian Literature, the first academic journal specifically...
this attitude can be also motivated by certain idea of resistance to progress and of rejection of the growing materialism which is the nature of American society in the mid 19th century."
The essay Civil Disobedience
Civil Disobedience (Thoreau)
Civil Disobedience is an essay by American transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau that was first published in 1849...
(Resistance to Civil Government) was first published in 1849. It argues that people should not permit governments to overrule or atrophy their consciences, and that people have a duty to avoid allowing such acquiescence
Acquiescence
Acquiescence is a legal term used to describe an act where a person knowingly stands by without raising any objection to the infringement of their rights, while someone else unknowingly and without malice aforethought makes a claim on their rights...
to enable the government to make them the agents of injustice. Thoreau was motivated in part by his disgust with slavery
Slavery
Slavery is a system under which people are treated as property to be bought and sold, and are forced to work. Slaves can be held against their will from the time of their capture, purchase or birth, and deprived of the right to leave, to refuse to work, or to demand compensation...
and the Mexican-American War. The essay later influenced Mohandas Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Martin Luther King, Jr. was an American clergyman, activist, and prominent leader in the African-American Civil Rights Movement. He is best known for being an iconic figure in the advancement of civil rights in the United States and around the world, using nonviolent methods following the...
, Martin Buber
Martin Buber
Martin Buber was an Austrian-born Jewish philosopher best known for his philosophy of dialogue, a form of religious existentialism centered on the distinction between the I-Thou relationship and the I-It relationship....
and Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy was a Russian writer who primarily wrote novels and short stories. Later in life, he also wrote plays and essays. His two most famous works, the novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina, are acknowledged as two of the greatest novels of all time and a pinnacle of realist...
through its advocacy of nonviolent resistance
Nonviolent resistance
Nonviolent resistance is the practice of achieving goals through symbolic protests, civil disobedience, economic or political noncooperation, and other methods, without using violence. It is largely synonymous with civil resistance...
. It is also the main precedent for anarcho-pacifism
Anarcho-pacifism
Anarcho-pacifism is a tendency within the anarchist movement which rejects the use of violence in the struggle for social change. The main early influences were the thought of Henry David Thoreau and Leo Tolstoy while later the ideas of Mohandas Gandhi gained importance...
. The American version of individualist anarchism has a strong emphasis on the non-aggression principle
Non-aggression principle
The non-aggression principle , or NAP for short, is a moral stance which asserts that aggression is inherently illegitimate...
and individual sovereignty
Self-ownership
Self-ownership is the concept of property in one's own person, expressed as the moral or natural right of a person to be the exclusive controller of his own body and life. According to G...
. Some individualist anarchists, such as Thoreau, do not speak of economics but simply the right of "disunion" from the state, and foresee the gradual elimination of the state through social evolution.
Free Love, anarcha-feminism and LGBT issues
Free love
The term free love has been used to describe a social movement that rejects marriage, which is seen as a form of social bondage. The Free Love movement’s initial goal was to separate the state from sexual matters such as marriage, birth control, and adultery...
. Free love advocates sometimes traced their roots back to Josiah Warren
Josiah Warren
Josiah Warren was an individualist anarchist, inventor, musician, and author in the United States. He is widely regarded as the first American anarchist, and the four-page weekly paper he edited during 1833, The Peaceful Revolutionist, was the first anarchist periodical published, an enterprise...
and to experimental communities, and viewed sexual freedom as a clear, direct expression of an individual's self-ownership. Free love particularly stressed women's rights
Women's rights
Women's rights are entitlements and freedoms claimed for women and girls of all ages in many societies.In some places these rights are institutionalized or supported by law, local custom, and behaviour, whereas in others they may be ignored or suppressed...
since most sexual laws, such as those governing marriage and use of birth control, discriminated against women. The most important American free love journal was Lucifer the Lightbearer
Lucifer the Lightbearer
Lucifer the Lightbearer was an individualist-anarchist journal published by Moses Harman in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Originally produced by a local branch of the National Liberal League as the Valley Falls Liberal , Harman changed the title after he assumed sole editorship in...
(1883–1907) edited by Moses Harman
Moses Harman
Moses Harman was an American schoolteacher and publisher notable for his staunch support for women's rights. He was prosecuted under the Comstock Law for content published in his anarchist periodical Lucifer the Lightbearer. He was arrested and jailed multiple times for publishing allegedly...
and Lois Waisbrooker
Lois Waisbrooker
Lois Waisbrooker was an American feminist author, editor, publisher, and campaigner of the later nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries. She wrote extensively on issues of sex, marriage, birth control, and women's rights, plus related areas of radical thought like free speech, anarchism, and...
but also there existed Ezra Heywood
Ezra Heywood
Ezra Heywood was a 19th century North American individualist anarchist, slavery abolitionist, and feminist.-Philosophy:Heywood saw what he believed to be a disproportionate concentration of capital in the hands of a few as the result of a selective extension of government-backed privileges to...
and Angela Heywood's The Word
The Word (free love)
The Word was an individualist anarchist free love magazine edited by Ezra Heywood and Angela Heywood's from , issued first from Princeton and then from Cambridge, Massachusetts. The Word was subtitled "A Monthly Journal of Reform," and it included contributions from Josiah Warren, Benjamin Tucker,...
(1872–1890, 1892–1893). Also M. E. Lazarus
M. E. Lazarus
Dr. Marx Edgeworth Lazarus was an American individualist anarchist from Guntersville, AL where he owned a small farm. Lazarus wrote under the pseudonym "Edgeworth." He is the author of several essays and anarchist pamphlettes including Land Tenure: Anarchist View...
was an important American individualist anarchist who promoted free love. Later John William Lloyd
John William Lloyd
J. William Lloyd was an American individualist anarchist. Lloyd was born in New Jersey, and later moved to Grahamville, Florida. He based his individualist anarchism upon natural law, rather than on egoism as Benjamin Tucker did; this was a source of conflict amidst otherwise friendly relations...
, a collaborator of Benjamin Tucker
Benjamin Tucker
Benjamin Ricketson Tucker was a proponent of American individualist anarchism in the 19th century, and editor and publisher of the individualist anarchist periodical Liberty.-Summary:Tucker says that he became an anarchist at the age of 18...
´s periodical Liberty, published in 1931 a sex manual that he called The Karezza Method: Or Magnetation, the Art of Connubial Love.
In Europe, the main propagandist of free love within individualist anarchism was Emile Armand
Emile Armand
Emile Armand was the most influential French individualist anarchist at the beginning of the 20th century and also a dedicated free love/polyamory, intentional community, and pacifist/antimilitarist writer, propagandist and activist...
. He proposed the concept of la camaraderie amoureuse to speak of free love as the possibility of voluntary sexual encounter between consenting adults. He was also a consistent proponent of polyamory
Polyamory
Polyamory is the practice, desire, or acceptance of having more than one intimate relationship at a time with the knowledge and consent of everyone involved....
. In France, there was also feminist activity inside individualist anarchism as promoted by individualist feminists Marie Küge, Anna Mahé, Rirette Maitrejean
Rirette Maitrejean
Rirette Maitrejean was the pseudonym of Anna Estorges. She was a French individualist anarchist born in 1887 in Tulle who collaborated in the French individualist anarchist magazine L´anarchie along with Emile Armand and Albert Libertad. She had romantic relationships with Maurice Vandamme and...
, and Sophia Zaïkovska.
The Brazil
Brazil
Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...
ian individualist anarchist Maria Lacerda de Moura
Maria Lacerda de Moura
Maria Lacerda de Moura was a Brazilian teacher, journalist, writer, anarcha-feminist, and individualist anarchist.- Life :...
lectured on topics such as education, women's rights
Women's rights
Women's rights are entitlements and freedoms claimed for women and girls of all ages in many societies.In some places these rights are institutionalized or supported by law, local custom, and behaviour, whereas in others they may be ignored or suppressed...
, free love
Free love
The term free love has been used to describe a social movement that rejects marriage, which is seen as a form of social bondage. The Free Love movement’s initial goal was to separate the state from sexual matters such as marriage, birth control, and adultery...
, and antimilitarism
Antimilitarism
Antimilitarism is a doctrine commonly found in the anarchist and, more globally, in the socialist movement, which may both be characterized as internationalist movements. It relies heavily on a critical theory of nationalism and imperialism, and was an explicit goal of the First and Second...
. Her writings and essays garnered her attention not only in Brazil, but also in Argentina
Argentina
Argentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...
and Uruguay
Uruguay
Uruguay ,officially the Oriental Republic of Uruguay,sometimes the Eastern Republic of Uruguay; ) is a country in the southeastern part of South America. It is home to some 3.5 million people, of whom 1.8 million live in the capital Montevideo and its metropolitan area...
. She also wrote for the Spanish individualist anarchist magazine Al Margen alongside Miguel Gimenez Igualada
Miguel Giménez Igualada
Miguel Giménez Igualada, , was a Spanish individualist anarchist writer also known as Miguel Ramos Giménez and Juan de Iniesta.- Life :In his youth, Igualada engaged in illegalist activities...
In Germany, the Stirner
Stirner
Stirner:* Max Stirner, pseudonym for Johann Caspar Schmidt , German philosopher and journalist* Karl Stirner , painter, illustrator and poet...
ists Adolf Brand
Adolf Brand
Adolf Brand was a German writer, individualist anarchist and pioneering campaigner for the acceptance of male bisexuality and homosexuality.-Biography:...
and John Henry Mackay
John Henry Mackay
John Henry Mackay was an individualist anarchist, thinker and writer. Born in Scotland and raised in Germany, Mackay was the author of Die Anarchisten and Der Freiheitsucher . Mackay was published in the United States in his friend Benjamin Tucker's magazine, Liberty...
were pioneering campaigners for the acceptance of male bisexuality
Bisexuality
Bisexuality is sexual behavior or an orientation involving physical or romantic attraction to both males and females, especially with regard to men and women. It is one of the three main classifications of sexual orientation, along with a heterosexual and a homosexual orientation, all a part of the...
and homosexuality
Homosexuality
Homosexuality is romantic or sexual attraction or behavior between members of the same sex or gender. As a sexual orientation, homosexuality refers to "an enduring pattern of or disposition to experience sexual, affectional, or romantic attractions" primarily or exclusively to people of the same...
.
Freethought
Freethought as a philosophical position and as activism was important in both North American and European individualist anarchism.In the United States "freethought was a basically anti-christian, anti-clerical movement, whose purpose was to make the individual politically and spiritually free to decide for himself on religious matters. A number of contributors to Liberty were prominent figures in both freethought and anarchism. The individualist anarchist George MacDonald was a co-editor of Freethought and, for a time, The Truth Seeker. E.C. Walker was co-editor of the excellent free-thought / free love journal Lucifer, the Light-Bearer". "Many of the anarchists were ardent freethinkers; reprints from freethought papers such as Lucifer, the Light-Bearer, Freethought and The Truth Seeker appeared in Liberty...The church was viewed as a common ally of the state and as a repressive force in and of itself".
In Europe a similar development occurred in French and Spanish individualist anarchist circles. "Anticlericalism, just as in the rest of the libertarian movement, in another of the frequent elements which will gain relevance related to the measure in which the (French) Republic begins to have conflicts with the church...Anti-clerical discourse, frequently called for by the french individualist André Lorulot, will have its impacts in Estudios (an spanish individualist anarchist publication). There will be an attack on institutionalized religion for the responsibility that it had in the past on negative developments, for its irrationality which makes it a counterpoint of philosophical and scientific progress. There will be a criticism of proselitism and ideological manipulation which happens on both believers and agnostics.". This tendencies will continue in French individualist anarchism in the work and activism of Charles-Auguste Bontemps
Charles-Auguste Bontemps
Charles-Auguste Bontemps was a French individualist anarchist, pacifist, freethinker and naturist activist and writer.- Life and works:...
and others. In the Spanish individualist anarchist magazine Ética and Iniciales
Iniciales
Iniciales was a Spanish individualist anarchist and naturist eclectic magazine which ran between 1929 and 1937. The first number appeared in Barcelona in February, 1929. Its predecessor was Barcelona's Ética...
"there is a strong interest in publishing scientific news, usually linked to a certain atheist and anti-theist obsession, philosophy which will also work for pointing out the incompatibility between science and religion, faith and reason. In this way there will be a lot of talk on Darwin´s theories or on the negation of the existence of the soul.".
Anarcho-naturism
Another important current, especially within French and Spanish individualist anarchist groups was naturismNaturism
Naturism or nudism is a cultural and political movement practising, advocating and defending social nudity in private and in public. It may also refer to a lifestyle based on personal, family and/or social nudism....
. Naturism promoted an ecological worldview, small ecovillage
Ecovillage
Ecovillages are intentional communities with the goal of becoming more socially, economically and ecologically sustainable. Some aim for a population of 50–150 individuals. Larger ecovillages of up to 2,000 individuals exist as networks of smaller subcommunities to create an ecovillage model that...
s, and most prominently nudism as a way to avoid the artificiality of the industrial mass society
Mass society
Mass society is a description associated with society in the modern, industrial era. "Guided by the structural-functional approach and drawing on the ideas of Tönnies, Durkheim, and Weber, understands modernity as the emergence of a mass society...
of modernity. Naturist individualist anarchists saw the individual in his biological, physical and psychological aspects and avoided, and tried to eliminate, social determinations."EL NATURISMO LIBERTARIO EN LA PENÍNSULA IBÉRICA (1890-1939)" by Josep Maria Rosell An early influence in this vein was Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau was an American author, poet, philosopher, abolitionist, naturalist, tax resister, development critic, surveyor, historian, and leading transcendentalist...
and his famous book Walden
Walden
Walden is an American book written by noted Transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau...
Important promoters of this were Henri Zisly
Henri Zisly
Henri Zisly was a french individualist anarchist and naturist. He participated alongside Henry Beylie and Emile Gravelle in many journals such as La nouvelle humanité and La Vie naturelle, which promoted anarchist-naturism.In 1902 he is one of the main initiators along Georges Butaud and Sophie...
and Emile Gravelle
Emile Gravelle
Emile Gravelle was a French individualist anarchist and naturist activist, writer and painter. He published the review "L'Etat Naturel." Collaborated with Henri Zisly & Henri Beylie on "La Nouvelle Humanité," followed by "Le Naturien," "Le Sauvage," "L'Ordre Naturel," & "La Vie Naturelle." His...
who collaborated in La Nouvelle Humanité followed by Le Naturien, Le Sauvage, L'Ordre Naturel, & La Vie Naturelle.
This relationship between anarchism and naturism was quite important at the end of the 1920s in Spain. "The linking role played by the ‘Sol y Vida’ group was very important. The goal of this group was to take trips and enjoy the open air. The Naturist athenaeum, ‘Ecléctico’, in Barcelona, was the base from which the activities of the group were launched. First Etica and then Iniciales
Iniciales
Iniciales was a Spanish individualist anarchist and naturist eclectic magazine which ran between 1929 and 1937. The first number appeared in Barcelona in February, 1929. Its predecessor was Barcelona's Ética...
, which began in 1929, were the publications of the group, which lasted until the Spanish Civil War
Spanish Civil War
The Spanish Civil WarAlso known as The Crusade among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War among Carlists, and The Rebellion or Uprising among Republicans. was a major conflict fought in Spain from 17 July 1936 to 1 April 1939...
. We must be aware that the naturist ideas expressed in them matched the desires that the libertarian youth had of breaking up with the conventions of the bourgeoisie of the time. That is what a young worker explained in a letter to ‘Iniciales’ He writes it under the odd pseudonym of ‘silvestre del campo’, (wild man in the country). “I find great pleasure in being naked in the woods, bathed in light and air, two natural elements we cannot do without. By shunning the humble garment of an exploited person, (garments which, in my opinion, are the result of all the laws devised to make our lives bitter), we feel there no others left but just the natural laws. Clothes mean slavery for some and tyranny for others. Only the naked man who rebels against all norms, stands for anarchism, devoid of the prejudices of outfit imposed by our money-oriented society.”". "The relation between Anarchism and Naturism gives way to the Naturist Federation, in July 1928, and to the lV Spanish Naturist Congress, in September 1929, both supported by the Libertarian Movement. However, in the short term, the Naturist and Libertarian movements grew apart in their conceptions of everyday life. The Naturist movement felt closer to the Libertarian individualism of some French theoreticians such as Henri Ner (real name of Han Ryner
Han Ryner
Jacques Élie Henri Ambroise Ner , also known by the pseudonym Han Ryner, was a French individualist anarchist philosopher and activist and a novelist...
) than to the revolutionary goals proposed by some Anarchist organisations such as the FAI, (Federación Anarquista Ibérica
Federación Anarquista Ibérica
The Federación Anarquista Ibérica is a Spanish organization of anarchist militants active within affinity groups inside the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo trade union. It is often abbreviated as CNT-FAI because of the close relationship between the two organizations...
)".
