Editor's Foreword

EDITOR'S FOREWo1{n For a number of years practically all of the. literature of Individualist Anarchism has been. Qut of· print. The great bulk of whatever matter there was had, of course, been in .the handsof Benjamin R. Tucker, and up to 1908 it was being constantly augmen/ted by him. But when, in January of that year, his entire wholesale stock of publications, manuscripts, etc., and nearly. all of his plates were wiped out by fire, the lo~s was irreparable, and little attempt has been made. to •re place any of the material destroyed. The demand for something representative ,of Individualist Anarchism has become so insistent that it has been. determined to··produce at least .one volume of the best matter available, and in that volume to'attempt to cover the whole subject. \ The ·.·nearest.that .an.y .hqokevc·r came .to answering that description is Tucker's UInstead of a Book,"first .published.in 1893, .culled from his writings in his pe,riodical,Liberty, and out of print since 1908. This closely printed volume of nea'rly 500 pages was. composed of questions-and criticisms by his correspondents and by writers in other periodicals, all answered by the editor of Liberty in that keen, clear~cut style that was the delight of his.adherents and the despair of his opponents.

, In •casting about for material· for the proposed. v()lume~ therefore, no other writings thanthose of Benjamin R. Tucker could for"a moment be considered, and it is no exaggeration to say that ·~hey .stand. high above everything else .that has been written on. the subject,. not eVen excepting the works of Jos~ahWarren,Proudhon, and Lysander Spooner, or· of any other person who has ever a.:tt~mpted to expound the principles of Individualist· Anarchism. Mr. Tucke:r is an educated and cultured man. His v vi EDITOR'S FOREWORD literary style is both fluent and elegant, his statements concise and accurate, his arguments logical and convincing, and his replies terse yet courteous. The reade'r is never at a loss to know what he means. There is not a word too much or too little. Every sentence is rounded and complete-not a re dundant syllable or a missing punctuation mark. What he writes is a joy to read, even when the reader himself is the victim of his withering sarcasm or caustic satire.

A brief resume of Mr. Tucker's life will serve to indicate the background of his remarkable personality. He was born in South Dartmouth, Massachusetts, April 17, 1854, the son of Abner R. Tucker, owner and outfitter of whale ships and later a grocer in New Bedford. His mother was Caroline A. Cummings, his father's second wife, and Benjamin was their only child. The father was of Quaker parents and the mother was a Unitarian, and an able, progressive and radical woman, her father having been a pronounced admirer of Thomas Paine. At two years Tucker was reading English fluently and at four gleefully discovered that the Episcopal Prayer Book had misquoted the' Bible. At sixteen he had finished the course at the Friends' Academy, and, while at :first refusing to go to any college, he finally spent two years at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Boston). After' hearing Josiah Warren speak and CoL William B. Greene quote Proudhon at a convention of the New England Labor Reform League in Boston in 1872, he soon became an Anarchist and translated Proudhon's (What Is Property?" from the French. In 1877 he edited The Word in Princeton, Massachusetts, while its editor, Ezra H. Heywood, was in prison. In 1878 he estab lished and conducted for a year The Radical Revi{!w in New Bedford. In the same year he joined the editorial· staff of the Boston Daily Globe, remaining for eleven years.

In 188 I he founded Liberty, which he continued to pub lish, with some irregularity and several suspensions, until 1908 , the last issue appearing in April of that year, a few months after the disastrous :fire. In I 892, when he assumed editorial EDITOR'S· FOREWORD vii duties. on The Engineering Magazine, he removed Liberty to NewXork, •where it was,published. until its final suspension. Since that time Lucker has been living il1France. ((Instead ofa Book" was.•deemed uns:uitable.for reproduc tion. in its present form because it contains •• so many articles d~alin.g with local and current events.. It was.•decided that Ingividualist Anarchism could bet~er be expounded by present ingthe wordsof Mr. Tuckeralone~eliminating the volwninous letters of his correspondents and many more or less personal matters that crep.t into the discussions,.with just enough"ex planatory matter written by the editor to indicate what drew forth the. arguments advanced by.LiberlJl's editor and to con nect up the loose ends. In many cases Mr. Tucker has so care fully restated the position of his adversary that it has been un necessary for the editor to repeat it.

The compiler has therefore merely attempted to weld to gether· the·.different .sections and' weave the various articles into a more or less continuous whole. The task. has proved to be difficult beyond all preconception, and that it has been performed with complete success it would be presumptuous to assert. In :M:r. Tucker's· controversies with his correspondents and others, occasional allusions to· persons and matters not in volved .in the discussion have entered. These, while perfectly pertinent when his opponents' remarks were given, add ·little 1:0 the force of the arguments for the Anarchistic position which it is the purpose of this volum<? exclusively to set· :forth~ and they have therefore generally been excised, in spite of the fact th~tthey constitute some of Mr. Tucker's most pungent writing. In some places this method of treatment has made it necessary to eliminate parts of paragra_phsand even parts of sentences". This elision has not been indicated by asterisks or otherwise, because the frequency of suchin:stances would hav~made the matter too disconnected; .while· the main object of this volume is to present, as nearly as possible, an unbroken exposition. It is cOl}sidered that this proceeding· is entirely :viii EDITOR'S FOREWORD unobjectionable, since the essential arguments are thus ex pressed just as clearly, and of course more concisely, than in the complete original.

((Instead of a Book" contained only material published in Liberty previous to 1893, so the columns of Liberty since that date have been resorted to for some additional material. The editor wishes to acknowledge his indebtedness to those comrades, all plumb-liners of the period when Liberty w'as the venerated medium for the exchange of their ideas, who have aided him, by advice and hard work, in the preparation of this volume, the index thereto having been prepared by the same person who performed that service for ((Instead of a Book." c. L. S. Los Angeles, California. August, 1926.