Editing Talk:Anarcho-Individualism

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== Individualist Anarchism and Capitalism ==
I feel as if the relationship between ind-anarchism and capitalism (which I refer here to mean free markets, voluntary wage labor, and private property) is a bit more varied than what is stated here.
Stephen Pearl Andrews in "The Science of Society", says the following:
"We come, finally, to the consideration of the much-abused “Wages System.” To escape which Social Reformers of all schools have proposed rushing into combinations of interest of some sort, to the destruction, as we have seen, of individual sovereignty and freedom. The concrete of our existing labor and commercial arrangements is felt to be disharmonic and oppressive; hence every feature of it is liable to be denounced in turn, in the absence of corrective scientific discrimination between what is fundamentally right and wrong in the system. It is in consequence of this liability that Individuality has fallen into disrepute among Reformers, as if in it were the essential element of discord, whereas it has been shown that Individuality is the sole basis of all harmonic adjustment. In like manner the relation of employer and employed is stigmatized daily as vicious in itself, and the ideal is entertained of each individual being so employed as to be his own “boss,” to use the language of the trades, and to work solely for himself. No such arrangement is either desirable or feasible. It is not all men who are made for designers, contrivers, and directors. That is perhaps one of the most exact generalizations of mankind into classes by which they are divided into Originators, Organizers, and Executors. The first are least numerous, the second more numerous, and the last most numerous. It is right that those who originate should impress themselves on the execution of their designs, either directly, or through the intervention of the organizing class. Naturally each is content with the performance of his own function, according to this organization. The few only will desire to lead; the mass of mankind will prefer to follow, so soon as an equality of rewards renders it alike honorable either to follow or lead."
"It is, then, a natural relation that one man should employ another to aid him in actualizing his design; that he who has a design to execute should adjoin to himself the labor of him who has none, or no other one than that of securing the means of his own subsistence in circumstances of personal comfort. For that purpose,– the execution of the design,– they two enter into a combination, while in interest they are still individual and distinct,– the interest of one being in his design, and that of the other in the wages he is to earn. But every combined movement demands an individual lead. Hence, in the execution of the design, the one must guide and the other follow, and the more absolute the submission of the one mind to the other, the more harmonious the movement. Hence, it is proper and right that one man should hire another, and, if he hires him, it is proper and right that he should remunerate him for his labor, and such remuneration is wages. Hence, it follows that the “Wages System” is essentially proper and right. It is right that one man employ another, it is right that he pay him wages, and it is right that he direct him absolutely, arbitrarily, if you will, in the performance of his labor, while, on the other hand, it is the business of him who is employed implicitly to obey,—that is, to surrender all will of his own in relation to a design not his own, and to conceive and execute the will of the other."

Andrews also disagreed with Proudhon on private property.
"It is, however, not true that property, even so restricted in definition, is robbery, pure and simple. The acute thinker has still not discriminated closely enough. It is not proprietorship, but the use of proprietorship to extort increase, which is vicious in principle; or else proprietorship applied where, in the true nature of things, it is not applicable, as in the case of land. The product of the labor of the free laborer, equitably and fairly produced, is in justice his property, and the argument of Proudhon to the effect that he owes it to society even before it is produced, and holds it only on sufferance, seems to me, at least, the weakest part of his First Memoir. It (the product) is his (the producer’s) to lend, to own while out of possession, to recover back in kind or in equivalent, and in all senses precisely as ownership is understood in the world and defined in the law-books. The simple distinction between natural wealth which, while it can be possessed and enjoyed when needed, ought not to be owned in the technical sense (except temporarily, as adjunct to improvements, to secure the repayment for them), and proprietary wealth as the product of labor, sets the whole matter right. There may be an ethical inhibition against abusing one’s own, but not rightly a social one; that is to say, a man’s neighbors should not be set upon him to decide when he is rightly using and when he is abusing what belongs to him by a perfect title. All that the law means here is that the decision on that point is best left to the individual; and the law of the land and the law of sociological right are in perfect harmony in that particular, and Proudhon is wrong." (from: "Proudhon and His Translator")