Individualist anarchism and Friedrich Nietzsche
The thought of German philosopher Friedrich NietzscheFriedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was a 19th-century German philosopher, poet, composer and classical philologist...
has been influential in individualist anarchism specifically in thinkers such as the French Emile Armand
Emile Armand
Emile Armand was the most influential French individualist anarchist at the beginning of the 20th century and also a dedicated free love/polyamory, intentional community, and pacifist/antimilitarist writer, propagandist and activist...
, the Italian Renzo Novatore
Renzo Novatore
- Life :Abele Ricieri Ferrari was born in Arcola, Liguria, Italy on May 12, 1890 in a poor peasant family. He did not adjust to school discipline and quit in the first year never coming back after that. While he worked in his father's farm, he self educated himself with an emphasis in poetry and...
, the Colombian Biofilo Panclasta
Biofilo Panclasta
Vicente Rojas Lizcano , know by his pseudonym Biófilo Panclasta, was an individualist anarchist writer and activist. In 1904 he begins using the name Biofilo Panclasta. "Biofilo" in Spanish stands for "lover of life" and "Panclasta" for "enemy of all"...
, and also "translations of Nietzsche's writings in the United States very likely appeared first in Liberty, the anarchist journal edited by Benjamin Tucker
Benjamin Tucker
Benjamin Ricketson Tucker was a proponent of American individualist anarchism in the 19th century, and editor and publisher of the individualist anarchist periodical Liberty.-Summary:Tucker says that he became an anarchist at the age of 18...
".
Anglo American individualist anarchism
American mutualism and individualist utopianism
For American anarchist historian Eunice Minette Schuster "It is apparent...that Proudhonian Anarchism was to be found in the United States at least as early as 1848 and that it was not conscious of its affinity to the Individualist Anarchism of Josiah WarrenJosiah Warren
Josiah Warren was an individualist anarchist, inventor, musician, and author in the United States. He is widely regarded as the first American anarchist, and the four-page weekly paper he edited during 1833, The Peaceful Revolutionist, was the first anarchist periodical published, an enterprise...
and Stephen Pearl Andrews
Stephen Pearl Andrews
Stephen Pearl Andrews was an American individualist anarchist and author of several books on Individualist anarchism.-Early life and work:...
...William B. Greene presented this Proudhonian Mutualism in its purest and most systematic form.". William Batchelder Greene
William Batchelder Greene
William Batchelder Greene was a 19th century individualist anarchist, Unitarian minister, soldier and promotor of free banking in the United States.-Biography:...
(1819–1878) is best known for the works Mutual Banking(1850), which proposed an interest-free banking system, and Transcendentalism, a critique of the New England philosophical school. He saw mutualism as the synthesis of "liberty and order." His "associationism...is checked by individualism..."Mind your own business," "Judge not that ye be not judged." Over matters which are purely personal, as for example, moral conduct, the individual is sovereign, as well as over that which he himself produces. For this reason he demands "mutuality" in marriage—the equal right of a woman to her own personal freedom and property."
feminist, & spiritualist tendencies. "
Contemporary american anarchist Hakim Bey reports that "Steven Pearl Andrews
Stephen Pearl Andrews
Stephen Pearl Andrews was an American individualist anarchist and author of several books on Individualist anarchism.-Early life and work:...
...was not a fourierist (see Charles Fourier
Charles Fourier
François Marie Charles Fourier was a French philosopher. An influential thinker, some of Fourier's social and moral views, held to be radical in his lifetime, have become main currents in modern society...
), but he lived through the brief craze for phalansteries
Phalansterium
Phalansterium is a genus of single-celled organisms comprising several species. Phalansterium produces tetraspores.Phalansterium is hard to classify; it has a distinctive ultrastructure of its pericentriolar material. Molecular evidence places it in the Amoebozoa.It has been suggested that it is...
in America & adopted a lot of fourierist principles & practices...a maker of worlds out of words. He syncretized Abolitionism
Abolitionism
Abolitionism is a movement to end slavery.In western Europe and the Americas abolitionism was a movement to end the slave trade and set slaves free. At the behest of Dominican priest Bartolomé de las Casas who was shocked at the treatment of natives in the New World, Spain enacted the first...
, Free Love
Free Love
Free Love may refer to:*Free love, a social movement that rejects marriage, which is seen as a form of social bondage, especially for women*"Free Love", a song by Morphine from their 1995 album Yes...
, spiritual universalism, (Josiah) Warren
Josiah Warren
Josiah Warren was an individualist anarchist, inventor, musician, and author in the United States. He is widely regarded as the first American anarchist, and the four-page weekly paper he edited during 1833, The Peaceful Revolutionist, was the first anarchist periodical published, an enterprise...
, & (Charles) Fourier
Charles Fourier
François Marie Charles Fourier was a French philosopher. An influential thinker, some of Fourier's social and moral views, held to be radical in his lifetime, have become main currents in modern society...
into a grand utopian scheme he called the Universal Pantarchy...He was instrumental in founding several “intentional communities,” including the “Brownstone Utopia” on 14th St. in New York, & “Modern Times” in Brentwood, Long Island. The latter became as famous as the best-known fourierist communes (Brook Farm in Massachusetts & the North American Phalanx in New Jersey) — in fact, Modern Times became downright notorious (for “Free Love
Free Love
Free Love may refer to:*Free love, a social movement that rejects marriage, which is seen as a form of social bondage, especially for women*"Free Love", a song by Morphine from their 1995 album Yes...
”) & finally foundered under a wave of scandalous publicity. Andrews (& Victoria Woodhull
Victoria Woodhull
Victoria Claflin Woodhull was an American leader of the woman's suffrage movement, an advocate of free love; together with her sister, the first women to operate a brokerage in Wall Street; the first women to start a weekly newspaper; an activist for women's rights and labor reforms and, in 1872,...
) were members of the infamous Section 12 of the 1st International, expelled by Marx for its anarchist, feminist, & spiritualist tendencies. "
The "Boston Anarchists"
They believed state monopoly capitalism
State monopoly capitalism
The theory of state monopoly capitalism was initially a Marxist doctrine popularised after World War II. Lenin had claimed in 1916 that World War I had transformed laissez-faire capitalism into monopoly capitalism, but he did not publish any extensive theory about the topic...
(defined as a state-sponsored monopoly) prevented labor from being fully rewarded. Voltairine de Cleyre
Voltairine de Cleyre
Voltairine de Cleyre was an American anarchist writer and feminist. She was a prolific writer and speaker, opposing the state, marriage, and the domination of religion in sexuality and women's lives. She began her activist career in the freethought movement...
, summed up the philosophy by saying that the anarchist individualists "are firm in the idea that the system of employer and employed, buying and selling, banking, and all the other essential institutions of Commercialism, centred upon private property, are in themselves good, and are rendered vicious merely by the interference of the State."
Even among the 19th century American individualists, there was not a monolithic doctrine, as they disagreed amongst each other on various issues including intellectual property
Intellectual property
Intellectual property is a term referring to a number of distinct types of creations of the mind for which a set of exclusive rights are recognized—and the corresponding fields of law...
rights and possession versus property
Property
Property is any physical or intangible entity that is owned by a person or jointly by a group of people or a legal entity like a corporation...
in land. A major schism occurred later in the 19th century when Tucker and some others abandoned their traditional support of natural rights -as espoused by Lysander Spooner
Lysander Spooner
Lysander Spooner was an American individualist anarchist, political philosopher, Deist, abolitionist, supporter of the labor movement, legal theorist, and entrepreneur of the nineteenth century. He is also known for competing with the U.S...
- and converted to an "egoism" modeled upon Stirner's philosophy
Philosophy of Max Stirner
The philosophy of Max Stirner is credited as an influence on the development of nihilism, existentialism, post-modernism and anarchism, especially of individualist anarchism, postanarchism and post-left anarchy...
. Lysander Spooner besides his individualist anarchist activism was also an important anti-slavery activist and became a member of the First International.
Some "Boston anarchists", including Benjamin Tucker, identified themselves as "socialists", which in the 19th century was often used in the sense of a commitment to improving conditions of the working class (i.e. "the labor problem
The labor problem
"The labor problem" is an economics term widely used toward the turn of the twentieth century with various applications. It has been defined in various ways, such as "the problem of improving the conditions of employment of the wage-earning classes." However, its cause is universal: failure to...
"). By the turn of the 20th century, the heyday of individualist anarchism had passed, although aspects of the individualist anarchist tradition were later revived with modifications by Murray Rothbard
Murray Rothbard
Murray Newton Rothbard was an American author and economist of the Austrian School who helped define capitalist libertarianism and popularized a form of free-market anarchism he termed "anarcho-capitalism." Rothbard wrote over twenty books and is considered a centrally important figure in the...
and his anarcho-capitalism
Anarcho-capitalism
Anarcho-capitalism is a libertarian and individualist anarchist political philosophy that advocates the elimination of the state in favour of individual sovereignty in a free market...
in the mid-20th century, as a current of the broader libertarian
Libertarianism
Libertarianism, in the strictest sense, is the political philosophy that holds individual liberty as the basic moral principle of society. In the broadest sense, it is any political philosophy which approximates this view...
movement.
American individualist anarchism and the labor movement
Benjamin Tucker
Benjamin Ricketson Tucker was a proponent of American individualist anarchism in the 19th century, and editor and publisher of the individualist anarchist periodical Liberty.-Summary:Tucker says that he became an anarchist at the age of 18...
´s Liberty
Liberty
Liberty is a moral and political principle, or Right, that identifies the condition in which human beings are able to govern themselves, to behave according to their own free will, and take responsibility for their actions...
were also important labor organizers of the time. Joseph Labadie
Joseph Labadie
Charles Joseph Antoine Labadie was an American labor organizer, anarchist, social activist, printer, publisher, essayist, and poet.-Biography:...
(April 18, 1850 – October 7, 1933) was an American labor organizer, individualist anarchist, social activist, printer, publisher, essayist, and poet. In 1883 Labadie embraced a non-violent version of individualist anarchism. Without the oppression of the state, Labadie believed, humans would choose to harmonize with "the great natural laws...without robbing [their] fellows through interest, profit, rent and taxes." However, he supported community cooperation, as he supported community control of water utilities, streets, and railroads. Although he did not support the militant anarchism of the Haymarket anarchists, he fought for the clemency of the accused because he did not believe they were the perpetators. In 1888, Labadie organized the Michigan Federation of Labor, became its first president, and forged an alliance with Samuel Gompers
Samuel Gompers
Samuel Gompers was an English-born American cigar maker who became a labor union leader and a key figure in American labor history. Gompers founded the American Federation of Labor , and served as that organization's president from 1886 to 1894 and from 1895 until his death in 1924...
. On the other hand Dyer Lum
Dyer Lum
Dyer Daniel Lum was a 19th-century American anarchist labor activist and poet. A leading anarcho-syndicalist and a prominent left-wing intellectual of the 1880s, he is remembered as the lover and mentor of early anarcha-feminist Voltairine de Cleyre.Lum was a prolific writer who wrote a number of...
was a 19th-century American individualist anarchist labor activist and poet. A leading anarcho-syndicalist and a prominent left-wing intellectual
Intellectual
An intellectual is a person who uses intelligence and critical or analytical reasoning in either a professional or a personal capacity.- Terminology and endeavours :"Intellectual" can denote four types of persons:...
of the 1880s, he is remembered as the lover and mentor of early anarcha-feminist Voltairine de Cleyre
Voltairine de Cleyre
Voltairine de Cleyre was an American anarchist writer and feminist. She was a prolific writer and speaker, opposing the state, marriage, and the domination of religion in sexuality and women's lives. She began her activist career in the freethought movement...
. Lum was a prolific writer who wrote a number of key anarchist texts, and contributed to publications including Mother Earth
Mother Earth (journal)
This version of Mother Earth was an anarchist periodical aimed at bringing up progressive issues, and discuss these. It was in circulation among people in the radical community in the United States from 1933 - 1934....
, Twentieth Century, and, The Alarm (the journal of the International Working People's Association
International Working People's Association
The International Working People's Association , sometimes known as the "Black International," was an international anarchist political organization established in 1881 at a convention held in London, England...
) and The Open Court among others. Lum's political philosophy
Political philosophy
Political philosophy is the study of such topics as liberty, justice, property, rights, law, and the enforcement of a legal code by authority: what they are, why they are needed, what, if anything, makes a government legitimate, what rights and freedoms it should protect and why, what form it...
was a fusion of individualist anarchist economics
Anarchist economics
Anarchist economics is the set of theories and practices of economics and economic activity within the political philosophy of anarchism.-Early views:...
– "a radicalized form of laissez-faire
Laissez-faire
In economics, laissez-faire describes an environment in which transactions between private parties are free from state intervention, including restrictive regulations, taxes, tariffs and enforced monopolies....
economics" inspired by the Boston anarchists– with radical labor organization similar to that of the Chicago anarchists of the time.Herbert Spencer
Herbert Spencer
Herbert Spencer was an English philosopher, biologist, sociologist, and prominent classical liberal political theorist of the Victorian era....
and Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon was a French politician, mutualist philosopher and socialist. He was a member of the French Parliament, and he was the first person to call himself an "anarchist". He is considered among the most influential theorists and organisers of anarchism...
influenced Lum strongly in his individualist tendency. He developed a "mutualist
Mutualism (economic theory)
Mutualism is an anarchist school of thought that originates in the writings of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, who envisioned a society where each person might possess a means of production, either individually or collectively, with trade representing equivalent amounts of labor in the free market...
" theory of unions and as such was active within the Knights of Labor
Knights of Labor
The Knights of Labor was the largest and one of the most important American labor organizations of the 1880s. Its most important leader was Terence Powderly...
and later promoted anti-political
Apolitical
The state or quality of being apolitical can be the apathy and/or the antipathy towards all political affiliations. Being apolitical can also refer to situations in which people take an unbiased position in regard to political matters.-References:...
strategies in the American Federation of Labor
American Federation of Labor
The American Federation of Labor was one of the first federations of labor unions in the United States. It was founded in 1886 by an alliance of craft unions disaffected from the Knights of Labor, a national labor association. Samuel Gompers was elected president of the Federation at its...
. Frustration with abolitionism
Abolitionism
Abolitionism is a movement to end slavery.In western Europe and the Americas abolitionism was a movement to end the slave trade and set slaves free. At the behest of Dominican priest Bartolomé de las Casas who was shocked at the treatment of natives in the New World, Spain enacted the first...
, spiritualism
Spiritualism
Spiritualism is a belief system or religion, postulating the belief that spirits of the dead residing in the spirit world have both the ability and the inclination to communicate with the living...
, and labor reform caused Lum to embrace anarchism and radicalize workers, as he came to believe that revolution
Revolution
A revolution is a fundamental change in power or organizational structures that takes place in a relatively short period of time.Aristotle described two types of political revolution:...
would inevitably involve a violent struggle between the working class
Working class
Working class is a term used in the social sciences and in ordinary conversation to describe those employed in lower tier jobs , often extending to those in unemployment or otherwise possessing below-average incomes...
and the employing class. Convinced of the necessity of violence to enact social change he volunteered to fight in the American Civil War
American Civil War
The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...
, hoping thereby to bring about the end of slavery
Slavery
Slavery is a system under which people are treated as property to be bought and sold, and are forced to work. Slaves can be held against their will from the time of their capture, purchase or birth, and deprived of the right to leave, to refuse to work, or to demand compensation...
. Kevin Carson has praised Lum's fusion of individualist laissez-faire economics with radical labor activism as "creative" and described him as "more significant than any in the Boston group".
American egoism
Benjamin Tucker
Benjamin Ricketson Tucker was a proponent of American individualist anarchism in the 19th century, and editor and publisher of the individualist anarchist periodical Liberty.-Summary:Tucker says that he became an anarchist at the age of 18...
, abandoned natural rights positions and converted to Max Stirner
Max Stirner
Johann Kaspar Schmidt , better known as Max Stirner , was a German philosopher, who ranks as one of the literary fathers of nihilism, existentialism, post-modernism and anarchism, especially of individualist anarchism...
's Egoist anarchism
Egoist anarchism
Egoist anarchism is a school of anarchist thought that originated in the philosophy of Max Stirner, a nineteenth century Hegelian philosopher whose "name appears with familiar regularity in historically orientated surveys of anarchist thought as one of the earliest and best-known exponents of...
. Rejecting the idea of moral rights, Tucker said that there were only two rights, "the right of might" and "the right of contract." He also said, after converting to Egoist individualism, "In times past...it was my habit to talk glibly of the right of man to land. It was a bad habit, and I long ago sloughed it off....Man's only right to land is his might over it." In adopting Stirnerite egoism (1886), Tucker rejected natural rights which had long been considered the foundation of libertarianism. This rejection galvanized the movement into fierce debates, with the natural rights proponents accusing the egoists of destroying libertarianism itself. So bitter was the conflict that a number of natural rights proponents withdrew from the pages of Liberty in protest even though they had hitherto been among its frequent contributors. Thereafter, Liberty championed egoism although its general content did not change significantly."
