Benjamin R. Tucker : American Father of Individualist Anarchism

Image::1 Introduced to Anarchism, labor reform, and free love by Ezra Heywood in Massachusetts, Tucker was also particularly influenced by Josiah Warren.  An individualist Anarchist, Tucker (1854-1939) was a person of intellect rather than of action, focusing on the development of his ideas and on the publication of books and journals, especially the journal Liberty:  Not the Daughter but the Mother of Order (1881-1908).  Tucker summarized his philosophy by stating, "The Anarchists are simply unterrified Jeffersonian Democrats. They believe that 'the best government is that which governs least,' and that which governs least is no government at all. Besides publishing the writings of the leading individualist anarchists and many other radicals, Liberty was probably the earliest American magazine to publish Nietzsche and George Bernard Shaw.  Besides Liberty, Tucker operated an ambitious book publishing program.  He translated into English and published a long list of radical works, including What is Property?, of Pierre Joseph Proudhon.  He also translated and published Bakunin's God and the State, Chernyshevsky's What Is To Be Done? and Tolstoy's The Kreutzer Sonata.  He published Max Stirner's The Ego and His Own, as well as works by Oscar Wilde, Herbert Spencer, Emile Zola, John Henry Mackay, and many others.  After a disastrous fire in New York City in 1908 destroyed his warehouse and Unique Book Shop, Tucker left the United States for France, where he lived for the remainder of his life.