page_title: Individualist anarchism
section_title: Boston anarchists
hierarchical_section_title: Individualist anarchism / Developments and expansion / Individualist anarchism in the United States / Boston anarchists
context_page_description: 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. Although usually contrasted to social anarchism, both individualist and social anarchism have influenced each other. Mutualism, an economic theory particularly influential within individualist anarchism whose pursued liberty has been called the synthesis of communism and property, has been considered sometimes part of individualist anarchism and other times part of social anarchism. Many anarcho-communists regard themselves as radical individualists, seeing anarcho-communism as the best social system for the realization of individual freedom.
  As a term, individualist anarchism is not a single philosophy, but it refers to a group of individualist philosophies that sometimes are in conflict. Among the early influences on individualist anarchism were William Godwin, Josiah Warren, Max Stirner, Lysander Spooner, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Henry David Thoreau, Herbert Spencer and Anselme Bellegarrigue.
context_section_description: Another form of individualist anarchism was found in the United States as advocated by the so-called 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 Max 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"). The Boston anarchists such as Tucker and his followers continue to be considered socialists due to their opposition to usury. They do so because as the modern economist Jim Stanford points out there are many different kinds of competitive markets such as market socialism and capitalism is only one type of a market economy. By around the start of the 20th century, the heyday of individualist anarchism had passed.
caption: Lysander Spooner
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