The Debates of Liberty: An Overview of Individualist Anarchism, 1881-1908.

• Author: Stringham, Edward P.
• Position: Book Review

* The Debates of Liberty: An Overview of Individualist Anarchism, 1881-1908

By Wendy McElroy

Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 2003. Pp. 208. $60.00 cloth.

Wendy McElroy's new book is a valuable asset for those interested in learning more about the history of libertarianism. It presents an overview of the major discussions that took place in the nineteenth-century periodical Liberty. Edited by Benjamin R. Tucker from 1881 to 1908, Liberty contained contributions from a group of individualists often referred to as the Boston Anarchists. With clear summaries, quotations, and references, McElroy provides a synopsis for readers who do not have time to sift through the archives of Liberty. The book is well organized, with each chapter summarizing an area of debate: the state and politics, violence, natural rights, children's rights, intellectual property, trial by jury, economics and money. By following these interesting debates, readers can see how libertarians refined and arrived at their positions. Particularly striking is how many ideas discussed by modern libertarians also appeared in the pages of Liberty.

Instead of taking the middle-of-the-road approach of the classical liberals, who believed the state is sometimes bad and sometimes good, the contributors to Liberty opposed the state in all its forms. The state is not a benevolent, albeit sometimes misguided institution. It is an institution of force and as such incapable of being reformed. To Tucker and his comrades, the political process and voting are nothing more than mechanisms for the tyranny of the majority. Thus, they considered attempts to work within its structure to be futile. If not through politics, though, how can change ever take place? They believed that education and persuasion are the keys.

Other anarchists advocated violence as a means of effecting change, but Tucker and other Liberty contributors believed violence should be considered and utilized only in rare circumstances. Regardless of the morality, trying to beat the state at its own game of force is highly questionable. McElroy does an excellent job juxtaposing the nonviolent Boston Anarchists with the contemporary violent Chicago Anarchists. The latter were communists and not anarchists in any libertarian sense: they advocated abolition of business and private property as well as of government. McElroy describes incidents in which the socialist anarchists had no qualms about using force against private...