Benjamin Tucker

Benjamin Ricketson Tucker (; April 17, 1854 – June 22, 1939) was an American individualist anarchist and self-identified socialist. Tucker was the editor and publisher of the American individualist anarchist periodical Liberty (1881–1908). Tucker described his form of anarchism as "consistent Manchesterism" and "unterrified Jeffersonianism". Tucker looked upon anarchism as a part of the broader socialist movement. Tucker harshly opposed state socialism and was a supporter of free-market socialism and libertarian socialism which he termed anarchist or anarchistic socialism. He connected Josiah Warren, Karl Marx and Pierre-Joseph Proudhon to socialism. Some modern commentators have described Tucker as an anarcho-capitalist, although this has been disputed by others. During his lifetime, Tucker opposed capitalism and considered himself a socialist due to wanting to increase human welfare by acting upon social relations and environment, rather than on nature of individuals, and his support for preventing possession of wealth from being a means of levying on the product of labor. Tucker connected his libertarian socialist economic views which included his opposition to non-labor income in the form of profit, interest and rent with those of Josiah Warren, Proudhon and Marx while arguing against American anti-socialists who declared socialism as imported.