Benjamin Tucker had these things to say about private property and wage labor:
"In No. 121 of Liberty, criticising an attempt of Kropotkine to identify Communism and Individualism, I charged him with ignoring “the real question whether Communism will permit the individual to labor independently, own tools, sell his labor or his products, and buy the labor or products of others.” In Herr Most’s eyes this is so outrageous that, in reprinting it, he puts the words “the labor of others” in large black type. Most being a Communist, he must, to be consistent, object to the purchase and sale of anything whatever, but why he should particularly object to the purchase and sale of labor is more than I can understand. Really, in the last analysis, labor is the only thing that has any title to be bought or sold. Is there any just basis of price except cost? And is there anything that costs except labor or suffering (another name for labor)? Labor should be paid! Horrible, isn’t it? Why, I thought that the fact that it is not paid was the whole grievance. “Unpaid labor” has been the chief complaint of all Socialists, and that labor should get its reward has been their chief contention. Suppose I had said to Kropotkine that the real question is whether Communism will permit individuals to exchange their labor or products on their own terms. Would Herr Most have been so shocked? Would he have printed that in black type? Yet in another form I said precisely that."
"If the men who oppose wages — that is, the purchase and sale of labor — were capable of analyzing their thought and feelings, they would see that what really excites their anger is not the fact that labor is bought and sold, but the fact that one class of men are dependent for their living upon the sale of their labor, while another class of men are relieved of the necessity of labor by being legally privileged to sell something that is not labor and that, but for the privilege, would be enjoyed by all gratuitously. And to such a state of things I am as much opposed as any one. But the minute you remove privilege, the class that now enjoy it will be forced to sell their labor, and then, when there will be nothing but labor with which to buy labor, the distinction between wage-payers and wage-receivers will be wiped out, and every man will be a laborer exchanging with fellow-laborers. Not to abolish wages, but to make every man dependent upon wages and to secure to every man his whole wages is the aim of Anarchistic Socialism. What Anarchistic Socialism aims to abolish is usury. It does not want to deprive labor of its reward; it wants to deprive capital of its reward. It does not hold that labor should not be sold; it holds that capital should not be hired at usury."
"But, says Herr Most, this idea of a free labor market from which privilege is eliminated is nothing but “consistent Manchesterism.” Well, what better can a man who professes Anarchism want than that? For the principle of Manchesterism is liberty, and consistent Manchesterism is consistent adherence to liberty. The only inconsistency of the Manchester men lies in their infidelity to liberty in some of its phases. And this infidelity to liberty in some of its phases is precisely the fatal inconsistency of the “Freiheit” school, the only difference between its adherents and the Manchester men being that in many of the phases in which the latter are infidel the former are faithful, while in many of those in which the latter are faithful the former are infidel. Yes, genuine Anarchism is consistent Manchesterism, and Communistic or pseudo-Anarchism is inconsistent Manchesterism. “I thank thee, Jew, for teaching me that word.”" (Liberty Vol. V. No. 19.)

"When this struggle comes, the weak point in Mr. Bellamy's position will be located. I point it out in advance. It lies in the enormous assumptions that labourers, in order to receive the profits which now go to the employers, must become their own employers, and that the only way by which they can do this is to assume through their salaried agents the conduct of industry. The anarchistic solution shows that there is no such must and no such only. When interest, rent, and profit disappear under the influence of free money, free land, and free trade, it will make no difference whether men work for themselves, or are employed, or employ others. In any case they can get nothing but that wage for their labour which free competition determines. Therefore they do not need to become their own employers. Perhaps, however, they will prefer to do so. Any of them that choose will be enabled throgh mutual banking to secure the means of production whereby to conduct whatever industry they desire." (Instead Of A Book, page 475)

"Man’s only right over the land is his might over it. If his neighbor is mightier than he and takes the land from him, then the land is his neighbor’s until the latter is dispossessed in turn by one mightier still. But while the danger of such dispossession continues there is no society, no security, no comfort. Hence men contract. They agree upon certain conditions of land ownership, and will protect no title in the absence of the conditions fixed upon. The object of this contract is not to enable all to benefit equally from the land, but to enable each to hold securely at his own disposal the results of his efforts expended upon such portion of the earth as he may possess under the conditions agreed upon. It is principally to secure this absolute control of the results of one’s effort that equality of liberty is instituted, not as a matter of right, but as a social convenience. I have always maintained that liberty is of greater importance than wealth,—in other words, that man derives more happiness from freedom than from luxury,—and this is true; but there is another sense in which wealth, or rather property, is of greater importance than liberty. Man has but little to gain from liberty unless that liberty includes the liberty to control what he produces. One of the chief purposes of equal liberty is to secure this fundamental necessity of property, and, if property is not thereby secured, the temptation is to abandon the régime of contract and return to the reign of the strongest."
"Now the difference between the equal liberty of the Anarchists and the system which Mr. Byington and the Single-Taxers consider equal liberty is this: the former secures property, while the latter violates it.
The Anarchists say to the individual: “Occupancy and use is the only title to land in which we will protect you; if you attempt to use land which another is occupying and using, we will protect him against you; if another attempts to use land to which you lay claim, but which you are not occupying and using, we will not interfere with him; but of such land as you occupy and use you are the sole master, and we will not ourselves take from you, or allow any one else to take from you, whatever you may get out of such land.”"
"The Single-Taxers, on the other hand, say to the individual: “You may hold all the land you have inherited or bought, or may inherit or buy, and we will protect you in such holding; but, if you produce more from your land than your neighbors produce from theirs, we will take from you the excess of your product over theirs and distribute it among them, or we will spend it in taking a free ride whenever we want to go anywhere, or we will make any use of it, wise or foolish, that may come into our heads.”
The reader who compares these two positions will need no comment of mine to enable him to decide “on which side the maximum of liberty lies,” and on which side property, or the individual control of product, is respected." (Instead of A Book, "Liberty and Property")

