#not that those two things are mutually exclusive of course

[reorientation]

Nude/sexting lesbian strikes again!

For starters: my friend wants to get me into anal and a threesome with another guy because "using me with another man will be way more fun" , but I wanted to know what you think of it. I feel the need for your approval before doing anything else.

And lastly, my friend says u need to publicly thank you for convincing me into taking some dick. So thank you so much, if you allow me, I'll send you a nude to show my appreciation ;).

(Previously)

Of course I approve, sugar - it's a natural next step for you. A few months ago, you hadn't been used by a man at all, and the best you could do was send nudes; with my encouragement, you worked your way up to serving one man with your body; it only makes sense for you to learn how to entertain two at a time. And I'll be proud of you for the personal growth. 🖤

And yes, I certainly will accept another little offering from you - I'm always pleased to get a token of gratitude that doubles as a trophy.

Tell your man I said to show you a good time - it's a very special occasion, when a "dyke" takes two cocks for the first time. There'll be plenty of opportunities for him to just use you like a fleshlight, but this time, he should leave you drooling at the memory.

[grunckle]

I think something that gets misinterpreted a lot in the Rain World community is what purposed organisms actually are. Theres a common interpretation that they were like “beasts of burden” and looked like or were the creatures we still see today. But this isn’t what Moon tells us, here’s what she says.

“Most purposed organisms were considerably smaller than me, and most barely looked like organisms at all. More like tubes in metal boxes, where something went in one end and something else came out the other…When I came into this world there was very little primal fauna left. So it's highly likely that you are the descendant of a purposed organism yourself!”

This dialogue paints the picture that most purposed organisms were closer to machines, or machine cogs, with biological parts than actual animals.

Of course most people are aware that creatures like leviathans and miros birds have mechanical aspects, but I think that most if not all creatures have some sort of blending of the biological and mechanical; it’s more of a spectrum than a dichotomy with cyborgs in between.

This idea is also based on some of the old Rain World concept art by Joar.

Here, it looks like melting globs of flesh, (or fleshy rubber and plastic) mutate over a metal “skeleton”. I think this can show the possible intention for purposed organisms and evolution in this world. Organic and mechanical transition seamlessly, and organic parts grow rapidly. I believe most purposed organisms started off on the more mechanical side of things, but evolved their organic “cover” in this way. Maybe everything we see, including us, have some mechanical components that are hidden by the flesh exterior.

This sort of, life overabundance and rapid growth is shown through Five Pebbles’s rot in game. His rot globs are able to grow legs and become mobile in an incredibly short amount of time, and even proto rot grows from innocuous metal walls.

My friend over at Darthzz-Ploo-World really coined this interpretation (and many others) in my opinion and did a wonderful art piece showcasing it.

My friend Re also did some great art showcasing a theory on orange lizards evolving from those computer boxes in Sky Islands and the exterior.

I also did some doodles on my own theories in the same vein. This time on the origin or Shoreline leviathans from Moon’s collapsed iterator components.

But yeah, I think Downpour leaned more into the “beast of burden” interpretation, but I also don’t think the two are mutually exclusive. Not everything needs to be a tube-box descendant I suppose.

[dilatorywriting]

59 Leona, it'd take a lot for him to admit but he would say it eventually. (Also I know you'd recognize me but I'm shy, so anon it is)

Gender Neutral Reader x Leona Kingscholar Word Count: 1.5k

Prompt 59: "People like me aren’t supposed to have someone like you, I think fate was being harsh on you."

[EVENT MASTERLIST]

You are nice, and you are stupid. And those things aren’t mutually exclusive.

Sometimes you’re nice because you’re stupid, and sometimes you do stupid things because you’re too nice for your own stupid, stupid good. And it drives Leona half insane.

Which it shouldn’t, because nice, stupid people like you are just as annoying as his brother. Goody-two-shoes with buttoned vests and sparkly, star-shaped stickers on their term papers.

“Did you remember your homework?”

Leona flicked his tail in your face and you scrunched your nose over your notebook.

“Well?”

“Of course I remembered,” he scoffed, lazing back against the roots of one of his favorite trees. This spot used to be so much quieter, so much more peaceful, before you decided to trail after him like a duck quacking for its mother.

“Did you do the homework?” you clarified, and Leona rolled his eyes.

You sighed and starting ruffling around in your bookbag. “I brought a spare copy of the worksheet. You’re going to drive Ruggie insane, y’know. If he winds up stuck with you for another year because you failed for not turning in assignments.”

“Yeah. Sure. Another three-hundred-and-sixty-five days to rifle through my wallet. Worst news of his life.”

You huffed good naturedly and handed him the sheet of crisp, white copy paper and a pen. “Get to work, Kingscholar.”

“Oh?” he drawled, closing his eyes and settling back, loose limbed and all long, lean leisure, against the tree trunk. Clearly ready for an afternoon snooze. “Make me.”

You sighed again and reached over to flick your own well-used pen against his ear. It twitched under your fingers—soft, and tufted. The finest of the pale, tan fur brushing up against your fingertips. “Fine. Be that way. See if I bring you lunch tomorrow.”

