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Benjamin Ricketson Tucker (; April 17, 1854 – June 22, 1939) was an American individualist anarchist and self-identified socialist.Chartier, Gary. Anarchy and Legal Order. Cambridge University Press: New York. 2013. p. 397. "Similarly, Benjamin Tucker, who explicitly identified himself as a socialist.." Tucker was the editor and publisher of the American individualist anarchist periodical Liberty (1881–1908). Tucker described his form of anarchism as "consistent Manchesterism" and "unterrified Jeffersonianism".McCarthy, Daniel (January 1, 2010) A Fistful of Dynamite , The American Conservative.
Tucker looked upon anarchism as a part of the broader socialist movement. Tucker harshly opposed state socialism and was a supporter of Market socialismChartier, Gary; Johnson, Charles W. Markets Not Capitalism: Individualist Anarchism Against Bosses, Inequality, Corporate Power, and Structural Poverty. Brooklyn: Minor Compositions/Autonomedia. (2011). p. 10. "...In 'State Socialism and Anarchism,' Benjamin Tucker explains why a market-oriented variety of anarchism can be understood as part of the socialist tradition..." and libertarian socialismChartier, Gary; Johnson, Charles W. Markets Not Capitalism: Individualist Anarchism Against Bosses, Inequality, Corporate Power, and Structural Poverty. Brooklyn: Minor Compositions/Autonomedia. (2011). p. 33. "...'There are two Socialisms...One is dictatorial, the other libertarian." which he termed anarchist or anarchistic socialism.Gary Chartier. Anarchy and Legal Order. Cambridge University Press: New York. 2013. p. 399. He 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.Chartier, Gary. Anarchy and Legal Order. Cambridge University Press: New York. 2013. p. 401. Some modern commentators have described Tucker as an anarcho-capitalist, although this has been disputed by others.McKay, Iain. An Anarchist FAQ. AK Press. Oakland. 2008. pp. 23, 526.Chartier, Gary. Anarchy and Legal Order. Cambridge University Press: New York. 2013. pp. 402–403. During his lifetime, Tucker opposed capitalismChartier, Gary. Anarchy and Legal Order. Cambridge University Press: New York. 2013. p. 403. and considered himself a socialist due to his belief in the labor theory of value and disputed many of the dictionary definitions of the term which he believed were inaccurate.Chartier, Gary. Anarchy and Legal Order. Cambridge University Press: New York. 2013. p. 400, fn 32.
The periodical was instrumental in developing and formalizing the individualist anarchist philosophy through publishing essays and serving as a format for debate. Beside Tucker, contributors also included Lysander Spooner, Gertrude Kelly, Auberon Herbert, Dyer Lum, Joshua K. Ingalls, John Henry Mackay, Victor Yarros, Wordsworth Donisthorpe, James L. Walker, J. William Lloyd, Florence Finch Kelly, Voltairine de Cleyre, Steven T. Byington, John Beverley Robinson, Jo Labadie, Lillian Harman and Henry Appleton. Included in its masthead is a quote from Proudhon saying that liberty is "Not the Daughter But the Mother of Order".
In 1939, Tucker died in the company of his family in Monaco and carried his beliefs to his deathbed.
Towards the end of Tucker's life, anarchist Victor Yarros described him as a "forceful and clear writer, but a poor speaker" who considered writing for bourgeois newspapers to be "the worst form of prostitution".
According to Frank Brooks, an historian of American individualist anarchism, it is easy to misunderstand Tucker's claim to socialism. Before Marxists established a hegemony over definitions of socialism, "the term socialism was a broad concept". Tucker as well as most of the writers and readers of Liberty understood socialism to refer to one or more of various theories aimed at solving the labor problem through radical changes in the capitalist economy. Descriptions of the problem, explanations of its causes and proposed solutions (abolition of private property and support of or public ownership) varied among socialist philosophies.Brooks, Frank H. (1994). The Individualist Anarchists: An Anthology of Liberty (1881–1908). Piscataway: Transaction Publishers. p. 75. .
