Pioneers of American Freedom: Origin of Liberal and Radical Thought in America

236 Pages·1949·5.972 MB·English

by  Rudolf Rocker

P I O N E E RS OF
A M E R I C AN
F R E E D OM
ORIGIN OF LIBERAL AND RADICAL
THOUGHT IN AMERICA
BY R U D O LF R O C K ER
Translated from the German
by Arthur E. Briggs
ROCKER PUBLICATIONS COMMITTEE
(A Non-Profit Organization)
2101 SOUTH GRAMERCY PLACE
LOS ANGELES 7, CALIFORNIA
F-ROtKER
COPYRIGHT, 1949, BY RUDOLF ROCKER
All rights reserved—no part of this book may be
reproduced in any form without permission in
writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer
who wishes to quote brief passages in a review
to be printed in a magazine or newspaper.
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
BY J. J. LITTLE & IVES COMPANY, NEW YORK
CONTENTS
Introduction xiii
PART ONE
AMERICAN LIBERALS
Thomas Paine 1
Thomas Jefferson 12
Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry D. Thoreau 20
William Lloyd Garrison and Wendell Phillips 32
Abraham Lincoln 43
PART TWO
AMERICAN RADICALS
Josiah Warren 49
Stephen Pearl Andrews 70
Lysander Spooner 86
William B. Greene 97
Benjamin R. Tucker 118
Benjamin R. Tucker's Collaborators and other Exponents
of Philosophical Anarchism in America 139
Influences of American Individualist Anarchism in Europe 145
Anarchism and the American Tradition 155
America in Reverse 165
Bibliography 183
Index 207

TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE
More recent events, notably the Alliances of World War
II, have created great confusion concerning the meaning of
democracy, as well as emphasizing the distinctions between
free and regimented societies. Fascism, Naziism, and Rus-
sian Bolshevism, all have certain popular aspects which
tend to characterize them as mass movements. Those who
are unclear about democracy may therefore mistakenly
describe these totalitarian phenomena as democratic.
In such a state of bewilderment of opinion which one
finds even in books of American scholarship, a thoughtful
and informed history of American liberalism and radicalism
is a much needed discipline for our thinking.
Rudolf Rocker's essay, which I have labored to present
here literally in translation, has the dual merit of exhibiting
to Americans their country from the viewpoint of one
trained in European traditions and of giving his interpre-
tation of America to Europeans in the light of their own
knowledge and traditions. Not since de Tocqueville, I dare
say, and not even by his most important work, Democracy
in America, has anyone, native or foreign, had such insight
of America.
For the general viewpoint, the first and final chapters
are illuminating and definitive. They enable us as Americans
to see present disturbances from illiberal and reactionary
factions in comparison with similar outbreaks in our past
history from the beginning to the present. But the greatest
contribution here is the exhibition of our distinguished
liberal leaders from Paine to Lincoln as creative persons
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viii TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE
who have shaped what there is of distinctive character in
American democracy. A yet more unique contribution is
that of bringing to attention the little known personalities
and work of the creative radicals of America who are
shown not to be importations from abroad but very orig-
inal thinkers native to America who have also had con-
siderable influence in European thought and movements.
Of not less moment, especially at this time of extreme
collectivist trends, is the interpretation of the opposite
social philosophy which as philosophical anarchism has been
so terribly misunderstood and persecuted in this country,
and which, though primarily responsible for the coopera-
tive movement, has come under reprobation along with
laissez faire individualism. If traditional American democ-
racy is to survive the insidious attacks which come upon it
persistently from the totalitarian quarters of opinion,
despite two wars that like the mythical Jason's predica-
ment have only produced more antagonists in the place
of those presumably destroyed, it will have to be through
and because of greater enlightenment concerning the origins
and nature of American democracy and American liberalism
and also American radicalism.
This work seems to me also to be recommended for the
broad and tolerant consideration of facts and opinions which
one should expect from a liberal thinker but which is not
too often available today in the heat of discussion on de-
batable subjects. I gather from the book a hopeful outlook
for democracy and liberalism which is absent from most
contemporary writing.
Here is at least a very challenging interpretation of
American social, political and economic philosophy, and it
largely answers that absurd but often repeated declaration
that what America lacks is a philosophy of its own. The
fault as we see here is the neglect of the philosophy which
ix TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE
has been distinctive of the greatest American leaders. In
Rocker's viewpoint we may see that American philosophy
as an exceptionally gifted European liberal sees it and sees
us.
The author's personal experiences as a German exile for
long periods of his life with the hardships endured for the
sake of his opinions have not embittered him. On the con-
trary, he is infused and sustained by deep convictions that
freedom is an attainable environment that produces the
greatest good for mankind, a theme which he has expressed
in a larger book entitled "Nationalism and Culture." That
work deserves to be better known than the works of
Spengler, Pareto, or Toynbee, which are more or less fas-
cistic or reactionary expressions of social philosophy but
of like historical scope. He has lived a life rich in friend-
ships amidst his practical labors as an editor, journalist and
literary man, as will be related in his forthcoming
"Memoirs." It is a refreshing experience to know him as
one trained and actively working in the atmosphere of
radical movements who has developed and preserved an
objective and balanced emotional and intellectual attitude
toward all human events, a powerful advocate of a cause
who has not lost his head or become clouded in his vision,
but rather has attained a consistent view of history which
meets contradicting viewpoints with due measure of their
significance and undertakes to refute them not with rhetor-
ical cliches but with factual and logical reasons. This im-
portant book is only a lesser one of his many profound
writings.
Those who have promoted the publishing of this book,
which has already become known by translation in Spanish,
hope to make the American public conscious as well of the
value of Rocker's other writings for interpretation of the
concept of democracy not only as an expression of freedom
ix
TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE
in the long history of mankind but also as preeminently
the best environment for human achievement.
Among those to whom special acknowledgment of as-
sistance is particularly due are H. Yaffe, Cassius V. Cook,
Sadie Cook, and Dr. Frederick W. Roman, of the Rocker
Publications Committee, who have borne the burden of
finance and initiative in producing this and other works of
Rocker.
ARTHUR E. BRIGGS
Los Angeles, California
PREFACE
The story of our pioneers has often been told. The
unique characteristic of this volume comes from the author
who has offered its pages. Studies on travel and foreign
countries have shown repeatedly that only the foreigner
can reveal, see and observe traits of inhabitants, ways of liv-
ing and thought-forms that the native would never notice.
"Our ways" are commonplace. Nobody takes note of them.
In order to assess the true and all-sided picture, we must
enlist the help of the foreigner.
The author, by training, travel and the production of
epoch-making studies of liberal Movements throughout
the world, brings to this task an equipment that has found no equal anywhere.
Here is a volume that sets forth the contributions toward
freedom that were original on our own soil. However, these
are given with a proper setting of a European background
that adds illumination to the brilliance that seems inherent
in creativeness that was afforded on our soil and latent in a
population whose forebears carried within their lives and
physical make-up the germs of progressive action toward the
dawn of a new Age.
The author of this volume, being himself a rare exponent
of freedom, a creator and moulder of the advanced think-
ing and action of our time, has been enabled to produce a
work that could not have been undertaken by the regular
or typical historian.
In his own right he is the embodiment of the free spirit.
He works, moves forward, not by a reflected or borrowed
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