"Several periodicals were undoubtedly influenced by Libertys presentation of egoism. They included: I published by C.L. Swartz, edited by W.E. Gordak and J.W. Lloyd (all associates of Liberty); The Ego and The Egoist, both of which were edited by Edward H. Fulton. Among the egoist papers that Tucker followed were the German Der Eigene, edited by Adolf Brand
Adolf Brand
Adolf Brand was a German writer, individualist anarchist and pioneering campaigner for the acceptance of male bisexuality and homosexuality.-Biography:...
, and The Eagle and The Serpent, issued from London. The latter, the most prominent English-language egoist journal, was published from 1898 to 1900 with the subtitle 'A Journal of Egoistic Philosophy and Sociology.
American anarchists who adhered to egoism include Benjamin Tucker
Benjamin Tucker
Benjamin Ricketson Tucker was a proponent of American individualist anarchism in the 19th century, and editor and publisher of the individualist anarchist periodical Liberty.-Summary:Tucker says that he became an anarchist at the age of 18...
, John Beverley Robinson
John Beverley Robinson (anarchist)
John Beverley Robinson , was an American anarchist author, publisher, translator, and architect.He was for a time publisher of the Free Soiler the newsletter of the Georgist American Free Soil Society...
, Steven T. Byington
Steven T. Byington
Steven Tracy Byington was a noted intellectual, translator, and American individualist anarchist. He was born in Westford, Vermont, and later moved to Ballardvale section of Andover, Massachusetts. A one-time proponent of Georgism, he converted to individualist anarchism after associating with...
, Hutchins Hapgood
Hutchins Hapgood
Hutchins Hapgood was an U.S. journalist, author, individualist anarchist/philosophical anarchist....
, James L. Walker
James L. Walker
James L. Walker , sometimes known by the pen name Tak Kak, was an American individualist anarchist of the Egoist school. He was one of the main contributors to Benjamin Tucker's Liberty. He worked out Egoism on his own some years before encountering the Egoist writings of Max Stirner, and was...
and Victor Yarros
Victor Yarros
Victor Yarros was an American anarchist and author. He was a prolific contributor to the individualist anarchist periodical in the United States called Liberty....
and E.H. Fulton. John Beverley Robinson wrote an essay called "Egoism" in which he states that "Modern egoism, as propounded by Stirner and Nietzsche, and expounded by Ibsen
Henrik Ibsen
Henrik Ibsen was a major 19th-century Norwegian playwright, theatre director, and poet. He is often referred to as "the father of prose drama" and is one of the founders of Modernism in the theatre...
, Shaw
George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw was an Irish playwright and a co-founder of the London School of Economics. Although his first profitable writing was music and literary criticism, in which capacity he wrote many highly articulate pieces of journalism, his main talent was for drama, and he wrote more than 60...
and others, is all these; but it is more. It is the realization by the individual that they are an individual; that, as far as they are concerned, they are the only individual."
Italian anti-organizationalist individualist anarchism was brought to the United States by Italian born individualists such as Giuseppe Ciancabilla
Giuseppe Ciancabilla
Giuseppe Ciancabilla was one of the important figures of the anarchist movement who immigrated to the United States in the late 19th century, along with F. Saverio Merlino, Pietro Gori, Carlo Tresca, and Luigi Galleani.- Life :...
and others who advocated for violent propaganda by the deed there. Anarchist historian George Woodcock
George Woodcock
George Woodcock was a Canadian writer of political biography and history, an anarchist thinker, an essayist and literary critic. He was also a poet, and published several volumes of travel writing. He founded in 1959 the journal Canadian Literature, the first academic journal specifically...
reports the incident in which the important Italian social anarchist Errico Malatesta
Errico Malatesta
Errico Malatesta was an Italian anarcho-communist. He was an insurrectionary anarchist early in his life. He spent much of his life exiled from his homeland of Italy and in total spent more than ten years in prison. He wrote and edited a number of radical newspapers and was also a friend of...
became involved "in a dispute with the individualist anarchists of Paterson
Paterson, New Jersey
Paterson is a city serving as the county seat of Passaic County, New Jersey, United States. As of the 2010 United States Census, its population was 146,199, rendering it New Jersey's third largest city and one of the largest cities in the New York City Metropolitan Area, despite a decrease of 3,023...
, who insisted that anarchism implied no organization at all, and that every man must act solely on his impulses. At last, in one noisy debate, the individual impulse of a certain Ciancabilla directed him to shoot Malatesta, who was badly wounded but obstinately refused to name his assailant."
Enrico Arrigoni
Enrico Arrigoni
Enrico Arrigoni was an Italian American individualist anarchist Lathe operator, house painter, bricklayer, dramatist and political activist influenced by the work of Max Stirner.- Life and activism :He took the pseudonym "Brand" from a fictional character in one of...
(pseudonym: Frank Brand) was an Italian American
Italian American
An Italian American , is an American of Italian ancestry. The designation may also refer to someone possessing Italian and American dual citizenship...
individualist anarchist Lathe operator, house painter, bricklayer, dramatist and political activist influenced by the work of Max Stirner
Max Stirner
Johann Kaspar Schmidt , better known as Max Stirner , was a German philosopher, who ranks as one of the literary fathers of nihilism, existentialism, post-modernism and anarchism, especially of individualist anarchism...
. He took the pseudonym "Brand" from a fictional character in one of Henrik Ibsen
Henrik Ibsen
Henrik Ibsen was a major 19th-century Norwegian playwright, theatre director, and poet. He is often referred to as "the father of prose drama" and is one of the founders of Modernism in the theatre...
´s plays. In the 1910s he started becoming involved in anarchist and anti-war activism around Milan. From the 1910s until the 1920s he participated in anarchist activities and popular uprisings in various countries including Switzerland, Germany, Hungary, Argentina and Cuba. He lived from the 1920s onwards in New York City and there he edited the individualist anarchist eclectic journal Eresia in 1928. He also wrote for other american anarchist publications such as L' Adunata dei refrattari
L' Adunata dei refrattari
L'Adunata dei refrattari was an Italian American anarchist publication published between 1923 and 1940 in New York City. It was first edited by Osvaldo Maraviglia and later by Max Sartin. It was illegally distributed in Italy during its fascist period...
, Cultura Obrera, Controcorrente and Intessa Libertaria. During the Spanish Civil War
Spanish Civil War
The Spanish Civil WarAlso known as The Crusade among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War among Carlists, and The Rebellion or Uprising among Republicans. was a major conflict fought in Spain from 17 July 1936 to 1 April 1939...
, he went to fight with the anarchists but was imprisoned and was helped on his release by Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman was an anarchist known for her political activism, writing and speeches. She played a pivotal role in the development of anarchist political philosophy in North America and Europe in the first half of the twentieth century....
. Afterwards Arrigoni became a longtime member of the Libertarian Book Club in New York City. His written works include The totalitarian nightmare (1975), The lunacy of the Superman (1977), Adventures in the country of the monoliths (1981) and Freedom: my dream (1986).
Anarcho-capitalism
19th century individualist anarchists espoused the labor theory of value
Labor theory of value
The labor theories of value are heterodox economic theories of value which argue that the value of a commodity is related to the labor needed to produce or obtain that commodity. The concept is most often associated with Marxian economics...
. Some believe that the modern movement of anarcho-capitalism is the result of simply removing the labor theory of value from ideas of the 19th century American individualist anarchists: "Their successors today, such as Murray Rothbard, having abandoned the labor theory of value, describe themselves as anarcho-capitalists." As economic theory changed, the popularity of the labor theory of classical economics
Classical economics
Classical economics is widely regarded as the first modern school of economic thought. Its major developers include Adam Smith, Jean-Baptiste Say, David Ricardo, Thomas Malthus and John Stuart Mill....
was superseded by the subjective theory of value
Subjective theory of value
The subjective theory of value is an economic theory of value that identifies worth as being based on the wants and needs of the members of a society, as opposed to value being inherent to an object....
of neo-classical economics. According to Kevin Carson (himself a mutualist
Mutualism (economic theory)
Mutualism is an anarchist school of thought that originates in the writings of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, who envisioned a society where each person might possess a means of production, either individually or collectively, with trade representing equivalent amounts of labor in the free market...
), "most people who call themselves "individualist anarchists" today are followers of Murray Rothbard's Austrian economics."
Murray Rothbard
Murray Rothbard
Murray Newton Rothbard was an American author and economist of the Austrian School who helped define capitalist libertarianism and popularized a form of free-market anarchism he termed "anarcho-capitalism." Rothbard wrote over twenty books and is considered a centrally important figure in the...
, a student of Ludwig von Mises
Ludwig von Mises
Ludwig Heinrich Edler von Mises was an Austrian economist, philosopher, and classical liberal who had a significant influence on the modern Libertarian movement and the "Austrian School" of economic thought.-Biography:-Early life:...
, combined the Austrian school
Austrian School
The Austrian School of economics is a heterodox school of economic thought. It advocates methodological individualism in interpreting economic developments , the theory that money is non-neutral, the theory that the capital structure of economies consists of heterogeneous goods that have...
economics of his teacher with the absolutist views of human rights and rejection of the state he had absorbed from studying the individualist American anarchists of the 19th century such as Lysander Spooner and Benjamin Tucker.
In the mid-1950s Rothbard wrote an article under a pseudonym, saying that "we are not anarchists...but not archists either...Perhaps, then, we could call ourselves by a new name: nonarchist," concerned with differentiating himself from communist and socialistic economic views of other anarchists (including the individualist anarchists of the 19th century). However, Rothbard later chose the term "anarcho-capitalism" for his philosophy and referred to himself as an anarchist.
Agorism
Agorism is a radical left-libertarian
Left-libertarianism
Left-libertarianism names several related but distinct approaches to politics, society, culture, and political and social theory, which stress equally both individual freedom and social justice.-Schools of thought:...
form of anarchism, developed from anarcho-capitalism in the late 20th-century by Samuel Edward Konkin III
Samuel Edward Konkin III
Samuel Edward Konkin III was the author of the New Libertarian Manifesto and a proponent of the political philosophy which he called agorism. Agorism is a leftward evolution of anarcho-capitalism, and subset of market anarchism...
(a.k.a. SEK3). The goal of agorists is a society in which all "relations between people are voluntary exchanges
Voluntaryism
Voluntarism, or voluntaryism, is a philosophy according to which all forms of human association should be voluntary. This moral principle is called the non-aggression principle, which prohibits the initiation of aggressive force or coercion...
– a free market
Free market
A free market is a competitive market where prices are determined by supply and demand. However, the term is also commonly used for markets in which economic intervention and regulation by the state is limited to tax collection, and enforcement of private ownership and contracts...
." Agorists are market anarchists
Market anarchism
Free-market anarchism refers to an individualist anarchist philosophy in which monopoly of force held by government would be replaced by a competitive market of non-monopolistic organizations providing security, justice, and other defense services...
. Most Agorists consider that property rights are natural rights deriving from the primary right of self-ownership. Because of this they are not opposed in principle to collectively held property if individual owners of the property consent to collective ownership by contract or other voluntary mutual agreement. However, Agorists are divided on the question of intellectual property
Intellectual property
Intellectual property is a term referring to a number of distinct types of creations of the mind for which a set of exclusive rights are recognized—and the corresponding fields of law...
rights.
Though anarcho-capitalism has been regarded as a form of individualist anarchism, some writers deny that it is a form of anarchism, or that capitalism itself is compatible with anarchism.
Post-left anarchy and insurrectionary anarchism
Murray BookchinMurray Bookchin
Murray Bookchin was an American libertarian socialist author, orator, and philosopher. A pioneer in the ecology movement, Bookchin was the founder of the social ecology movement within anarchist, libertarian socialist and ecological thought. He was the author of two dozen books on politics,...
has identified post-left anarchy
Post-left anarchy
Post-left anarchy is a recent current in anarchist thought that promotes a critique of anarchism's relationship to traditional leftism. Some post-leftists seek to escape the confines of ideology in general also presenting a critique of organizations and morality...
as a form of individualist anarchism in Social Anarchism or Lifestyle Anarchism: An Unbridgeable Chasm
Social Anarchism Or Lifestyle Anarchism: An Unbridgeable Chasm
Social Anarchism or Lifestyle Anarchism: An Unbridgeable Chasm is a polemical essay written by Murray Bookchin and published as a book in 1995. It is a critique of deep ecology, bio-centrism and lifestyle anarchism...
where he identifies "a shift among Euro-American anarchists away from social anarchism and toward individualist or lifestyle anarchism. Indeed, lifestyle anarchism today is finding its principal expression in spray-can graffiti, post-modernist nihilism
Nihilism
Nihilism is the philosophical doctrine suggesting the negation of one or more putatively meaningful aspects of life. Most commonly, nihilism is presented in the form of existential nihilism which argues that life is without objective meaning, purpose, or intrinsic value...
, antirationalism, neo-primitivism, anti-technologism, neo-Situationist 'cultural terrorism', mysticism, and a 'practice' of staging Foucauldian
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault , born Paul-Michel Foucault , was a French philosopher, social theorist and historian of ideas...
'personal insurrections'." Post-left anarchist Bob Black
Bob Black
Bob Black is an American anarchist. He is the author of The Abolition of Work and Other Essays, Beneath the Underground, Friendly Fire, Anarchy After Leftism, and numerous political essays.-Writing:Some of his work from the early 1980s includes...
in his long critique of Bookchin´s philosophy called Anarchy after leftism said about post-left anarchy that "It is, unlike Bookchinism, “individualistic” in the sense that if the freedom and happiness of the individual — i.e., each and every really existing person, every Tom, Dick and Murray — is not the measure of the good society, what is?".
Max Stirner
Johann Kaspar Schmidt , better known as Max Stirner , was a German philosopher, who ranks as one of the literary fathers of nihilism, existentialism, post-modernism and anarchism, especially of individualist anarchism...
. Jason McQuinn
Jason McQuinn
Jason McQuinn is an American anarchist, founder and co-editor of Alternative Press Review, and founder and former co-editor of the journal Anarchy: A Journal of Desire Armed from 1980 to 1995, when Tad Kepley took it over, and again from 1997 to 2006...
says that "when I (and other anti-ideological anarchists) criticize ideology, it is always from a specifically critical, anarchist perspective rooted in both the skeptical, individualist-anarchist philosophy of Max Stirner. Also Bob Black
Bob Black
Bob Black is an American anarchist. He is the author of The Abolition of Work and Other Essays, Beneath the Underground, Friendly Fire, Anarchy After Leftism, and numerous political essays.-Writing:Some of his work from the early 1980s includes...
and Feral Faun/Wolfi Landstreicher
Wolfi Landstreicher
Wolfi Landstreicher is the former nom de plume of a contemporary anarchist philosopher involved in theoretical and practical activity...
strongly adhere to stirnerist egoist anarchism
Egoist anarchism
Egoist anarchism is a school of anarchist thought that originated in the philosophy of Max Stirner, a nineteenth century Hegelian philosopher whose "name appears with familiar regularity in historically orientated surveys of anarchist thought as one of the earliest and best-known exponents of...
. Bob Black has humorously suggested the idea of "marxist stirnerism".
Hakim Bey has said "From Stirner's "Union of Self-Owning Ones
Union of egoists
Max Stirner's idea of the "Union of Egoists" , was first expounded in The Ego and Its Own. The Union is understood as a non-systematic association, which Stirner proposed in contradistinction to the state. The Union is understood as a relation between egoists which is continually renewed by all...
" we proceed to Nietzsche's circle of "Free Spirits" and thence to Charles Fourier
Charles Fourier
François Marie Charles Fourier was a French philosopher. An influential thinker, some of Fourier's social and moral views, held to be radical in his lifetime, have become main currents in modern society...
's "Passional Series", doubling and redoubling ourselves even as the Other multiplies itself in the eros of the group." Bey also wrote that "The Mackay Society, of which Mark & I are active members, is devoted to the anarchism of Max Stirner, Benj. Tucker
Benjamin Tucker
Benjamin Ricketson Tucker was a proponent of American individualist anarchism in the 19th century, and editor and publisher of the individualist anarchist periodical Liberty.-Summary:Tucker says that he became an anarchist at the age of 18...
& John Henry Mackay
John Henry Mackay
John Henry Mackay was an individualist anarchist, thinker and writer. Born in Scotland and raised in Germany, Mackay was the author of Die Anarchisten and Der Freiheitsucher . Mackay was published in the United States in his friend Benjamin Tucker's magazine, Liberty...
...The Mackay Society, incidentally, represents a little-known current of individualist thought which never cut its ties with revolutionary labor. Dyer Lum
Dyer Lum
Dyer Daniel Lum was a 19th-century American anarchist labor activist and poet. A leading anarcho-syndicalist and a prominent left-wing intellectual of the 1880s, he is remembered as the lover and mentor of early anarcha-feminist Voltairine de Cleyre.Lum was a prolific writer who wrote a number of...
, Ezra
Ezra Heywood
Ezra Heywood was a 19th century North American individualist anarchist, slavery abolitionist, and feminist.-Philosophy:Heywood saw what he believed to be a disproportionate concentration of capital in the hands of a few as the result of a selective extension of government-backed privileges to...
