a º
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The Attitude of Anarchism
Toward
Industrial Combinations
BY
BENJ. R. TUCKER
NEW YORK
BENJ. R. TUCKER, Publisher
1903

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The Attitude of Anarchism
Toward
Industrial Combinations
BY
BENJ. R. TUCKER
NEW YORK
BEN.J. R. TUCKER, Publisher
1903


The Attitude of Anarchism Toward
Industrial Combinations. *
Having to deal very briefly with the problem
with which the so-called trusts confront us, I
go at once to the heart of the subject, taking
my stand on these propositions: That the right
to co-operate is as unquestionable as the right
to compete; that the right to compete involves
the right to refrain from competition; that co-
operation is often a method of competition,
and that competition is always, in the larger
view, a method of co-operation; that each is a
legitimate, orderly, non-invasive exercise of the
individual will under the social law of equal
liberty; and that any man or institution at-
tempting to prohibit or restrict either, by legis-
lative enactment or by any form of invasive
force, is, in so far as such man or institution
may fairly be judged by such attempt, an enemy
* An address delivered by Benj. R. Tucker in Central
Music Hall, Chicago, on September 14, 1899, before the
Conference on Trusts held under the auspices of the Civic
Federation.

4. THE AT TITUDE OF ANARCHISM
of liberty, an enemy of progress, an enemy of
society, and an enemy of the human race.
Viewed in the light of these irrefutable prop-
ositions, the trust, then, like every other indus-
trial combination endeavoring to do collectively
nothing but what each member of the combina-
tion rightfully may endeavor to do individually,
is, per se, an unimpeachable institution. To
assail or control or deny this form of co-opera-
tion on the ground that it is itself a denial of
competition is an absurdity. It is an absurdity,
because it proves too much. The trust is a
denial of competition in no other sense than
that in which competition itself is a denial of
competition. The trust denies competition
only by producing and selling more cheaply
than those outside of the trust can produce and
sell; but in that sense every successful indi-
vidual competitor also denies competition.
And if the trust is to be suppressed for such
denial of competition, then the very competition
in the name of which the trust is to be sup-
pressed must itself be suppressed also. I re-
peat: the argument proves too much. The
fact is that there is one denial of competition
which is the right of all, and that there is an-
other denial of competition which is the right
of none. All of us, whether out of a trust or in

TOWARD INDUSTRIAL COMBINATIONS. 5
it, have a right to deny competition by compet-
ing, but none of us, whether in a trust or out of
it, have a right to deny competition by arbitrary
decree, by interference with voluntary effort,
by forcible suppression of initiative.
Again: To claim that the trust should be
abolished or controlled because the great re-
sources and consequent power of endurance
which it acquires by combination give it an
undue advantage, and thereby enable it to crush
competition, is equally an argument that proves
too much. If John D. Rockefeller were to
start a grocery store in his individual capacity,
we should not think of suppressing or restrict-
ing or hampering his enterprise simply because,
with his five hundred millions, he could afford
to sell groceries at less than cost until the day
when the accumulated ruins of all other grocery
stores should afford him a sure foundation for
a profitable business. But, if Rockefeller's pos-
session of five hundred millions is not a good
ground for the suppression of his grocery store,
no better ground is the control of still greater
wealth for the suppression of his oil trust. It
is true that these vast accumulations under one
control are abnormal and dangerous, but the
reasons for them lie outside of and behind and
beneath all trusts and industrial combinations,

6 THE ATTITUDE OF ANARCHISM
—reasons which I shall come to presently,–
reasons which are all, in some form or other, an
arbitrary denial of liberty; and, but for these
reasons, but for these denials of liberty, John D.
Rockefeller never could have acquired five
hundred millions, nor would any combination
of men be able to control an aggregation of
wealth that could not be easily and successfully
met by some other combination of men.
Again: There is no warrant in reason for
deriving a right to control trusts from the State
grant of corporate privileges under which they
are organized. In the first place, it being pure
usurpation to presume to endow any body of
men with rights and exemptions that are not
theirs already under the social law of equal lib-
erty, corporate privileges are in themselves a
wrong; and one wrong is not to be undone by
attempting to offset it with another. But, even
admitting the justice of corporation charters,
the avowed purpose in granting them is to en-
courage co-operation, and thus stimulate indus-
trial and commercial development for the bene-
fit of the community. Now, to make this en-
couragement an excuse for its own nullification
by a proportionate restriction of co-operation
would be to add one more to those interminable
imitations of the task of Sisyphus for which