“You will,” he scoffed.

“Yeah,” you sighed, sounding resigned and foolishly fond. “I probably will.”

See? Stupid. So easy to manipulate. So willing to let yourself be squashed under his clawed thumb. It was a wonder you’d managed to survive in this school at all. Nevertheless by clinging onto the coattails of someone like him. He’d never made anyone’s existence easier a day in his life, and he certainly wasn’t going to start now, just because you were too soft-hearted and slow to see a looming predator for what it was.

“Just give me that stupid fucking paper,” he snapped, sitting upright and swatting away your poking pen with a sneer. You laughed into your palms like a secret—bright, and merry, and dumb as a fucking rock.

“Whatever you say, Leona.”

.

.

You’d handled his Overblot with a strange sort of aplomb that at first Leona had attributed to perhaps a lingering, hidden confidence that he’d just never bothered to unearth. You were just some herbivore, and even the littlest rabbits could bite back when you put them in a corner. But then he’d come to the decision that that easy conviction was just another symptom of your rampant stupidity.

“I know you guys don’t want to hurt me, or any of us. Not really,” you shrugged around a wad of cotton—the blood dripping from your nose slowly drying up to a tacky, sticky dribble. Leona gaped at you outright.

That was your grand explanation. For why you’d been so eager to charge forward when he’d collapsed in a pool of inky nightmares and self-loathing. And the very same reason apparently thatyou’d felt so comfortable rushing forward to treat Azul Ashengrotto’s blubbering, hysterical, breakdown with the same urgency.

“That octo-prick would have ripped you in half,” he sneered, fingers twitching a nervous rhythm against his palms as he watched the nurse wrap another layer or bandages around your head.

You shrugged. “Not on purpose.”

You were going to give him an aneurism.

“You’re going to get yourself killed,” he snarled, ignoring the horrible, twisty thing curling like bile through his chest. “And I’m not going to bother paying for some self-sacrificing idiot’s funeral.”

Another shrug.

“That’s alright,” you hummed, a soft sort of crooked smile on your mouth. “Would’ve been a waste of money anyways.”

Leona didn’t talk to you for a week after that. Surely because your stupidity had reached such a fever pitch that it was no doubt contagious, and he needed to protect his far superior and more valuable brain. Not because the image of you smiling and nodding along to his declarations that he wouldn’t put the effort into mourning your death had soured something so deep in his gut that he wasn’t sure he’d ever be able to scrape it out.

.

.

When he received a letter from home asking him to return for some shitty coronation nonsense for his equally shitty brother, Leona had debated just skipping it outright. Who was going to stop him? You?

Well. Yes, apparently.

“It sounds important,” you hummed, peering over his shoulder at the neat, formal scrawl of the summons. “You should go.”

He snorted. “I don’t want to be there, they don’t want me to be there. What’s the point.”

You frowned, brow crinkling in the middle.

“Well, that’s not true,” you said, perplexed. “They wouldn’t write to you if that was the case.”

Leona snorted, eyes darting away to glare bitterly off into the corner. “Not like they have a choice.”

“Well then you don’t have a choice either,” you argued, firm. “I’ll go with you. See? It says you can have a plus one. You can camp out in your fancy, princey, bedroom. And I can siphon you snacks from the fancy, princey hors d'oeuvres tables. That way we both win. You get to be a reclusive asshole and rub the fact that that you still went in everyone’s faces, and I can get access to some tasty, royal food that I’ll probably never be able to afford again for the rest of my life.”

“Should’ve known you’d be like Ruggie—only using me for the free food,” he sighed, melodramatic and obviously put on.

“Well, also because I thought you could use the emotional support,” you added, a touch too soft and far too genuine. “But I didn’t think you wanted to hear that bit.”

“You’re right,” he scoffed, turning onto his side to hide the strange, miserable heat pricking at his skin. “Don’t ever say corny shit like that again.”

“Aye, aye, captain,” you grinned, flicking at his ear, and Leona added another mental tab to his never-ending list of reasons that you were really far too brainless to keep functioning at all.

.

.

You were nice, and you were stupid. And Seven, he wanted to be anywhere but here.

“My brother hasn’t ever brought someone to one of these events before,” Falena had said, to your face. Idiot to idiot communication.  

“I didn’t give him much of an option,” you’d chirped, perfectly pleasant. “I don’t think he wants me anywhere near here, to be fair. Or around him in general. But I’m like a cockroach. Can’t get rid of me.”

And Falena had laughed. Because he was terrible. And said, “I’m sure he must care about you very much, little cockroach.”

And then because you were more terrible, you laughed back and said very assuredly, “Oh, not at all.”

Which was—was—

“Do you really think that?” he snapped, once the two of you were alone. And you blinked back at him with wide, owlish eyes.

“Think what?”

Think at all,he wanted to sneer, but just glared silently and bitterly into the middle distance—fighting the nonsensical, irritated swishing of his tail.

But you just kept staring at him. Like he was the moron here. Which was unacceptable.

