Discover rare photographic glimpses of pioneering egoists such as Dora Marsden and Benjamin R. Tucker, and delve into the visionary project to produce a Braille edition of Max Stirner’s magnum opus for the indomitable Helen Keller. Unearth a plethora of fascinating artifacts pertaining to Malfew Seklew, and be riveted by the astonishing revelation of Ragnar Redbeard’s brief yet impactful foray as a Canadian Socialist Provocateur.

This sixth issue of Der Geist is sure to delight and offend, but most of all, serve as an essential philosophical reference work for centuries to come.

DER GEIST: The Journal of Egoism from 1845 – 1945 | ISSUE 6 | Winter 2023
Paperback, 212 pages, $15
ISBN 978-1-944651-29-9, ISSN 2639-5339

Der Geist, (Trevor Blake, editor; Kevin I. Slaughter, co-editor) is an English-language journal for an international audience, publishing original scholarship on the philosophy of egoism. The journal is descriptive of the first century of egoism in print (from the 1845 publication of Der Einzige und sein Eigentum by Max Stirner to the end of 1945), not prescriptive in advocacy of egoism.

CONTENTS

Introduction by the Editor  2

1. Max Stirner   7

Max Stirner’s Anarchist Gospel | A Dutch Review of Stirner’s Work | Anarchist Black Dragon | Max Stirner vs. Wahrheit-Sucher | “Celine Adele Marillier” | Pity and the Future | Max Stirner and the Grisette | Steven T. Byington’s Triple Score

2. Malfew Seklew  29

On “Bérnard’s Tour” | Minister Mocks Malfew  | Stern Critique of Christian Socialist  | Seklew Asks: Nietzsche to Blame?  | Social Aristocrat Socialist Secretary | A Freak Among Reformers  | No Guide for Anybody | Proletarians in Purgatory | No Justice for Malfew Seklew  | “We’re All More or Less Nutty” | Not Seeking Work  | Seklew Scolds Simpoleons, Supplies Sample Shilling Sericine Silk Set | No Detail Too Small!

3. Ragnar Redbeard   51

Redbeard in Canada | Desmond Selling George  | Give the New Hand a Show! | A.D. in the O.E.D.  | A Bogus Book | Australian Socialist Drinking Club | Redbeard’s Rough Stuff |“We Understand the Redbeard Philosophy” | Voima On Oikeus | Etc.

4. Dora Marsden  95

Dora Marsden for the Prosecution | The Freewomen of New York | Dora Marsden, unser aller Mutter  | Dora Marsden Ephemera | Rare Portraits

5. Benjamin DeCasseres   107

Emmeline Pankhurst | Pyrrhonism and Acatalepsy | Balzac | The Borrowed Mirror

6. Friedrich Nietzsche   117

Nietzsche and a Braille Stirner for Hellen Keller | “Will Nietzsche Come Into Vogue…” | The Works of Friedrich Nietzsche | Alexander Tille Reads Egoism

7. Enzo Martucci   135

A Sketch of Martucci | An Excerpt from The Red Sect | Martucci on Stirner

8. Free Spirits  159

Peter Lamborn Wilson Has Passed  | Hakim Bey: Real and Unreal | Vox Populi Vox Dei | Thompson at Rudolf Steiner Hall | Speakers’ Corner Anthology | Among the Anarchists | The True Comarade | Is This What You Call “Living?” | The Thirteenth Paragraph | Greeves Fisher, A Sketch | Dominance vs. Egoism | More Individualism | Individualism and Property | Why I am a Right-Wing Anarchist | Opening and Closing the Dil Pickle | Christmas a Joke! | “I” a poem  | “I GO” a poem| A Letter to the Editors of Freedom | Enrico Arrigoni Bibliography | Photo of Benjamin R. Tucker | About the Editors

Leedz Anarkyst – Greevz Fysher (1845-1931)

Greevz was one of England’s most original yet least known pioneering anarchists. From the economy to the alphabet, if there was a conventional system, Greevz had an alternative!

A Marriage Made in Heaven – and Leeds

Born John Greeves Fisher in Youghal, Ireland on 9 September 1845, Greevz preferred the phonetic form of his name in line with his scheme for spelling reform. Initially employed as an ironmongers assistant in Dublin, in 1877 Greevz moved to Wetherby, Yorkshire to partner his cousin in his Leeds “Kingfisher” engineering business. After his first wife died, in 1879, Greevz lived with her widowed sister, Charlotte Rowntree. Although both shared a Quaker upbringing Greevz had since progressed through scepticism to full-blown atheism and Charlotte wasn’t amused. In 1884 Daniel Pickard told the Leeds Quaker congregation that, “We much regret to have to inform the Monthly Meeting that John G Fisher has been for some time past an acknowledged disbeliever on the fundamental truths of the Christian religion”. Charlotte moved to America and in September 1887 at Leeds Register Office, Greevz married the love of his life, Marie Clapham.

Klever and Kreativ

Marie shared and encouraged Greevz’ iconoclasm and the joyful inventiveness that had already borne fruit. In 1884 Greevz had marketed, “Fisher’s Nonpareil Perpetual Kalendar” and the following year published, “Spelling Reform in Three Stages”. He then developed an improved device for producing reading material for the blind. Marketed as the “Kingfisher Braille Printer” and adopted by Liverpool blind school it was only a modest success.

By then his cousin had left the engineering business, making Greevz sole proprietor. Greevz re-focussed the business onto developing lubricants for industry. In 1883 he came up with “ACME” a unique, soap-based grease that proved invaluable.

In 1886 Greevz first mounted the pulpit to rail against religion and April found him at Sheffield’s “Hall of Science” delivering a couple of characteristic sermons. In the afternoon he spoke on, “Spiritualism a Delusion” and in the evening, rhetorically reassured listeners, “Has a Dying Atheist Anything to Fear?”

Cheeky Lady

Marie Fisher was a secularist freethinker in her own right and according to her son, ”as a young country girl she used to tramp the 12 miles to attend the meetings of Charles Bradlaugh”. Greevz and Marie first met at one of these secularist meetings and the couple’s selection of names for their 5 children signals their influences and advertises their radicalism;

• Auberon Herbert (1888-1932) – named after the individualist anarchist
• Wordsworth Donisthorpe (1889-1950) – another English anarchist
• Constance Naden (1891-1984) – female poet and philosopher
• Spencer Darwin (1893-1968) – libertarian philosopher and discoverer of evolution
• Hypatia Ingersoll (1899-1977) – philosopher martyred by Church & an American libertarian

Marie didn’t confine her interests to the home and every Wednesday attended educational classes at Leeds’ Mechanics’ Institute. When local magistrates refused to accept affirmation as an alternative to “swearing on the bible”, she doggedly pursued the issue through the press. In 1904 she travelled to the Rome International Freethought Congress as a delegate of the British Secular League and relished the perceived insult to Catholicism in the pages of “The Truthseeker”, “The Pope thinks that the gates of hell cannot prevail against the Church but he sees rationalism forcibly pronouncing itself within earshot of the Vatican. He admits he is grieved; possibly he trembles.”

Marie was an active member of the local Astronomical, Philosophical, Geological and Yorkshire Naturalists’ Societies and, in 1923 was elected as the first female president of the Leeds Philatelic Society. She was a militant feminist and active suffragette and in 1920 Marie wrote to the press encouraging Leeds ladies to light up in cinemas after seeing notices permitting men to smoke but prohibiting women.

Freethought to FREEDOM

Encouraged by Marie’s own iconoclasm it wasn’t long before Greevz’ Freethought widened out into political activism. In 1888 he supported the local strike of Jewish tailors and at the Clarendon Buildings denounced, “Starvation in the Midst of Plenty”. He also began a six year campaign for election onto local School Boards. Greevz opposed the growing State control of education and was determined to derail the process in Leeds but was never elected.

Even within anarchism, Greevz adopted an advanced position on children. In an article entitled, “Children as Chattels”, he argued against Benjamin Tucker, in Tucker’s journal, “Liberty”, that parents don’t own their children. They certainly owe them a duty of care but children own themselves and should be respected as individuals from the start. Greevz had real insight into libertarian learning and as well as generally campaigning against state control of schools he also specifically opposed the abstract curriculum that came with it. In 1889 he argued in, “The Revolutionary Review”, “Keeping children from manipulating tangible objects and forcing them to occupy themselves almost wholly with symbols is a total reversal of the natural order of intellectual growth.”

Anarchism or Communism

Greevz remained forever sceptical of the millenarial promises of Communists. Although he subscribed to the Anarchist-Communist journal “Freedom” he objected to Kropotkin’s assurances that history was inevitably moving in the direction of communism. History shows Greevz was right to be sceptical. Whilst Kropotkin’s observations on mutual aid were a useful corrective to the excesses of social Darwinism, “Freedom” continued to over-egg the pudding and exaggerate revolutionary prospects. Greevz was one of a small group of English anarchists who fought against State control and argued for voluntary cooperation yet refused to accept that “Anarchist-Communism” could square the circle. He was presciently aware of the group-think dangers inherent in all forms of Communism.

