Benjamin Tucker

Benjamin Ricketson Tucker ( born April 17, 1854 in South Dartmouth, Massachusetts, † June 22, 1939 in Monaco ) was an American journalist and anarchist.

Life

1881 Tucker founded the magazine " Liberty ," which was published until 1908. The "Liberty" provided a much-used and influential platform for different representatives of a radical concept of freedom.

Tucker was described by contemporaries as a pleasant, courteous and affable gentleman. He was also known as a militant critic and brilliant speaker with more engaging and impressive personality. As Tucker in 1908 after a fire had ruined his publisher, the publication of the " freedom " surprisingly stopped and moved to France, the individualanarchistische scene of America was robbed of its main character.

Thinking

Tucker stood first in the North American tradition of freedom thinkers such as Thomas Jefferson, Josiah Warren, Lysander Spooner, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. Soon the influence of European anarchist Pierre Joseph Proudhon and Mikhail Bakunin was added, the more important writings he translated into English and published. Tucker was one of the founders of the individual anarchism. Initially, Kant stressed going back this concept of anarchism the "equal freedom for all ." Later, Tucker was referring primarily to Max Stirner, whose book The Ego and Its Own (1845 ) he in his publishing house in 1907 for the first time in English translation brought out ( The Ego and His Own). How many anarchists Tucker was consistent opponents of authoritarian communism and state socialism. He described his position as anarchic socialism. Because Tucker was a consistent rejecters of the state principle, he refused for years paying taxes and took for imprisonment in purchasing.

Tucker argued that the deplorable situation of American workers stemmed from four legal monopolies, which are fed by state authoritarianism: money monopoly, land monopoly, customs and patents.

In Germany, the poet and writer John Henry Mackay and the author Kurt Zube represented the teachings Tucker.