Many, particularly on the libertarian right, would dismiss claims that the Individualist Anarchists were socialists. By their support of the "free market" the Individualist Anarchists, they would claim, show them as really supporters of capitalism. Most, if not all, anarchists would reject this claim. Why is this the case?
This because such claims show an amazing ignorance of socialist ideas and history. The socialist movement has had a many schools, many of which, but not all, opposed the market and private property. Given that the right-libertarians who make such claims are not well informed of the ideas they oppose (i.e. of socialism, particularly libertarian socialism) it is unsurprising they claim that the Individualist Anarchists are not socialists (of course the fact that many Individualist Anarchists argued they were socialists is ignored). Coming from a different tradition, it is unsurprising they are not aware of the fact that socialism is not monolithic. Hence we discover right-libertarian guru von Mises claiming that the "essence of socialism is the entire elimination of the market." [Human Action, p. 702] This would have come as something of a surprise to, say, Proudhon, who argued that "[t]o suppress competition is to suppress liberty itself." [The General Idea of the Revolution, p. 50] Similarly, it would have surprised Tucker, who called himself a socialist while supporting a freer market than von Mises ever dreamt of.
Part of the problem, of course, is that the same word often means different things to different people. Both Kropotkin and Lenin said they were "communists" and aimed for "communism." However, it does not mean that the society Kropotkin aimed for was the same as that desired by Lenin. Kropotkin's communism was decentralised, created and run from the bottom-up while Lenin's was fundamentally centralised. Similarly, both Tucker and the Social-Democrat (and leading Marxist) Karl Kautsky called themselves a "socialist" yet their ideas on what a socialist society would be like were extremely different. As J.W. Baker notes, "Tucker considered himself a socialist . . . as the result of his struggle against 'usury and capitalism,' but anything that smelled of 'state socialism' was thoroughly rejected." ["Native American Anarchism," The Raven, pp. 43-62, vol. 10, no. 1, p. 60] This, of course, does not stop many "anarcho"-capitalists talking about "socialist" goals as if all socialists were Stalinists (or, at best, social democrats). In fact, "socialist anarchism" has included (and continues to include) advocates of truly free markets as well as advocates of a non-market socialism which has absolutely nothing in common with the state capitalist tyranny of Stalinism. Similarly, they accept a completely ahistorical definition of "capitalism," so ignoring the massive state violence and support by which that system was created and is maintained.
The same with terms like "property" and the "free market," which by the "anarcho"-capitalist assumes the individualist anarchist means the same thing as they do. We can take land as an example. The individualist anarchists argued for an "occupancy and use" system of "property" (see section G.2.2). Thus in their "free market," land would not be a commodity as it is under capitalism. Thus, under individualist anarchism, absentee landlords would be considered as aggressors (and under capitalism, using state coercion to back up their collection of rent against the actual occupiers of property). Tucker argued that local defence associations should treat the occupier and user as the rightful owner, and defend them against the aggression of an absentee landlord who attempted to collect rent. An "anarcho"-capitalist would consider this as aggression against the landlord and a violation of "free market" principles. Similarly, if we apply the mutualist understanding of land to the workplace, we would treat the workers in a factory as the rightful owners, on the basis of occupation and use; at the same time, we could treat the share owners and capitalists as aggressors for attempting to force their representatives as managers on those actually occupying and using the premises. Again, such a system of "occupancy and use" would involve massive violations of what is considered normal in a capitalist "free market."
In other words, an individualist anarchist would consider an "anarcho"-capitalist "free market" as nothing of the kind and vice versa. For the "anarcho"-capitalist, the individualist anarchist position on "property" would be considered as forms of regulation and restrictions on private property and so the "free market." The individualist anarchist would consider the "anarcho"-capitalist "free market" as another system of legally maintained privilege, with the free market distorted in favour of the wealthy.
Therefore it should be remembered that "anarcho"-capitalists at best agree with Tucker, Spooner, et al on fairly vague notions like the "free market." They do not bother to find out what the individualist anarchists meant by that term. Indeed, the "anarcho"-capitalist embrace of different economic theories means that they actually reject the reasoning that leads up to these nominal "agreements." It is the "anarcho"-capitalists who, by rejecting the underlying economics of the mutualists, are forced to take any "agreements" out of context. It also means that when faced with obviously anti-capitalist arguments and conclusions of the individualist anarchists, the "anarcho"-capitalist cannot explain them and are reduced to arguing that the anti-capitalist concepts and opinions expressed by the likes of Tucker are somehow "out of context." In contrast, the anarchist can explain these so-called "out of context" concepts by placing them into the context of the ideas of the individualist anarchists and the society which shaped them.