From its 1898 inception, Greevz subscribed to the Egoist journal The EAGLE and the SERPENT (E&S) from and enthusiastically responded to its editor’s appeal for supporters to form affinity groups – “Egoist Coteries”, “Nietzsche Clubs”, “Myself Societies” – by proposing himself as Leeds coordinator of an “Egoist Lending Library”. Once established, E&S advertised this network as “Egoist Universities”, which grew to include Scottish anarchist William Duff as its Glasgow representative. Unfortunately the scheme never operated effectively and after publishing nineteen iconoclastic editions the journal finally ceased publication in 1903.

Natural Order

After anarchism and family-life, Greevz loved cycling. He’d started in Ireland on a boneshaker with wooden wheels and iron tyres but had still managed journeys of over 100 miles. In later life he rode a variety of fairly modern machines and into his eighties he rode almost every day. Greevz’ cycling exploits featured regularly in “The Leeds Mercury” where he revealed his recipe for a long and active life, “I consume a fair amount of home-made lemonade” and “I make my own porridge”.

Greevz was also keen on natural history, a respected member of several local societies, in 1930 he was elected President of the Yorkshire Naturalist’s Union. His non-political lecture repertoire included;

• “Some Curious Habits of the Indian Wasps”
• “The Sinistral Form of Limnaea Peregra”
• “The Structure and Habits of the Crayfish”

In later years Greevz combined an interest in wildlife with a passion for cycling and indulging his eccentricity he was regularly spotted cycling around Leeds with a pet jackdaw perched on his shoulder!

Yorkshire Anarchy

Greevz was a much loved local character but was also a serious, inventive owner of a small, successful business employing around 30 people. As a Proudhonian advocate of small scale enterprise he never contemplated converting “Kingfisher” into a workers’ co-op but according to a former employee writing in the “Yorkshire Post”, “We all had a real affection for him”.

Greevz followed up the great success of his, “Kingfisher Acme Lubricant” with the invention and production of an original,”Screw Plunger Automatic Lubricator” which continues, in modified form, in production today. Interestingly, for many years Greevz employed Leonard Hall, a pioneering Manchester socialist as Kingfisher’s sales agent. Greevz’ monetary theories were then critically examined in one of Hall’s political tracts, “Which Way? Root Remedies & Free Socialism Versus Collectivist Quackery and Glorified Pauperism”.

Whatever folks thought of his politics the business thrived and continues today, still under family ownership. Greevz updated, patent grease fittings, have over the years been installed in vehicles ranging from Volvo cars through the European Airbus to NASA’s space shuttle transporter.

Catalogue of Surgical Specialities

Greevz was a keen analyst of the role money and markets play in capitalist society but in contrast to the Anarchist-Communists he wasn’t satisfied that problems of distribution and exchange would evaporate if capitalism were destroyed. The debates appear abstract and protracted but the problem is real enough.

Greevz and Marie also enthusiastically attacked traditional constraints on sexual relations and reproduction. They didn’t merely campaign for women’s right to limit family size but bravely also advertised and supplied contraceptives in an age that was outraged. In the 1890’s they freely supplied interested parties with their, “Malthusian Catalogue of Domestic & Surgical Specialities”. Greeves also campaigned against the labelling of children as “Bastards” and organised for the repeal of oppressive legislation as President of the “Legitimation League”.

Unlike Kropotkin, Greevz didn’t promise heaven on earth. Although he disagreed with Benjamin Tucker on some of the finer points they shared the same basic practical anarchist approach; “There are some troubles from which mankind can never escape…They (the anarchists) have never claimed that liberty will bring perfection; they simply say that its results are vastly preferable to those that follow from authority…As a choice of blessings, liberty is the greater; as a choice of evils, liberty is the smaller. Then liberty always says the Anarchist. No use of force except against the invader…”

In the 1880’s Greevz campaigned against granting the Post Office a monopoly over telegram delivery. In the 1890’s he argued against doctors claiming immunity from public scrutiny as he rejected all forms of professional cartel, “Classes based upon special privileges are a danger to the public liberty”.

Throughout his long life Greevz continued to resist authority and speak up for the dispossessed. Through the pages of “Liberty” he continued to argue for the liberation of Ireland but unlike the Fenians he didn’t want an Independent Irish State, he proposed “No Government for Ireland!” Aged 83, he wrote to the “Yorkshire Post” criticising the local authority who’d demolished the homes of the Beeston Community of Tolstoyan anarchists because they refused to fully comply with the Council’s petty demands.

Ashes to Ashes

Celebrating Greevz long involvement in civic life, in September 1925 the “Yorkshire Post” observed, “Mr Greevz Fisher, head of the firm of Kingfisher (Ltd) lubricators and oil merchants, Sackville Street, Leeds, yesterday attained his 80^th birthday and in celebration of this and his 50 years in business in the city his employees presented him with a barometer and case. Only last year Mr Fisher rode a push bike from Liverpool to Leeds.”

When Greevz died in May 1931 his cremation ceremony was marked by the “Yorkshire Post”, which also detailed the numerous organisations that attended. Marie took over the business which on her death in 1950 was in turn run by her surviving children.

Greevz left a published legacy of over a hundred pamphlets, articles and letters that remain uncollected and, nowadays, largely unread. Whilst no single piece may be revelatory, taken together his life and work evidences and illustrates a vital thread of practical, home grown English anarchism that can still amuse and inspire.

Christopher Draper – April 2021

Nietzsche on Egoism.

[Translated from the German by George Schumm.]

A good author who really has his cause at heart longs for someone to come and replace him by presenting the same cause more clearly and by more completely answering the questions raised by it. The loving girl longs to prove the devoted fidelity of her love through the infidelity of her lover. The soldier longs to die on the battlefield for his victorious coun­try; for in the victory of his country his highest aspirations are also victorious. The mother gives to her child what she denies to herself,—sleep, the best food, if need be her health, her property. But are all these unegoistic conditions? Are these actions of morality miracles because, in Schopenhauer’s language, they are “impossible and yet real”? Is it not clear that in all these cases a man loves some part of himself, a thought, a desire, a product, more than some other part of himself; that he thus divides his nature, and sacrifices the one part to the other? Is there anything essentially different in the declaration of an obstinate man: “I will rather be shot down than go a step out of the way of this fellow ”? There is, in all of the above cases, an inclination toward something (wish, im­pulse, desire); to yield to it, with all the consequences, is certainly not “unegoistic.”—Menscliliches Allzumenschliches.

There is no help: we must mercilessly put on trial and cross-question the sentiments of devotion, of self-sacrifice, the whole morality of unselfishness, as well as the aesthetic of “disinterested contemplation,” un­der which the emasculation of art seeks alluringly enough to create for itself a good conscience to-day. There is too much of moonshine and sugar in those sentiments, in this “for others,” in this “not for my­self,” so that there should be no need here of being doubly suspicious and of asking: “ Are they perhaps the language of the—seducer?” That they please—him who has them, and him who enjoys their fruits, also the mere spectator,—this furnishes no argument for them, but invites prudence. Let us be prudent, then!—Jenseits von Gut und Bose.

In listening to the now so popular phrase of the “ disinterested,” one must consider, perhaps not without some danger, in what the people really take an in­terest, and what are, in general, the things about which the common man concerns himself thoroughly and profoundly,—including the educated, even the savants, and, unless all signs mislead, almost also the philosophers. Thereby the fact is brought out that most of what interests and fascinates every superior nature appears to the average man as entirely “uninteresting if he, nevertheless, observes a devotion to it, he calls it “désintéressé,” and wonders how it is possible to act “disinterestedly.” There have been philosophers who knew how to invest this popular wonderment with an alluring and mystically other­worldly aspect (perhaps because they did not know the superior nature from experience?), instead of setting forth the plain and naked truth that the disinterested action is a very interesting and interested action, pro­vided. . . . “And love?” What! even love you would make out to be “unegoistic”? Dunces!

“And the praise of the self-sacrificing?” But whoso has really made sacrifices knows that he wanted and got something for them—perhaps something from him­self—that he gave here in order to have more there, perhaps in order generally to be more, or at any rate to feel himself as “more.” But this is a realm of questions and answers in which a pampered spirit does not like to tarry: so necessary is it here already for truth, if she must answer, to suppress yawning. And she is a woman: one must not do violence to her.—Jenseits von Gut und Bose.

“Science” as Prejudice.—It follows from the laws of the order of rank (Rangordnung) that savants, in so far as they belong to the intellectual middle class, do not even see the truly great problems and question-marks: besides, their courage, and likewise their vision, do not reach so far,—above all, the need which makes of them investigators, their inner wish and anticipation that things might be ordered so and so, their fears and hopes, are too soon satisfied and set at rest. That, for instance, which makes the pedantical Englishman, Herbert Spencer, dream after his fashion, and causes him to draw a line of hope, a horizon-line of desirability, the final reconciliation of “egoism and altruism,” of which he fables, gives to persons of our kind almost a feeling of nausea; a humanity with such Spencerian perspectives as final perspectives would seem to us as worthy of contempt, of destruction! But already that something must be experienced by him as a highest hope which is, and rightly may be, to others, only a repulsive possibility, is a question-mark which Spencer could not have fore­seen. —Frohliche Wissenschaft.