"Proudhon scoffed at this distinction between capital and product. He maintained that capital and product are not different kinds of wealth, but simply alternate conditions or functions of the same wealth; that all wealth undergoes an incessant transformation from capital into product, and from product back into capital, the process repeating itself interminably; that capital and product are social terms; that what is product to one man immediately becomes capital to another, and vice versa; that if there were but one person in the world, all wealth would be to him at once capital and product; that the fruit of A's toil, when sold to B, becomes B's capital (unless B is some unproductive consumer, in which case it is merely wasted wealth, outside the view of social economy); that a steam-engine is as much a product as a coat, and that a coat is as much capital as a steam-engine; and that the same laws of equity govern the possession of the one that govern the possession of the other." (State Socialism and Anarchism)

Tucker also published a positive review of Gustave de Molinari's "Society of The Future", which contains the following:
"For, whether he knows it or not, he is an Anarchist. He disbelieves in organized government, even in a government of and by Roosevelt. According to him, in the society of to-morrow there will be no government in the present sense of the term."
"Readers of Liberty will find the whole book delightful and refreshing, if rather naïve in certain places. Its leading ideas are not new in these pages, but de Molinari seems to have reached them in a different way from that of the philosophical Anarchist. To him the question is simply and severely economic. Government is too wasteful; it is destroying industrial society, not aiding or protecting it. The waste is inseparable from monopoly, and the remedy is – competition."
"De Molinari does not touch upon the status of the non-aggressive individual who chooses to ignore the defensive association and to forego its benefits. He would do away with taxes and have premiums and contributions in their stead. But are these to be absolutely voluntary? This point is not treated. However, the burden and spirit of the book are plainly Anarchistic, and, if this distinguished economist should wish to come to the United States for the purpose of explaining and amplifying his views, he would be informed that he would render himself liable to detention and deportation along with criminals, diseased persons and other undesirable arrivals. Oh, this is a land of free and brave people!"
How do we know Tucker agreed with this view? The editorial section this appears in begins with thus:
"The appearance in the editorial column of article over other signatures than the editor’s initial indicates that the editor approves their central purpose and general tenor, though he does not hold himself responsible for every phrase or word. But the appearance in other parts of the paper of articles by the same or other writers by no means indicates that he disapproves of them in any respect, such disposition of them being governed largely by motives of convenience."

Benjamin Tucker also liked Auberon Herbert and early Herbert Spencer, only disagreeing with them on certain tax laws and interest & rent.

Proudhon himself had very interesting thoughts on private property, land, and wage labor:
"Thus I do not consider as falling within the logical class division of labor nor of collective force the innumerable small shops which are found in all trades, and which seem to me the effect of the preference of the individuals who conduct them, rather than the organic result of a combination of forces. Anybody who is capable of cutting out and sewing up a pair of shoes can get a license, open a shop, and hang out a sign, So-and-So, Manufacturing Shoe Merchant, although there may be only himself behind his counter. If a companion, who prefers journeyman’s wages to running the risk of starting in business, joins with the first, one will call himself the employer, the other, the hired man; in fact, they are completely equal and completely free. If a youth of fourteen or fifteen wants to learn the trade, there may be a certain division of labor with him; but this division of labor is the condition of apprenticeship, there is nothing remarkable about it. If orders come in freely, there may be several journeymen and apprentices, besides helpers, perhaps a clerk: then it will be what is called a shop, that is, six, ten, fifteen persons, all doing about the same thing, and working together merely to increase the product, not at all to contribute to its perfection by their different abilities. If suddenly the employer’s affairs fall into confusion, and he goes into bankruptcy, they whom he employed will have only the trouble of finding another shop; as for his customers, they run no risk, each of the journeymen, or all of them together, may resume the business." (The General Idea of the Revolution in the 19th Century)

"I protest that in criticising property, or rather the whole body of institutions of which property is the pivot, I never meant either to attack the individual rights recognized by previous laws, or to dispute the legitimacy of acquired possessions, or to instigate an arbitrary distribution of goods, or to put an obstacle in the way of the free and regular acquisition of properties by bargain and sale; or even to prohibit or suppress by sovereign decree land-rent and interest on capital. I think that all these manifestations of human activity should remain free and optional for all; I would admit no other modifications, restrictions or suppressions of them than naturally and necessarily result from the universalization of the principle of reciprocity and of the law of synthesis which I propound. This is my last will and testament. I allow only him to suspect its sincerity, who could tell a lie in the moment of death." (different translation that says essentially the same thing in p. 454 of Iain McKay's "Property Is Theft!", this specific translation or at least some of it can be found in Paul Eltzabacher's "Anarchism")

So, I think the relationship with ancap should be edited. But take this as you will.
-- [[User:Spoonerist|Spoonerist]] ([[User talk:Spoonerist|talk]]) 21:09, 29 November 2025 (UTC)