Comments Elsewhere

A fascinating quote and good to hear from Sumner. For an interesting compare and contrast, though, see Benjamin Tucker’s State Socialism and Anarchism: How Far They Agree, and Wherein They Differ (1888), where Tucker makes quite a similar argument, and indeed says something nearly identical, but construes the whole debate as a debate WITHIN “socialism,” between state socialism (“which may be described as the doctrine that all the affairs of men should be managed by the government, regardless of individual choice”) and anarchistic socialism (“which 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”). Thus Tucker:

“The two principles referred to are Authority and Liberty, and the names of the two schools of Socialistic thought which fully and unreservedly represent one or the other of them are, respectively, State Socialism and Anarchism. Whoso knows what these two schools want and how they propose to get it understands the Socialistic movement. For, just as it has been said that there is no half-way house between Rome and Reason, so it may be said that there is no half-way house between State Socialism and Anarchism. There are, in fact, two currents steadily flowing from the center of the Socialistic forces which are concentrating them on the left and on the right; and, if Socialism is to prevail, it is among the possibilities that, after this movement of separation has been completed and the existing order have been crushed out between the two camps, the ultimate and bitterer conflict will be still to come. In that case all the eight-hour men, all the trades-unionists, all the Knights of Labor, all the land nationalizationists, all the greenbackers, and, in short, all the members of the thousand and one different battalions belonging to the great army of Labor, will have deserted their old posts, and, these being arrayed on the one side and the other, the great battle will begin. What a final victory for the State Socialists will mean, and what a final victory for the Anarchists will mean, it is the purpose of this paper to briefly state.”

Tucker, of course, hoped for victory for the Anarchists.

I’d be interested to know how far the difference between Sumner and Tucker here over “socialism” is merely terminological, and how far it’s substantive.