“Look,” he frowned, sharp and miserable. “I get it. People like me aren’t supposed to have someone like you. Whatever gods exist out there were playing a shitty fucking joke on you when they dropped you in my lap. But you’re stuck with me. So stop—” he bit out, fighting that awful, twisty thing in his gut that never seemed to fully go away. “Stop talking like I can’t stand you.”

“…oh,” you mumbled, whisper quiet—that wide, startled gaze flicking away in embarrassment. “Oh.”

“Oh,” he echoed, sharp, and you snorted a laugh that seemed to surprise even you.

“You’re stuck with me too then, y’know,” you said after a long moment. “Even when I make you grumpy.”

“You don’t make me grumpy. I am grumpy. You make me—” he cut off quick, eyes darting away petulantly and an absolutely unfair heat rising along his cheekbones.  

“Itchy,” you piped in, and he gaped at you in shock.

“What?”

“You know,” you shrugged, awkward, and reached up to wiggle your fingers. “Cockroach. Many legs. Squirming. Itchy.”

“Never say any of those words again.”

You laughed into your palm—inelegant and a touch too loud. Leona felt his lips quirk.

“Thank you,” you said after a moment, once your giggles were a bit more under control. And leaned forward quick as a whip to press a nervous peck against his cheek. “For being kind to me.”

Kind.

Leona reached up to press a hand against the too-warm skin with a terrible, unfamiliar sensation in his head not unlike the fuzzy, white drone of TV static. And a horrible thought managed to filter its way through the floating, buzzing sensation curling through the whole of him.

Oh, fuck. It is contagious.

.

.

[happiest-hotch]

Mother's Day

Summary: Jack has a very important, surprise gift to give you on a special holiday for your inaugural celebrations together

Paring: Aaron Hotchner x Fem!Reader (Fluff)

WC: 1.4k

Whenever he can, Aaron leaves work early to get Jack. Thankfully, with Strauss's return, he's not still stuck doing two jobs, so he finishes his work in time to get Jack from school. You also love when he has days like that because it means he'll cook something delicious and homemade, maybe even dessert if Jack has anything to say about it.

Jack gets into the car like any other day, but what he says isn't the typical comment about his day or request for an afternoon activity. "Did you know it's Mother's Day this weekend?" Jack asks.

Aaron's heart clenches in his chest. Mother's Days, birthdays, Christmases, and the anniversary of Haley's death are all especially hard days for Jack, and Aaron tries his best to support his son. "Do you want to talk about mom?" He asks softly as he drives. Since Jack doesn't remember a lot of it, Aaron fills in the blanks and answers the questions.

"No, I might want to talk to her tonight, but I want to get a present," Jack explains.

Aaron frowns a little but accepts it. "We can do that. What do you want to get her?"

Jack's thinking face looks like his dad's, something you were the first to point out to Aaron. "I don't know." He admits. "You always get roses for Y/n so maybe I can get her flowers?"

That really throws Aaron, and it rapidly occurs to him that he and Jack aren't talking about the same person. "You want to get a present for Y/n?" He clarifies.

Jack shifts uncomfortably in his car seat, clearly nervous at his father's reaction. "I'm sorry. Is that wrong?"

Aaron can't shake his head fast enough. "No. No, of course not, buddy." He assures his son, reaching back with one hand to touch the boy's foot for extra reassurance. "I think she'd really like that. What made you think you want to get something for her?" He tries to ask it in a non-judgemental, casual tone.

"Well, in class, we were all talking about what we love about our moms, and a lot of the things that my friends were talking about are things that Y/n does for me." He explains, and Aaron feels his heart clench in the best way that time while he bites down a wide smile. "Mom is still my mom, and I'm not forgetting how she used to do those things for me, but Y/n is there for me too."

Aaron notices what he's emphasizing, and he's immensely proud of Jack for being able to express those feelings, understanding that appreciating his mom and recognizing your role in his life aren't mutually exclusive.

Then he's thinking about you as he absorbs the confession. And how lucky he is to have you. You have been a constant source of support and love, a beacon of hope and stability in the wake of their family tragedy, never anything but good to them. He feels so much joy and a tiny bit of sadness. He knows Haley would have loved you and appreciated how much you care for Jack, but he wishes she was there to see it.

He's choked up as he goes to speak. "Jack, that's very sweet of you, and I think, no, I know, Y/n feels the same way about you. She thinks you're the most amazing kid ever."

Jack smiles softly. "She does? Really?"

Aaron can't nod fast enough. "Yes, she always tells me how great she thinks you are."

"So we can get her a gift for her?" Jack confirms, looking hopeful.

"Absolutely." Aaron agrees, taking a right turn to the mall rather than a left to their home. "Whatever you want."

~

It's been such a long week of work and Saturday mornings are Jack's soccer games, so as soon as your Saturday movie night is over, you're fast asleep next to Aaron.

Like usual, he stirs beside you first on Sunday morning, but when you go to get up with him, he softly whispers for you to go back to sleep and that's very easy to do.

When you next wake up, the sun is creeping through the blinds at a different angle, signaling that you slept in for longer than you usually would.

There's a soft knock at the bedroom door before you can properly wake up and get out of bed, and you softly call out for who you expect to be Jack to come in.

