The Individualist Anarchists: Anthology of Liberty, 1881-1908 by Frank H Brooks

Author:Frank H Brooks [Brooks, Frank H]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Anarchism, Political Science, General, Political Ideologies
ISBN: 9781351480901
Google: lpguDwAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 35865071
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2017-07-28T00:00:00+00:00

7

Tariffs, Patents, and Copyright

Although the money and land monopolies were clearly the two most important of the "four monopolies," Tucker, if not all the writers in Liberty, insisted on attacking the last two monopolies: tariffs (a monopoly on foreign trade), and patents and copyrights (monopolies on ideas). Unlike money and land, tariffs, patents, and copyrights were not traditional targets of labor reformers. Indeed, labor reformers often demanded protectionist tariffs, while patents and copyrights seemed peripheral to the concerns of most workers. Tucker included them as sources of the exploitation of labor because they were obvious and unnatural creatures of government intervention. Protecting titles to land and providing money seemed to be impartial actions of a liberal government, because they simply provided an economic infrastructure. Erecting tariffs and issuing patents and copyrights, however, were clearly examples of positive state action, and not so obviously infrastructural. Consequently, even though there was no pressing demand among anarchists or workers for the abolition of tariffs, patents, and copyrights, this was seen, by Tucker at least, as essential in clearing the way for free competition.

The tariff issue pitted the individualist anarchists in another dispute with individualists, those who hadn't quite gone the distance to anarchism. While Tucker and others agreed wholeheartedly with the arguments put forward by individualists for free trade, they called on them to extend their logic and to focus on the more important evil of the money and land monopolies. As Tucker put it bluntly: "For a just cause, that of the anti-custom-house reformer is the pettiest that I know of in proportion to the importance that is claimed for it."1 Like taxation generally, the tariff was clearly an evil of government, but (at least in Tucker's day) its economic impact was limited: "The amount abstracted from labor's pockets by the protective tariff and by all other methods of getting governmental revenue is simply one of the smaller drains on industry."2 The vehemence with which the free traders attacked the tariff suggested that they were less interested in a libertarian critique of the modern industrial economy than in a defense of the interests of plutocrats.3 For these reasons, then, there was relatively little extended discussion of tariffs in Liberty, and only one selection (A) is offered, Tucker's attack on William Graham Sumner.

Patents and copyrights, especially the latter, were much more controversial among the individualist anarchists.4 The anti-copyright position, headed by Tucker, argued that the right to deny copying of an author's work was simply a monopoly and could not be justified on theoretical or practical grounds. The basic point of contention was whether an author's works could be considered property, that is, whether there was "property in ideas." Tucker made two related points against such "property," implicitly reverting back to the labor theory of property. The natural reward of productive labor, according to this theory, was property in the objects produced by that labor. The problem was that authors (or inventors, for that matter) produced ideas. These ideas were abstract, not concrete. Moreover, Tucker argued, they did not even produce these ideas, but really only discovered them.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.