XX.Benjamin R. Tucker

XX BENJAMIN R. TUCKER Benjamin R. Tucker, born at South Dartmouth in 1854. From 1870 to 1872, studied technology in Boston; traveled in England, France, and Italy. In 1877 took the temporary editorship of The Word, published at Princeton, Mass.; published the quarterly The Radical Review, in New Bedford, 1878; but only four numbers appeared; in 1881, in Boston, founded the semi-monthly paper Liberty, for ten years was one of the editorial staff of the Globe. From 1892 to 1907 lived in New York and published Liberty. Tucker's teaching about law, the State and property is contained mainly in his articles in Liberty. Wrote Instead of a Booh, an exposition of philosophical Anarchism. 1893; translated and published The Krentier Sonata and two volumes of Proudhon, and many other works. He is at present (1913) living in France, devoting his time to study and research. The selections are from Liberty and Instead of a Book.

The people cannot afford to be enslaved for the sake of being insured. The motto on our flag is not "Liberty a Natural Right," but "Liberty the Mother of Order." Just as truly as Liberty is the mother or order, is the State the mother of violence. There is no such depth of poltroonery as that of the man who does not dare to run. If there were more extremists in evolutionary periods, there would be no revolutionary periods. No man can make himself so much a slave as to forfeit the right to issue his own emancipation proclamation. Man has but little to gain from liberty unless that liberty includes the liberty to control what he produces. The invader, whether an individual or a government, forfeits all claim to consideration from the invaded. Force of offence is the principle of the state, while force of defence is one aspect of the principle of liberty. Apart from the right of might, no individual has a right to anything, except as he creates his right by contract with his neighbor.

Evolution is "leading us up to liberty" simply because it Benjamin R. Tucker 335 has already led us in nearly every other direction and made a failure of it. The voice of the majority saves bloodshed, but it is no less the arbitrament of force than is the decree of the most absolute of despots backed by the most powerful of armies. The art of war, on which government finally rests, has, like government itself, its laws and regulations and customs, which, in the eyes of the military devotee, must be observed at all hazards. Beside them human life is a mere bagatelle. Anarchism may be described as the doctrine that all the affairs of men should be managed by individuals or voluntary associations, and that the State should be abolished. Relation of the State to the Individual Address before the Unitarian Ministers' Institute, Salem, Mass., Oct. 14, 1890. The future of the tariff, of taxation, of finance, of property, of woman, of marriage, of the family, of the suffrage, of education, of invention, of literature, of science, of the arts, of personal habits, of private character, of ethics, of religion, will be determined by the conclusion at which mankind shall arrive as to whether and how far the individual owes allegiance to the State.