Capital, Profits and Interest Excerpted from the book; Individual Liberty Selections From the Writings of Benjamin R. Tucker Vanguard Press, New York, 1926 Kraus Reprint Co., Millwood, NY, 1973. In the study of the economic question, the first thing that must engage our attention is why the worker fails to get all of the product of his labor. Volumes have been written by economists of various schools in discussion of the problem, most of them muddling about in the mire of their own misconceptions. But the editor of Liberty went straight to the heart of the matter and quickly found the answer: Somebody gets the surplus wealth that labor produces and does not consume. Who is the Somebody? Such is the problem recently posited in the editorial columns of the New York Truth. Substantially the same question has been asked a great many times before, but,...
State Socialism and Anarchism[1] How Far They Agree, And Wherein They Differ Probably no agitation has ever attained the magnitude, either in the number of its recruits or the area of its influence, which has been attained by Modern Socialism, and at the same time been so little understood and so misunderstood, not only by the hostile and the indifferent, but by the friendly, and even by the great mass of its adherents themselves. This unfortunate and highly dangerous state of things is due partly to the fact that the human relationships which this movement—if anything so chaotic can be called a movement—aims to transform, involve no special class or classes, but literally all mankind; partly to the fact that these relationships are infinitely more varied and complex in their nature than those with which any specia...