Individualist Anarchism in The United States - The "Boston Anarchists"

The "Boston Anarchists"

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 around the start 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.