You're right in your guess that it's Jack, who quickly jumps up onto the bed with you, followed by his father who has a breakfast tray with a big vase of flowers on it accompanying a delicious-looking plate of French toast.

"Wow, you've both been busy this morning." You mumble sleepily as you sit up to hug Jack who's jumping into your arms.

"Happy Mother's Day!" He cheers joyfully, and you're taken off guard by the greeting, completely shocked.

Your eyes dart to Aaron's to make sure you heard Jack correctly, and his wide smile confirms you have. He's looking between you both with so much love and tenderness, his heart so full it feels like it's bursting.

Your eyes fill with tears as you realize the enormity of what he's just said. "Thank you, Jack." You squeeze him even tighter in a hug, not wanting him to slip away from this perfect moment.

He pulls back and smiles at you before turning back to his dad. "Can we give it to her?" He asks.

"Sure, bud." Aaron agrees, setting the tray down over the top of your legs. He sits near the foot of the bed while Jack snuggles into your side.

Jack reaches forward to pick up the little box next to the breakfast. "Here." He hands it to you. "Happy Mother's Day. Thank you for caring so much about me."

You kiss his forehead, holding him tighter to his side as you gladly accept his thoughtful and unexpected gift. "You're very welcome. I love you, Jackers."

Whatever he has for you has to be jewelry from the small, flat shape of the box and the designer jewelry stamp. You open it up, and your heart melts more, if it were possible. What's inside is a gorgeous gold bracelet with a flat, circular charm, engraved with the letter J.

Jack touches it as your finger does. "It's a J for Jack."

You nod so you don't start crying too much. You're so overwhelmed by gratitude and happiness that you can't help but let one tear slip out.

"Thank you." You finally get the words out. "It's perfect and I love it so much. I'm going to wear it every day, so you're always with me."

Jack's grinning a proud grin, clearly proud of himself for picking it out. Aaron had told him how much you would love it, but seeing it confirms it for him. "I think it'll look beautiful on you." He tells you adorably.

You chuckle a little. "You're a sweet talker just like your dad, you know?"

Aaron laughs next to you, but Jack's confused at what your compliment means, and his attention is drawn elsewhere. "Daddy and I made French toast for me as well. Oh, and I got you flowers."

It's a gorgeous bunch of flowers, beautiful colors, and lovely smells. "Thank you so much. Both of you." You repeat to them, making sure they're feeling the reciprocated love you're feeling.

"You're welcome," Jack says politely.

Aaron leans over to kiss your forehead. "I love you." He whispers.

You whisper it back before looking back at your breakfast plate. "There's a lot of French toast here, so I might need some help eating it." You say suspiciously, looking between Jack and Aaron.

Jack's eyes light up like he's been waiting for you to offer him some of it, and you can't blame him, it looks and smells like restaurant quality and you know breakfast foods are Aaron's strong suit cooking-wise.

"I am kind of hungry." Jack agrees, smirking at you softly.

"Eat up then, bud." You say, offering him the first spoonful. "We've got lots of fun stuff to do today."

[kaleldobrev]

What Are We?

Pairing: Dean Winchester x Fem!Reader

Summary: Dean and you do a lot of couple things together but yet…you’re not a couple, and you often wonder why.

Original Prompt: Requested by anonymous | Hey! How are ya? I don’t know if you write for chubby reader but if you’re comfortable with that then could you write something about dean and reader being in a situationship and the reader thinks he doesn’t wanna date her cause of how she looks and he confesses that he actually likes her? You can change it however you want. Thank you so much!

Word Count: 2.1k

Warnings: Cursing (2x), Angst, Fluff, Talks of body "issues"

Authors Note: Thanks for the request anon friend! Of course I’ll write it. I don’t discriminate and neither would Dean 👌🏻 | As a girlie who has a slight muffin top myself, I loved this prompt <3 | If you liked this, don’t forget to like & reblog. I really appreciate it! Feedback is always welcome ♡

Situationship (noun): a romantic or sexual relationship that is not considered to be formal or established.

This was the type of relationship that you've had with Dean for the past several months. At first, it was something that you were okay with because you thought that maybe it would eventually turn into something more. As you felt that if he liked you enough to sleep with you, make out with you, and basically do everything a "normal" couple does, then why wouldn't he eventually want to make things official with you down the road? But it's been months, and there's been remotely no talks about making things exclusive, and you were really starting to wonder why.

Exclusivity was a word that you wouldn't use to describe Dean, but it was something that you wanted with him, wanted with him because he was the one person that you could genuinely see yourself being with. But at this point, based on the current situation that the two of you were in, you were afraid that he didn't actually want to be with you, that he was just using you until he had found someone better...found someone that was his usual toothpick thin type that he tended to go for, which wasn't your body type.

When it came to your body type, it was something that you had a love/hate relationship with. You weren't the thinnest girl in the world, but you still liked the way you looked, as you believed the muffin top you had was just something more to love. And at this point in your situationship, you didn't think Dean minded either, as he would always trail kisses along your stomach, telling you how beautiful you were, and how perfect you were. Complimenting how much he loved your thick thighs as he gripped them. But at the same time, that talk seemed to never leave the comforts of the Bunker; and if it did, it stayed strictly around your mutual friends. The hand holding and kisses would cease as soon as the two of you would leave the Bunker, and you couldn't help but think that he was embarrassed to be seen with you, be seen as someone that he was romantic with.

