Re: "anarchists/libertarian socialists" and "classical liberals" or "radical liberals." Figures like Molinari, Auberon Herbert and Herbert Spencer were not, as AFAQ claims, treated as radicalized "right-wing liberals" instead of anarchists by Tucker, or Dyer Lum, or de Cleyre, or by Goldman, or by Berkman. This is an invention of contemporary anarchist sectarianism, and is a distinction intended to push an argument that first-wave anarchists were more or less wholly unconcerned with. Molinari and Herbert are explicitly called Anarchist writers in the pages of Liberty; Spencer's earlier work, e.g. the chapter on "The Right to Ignore the State" in Social Statics, is explicitly described as Anarchist, and when he is later taken out of the ranks of the Anarchists (e.g. in Voluntary Co-Operation), it is because of his acceptance of state principles. Spencer's earlier, anarchistic work was recognized as a massive influence, and not only on or by Tucker (see Dyer Lum's <cite>Economics of Anarchy</cite>, or Bailie's <cite>Problems of Anarchism</cite>, or for that matter at copies of <cite>The Blast</cite>, where he is repeatedly quoted.) In "The Child and Its Enemies," Goldman, in a funny passage about the efforts of radical parents to mold their red-diaper babies into images of themselves, puts Spencer in the company of Bakunin and Moses Harman: "… the Anarchistic mother can make it known that her daughter's name is Louise Michel, Sophia Perovskaya … and that she will point out the faces of Spencer, Bakunin, or Moses Harman almost anywhere;" in Living My Life she lists Spencer alongside Tolstoy, Kropotkin and Edward Carpenter as men who would be excluded from entering the U.S. under the Anarchist Exclusion Act).

Again, of course, these folks may have been wrong about that. Perhaps they shouldn't have been counted as "Anarchists." Personally, I'm inclined to doubt that it matters very much whether you call them that or not, provided that you are clear on their views. But reading them out of The Anarchist Tradition has very little to do with what the people indisputably involved in making that tradition thought about them. Which may of course not be binding at all; but it ought to be acknowledged if we're going to wave our hands in the direction of how "anarchism as it has been understood throughout much of history."
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Coming from a libertarian socialist perspective, I share your opinion that self-described anarcho-capitalists are not calling for anarchism as it is has been understood throughout much of history.

Understood by whom?

Tucker was an Anarchistic Socialist, but he understood "Anarchism" explicitly in terms that would include capitalistic anarchists.

When it came to definitions, Berkman and Goldman specifically and repeatedly defined "Anarchism" in terms of anti-statism. (They had another term, "free communism," that they used to describe their economic commitments.) They had some formulaic definitions that they repeatedly used as filler text both in <cite>Mother Earth</cite> and in <cite>The Blast</cite> (cf. "Anarchism" at the bottom of this page and "Free Communism" at the bottom of this one.)

Voltairine de Cleyre and Rosa Slobodinsky, in the 1890s, were willing to accept the label "capitalistic anarchist" for their own views, even if tongue in cheek and for the sake of argument, in debates with communist anarchists. Of course this is not really a fair description of their views, as the "Individualist" in the dialogue goes on to make very clear, but their attitude toward this kind of division of the field into terminological camps is telling, and refreshing: "Capitalistic Anarchism? Oh, yes, if you choose to call it so. Names are indifferent to me; I am not afraid of bugaboos. Let it be so, then, capitalistic Anarchism."

I wish contemporary anarchist scholars, with their chanted invocations of The Anarchist Tradition (whether broadly or narrowly construed), had more of that kind of attitude.

Even if it were true that the Tradition had a well-defined and uniform set of views on these issues, I think that would have absolutely no normative value at all, because Anarchism is a living ideal in thought and action, which is perfectly capable of new developments, radical turnarounds, new innovations, and new errors that have nothing at all to do with "anarchism as it has been understood throughout much of history." And thank goodness.

But in any case if we are going to talk about an our predecessors in an anarchist tradition, or about the historical meaning of the term, I think it's important to exercise at least some minimal sensitivity to how messy and internally divided that tradition always already was, and how far they may have differed with us, and differed among themselves, in what they saw as most important, most essential, or necessary, and who they would or would not recognize as fellow anarchists. This ground has always been contested, and to a great extent if we hope ever to understand what past writers have had to say about it, we need a healthy dose of de Cleyre's and Slobodinsky's good-humored flexibility in recognizing the ambiguity and contestation, and taking terms provisionally or for the sake of argument or communication, rather than trying to plant a black flag on them. But instead most of the contemporary writing on this subject has tended to project the writers' own priorities, and their own ideas about what's essential, onto their predecessors, and has had a lot more to do with trying to defend turf. (N.B.: Tucker's as guilty of that as anyone, in his attempts to "defend" Proudhon, Warren, et al. from the claims of the Communists.) This kind of anarchist classicism, like most forms of classicism, lectures monotonously about the wisdom of the ancients, quite as if nobody in the past ever argued amongst themselves about what "anarchism" meant, and as if it were some kind of intellectual property that the capitalists or the communists or whoever were trying to pirate away from its "traditional" owners.