TOWARD INDUSTRIAL COMBINATIONS. º
that stupid institution which we call the State
has ever been notorious.
Of somewhat the same nature, but rather
more plausible at first blush, is the proposition
to cripple the trusts by stripping them of those
law-created privileges and monopolies which are
conferred, not upon trusts as corporate bodies,
but upon sundry individuals and interests, os-
tensibly for protection of the producer and in-
ventor, but really for purposes of plunder, and
which most trusts acquire in the process of
merging the original capitals of their constitu-
ent members. I refer, of course, to tariffs,
patents, and copyrights. Now, tariffs, patents,
and copyrights either have their foundations in
justice, or they have not their foundations in
justice. If they have their foundations in jus-
tice, why should men guilty of nothing but a
legitimate act of co-operation and partnership be
punished therefor by having their just rights
taken from them? If they have not their foun-
dations in justice, why should men who refrain
from co-operation be left in possession of unjust
privileges that are denied to men who co-oper-
ate? If tariffs are unjust, they should not be
levied at all. If patents and copyrights are un-
just, they should not be granted to any one
whomsoever. But, if tariffs and patents and

S THE ATTITUDE OF ANARCHISM
copyrights are just, they should be levied or
granted in the interest of all who are entitled to
their benefits from the viewpoint of the motives
in which these privileges have their origin, and
to make such levy or grant dependent upon any
foreign motive, such, for instance, as willing-
ness to refrain from co-operation, would be
sheer impertinence.
Nevertheless, at this point in the hunt for the
solution of the trust problem, the discerning
student may begin to realize that he is hot on
the trail. The thought arises that the trusts,
instead of growing out of competition, as is so
generally supposed, have been made possible
only by the absence of competition, only by the
difficulty of competition, only by the obstacles
placed in the way of competition,-only, in
short, by those arbitrary limitations of competi-
tion which we find in those law-created privi-
leges and monopolies of which I have just
spoken, and in one or two others, less direct, but
still more far-reaching and deadly in their de-
structive influence upon enterprise. And it is
with this thought that Anarchism, the doctrine
that in all matters there should be the greatest
amount of individual liberty compatible with
equality of liberty, approaches the case in hand,
and offers its diagnosis and its remedy.

TOWARD INDUSTRIAL COMBINATIONS. 9
The first and great fact to be noted in the
case, I have already hinted at. It is the fact
that the trusts owe their power to vast accumula-
tion and concentration of wealth, unmatched,
and, under present conditions, unmatchable, by
any equal accumulation of wealth, and that this
accumulation of wealth has been effected by the
combination of several accumulations only less
vast and in themselves already gigantic, each of
which owed its existence to one or more of the
only means by which large fortunes can be rolled
up, interest, rent, and monopolistic profit.
But for interest, rent, and monopolistic profit,
therefore, trusts would be impossible. Now,
what causes interest, rent, and monopolistic
profit? For all there is but one cause, – the
denial of liberty, the suppression or restriction
of competition, the legal creation of monopolies.
This single cause, however, takes various
shapes.
Monopolistic profit is due to that denial of
liberty which takes the shape of patent, copy-
right, and tariff legislation, patent and copy-
right laws directly forbidding competition,
and tariff laws placing competition at a fatal
disadvantage.
Rent is due to that denial of liberty which
takes the shape of land monopoly, vesting titles