Notwithstanding some very excellent arguments in your two articles on Nature’s decrees concerning industry and militarism, I hardly think question is finally settled. It is not us to put on our seven-league boots and go on a tour of inspection among European nations during the past 2000 years. If we wished to determine the course human evolution with some degree of accuracy, we would have to traverse a period at least one hundred times greater.

It will be enough for our purpose to go back to the time when Egypt became part of the Roman empire. What would the philosophical Roman soldier have thought about the course of human evolution after having examined the pyramids and the wonderful temples and tombs of long past ages? With the military exploits of Rome vividly impressed on his memory, he might probably have thought Nature has decreed that militarism was destined to replace the apparently peaceful industry that had left such wonderful monuments on the bank of the Nile. His opinion, however, would have been just as erroneous as the opposite opinion.

The fact is that militarism and industrialism are not necessarily antithetic, in the predominance of the one or the other is no certain indication by which we can always distinguish advancedness or the backwardness of the people in the scale of civilization. Neither the one nor the other is the true end of humanity; and the Czar and his Ministers are equally in error when they say that “the maintenance of universal peace and a possible reduction of the excessive armaments… represents the ideal aims towards which the efforts of all governments should be directed.

In so far as the human race can be said to have a goal at all, it is the highest excellence of society, and neither militarism or industrialism, neither peace nor war can be judged independently, but must be tested by their effects in furthering or retarding the attainment of man’s true end. It is doubtful what may take place with regard to national armaments. It is quite possible that they may be reduced in the near future, not from a decrease in aggressiveness, but owing to the increasing lack of solidarity among the individuals comprising a nation.

There is little doubt, however, that as regard the police organization (which is practically a military organization) it will be more and more strengthened for a long time to come. The disorganization of social arrangements which has resulted from the vast increase in trade and commerce during the present century has produced a state of latent anarchism, which is only prevented from bursting forth in lawlessness by the great increase of the police force in all our industrial centers.

I would most emphatically deny the probability of the dream of a millennium of happiness and comfort for all individuals ever being realized. Instead of the struggle for existence ceasing in the future, it is likely to become more violent. Under Christian influences this struggle has been reduced to a minimum for the lower classes of the population, and has resulted in the deterioration of the European races.

Now, however, when the theologians themselves have torn up their creed and the Christian records and in their triumph have painted the shreds in all the colors of the rainbow (see the Polychrome Bible), Christian morality, with the secular salvation which it has assuredly provided for sinners, must necessarily perish in spite of all the efforts of the ethical societies to foster it. The natural result is likely to be a recrudescence of pagan morality.

The struggle for existence will probably once more be waged fiercely, as in ancient Greece and Rome, and as a final result of a long and bitter struggle a united Western Europe may once more be realized. The fierce struggle of classes and of individuals will, in all probability, continue its natural course until it results once more, as in ancient India, in welding society into a system of castes – a ruling caste, a soldier caste, an a laboring caste, each with its various gradations. It is likely that industrialism and militarism will always continue to co-exist; in future, however, there will be a regulated system of manufactures, trade, and commerce according to the national requirements – not the anarchical huckster system that is carried on at present.

The whole philosophy of the subject is set forth at great length in Nietzsche’s works, which, instead of taking a pessimistic view of the world like Schopenhauerism, are joyfully optimistic. As Nietzsche has succeeded best in explaining the past, he may also be taken as the best guide with regard to the future; and notwithstanding that Professor Andrew Seth has misrepresented and even vilified the new philosophy in “Blackwood” and the “Contemporary,” Nietzsche has an ever-increasing number of enthusiastic disciples and able defenders. We may mention among the number Mr. Havelock Ellis and the late Professor Wallace of Oxford. Perhaps the best book on the subject is La Philosopie de Nietzsche, by Professor Lichtenberger.

Lecture to the Ferrer Colony

by John William Lloyd

In reading this paper to you, members of the Ferrer Colony, I wish to say that I claim neither inspiration nor infallibility. I do not pretend to be an expert in anything. I am simply a friend and a comrade who has a few suggestions to make out of his own thought and experience. It is your part to criticize and reject the useless.

In coming to a colony you are aiming at a more ideal social life. Were it not so there would be no object in your forming a colony, for the advantages of complex civilization are better obtained in a city and the joys of a country life, per se, would be better obtained in a hermitage. But the first thing you all need to realize is that social life is more difficult in a colony of comrades than in a village of strangers, still more so than in a city. It requires more tact, more sympathy, more patience and good-will. The chief trouble in almost every colony of radicals is the dogmatic cock-sureness, the critic-ability and combativeness-plus of the members. Almost every member in such a chosen community has a vivid ideal of what life should be in such a place, all mapped and drawn to a scale in his mind, with every body’s behaviour and belief specified, and he confidently expects to see this at once put in operation on his arrival. But alas, his ideal coincides with that of no one else exactly, for each and every one of his neighbors has a different ideal, also demanding general faith and practice. The result is a clash of intense natures, a Donnybrook Fair of the saints, so to speak, each zealous enthusiast using his plan-of-salvation as a shillaleh to pound his neighbor with. What you must all remember, when you come to a place like this, is that you are all intense individualists and therefore fated to differ, that Harmony is vastly more important than your particular “ism”, and that whatever system, plan or method of life finally prevails in the colony will not be exactly what you have imagined, or exactly what anybody else has imagined, but a new and composite thing which the circumstances of the colony and the characters concerned have evolved and which under the friction of all these has proved most fitted to survive. Nothing else than this can be done.

The thing most needed in any colony is a lot of colonists who can live and work harmoniously together and you will find it the hardest thing of all to secure. In fact if your colony endures it will have to go thru a period of fermentation which will work off and out the unassimiable human units, leaving an effective working majority of those who are comrades in fact as well as in name. If you would assure this harmony you must all set your hearts upon it as your most vital social ideal, they keystone of your social arch without which it will surely fall.

But if Harmony is the keystone of your arch, Liberty and Sympathy are the foundation stones from which it springs. And these must be equal or it totters. A liberty which would do simply what it pleases is a Sampson which finally pulls down everything and on itself; and a sympathy which does not first grant freedom is worthless indeed. As you are mostly all libertarians I will not go into the theory of liberty, about which many of you know, no doubt, more than myself, but the necessary relation of sympathy to liberty is something which I have found too many libertarians unconscious of or indifferent to. It is all very well to affirm “I will do as I please and take the consequences”, if you are willing to take the consequences, but not if you are willing that one of the consequences shall be a successful colony group.

The first step in that liberty which is sympathetic and makes for harmony, as I see it, is that you are willing and glad that other people should be different from yourself in looks, dress, habits, beliefs and ideals, that variation is not only certain but within uninvasive and reasonable limits is exceedingly useful and the thing to be desired to make life interesting and picturesque.

I will quote from some writings of mine on this subject made years ago:

“There are two ways to get liberty. One is for the isolated individual to flee to the savage wilderness, and there, away from his fellows and untrammeled by them, attain such animal liberty as Nature permits. But this, be in noted, is only liberty from man’s fulfillment.

“The second way is for men to unite and by patiently, faithfully, lovingly cooperating, create for each other, and all, that real liberty which is power over Nature and fullness of self-expression — which is knowledge, which is mastery, which is character; which in the material realm is service, art, leisure and healthful joy.

“Liberty is power.

“And the greatest attainable human liberty will be when men stop struggling for power over each other and all unite for power over Nature?

“To drop men isolated — sink or swim — on little bits of land, is not to give them liberty, leisure, power, home or Nature. All the raw materials are there, but just out of reach. The necessity for constant drudgery of toil from dawn to bed makes all inaccessible?

“But the moment man helps his fellow, power arrives and liberty flowers and art bears fruit. Life on small pieces of land, in individual homes, is ideal, if all one’s neighbors are one’s helpers and one’s liberators, and if to liberate, love and assist is mutual job. Then combined brain and brawn can progressively lessen the hours of labor, while increasing the product, and power, leisure — real liberty — progressively arrive.”

Another quotation is this: “And I would suggest for land-holding groups that they hold land as a corporate body, but in individual allotments, with an understanding that on the withdrawal of any member the title should revert to the group. Otherwise when a member leaves he ight sell his holding to some outsider of absolutely uncongenial traits and so break up the quality of the group.”

When a group is formed of people who all know each other and live close together, one great danger is that they will so constantly enter each other’s homes and keep up such an intrusive intimacy that privacy will be impossible, and those who love retirement, meditation, quiet literary pursuits, and so on, will find the situation intolerable and at any cost must leave. And such people are usually of the very finest sort, the best material for harmonious cooperation. To lose them would be a grave loss. Yet there are always in every neighborhood, some who have no respect for their own society, but shun it as a vacuum, and rush continually to those about them for refuge from themselves. These become perilous bores unless carefully guarded against. It should be one of your unwritten if not written laws that a member may be as reserved as he likes, a hermit, a very Robinson Crusoe if he pleases, with no reproof from any one. But the mere theory will not be enough, for it is the peculiarity of the bore that he is obtuse and conceited and always imagines that he is the accepted one and his society thrice welcome. You must have some sign or signal, flag, color, emblem, what you will, that can be displayed on the door-post or gate-post and which will be understood as warning all away. And as soon as possible all your homes should be united by telephone so that any really necessary communication can be made without entering the home itself. I would emphasize this point, if you wish to have real liberty.