This has tended to obscure a hell of a lot more about Anarchism, and about the debates of the past, than it has clarified.

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is printing up Market Anarchy zines for a full-print-run order to ship out this morning. Still queued up: “A Plea for Public Property” and “Libertarian Anarchism: Responses to Ten Common Objections” by Roderick Tracy Long, “Where Are The Specifics?” by Karl Hess, “Woman Vs. The Nation-State” by Carol Moore, “The Attitude of Anarchism Towards Industrial Combinations” by Benjamin Tucker, and a couple essays on privatization and individualist anarchism by some dude named Charles Johnson.

“From the conservative position comes the position of libertarian reformism. It holds that, since there is a good base to build upon—the at least lip-service traditions of liberty in this country, for instance—that the way to avoid the dangers that might lurk on the other side of revolutionary change is to opt for evolutionary change. The repeal of certain laws is, in this position, held as crucial and, of course, it probably is true that if the withholding tax were repealed that the government would be bankrupted as millions of taxpayers simply found themselves unable to pay up.

“That is, this situation might be true if it were not for the amazing ingenuity of American state-monopoly-capitalism. Few if any corporation heads would stand idly by and see the source of their prosperity—a partnership with the state—seriously jeopardized. One can imagine a ‘voluntary’ tax withholding system going into effect which, if anything, might be more effective than the state system which, after all, is operated by businessmen anyway even though with a lot of wasteful bureaucratic interference. Same with the voluntary or even ‘corporate’ military concepts. A libertarian should be the first to recognize that such systems would, if anything, make imperialism more effective by making its military machine more efficient. Such reforms, in short, would not necessarily end injustices but might merely streamline them.

“More pertinent is the central error of reformism as a possible instrument of change. To reform a system you must, first of all, preserve it against attacks more precipitous than those called for in the reformist timetable. This position not only makes neutrality impossible, it makes siding with the system (the state) unavoidable in the long run.”

• Karl Hess, “Conservative Libertarianism” (Libertarian Forum, October 1, 1969, p. 2)

Ah, migrating computers: “Dropbox 1.4.12. Downloading 155,721 files. (40.5 kB/sec, 32 days left).”

Well, I hope it doesn’t really take quite that long. But probably at this point I should turn off the lights and leave it running overnight.

Well in that incredibly contrived scenario that you have stipulated without providing evidence, I suppose that one of two things will happen. Either people will stop trading in mutualist bank notes. Or else they will trade in them, but at a discount from their face value. Of course both of these things have happened in real-world cases where people dealt in multiple currencies at varying levels of trust. As for your second question, I am sure there are a lot of reasons. But I'm not sure what they would demonstrate about likely outcomes in a freed market for media of exchange; because of course the historical development of money, and the eventual adoption of metal currencies over alternative paths (or over a mess of many different moneys, being used in different contexts), had basically nothing at all to do with free markets, and everything to do with government systems of taxation, tribute, military salaries, currency monopoly, and [massive, lethal state violence as a subsidy to the extraction of precious metals](http://radgeek.com/gt/2011/10/04/all-that-glitters/). Of course, as has also been pointed out, most mutual banking proposals were not backed by promises of future labor. For whatever that's worth. Not even Warren's labor-note system was purely backed by promises of future labor; he more or less always included a specific peg to a universally marketable commodity.

In more uplifting news, I found the proper bibliographical source, and the correct wording, for an unsourced Karl Hess quote that I’ve been chasing for 9 months. This is extremely exciting.

is prepping an old Ubuntu machine to be reformatted and migrated to Windows Vista. I have my reasons, but I can’t help but find the whole process a bit demoralizing.

John,

The quotation you’ve pulled from Liberty here (“But prudence is understood to be a virtue . . .”) may well be representative of Schulder’s views, but the words you quote are not by Fred Schulder. The article you’re quoting from (“Who Is A Rascal?”) is by Steven T. Byington; Fred Schulder wrote the article immediately above it, “A Healthy Sign.”

The formatting that Anarchy Archives did on the issue unfortunately makes this less than clear, but Tucker more or less always put author’s signatures at the end of the articles, not above the headlines, as you can see in the original page layout.

Hope this helps.

is typing up some Karl Hess articles for an upcoming post at Fair Use Repository. To-day’s transcription: “An Open Letter to Barry Goldwater,” from Ramparts (October 1969)