Not all modern economists believe Marxists established a hegemony over definitions of socialism.Bestor, Arthur E. (June 1948). "The Evolution of the Socialist Vocabulary". Journal of the History of Ideas. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. 9 (3): 259–302. . .
Tucker followed Pierre Proudhon in distinguishing between capitalistic property and possession. However, while Tucker following Proudhon, he called possession as property or private property, and described the kind of property(interest, rent, and profit, etc.) that Proudhon criticized under his own name of 'usury', which caused confusion among the anarchist movement and other market socialists.
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.Brown, Susan Love. 1997. "The Free Market as Salvation from Government". In Meanings of the Market: The Free Market in Western Culture. Berg Publishers. p. 107.
Instead of asserting that common ownership was the key to eroding differences of economic power and appealing to social solidarity, as did many social anarchists, Tucker's individualist anarchism advocated distribution of property in an undistorted natural free market as a mediator of egoistic impulses and a source of social stability rooted in a free-market socialist system.Freeden, Michael (1996). Ideologies and Political Theory: A Conceptual Approach. Oxford University Press. p. 276.
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 (influenced by Max Stirner) in which he believed that only the right of might exists until overridden by contract. According to Charles A. Madison, Tucker promoted full individual liberty and disdained communism in any form, believing that even a stateless communist society must encroach upon the liberty of individuals, insisting instead on the voluntary nature of all association and rejecting majority rule, organized religion and the institution of marriage due to their compulsory nature.Madison, Charles A. "Anarchism in the United States". Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 6, No. 1, January 1945, p. 56.
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 while arguing against American anti-socialists who declared socialism as imported.Brooks, Frank H. (1994). The Individualist Anarchists: An Anthology of Liberty (1881–1908). Piscataway: Transaction Publishers. p. 79. .
Tucker envisioned an individualist anarchist society with "each man reaping the fruits of his labour and no man able to live in idleness on an income from capital ... becomeing a great hive of Anarchistic workers, prosperous and free individuals combining to carry on their production and distribution on the cost principle" The Individualist Anarchists, p. 276. rather than a bureaucratic organization of workers organized into rank and file unions. However, he did hold a genuine appreciation for labor unions (which he called trades-union socialism) and saw it as "an intelligent and self-governing socialism", and praised their "substitution of industrial socialism for usurping legislative mobism". The Individualist Anarchists, pp. 283–284.
According to Peter Marshall, "the egalitarian implications of traditional individualist anarchists" such as Tucker and Lysander Spooner have been overlooked.Marshall, Peter (1992). Demanding the Impossible: A History of Anarchism. London: HarperCollins. pp. 564–565. .
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.
Tucker was opposed to compulsion and vehemently opposed reform movements with paternalistic goals such as state aid. He did not have a utopian vision of anarchy in which individuals would refrain from coercing others.
Tucker believed that his contemporary millionaires received their wealth through the exploitation of monopolies.
For several decades, his focus became the state's economic control of how trade could take place and what currency counted as legitimate. He saw interest and profit as a form of exploitation, made possible by the banking monopoly, in turn maintained through coercion and invasion. Tucker called any such interest and profit usury and saw it as the basis of the oppression of the workers. In his words, "interest is theft, Rent Robbery, and Profit Only Another Name for Plunder".Martin Blatt, Benjamin R. Tucker and the Champions of Liberty. Coughlin, Hamilton and Sullivan (eds.), p. 29.
Tucker opposed protectionism, believing that tariffs caused high prices by preventing national producers from having to compete with foreign competitors. He believed that free trade would help keep prices low and therefore would assist laborers in receiving what he called their "natural wage". Tucker objected to the exploitation of individuals and explained that only under anarchism will man be truly free, saying: "When interest, rent, and profit disappear under the influence of free money, free land, and free trade, it will make no difference whether men work for themselves, or are employed, or employ others. In any case they can get nothing but that wage for their labor which free competition determines".
Iain McKay et al. criticize specifically Tucker's support, even within an anarchy, for wage labour, which they consider hierarchical, exploitative, and conducive to private defense agencies' statism.
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