43 Facts About Benjamin Tucker

Benjamin Ricketson Tucker was an American individualist anarchist and libertarian socialist.

Benjamin Tucker harshly opposed state socialism and was a supporter of free-market socialism and libertarian socialism which he termed anarchist or anarchistic socialism as well as a follower of mutualism.

Benjamin Tucker connected the classical economics of Adam Smith and the Ricardian socialists as well as that of Josiah Warren, Karl Marx and Pierre-Joseph Proudhon to socialism.

Later in his life, Benjamin Tucker converted to Max Stirner's egoism.

From August 1881 to April 1908, Benjamin Tucker published the periodical Liberty, "widely considered to be the finest individualist-anarchist periodical ever issued in the English language".

Benjamin Tucker contributed to anarcho-communist publications already at the age of twenty.

In 1908, a fire destroyed Benjamin Tucker's uninsured printing equipment and his thirty-year stock of books and pamphlets.

Six weeks after his daughter's birth, Benjamin Tucker closed both Liberty and the book shop and retired with his family to France.

Later, Benjamin Tucker became much more pessimistic about the prospects for anarchism.

Martin states how Benjamin Tucker went on to observe that "under any of these regimes a sufficiently shrewd man can feather his nest".

In 1939, Benjamin Tucker died in the company of his family in Monaco which his daughter Oriole reported as such:.

Benjamin Tucker said that he became an anarchist at the age of eighteen.

Benjamin Tucker was the first to publish an English translation of Max Stirner's The Ego and Its Own, which Benjamin Tucker claimed was his proudest accomplishment.

Benjamin Tucker said socialism was the claim that "labor should be put in possession of its own" while holding that what he respectively termed state socialism and anarchistic socialism had in common was the labor theory of value.

Benjamin Tucker first favored a natural rights philosophy in which an individual had a right to own the fruits of his labor, but then abandoned it in favor of egoist anarchism in which he believed that only the right of might exists until overridden by contract.

In Individual Liberty, Benjamin Tucker connected his libertarian socialist economic views which included his opposition to non-labor income in the form of profit, interest and rent with those of Adam Smith, Josiah Warren, Proudhon and Marx in the following way while arguing against American anti-socialists who declared socialism as imported:.

Benjamin Tucker maintained that all forms of authoritarian activities imply the resort to force and nothing good or lasting was ever accomplished by compulsion.

The abolition of compulsory taxation would mean the abolition of the state as well, Benjamin Tucker asserted, and the form of society succeeding it would be on the line of a voluntary defensive institution.

Benjamin Tucker rejected the legislative programs of labor unions, laws imposing a short day, minimum wage laws, forcing businesses to provide insurance to employees and compulsory pension systems.

Benjamin Tucker believed instead that strikes should be organized by free workers rather than by bureaucratic union officials and organizations.

Benjamin Tucker did not have a utopian vision of anarchy, where individuals would not coerce others.

Benjamin Tucker advocated that liberty and property be defended by private institutions.

Benjamin Tucker expressed that the market-based providers of security would offer protection of land that was being used and would not offer assistance to those attempting to collect rent by saying:.

Benjamin Tucker argued that the poor condition of American workers resulted from four legal monopolies based in the authoritarianism of the state:.

Benjamin Tucker saw interest and profit as a form of exploitation, made possible by the banking monopoly, in turn maintained through coercion and invasion.

Benjamin Tucker called any such interest and profit usury and saw it as the basis of the oppression of the workers.

Benjamin Tucker opposed granting title to land that was not in use, arguing that an individual should use land continually in order to retain exclusive right to it, believing that if this practice were not followed, there was a land monopoly.

Benjamin Tucker acknowledged that "anything is a product upon which human labor has been expended", but he would not recognize full property rights to labored-upon land: "It should be stated that in the case of land, or of any other material the supply of which is so limited that all cannot hold it in unlimited quantities, Anarchism undertakes to protect no titles except such as are based upon actual occupancy and use".

Benjamin Tucker hoped to raise wages by deregulating the banking industry, reasoning that competition in banking would drive down interest rates and stimulate enterprise.

Benjamin Tucker believed this would decrease the proportion of individuals seeking employment and wages would be driven up by competing employers, saying: "Thus the same blow that strikes interest down will send wages up".

Benjamin Tucker opposed protectionism, believing that tariffs caused high prices by preventing national producers from having to compete with foreign competitors.

Benjamin Tucker believed that free trade would help keep prices low and therefore would assist laborers in receiving what he called their "natural wage".

Furthermore, Benjamin Tucker did not believe in intellectual property rights in the form of patents on the grounds that patents and copyrights protect something which cannot rightfully be held as property.

Benjamin Tucker wrote that the basis for property is "the fact that it is impossible in the nature of things for concrete objects to be used in different places at the same time".

Benjamin Tucker abandoned natural rights positions and converted to Max Stirner's egoist anarchism.

Benjamin Tucker came to hold the position that no rights exist until they are created by contract.

Benjamin Tucker said that a person, who physically tries to stop a mother from throwing her "baby into the fire", should be punished for violating her property rights.

Benjamin Tucker came to believe that aggression towards others was justifiable if doing so led to a greater decrease in "aggregate pain" than refraining from doing so, saying:.

Benjamin Tucker claimed that ownership in land is legitimately transferred through force unless contracted otherwise.

Yarros wrote that Benjamin Tucker "opposed savagely any and all reform movements that had paternalistic aims, and looked to the state for aid and fulfillment", further stating:.

Benjamin Tucker denounced and exposed Johann Most, the editor of Freiheit, the anarchist-communist organ.

Benjamin Tucker's influences include Mikhail Bakunin, Gustave de Molinari, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Herbert Spencer, Lysander Spooner, Max Stirner and Josiah Warren.

Benjamin Tucker has influenced Emile Armand, Kevin Carson, Lev Chernyi, Voltairine de Cleyre, John Henry Mackay, Ricardo Mella, Henry Meulen, Murray Rothbard and Robert Anton Wilson as well as libertarianism as a whole.