>From: "Alex Robson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > > As for socialism, its defining characteristic is not necessarily the >absence > >of private property rights. Tucker simply defined socialism by two > >criteria: the beliefs that 1) all value was created by labor; and 2) >that > >labor should get 100% of its product. In his view, exploitation was > >possible only through the state's coercion, by which it enabled legally > >privileged classes to extract a premium in unpaid labor. If such >privilege > >were eliminated, the free market would cause wages to rise to 100% of > >value-added. > >I haven't read Tucker, but I've always thought that Von Mises is correct >when he says that the essential mark of socialism is that "one will alone, >acts, irrespective of whose will it is" (Human Action, p 695.) To me, this >"essential mark" implies an absence of private property rights.
The identification of socialism with statism or collectivism reflects the victory of a particular tendency within the socialist movement. To define the movement in terms of that particular tendency, therefore, strikes me as ahistorical. The original main current of "socialism," in the early nineteenth century, was the mutualism of P.J. Proudhon and Josiah Warren, both of which predated Marx. Warren founded an American tradition, culminating in Lysander Spooner and Benjamin Tucker, that was a virtual free market fundamentalism. Libertarian socialism, or anarchism, was a major current within the original socialist movement even after Marx; and a major part of that current, especially in America, favored the free market. _________________________________________________________________ Join the world�s largest e-mail service with MSN Hotmail. http://www.hotmail.com
