The full economic detail of Individualist Anarchism may be inferred
with sufficient completeness from an article entitled "State Socialism
and Anarchism: how far they agree, and wherein they differ," which
appeared in March, 1888, in _Liberty_, an Anarchist journal published
in Boston, Mass., and edited by the author of the article, Mr. Benjamin
R. Tucker. An examination of any number of this journal will shew that
as a candid, clear-headed, and courageous demonstrator of Individualist
Anarchism by purely intellectual methods, Mr. Tucker may safely be
accepted as one of the most capable spokesmen of his party.
"The economic principles of Modern Socialism," says Mr. Tucker, "are
a logical deduction from the principle laid down by Adam Smith in the
early chapters of his _Wealth of Nations_--namely, that labor is the
true measure of price. From this principle, these three men [Josiah
Warren, Proudhon and Marx] deduced 'that the natural wage of labor is
its product.'"
Now the Socialist who is unwary enough to accept this economic
position will presently find himself logically committed to the Whig
doctrine of _laissez-faire_. And here Mr. Tucker will cry, "Why not?
_Laissez-faire_ is exactly what we want. Destroy the money monopoly,
the tariff monopoly, and the patent monopoly. Enforce then only those
land titles which rest on personal occupancy or cultivation;[2]
and the social problem of how to secure to each worker the product
of his own labor will be solved simply by everyone minding his own
business."[3]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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