Many of you, I understand, are communists. Communism is one of the most beautiful of ideals, but in liberty it is only possible between loving friends. The only communism a libertarian can stand for is freedom communism and communism is only free when it is free to refuse. Therefore it must be based on individualism, on individual possession of property, for communism is sharing and if I possess nothing I can share nothing, and if I possess nothing I can refuse nothing. If your communism is forced it destroys your liberty, for liberty is power the means of power is property. Therefore your communism and individualism must be reconciled and both expressed in your colony life. Your communism must be your expression of your sense of solidarity and good will toward each other. Communism cannot be demanded as a right where there is to be liberty — it can only be a gift.

As many of you are city men, unused to country life and its methods, you should employ one or more of your members, if capable, if not then some outsider, to teach and show such of you as may need it the mysteries of gardening, fruit-growing, poultry-raising, also to maintain a model garden where you may learn by example. This may make all the difference between great losses and easy success.

Most men who are fitted for country life, who would make good gardeners and good home-makers are not good businessmen in the modern sense — they are not fitted for the struggles of the market, to buy and sell. You should then choose some trusted member with a talent for this and employ him as your business-agent, to buy for you economically and sell at a profit the things you produce.

The American pioneers did a good deal of practical communism under the name of “bees”. When a new man arrived in the community, all came together in a “bee” and rushed up a little home to shelter him, or cleared his land, or plowed it, or whatever might be necessary. You too might do much with the “bee”.

I would advise, too, that you mutually insured each other. What I mean is that in case of sickness you each contribute a few cents a week, whatever the agreed upon sum might be, to the support of the sick member. Or if fire destroys one of your little homes, that you each give $5, or whatever you may pledge yourselves for, toward the erection of a new dwelling. These things will bind you all together, make you all feel more secure and your comradeship real.

I take it for granted that most of you would prefer to escape the city altogether and form you abiding place here. To do this you should band your energies upon mutual employment. See if you cannot make your colony a little world in itself, self-supporting, self-sufficient. Andy by such cooperation and division of labor you can greatly increase your combined efficiency and comfort.

Thus why should not one of your members do all the baking and perhaps much of the cooking for the whole colony? Why not have a common dining-room where those who chose could get meals without doing their own cooking? Why not have a colony carpenter, a colony barber, a colony cobbler, etc. You should be able to employ a colony tailor and colony seamstress. Of course no one of these trades or employments might furnish a complete living, but combined with the garden it might make possible a residence permanent in the country, otherwise out of reach.

Many ways besides agriculture might be devised to sell colony products profitably to the outside world also. An arts-and-crafts shop for example. Or one woman instead of gardening might get some tents and furnish them and in summer take boarders from the city, doing their light housekeeping and cooking their meals. These are only hints and pointers.

Self-support and economic freedom should be your goal.

We all want liberty and we should want it. But we must take the universe as it is, for neither you nor I have made it, nor can change its laws. The wise man faces life as it is, and from that basis uses it to serve his purpose. And life as it is is an unstable balance of opposites; opposites that partly conflict, that is, and partly support each other, but are always there and insistent on being included. You can never successfully exclude all of any one and successfully include all of its opposite. It is a waste of time and strength to fight this natural law. In real life you can only have liberty in conjunction with a certain amount of authority and you practical problem, in each new set of circumstances that arises, will be to so reconcile the two that both may serve your benefit. We would fain abolish government because of its abuses, but in some form government insists on proportionate representation. Josiah Warren saw this and affirmed that in practical action the group must be an individual — which means that somebody’s brain must dominate the rest. Tucker saw it and based society on free-contract — but contract is valueless unless there is some power to enforce it on those who treat it as a scrap of paper. Kropotkin saw this and would regulate society by custom, but custom is government — too often the rule of the dead hand — and maybe a very arbitrary and obstructive form of government indeed. The same is true of the boycott. Abolish artificial government and we go back to the primitive struggle and rule of might as right. In some form, and necessarily, the arbitrary and the coercive always emerges. Any way you fix it or leave it alone, when it comes to cooperation or business, you will find yourselves helpless unless you have organization, accepted order and executive power. Apparently the experience of mankind has evolved nothing so far better for the working reconciliation of liberty and authority than the democratic vote with majority decision; the minority agreeing beforehand to acquiesce.

If you can secure the necessary degree of government thru internal discipline, self-government — self-restraint, loyalty and mutual agreement — well and good. If not it will have to be accomplished by some degree of external government.

For in your business you will not be able to function without some method of obtaining and enforcing decisions and in your school you will not have success unless you have an order and discipline — some method, with whatever checks and safeguards, of investing your teachers with sufficient authority to establish a working system out of a chaos of raw materials. Unless you evolve from or implant in your pupils a passionate love of social service and individual efficiency the liberty with which you endow them may be a personal and social curse and your education a failure.

The only true education is that which creates character. For character is the supreme essential of society. This is a truism, a platitude, if you will, but it is a fact we are all too prone to forget or underestimate. There is a certain plan of good intention and comprehending wisdom which some people attain which makes them always and everywhere good neighbors and good citizens. Get enough of such and you are safe. Without such a majority, nothing of theory or brilliant accomplishment can save you. Formulas, philosophies, laws or liberations are all wind and waste, deceptions and disappointments unless the men behind them are men of character.

And if you have the character you will do pretty well no matter what the form or shibboleth.

It is not what men profess, it is what they will and what they do.

There is in almost every human being an instinctive love of beauty tho he may be largely unconscious of it or contentious enough to deny it, or unable, by himself, to express it. But if not in his environment he will grow disgusted, pessimistic, heartsick. Order is one of these elements of beauty. Order is everywhere in Nature. All animals lead orderly lives. All “savages”, as we call them, have orderly societies and customs of life. Without order social life becomes intolerable and explodes to rearrange on new lines. Whatever its theories of liberty and spontaneity a society must evolve and maintain its own order or it falls into chaos.

The esthetic is extremely practical. We often regard work as alone practical, but we all work to attain the means of pleasure, and nothing affords us more pleasure than beauty. And the more orderly the work the more efficient. Work beautifully done, to achieve beautiful results, is always the most satisfactory.

But after the work is done, and we are tired and would rest, then disorder and ugliness discourage, dishearten, sicken. If the home to which we go after the day’s work is done is not orderly and restfully beautiful the next day’s work will be less efficient. Pioneers continually forget or ignore this and, in their concentration on the immediately practical, flout the beautiful until, in dull disgust with the hideousness of their own doings, they sell out and move on. Not until an element arrives which considers order and esthetics does an element which will stick arrive. It would pay any colony, then, that cares to succeed, to see it to that every building, however small or cheap, was made attractive to the eye, and that every bit of ground was laid out or cultivated in such a manner that the relation of it to all others in sight was pleasing, harmonious. For a hundred different people to settle, helter skelter on a tract of land, all in sight of each other, and proceed without plan, experience or regard to others, to run up every possible type of structure and tear up the earth generally, is very much in total effect on the nerves, as if a hundred would-be musicians seized a hundred instruments of any and every kind and proceeded, each for himself, to scrape, bang and blow, in the confident expectation of creating a symphony.

One of the most practical things any colony could do would be to elect a Committee of Esthetics to give advice to all on matters pertaining to beauty of form, color, line and relation. Make your colony beautiful and your colonists will love it as a home and be happy in it and with each other. Pay no attention to such things and observe the amazing percentage of homesickness, grumbling, quarreling, chronic kicking — the many and frequent secessions and the satire and contempt the whole movement will evoke.

It is simply a scientific fact that any tent, shack or hutch, however cheap or simple, can be made picturesque, and any bit of ground can be made not only productive but a pleasing part of the total landscape.

“The Man Born Blind”
Ambrose Bierce

A man born blind received his sight
By a painful operation;
And these are things he saw in the light
Of an infant observation.

He saw a merchant, good and wise.
And greatly, too, respected,
Who looked, to those imperfect eyes,
Like a swindler undetected.

He saw a patriot address
A noisy public meeting.
And said: ‘Why, that’s a calf, I guess,
That for the teat is bleating.’

A doctor stood beside a bed
And shook his summit sadly.
‘O see that foul assassin!’ said
The man who saw so badly.

He saw a lawyer pleading for
A thief whom they’d been jailing,
And said: ‘That’s an accomplice, or
My sight again is failing.’

Upon the Bench a Justice sat,
With nothing to restrain him;
”Tis strange,’ said the observer, ‘that
They ventured to unchain him.’

With theologic works supplied,
He saw a solemn preacher;
‘A burglar with his kit,’ he cried,
‘To rob a fellow creature.’

