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Individualist anarchism is the branch of anarchism that emphasizes the individual and their will over external determinants such as groups, society, traditions, and ideological systems.[1][2] Although usually contrasted with social anarchism,[3] both individualist and social[3] anarchism have influenced each other. Mutualism, an economic theory sometimes considered a synthesis of communism and property,[4] has been considered individualist anarchism[5][6][7] and other times part of social anarchism.[8][9] Many anarcho-communists regard themselves as radical individualists,[10] seeing anarcho-communism as the best social system for the realization of individual freedom.[11] Some anarcho-capitalists claim anarcho-capitalism is part of the individualist anarchist tradition, while others disagree and claim individualist anarchism is only part of the socialist movement and part of the libertarian socialist tradition.[12] Economically, while European individualist anarchists are pluralists who advocate anarchism without adjectives and synthesis anarchism, ranging from anarcho-communist to mutualist economic types, most American individualist anarchists of the 19th century advocated mutualism, a libertarian socialist form of market socialism, or a free-market socialist form of classical economics.[13] Individualist anarchists are opposed to property that violates the entitlement theory of justice, that is, gives privilege due to unjust acquisition or exchange, and thus is exploitative,[14] seeking to "destroy the tyranny of capital, — that is, of property" by mutual credit.[15]
Individualist anarchism represents a group of several traditions of thought and individualist philosophies within the anarchist movement. Among the early influences on individualist anarchism were William Godwin (philosophical anarchism),[16] Josiah Warren (sovereignty of the individual), Max Stirner (egoism),[17] Lysander Spooner (natural law), Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (mutualism), Henry David Thoreau (transcendentalism),[18] Herbert Spencer (law of equal liberty)[19] and Anselme Bellegarrigue (civil disobedience).[20] From there, individualist anarchism expanded through Europe and the United States, where prominent 19th-century individualist anarchist Benjamin Tucker held that "if the individual has the right to govern himself, all external government is tyranny".[21]
Within anarchism, individualist anarchism is primarily a literary phenomenon[22] while social anarchism has been the dominant form of anarchism,[23][24][25][26] emerging in the late 19th century as a distinction from individualist anarchism after anarcho-communism replaced collectivist anarchism as the dominant tendency.[27] Individualist anarchism has been described by some as the anarchist branch most influenced by and tied to liberalism (the classical liberalism deriving anti-capitalist notions and socialist economics from classical political economists and the labor theory of value) as well as being described as a part of the liberal or liberal-socialist wing—in contrast to the collectivist or communist wing—of anarchism and libertarian socialism.[28][29][30] However most do not agree with this divide as social anarchists including collectivist and communist anarchists regard the individualist anarchists as socialists and libertarian socialists due to their opposition to capitalist profit, interest, and absentee rent.[31] The very idea of an individualist–socialist divide is also contested as individualist anarchism is largely socialistic[32][33][34] and can be considered a form of individualist socialism, with non-Lockean individualism encompassing socialism.[35] Individualist anarchism is the basis of most anarchist schools of thought, influencing nearly all anarchist tendencies and having contributed to much of anarchist discourse.[36][37]
- ^ "What do I mean by individualism? I mean by individualism the moral doctrine which, relying on no dogma, no tradition, no external determination, appeals only to the individual conscience". Mini-Manual of Individualism by Han Ryner Archived 27 September 2011 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ "I do not admit anything except the existence of the individual, as a condition of his sovereignty. To say that the sovereignty of the individual is conditioned by Liberty is simply another way of saying that it is conditioned by itself. "Anarchism and the State" in Individual Liberty
- ^ a b McKay, Iain. An Anarchist FAQ. AK Press. Oakland. 2008. pp 59-60.
- ^ Proudhon, Pierre-Joseph (1840). What Is Property? An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government. "Chapter V. Psychological Exposition of the Idea of Justice and Injustice, and a Determination of the Principle of Government and of Right". "This third form of society, the synthesis of communism and property, we call liberty".
- ^ Rines, George Edwin, ed. (1918). "Anarchism". The Encyclopedia Americana: A Library of Universal Knowledge. Vol. 1. New York. p. 624. LCCN 18016023. OCLC 7308909 – via Hathi Trust.
{{cite encyclopedia}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) - ^ Hamilton, Peter (1995). Émile Durkheim. New York: Routledge. p. 79. ISBN 978-0415110471.
- ^ Faguet, Émile (1970). Politicians & Moralists of the Nineteenth Century. Freeport: Books for Libraries Press. p. 147. ISBN 978-0-8369-1828-1.
- ^ Bowen, James; Purkis, Jon (2004). Changing Anarchism: Anarchist Theory and Practice in a Global Age. Manchester University Press. p. 24. ISBN 9780719066948.