& Angela Haywood represent this school of thought; Jo Labadie, who wrote for Tucker’s Liberty
Liberty
Liberty is a moral and political principle, or Right, that identifies the condition in which human beings are able to govern themselves, to behave according to their own free will, and take responsibility for their actions...
, made himself a link between the american “plumb-line” anarchists, the “philosophical” individualists, & the syndicalist or communist branch of the movement; his influence reached the Mackay Society through his son, Laurance. Like the Italian Stirnerites (who influenced us through our late friend Enrico Arrigoni
Enrico Arrigoni
Enrico Arrigoni was an Italian American individualist anarchist Lathe operator, house painter, bricklayer, dramatist and political activist influenced by the work of Max Stirner.- Life and activism :He took the pseudonym "Brand" from a fictional character in one of...
) we support all anti-authoritarian currents, despite their apparent contradictions."
As far as posterior individualist anarchists, Jason McQuinn
Jason McQuinn
Jason McQuinn is an American anarchist, founder and co-editor of Alternative Press Review, and founder and former co-editor of the journal Anarchy: A Journal of Desire Armed from 1980 to 1995, when Tad Kepley took it over, and again from 1997 to 2006...
for some time used the pseudonym Lev Chernyi
Lev Chernyi
Pável Dimítrievich Turchanínov , known by the pseudonym Lev Chernyi , was a Russian anarchist theorist, activist and poet, and a leading figure of the Third Russian Revolution. His early thought was individualist, rejecting anarcho-communism as a threat to individual liberty...
in honor of the Russian individualist anarchist of the same name while Feral Faun has quoted Italian individualist anarchist Renzo Novatore
Renzo Novatore
- Life :Abele Ricieri Ferrari was born in Arcola, Liguria, Italy on May 12, 1890 in a poor peasant family. He did not adjust to school discipline and quit in the first year never coming back after that. While he worked in his father's farm, he self educated himself with an emphasis in poetry and...
and has translated both Novatore. and the young Italian individualist anarchist Bruno Filippi
Bruno Filippi
Bruno Filippi , was an Italian individualist anarchist writer and activist who collaborated in the Italian individualist anarchist magazine Iconoclasta! alongside Renzo Novatore....
Kevin Carson is a contemporary mutualist economist and author of Studies in Mutualist Political Economy
Studies in Mutualist Political Economy
Studies in Mutualist Political Economy is a book on political economy published on 2007 by american mutualist anarchist Kevin Carson. In its preface Carson describes this work as "an attempt to revive individualist anarchist political economy, to incorporate the useful developments of the last...
. Another important current mutualist is Joe Peacott
Joe Peacott
Joe Peacott is an individualist anarchist writer based in the United States. He is a leading figure at BAD Press, a publishing outlet for individualist anarchist philosophy. His work on economics and sociology has been published by the Libertarian Alliance and referenced favourably by leading...
. Contemporary mutualists are among those involved in the Alliance of the Libertarian Left and in the Voluntary Cooperation Movement. A recent mutualist collective was the Boston Anarchist Drinking Brigade.
Egoism has had a strong influence on insurrectionary anarchism
Insurrectionary anarchism
Insurrectionary anarchism is a revolutionary theory, practice and tendency within the anarchist movement which emphasizes the theme of insurrection within anarchist practice. It is critical of formal organizations such as labor unions and federations that are based on a political programme and...
, as can be seen in the work of Wolfi Landstreicher
Wolfi Landstreicher
Wolfi Landstreicher is the former nom de plume of a contemporary anarchist philosopher involved in theoretical and practical activity...
. Feral Faun wrote in 1995 that:
In the game of insurgence—a lived guerilla war game—it is strategically necessary to use identities and roles. Unfortunately, the context of social relationships gives these roles and identities the power to define the individual who attempts to use them. So I, Feral Faun, became ... an anarchist ... a writer ... a Stirner-influenced, post-situationist, anti-civilization theorist ... if not in my own eyes, at least in the eyes of most people who've read my writings.
European individualist anarchism
William Godwin
William Godwin was an English journalist, political philosopher and novelist. He is considered one of the first exponents of utilitarianism, and the first modern proponent of anarchism...
, Pierre Joseph Proudhon and Max Stirner
Max Stirner
Johann Kaspar Schmidt , better known as Max Stirner , was a German philosopher, who ranks as one of the literary fathers of nihilism, existentialism, post-modernism and anarchism, especially of individualist anarchism...
. Proudhon was an early pioneer of anarchism
Anarchism
Anarchism is generally defined as the political philosophy which holds the state to be undesirable, unnecessary, and harmful, or alternatively as opposing authority in the conduct of human relations...
as well as of the important individualist anarchist current of mutualism
Mutualism (economic theory)
Mutualism is an anarchist school of thought that originates in the writings of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, who envisioned a society where each person might possess a means of production, either individually or collectively, with trade representing equivalent amounts of labor in the free market...
. Stirner became a central figure of individualist anarchism through the publication of his seminal work The Ego and Its Own
The Ego and Its Own
The Ego and Its Own is a philosophical work by German philosopher Max Stirner . This work was first published in 1845, although with a stated publication date of "1844" to confuse the Prussian censors.-Content:...
which is considered to be "a founding text in the tradition of individualist anarchism." Another early figure was Anselme Bellegarrigue
Anselme Bellegarrigue
Anselme Bellegarrigue was a French individualist anarchist, born between 1820 and 1825 in Toulouse and presumed dead around the end of the 19th century in Central America...
. IA expanded and diversified through Europe, incorporating influences from North American individualist anarchism
Individualist anarchism in the United States
Individualist anarchism in the United States was strongly influenced by Josiah Warren, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Lysander Spooner, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Max Stirner, Herbert SpencerHenry David Thoreau...
.
European individualist anarchists include Albert Libertad
Albert Libertad
Joseph Albert was an individualist anarchist militant and writer from France who edited the influential anarchist publication L’Anarchie.- Life and work :...
, Bellegarrigue, Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde
Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was an Irish writer and poet. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s...
, Émile Armand
Emile Armand
Emile Armand was the most influential French individualist anarchist at the beginning of the 20th century and also a dedicated free love/polyamory, intentional community, and pacifist/antimilitarist writer, propagandist and activist...
, Lev Chernyi
Lev Chernyi
Pável Dimítrievich Turchanínov , known by the pseudonym Lev Chernyi , was a Russian anarchist theorist, activist and poet, and a leading figure of the Third Russian Revolution. His early thought was individualist, rejecting anarcho-communism as a threat to individual liberty...
, John Henry Mackay
John Henry Mackay
John Henry Mackay was an individualist anarchist, thinker and writer. Born in Scotland and raised in Germany, Mackay was the author of Die Anarchisten and Der Freiheitsucher . Mackay was published in the United States in his friend Benjamin Tucker's magazine, Liberty...
, Han Ryner
Han Ryner
Jacques Élie Henri Ambroise Ner , also known by the pseudonym Han Ryner, was a French individualist anarchist philosopher and activist and a novelist...
, Adolf Brand
Adolf Brand
Adolf Brand was a German writer, individualist anarchist and pioneering campaigner for the acceptance of male bisexuality and homosexuality.-Biography:...
, Miguel Gimenez Igualada
Miguel Giménez Igualada
Miguel Giménez Igualada, , was a Spanish individualist anarchist writer also known as Miguel Ramos Giménez and Juan de Iniesta.- Life :In his youth, Igualada engaged in illegalist activities...
, Renzo Novatore
Renzo Novatore
- Life :Abele Ricieri Ferrari was born in Arcola, Liguria, Italy on May 12, 1890 in a poor peasant family. He did not adjust to school discipline and quit in the first year never coming back after that. While he worked in his father's farm, he self educated himself with an emphasis in poetry and...
, and currently Michel Onfray
Michel Onfray
Michel Onfray is a contemporary French philosopher who adheres to hedonism, atheism and anarchism...
. Important currents within it include free love
Free love
The term free love has been used to describe a social movement that rejects marriage, which is seen as a form of social bondage. The Free Love movement’s initial goal was to separate the state from sexual matters such as marriage, birth control, and adultery...
, anarcho-naturism
Anarcho-naturism
Anarcho-naturism appeared in the late 19th century as the union of anarchist and naturist philosophies. Mainly it had importance within individualist anarchist circles in Spain, France, Portugal...
, and illegalism
Illegalism
Illegalism is an anarchist philosophy that developed primarily in France, Italy, Belgium, and Switzerland during the early 1900s as an outgrowth of individualist anarchism...
.
France
Individualist anarchism in France
Individualist anarchism refers to several traditions of thought within the anarchist movement that emphasize the individual and his or her will over external determinants such as groups, society, traditions, and ideological systems....
. An early important individualist anarchist was Anselme Bellegarrigue
Anselme Bellegarrigue
Anselme Bellegarrigue was a French individualist anarchist, born between 1820 and 1825 in Toulouse and presumed dead around the end of the 19th century in Central America...
. He participated in the French Revolution of 1848
French Revolution of 1848
The 1848 Revolution in France was one of a wave of revolutions in 1848 in Europe. In France, the February revolution ended the Orleans monarchy and led to the creation of the French Second Republic. The February Revolution was really the belated second phase of the Revolution of 1830...
, was author and editor of 'Anarchie, Journal de l'Ordre and Au fait ! Au fait ! Interprétation de l'idée démocratique' and wrote the important early Anarchist Manifesto
Anarchist Manifesto
Anarchist Manifesto is a work by Anselme Bellegarrigue, notable for being the first manifesto of anarchism...
in 1850. Catalan historian of individualist anarchism Xavier Diez reports that during his travels in the United States "he at least contacted (Henry David) Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau was an American author, poet, philosopher, abolitionist, naturalist, tax resister, development critic, surveyor, historian, and leading transcendentalist...
and, probably (Josiah) Warren
Josiah Warren
Josiah Warren was an individualist anarchist, inventor, musician, and author in the United States. He is widely regarded as the first American anarchist, and the four-page weekly paper he edited during 1833, The Peaceful Revolutionist, was the first anarchist periodical published, an enterprise...
."Autonomie Individuelle was an individualist anarchist publication that ran from 1887 to 1888. It was edited by Jean-Baptiste Louiche, Charles Schæffer and Georges Deherme.
Later, this tradition continued with such intellectuals as Albert Libertad
Albert Libertad
Joseph Albert was an individualist anarchist militant and writer from France who edited the influential anarchist publication L’Anarchie.- Life and work :...
, André Lorulot, Emile Armand
Emile Armand
Emile Armand was the most influential French individualist anarchist at the beginning of the 20th century and also a dedicated free love/polyamory, intentional community, and pacifist/antimilitarist writer, propagandist and activist...
, Victor Serge
Victor Serge
Victor Serge , born Victor Lvovich Kibalchich , was a Russian revolutionary and writer. Originally an anarchist, he joined the Bolsheviks five months after arriving in Petrograd in January 1919 and later worked for the Comintern as a journalist, editor and translator...
, Zo d'Axa
Zo d'Axa
Alphonse Gallaud de la Pérouse, better known as Zo d'Axa , was an adventurer, anti-militarist, satirist, journalist, and founder of two of the most legendary French magazines, L'EnDehors and La Feuille...
and Rirette Maitrejean
Rirette Maitrejean
Rirette Maitrejean was the pseudonym of Anna Estorges. She was a French individualist anarchist born in 1887 in Tulle who collaborated in the French individualist anarchist magazine L´anarchie along with Emile Armand and Albert Libertad. She had romantic relationships with Maurice Vandamme and...
, who developed theory in the main individualist anarchist journal in France, L'Anarchie in 1905. Outside this journal, Han Ryner
Han Ryner
Jacques Élie Henri Ambroise Ner , also known by the pseudonym Han Ryner, was a French individualist anarchist philosopher and activist and a novelist...
wrote Petit Manuel individualiste (1903). Later appeared the journal L'EnDehors created by Zo d'Axa in 1891.
Violence
Violence is the use of physical force to apply a state to others contrary to their wishes. violence, while often a stand-alone issue, is often the culmination of other kinds of conflict, e.g...
and embraced mutualism while becoming an important propagandist for free love
Free love
The term free love has been used to describe a social movement that rejects marriage, which is seen as a form of social bondage. The Free Love movement’s initial goal was to separate the state from sexual matters such as marriage, birth control, and adultery...
, while Albert Libertad
Albert Libertad
Joseph Albert was an individualist anarchist militant and writer from France who edited the influential anarchist publication L’Anarchie.- Life and work :...
and Zo d'Axa
Zo d'Axa
Alphonse Gallaud de la Pérouse, better known as Zo d'Axa , was an adventurer, anti-militarist, satirist, journalist, and founder of two of the most legendary French magazines, L'EnDehors and La Feuille...
were influential in violentists circles and championed violent propaganda by the deed while adhering to communitarianism
Communitarianism
Communitarianism is an ideology that emphasizes the connection between the individual and the community. That community may be the family unit, but it can also be understood in a far wider sense of personal interaction, of geographical location, or of shared history.-Terminology:Though the term...
or anarcho-communism and rejecting work
Refusal of work
Refusal of work is behavior which refuses to adapt to regular employment.As actual behavior, with or without a political or philosophical program, it has been practiced by various subcultures and individuals. Radical political positions have openly advocated refusal of work. From within marxism it...
. Han Ryner on the other side conciled anarchism with stoicism
Stoicism
Stoicism is a school of Hellenistic philosophy founded in Athens by Zeno of Citium in the early . The Stoics taught that destructive emotions resulted from errors in judgment, and that a sage, or person of "moral and intellectual perfection," would not suffer such emotions.Stoics were concerned...
. Nevertheless French individualist circles had a strong sense of personal libertarianism and experimentation. Naturism
Naturism
Naturism or nudism is a cultural and political movement practising, advocating and defending social nudity in private and in public. It may also refer to a lifestyle based on personal, family and/or social nudism....
and free love
Free love
The term free love has been used to describe a social movement that rejects marriage, which is seen as a form of social bondage. The Free Love movement’s initial goal was to separate the state from sexual matters such as marriage, birth control, and adultery...
contents started to have a strong influence in individualist anarchist circles and from there it expanded to the rest of anarchism also appearing in Spanish individualist anarchist groups. "Along with feverish activity against the social order, (Albert) Libertad
Libertad
Libertad, the Spanish word for "freedom", may refer to any of the following:-Geography:Argentina*Libertad, Buenos Aires Province*Libertad, ChacoBelize*Libertad, BelizeEquador*Libertad, EquadorMexico*Libertad, Chihuahua*Libertad, Chiapas...
was usually also organizing feasts, dances and country excursions, in consequence of his vision of anarchism as the “joy of living” and not as militant sacrifice and death instinct, seeking to reconcile the requirements of the individual (in his need for autonomy) with the need to destroy authoritarian society."
Anarchist naturism was promoted by Henri Zisly
Henri Zisly
Henri Zisly was a french individualist anarchist and naturist. He participated alongside Henry Beylie and Emile Gravelle in many journals such as La nouvelle humanité and La Vie naturelle, which promoted anarchist-naturism.In 1902 he is one of the main initiators along Georges Butaud and Sophie...
, Emile Gravelle
Emile Gravelle
Emile Gravelle was a French individualist anarchist and naturist activist, writer and painter. He published the review "L'Etat Naturel." Collaborated with Henri Zisly & Henri Beylie on "La Nouvelle Humanité," followed by "Le Naturien," "Le Sauvage," "L'Ordre Naturel," & "La Vie Naturelle." His...
and Georges Butaud. Butaud was an individualist "partisan of the milieux libres, publisher of "Flambeau" ("an enemy of authority") in 1901 in Vienna. Most of his energies were devoted to creating anarchist colonies (communautés expérimentales) in which he participated in several.
"In this sense, the theoretical positions and the vital experiences of french individualism are deeply iconoclastic and scandalous, even within libertarian circles. The call of nudist naturism
Naturism
Naturism or nudism is a cultural and political movement practising, advocating and defending social nudity in private and in public. It may also refer to a lifestyle based on personal, family and/or social nudism....
, the strong defence of bith control methods, the idea of "unions of egoists
Union of egoists
Max Stirner's idea of the "Union of Egoists" , was first expounded in The Ego and Its Own. The Union is understood as a non-systematic association, which Stirner proposed in contradistinction to the state. The Union is understood as a relation between egoists which is continually renewed by all...
" with the sole justification of sexual practices, that will try to put in practice, not without difficulties, will establish a way of thought and action, and will result in symphathy within some, and a strong rejection within others."
French individualist anarchists grouped behind Emile Armand
Emile Armand
Emile Armand was the most influential French individualist anarchist at the beginning of the 20th century and also a dedicated free love/polyamory, intentional community, and pacifist/antimilitarist writer, propagandist and activist...