A bluff old farmer next he saw
Sell produce in a village,
And said: ‘What, what! is there no law
To punish men for pillage?’

A dame, tall, fair and stately, passed,
Who many charms united;
He thanked his stars his lot was cast
Where sepulchers were whited.

He saw a soldier stiff and stern,
‘Full of strange oaths’ and toddy;
But was unable to discern
A wound upon his body.

Ten square leagues of rolling ground
To one great man belonging,
Looked like one little grassy mound
With worms beneath it thronging.

A palace’s well-carven stones,
Where Dives dwelt contented,
Seemed built throughout of human bones
With human blood cemented.

He watched the yellow shining thread
A silk-worm was a-spinning;
‘That creature’s coining gold.’ he said,
‘To pay some girl for sinning.’

His eyes were so untrained and dim
All politics, religions,
Arts, sciences, appeared to him
But modes of plucking pigeons.

And so he drew his final breath,
And thought he saw with sorrow
Some persons weeping for his death
Who’d be all smiles to-morrow.

Available from Underworld Amusements

Nearly 40 years ago panarchy advocate John Zube put every of copy of Benjamin R. Tucker’s Liberty journal on microfiche as part of his Peace Plans project, and made them available for very little money. You can find out more about his project at LibertarianMicrofiche.com.

In preparation of the microfiche he created a Table of Content for each issue to assist with readers of his Peace Plans,something I’m not aware of existing elsewhere. The tables, noting author, title and pages number for each issue of Liberty and the German-language Libertas, run seventy-seven pages. Unfortunately, his amazingly interesting and useful work has only been seen by a small number of people who bought his microfiched collected edition of Liberty.

For personal reference, I scanned and prepared this print edition, but am printing a small run of ten total, to make available to others who may be interested. It is flawed. Some of the text is marred, but he majority of it is legible and the issue numbers listed allows you to quickly access the information you want. At some point Union Of Egoists would like to transcribe this and make it available online and in print in a better presentation, but personal need moved me to produce a “good enough for now” version.
I have preserved Zube’s two page “Editorial Notes” he included at the end of his contents, written in December of 1980.

—Kevin I. Slaughter
April 1st, 2018

A Brief Sketch of the Life of J. William Lloyd

I was born on June 4th, 1857, at the tiny village of Westfield, New Jersey, (about 20 miles from New York City), of British, immigrant parents, who were almost unschooled, but not illiterate; my father a carpenter, my mother a seamstress.

A last and belated child in the family (the next eleven years older), I was brought up in a clearing in the woods, alone mostly, in the day time, with my mother, with only a few and occasional playmates. Went, in the winters, beginning at the age of seven, to two little, country, one-room, one-teacher schools, to be taught by “rote” the “four R.s”, tho I was always the school’s dunce in “‘rithmetic”. Left school at 14 to earn my living by hard work. Never so much as heard of High School, unknown at that time in those parts. My education has come from life and the reading of books and an innate flair for literary style.

Did farm work first, then was apprenticed to the carpenter’s trade but after one year carpentry collapsed in the “panic” of 1873. Took up gardening, but the second year a late drought destroyed my garden. When worked my way thru the Hygiee-Therapeutic College of drugless medication, at Florence, New Jersey, which system I later practiced in Kansas, Iowa, Tennessee and Florida. Lacking means, became next a pioneer on the Kansas frontier; first as a worker on a cattle-ranch, co-punching and prairie-breaking; later on my own homestead. With help of a friend, built myself a little stone cabin, and the girl I had become engaged to at the college, (Maria Elizabeth Emerson, a distant relative of Ralph Waldo) came out from Boston and married me in 1879. We were most happy together, but continuous drought from several years gave us very hard times. No work anywhere. Lived on whole-wheat bread, from borrowed wheat, and milk, with occasional prairie-chicken or rabbit. Only cash we had was $2.00 a month sent from my home. Local doctor, but almost no patients in that hardy and destitute population. Finally accepted invitation from head of Sanitarium at Vinton, Iowa, (who had heard of me from my articles in Medical Journals), to be assistant physician there and left Kansas, successful experience, but institution finally failed from accumulated debts. Followed another invitation to a Health Colony in the mountains of Tennessee. Again hard times. Built myself a beautiful little log cabin and cleared some land, worked in a saw-mill, had a few patients, drove a milk wagon, peddled home-made yeast. All would not suffice, work gave out, colony failed, and I sold out and moved to a similar colony in Florida, “Waldena”. Cleared a five-acre lot there, and built myself a two-story log-house, 40×16 splitting out all the shakes for the roof, and all the pickets for my garden, with a “frow”. Practiced medicine, but again folks were too healthy and too poor for any profit. Hoed in orange groves for neighbor and one winter cleared 15 acres of pine forest for him. But their colony failed too, work gave out, and I moved to Palatka and worked on a poultry farm. While there Yellow-fever struck Florida as a plague, the State was quarantined, and my beautiful married life ended by my wife dying from some mysterious internal disease, probably cancer of the liver. So, as soon as I could leave the State, I had to take my two little children (a boy born in Kansas and a girl in Tenn.), back to my parental home in N.J., to be cared for by my sister.

To find employment was imperative, and as my school of medicine was recognized there I became a nurse in New York City, specializing on the care of the insane, and also giving massage. My parents soon died, and with the help of my sister and my children, I tried to establish a little chicken-farm, on the old place, on the side.

When in Kansas I had written for the local newspaper and some Medical Journals, in Florida I had written for radical journals and reform papers, and always, ever since I was in college, I wrote poems, almost as a habit (still a habit in my eighties), but now, in New York, I began to bring out books and take literature more seriously, my first book, “Wind-Harp songs” appearing in 1896, and others gradually following: the most important, “Dawn-Thought” in 1908 and its sequel, “Life’ Beautiful Battle”, in 1910.

On March 7th, 1907, my Oriole, my lovely, beautiful daughter and dearest comrade, herself a fine poet and starting a printing-shop of her own, who had always seemed so healthy, died suddenly in Pennsylvania, from appendecitis and peritonitis. One of the great blows of my life. And my sister, Emily, so devoted to me, died in 1912. I had contracted a second marriage in 1901, but that had been unfortunate; we were incompatible, and after first separating were finally divorced. I would have been alone, but my son, who had become a dentist, and married, brought his wife to our home, and we all lived there till 1922. At my sister’s death I had inherited the old home.

In 1913, on sudden impulse, and accompanied at first by my bosom friend, Leonard D. Abbott, I started to make a knapsack trip over the British Islands. We went over much of Ireland together, had a period in England, and had just entered Scotland, when the sudden death of his father, forced Leonard to return, I went over most of England, making my headquarters with Dr. John Johnston and the Whitmanites of Bolton. Johnston had written a book on Whitman and was the physician of Edward Carpenter. I spent two days with Carpenter, incidentally meeting Henry S. Salt, the biographer of Thoreau. Also two weeks with William Atkinson, the dear old naturalist of Midhurst, in Sussex, studying the birds of England. A dear, affectionate old man, and what good times we had, tramping the commons and downs. Went into Surey. Went to Gilbert White’s “Selborne”. Went to Stonhenge and to Stratford-on-Avon. Visited William Platt, an English poet, went to Chichester and to Chester. Over Devonshire to Glovelly, over all the lake Country. To Winchester and Salisbury. To Milton’s Cottage and to Wordsworth’s Cottage, and to the old meeting house of William Penn. Hike over North Wales, and over Snowdown with knapsack on back. Over Isle of Man, and Isle of White, and Guernesye and Jersey in the Channel. Spent a day at St. Malo in Brittney. Slipped over to Switzerland and saw the Matterhorn. Visited Havelock Ellis is London and started a friendship lasting till death. Again in Scotland saw all the Burns country in Ayrshire., going out to Afton Water on one trip, seeing Burn’s Cottage and birthplace. And, standing on the Brig-‘O-Doon, felt the full thrill of the place and how he must have loved it. Went up the Caledonian Canal to Inverness, incidentally climbing Ben Movis, the highest mountain in the British Isles, and making snowballs there in August. Sailed, for a rip, out of Oban to see Fingal’s Cave, and Iona’s holy Isle, catching a glimpse, from the sea, of the Isle of Skye, with its dark and tragic peaks.

Returning to Glasgow from this trip, I took ship on the Allen Line for Canada, going up the St. Lawrence, stopping a short time at Quebec and spending several days at Montreal, with Horace Traubel at the hospitable home the Bains. Then came home by way of Boston, going out to Wellesly to see my friends, the Dentons.

Altogether I was gone about four months, at a total cost of about $400.00 and having one of the most delightful experiences of my whole life. And getting just ahead of the World War.

Back in 1903, (something I forgot to tell in its right place) I had gone out to the Pima Indians of Arizona, on the invitation of one tribe to get their wonderful old legends, living with them, as one of them, and building these stories into my “Am-Am-Tam Indian Nights” and some of the experience into “The Songs of the Desert”; on my return visiting the Grand Canyon of the Colorado and the Petrified Forest at Adama; La Veta and Denver, Colorado, Pike’s Peak and the Garden of the Gods.