- ^ Knowles, Rob (Winter 2000). "Political Economy From Below: Communitarian Anarchism as a Neglected Discourse in Histories of Economic Thought". History of Economics Review. 31 (31): 30–47. doi:10.1080/10370196.2000.11733332. S2CID 141027974.
- ^ Baginki, Max (May 1907). "Stirner: The Ego and His Own". Mother Earth (2: 3). "Modern Communists are more individualistic than Stirner. To them, not merely religion, morality, family and State are spooks, but property also is no more than a spook, in whose name the individual is enslaved — and how enslaved! [...] Communism thus creates a basis for the liberty and Eigenheit of the individual. I am a Communist because I am an Individualist. Fully as heartily the Communists concur with Stirner when he puts the word take in place of demand — that leads to the dissolution of property, to expropriation. Individualism and Communism go hand in hand."; Novatore, Renzo (1924). "Towards the Creative Nothing"; Gray, Christopher (1974). Leaving the Twentieth Century. p. 88; Black, Bob (2010). "Nightmares of Reason". "[C]ommunism is the final fulfillment of individualism. [...] The apparent contradiction between individualism and communism rests on a misunderstanding of both. [...] Subjectivity is also objective: the individual really is subjective. It is nonsense to speak of "emphatically prioritizing the social over the individual," [...]. You may as well speak of prioritizing the chicken over the egg. Anarchy is a "method of individualization." It aims to combine the greatest individual development with the greatest communal unity".
- ^ Kropotkin, Peter (1901). "Communism and Anarchy" Archived 2021-10-23 at the Wayback Machine. "Communism is the one which guarantees the greatest amount of individual liberty — provided that the idea that begets the community be Liberty, Anarchy [...]. Communism guarantees economic freedom better than any other form of association, because it can guarantee wellbeing, even luxury, in return for a few hours of work instead of a day's work."; Truda, Dielo (1926). "Organisational Platform of the Libertarian Communists". "This other society will be libertarian communism, in which social solidarity and free individuality find their full expression, and in which these two ideas develop in perfect harmony."; "My Perspectives". Willful Disobedience (2: 12). "I see the dichotomies made between individualism and communism, individual revolt and class struggle, the struggle against human exploitation and the exploitation of nature as false dichotomies and feel that those who accept them are impoverishing their own critique and struggle."; Brown, L. Susan (2002). The Politics of Individualism. Black Rose Books; Brown, L. Susan (2 February 2011). "Does Work Really Work?".
- ^ McKay, Iain. An Anarchist FAQ. AK Press. Oakland. 2008. pp 22, 526.
- ^ Cite error: The named reference
AFAQwas invoked but never defined (see the help page). - ^ McKay, Iain, ed. (2012) [2008]. "Appendix: Anarchism and 'anarcho'-capitalism". An Anarchist FAQ. Vol. I/II. Stirling: AK Press. ISBN 9781849351225.
- ^ Dana, Charles Anderson. Proudhon and his "Bank of the People". p. 46.
- ^ Philip, Mark (2006-05-20). "William Godwin". In Zalta, Edward N. (ed.). Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
- ^ Leopold, David (2006-08-04). "Max Stirner". In Zalta, Edward N. (ed.). Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
- ^ "Paralelamente, al otro lado del atlántico, en el diferente contexto de una nación a medio hacer, los Estados Unidos, otros filósofos elaboraron un pensamiento individualista similar, aunque con sus propias especificidades. Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862), uno de los escritores próximos al movimiento de la filosofía trascendentalista, es uno de los más conocidos. Su obra más representativa es Walden, aparecida en 1854, aunque redactada entre 1845 y 1847, cuando Thoreau decide instalarse en el aislamiento de una cabaña en el bosque, y vivir en íntimo contacto con la naturaleza, en una vida de soledad y sobriedad. De esta experiencia, su filosofía trata de transmitirnos la idea que resulta necesario un retorno respetuoso a la naturaleza, y que la felicidad es sobre todo fruto de la riqueza interior y de la armonía de los individuos con el entorno natural. Muchos han visto en Thoreau a uno de los precursores del ecologismo y del anarquismo primitivista representado en la actualidad por Jonh Zerzan. Para George Woodcock, esta actitud puede estar también motivada por una cierta idea de resistencia al progreso y de rechazo al materialismo creciente que caracteriza la sociedad norteamericana de mediados de siglo XIX.""Voluntary non-submission. Spanish individualist anarchism during dictatorship and the second republic (1923–1938)" Archived July 23, 2011, at the Wayback Machine
- ^ Freeden, Michael. Ideologies and Political Theory: A Conceptual Approach. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-829414-X. pp. 313–314
- ^ George Woodcock, Anarchism: A History of Libertarian Ideas and Movements. 1962
- ^ Tucker, Benjamin (March 10, 1888). "State Socialism and Anarchism: How far they agree and wherein they differ". Liberty. 5 (120): 2–3, 6.