The "anarcho"-capitalist usually admits that they totally disagree with many of the essential premises of Spooner's and Tucker's analyses. The most basic difference is that the individualist anarchists rooted their ideas in the labour theory of value while the "anarcho"-capitalists favour the subjective theory. It does not take much thought to realise that advocates of labour theories and those of subjective theories of value will naturally develop differing notions of what is and what should be happening within a given economic system. One difference that has in fact arisen is that the notion of what constitutes a "free market" has differed according to the theory of value applied. Many things can be attributed to the workings of a "free" market under a subjective analysis that would be considered symptoms of economic unfreedom under most labour-theory driven analyses.
This can be seen if you look closely at the case of Tucker's comments that anarchism was simply "consistent Manchesterianism." If this is done then a simple example of this potential confusion can be found. Tucker argued that anarchists "accused" the Manchester men "of being inconsistent," that while being in favour of laissez faire for "the labourer in order to reduce his wages" they did not believe "in liberty to compete with the capitalist in order to reduce his usury." [The Individualist Anarchists, p. 83] To be consistent in this case is to be something other — and more demanding in terms of what is accepted as "freedom" — than the average Manchesterian (i.e. a supporter of "free market" capitalism). Partisans of the subjective theory see things differently, of course, feeling justified in calling many things "free" that anarchists would not accept, and seeing "constraint" in what they simply thought of as "consistency."
Therefore it should be pretty clear that a "free market" will look somewhat different depending on your economic presuppositions. Ironically, therefore, "anarcho"-capitalists admit they do not agree with the likes of Spooner and Tucker on key premises, but then claim — despite all that — that it is anarchists who "reject" them. Moreover, the "anarcho"-capitalist simply dismisses all the reasoning that got Tucker there — that is like trying to justify a law citing Leviticus but then saying "but of course all that God stuff is just absurd." You cannot have it both ways. And, of course, the "anarcho"-capitalist support for non-labour based economics allow them to side-step (and so ignore) much of what anarchists — communists, collectivists, individualists, mutualists and syndicalists alike — consider authoritarian and coercive about "actually existing" capitalism. But the difference in value theories is critical. No matter what they are called, it is pretty clear that individualist anarchist standards for the freedom of markets are far more demanding than those associated with even the freest capitalist market system.
In summary, the "free market" as sought by (say) Tucker would not be classed as a "free market" by right-wing "libertarians." So the term "free market" (and, of course, "socialism") can mean different things to different people. As such, it would be correct to state that all anarchists oppose the "free market" by definition as all anarchists oppose the capitalist "free market." And, just as correctly, "anarcho"-capitalists would oppose the mutualist "free market," arguing that it would be no such thing as it would be restrictive of property rights (capitalist property rights of course). For example, the question of resource use in a mutualist society is totally different than in a capitalist "free market" as landlordism would not exist. This is a restriction on capitalist property rights and a violation of a capitalist "free market." So a mutualist "free market" would not be considered so by right-wing "libertarians" due to the substantial differences in the rights on which it would be based (with no right to capitalist private property being the most important).
All this means that to go on and on about Tucker's (or Spooner's et al) feelings about a free market simply misses the point. No one denies that Tucker (or Spooner) was in favour of the "free market" but he did not mean the same kind of "free market" desired by "anarcho"-capitalism or that has existed under capitalism. For example, as we note in section G.4, Tucker was well aware of the impact of inequalities in wealth in the economy. In 1911 he argued that economic inequality was so large that it meant individualist anarchism was impossible. If, as "anarcho"-capitalists claim, Tucker supported the "free market" above all else then he would not have argued this point. Clearly, then, Tucker's support for the "free market" cannot be abstracted from his fundamental principles nor can it be equated with a "free market" based on capitalist property rights and massive inequalities in wealth (and so economic power). Thus individualist anarchist support for the free market does not mean support for a capitalist "free market."
Little wonder, then, that the likes of Tucker considered themselves socialists and stated numerous times that they were.
It could be argued that these self-proclaimed socialists did not, in fact, understand what socialism "really meant." For this to be the case, other, more obviously socialist, writers and thinkers would dismiss them as socialists. This, however, is not the case. Thus we find Karl Marx, for example, writing of "the socialism of Proudhon." [Capital, vol. 1, p. 161f] Engels talked about Proudhon being "the Socialist of the small peasant and master-craftsman" and of "the Proudhon school of Socialism." [Marx and Engels, Selected Works, p. 254 and p. 255] Bakunin talked about Proudhon's "socialism, based on individual and collective liberty and upon the spontaneous action of free associations." [Michael Bakunin: Selected Writings, p. 100] These renown socialists did not consider Proudhon's position to be in any way anti-socialist.
