Infoshop.org is apparently a respected anarchist site. So respected, that the when I wiki’d it the article mentioned that a college study came to the conclusion that infoshop was the most accurate and current site on anarchism out there. So I looked up Lysander Spooner and what is the first thing I find? An article that said Spooner was a socialist and more or less an attempt to refute Free Market Anarchism. So how seriously should I take this site and the article on Spooner? I’m guessing from what I’ve seen something between zero and a negative number. And here is the article on Spooner: http://www.infoshop.org/faq/secG7.html
I was only able to take a glance at it, but it seems more or less like a copy and paste job with some " There see, I told you!!!11". Tell me if it is anything worth serious consideration, and if this site is something that is respected by people outside of the anarchist movement.
Spooner was extremely critical of state capitalism and its effects on the working class, and wanted to see more people able to become self-employed. But the claim that he opposed people selling their labor strikes me as total nonsense.
Whatever his personal preferences, he had what could basically be called an ancap view of property and contracts. I’ve compiled a number of his quotes on the subject here:
In my opinion, it’s a massive stretch to call Spooner a “libertarian socialist”. His ‘natural rights’ and non-proviso Lockean property rights put his philosophy very close to Rothbard’s. Spooner was not against “usury,” either.
In Poverty, Spooner wrote "This quasi partnership between the capitalist and laborer, by which the latter is made sure of his subsistence while laboring, and by which the capitalist is made to risk his capital on the final success of the enterprise, without any claim upon the debtor in case of failure, is the true relation between capital and labor." Does this sound like a statement a socialist would make?
The FAQ authors seem desperate to make him one of their own, no matter how dubious the reasoning–they hate that they can’t claim a radical abolitionist, would be my guess.
“Spooner was extremely critical of state capitalism and its effects on the working class, and wanted to see more people able to become self-employed.”
in other words he thought that without state support there will be less capitalism. please note that by capitalism i mean private ownership of means of production and people working for wages for people owning the capital.
other than that spooner was a hardcore supporter of markets as ancaps see it.
he was pro-private property, pro market exchange, pro-private production of defense and arbitration. above all he believed and understoods the benefits of market exchange. orthodox anarchists oppose private relations(especially economic) between individuals