By Keith Preston, April 12, 2025

Substack

Benjamin R. Tucker (1854–1939), one of the most influential figures in 19th-century American individualist anarchism, developed a unique economic philosophy that combined radical anti-capitalism with a devotion to genuinely free markets. His vision stood apart from both the Marxist tradition of collectivist socialism and the classical liberal defense of capitalist property relations, offering instead what he described as “socialism without the state.” In doing so, Tucker articulated an economic theory grounded in the abolition of coercive monopolies, the liberation of individual labor, and the mutualist organization of exchange.

The Four Monopolies and the Roots of Exploitation

At the center of Tucker’s economic thought was his theory of “four monopolies”—a framework identifying the legal and institutional privileges by which the state enabled a capitalist ruling class to extract unearned income through usury, rent, profit, and taxation. These monopolies were:

1. The Money Monopoly: Tucker condemned state control over currency and banking, particularly the legal restrictions that prevented individuals and cooperatives from issuing mutual credit. He argued that monopolization of currency—through chartered national banks—created artificial scarcity of credit and allowed capitalists to charge interest on money as a commodity.

2. The Land Monopoly: Tucker distinguished between property based on occupancy and use (which he defended) and absentee ownership (which he rejected). He argued that when the state enforces claims to land not being actively used, it enables landlords to extract rent from those who do the actual labor.

3. The Tariff Monopoly: Tucker viewed tariffs as a state-enforced privilege that protected domestic manufacturers from foreign competition, allowing them to raise prices and exploit both workers and consumers. Tariffs were, to him, a clear example of how the state distorted free exchange to benefit a capitalist elite.

4. The Patent Monopoly: He also opposed intellectual property laws, believing that state-enforced patents and copyrights created artificial scarcity and allowed monopolists to extract profits long after the labor of innovation was done.

These monopolies, Tucker believed, were the primary instruments by which the state upheld capitalism. Remove them, and the conditions that allow capitalists to exploit labor would collapse. The resulting society would not resemble capitalism as we know it, but a decentralized market system based on cooperative production and voluntary exchange.

Markets Without Capitalism: Tucker’s Vision of a Freed Market

Tucker’s belief in the “freed market” (a term that would later be adopted by left-libertarian and mutualist thinkers) must be carefully distinguished from capitalist markets. While he was an enthusiastic proponent of voluntary exchange, private ownership based on use, and competitive enterprise, he was a fierce opponent of wage labor as a dominant economic relation under capitalism.

He believed that in a truly free market, where access to land, credit, and tools of production were not monopolized, workers would not need to sell their labor to capitalists. Instead, they could:

– Form worker cooperatives
– Operate as independent artisans or producers
– Establish mutual credit banks to finance their labor

In such a society, the returns to capital (profit), land (rent), and money (interest) would fall to zero—or near zero—because free competition and mutual cooperation would eliminate the structural advantages that allow some to live off the labor of others. In this way, Tucker envisioned a society that was both individualist and egalitarian—one where labor received its full product, and coercive hierarchy would wither away.

Rejection of Marxism: No Dictatorship, No Central Plan

Although Tucker shared with Marxists a critique of capitalism and the desire to abolish exploitation, he was deeply opposed to Marxist methods and assumptions. He rejected:

– The dictatorship of the proletariat as a new form of centralized coercion
– The abolition of all private property, preferring instead the mutualist principle of property based on use and occupation
– The central planning of production, insisting on decentralized, voluntary economic arrangements

He regarded Marxism as a variant of statism that merely replaced the bourgeois capitalist class with a bureaucratic collectivist class. In his journal Liberty, Tucker derisively referred to state socialists as “red tyrants” and warned that authoritarian socialism would be no better than capitalism for the working class.

Critique of Classical Liberalism: Liberty vs. Privilege

While Tucker agreed with classical liberals in their defense of free association, freedom of speech, and property rights, he rejected their support for capitalist property arrangements, state-backed corporate structures, and legal enforcement of monopolies. He considered most forms of capitalist enterprise to be dependent on state intervention, and he distinguished sharply between laissez-faire in theory and laissez-faire in practice.

Tucker saw capitalist “free markets” as rigged by law in favor of capital owners. He believed that if the state were truly removed from the economy, what emerged would not be capitalism, but a decentralized, self-managed network of workers, producers, and cooperatives exchanging goods and services without the domination of a propertied elite.

No “No Particular Order”

Benjamin Tucker did not support the “no particular order” or “do whatever deregulation you can get” approach often found among modern libertarians, particularly right-libertarians or anarcho-capitalists. Instead, he pursued a systematic and strategic vision for dismantling government functions—one grounded in his critique of four monopolies and a commitment to social justice through individual liberty. Tucker believed that not all aspects of the state were equally oppressive. Some were merely symptoms, while others were the root causes of exploitation. His strategy was to first abolish the four state-enforced monopolies: the money monopoly, the land monopoly, the tariff monopoly, and the patent monopoly. Tucker argued that these monopolies distorted the free market, enabled capitalistic exploitation, and created artificial hierarchies of wealth and power. By removing them, workers would gain access to land, credit, and productive tools; systems of usury, rent, and profit would collapse; and the coercive functions of the state would become unnecessary. As he put it, when these monopolies are removed, “the workingman will be able to employ himself and secure the full product of his labor,” thereby undermining the foundations of both capitalism and the state.

Tucker rejected piecemeal or random deregulation that failed to confront structural monopolies. He would not have supported repealing labor protections while capital and land remained monopolized, nor would he have endorsed privatizing police and courts in a society where wealth remained concentrated through state-backed privilege. He likely would have opposed libertarians who call for abolishing welfare without also challenging landlordism, corporate charters, or banking monopolies, or those who promote corporate deregulation in an economy already skewed in favor of the powerful. Tucker’s anarchism was mutualist, meaning liberty must be conditioned by reciprocity and rooted in equal access to productive resources. For Tucker, freedom without access to land or credit was a farce, and a just market could only emerge after state-created privilege was dismantled. Therefore, liberty should not be pursued haphazardly but through a deliberate effort to eliminate structural domination.

Tucker’s views find stronger resonance among modern left-libertarians and market anarchists, such as Kevin Carson and Gary Chartier, who oppose both state coercion and capitalist privilege. Like Tucker, they reject the “just deregulate everything now” mindset, emphasizing instead that dismantling the state must be done in tandem with dismantling the economic structures it upholds. In short, Tucker’s abolition strategy was systematic—focused first on monopolies—while his critique of piecemeal deregulation was rooted in a concern that unbalanced liberalization could entrench exploitation. His philosophy aligns more with mutualist and market-anarchist traditions than with typical right-libertarian thought. Ultimately, Tucker believed that a truly free market is one in which labor receives its full product, and that liberty without justice is nothing more than privilege repackaged.

Liberty, Labor, and the Stateless Market

Benjamin Tucker’s economic thought presents a radical synthesis of socialism and individualism, offering a model of anti-capitalist market anarchism rooted in voluntary exchange, mutual cooperation, and worker autonomy. He believed that freedom must be accompanied by justice, and that a market liberated from state-imposed monopolies would naturally tend toward equality and social harmony. In rejecting both Marxist authoritarianism and capitalist privilege, Tucker advanced a vision of a truly free society—a stateless economy without exploitation, built on the foundations of mutualism and individual liberty.