Benjamin Tucker-Anarchist Essay

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Joseph Sophomore Sociology Class Benjamin Tucker-Anarchist Benjamin Tucker was born on April 17, 1854 in South Darmouth, Massachusetts. He was an intelligent young man and his family valued education, but they were very opinionated about the realities of life. Tucker grew up in a hothouse fostering freedom of thought, religious dissent, and political nonconformity. Tucker’s great-grandfather was a follower of the radical free-thinker Tom Paine, his mother was an extreme Unitarian and his father was a rebellious Quaker and Jeffersonian democrat. (The Forum) With this mixture of different life philosophies surrounding him in his younger years it is not surprising that he thought a lot about the world around him and eventually put those thoughts down on paper. At the young age of 16, Tucker entered the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with the original intent to pursue a career in engineering. However, the more he lived in the real world and witnessed what he felt were unfair practices towards and the exploitation of human beings, Tucker was soon drawn to social reform and became a convert to individualist anarchism when he turned eighteen. (Cooperative Individualism) This young, opinionated man dropped out of technical school at the age of 18 and soon traveled to France to study the works of French socialist Pierre Joseph Proudhon. While working underneath Proudhon he founded the Radical Review which was published in 1877. Tucker’s most famous publication was the broadsheet, Liberty. Liberty was issued regularly from 1881-1908 and became a widely read clearinghouse for unorthodox thought. (Cooperative Individualism) He wrote much of Liberty himself while he was back in the states working for the Boston Globe in 1878. After working in Dohrmann 2 Boston for a time, he traveled to New York City to be an editor of the Engineering Magazine. Mr.
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