, published L'Unique after World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
. L'Unique went from 1945 to 1956 with a total of 110 numbers. Within the synthesist
Synthesis anarchism
Synthesis anarchism, synthesist anarchism, synthesism or synthesis federations is a form of anarchist organization which tries to join anarchists of different tendencies under the principles of anarchism without adjectives. In the 1920s this form found as its main proponents the anarcho-communists...
anarchist organization, the Fédération Anarchiste, there existed an individualist anarchist tendency alongside anarcho-communist and anarchosyndicalist currents. Individualist anarchists participating inside the Fédération Anarchiste included Charles-Auguste Bontemps
Charles-Auguste Bontemps
Charles-Auguste Bontemps was a French individualist anarchist, pacifist, freethinker and naturist activist and writer.- Life and works:...
, Georges Vincey and André Arru. The new base principles of the francophone Anarchist Federation were written by Charles-Auguste Bontemps and the anarcho-communist Maurice Joyeux which established an organization with a plurality of tendencies and autonomy of federated groups organized around synthesist principles. Charles-Auguste Bontemps was a prolific author mainly in the anarchist, freethinking, pacifist and naturist
Anarcho-naturism
Anarcho-naturism appeared in the late 19th century as the union of anarchist and naturist philosophies. Mainly it had importance within individualist anarchist circles in Spain, France, Portugal...
press of the time. His view on anarchism was based around his concept of "Social Individualism" on which he wrote extensively. He defended an anarchist perspective which consisted on "a collectivism of things and an individualism of persons."
In 2002, an anarchist, Libertad organized a new version of the L'EnDehors, collaborating with Green Anarchy
Green Anarchy
Green Anarchy was a magazine published by a collective located in Eugene, Oregon. The magazine's focus was primitivism, post-left anarchy, radical environmentalism, African American struggles, anarchist resistance, indigenous resistance, earth and animal liberation, anti-capitalism and supporting...
and including several contributors, such as Lawrence Jarach
Lawrence Jarach
- External links :* official website.Publications*"" by Lawrence Jarach at the Berkeley Daily Planet...
, Patrick Mignard, Thierry Lodé
Thierry Lodé
Thierry Lodé is a French biologist and professor who teaches evolutionary ecology in the CNRS Units ETHOS...
, Ron Sakolsky
Ron Sakolsky
Ron Sakolsky is a scholar covering the intersection of music, revolution and radio. As of 2005, Sakolsky is Emeritus Professor of Public Policy at the University of Illinois at Springfield, previously known as Sangamon State University. For more than twenty years he taught at the university on...
, and Thomas Slut. Numerous articles about capitalism, human rights, free love
Free love
The term free love has been used to describe a social movement that rejects marriage, which is seen as a form of social bondage. The Free Love movement’s initial goal was to separate the state from sexual matters such as marriage, birth control, and adultery...
and social fights were published. The EnDehors continues now as a website, EnDehors.org.
The prolific contemporary French philosopher Michel Onfray
Michel Onfray
Michel Onfray is a contemporary French philosopher who adheres to hedonism, atheism and anarchism...
has been writing from an individualist anarchist perspective influenced by Nietzsche, French post-structuralists thinkers such as Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault , born Paul-Michel Foucault , was a French philosopher, social theorist and historian of ideas...
and Gilles Deleuze
Gilles Deleuze
Gilles Deleuze , was a French philosopher who, from the early 1960s until his death, wrote influentially on philosophy, literature, film, and fine art. His most popular works were the two volumes of Capitalism and Schizophrenia: Anti-Oedipus and A Thousand Plateaus , both co-written with Félix...
; and Greek classical schools of philosophy such as the Cynics and Cyrenaics
Cyrenaics
The Cyrenaics were an ultra-hedonist Greek school of philosophy founded in the 4th century BC, supposedly by Aristippus of Cyrene, although many of the principles of the school are believed to have been formalized by his grandson of the same name, Aristippus the Younger. The school was so called...
. Among the books which best expose Onfray´s individualist anarchist perspective include La sculpture de soi : la morale esthétique (The sculpture of oneself: aesthetic morality), La philosophie féroce : exercices anarchistes, La puissance d'exister and Physiologie de Georges Palante, portrait d'un nietzchéen de gauche which focuses on French individualist philosopher Georges Palante
Georges Palante
Georges Toussaint Léon Palante was a French philosopher and sociologist.He advocated aristocratic individualist ideas similar to Nietzsche and Schopenhauer. He was opposed to Émile Durkheim's holism, promoting methodological individualism instead.-Life:Palante was born in Blangy-les-Arras in the...
.
Illegalism
Illegalism is an anarchist philosophy that developed primarily in France, Italy, Belgium, and Switzerland during the early 1900s as an outgrowth of Stirner's individualist anarchism. Illegalists usually did not seek moral basis for their actions, recognizing only the reality of "might" rather than "right"; for the most part, illegal acts were done simply to satisfy personal desires, not for some greater ideal, although some committed crimes as a form of Propaganda of the deedPropaganda of the deed
Propaganda of the deed is a concept that refers to specific political actions meant to be exemplary to others...
. The illegalists embraced direct action
Direct action
Direct action is activity undertaken by individuals, groups, or governments to achieve political, economic, or social goals outside of normal social/political channels. This can include nonviolent and violent activities which target persons, groups, or property deemed offensive to the direct action...
and propaganda of the deed
Propaganda of the deed
Propaganda of the deed is a concept that refers to specific political actions meant to be exemplary to others...
.
Influenced by theorist Max Stirner's egoism
Egoist anarchism
Egoist anarchism is a school of anarchist thought that originated in the philosophy of Max Stirner, a nineteenth century Hegelian philosopher whose "name appears with familiar regularity in historically orientated surveys of anarchist thought as one of the earliest and best-known exponents of...
as well as Proudhon (his view that Property is theft!
Property is theft!
Property is theft! is a slogan coined by French anarchist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon in his 1840 book What is Property? Or, an Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government....
), Clément Duval
Clément Duval
Clément Duval was a famous French anarchist and criminal. His ideas concerning individual reclamation were greatly influential in later shaping illegalism....
and Marius Jacob
Marius Jacob
Alexandre Jacob , known as Marius Jacob, was a French anarchist illegalist. A clever burglar equipped with a sharp sense of humour, capable of great generosity towards his victims, he became one of the models for Maurice Leblanc's character Arsene Lupin.- A rough start :Jacob was born in 1879 in...
proposed the theory of la reprise individuelle (Eng: individual reclamation
Individual reclamation
Individual reclamation is a form of direct action, characterized by the individual theft of resources from the rich by the poor...
) which justified robbery on the rich and personal direct action against exploiters and the system.,
Illegalism first rose to prominence among a generation of Europeans inspired by the unrest of the 1890s, during which Ravachol
Ravachol
François Claudius Koenigstein, known as Ravachol, , was a French anarchist. He was born 14 October 1859 at Saint-Chamond and died guillotined 11 July 1892 at Montbrison.-Biography:...
, Émile Henry
Emile Henry
Émile Henry was a French anarchist, who on 12 February 1894 detonated a bomb at the in the Parisian Gare Saint-Lazare killing one person and wounding twenty....
, Auguste Vaillant
Auguste Vaillant
Auguste Vaillant was a French anarchist, most famous for his bomb attack on the French Chamber of Deputies on 9 December 1893. The government's reaction to this attack was the passing of the infamous repressive Lois scélérates.He threw the home-made device from the public gallery and was...
, and Caserio committed daring crimes in the name of anarchism, in what is known as propaganda of the deed
Propaganda of the deed
Propaganda of the deed is a concept that refers to specific political actions meant to be exemplary to others...
. France's Bonnot Gang
Bonnot gang
The Bonnot Gang was a French criminal anarchist group that operated in France and Belgium during the Belle Époque, from 1911 to 1912...
was the most famous group to embrace illegalism.
Italy
Illegalism
Illegalism is an anarchist philosophy that developed primarily in France, Italy, Belgium, and Switzerland during the early 1900s as an outgrowth of individualist anarchism...
and violent propaganda by the deed similar to French individualist anarchism but perhaps more extreme which emphazised criticism of organization be it anarchist or of other type. In this respect we can consider notorious magnicides carried out or attempted by individualists Giovanni Passannante, Sante Caserio, Michele Angiolillo
Michele Angiolillo
Michele Angiolillo Lombardi was an Italian anarchist, born in Foggia, and murderer of Spanish Prime Minister Antonio Cánovas in 1897.-Barcelona bombing and Montjuïc repression:...
, Luigi Luccheni, Gaetano Bresci
Gaetano Bresci
Gaetano Bresci was an Italian American anarchist who assassinated King Umberto I of Italy. Bresci was the first European regicide not to be executed, as capital punishment in Italy had been abolished since 1889.-Militancy:...
who murdered king Umberto I. Caserio lived in France and coexisted within French illegalism and later assassinated French president Sadi Carnot
Marie François Sadi Carnot
Marie François Sadi Carnot was a French statesman and the fourth president of the Third French Republic. He served as the President of France from 1887 until his assassination in 1894.-Early life:...
. The theoretical seeds of current Insurrectionary anarchism
Insurrectionary anarchism
Insurrectionary anarchism is a revolutionary theory, practice and tendency within the anarchist movement which emphasizes the theme of insurrection within anarchist practice. It is critical of formal organizations such as labor unions and federations that are based on a political programme and...
were already laid out at the end of 19th century Italy in a combination of individualist anarchism criticism of permanent groups and organization with a socialist class struggle worldview. During the rise of fascism this thought also motivated Gino Lucetti
Gino Lucetti
Gino Lucetti was an Italian anarchist and would-be assassin.Born in Carrara, Italy, he fought in the assault troops during World War I. Later he emigrated to France, from where he returned to attempt the assassination of Benito Mussolini, Italy's Fascist Duce...
, Michele Schirru and Angelo Sbardellotto in attempting the assassination of Benito Mussolini
Benito Mussolini
Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini was an Italian politician who led the National Fascist Party and is credited with being one of the key figures in the creation of Fascism....
.
During the early 20th century, the intellectual work of individualist anarchist Renzo Novatore
Renzo Novatore
- Life :Abele Ricieri Ferrari was born in Arcola, Liguria, Italy on May 12, 1890 in a poor peasant family. He did not adjust to school discipline and quit in the first year never coming back after that. While he worked in his father's farm, he self educated himself with an emphasis in poetry and...
came to importance; he was influenced by Stirner, Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was a 19th-century German philosopher, poet, composer and classical philologist...
, Georges Palante
Georges Palante
Georges Toussaint Léon Palante was a French philosopher and sociologist.He advocated aristocratic individualist ideas similar to Nietzsche and Schopenhauer. He was opposed to Émile Durkheim's holism, promoting methodological individualism instead.-Life:Palante was born in Blangy-les-Arras in the...
, Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde
Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was an Irish writer and poet. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s...
, Henrik Ibsen
Henrik Ibsen
Henrik Ibsen was a major 19th-century Norwegian playwright, theatre director, and poet. He is often referred to as "the father of prose drama" and is one of the founders of Modernism in the theatre...
, Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer was a German philosopher known for his pessimism and philosophical clarity. At age 25, he published his doctoral dissertation, On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason, which examined the four separate manifestations of reason in the phenomenal...
and Charles Baudelaire
Charles Baudelaire
Charles Baudelaire was a French poet who produced notable work as an essayist, art critic, and pioneering translator of Edgar Allan Poe. His most famous work, Les Fleurs du mal expresses the changing nature of beauty in modern, industrializing Paris during the nineteenth century...
. He collaborated in numerous anarchist journals and participated in futurism
Futurism
Futurism was an artistic and social movement that originated in Italy in the early 20th century.Futurism or futurist may refer to:* Afrofuturism, an African-American and African diaspora subculture* Cubo-Futurism* Ego-Futurism...
avant-garde currents. In his thought, he adhered to Stirnerist disrespect for private property, only recognizing property of one's own spirit. Novatore collaborated in the individualist anarchist journal Iconoclasta! alongside the young stirner
Stirner
Stirner:* Max Stirner, pseudonym for Johann Caspar Schmidt , German philosopher and journalist* Karl Stirner , painter, illustrator and poet...
ist illegalist
Illegalism
Illegalism is an anarchist philosophy that developed primarily in France, Italy, Belgium, and Switzerland during the early 1900s as an outgrowth of individualist anarchism...
Bruno Filippi
Bruno Filippi
Bruno Filippi , was an Italian individualist anarchist writer and activist who collaborated in the Italian individualist anarchist magazine Iconoclasta! alongside Renzo Novatore....
The individualist philosopher and poet Renzo Novatore
Renzo Novatore
- Life :Abele Ricieri Ferrari was born in Arcola, Liguria, Italy on May 12, 1890 in a poor peasant family. He did not adjust to school discipline and quit in the first year never coming back after that. While he worked in his father's farm, he self educated himself with an emphasis in poetry and...
belonged to the leftist section of the avant-garde
Avant-garde
Avant-garde means "advance guard" or "vanguard". The adjective form is used in English to refer to people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics....
movement of Futurism
Futurism
Futurism was an artistic and social movement that originated in Italy in the early 20th century.Futurism or futurist may refer to:* Afrofuturism, an African-American and African diaspora subculture* Cubo-Futurism* Ego-Futurism...
alongside other individualist anarcho-futurists such as Dante Carnesecchi
Dante Carnesecchi
Dante Carnesecchi was an Italian individualist anarchist associated with left wing futurism alongside other individualist anarchists such as Renzo Novatore, Leda Rafanelli, Auro d'Arcola, and Giovanni Governato.-External links:** in Italian*]]...
, Leda Rafanelli, Auro d'Arcola, and Giovanni Governato. Also there was Pietro Bruzzi who published the journal L'Individualista in the 1920s alongside Ugo Fedeli and Francesco Ghezzi but who fell to fascist forces later. Pietro Bruzzi also collaborated with the Italian American
Italian American
An Italian American , is an American of Italian ancestry. The designation may also refer to someone possessing Italian and American dual citizenship...
individualist anarchist publication Eresia of New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
edited by Enrico Arrigoni
Enrico Arrigoni
Enrico Arrigoni was an Italian American individualist anarchist Lathe operator, house painter, bricklayer, dramatist and political activist influenced by the work of Max Stirner.- Life and activism :He took the pseudonym "Brand" from a fictional character in one of...
.
In Italy in 1945, during the Founding Congress of the Italian Anarchist Federation, there was a group of individualist anarchists led by Cesare Zaccaria who was an important anarchist of the time. Later, during the IX Congress of the Italian Anarchist Federation in Carrara
Carrara
Carrara is a city and comune in the province of Massa-Carrara , notable for the white or blue-grey marble quarried there. It is on the Carrione River, some west-northwest of Florence....
in 1965, a group decided to split off from this organization and created the Gruppi di Iniziativa Anarchica. In the seventies, it was mostly composed of "veteran individualist anarchists with an of pacifism
Anarcho-pacifism
Anarcho-pacifism is a tendency within the anarchist movement which rejects the use of violence in the struggle for social change. The main early influences were the thought of Henry David Thoreau and Leo Tolstoy while later the ideas of Mohandas Gandhi gained importance...
orientation, naturism
Anarcho-naturism
Anarcho-naturism appeared in the late 19th century as the union of anarchist and naturist philosophies. Mainly it had importance within individualist anarchist circles in Spain, France, Portugal...
, etc,...".
In the famous Italian insurrectionary anarchist essay written by an anonymous writer, "At Daggers Drawn with the Existent, its Defenders and its False Critics", there reads "The workers who, during a wildcat strike, carried a banner saying, 'We are not asking for anything' understood that the defeat is in the claim itself ('the claim against the enemy is eternal'). There is no alternative but to take everything. As Stirner said: 'No matter how much you give them, they will always ask for more, because what they want is no less than the end of every concession'." The contemporary imprisoned Italian insurrectionary anarchist philosopher Michele Fabiani writes from an explicit individualist anarchist perspective in such essays as "Critica individualista anarchica alla modernità" (Individualist anarchist critique of modernity)
Spain
While SpainSpain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
was influenced by American individualist anarchism, it was more closely related to the French currents. At the turn of the century, individualism in Spain gathered force through the efforts of people such as Dorado Montero, Ricardo Mella
Ricardo Mella
Ricardo Mella Cea was one of the first writers, intellectuals and anarchist activists of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century in Spain. Was characterized as an erudite in various subjects and versed in languages, mastering French, English and Italian...
, Federico Urales, Miguel Gimenez Igualada
Miguel Giménez Igualada
Miguel Giménez Igualada, , was a Spanish individualist anarchist writer also known as Miguel Ramos Giménez and Juan de Iniesta.- Life :In his youth, Igualada engaged in illegalist activities...
, Mariano Gallardo, and J. Elizalde who translated French and American individualists. Important in this respect were also magazines such as La Idea Libre, La revista blanca
La Revista Blanca
La Revista Blanca was a Spanish individualist anarchist magazine of sociology and arts published in Madrid by Joan Montseny y Teresa Mañé from 1898 to 1905 and in Barcelona from June 1, 1923 till August 15, 1936....
, Etica, Iniciales
Iniciales
Iniciales was a Spanish individualist anarchist and naturist eclectic magazine which ran between 1929 and 1937. The first number appeared in Barcelona in February, 1929. Its predecessor was Barcelona's Ética...