That's why you were confused, confused about what was actually going on between the two of you. He would constantly tell you how beautiful you were and hold your hand, and do those types of things in front of Sam, Jack, Cas, Jodi, Donna, but would never do these things in public. You were good enough to sleep with, but yet you weren't good enough to be considered his girlfriend?

You walked down the hall, a few books in hand as you made your way to the War Room. But you were stopped when you heard Dean call your name from his bedroom as you walked past. You turned around quickly, and went back to stand in his doorway. “What’s up Dean?” You asked.

“You didn’t say hi to me when you walked past,” he stated, flipping to the next page in his book.

To be honest, you did see him, and normally, you would have said hi to him, maybe chatted for a little bit until you eventually made your way into the War Room. But today, because of what was on your mind, you didn't really want to speak to him until you were sure about how you were going to handle this situationship between the two of you. “Oh, sorry,” you apologized.

“You okay Sweetheart? You seem distracted today,” he stated closing his book.

“I’m always like this,” you said. He got up from his bed and started making his way toward you.

“No, you’re not actually. Your voice is different, and your body language tells me other wise,” he said. “So, what’s up?”

“Very Sherlock of you,” you said. “I’m fine honestly.”

He looked at you with slight disbelief. “Y/N, we've been friends long enough for me to tell when you're lying." There it was. Friends. He used the word friends. You weren't sure if you should be relieved or disappointed.

“Yeah…friends,” you repeated the word.

“Are we not…friends?” He seemed hurt by your usage of the word, which caused you even more confusion.

“Honestly, I don’t know what we are,” you admitted, and you didn't expect those words of yours to come out like that.

He cocked a brow. “What do you mean? Did I do something?” As long as Dean could recall, he hadn't done anything to have hurt you as of late. He tried to recollect everything that he had done or said to you over the last couple of days, and he was honestly coming up with nothing; but there must of be something, as you would have never said something like that to him if there wasn't at least something wrong.

“No, no, you did nothing wrong I’m just…” you sighed. “I’m confused that’s all.”

“What are you confused about?” He asked.

“Do you mind if I came in and we closed the door?” You asked, and he nodded. He felt himself get nervous just as much as you were starting to feel the same. Holding your books in your hand you walked inside and Dean shut the door behind you. Setting your books on his table the two of you sat on the edge of his bed. You had no idea where to start, as you thought you'd have more time to figure out this conversation in your head. “I’m confused about what we are.”

“What do you mean?” He seemed genuinely concerned.

"What this is between us. You say that we're friends, but we have sex, make out, more often than not sleep in the same bed together, do everything normal couples do but yet...you say that we're friends."

"If you don't want us doing any of that anymore that's...fine," he said, but Dean wasn't remotely fine with stopping what was going on between the two of you, because he loved being able to just crawl into your bed at night and just kiss you and hold you in his arms.

You sighed in frustration, as he seemed to completely ignore the point you were trying to make. "That's not what I'm saying Dean. What I'm saying is, well, I'm more like asking really." You took a deep breath, and you felt your heart start to race, slightly afraid to ask what you were about to ask. "If I'm good enough to sleep with and do couple things with, why am I not good enough to be your girlfriend?"

Dean honestly didn't know what to say to you. Well, he did, but he knew that it was a poor excuse of an answer, an answer that he knew that you weren't going to believe even though it was true. All he wanted was to be with you, exclusively be with you (which he essentially already was). But he was afraid, afraid that the second the two of you mutually agreed to be together and only together, that you'd eventually realize pretty quickly how disappointing of a person that he was, that the novelty of him would somehow wear off. "It's cause I'm not thin right?" You asked.

Your question caught him off guard, honestly annoyed that you would say that was the reason he didn't want to be exclusive with you. He honestly didn't understand why you had thought that was the reason, as he thought that he had made it pretty clear how beautiful he thinks you are inside and out. But, apparently he hasn't been doing a good of job as he thought he had been. "What? Y/N, that's not the reason," he stated, his voice slightly annoyed.

"Then what is the reason Dean? I mean, that's honestly the only reason I can think of. Well, that or...you're embarrassed by me," you said, your voice getting lower.

“I’m not embarrassed by you Y/N, you know that,” he said.

"If you're not embarrassed by me, then why won't you hold my hand in public?" You asked. "Because, it's just weird to me you know? I mean, you have no issue telling me how beautiful I am in front of Donna, Sam, Jack. You have no problem kissing me in front of Claire or Cas. But the second we aren't around any of those people, the second we are outside of the Bunker, you want nothing to do with that with me anymore." Your voice was about to break, as all you wanted to do was just not have this conversation anymore; you just wanted to crawl into bed under the covers.