But I had not seen enough of my beloved West and in 1915, I bought a special trip ticket to the California Fairs, on the way seeing Salt Lake City, Yellowstone Park, the Columbia river, Shasta, and going out, after the Fair, from San Francisco to Yosemite and the Mariposa Grove; then two weeks with Dutch friends near Santa Cruz, and some days with other friends at Santa Barbara, thence down to Los Angeles, friends there, and all the sights and cities of Southern California, including the San Diego Fair. On the home-stretch visiting a dear friend at Prescott, Arizona.

In 1922, my son who was going to California to live persuaded me to sell out and do the same. And this brought me finally to Freedom Hill. In 1925 I visited the Society Islands. And the rest of the story is in my “Like an Old Chinese Poet”, accurately told there.

My books are not popular and no publisher wants to risk them but they get extravagant praise from the greater minds, and brought me all my great friends. And in various way, at my own expense, or from the subsidies of devoted friends, some twenty have gotten into print, and I have unpublished manuscripts to make as many more, which may be published after my death — who knows? Dead is often a man’s best advertisement. And it can’t be long now, for I am nearing 83, and the lightning keeps hitting closer.

February 8th, 1940

I recently transcribed several essays of J. Wm Lloyd, a frequent contributor to Benjamin Tucker’s individualist anarchist periodical Liberty (1881) through most of its lifespan. Lloyd was the author of several works, mostly of poetry, that were heavily promoted by Liberty; they included The Anarchists’ March, The Dwellers in Vale Sunrise, and The Red Heart in a White World. To the extent there is a poet laureate of individualist anarchism, it is surely John William Lloyd. I consider this to be a companion piece to Lloyd’s classical essay on Anarchist Socialism. –Wendy McElroy, http://www.wendymcelroy.com

Anarchist-Mutualism

My old-time comrade and dear friend, C.L. Swartz, has sent me a copy of his new book, “What is Mutualism”, for review. I have unlimited respect for C.L. Swartz, his ripe scholarship and sincere idealism, and if I am compelled by an equal sincerity to differ with him, I hope our valued friendship will not be affected.

I make this review with pleasure, because it will incidentally afford me an opportunity to explain myself to my old comrades, who, I know, regard me as a sad renegade. In 1884, or thereabout, I became a disciple of the school of Proudhon and Tucker. Tho never very orthodox, I passed for a pretty straight Individualist-Anarchist for some 20 years. Tucker was a gentleman and a scholar, and his personal charm held me as well as intellectual and moral conviction. But at last my critical faculties were turned on the cult itself and I had to come out. I am no longer an Anarchist, but perhaps on many points I might fairly be called a Near-Anarchist still. I no longer label myself an Anarchist, or a Socialist (except in the large use of that term), but a Humanist, and the one principle I subscribe to is the greatest benefit to the greatest number. But I want all the personal liberty it is possible to have, for myself and others, so far as it is consistent with social benefit. I say all this because this new cult of Mutualism is simply the old cult of Tuckerism, of Individualist-Anarchism, under a new name and very wisely supplemented by the constructive principle of cooperation. As such it is far more attractive to me, as Co-operation is the most saving word in the language.

The Anarchists of half a century ago knew nothing of the psychology of modern business. With a new idea to put over, and in private life, courteous, cordial and refined, on paper they were a lot of swaggering, critical, swashbucklers, arrogant, browbeating and insulting, and all who differed were knaves or fools, and frankly so informed. The dictionary was reversed, and the astonished world was told that Anarchy was Order and Government was Invasion. Worse salesmanship for a new propaganda could hardly have been conceived. But conceit did not stop here, for men were also told that the Declaration of Independence must also be reversed. There were no “natural rights”, or any rights except those of might, unless created by contract between associates, and that children were the chattels of their parents, who (after all, as it was contradictorily discovered) had a natural right to do what they pleased with them as a labor product. It was a thousand pities, for those men really had some very valuable ideas that the world needed and which a sane and considerate propaganda might have enabled them to spread far. The tone of “What is Mutualism” is very different. It is courteous, persuasive, respectful and sweetly reasonable, and the old, antagonism-creating name has been wisely dropped, but under this gentle exterior one is saddened to see most of the old ideas reappear still.

As I see it: —

Liberty is to do as you please;
Law is that which limits liberty;
Government is that which applies law.

There is not now, and never has been, any complete liberty in our natural world or among men.

The universe is constructed of opposites, which always operate co-existently, at least to some extent; therefore liberty and authority always co-exist and operate together,

Anarchists plead only for equal-liberty, which is limited liberty, and therefore admit at the start that there is something in Nature and her necessities which limits liberty; therefore admit natural law and natural government — that there is a natural basis and origin for government. It is a dangerous admission for their cult. But they go further and claim that even equal-liberty has no rights against invasive might and its right must be created by an artificial contract between associates who pool their mights to defend it. They don’t stress the corollary, but if cornered admit it, that those outside the contract have no rights whatever and may be invaded without guilt by whosoever has the might. It is remindful of the morality of our Amerindians who are angels in tribal relations and fiends on the war-path to outsiders. They thus create a justification for invasion that the moral sense of the rest of men denies — and so still further cease to be the champions of liberty.

It is a tremendous strategic mistake that the Mutualists thus make to fly in the face of and array against them the moral intuitions of mankind. And quite unnecessary also. Even if they believe this, it is needless to mention it. Nobody suspects for a moment that Comrade Swartz and his immediate associates are seeking excuses for rape and murder on non-associates, or that they would treat their children any more like puppies or stove wood than other humans. Why then metaphysically outrage the moral code of those they are trying to persuade? What they are trying to put over is that good men, if they wish to have satisfactory liberty, must associate to realize and defend it. Why not emphasize that and chuck offensive hair-splitting out of the window? Why take a position that would theoretically permit one of their associates to prey as a burglar on non-associates, or a woman to sell her pretty little daughter into white slavery? And if it actually happened, if the man and the woman were loyal and inoffensive within the clan, and willing that the other members had equal liberty to burglarize and sell, how, without violating their principles, could they act to stop it? It was precisely at this point where Tucker, mad with his logic, asserted that the child was the labor-product of the mother, therefore absolutely her property and that the mother had the right to throw her baby into the fire, like an old newspaper, if she chose, that I broke with him first, and my Anarchism first began to crack. What insanity has moved modern Mutualists to re-assert these positions against which the heart of humanity and the intuitions of its moral conscience will always rebel? Especially as it is quite certain that none of those writing this book (for I am informed it is a mutualist creation) intend to make any practical application of such anti-social dogmas; nor has the practical application of the theory of the social-contract any need of such logic.

Nothing seems easier to demonstrate than natural rights. When Nature created us she endowed us all with an innate and indestructible conviction that we have: —

1. A right to live;
2. A right to promote and defend that life;
3. A right to do anything that really benefits us.

These are our natural rights, and everybody is convinced of them, spite of all doctrinaires. It is safe to say that Comrade Swartz is as convinced of his natural right to these rights as I am and would fight as hard to maintain them. And there are other natural rights with a wider social application. If advanced thinkers base their contentions on natural rights, and claim these for all human beings by the very fact of their humanity, they can go ahead with confidence and appeal with results to the human heart.

Those who would reason clearly on the question of rights should always make a distinction between rights and privileges. The so-called “right of might” is in the nature of a privilege. It is not a right, nor is it right unless it serves a right. Our rights always relate to benefits and connote satisfaction. That is right which benefits. In Nature might has no justification for action unless it secures benefit — therefore is subordinate to right. Might must serve right before it is justified and right must have the service of might before it can practically act, tho it existed just as certainly before. Swartz has a right to his Mutual Bank, tho he has no might to compel the government to withdraw its impediments. If might does not serve right, Nature condemns it in the final results — they are not beneficial. By endorsing the right of might Anarchists throw away their whole case, for they thereby endorse and justify all successful invasions, and particularly the invasions of government, which has the most might.

Instead of all rights being derived from might, all rights are derived from benefit and imply that, otherwise cannot qualify.

Government has its origin in Nature below man. Animal parents control their young, animal packs follow and obey a leader. We see the same among primitive men. Nature has instituted an instinct for government and its purpose has been benefit and preservation. The mother governs her child for the benefit of the family; and the tribe, the larger family, huddles for protection under the strength, courage and wisdom of the chief. The natural roots of government are in the mother and the chief, and in that self-government by which a man conserves his health and safety by controlling his dangerous appetites and impulses. Government of this kind is instinctively sought by human beings, and benefits of this sort are instinctively expected of government; and where benefits of this sort are derived from government, there need be no fear of rebellion. To “establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty”, states the essentials pretty well.

