Benjamin Tucker

Benjamin Ricketson Tucker (Dartmouth, Massachusetts, April 17, 1854-Monaco, June 22, 1939) was a 19th-century American translator, propagandist, and anarcho-individualist theorist. He is known for being the founder of the anarchist newspaper Liberty , with a mutualist-individualist tendency.

Diffuser

Benjamin Ricketson Tucker contributed to individualist anarchism with the publication of newspapers and the development of his own writings. Through the editing and publication of the anarchist newspaper Liberty, Tucker disseminated and integrated the theories of European thinkers, such as Herbert Spencer and Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, with those of American thinkers, such as Lysander Spooner, William Greene, Josiah Warren, and Stephen Pearl Andrews. He also introduced the ideas of freedom of thought and free love, all in order to lay the foundation for individualistic anarchism, which he called "philosophical anarchism" and "anarchist socialism."

He was responsible for the editing and dissemination of his translations of the works of Mijaíl Bakunin and Max Stirner. He was also the first person to introduce the works of Friedrich Nietzsche to the United States and one of the first translators of Nietzsche into English.

Ideology

Tucker added the ideas with the sympathizers of free love and free thought about the rejection against legislation of a religious nature, but also saw the poor condition of the workers as a result of four monopolies, which he called " capitalism", contrary to the free market:

1. Money
2. Landlords
3. Tariffs and fees
4. Patents

Tucker produced a rigorous system of ideas that he called "anarchist socialism," arguing that "the most perfect socialism is possible only on the condition of the most perfect individualism." Tucker said the following:

"Socialism is the belief that the next important step of progress consists of a change in the environment of man that includes the abolition of all privileges by which the possessors of wealth acquire an antisocial power to demand tribute."

Tucker believed that a true free market was the answer to abolishing labor exploitation and to equating wages with their product. Tucker considered interest, rent, and profit to be the "trinity of usury," of which He thought they were "simply different methods of imposing a tax on the use of capital." For this reason, he defended that the use of capital should be free, since for him capital is "simply stored labor that has already received its full payment."

Unlike other anarcho-individualists, Tucker rejected natural law, although he was initially a natural lawist. Instead he believed that "there was no natural right except the right of force, and men must come together and create rights if they wanted them."

Likewise, he proposed overcoming the State's monopoly on violence through a market of private police agencies.