Dean knew you had a point, and he could fully admit to everything that you had just said. He did only hold your hand, or kiss you, or tell you how beautiful you were when they were in the presence of friends or family, but it was because he could be vulnerable in front of them; he wasn't afraid to be vulnerable in front of them, but he was afraid to be vulnerable in front of people he didn't know, afraid that they were somehow going to use the love he had for you against him, and it was something he didn't want to risk. "I'm sorry," he began finally, and you raised a brow at his response. "I'm not embarrassed by you Y/N, not at all. And the reason I'm not with you, with you isn't because I don't think you're skinny enough," he hated saying those words. "Honestly, it fucking breaks my heart that you think that's the reason because I think I do a pretty good job at telling you how beautiful you are," he said, taking your hand. "And it's not just bedroom talk. I honestly think you're so fucking beautiful."

"Even with my muffin top?" You asked, slight amusement in your voice, but you were still serious in your question.

"It's just more of you for me to love," he said.

"When you mean love..." you trailed off. "See, now I'm more confused."

He sighed. "I know what I'm about to say is something that you're not going to believe, but it's the truth," he took a deep breath before he continued. "Not only do I think you're too good for me, but I'm afraid that someone will use what we have together against me somehow, against us somehow. And...I can't...I can't risk that." I love you too much, he wanted to say.

"So, you're telling me the reason you don't hold my hand in public is because you're afraid some demon or something will see that and then use it against us?" You asked, clarifying. "Dean." You wanted to not believe him, but you did, and you hated that this was the reason. You hated that because he was so afraid of losing you, losing what the two of you have, that he didn't want to even hold your hand outside of the Bunker walls.

"I know you don't believe me Sweetheart," he said, his voice sounding slightly sad.

"I do Dean I just..." you sighed. "You know I can take care of myself right? How many times have you seen me take on two, three, four creatures at time and only had a single scratch?" You took his other hand. "Dean, I genuinely want to be with you if you want to be with me. I know you're afraid that you're going to lose me but, newsflash, I'm afraid of losing you too. That's...that's just what life is Dean. It's just more of a reason to go for it, because...we might not always be here."

Dean knew you were right, you were always right. And to your point, it was something that he hated, but he couldn't help but find himself agreeing with. He would rather have a little bit of time with you than nothing at all, because at least he would have some memories of the good times you had together, instead of the constant, "What if's?"

"Dean, I love you," you said. "You're the only person I want to be with okay?" You leaned in, and so did he, mere inches away from each other's lips.

"Love you too Sweetheart," he replied back. He leaned in fully now, meeting his lips to yours.

"Does this mean we're together? Like you'll actually hold my hand in public or is that still off the table?" You whispered.

Dean grinned. "I'll grab your ass in public if you want me to," he winked, and you felt yourself slightly blush at his comment.

The two of you knew that the newfound relationship wasn't going to be easy, but it was something that the two of you were willing to fight for.

Tag List: @roseblue373 @beansproutmafia @queenie32 @deanwanddamons @missy420-0 @jackles010378 @mrsjenniferwinchester @syrma-sensei @k-slla @justletmereadfanfic @deans-daydream If you'd like to be added to a tag list, let me know!

[sl-ut]

sweet cliches

THE FRIENDZONE

pairing: college!abby anderson x fem!reader

description: y/n thinks that abby may have trapped her in the friendzone, and begins to fear that it is far too late to escape.

warnings: VERY QUICKLY AND NOT VERY WELL EDITED, light smut, anxiety, fear of unrequited feelings, reader is a needy hoe, abby is a dommy mommy, swearing

words: 2.1K

date posted: 03/08/23

more college!abby

In general, Y/n was very secure within herself. Of course, she had experienced her fair share of insecurities and would certainly like to change a few things about herself, but wasn’t that the case with all girls in their early-to-mid twenties? She didn’t think herself to be anything special; not the smartest, funniest, or prettiest girl around, but she also didn’t think that any of those things might have made her blind to the fact that her own feelings could have potentially been unrequited. Until she met Abby. 

Abby had been on her radar for around a year before they had even formally met. Y/n was fortunate enough to have had an in with a few of the girls on the cheer team, making the cut with the kind of ease that freshman were scarcely offered. For anyone around campus, it was impossible to not not know Abby’s name and face at the very least–as the school’s star athlete, she was plastered on posters, billboards, and the school’s Instagram for everyone to see, though it was even more impossible for those who were involved in the athletics department to ignore her six-foot tall frame as she barrelled down the lacrosse field, expertly weaving through the opposing team’s defence and hurling the ball into the net with frightening strength. 

It had only taken half a practice for Y/n to be completely enamoured with the upperclassman. She spent the following weeks discreetly finding out little things about her; she was from Salt Lake City, she was in her junior year of Biology with a minor in Classic Lit, and kept to herself more than Y/n would have expected from someone so popular–this, she had determined from the fact that she had only been able to find out very general details about her even from Mel and Nora, who both ran in the same friend group as Abby. 

Nora had quickly taken a liking to Y/n, referring to her almost exclusively as my freshie around their teammates. Y/n honestly did like Nora, and had become somewhat friends with her before she even laid eyes on Abby, but she couldn’t help but wish that she would introduce the two without having to ask her. Hell, she didn’t even know for sure if Abby even liked girls, especially because the only previous relationship she had heard about was with a man. She also didn’t want to let on to Nora that she was interested in her friend in fear of making her believe that she was using her in any way. So, after a long internal debate, she decided that she was going to stick it out until fate came into play. 