Government of the invasive kind began when tribesmen adopted these very principles that Tucker and Swartz would have us accept — they felt an implied contract bound them together in loyalty within the tribe, but outside there was no right but might, no one outside the tract had any rights they were required to respect. The result was invasions, war, conquest of weaker tribes, property in loot, the ownership of stolen lands, the making of slaves. The chief made himself king over these conquered ones, subjects. By a separate contract with his strongest warriors he divided stolen lands among them, and made them feudal lords with serfs, and bound them to him and away from the loyalty to the weaker ones of the tribe. Special privileges in stolen property — that has been the quality of invasive government ever since. But the people have never forgotten that government purely for social benefit is perfectly possible, and the reason they do not forget it is because they still have mothers, and still at time, strong friends and champions arise to use their might to protect them.

Another instance where an implied contract was used for invasion was when men usurped all rights in the name of might, declared women had no rights, subjugated them, and instituted that form of marriage in which, in its pure form, the woman was forced to be monogamous, was purely her husband’s property, without human rights, and her children also property and also his.

Pure liberty — the untrammeled doing as one pleases — nowhere exists. Law and government, in some form or degree, open or concealed, always accompany liberty and modify it. When Anarchists ask only for equal-liberty they themselves acknowledge this and institute a degree of law and government by limiting liberty by equality, governing liberty by equality. Once you admit that, in practice, liberty must be limited, law and government are admitted, and it only becomes a question how much or hoe little liberty is best for the greatest benefit. If Mutualists bind themselves by a contract, the moment any one of them finds he has made a mistake and no longer agrees to the contract, he finds that the Contract has become a Government, and its several parts are laws, which is associates will enforce upon him. He can leave of course but if his home and investments are there that will not be so easy, and if obliged to go to another group, under another contract, he only changes governments, as an American who goes to Canada or Mexico. If a child has the misfortune to be born under one of these contract-mutualisms he finds he has no rights whatever, and is only property of his parent’s might. Not even equal-liberty for him until big enough to put his head into one of those contract nooses. If he chooses to live as a pure inoffensive individualist, outside of any contract, he will find that for his mutualist neighbors he has no rights whatever, unless they choose to endow him with some. If not, they are free to exercise their might upon him.

If a contract exactly expresses the will of a member it, of course, does not govern him. But it is a rigid form, for all that, and, sooner or later is bound to pinch somewhere, for he is growing and changing. When it pinches it governs, and if he enforces it on his dissenting desires he aids it to govern, but it governs none the less. If he does not enforce it on himself, but breaks it, and others enforce it on him, he is sure it governs. If enforced only by forfeiture of bonds, loss of privileges, etc., it governs still. A contract enforced limits liberty, tho not necessarily equal-liberty, and a contract not enforced, or not intended for enforcement, is weak, and weak precisely at points of greatest strain. And it is safe to say that, with any contract involving social life, there will be moments of emergency and crucial necessity when imperious wills will enforce the contract or violate it spite of any scruples about equal-liberty.

Perhaps the contract will be enforced only by the boycott. Mutualists would fain [sic] persuade us that there is no possible invasion of equal liberty in a boycott. Comrade Swartz, instinctively sensing a weak spot in his levees here, throws all his strength to its support. “It is”, he says, “the only weapon that cannot be used invasively?The reason for this is that the boycott is not an act; it is merely the refusal to act.” Yet please note that he admits it is a “weapon”, and implies that it can be “used”, and on page 163 admits that a boycotted person “may correctly allege that he has been coerced”, and lower down speaks of a boycott exerting a “pressure.” On page 165, we see it recommended as a “punishment for crime”, and a “drastic penalty”, “more painful to many than to be incarcerated in a prison”, etc. Now how can the use of a weapon, to exert a pressure, to coerce, to inflict a drastic penalty or punishment, worse than incarceration in a prison, be described as no act, “merely a declination to act”? It is absurd. The confusion of the Anarchist here comes from his failing to understand that, in the paradoxicality of the universe, there are acts-negative as well as acts-positive, and that the boycott is one of the acts-negative. A failure, or refusal to act in a positive manner may still be an act-negative. Thus if a baby, at my feet, falls into a ditch, and I, quite able to retrieve it, allow it to drown, I am just as guilty of its murder as if I pushed it under; if I see a spark starting to ignite a house, and I, quite able, indifferently permit it to burn on, I am morally guilty of arson. When I boycott or ostracize a person to coerce him to do something which he is unwilling to do I am acting, and my act is an act of government.

For this is precisely what government is — in the relations of human beings, it is the action of one mind to control another mind to coerce it to perform an act, or cease to act, where it is reluctant or unwilling to comply — that is government, and is so understood by all mankind — or, more briefly — government is the imposition of a stronger will upon a weaker will that is here unwilling. It is always a limitation of liberty, even if intended to maintain whatever liberty may be possible.

Anarchists will find, whenever they try to apply their theories, that they cannot maintain an orderly, comfortable home, or run an orderly, harmonious school, or conduct an orderly public meeting, (Tucker averred that it was necessary that the moderator should be an autocrat), or run a safe railroad train, or sail a safe ship, without government. There must be discipline for order and efficiency — self-applied, or externally applied, and almost invariably the latter, for the self-applied is very unreliable in practice. Swartz praises the superior efficiency of private business concerns over government action in the same lines. He fails to note that the reason is that the discipline and government of the business enterprises is far more instant and severe than that of ordinary political government. In the army and navy, where government is still more strict and severe, efficiency is supreme. Efficiency is apt to be in inverse proportion to liberty. But of course government is a blind force and must be directed by intelligence; a fool must not be an engineer.

I cite all this merely to prove that Anarchism is a natural impossibility. Government is ubiquitous and pops up everywhere. There is no such thing as complete liberty, and equal-liberty, tho a beautiful moral standard, as an ideal, is, in real life invaded all the time, by stern natural necessity. There is no such thing as an “individual sovereign”, a “single, separate person” — he does not exist. Centrally there is a certain nucleus of individuality, yes, and very precious to us, but on all borders and contacts one merges with forces, things and persons, depends on them, and becomes all tangled up, coercing and being coerced, governing and being governed, in all sorts of conscious or unconscious, secret or overt way, by acts-negative or acts-positive. Society is not a mere word, but a living reality. As soon as any group forms there begins to develop a collective, composite spirit, or mind, invisible, but very real, that more or less telepathically unites and includes it — all its members. All contribute life to it — all are influenced, modified by it. This is Society — the composite spirit of the group — and it exercises an invisible, but very real government. The visible leaders must mainly express it or they do not last long. There is always a majority rule, tho a powerful individual mind may captivate the majority, at least for a time. Anarchists cannot escape the action of this government; moreover they will participate in it.

I first really faced the fallacy of Anarchism when I faced the problem of Conservation. When Anarchists forgot the assertion of the single right of might, they were full of rights to assert, and one was that the individual sovereign had an indisputable right to go to wild Nature for anything he could use and, provided he left the field open for others, no one had a right to prevent him. I agreed, till suddenly I realized that this meant that an Italian could live on slaughtered son birds, a market pot-hunter could kill all the year round, fish could be seined out of all waters, the lumber-hog could seep away the forests, and, as long as these men left equal-liberty for others to commit equal havoc, there was absolutely nothing in Anarchist principles that could consistently be applied to stop them. They were occupying and using, and not invading equal-liberty — and to stop them was “government”, that is, “invasion”. I dropt Anarchism right then and there. I began to see emerging the rights of society — of a wise collectivity, envisaging the rights o all and of posterity. Some social benefits required even the sacrifice of equal-liberty.

In presenting their propaganda, Anarchists seem to fight shy of putting out any definite program, or telling in unmistakable terms how their principles would work out in practice. Usually they prefer to only deliver fascinating generalities. One of these fascinating generalities is that of usufruct, which, they claim, would give a perfect title to land. But when you look into it, this doctrine of occupation and use is as full of potential trouble as any tropical jungle. Will occupancy alone give a full title to ownership, or will use alone do so, or must it be both occupancy and use. And what constitutes either occupancy or use? If I set my house in the middle of a quarter-section do I occupy all that land, or do I occupy only what my house actually covers? If I run a footpath over a farm and walk over it frequently, does that constitute use? If I fence in 10,000 acres of rich land, capable of feeding 40,000 people under intensive cultivation, and merely pasture 10,000 head of cattle on the tract, is that occupancy and use and must the other 39,999 leave me in possession? What constitutes failure to occupy? How long may I be absent, and under what circumstances, and still retain occupancy. And so on and so on, and so on? What has the right to decide such questions anyway, or to enforce decisions when made, especially when “the natural right of might” looms in the background? Is it not instantly clear that any and all decisions must be more or less arbitrary. And all occupancy and use of land is to a certain extent a monopoly and excludes some one from the equal right to occupy and use it — is, to a degree, a violation of equal freedom. I see endless possibilities of disputes, quarrels, litigation, fights, feuds, arising out of this utterly loose and indeterminate way of deciding land titles. Far better in every way, in my judgment, is to plan of the Single Taxer — all the people own the land in common and the government administers it; you pay your rent to a clearly defined piece of land, and so long as you pay, you occupy — when you stop payment, you have vacated your title. It is all as clear as dollars and cents, and settled instantly on business-like principles. And makes it far more difficult to hold valuable and socially-needed lands for selfish pleasure or inferior use. Under usufruct a stubborn occupant, holding a strategic position, refusing to sell out, could block a road, even a railroad, and cause expense and trouble, or exact his own price, or exact a toll. Nothing of that [is] possible under government ownership.

