Tucker, Benjamin R. (1854–1939)

Benjamin R. Tucker was a writer, an editor, and a publisher. Tucker is arguably the most significant figure in American individualist anarchism. Through his periodical Liberty: Not the Daughter but the Mother of Order, published from 1881 to 1908, Tucker made the case for a stateless society in clear and uncompromising prose. In addition to Tucker's writings, Liberty published articles by such notable libertarians as Lysander Spooner, Auberon Herbert, and Wordsworth Donisthorpe. It also featured pieces by Irish literary critic George Bernard Shaw and Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto, as well as early translations of the work of German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche.

Tucker's views, like those of most 19th-century individualist anarchists, seem somewhat eclectic—if not odd—to modern libertarians. The principal reason lies in Tucker's self-identified socialism. In ...