The moment finally came early on during Y/n’s sophomore year. A few of Nora’s friends were hosting a party to celebrate the start of the lacrosse season, and of course she would extend the invitation to her own teammates. Y/n hadn’t even expected to see Abby that night, considering that she rarely made appearances at any big parties that Y/n had been to, but the moment that Nora had waved her over to join them on the couch, she couldn’t help but pray that she wouldn’t somehow embarrass herself in front of the intimidating blonde. 

As it would turn out, Abby’s head had begun to spin the moment that Nora had introduced them, her stormy blue eyes following the outline of her back as their mutual friend dragged her away and into the crowd of the make-shift dance floor. The day that she walked into the coffee shop and noticed who was standing in front of her, her heart almost beat out of her chest. She had stood there for a few moments, figuring out how exactly she would approach her without coming off as a creep–though Y/n probably would have folded no matter how she did it. Then, after the brief, but very enlightening conversation, Abby couldn’t wait any longer and asked Nora for her number.

Fast forward two weeks, there was hardly a moment where they weren’t either hanging out, texting, or Facetiming one another. Y/n was initially feeling very certain that Abby was at the very least wanting to hook up with her; when they were together, she was constantly making up excuses to have an arm around her shoulders or a hand on her leg, and when they were apart, she was quick to text back and was always interested in what Y/n had to say. All of the signs were there, but why wasn’t Abby making a move? In other situations, Y/n would have had no issue taking the bull by the horns, but she couldn’t help but fear that Abby might have been looking for nothing more than a friend. 

But how could she only view her as a friend when she treats her like so much more? At parties, her eyes were constantly scanning the crowd for her, pushing her way through the crowd in an instant the moment that she lays her eyes on her figure. When they were together, she treated her like she was the only person in the world that mattered, and always seemed to treat her differently than she would treat her other friends. They had to be something more by this point, but she just couldn’t figure out why she was so hesitant to make a move. 

Even now, as she was tucked into her side in the comfort of Abby’s apartment, the older girl’s arm curled around her shoulders securely as she watched the television screen intently, Y/n was entirely too self conscious of the fact that this was certainly not something that platonic friends would do. She couldn’t help but watch Abby out of the corner of her eye, catching every flicker of emotion that crossed her features. The film had been on for almost an hour and a half by this point, and it was quite possibly the most boring, uneventful movie she had ever seen. 

“Something on my face, pretty?”

Y/n’s cheeks warmed with embarrassment, obviously having been caught staring despite her every effort of discretion. She shook her head quickly, turning her gaze back to the film on the screen to avoid the sky blue hues of Abby’s eyes. The bulge of her bicep clenched behind her head, nudging her to face her once again. 

“No,” she muttered, “Just thinkin’.”

“Thinking about…” Abby prompted, raising her brows with a sly smirk appearing on her perfectly pink lips. 

“Things,” Y/n shrugged, “Papers, practice,” she hesitated before adding, “You.”

“Me?”

She shrugged again, “We’re hanging out right now, of course I’m thinking about you.”

Abby was silent for a moment, “Wanna know what I’m thinking about?”

“Eating raw meat and lifting ridiculously heavy objects?” Y/n chucking, trying to diffuse the growing tension.

“Close, but not quite.” Abby snorted, “I’m thinking about how awful this movie is.”

“Really? You’re the one who put it on.”

“Yeah, well I wasn’t expecting to actually watch it.”

A lump lodged itself into Y/n’s throat at that, leaving her entirely unsure of how to respond. 

“I was thinking about you, too, but not just because we’re hanging out. I was thinking about how pretty you look, how good you smell, how much I wanna kiss you right now.” 

The words flew out of her before she even had a chance to process them. 

“Then why don’t you?”

A moment of silence passed, and Y/n was beginning to wonder if she had crossed a boundary. Perhaps there was a reason as to why she hadn’t made a move yet, something of good reason that prevented her from doing so. Then the moment was over, and the distance between their lips had closed.

Abby’s lips were softer than she had imagined, though she should have suspected as much considering that the woman was virtually inseparable from her chapstick, and they tasted faintly of some kind of melon and perhaps a touch of mint. Her movements were gentle, tentative and curious as she explored the opposing side of the boundary that she had finally crossed. Y/n finally responded, lips pursing against hers and moulding to her every movement. She was pliant to her desires, following Abby’s lead as she curved the large expanse of her palm around the base of her skull.

It was slow, but a silent understanding passed between the two women throughout the interaction. A small whine vibrated from Y/n’s throat, her body melting against Abby’s chest as she tugged her closer and into her lap, fingers sliding down to curl around her clothed thighs. Y/n’s chest heaved, leaning impossibly closer as she tucked one hand into the loose blonde strands at the nape of Abby’s neck, the other sliding down her front to feel the rigid expanse of her abs beneath the cotton of her t-shirt. 

“Mmm,” Abby mumbled against her lips, “Can’t believe I waited this long.”