10 THE ATTITUDE OF ANARCHISM
to land in individuals and associations which
do not use it, and thereby compelling the non-
owning users to pay tribute to the non-using
owners as a condition of admission to the
competitive market.
Interest is due to that denial of liberty which
takes the shape of money monopoly, depriving
all individuals and associations, save such as
hold a certain kind of property, of the right to
issue promissory notes as currency, and thereby
compelling all holders of property other than
the kind thus privileged, as well as all non-pro-
prietors, to pay tribute to the holders of the
privileged property for the use of a circulating
medium and instrument of credit which, in the
complex stage that industry and commerce have
now reached, has become the chief essential of
a competitive market.
Now, Anarchism, which, as I have said, is the
doctrine that in all matters there should be the
greatest amount of individual liberty compatible
with equality of liberty, finds that none of these
denials of liberty are necessary to the mainten-
ance of equality of liberty, but that each and
every one of them, on the contrary, is destruct
tive of equality of liberty. Therefore it declares
them unnecessary, arbitrary, oppressive, and
unjust, and demands their immediate cessation.

Toward INDUSTRIAL combinations. 11
Of these four monopolies—the banking mon-
opoly, the land monopoly, the tariff monopoly,
and the patent and copyright monopoly—the
injustice of all but the last-named is manifest
even to a child. The right of the individual to
buy and sell without being held up by a high-
wayman whenever he crosses an imaginary line
called a frontier; the right of the individual to
take possession of unoccupied land as freely as
he takes possession of unoccupied water or un-
occupied air; the right of the individual to give
his IOU, in any shape whatsoever, under any
guarantee whatsoever, or under no guarantee at
all, to anyone willing to accept it in exchange
for something else, all these rights are too
clear for argument, and any one presuming
to dispute them simply declares thereby his
despotic and imperialistic instincts.
For the fourth of these monopolies, however,
—the patent and copyright monopoly,–a more
plausible case can be presented, for the question
of property in ideas is a very subtle one. The
defenders of such property set up an analogy
between the production of material things and
the production of abstractions, and on the
strength of it declare that the manufacturer of
mental products, no less than the manufacturer
of material products, is a laborer worthy of his

12 THE AT TITUDE OF ANARCHISM
hire. So far, so good. But, to make out their
case, they are obliged to go further, and to
claim, in violation of their own analogy, that
the laborer who creates mental products, unlike
the laborer who creates material products, is
entitled to exemption from competition. Be-
cause the Lord, in his wisdom, or the Devil, in
his malice, has so arranged matters that the
inventor and the author produce naturally at a
disadvantage, man, in his might, proposes to
supply the divine or diabolic deficiency by an
artificial arrangement that shall not only de-
stroy this disadvantage, but actually give the
inventor and author an advantage that no
other laborer enjoys-an advantage, moreover,
which, in practice, goes, not to the inventor
and the author, but to the promoter and the
publisher and the trust.
Convincing as the argument for property in
ideas may seem at first hearing, if you think
about it long enough, you will begin to be sus-
picious. The first thing, perhaps, to arouse
your suspicion will be the fact that none of the
champions of such property propose the punish-
ment of those who violate it, contenting them-
selves with subjecting the offenders to the risk
of damage suits, and that nearly all of them
are willing that even the risk of suit shall dis-

TOWARD INDUSTRIAL COMBINATIONS. 13
appear when the proprietor has enjoyed his
right for a certain number of years. Now, if,
as the French writer, Alphonse Karr, remarked,
property in ideas is a property like any other
property, then its violation, like the violation
of any other property, deserves criminal punish-
ment, and its life, like that of any other prop-
erty, should be secure in right against the lapse
of time. And, this not being claimed by the
upholders of property in ideas, the suspicion
arises that such a lack of the courage of their
convictions may be due to an instinctive feeling
that they are wrong.
The necessity of being brief prevents me from
examining this phase of my subject in detail.
Therefore I must content myself with develop-
ing a single consideration, which, I hope, will
prove suggestive.
I take it that, if it were possible, and if it
had always been possible, for an unlimited
number of individuals to use to an unlimited
extent and in an unlimited number of places the
same concrete things at the same time, there
never would have been any such thing as the
institution of property. Under those circum-
stances the idea of property would never have
entered the human mind, or, at any rate, if it
had, would have been summarily dismissed as