Looking at Tucker and the Individualist anarchists we discover that other socialists considered them socialists. Looking at Rudolf Rocker we discover him arguing that "it is not difficult to discover certain fundamental principles which are common to all of them and which divide them from all other varieties of socialism. They all agree on the point that man be given the full reward of his labour and recognise in this right the economic basis of all personal liberty. They all regard the free competition of individual and social forces as something inherent in human nature . . . They answered the socialists of other schools who saw in free competition one of the destructive elements of capitalist society that the evil lies in the fact we have too little rather than too much competition, since the power of monopoly has made competition impossible." [Pioneers of American Freedom, p. 160]
Adolph Fischer, one of the Haymarket Martyrs and contemporary of Tucker, argued that "every anarchist is a socialist, but every socialist is not necessarily an anarchist. The anarchists are divided into two factions: the communistic anarchists and the Proudhon or middle-class anarchists . . ." The former "advocate the communistic or co-operative method of production" while the latter "do not advocate the co-operative system of production [i.e. communism], and the common ownership of the means of production, the products and the land." [The Autobiographies of the Haymarket Martyrs, p. 81] However, while not being communists (i.e. aiming to eliminate the market), he obviously recognised the Individualists Anarchists as fellow socialists (we should point out that Proudhon did support co-operatives, as did the Individualist Anarchists, but they did not carry this to communism as do most social anarchists — as is clear, Fischer means communism by the term "co-operative system of production" rather than co-operatives as they exist today and Proudhon supported).
Thus claims that the Individualist Anarchists were not "really" socialists because they support competition are false. The simple fact is that those who make this claim are ignorant of the socialist movement, its ideas and its history (or desire, like many Marxists, to write out of history competing socialist theories). As Tucker argued, "the fact that State Socialism . . . has overshadowed other forms of Socialism gives it no right to a monopoly of the Socialistic idea." [Instead of a Book, pp. 363-4] It is no surprise that the authoritarian left and "libertarian" right have united to define socialism in such a way as to eliminate anarchism from its ranks — they both have an interest in removing a theory which exposes the inadequacies of their dogmas, which explains how we can have both liberty and equality, have freedom in work and outside it and have a decent, free and just society.
So why is Individualist Anarchism and Proudhon's mutualism socialist? Simply because they opposed the exploitation of labour by capital and proposed a means of ending it. Therefore, if socialism is, to quote Kropotkin, "understood in its wide, generic, and true sense" as "an effort to abolish the exploitation of labour by capital" [Kropotkin's Revolutionary Pamphlets, p. 169] then the Individualist Anarchists and Proudhon must be considered socialists (of course libertarian socialists) due to their opposition to usury. It is for this reason we discover Rudolf Rocker arguing that Stephan P. Andrews was "one of the most versatile and significant exponents of libertarian socialism" in the USA in spite of his belief that "the specific cause of the economic evil [of capitalism] is founded not on the existence of the wage system" but, rather, on the exploitation of labour, "on the unjust compensation of the worker" and the usury that "deprives him of a part of his labour." [Pioneers of American Freedom, p. 85 and pp. 77-8] His opposition to exploitation meant he was a socialist, an opposition which individualist anarchism was rooted in from its earliest days and the ideas of Josiah Warren:
"The aim was to circumvent the exploitation inherent in capitalism, which Warren characterised as a sort of 'civilised cannibalism,' by exchanging goods on co-operative rather than supply and demand principles." [J.W. Baker, "Native American Anarchism," The Raven, pp. 43-62, vol. 10, no. 1, p. 51]
The individualist anarchists considered it as a truism that in their society the exploitation of labour could not exist. Thus even if some workers did sell their liberty, they would still receive the full product of their labour. Thus accumulation of capital would be non-existent, so a general equality would prevail and so economic power would not undermine liberty. Remove this underlying assumption, assume that profits could be made and capital accumulated, assume that land can be monopolised by landlords (as the "anarcho"-capitalists do) and a radically different society is produced. One in which economic power means that the vast majority have to sell themselves to get access to the means of life. A condition of "free markets" may exist, but as Tucker argued in 1911, it would not be anarchism. The deus ex machina of invisible hands has takes a beating in the age of monopolies.