While browsing a Halfprice Books store, I found this book for $5.98. It's written by William Gary Kline and it has dramatically increased my knowledge of the history of American anarchism. That subject didn't get any useful exposure when in my classes at school, something that I might have been just as receptive to as I am now.

Some of the anecdotes are worth remembering, such as how "Rogues Island," one of the freer proto-colonies eventually became known as "Rhode Island."

The book starts off with the death of Benjamin Tucker and the effective end of the Individualist Anarchist movement that he helped expand. It talks about Roger Williams and his slow withdrawal from his initial libertarian practices, thereby inciting a rebellion on the aforementioned Island. It discussed Anne Hutchinson and her desire for absolute religious freedom so each person could find their own salvation. Kline brought up William Penn and both his desire for freedom and his trouble in collect taxes from the Quakers. Some space was also reserved for Thomas Paine, who was, according to Benjamin Tucker, the first American anarchist.

A much larger block of space was spent on Josiah Warren, now known as the father of American Anarchism. With his systemic approach, influenced by Robert Owen, he created a solid anarchist bedrock for others to follow. His successful Cincinnati Time Store (the medium of exchange was the labor-hour), his anarchist paper The Peaceful Revolutionist (apparently the first Individualist Anarchist publication of it's kind) and his experimental anarchist communities all drove the understanding and practical aspects of an authority-less society. Warren spoke of "enlightened self-interest" and his Equitable Commerce book was underpinned by the principle of individualism. Later on in his life, he did come to some acceptance of the state for "intervention for the sake of non-intervention" in self-defensive measures only. Warren opposed communism for it's attempts at forceful combination and collectivism and the book brought to my attention that his ideals were rejected by mainstream society even though at the time many agreed with what he thought should be done. Warren even had an impact on John Stuart Mill's conception of liberty and individualism.

The book goes on to talk about Stephen Pearl Andrews and the vibrant life he lived and his strong Charles Fourier philosophical roots. He was an early American discoverer and first publisher of Marx, which lead to his odd quasi-Marxist view of massive state control eventually fading away to complete individual freedom. One of his insights, taken for granted and hotly debated these days, was the increasing interconnectedness of the world.

Kline then moves on and devotes many pages to Lysander Spooner and his relative isolationism, his American Letter Mail Company and how it competed successfully against the US Postal Service until the feds imposed a fine on alternative mail carriers and left him broke during the legal battle, and his forays against slavery. Spooner advocated justice through individual reason and abandoned the Constitution on grounds that only those who consented to it had to follow it's commands. Kline quoted several excerpts from Spooner's No Treason essays and mentioned Spooner's radicalism extended to the advocacy of the Irish to violently resist British occupation. Kline emphasized his strong legalistic reasoning and natural law grounding.

The book moves on to mention William B. Greene and his status as the founder of American Mutualism, his emphasis on free banking and his famous book Mutual Banking, and his break with other Individualist Anarchists on private property. Ezra Heywood and his pacifism get a mention as well as his widely read monthly The Word, his arrest by Anthony Comstock under the same-named law and his multiple arrests for obscenity and his advocacy of free love.

A quick mention of Joshua King Ingalls and his "medieval" beliefs on landed property, his "occupancy and use" principle of property ownership, and his emphasis on the break up of the land monopoly gives way to the central character of the book's subject: Benjamin Tucker.

Benjamin Tucker and his Liberty periodical get substantial mention in this book. It discusses how his exchanges and interactions with Warren, Greene, Heywood, Pierre Joseph Proudhon, Spooner, Mikhail Bakunin, and so many others created within him a deeply-held conviction and understanding of anarchism as well as his firm belief in the Individualist perspective. He translation of Proudhon's What is Property? and the respect it earned him was only increased with his fiery defense of the publishment of Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass against the suppression under the Comstock Laws; Tucker even went so far as to defiantly publishLeaves in Liberty and he wasn't charged or arrested for this, encouraging others to the same act of civil disobedience.

The book discusses the almost formal and permanent break between Individualist Anarchists and Communist Anarchists over property theory and Tucker's rejection of labor-led "direct action" even though he supported the Haymarket indictees against the government. He rejected the idea of "community" on individualistic grounds and pushed Liberty to be a centralized market for all kinds of anarchist thought. However, Tucker favored a "plumb-line" adherence to Individualist Anarchist orthodoxy. Kline overviews Tucker's denouncement of religion on the basis of it's assumed earthly authority and his desire to avoid small anarchistic communities in favor of larger-scale reform.

In the same chapters, Kline discusses the other anarchists Tucker came into contact with, such as Victor Yarros, Joseph A. Labadie, the Alan Kelly, John Kelly, and Gertrude Kelly brothers, J.H. Swain, Henry Appleton, John William Lloyd, M. E. Lazarus, Edwin C. Walker, George Schumm, James L. Walker, John Beverly Robinson, Alfred B. Westrup, Hugo Bilgram, Sidney H. Morse, Charles T. Fowler, Edward H. Fulton, Dyer D. Lum, Steven T. Byington, William Bailie and the broad array of writers in Liberty and the large variety of causes they fought for and defended on the consistent application of their beliefs.

Kline moves to the general uniformity of Individualist Anarchists in their conception of the state and the tendency to denounce the state as an institution rather than specific instances of it. He devotes the remainder of the book on anarchist economics, some anarchists' beliefs on social Darwinism and egoism. He spends some time documenting and tracing the demise of the Individual Anarchist movement through internal disputes, the lack of positive plan of action against the state, and the burning of the Liberty print shop. Kline gives the example of Voltairine de Cleyre's transformation from Individualist Anarchist to Communist Anarchist to illustrate the almost "evaporative" end to the Individualist Anarchist movement.

Kline ends with a retrospective that attempts to reject the implication that anarchism fundamentally breaks with liberalism. I didn't find his argument to be too persuasive and it's obvious that he has a few consequentialist quibbles with a completely anarchist society, be it communistic or individualistic. His editorial opinion doesn't get in the way of the book as far as I can tell.

The book is written in a very easygoing style and simple typeset using endnotes to document the extensive research he underwent. I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to learn about the earliest roots of the American anarchist, libertarian, and individualist movement.