14 THE AT TITUDE OF ANARCHISM
too gross an absurdity to be seriously entertained
for a moment. Had it been possible for the
concrete creation or adaptation resulting from
the efforts of a single individual to be used con-
temporaneously by all individuals, including
the creator or adapter, the realization, or im-
pending realization, of this possibility, far from
being seized upon as an excuse for a law to
prevent the use of this concrete thing without
the consent of its creator or adapter, and far
from being guarded against as an injury to one,
would have been welcomed as a blessing to all,
—in short, would have been viewed as a most
fortunate element in the nature of things. The
raison d'être of property is found in the very
fact that there is no such possibility, in the
fact that it is impossible in the nature of things
for concrete objects to be used in different places
at the same time. This fact existing, no person
can remove from another's possession and take
to his own use another's concrete creation with-
out thereby depriving that other of all oppor-
tunity to use that which he created, and for this
reason it became socially necessary, since suc-
cessful society rests on individual initiative, to
protect the individual creator in the use of his
concrete creations by forbidding others to use
them without his consent. In other words, it

Toward INDUSTRIAL COMBINATIONS. 15
became necessary to institute property in
concrete things. -
But all this happened so long ago that we of
to-day have entirely forgotten why it happened.
In fact, it is very doubtful whether, at the time
of the institution of property, those who effected
it thoroughly realized and understood the mo-
tive of their course. Men sometimes do by in-
stinct and without analysis that which conforms
to right reason. The institutors of property
may have been governed by circumstances inher-
ing in the nature of things, without realizing
that, had the nature of things been the opposite,
they would not have instituted property. But,
be that as it may, even supposing that they thor-
oughly understood their course, we, at any rate,
have pretty nearly forgotten their understand-
ing. And so it has come about that we have
made of property a fetich; that we consider it
a sacred thing; that we have set up the god of
property on an altar as an object of idol-wor-
ship; and that most of us are not only doing
what we can to strengthen and perpetuate his
reign within the proper and original limits of
his sovereignty, but also are mistakenly endeav-
oring to extend his dominion over things and
under circumstances which, in their pivotal
characteristic, are precisely the opposite of those

16 THE ATTITUDE OF ANARCHISM
out of which his power developed.
All of which is to say, in briefer compass,
that from the justice and social necessity of
property in concrete things we have erroneously
assumed the justice and social necessity of
property in abstract things, that is, of prop-
erty in ideas, with the result of nullifying to
a large and lamentable extent that fortunate
element in the nature of things, in this case not
hypothetical, but real,—namely, the immeasur-
ably fruitful possibility of the use of abstract
things by any number of individuals in any
number of places at precisely the same time,
without in the slightest degree impairing the use
thereof by any single individual. Thus we have
hastily and stupidly jumped to the conclusion
that property in concrete things logically im-
plies property in abstract things, whereas, if
we had had the care and the keenness to accu-
rately analyze, we should have found that the
very reason which dictates the advisability of
property in concrete things denies the advis-
ability of property in abstract things. We see
here a curious instance of that frequent mental
phenomenon, the precise inversion of the truth.
by a superficial view.
Furthermore, were the conditions the same
in both cases, and concrete things capable of use

TOWARD INDUSTRIAL COMBINATIONS. 17
by different persons in different places at the
same time, even then, I say, the institution of
property in concrete things, though under those
conditions manifestly absurd, would be infi-
nitely less destructive of individual opportuni-
ties, and therefore infinitely less dangerous and
detrimental to human welfare, than is the insti-
tution of property in abstract things. For it is
easy to see that, even should we accept the rather
startling hypothesis that a single ear of corn is
continually and permanently consumable, or
rather inconsumable, by an indefinite number of
persons scattered over the surface of the earth,
still the legal institution of property in concrete
things that would secure to the sower of a grain
of corn the exclusive use of the resultant ear
would not, in so doing, deprive other persons of
the right to sow other grains of corn and become
exclusive users of their respective harvests;
whereas the legal institution of property in ab-
stract things not only secures to the inventor,
say, of the steam engine the exclusive use of the
engines which he actually makes, but at the
same time deprives all other persons of the right
to make for themselves other engines involving
any of the same ideas. Perpetual property in
ideas, then, which is the logical outcome of any
theory of property in abstract things, would,