, Al margen, Estudios and Nosotros. The most influential thinkers there were Max Stirner
Max Stirner
Johann Kaspar Schmidt , better known as Max Stirner , was a German philosopher, who ranks as one of the literary fathers of nihilism, existentialism, post-modernism and anarchism, especially of individualist anarchism...
, Emile Armand
Emile Armand
Emile Armand was the most influential French individualist anarchist at the beginning of the 20th century and also a dedicated free love/polyamory, intentional community, and pacifist/antimilitarist writer, propagandist and activist...
and Han Ryner
Han Ryner
Jacques Élie Henri Ambroise Ner , also known by the pseudonym Han Ryner, was a French individualist anarchist philosopher and activist and a novelist...
. Just as in France, the spread of Esperanto
Esperanto
is the most widely spoken constructed international auxiliary language. Its name derives from Doktoro Esperanto , the pseudonym under which L. L. Zamenhof published the first book detailing Esperanto, the Unua Libro, in 1887...
and anationalism
Anationalism
Anationalism is a term originating from the community of Esperanto speakers. It denotes a range of cosmopolitan political concepts that combine some or all of the following tendencies and ideas:*radical antinationalism,...
had importance just as naturism
Naturism
Naturism or nudism is a cultural and political movement practising, advocating and defending social nudity in private and in public. It may also refer to a lifestyle based on personal, family and/or social nudism....
and free love
Free love
The term free love has been used to describe a social movement that rejects marriage, which is seen as a form of social bondage. The Free Love movement’s initial goal was to separate the state from sexual matters such as marriage, birth control, and adultery...
currents. Later, Armand and Ryner themselves started writing in the Spanish invidualist press. Armand's concept of amorous camaraderie had an important role in motivating polyamory
Polyamory
Polyamory is the practice, desire, or acceptance of having more than one intimate relationship at a time with the knowledge and consent of everyone involved....
as realization of the individual.
Catalan historian Xavier Diez reports that the Spanish individualist anarchist press was widely read by members of anarcho-communist groups and by members of the anarcho-syndicalist trade union CNT
Confederación Nacional del Trabajo
The Confederación Nacional del Trabajo is a Spanish confederation of anarcho-syndicalist labor unions affiliated with the International Workers Association . When working with the latter group it is also known as CNT-AIT...
. There were also the cases of prominent individualist anarchists such as Federico Urales and Miguel Gimenez Igualada
Miguel Giménez Igualada
Miguel Giménez Igualada, , was a Spanish individualist anarchist writer also known as Miguel Ramos Giménez and Juan de Iniesta.- Life :In his youth, Igualada engaged in illegalist activities...
who were members of the CNT
Confederación Nacional del Trabajo
The Confederación Nacional del Trabajo is a Spanish confederation of anarcho-syndicalist labor unions affiliated with the International Workers Association . When working with the latter group it is also known as CNT-AIT...
and J. Elizalde who was a founding member and first secretary of the Iberian Anarchist Federation.
Spanish individualist anarchist Miguel Giménez Igualada
Miguel Giménez Igualada
Miguel Giménez Igualada, , was a Spanish individualist anarchist writer also known as Miguel Ramos Giménez and Juan de Iniesta.- Life :In his youth, Igualada engaged in illegalist activities...
wrote the lengthy theory book called Anarchism espousing his individualist anarchism. Between October, 1937 and February, 1938 he was editor of the individualist anarchist magazine Nosotros, in which many works of Han Ryner
Han Ryner
Jacques Élie Henri Ambroise Ner , also known by the pseudonym Han Ryner, was a French individualist anarchist philosopher and activist and a novelist...
and Émile Armand
Emile Armand
Emile Armand was the most influential French individualist anarchist at the beginning of the 20th century and also a dedicated free love/polyamory, intentional community, and pacifist/antimilitarist writer, propagandist and activist...
appeared. He also participated in the publishing of another individualist anarchist maganize Al Margen: Publicación quincenal individualista. In his youth he engaged in illegalist activities. His thought was deeply influenced by Max Stirner
Max Stirner
Johann Kaspar Schmidt , better known as Max Stirner , was a German philosopher, who ranks as one of the literary fathers of nihilism, existentialism, post-modernism and anarchism, especially of individualist anarchism...
, of which he was the main popularizer in Spain through his own writings. He published and wrote the preface to the fourth edition in Spanish of The Ego and Its Own
The Ego and Its Own
The Ego and Its Own is a philosophical work by German philosopher Max Stirner . This work was first published in 1845, although with a stated publication date of "1844" to confuse the Prussian censors.-Content:...
from 1900. He proposed the creation of a Union of Egoists
Union of egoists
Max Stirner's idea of the "Union of Egoists" , was first expounded in The Ego and Its Own. The Union is understood as a non-systematic association, which Stirner proposed in contradistinction to the state. The Union is understood as a relation between egoists which is continually renewed by all...
, to be a Federation of Individualist Anarchists in Spain, but did not succeed. In 1956 he published an extensive treatise on Stirner, dedicated to fellow individualist anarchist Emile Armand
Emile Armand
Emile Armand was the most influential French individualist anarchist at the beginning of the 20th century and also a dedicated free love/polyamory, intentional community, and pacifist/antimilitarist writer, propagandist and activist...
Afterwards he traveled and lived in Argentina, Uruguay and Mexico.
Federico Urales was an important individualist anarchist who edited La Revista Blanca
La Revista Blanca
La Revista Blanca was a Spanish individualist anarchist magazine of sociology and arts published in Madrid by Joan Montseny y Teresa Mañé from 1898 to 1905 and in Barcelona from June 1, 1923 till August 15, 1936....
. The individualist anarchism of Urales was influenced by Auguste Comte
Auguste Comte
Isidore Auguste Marie François Xavier Comte , better known as Auguste Comte , was a French philosopher, a founder of the discipline of sociology and of the doctrine of positivism...
and Charles Darwin
Charles Darwin
Charles Robert Darwin FRS was an English naturalist. He established that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestry, and proposed the scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process that he called natural selection.He published his theory...
. He saw science and reason as a defense against blind servitude to authority. He was critical of influential individualist thinkers such as Nietzsche and Stirner
Stirner
Stirner:* Max Stirner, pseudonym for Johann Caspar Schmidt , German philosopher and journalist* Karl Stirner , painter, illustrator and poet...
for promoting an asocial egoist individualism and instead promoted an individualism with solidarity seen as a way to guarantee social equality and harmony. He was highly critical of anarcho-syndicalism
Anarcho-syndicalism
Anarcho-syndicalism is a branch of anarchism which focuses on the labour movement. The word syndicalism comes from the French word syndicat which means trade union , from the Latin word syndicus which in turn comes from the Greek word σύνδικος which means caretaker of an issue...
, which he viewed as plagued by excessive bureaucracy, and thought that it tended towards reformism. Instead he favored small groups based on ideological alignement. He supported and participated in the establishment of the Iberian Anarchist Federation (FAI)
Federación Anarquista Ibérica
The Federación Anarquista Ibérica is a Spanish organization of anarchist militants active within affinity groups inside the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo trade union. It is often abbreviated as CNT-FAI because of the close relationship between the two organizations...
in 1927.
In 1956, on exile escaping from Franco´s dictatorship
Francisco Franco
Francisco Franco y Bahamonde was a Spanish general, dictator and head of state of Spain from October 1936 , and de facto regent of the nominally restored Kingdom of Spain from 1947 until his death in November, 1975...
Miguel Giménez Igualada
Miguel Giménez Igualada
Miguel Giménez Igualada, , was a Spanish individualist anarchist writer also known as Miguel Ramos Giménez and Juan de Iniesta.- Life :In his youth, Igualada engaged in illegalist activities...
published an extensive treatise on Stirner which he dedicated to fellow individualist anarchist Emile Armand
Emile Armand
Emile Armand was the most influential French individualist anarchist at the beginning of the 20th century and also a dedicated free love/polyamory, intentional community, and pacifist/antimilitarist writer, propagandist and activist...
On the subject of individualist anarchist theory, he publisheds Anarchism in 1968, during his exile in Mexico from Franco's dictatorship in Spain. He was present in the First Congress of the Mexican Anarchist Federation in 1945.
In 2000, in Spain Ateneo Libertario Ricardo Mella, Ateneo libertario Al Margen, Ateneu Enciclopèdic Popular, Ateneo Libertario de Sant Boi, Ateneu Llibertari Poble Sec y Fundació D'Estudis Llibertaris i Anarcosindicalistes republished Emile Armand's writings on Free Love and individualist anarchism in a compilation titled Individualist anarchism and Amorous camaraderie. Recently Catalan
Catalan people
The Catalans or Catalonians are the people from, or with origins in, Catalonia that form a historical nationality in Spain. The inhabitants of the adjacent portion of southern France are sometimes included in this definition...
historian Xavier Diez has dedicated extensive research on Spanish individualist anarchism as can be seen in his books El anarquismo individualista en España: 1923-1938 and Utopia sexual a la premsa anarquista de Catalunya. La revista Ética-Iniciales(1927–1937) (which deals with free love thought as present in the Spanish individualist anarchist magazine Iniciales
Iniciales
Iniciales was a Spanish individualist anarchist and naturist eclectic magazine which ran between 1929 and 1937. The first number appeared in Barcelona in February, 1929. Its predecessor was Barcelona's Ética...
).
Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
, the Scottish-German John Henry McKay became the most important propagandist for individualist anarchist ideas. He fused Stirnerist egoism with the positions of Benjamin Tucker and actually translated Tucker into German. Two semi-fictional writings of his own, Die Anarchisten
Die Anarchisten
Die Anarchisten: Kulturgemälde aus dem Ende des XIX Jahrhunderts is a book by anarchist writer John Henry Mackay published in German and English in 1891. It is the best known and most widely read of Mackay's works, and made him famous overnight...
and Der Freiheitsucher, contributed to individualist theory through an updating of egoist themes within a consideration of the anarchist movement. English translations of these works arrived in the United Kingdom and in individualist American circles led by Tucker. McKay is also known as an important European early activist for Gay
Gay
Gay is a word that refers to a homosexual person, especially a homosexual male. For homosexual women the specific term is "lesbian"....
rights.
Using the pseudonym
Pseudonym
A pseudonym is a name that a person assumes for a particular purpose and that differs from his or her original orthonym...
Sagitta, Mackay wrote a series of works for pederastic
Pederasty
Pederasty or paederasty is an intimate relationship between an adult and an adolescent boy outside his immediate family. The word pederasty derives from Greek "love of boys", a compound derived from "child, boy" and "lover".Historically, pederasty has existed as a variety of customs and...
emancipation
Emancipation
Emancipation means the act of setting an individual or social group free or making equal to citizens in a political society.Emancipation may also refer to:* Emancipation , a champion Australian thoroughbred racehorse foaled in 1979...
, titled Die Buecher der namenlosen Liebe (Books of the Nameless Love). This series was conceived in 1905 and completed in 1913 and included the Fenny Skaller, a story of a pederast. Under the same pseudonym he also published fiction, such as Holland (1924) and a pederastic novel of the Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
boy-bars, Der Puppenjunge (The Hustler) (1926).
Adolf Brand
Adolf Brand was a German writer, individualist anarchist and pioneering campaigner for the acceptance of male bisexuality and homosexuality.-Biography:...
(1874–1945) was a German
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
writer
Writer
A writer is a person who produces literature, such as novels, short stories, plays, screenplays, poetry, or other literary art. Skilled writers are able to use language to portray ideas and images....
, stirner
Stirner
Stirner:* Max Stirner, pseudonym for Johann Caspar Schmidt , German philosopher and journalist* Karl Stirner , painter, illustrator and poet...
ist anarchist
Anarchism
Anarchism is generally defined as the political philosophy which holds the state to be undesirable, unnecessary, and harmful, or alternatively as opposing authority in the conduct of human relations...
and pioneering campaigner for the acceptance of male bisexuality
Bisexuality
Bisexuality is sexual behavior or an orientation involving physical or romantic attraction to both males and females, especially with regard to men and women. It is one of the three main classifications of sexual orientation, along with a heterosexual and a homosexual orientation, all a part of the...
and homosexuality
Homosexuality
Homosexuality is romantic or sexual attraction or behavior between members of the same sex or gender. As a sexual orientation, homosexuality refers to "an enduring pattern of or disposition to experience sexual, affectional, or romantic attractions" primarily or exclusively to people of the same...
. Brand published a German homosexual periodical, Der Eigene
Der Eigene
Der Eigene was the first gay journal in the world, published from 1896 to 1932 by Adolf Brand in Berlin. Brand contributed many poems and articles himself...
in 1896. This was the first ongoing homosexual publication in the world. The name was taken from writings of egoist philosopher Max Stirner
Max Stirner
Johann Kaspar Schmidt , better known as Max Stirner , was a German philosopher, who ranks as one of the literary fathers of nihilism, existentialism, post-modernism and anarchism, especially of individualist anarchism...
, who had greatly influenced the young Brand, and refers to Stirner's concept of "self-ownership
Self-ownership
Self-ownership is the concept of property in one's own person, expressed as the moral or natural right of a person to be the exclusive controller of his own body and life. According to G...
" of the individual. Der Eigene
Der Eigene
Der Eigene was the first gay journal in the world, published from 1896 to 1932 by Adolf Brand in Berlin. Brand contributed many poems and articles himself...
concentrated on cultural and scholarly material, and may have had an average of around 1500 subscribers per issue during its lifetime, although the exact numbers are uncertain. Contributors included Erich Mühsam
Erich Mühsam
Erich Mühsam was a German-Jewish anarchist essayist, poet and playwright. He emerged at the end of World War I as one of the leading agitators for a federated Bavarian Soviet Republic....
, Kurt Hiller
Kurt Hiller
Kurt Hiller also known as Keith Lurr and Klirr was a German essayist of high stylistic originality and a political journalist from a Jewish family. A socialist, he was deeply influenced by Immanuel Kant and Arthur Schopenhauer, despising the philosophy of G. W. F...
, John Henry Mackay
John Henry Mackay
John Henry Mackay was an individualist anarchist, thinker and writer. Born in Scotland and raised in Germany, Mackay was the author of Die Anarchisten and Der Freiheitsucher . Mackay was published in the United States in his friend Benjamin Tucker's magazine, Liberty...
(under the pseudonym Sagitta) and artists Wilhelm von Gloeden
Wilhelm von Gloeden
Baron Wilhelm von Gloeden was a German photographer who worked mainly in Italy. He is mostly known for his pastoral nude studies of Sicilian boys, which usually featured props such as wreaths or amphoras suggesting a setting in the Greece or Italy of antiquity...
, Fidus
Fidus
Fidus was the pseudonym used by German illustrator, painter and publisher Hugo Reinhold Karl Johann Höppener . He was a symbolist artist, whose work directly influenced the psychedelic style of graphic design of the late 1960s.Born the son of a confectioner in Lübeck, Höppener demonstrated...
and Sascha Schneider
Sascha Schneider
Rudolph Karl Alexander Schneider, commonly known as Sascha Schneider , was a German painter and sculptor.-Biography :...
. Brand contributed many poems and articles himself. Benjamin Tucker
Benjamin Tucker
Benjamin Ricketson Tucker was a proponent of American individualist anarchism in the 19th century, and editor and publisher of the individualist anarchist periodical Liberty.-Summary:Tucker says that he became an anarchist at the age of 18...
followed this journal from the United States.
Der Einzige
Der Einzige
Der Einzige is the title of a German individualist anarchist magazine which appeared in 1919, as a weekly, then sporadically until 1925. It was edited by Anselm Ruest , and co-edited, in the first year, by Mynona , who was his uncle. Its title was adopted from the book Der Einzige und sein Eigentum...
was a German individualist anarchist magazine. It appeared in 1919, as a weekly, then sporadically until 1925 and was edited by cousins Anselm Ruest (pseud. for Ernst Samuel) and Mynona (pseud. for Salomo Friedlaender). Its title was adopted from the book Der Einzige und sein Eigentum (engl. trans. The Ego and Its Own
The Ego and Its Own
The Ego and Its Own is a philosophical work by German philosopher Max Stirner . This work was first published in 1845, although with a stated publication date of "1844" to confuse the Prussian censors.-Content:...
) by Max Stirner
Max Stirner
Johann Kaspar Schmidt , better known as Max Stirner , was a German philosopher, who ranks as one of the literary fathers of nihilism, existentialism, post-modernism and anarchism, especially of individualist anarchism...
. Another influence was the thought of German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was a 19th-century German philosopher, poet, composer and classical philologist...
. The publication was connected to the local expressionist
Expressionism
Expressionism was a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Germany at the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it radically for emotional effect in order to evoke moods or ideas...
artistic current and the transition from it towards dada
Dada
Dada or Dadaism is a cultural movement that began in Zurich, Switzerland, during World War I and peaked from 1916 to 1922. The movement primarily involved visual arts, literature—poetry, art manifestoes, art theory—theatre, and graphic design, and concentrated its anti-war politics through a...
.