- ^ Skirda, Alexandre (2002). Facing the Enemy: A History of Anarchist Organization from Proudhon to May 1968. AK Press. p. 191.
- ^ Jennings, Jeremy (1993). "Anarchism". In Eatwell, Roger; Wright, Anthony (eds.). Contemporary Political Ideologies. London: Pinter. pp. 127–146. ISBN 978-0-86187-096-7. "[...] anarchism does not stand for the untrammelled freedom of the individual (as the 'anarcho-capitalists' appear to believe) but, as we have already seen, for the extension of individuality and community" (p. 143).
- ^ Gay, Kathlyn; Gay, Martin (1999). Encyclopedia of Political Anarchy. ABC-CLIO. p. 15. ISBN 978-0-87436-982-3. "For many anarchists (of whatever persuasion), anarcho-capitalism is a contradictory term, since 'traditional' anarchists oppose capitalism".
- ^ Morriss, Andrew (2008). "Anarcho-capitalism". In Hamowy, Ronald (ed.). The Encyclopedia of Libertarianism. SAGE; Cato Institute. pp. 13–14. doi:10.4135/9781412965811.n8. ISBN 978-1-4129-6580-4. OCLC 191924853. "Social anarchists, those anarchists with communitarian leanings, are critical of anarcho-capitalism because it permits individuals to accumulate substantial power through markets and private property."
- ^ Franks, Benjamin (August 2013). Freeden, Michael; Stears, Marc (eds.). "Anarchism". The Oxford Handbook of Political Ideologies. Oxford University Press: 393–394. doi:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199585977.013.0001.
Individualisms that defend or reinforce hierarchical forms such as the economic-power relations of anarcho-capitalism [...] are incompatible with practices of social anarchism. [...] Increasingly, academic analysis has followed activist currents in rejecting the view that anarcho-capitalism has anything to do with social anarchism.
- ^ McKay, Iain, ed. (2012). An Anarchist FAQ. Vol. II. Stirling: AK Press. ISBN 9781849351225.
No, far from it. Most anarchists in the late nineteenth century recognised communist-anarchism as a genuine form of anarchism and it quickly replaced collectivist anarchism as the dominant tendency. So few anarchists found the individualist solution to the social question or the attempts of some of them to excommunicate social anarchism from the movement convincing.
- ^ Boyd, Tony; Harrison, Kevin, eds. (2003). "Marxism and Anarchism". Understanding Political Ideas and Movements. Manchester University Press. p. 251. ISBN 9780719061516.
- ^ McKay, Iain, ed. (2012). "Section G – Is Individualist Anarchism Capitalistic?". An Anarchist FAQ. Vol. II. Stirling: AK Press. ISBN 9781849351225.
- ^ Carson, Kevin (2017). "Anarchism and Markets". In Jun, Nathan J. (2017). Brill's Companion to Anarchism and Philosophy. BRILL. p. 81. ISBN 9789004356894.
- ^ McKay, Iain. An Anarchist FAQ. AK Press. Oakland. 2008. pp. 59.
- ^ Martin, James J. (1953). Men Against the State: the State the Expositors of Individualist Anarchism. Dekalb, Illinois: The Adrian Allen Associates.
- ^ Tucker, Benjamin (1970). Liberty. Greenwood Reprint Corporation. 7–8. p. 26. "Liberty has always insisted that Individualism and Socialism are not antithetical terms; that, on the contrary, the most ... not of Socialist Anarchism against Individualist Anarchism, but of Communist Socialism against Individualist Socialism."
- ^ Franks, Benjamin (August 2013). Freeden, Michael; Stears, Marc (eds.). "Anarchism". The Oxford Handbook of Political Ideologies. Oxford University Press: 385–404. doi:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199585977.013.0001.
- ^ Wood, Ellen Meiksins (1972). Mind and Politics: An Approach to the Meaning of Liberal and Socialist Individualism. University of California Press. p. 7. ISBN 0520020294.
- ^ "21st century dissent: Anarchism, anti-globalization and environmentalism" (PDF). Choice Reviews Online. 44 (10): 44–5863. 2007. doi:10.5860/choice.44-5863. hdl:10072/12679. S2CID 35607336. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2019-03-03.
- ^ Mitzman, Arthur (1977). "Anarchism, Expressionism and Psychoanalysis". New German Critique (10): 77–104. doi:10.2307/487673. JSTOR 487673.