Much more could be said, but I have not been asked to write a volume. And there is much in the book to praise. The criticism of Bolshevism is penetrative and deserved. I am not a financier but The Mutual Bank appeals to me as an excellent institution. For many years I have been convinced that the finances of the country should represent and be based upon the exchangable wealth of the country, not based on gold. The explanation of what The Mutual Bank is, and would do, seems to me to be more clearly given in this book than in anything else I have read. Some such method is painfully needed to deliver from the robbery of interest and insure general prosperity. [NOTE inserted in hand by Lloyd: Now (1934) I believe, with Bellamy, that the remedy is to abolish all banks and money.] The tone of the book is excellent, its literary merit of the highest. There is a complete absence of violent accusation and insult toward opponents, or those criticised. Its working methods, as recommended — education, passive resistance, to repeal obnoxious laws where possible and ignore where impossible — all these are admirable. But repeal would require voting — do Mutualists use the vote? Are they wise enough to be opportunists and to use the enemy’s weapons where available? The original Anarchists would die first.

For myself I am satisfied that education and evolution are all we can look to for effective help — the evolution of character. When the general character of society reaches a high enough development, only men of character can represent it in government or serve it in business, and the nature of all institutions will reflect that character, opportunities for the unscrupulous to use the might of force or cunning to domineer and exploit here will always be, under any system, rule or contract, and nothing but the refusal of the tempted to utilize these opportunities can save the day. And no matter how bad the social system, the good man will at once proceed to reform it into one of real social service. Even a dictator is harmless is his character is high enough, and the loudest professor of Anarchism will be a tyrant and a parasite if his character is low enough.

I quite agree with this book in its denunciation of monopoly and special business privilege. Government should never be permitted to create these. I am for free trade and free competition. Private parties should always be free to compete with the government in rendering public service — a competition between government and private companies should act as a corrective of the usual faults of each. I favor the abolition of patents and copyrights, still I think it would be to the public interest to offer inducements to investors. I would suggest a plan something like this: Suppose a board of experts nominated by the manufacturers of the county, to pass on the merits of inventions. Any inventor who chooses may submit his invention to these. If they approve, they appraise the labor cost of his invention, and of his model, and reimburse him for this. They also describe and illustrate his invention in one issue of a periodical they print, which goes to all manufacturers. Any and all are now free to make and sell the invention, but all who do so must pay the inventor a small royalty for his lifetime, or for the time they continue so to do. By this plan the inventor would get at least something for his invention, at least get back his expenses. But it would be the property of the people, and could not be bought up and shelved. All would have access to it on equal terms, and the more who were benefited, the more the inventor would get. And the more good, free inventions, the more the whole world gains.

I fully agree that juries should try he law as well s the evidence. In other words, all laws relating to crime should be flexible, and applied or modified according to the peculiar circumstances of each case. Only thus can justice be done. But to select ignorant and unwilling men, haphazard, for jurors, is a most clumsy and dangerous method. Jurymen should be professionals, men of selected character, especially educated in human psychology and the problems of impartial equity; in the employ of the whole people at a fixed salary, and always on the job, trying all cases as they came. Lawyers, too, should be only in the employ of the people, at fixed salaries; not mercenaries, fighting like soldiers of fortune for the highest bidder. The chief business of lawyers should be to settle quarrels, reconcile disputants, dissipate litigation and reform criminals. Also to constantly simplify, clarify and lessen law and save legal expense to the community. For a lawyer to aid a known criminal to escape conviction should be regarded as a worse crime than that of his client, because treasonable to his profession and not against an individual but the whole people.

I am convinced that private associations for defence against crime would swiftly lead to worse abuses than those we now suffer from in that line. Like mercenary lawyers, the temptation would always be to fight for their customers, right or wrong. And to get into conflicts between themselves that might easily embroil the whole community or lead to civil wars. Besides, there is nothing in true Anarchist principles that requires anyone to employ a defence-association. An individual sovereign has a right, according to his principles, to make his own laws about his own affairs, and avenge his own wrongs in his own way. Under Anarchism we could not fail to go back to the old ways of blood-vengeance and the vendetta, to lynch law and standing feuds.

The government we are under today has grown out of the composite spirit of the people and represents it. It is as good as the people deserve, speaking generally, however hard on advanced individuals. It will improve as the spirit of the people improves, and it can only improve that way. Bloody revolutions only deceptively change surfaces. Witness that in modern Russia the continuing spirit of czarist days comes out in despotisms, bureaucracy, massacres, executions without trial, espionage, censorship, corruption, inefficiency. Only those improvements have been made that the spirit of the people was ready for and would peacably have gradually effected anyway.

The greatest reform needed in government is flexibility and a recognition and promotion of growth. If governments were wise they would emasculate and “denature” rebellions by allowing safety-valves and vent-holes for radicals. They would encourage and solicit criticism and assist those who offered better ways to demonstrate their methods in practice, thus submitting them to the acid test. If a new theory could demonstrate actual improvement, then the referendum. No revolutions on that road, but steady evolution.

The trouble with Radicals is that they are practically all doctrinaires. They denounce compromise, not recognizing that compromise is the road of progress. In real life all principles must, at times, recognize and employ their opposites. There is everything in the universe and a time, place and use for each thing. Take the principle of Equal-Freedom and the case of the motorist. The motorist is not a criminal, nor intends to be — simply a busy man, rushing to his important destination, asking only liberty to do so at his own risk, and willing to give the same liberty to everyone, in cars or on foot. But at the crossing of the ways, there stands the traffic-officer, with his white gloves, imperiously stopping and starting him at his will. It is a clear invasion of equal-liberty and he would defy it if he dared, but there is Law behind the officer, and bullets behind the law. Yet there is public benefit in the traffic-officer and the people will never let him go, principle or no principle.

I have been sorry to criticize this book. Its spirit is fine — the spirit of individualist-anarchism usually is fine and co-operation is all to the good. I am for co-operation to the limit and for individual liberty as far as practicable. I agree with Jefferson that the least government that will do the work is the best and would reduce law to a minimum — but social action without some government and some law is naturally impossible and will always be found so. And liberty is the legal-tender of life and a piece of it is the price we pay for every motion and benefit.

June 17, 1927

The author of this work has spent some ten years among Anarchists, and in the study of Anarchist publications. He was for some time secretary to two Anarchist “groups,” and a well-known figure in Anarchist circles. Besides this, he was an occasional contributor with his pen to the Torch of Anarchy, Freedom, The Commonweal, Liberty, and The Alarm. He has, consequently, some claim to be considered an authority on the subject of which he treats.

William Hart is writing as an ex-Anarchist, and moreso one that believes Anarchism needs to be officially suppressed.

Chapter thirteen, titled “Anarchist Precepts”, we find a list of 25 concepts that define, according to the author, the fundamentals of Anarchism. Among this list is: Repudiation of just debts, Abortion, Burglary, Prostitution, and Indiscriminate Murder. Each precept is illustrated with quotes by individuals or publications in the anarchist milieu to reinforce the notion that this is anarchist dogma.

Below, we’ve excerpted number twelve, “might is right”, where the author quotes, Max Stirner, Ragnar Redbeard, Benjamin Tucker and the British journal Freedom. One thing to note is that since the book came out in 1906, the Stirner quote is before a full translation of the book had been published in English, so it shows that Stirner’s reputation and ideas preceded his comprehension. Indeed, it is common that most people who critically read Stirner believe that he has hardly been interpreted correctly in the 110 years since he was published in English.

12. Might is Right.—”Whoever has might, has right; if you have not the former you have not the latter.” (Max Stirner, “Der Einzige und sein Eigenthum,” 2nd ed., Leipzig, 1882, pp. 196-197.)

“The strong must ever rule the weak, is grim primordial law—
On earth’s broad racial threshing floor, the meek are beaten straw—
Then ride to Power o’er foemen’s necks; let nothing bar your way.
If you are fit you’ll rule and reign, is the logic of to-day.”
—Ragnar Redbeard.

“So far as inherent right is concerned, might is its only measure. Any man, be his name Bill Sykes or Alexander Romanoff, or any set of men, whether the Chinese highbinders or the Congress of the United States, have the right, if they have the power, to kill or coerce other men and to make the entire world subservient to their ends. Society’s right to enslave the individual and the individual’s right to enslave society are unequal only because their powers are unequal.” (Benj. R. Tucker, in Liberty, New York, November 15, 1890.)

“The natural law concerning possessions is this: ‘That they should take who have the power, and they should keep who can.'” (Freedom, August, 1889.)

What this entry does show is that Redbeard’s book was explicitly connected to anarchism and explicitly to Max Stirner very early on, by those inside the milieu. Because Redbeard has been adopted by the “right” today, many don’t know that he came from the “left” and was himself a labor leader and advocate for many years, literally fighting in the street. His book Might is Right was read by Wobblies and Egoists alike, and not just at the turn of the century, but through the 20th.