Great Britain and Ireland
English people
The English are a nation and ethnic group native to England, who speak English. The English identity is of early mediaeval origin, when they were known in Old English as the Anglecynn. England is now a country of the United Kingdom, and the majority of English people in England are British Citizens...
enlightenment
Age of Enlightenment
The Age of Enlightenment was an elite cultural movement of intellectuals in 18th century Europe that sought to mobilize the power of reason in order to reform society and advance knowledge. It promoted intellectual interchange and opposed intolerance and abuses in church and state...
political theorist William Godwin
William Godwin
William Godwin was an English journalist, political philosopher and novelist. He is considered one of the first exponents of utilitarianism, and the first modern proponent of anarchism...
was an important influence as mentioned before. The Irish anarchist
Anarchism
Anarchism is generally defined as the political philosophy which holds the state to be undesirable, unnecessary, and harmful, or alternatively as opposing authority in the conduct of human relations...
writer of the Decadent movement
Decadent movement
The Decadent movement was a late 19th century artistic and literary movement of Western Europe. It flourished in France, but also had devotees in England and throughout Europe, as well as in the United States.-Overview:...
Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde
Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was an Irish writer and poet. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s...
influenced individualist anarchists such as Renzo Novatore
Renzo Novatore
- Life :Abele Ricieri Ferrari was born in Arcola, Liguria, Italy on May 12, 1890 in a poor peasant family. He did not adjust to school discipline and quit in the first year never coming back after that. While he worked in his father's farm, he self educated himself with an emphasis in poetry and...
and gained the admiration of Benjamin Tucker
Benjamin Tucker
Benjamin Ricketson Tucker was a proponent of American individualist anarchism in the 19th century, and editor and publisher of the individualist anarchist periodical Liberty.-Summary:Tucker says that he became an anarchist at the age of 18...
. In his important essay The Soul of Man under Socialism
The Soul of Man under Socialism
"The Soul of Man under Socialism" is an 1891 essay by Oscar Wilde in which he expounds an anarchist worldview. The creation of "The Soul of Man" followed Wilde's conversion to anarchist philosophy, following his reading of the works of Peter Kropotkin....
from 1891 he defended socialism as the way to guarantee individualism and so he saw that "With the abolition of private property, then, we shall have true, beautiful, healthy Individualism. Nobody will waste his life in accumulating things, and the symbols for things. One will live. To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all." For anarchist historian George Woodcock
George Woodcock
George Woodcock was a Canadian writer of political biography and history, an anarchist thinker, an essayist and literary critic. He was also a poet, and published several volumes of travel writing. He founded in 1959 the journal Canadian Literature, the first academic journal specifically...
"Wilde's aim in The Soul of Man under Socialism
The Soul of Man under Socialism
"The Soul of Man under Socialism" is an 1891 essay by Oscar Wilde in which he expounds an anarchist worldview. The creation of "The Soul of Man" followed Wilde's conversion to anarchist philosophy, following his reading of the works of Peter Kropotkin....
is to seek the society most favorable to the artist...for Wilde art is the supreme end, containing within itself enlightenment and regeneration, to which all else in society must be subordinated...Wilde represents the anarchist as aesthete." Woodocock finds that "The most ambitious contribution to literary anarchism during the 1890's was undoubtedly Oscar Wilde The Soul of Man under Socialism
The Soul of Man under Socialism
"The Soul of Man under Socialism" is an 1891 essay by Oscar Wilde in which he expounds an anarchist worldview. The creation of "The Soul of Man" followed Wilde's conversion to anarchist philosophy, following his reading of the works of Peter Kropotkin....
" and finds that it is influenced mainly by the thought of William Godwin
William Godwin
William Godwin was an English journalist, political philosopher and novelist. He is considered one of the first exponents of utilitarianism, and the first modern proponent of anarchism...
.
In the late 19th century in the United Kingdom, there existed individualist anarchists such as Wordsworth Donisthorpe
Wordsworth Donisthorpe
Wordsworth Donisthorpe was an English individualist anarchist and inventor, pioneer of cinematography and chess enthusiast. His father was George E...
, Joseph Hiam Levy, Joseph Greevz Fisher, John Badcock, Jr., Albert Tarn, and Henry Seymour who were close to the United States group around Benjamin Tucker
Benjamin Tucker
Benjamin Ricketson Tucker was a proponent of American individualist anarchism in the 19th century, and editor and publisher of the individualist anarchist periodical Liberty.-Summary:Tucker says that he became an anarchist at the age of 18...
´s magazine Liberty. In the mid 1880's Seymour published a journal called The Anarchist. and also later took a special interest in free love
Free love
The term free love has been used to describe a social movement that rejects marriage, which is seen as a form of social bondage. The Free Love movement’s initial goal was to separate the state from sexual matters such as marriage, birth control, and adultery...
as he participated in the journal The Adult: A Journal for the Advancement of Freedom in Sexual Relationships. "The Serpent, issued from London...the most prominent English-language egoist journal, was published from 1898 to 1900 with the subtitle 'A Journal of Egoistic Philosophy and Sociology'". Henry Meulen
Henry Meulen
Henry Meulen was a British individualist anarchist and economist. He was an editor of the periodical called The Individualist, published by the Personal Rights Association and actively promoted the philosophy of free banking...
was another British anarchist, he was notable for his support of free banking
Free banking
Free banking refers to a monetary arrangement in which banks are subject to no special regulations beyond those applicable to most enterprises, and in which they also are free to issue their own paper currency...
.
In the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
, Herbert Read
Herbert Read
Sir Herbert Edward Read, DSO, MC was an English anarchist, poet, and critic of literature and art. He was one of the earliest English writers to take notice of existentialism, and was strongly influenced by proto-existentialist thinker Max Stirner....
was influenced highly by egoism
Egoist anarchism
Egoist anarchism is a school of anarchist thought that originated in the philosophy of Max Stirner, a nineteenth century Hegelian philosopher whose "name appears with familiar regularity in historically orientated surveys of anarchist thought as one of the earliest and best-known exponents of...
as he later approached existentialism
Existentialism
Existentialism is a term applied to a school of 19th- and 20th-century philosophers who, despite profound doctrinal differences, shared the belief that philosophical thinking begins with the human subject—not merely the thinking subject, but the acting, feeling, living human individual...
(see existentialist anarchism
Existentialist anarchism
Some observers believe existentialism forms a philosophical ground for anarchism. Anarchist historian Peter Marshall claims that "there is a close link between the existentialists' stress on the individual, free choice, and moral responsibility and the main tenets of anarchism."-Background:-Max...
). Albert Camus
Albert Camus
Albert Camus was a French author, journalist, and key philosopher of the 20th century. In 1949, Camus founded the Group for International Liaisons within the Revolutionary Union Movement, which was opposed to some tendencies of the Surrealist movement of André Breton.Camus was awarded the 1957...
devoted a section of The Rebel to Stirner. "Although throughout his book Camus is concerned to present "the rebel" as a preferred alternative to "the revolutionary" he nowhere acknowledges that this distinction is taken from the one that Stirner makes between "the revolutionary" and "the insurrectionist
Insurrectionary anarchism
Insurrectionary anarchism is a revolutionary theory, practice and tendency within the anarchist movement which emphasizes the theme of insurrection within anarchist practice. It is critical of formal organizations such as labor unions and federations that are based on a political programme and...
". Sidney Parker
Sidney Parker (anarchist)
Sidney Parker, also known as S. E. Parker, is a British egoist individualist anarchist who wrote articles and edited anarchist journals from 1963-1993.- External links :...
is a British
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
egoist individualist anarchist who wrote articles and edited anarchist journals from 1963 to 1993 such as Minus One, Egoist, and Ego.
In the hybrid of post-structuralism
Post-structuralism
Post-structuralism is a label formulated by American academics to denote the heterogeneous works of a series of French intellectuals who came to international prominence in the 1960s and '70s...
and anarchism called post-anarchism
Post-anarchism
Post-anarchism or postanarchism is the term used to represent anarchist philosophies developed since the 1980s using post-structuralist and postmodernist approaches. Some prefer to use the term post-structuralist anarchism, so as not to suggest having moved "past" anarchism...
the British
British people
The British are citizens of the United Kingdom, of the Isle of Man, any of the Channel Islands, or of any of the British overseas territories, and their descendants...
Saul Newman
Saul Newman
Saul Newman is a political theorist and central post-anarchist thinker.Newman coined the term "post-anarchism" as a general term for political philosophies filtering 19th century anarchism through a post-structuralist lens, and later popularized it through his 2001 book From Bakunin to Lacan...
has written a lot on Stirner and his similarities to post-structuralism. He writes:
Max Stirner's impact on contemporary political theory is often neglected. However in Stirner's political thinking there can be found a surprising convergence with poststructuralist theory, particularly with regard to the function of power. Andrew Koch, for instance, sees Stirner as a thinker who transcends the Hegelian tradition he is usually placed in, arguing that his work is a precursor poststructuralist ideas about the foundations of knowledge and truth.
Newman has published several essays on Stirner. "War on the State: Stirner and Deleuze's Anarchism" and "Empiricism, pluralism, and politics in Deleuze and Stirner" discusses what he sees are similarities between Stirner's thought and that of Gilles Deleuze
Gilles Deleuze
Gilles Deleuze , was a French philosopher who, from the early 1960s until his death, wrote influentially on philosophy, literature, film, and fine art. His most popular works were the two volumes of Capitalism and Schizophrenia: Anti-Oedipus and A Thousand Plateaus , both co-written with Félix...
. In "Spectres of Stirner: a Contemporary Critique of Ideology" he discusses the conception of ideology in Stirner. In "Stirner and Foucault: Toward a Post-Kantian Freedom" similarities between Stirner and Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault , born Paul-Michel Foucault , was a French philosopher, social theorist and historian of ideas...
. Also he wrote "Politics of the ego: Stirner's critique of liberalism".
Russia
Anarchism in Russia
Russian anarchism is anarchism in Russia or among Russians. The three categories of Russian anarchism were anarchist communism, anarcho-syndicalism and anarchist individualism...
, along with the more prominent anarchist communism
Anarchist communism
Anarchist communism is a theory of anarchism which advocates the abolition of the state, markets, money, private property, and capitalism in favor of common ownership of the means of production, direct democracy and a horizontal network of voluntary associations and workers' councils with...
and anarcho-syndicalism
Anarcho-syndicalism
Anarcho-syndicalism is a branch of anarchism which focuses on the labour movement. The word syndicalism comes from the French word syndicat which means trade union , from the Latin word syndicus which in turn comes from the Greek word σύνδικος which means caretaker of an issue...
. The ranks of the Russian individualist anarchists were predominantly drawn from the intelligentsia
Intelligentsia
The intelligentsia is a social class of people engaged in complex, mental and creative labor directed to the development and dissemination of culture, encompassing intellectuals and social groups close to them...
and the working class
Working class
Working class is a term used in the social sciences and in ordinary conversation to describe those employed in lower tier jobs , often extending to those in unemployment or otherwise possessing below-average incomes...
. For anarchist historian Paul Avrich
Paul Avrich
Paul Avrich was a professor and historian. He taught at Queens College, City University of New York, for most of his life and was vital in preserving the history of the anarchist movement in Russia and the United States....
"The two leading exponents of individualist anarchism, both based in Moscow
Moscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
, were Aleksei Alekseevich Borovoi
Alexei Borovoi
Alexei Alexeyevich Borovoi was a Russian individualist anarchist writer, orator, teacher and propagandist.-Biography:Borovoi was born on October 30, 1875 in Moscow. Starting from 1906, Borovoi lectured on anarchism in different Russian cities....
and Lev Chernyi
Lev Chernyi
Pável Dimítrievich Turchanínov , known by the pseudonym Lev Chernyi , was a Russian anarchist theorist, activist and poet, and a leading figure of the Third Russian Revolution. His early thought was individualist, rejecting anarcho-communism as a threat to individual liberty...
(Pavel Dmitrievich Turchaninov). From Nietzsche, they inherited the desire for a complete overturn of all values accepted by bourgeois societypolitical, moral, and cultural. Furthermore, strongly influenced by Max Stirner
Max Stirner
Johann Kaspar Schmidt , better known as Max Stirner , was a German philosopher, who ranks as one of the literary fathers of nihilism, existentialism, post-modernism and anarchism, especially of individualist anarchism...
and Benjamin Tucker
Benjamin Tucker
Benjamin Ricketson Tucker was a proponent of American individualist anarchism in the 19th century, and editor and publisher of the individualist anarchist periodical Liberty.-Summary:Tucker says that he became an anarchist at the age of 18...
, the German and American theorists of individualist anarchism, they demanded the total liberation of the human personality from the fetters of organized society."
Some Russian individualists anarchists "found the ultimate expression of their social alienation
Social alienation
The term social alienation has many discipline-specific uses; Roberts notes how even within the social sciences, it “is used to refer both to a personal psychological state and to a type of social relationship”...
in violence and crime, others attached themselves to avant-garde literary and artistic circles, but the majority remained "philosophical" anarchists
Philosophical anarchism
Philosophical anarchism is an anarchist school of thought which contends that the state lacks moral legitimacy while not supporting violence to eliminate it...
who conducted animated parlor discussions and elaborated their individualist theories in ponderous journals and books."
Lev Chernyi
Lev Chernyi
Pável Dimítrievich Turchanínov , known by the pseudonym Lev Chernyi , was a Russian anarchist theorist, activist and poet, and a leading figure of the Third Russian Revolution. His early thought was individualist, rejecting anarcho-communism as a threat to individual liberty...
was an important individualist anarchist involved in resistance against the rise to power of the Bolchevik Party. He adhered mainly to Stirner and the ideas of Benjamin Tucker
Benjamin Tucker
Benjamin Ricketson Tucker was a proponent of American individualist anarchism in the 19th century, and editor and publisher of the individualist anarchist periodical Liberty.-Summary:Tucker says that he became an anarchist at the age of 18...
. In 1907, he published a book entitled Associational Anarchism, in which he advocated the "free association of independent individuals.". On his return from Siberia in 1917 he enjoyed great popularity among Moscow workers as a lecturer. Chernyi was also Secretary of the Moscow Federation of Anarchist Groups, which was formed in March 1917. He was an advocate "for the seizure of private homes", which was an activity seen by the anarchists after the October revolution as direct expropriation on the bourgoise. He died after being accused of participation in an episode in which this group bombed the headquarters of the Moscow Committee of the Communist Party. Although most likely not being really involved in the bombing, he might have died of torture.
Chernyi advocated a Nietzschean overthrow of the values
Transvaluation of values
The revaluation of all values or the transvaluation of all values is a concept from the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche.Elaborating the concept in The Antichrist, Nietzsche asserts that Christianity, not merely as a religion but also as the predominant moral system of the Western world, in fact...
of bourgeois Russian society, and rejected the voluntary communes of anarcho-communist Peter Kropotkin
Peter Kropotkin
Prince Pyotr Alexeyevich Kropotkin was a Russian zoologist, evolutionary theorist, philosopher, economist, geographer, author and one of the world's foremost anarcho-communists. Kropotkin advocated a communist society free from central government and based on voluntary associations between...
as a threat to the freedom of the individual. Scholars including Avrich and Allan Antliff have interpreted this vision of society to have been greatly influenced by the individualist anarchists Max Stirner
Max Stirner
Johann Kaspar Schmidt , better known as Max Stirner , was a German philosopher, who ranks as one of the literary fathers of nihilism, existentialism, post-modernism and anarchism, especially of individualist anarchism...
, and Benjamin Tucker
Benjamin Tucker
Benjamin Ricketson Tucker was a proponent of American individualist anarchism in the 19th century, and editor and publisher of the individualist anarchist periodical Liberty.-Summary:Tucker says that he became an anarchist at the age of 18...
. Subsequent to the book's publication, Chernyi was imprisoned in Siberia
Siberia
Siberia is an extensive region constituting almost all of Northern Asia. Comprising the central and eastern portion of the Russian Federation, it was part of the Soviet Union from its beginning, as its predecessor states, the Tsardom of Russia and the Russian Empire, conquered it during the 16th...
under the Russian Czarist regime for his revolutionary activities.
On the other hand Aleksei Borovoi
Alexei Borovoi
Alexei Alexeyevich Borovoi was a Russian individualist anarchist writer, orator, teacher and propagandist.-Biography:Borovoi was born on October 30, 1875 in Moscow. Starting from 1906, Borovoi lectured on anarchism in different Russian cities....
(1876?-1936)., was a professor of philosophy at Moscow University, "a gifted orator and the author of numerous books, pamphlets, and articles which attempted to reconcile individualist anarchism with the doctrines of syndicallism". He wrote among other theoretical works, Anarkhizm in 1918 just after the October revolution and Anarchism and Law. For him "the chief importance is given not to Anarchism as the aim but to Anarchy
Anarchy
Anarchy , has more than one colloquial definition. In the United States, the term "anarchy" typically is meant to refer to a society which lacks publicly recognized government or violently enforced political authority...
as the continuous quest for the aim". He manifests there that "No social ideal, from the point of view of anarchism, could be referred to as absolute in a sense that supposes it’s the crown of human wisdom, the end of social and ethical quest of man."