18 THE ATTITUDE OF ANARCHISM
had it been in force in the lifetime of James
Watt, have made his direct heirs the owners of
at least nine-tenths of the now existing wealth
of the world; and, had it been in force in the
lifetime of the inventor of the Roman alphabet,
nearly all the highly civilized peoples of the
earth would be to-day the virtual slaves of that
inventor's heirs, which is but another way of
saying that, instead of becoming highly civil-
ized, they would have remained in the state of
semi-barbarism. It seems to me that these two
statements, which in my view are incontrover-
tible, are in themselves sufficient to condemn
property in ideas forever.
If, then, the four monopolies to which I have
referred are unnecessary denials of liberty, and
therefore unjust denials of liberty, and if they
are the sustaining causes of interest, rent, and
monopolistic profit, and if, in turn, this usu-
rious trinity is the cause of all vast accumula-
tions of wealth, for further proof of which
propositions I must, because of the limitations
of my time, refer you to the economic writings
of the Anarchistic school, it clearly follows
that the adequate solution of the problem with
which the trusts confront us is to be found only
in abolition of these monopolies and the conse-
quent guarantee of perfectly free competition.

TOWARD INDUSTRIAL COMBINATIONS. 19
The most serious of these four monopolies is
unquestionably the money monopoly, and I be-
lieve that perfect freedom in finance alone
would wipe out nearly all the trusts, or at least
render them harmless, and perhaps helpful.
Mr. Bryan told a very important truth when he
declared that the destruction of the money trust
would at the same time kill all the other trusts.
Unhappily, Mr. Bryan does not propose to de-
stroy the money trust. He wishes simply to
transform it from a gold trust into a gold and
silver trust. The money trust cannot be des-
troyed by the remonetization of silver. That
would be only a mitigation of the monopoly, not
the abolishment of it. It can be abolished only
by monetizing all wealth that has a market
value, that is, by giving to all wealth the right
of representation by currency, and to all cur-
rency the right to circulate wherever it can on
its own merits. And this is not only a solution
of the trust question, but the first step that
should be taken, and the greatest single step that
can be taken, in economic and social reform.
I have tried, in the few minutes allotted to
me, to state concisely the attitude of Anarchism
toward industrial combinations. It discounten-
ances all direct attacks on them, all interference
with them, all anti-trust legislation whatsoever.

20 THE ATTITUDE OF ANARCHISM
In fact, it regards industrial combinations as
very useful whenever they spring into existence
in response to demand created in a healthy
social body. If at present they are baneful, it
is because they are symptoms of a social disease
originally caused and persistently aggravated
by a regimen of tyranny and quackery. Anarch-
ism wants to call off the quacks, and give lib-
erty, nature’s great cure-all, a chance to do its
perfect work.
Free access to the world of matter, abolishing
land monopoly; free access to the world of
mind, abolishing idea monopoly; free access to .
an untaxed and unprivileged market, abolishing
tariff monopoly and money monopoly,–secure
these, and all the rest shall be added unto you.
For liberty is the remedy of every social evil,
and to Anarchy the world must look at last for
any enduring guarantee of social order.
*I r. 24- /s : 7
THE AT TITUDE OF ANARCHISM
Toward e t
INDUSTRIAL COMBINATIONS. R
BY
*
BENJ. R. TUCKER. -
Y -
An address delivered in Central Music Hall, Chi-
cago, on September 14, 1899, before the Conference
on Trusts held under the auspices of the Civic -
Federation. ~ -
Price, Five Cents; Ioo Copies, $3.o.o. * S.
Mailed, post-paid, by the Publisher,
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