Latin American individualist anarchism
Argentine anarchist historian Angel CappellettiAngel Cappelletti
Ángel Cappelletti was a philosopher and university professor. He was born in Rosario. He studied philosophy at the Universidad Nacional de Buenos Aires where he also got his PhD degree in 1954. He moved to Venezuela in 1968 and began teaching at the Simon Bolivar University until his retirement in...
reports that in Argentina "Among the workers that came from Europe in the 2 first decades of the century, there was curiously some stirnerian individualists influenced by the philosophy of Nietzsche, that saw syndicalism as a potential enemy of anarchist ideology. They established...affinity groups that in 1912 came to, according to Max Nettlau
Max Nettlau
Max Heinrich Hermann Reinhardt Nettlau was a German anarchist and historian. Although born in Neuwaldegg and raised in Vienna he retained his Prussian nationality throughout his life. A student of the Welsh language he spent time in London where he joined the Socialist League where he met...
, to the number of 20. In 1911 there appeared, in Colón
Colón, Buenos Aires
Colón is a town in Buenos Aires Province, Argentina. It is the head town of the Colón Partido.The town is located in an agricultural area, the main areas of employment are in agriculture, the production of agricultural machinery and textiles....
, the periodical El Único, that defined itself as ´Publicación individualista´".
Vicente Rojas Lizcano whose pseudonym was Biófilo Panclasta
Biofilo Panclasta
Vicente Rojas Lizcano , know by his pseudonym Biófilo Panclasta, was an individualist anarchist writer and activist. In 1904 he begins using the name Biofilo Panclasta. "Biofilo" in Spanish stands for "lover of life" and "Panclasta" for "enemy of all"...
, was a Colombian
Colombian people
Colombian people are from a multiethnic Spanish speaking nation in South America called Colombia. Colombians are predominantly Roman Catholic and are a mixture of Europeans, Africans, and Amerindians.-Demography:...
individualist anarchist writer and activist. In 1904 he begins using the name Biofilo Panclasta. "Biofilo" in Spanish stands for "lover of life" and "Panclasta" for "enemy of all". He visited more than fifty countries propagandizing for anarchism which in his case was highly influenced by the thought of Max Stirner
Max Stirner
Johann Kaspar Schmidt , better known as Max Stirner , was a German philosopher, who ranks as one of the literary fathers of nihilism, existentialism, post-modernism and anarchism, especially of individualist anarchism...
and Friedrich Nietszche. Among his written works there are Siete años enterrado vivo en una de las mazmorras de Gomezuela: Horripilante relato de un resucitado(1932) and Mis prisiones, mis destierros y mi vida (1929) which talk about his many adventures while living his life as an adventurer, activist and vagabond
Vagabond (person)
A vagabond is a drifter and an itinerant wanderer who roams wherever they please, following the whim of the moment. Vagabonds may lack residence, a job, and even citizenship....
, as well as his thought and the many times he was imprisoned in different countries.
Maria Lacerda de Moura
Maria Lacerda de Moura was a Brazilian teacher, journalist, writer, anarcha-feminist, and individualist anarchist.- Life :...
was a Brazil
Brazil
Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...
ian teacher
Teacher
A teacher or schoolteacher is a person who provides education for pupils and students . The role of teacher is often formal and ongoing, carried out at a school or other place of formal education. In many countries, a person who wishes to become a teacher must first obtain specified professional...
, journalist
Journalist
A journalist collects and distributes news and other information. A journalist's work is referred to as journalism.A reporter is a type of journalist who researchs, writes, and reports on information to be presented in mass media, including print media , electronic media , and digital media A...
, anarcha-feminist, and individualist anarchist. Her ideas regarding education were largely influenced by Francisco Ferrer. She later moved to São Paulo
São Paulo
São Paulo is the largest city in Brazil, the largest city in the southern hemisphere and South America, and the world's seventh largest city by population. The metropolis is anchor to the São Paulo metropolitan area, ranked as the second-most populous metropolitan area in the Americas and among...
and became involved in journalism for the anarchist and labor press. There she also lectured on topics including education, women's rights
Women's rights
Women's rights are entitlements and freedoms claimed for women and girls of all ages in many societies.In some places these rights are institutionalized or supported by law, local custom, and behaviour, whereas in others they may be ignored or suppressed...
, free love
Free love
The term free love has been used to describe a social movement that rejects marriage, which is seen as a form of social bondage. The Free Love movement’s initial goal was to separate the state from sexual matters such as marriage, birth control, and adultery...
, and antimilitarism
Antimilitarism
Antimilitarism is a doctrine commonly found in the anarchist and, more globally, in the socialist movement, which may both be characterized as internationalist movements. It relies heavily on a critical theory of nationalism and imperialism, and was an explicit goal of the First and Second...
. Her writings and essays garnered her attention not only in Brazil, but also in Argentina
Argentina
Argentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...
and Uruguay
Uruguay
Uruguay ,officially the Oriental Republic of Uruguay,sometimes the Eastern Republic of Uruguay; ) is a country in the southeastern part of South America. It is home to some 3.5 million people, of whom 1.8 million live in the capital Montevideo and its metropolitan area...
. In February 1923, she launched Renascença, a periodical linked with the anarchist, progressive
Progressivism
Progressivism is an umbrella term for a political ideology advocating or favoring social, political, and economic reform or changes. Progressivism is often viewed by some conservatives, constitutionalists, and libertarians to be in opposition to conservative or reactionary ideologies.The...
, and freethinking
Freethought
Freethought is a philosophical viewpoint that holds that opinions should be formed on the basis of science, logic, and reason, and should not be influenced by authority, tradition, or other dogmas...
circles of the period. Her thought was mainly influenced by individualist anarchists such as Han Ryner
Han Ryner
Jacques Élie Henri Ambroise Ner , also known by the pseudonym Han Ryner, was a French individualist anarchist philosopher and activist and a novelist...
and Emile Armand
Emile Armand
Emile Armand was the most influential French individualist anarchist at the beginning of the 20th century and also a dedicated free love/polyamory, intentional community, and pacifist/antimilitarist writer, propagandist and activist...
. She maintained contact with Spanish individualist anarchist circles.
During the 1990s in Argentina, there appeared a stirner
Stirner
Stirner:* Max Stirner, pseudonym for Johann Caspar Schmidt , German philosopher and journalist* Karl Stirner , painter, illustrator and poet...
ist publication called El Único: publicacion periódica de pensamiento individualista.
Criticisms
Prior to abandoning anarchism, libertarian socialist Murray Bookchin
Murray Bookchin
Murray Bookchin was an American libertarian socialist author, orator, and philosopher. A pioneer in the ecology movement, Bookchin was the founder of the social ecology movement within anarchist, libertarian socialist and ecological thought. He was the author of two dozen books on politics,...
criticized individualist anarchism for its opposition to democracy
Democracy
Democracy is generally defined as a form of government in which all adult citizens have an equal say in the decisions that affect their lives. Ideally, this includes equal participation in the proposal, development and passage of legislation into law...
and its embrace of "lifestylism
Lifestyle anarchism
Lifestyle anarchism is a term derived from Murray Bookchin's polemical essay "Social Anarchism or Lifestyle Anarchism: An Unbridgeable Chasm." He used it to criticize those anarchists who dress the look or live in certain ways, but who don't really act on the basic tenets of anarchism at the...
" at the expense of class struggle
Class struggle
Class struggle is the active expression of a class conflict looked at from any kind of socialist perspective. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels wrote "The [written] history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggle"....
. Bookchin claimed that individualist anarchism supports only negative liberty
Negative liberty
Negative liberty is defined as freedom from interference by other people, and is set in contrast to positive liberty, which is defined as an individual's freedom from inhibitions of the social structure within the society such as classism, sexism or racism and is primarily concerned with the...
and rejects the idea of positive liberty
Positive liberty
Positive liberty is defined as having the power and resources to fulfill one's own potential ; as opposed to negative liberty, which is freedom from external restraint...
. Anarcho-communist Albert Meltzer
Albert Meltzer
Albert Meltzer was an anarcho-communist activist and writer.-Early life:Meltzer was born in London, and attracted to anarchism at the age of fifteen as a direct result of taking boxing lessons . The Labour MP for Edmonton, Edith Summerskill was virulently anti-boxing and his school governors at...
proposed that individualist anarchism differs radically from revolutionary anarchism, and that it "is sometimes too readily conceded 'that this is, after all, anarchism'." He claimed that Benjamin Tucker
Benjamin Tucker
Benjamin Ricketson Tucker was a proponent of American individualist anarchism in the 19th century, and editor and publisher of the individualist anarchist periodical Liberty.-Summary:Tucker says that he became an anarchist at the age of 18...
's acceptance of the use of a private police force (including to break up violent strikes to protect the "employer's 'freedom'") is contradictory to the definition of anarchism as "no government." Meltzer opposed anarcho-capitalism
Anarcho-capitalism
Anarcho-capitalism is a libertarian and individualist anarchist political philosophy that advocates the elimination of the state in favour of individual sovereignty in a free market...
for similar reasons, arguing that since it supports "private armies", it actually supports a "limited State." He contends that it "is only possible to conceive of Anarchism which is free, communistic and offering no economic necessity for repression of countering it."
According to Gareth Griffith, George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw was an Irish playwright and a co-founder of the London School of Economics. Although his first profitable writing was music and literary criticism, in which capacity he wrote many highly articulate pieces of journalism, his main talent was for drama, and he wrote more than 60...
initially had flirtations with individualist anarchism before coming to the conclusion that it was "the negation of socialism, and is, in fact, unsocialism carried as near to its logical conclusion as any sane man dare carry it." Shaw's argument was that even if wealth was initially distributed equally, the degree of laissez-faire
Laissez-faire
In economics, laissez-faire describes an environment in which transactions between private parties are free from state intervention, including restrictive regulations, taxes, tariffs and enforced monopolies....
advocated by Tucker would result in the distribution of wealth becoming unequal because it would permit private appropriation and accumulation. According to academic Carlotta Anderson, American individualist anarchists accept that free competition results in unequal wealth distribution, but they "do not see that as an injustice." Tucker explained, "If I go through life free and rich, I shall not cry because my neighbor, equally free, is richer. Liberty will ultimately make all men rich; it will not make all men equally rich. Authority may (and may not) make all men equally rich in purse; it certainly will make them equally poor in all that makes life best worth living."
There is also criticism between contemporary individualist anarchism currents. American mutualist Joe Peacott
Joe Peacott
Joe Peacott is an individualist anarchist writer based in the United States. He is a leading figure at BAD Press, a publishing outlet for individualist anarchist philosophy. His work on economics and sociology has been published by the Libertarian Alliance and referenced favourably by leading...
has criticized anarcho-capitalists for trying to hegemonize the label "individualist anarchism", as this makes it appear as if all individualist anarchists are pro-capitalism. He has stated that "some individualists, both past and present, agree with the communist anarchists that present-day capitalism is based on economic coercion, not on voluntary contract. Rent and interest are mainstays of modern capitalism, and are protected and enforced by the state. Without these two unjust institutions, capitalism could not exist." In this way he adheres to mutualist anti-capitalism
Anti-capitalism
Anti-capitalism describes a wide variety of movements, ideas, and attitudes which oppose capitalism. Anti-capitalists, in the strict sense of the word, are those who wish to completely replace capitalism with another system....
.
See also
- Individualist anarchism in EuropeIndividualist anarchism in EuropeIndividualist anarchism refers to several traditions of thought within the anarchist movement that emphasize the individual and his or her will over external determinants such as groups, society, traditions, and ideological systems.European individualist anarchism proceeded from the roots laid by...
- Individualist anarchism in FranceIndividualist anarchism in FranceIndividualist anarchism refers to several traditions of thought within the anarchist movement that emphasize the individual and his or her will over external determinants such as groups, society, traditions, and ideological systems....
- Existentialist anarchismExistentialist anarchismSome observers believe existentialism forms a philosophical ground for anarchism. Anarchist historian Peter Marshall claims that "there is a close link between the existentialists' stress on the individual, free choice, and moral responsibility and the main tenets of anarchism."-Background:-Max...
Footnotes
α The term "individualist anarchism" is often used as a classificatory term, but in very different ways. Some sources, such as An Anarchist FAQAn Anarchist FAQ
"An Anarchist FAQ" is an FAQ written by an international work group of social anarchists connected through the internet. It documents anarchist theory and ideas while arguing that social anarchism is a better form of anarchism than individualist anarchism, which it critiques. It also explores other...
use the classification "social anarchism
Social anarchism
Social anarchism is a term originally used in 1971 by Giovanni Baldelli as the title of his book where he discusses the organization of an ethical society from an anarchist point of view...
/ individualist anarchism". Some see individualist anarchism as distinctly non-socialist, and use the classification "socialist anarchism / individualist anarchism" accordingly. Other classifications include "mutualist/communal" anarchism.
β Michael Freeden identifies four broad type
Personality type
Personality type refers to the psychological classification of different types of individuals. Personality types are sometimes distinguished from personality traits, with the latter embodying a smaller grouping of behavioral tendencies. Types are sometimes said to involve qualitative differences...
s of individualist anarchism. He says the first is the type associated with William Godwin
William Godwin
William Godwin was an English journalist, political philosopher and novelist. He is considered one of the first exponents of utilitarianism, and the first modern proponent of anarchism...
that advocates self-government with a "progressive rationalism
Rationalism
In epistemology and in its modern sense, rationalism is "any view appealing to reason as a source of knowledge or justification" . In more technical terms, it is a method or a theory "in which the criterion of the truth is not sensory but intellectual and deductive"...
that included benevolence to others." The second type is the amoral self-serving rationality of Egoism
Egotism
Egotism is "characterized by an exaggerated estimate of one's intellect, ability, importance, appearance, wit, or other valued personal characteristics" – the drive to maintain and enhance favorable views of oneself....
, as most associated with Max Stirner
Max Stirner
Johann Kaspar Schmidt , better known as Max Stirner , was a German philosopher, who ranks as one of the literary fathers of nihilism, existentialism, post-modernism and anarchism, especially of individualist anarchism...
. The third type is "found in Herbert Spencer
Herbert Spencer
Herbert Spencer was an English philosopher, biologist, sociologist, and prominent classical liberal political theorist of the Victorian era....
's early predictions, and in that of some of his disciples such as Donisthorpe
Wordsworth Donisthorpe
Wordsworth Donisthorpe was an English individualist anarchist and inventor, pioneer of cinematography and chess enthusiast. His father was George E...
, foreseeing the redundancy of the state in the source of social evolution." The fourth type retains a moderated form of egoism and accounts for social cooperation through the advocacy of market relationships.
γSee, for example, the Winter 2006 issue of the Journal of Libertarian Studies, dedicated to reviews of Kevin Carson's Studies in Mutualist Political Economy. Mutualists compose one bloc, along with agorists and geo-libertarians, in the recently formed Alliance of the Libertarian Left.
δThough this term is non-standard usage – by "left", agorists mean "left" in the general sense used by left-libertarians
Left-libertarianism
Left-libertarianism names several related but distinct approaches to politics, society, culture, and political and social theory, which stress equally both individual freedom and social justice.-Schools of thought:...
, as defined by Roderick T. Long, as "... an integration, or I'd argue, a reintegration of libertarianism with concerns that are traditionally thought of as being concerns of the left. That includes concerns for worker empowerment, worry about plutocracy, concerns about feminism and various kinds of social equality."
εKonkin wrote the article "Copywrongs" in opposition to the concept and Schulman countered SEK3's arguments in "Informational Property: Logorights."
ζ Individualist anarchism is also known by the terms "anarchist individualism", "anarcho-individualism", "individualistic anarchism", "libertarian anarchism", "anarcho-libertarianism", "anarchist libertarianism" and "anarchistic libertarianism".
External links
- Individualist anarchism at Government and Politics Research Guide
- The Bonnot Gang: The Story of the French Illegalists by Richard Parry
- A.3.1 What are the differences between individualist and social anarchists?, An Anarchist FAQAn Anarchist FAQ"An Anarchist FAQ" is an FAQ written by an international work group of social anarchists connected through the internet. It documents anarchist theory and ideas while arguing that social anarchism is a better form of anarchism than individualist anarchism, which it critiques. It also explores other...
- I-studies: a journal of Stirner studies and personalist philosophy
- Les en-dehors:Anarchistes individualistes et illégalistes à la « Belle époque » by Anne Steiner. L’Echappée. 2008 in French
- Internet Archive of Individualist Anarchism
- Mutualist.org. Free market anti-capitalism
- Voluntary non-submission. Spanish individualist anarchism during dictatorship and the second republic (1923-1938) by Xavier Diez PDF in Spanish
- "An Introduction to Individualist Anarchism" by Andrew Rogers
- L'En Dehors current French individualist anarchist magazine and website
- Archives of individualist and egoist texts at the Anarchist Library
- William D. P. Bliss, Historical Sketch of Individualist Anarchism (1897) - With further references