Y/n ignored her, pressing her lips tighter against hers in desperation. She was almost embarrassed at how needy she had become so easily, completely malleable to Abby’s every will and growing even more desperate as Abby continued to babble on, instead turning her attention to kiss, bite, and suck at the pale skin of her muscular neck. 

“Didn’t wanna make you think I just wanted a hookup,” Abby muttered out, shuddering as Y/n’s teeth raked against her throat. “Hey, hey, you listening?” she pulled her back to look into her eyes, almost moaning at the sight of her hooded eyes, lips swollen and glistening with spit, “Jesus, you look so beautiful right now.”

Y/n whimpered, “Abs, please.”

“Listen,” Abby shook her head, cupping her cheek affectionately, “I like you. A lot. I didn’t wanna rush things, so don’t take this as a quick fling.”

Y/n nodded, pushing closer into Abby’s palm, “I won’t. Thought you were gonna friendzone me.”

“Me? Friendzone you?” Abby laughed, “Baby, how stupid do you think I am?”

Baby. 

Y/n shifted in her lap, “Abby, please. I don’t–I’m not trying to–I need–”

“Tell me what you need, baby.”

She could burst into tears at any moment, “You.”

The next ten minutes passed in a blur of movement and a flurry of discarded clothing, Y/n finding herself pressed into Abby’s sheets in nothing but her baby pink thong, the hulking figure of the lacrosse captain crouched over her having stripped down to her own boyshorts. 

“Who knew you would be such a needy little thing, huh?” Abby smirked down at her, fingers pinching at the hardened nipples of the girl that she’d been so patient to have. She chuckled as Y/n began to babble almost incoherently, “You need somethin’? Why don’t you just ask?”

“I need you, Abs,” she whined, pulling at her with all of the strength that she could muster to feel her lips against her once again. 

“Ah, ah,” the blonde tutted, “Gotta be more specific, pretty girl. What do you need?”

Y/n writhed beneath her, “Please touch me, please.”

“Well,” she grinned, “Since you asked so nicely.”

Abby kissed her lips quickly, chuckling as she chased after her with a whine of annoyance. The blonde pressed a trail of kisses down her body, taking special care to show some love to her breasts before moving even further south. 

“This what you need, baby?” Abby asked, hot breath fanning over her covered mound. “You want me to kiss your pretty little pussy?”

Y/n whined again and nodded anxiously as she wiggled her hips closer to her face. 

Abby leaned forward, leaving a long, soft kiss on her covered clit, basking in the mewling that she received in response, hooking a finger into the waistband of her panties and turning her gaze back up to the frazzled features of the girl below her before tugging them down to her ankles and diving face first into her.

“How’s this for being friendzoned?”

[literaticat]

 If your book earns out (eventually)that's good for the author and publisher, right? Why is there a big stress on preorders, first week sales and what a book does right out of the gate? Shouldn't publishers wait a year before they make a final determination to a books success? Especially with things like TikTok that can help bolster sales out of nowhere. It seems like there's so much pressure on authors for success straight away. Do publishers just want their investment back ASAP?

I don't know how you got your question to be in bold? ANYway, since there are like 30 questions in here I'm just going to take them bird by bird.

If your book earns out (eventually) that's good for the author and publisher, right? Yes, of course.

Why is there a big stress on preorders, first week sales and what a book does right out of the gate? Well, for several reasons:

-- A book with a ton of pre-orders feels "exciting" -- if you owned a bookstore, and you had ordered two copies of GREATBOOK initially to come in -- but then 30 people pre-ordered it from you -- you'd probably strongly consider ordering EXTRA copies, right? That seems like an indication that people really are interested in this book, you should have a pile of them, not just two! You should put it on display!

-- A book with a ton of pre-orders and first-week sales has a much better chance to hit a bestseller list (specifically, the NYT bestseller list). Why? Let's say your author started asking people to pre-order six months ago and those orders have been stacking up in dribs and drabs. But that book doesn't go on sale until January 15th. ALL SIX MONTHS of pre-orders are going to get rung up on release day. The NYT is based on books sold during one week's time compared to all other books sold during that one week. Obviously, a book with a ton of pre-orders will get a big boost that week!

-- Books that hit the list get more visibility, they get people hooting about them on social media, they get to be called "NYT Bestselling" which seems fancy, ALL of that can very much help sales going forward. Is it the be-all-end-all? No, of course not. But there's no doubt that it's NICE!

-- The majority of publisher-led publicity and marketing efforts are focused on before or soon after release date -- getting gatekeepers like booksellers, librarians, etc whatever interested in ordering the book into their stores and libraries, getting reviews, pitching the book to media outlets, etc -- so IF those efforts are going to help a book, you're more likely to get that boost when the book is new. After several months have gone by, a thousand newer books have come out, focus has shifted to those books.

Shouldn't publishers wait a year before they make a final determination to a books success?

I mean - I think they do? These things are not mutually exclusive. Of course they'd like to have a lot of success right out of the gate. Obviously, they'd be delighted to have a lot of success later, as well. Plenty of books grow in sales as time goes on, etc -- I don't think anyone is deeming a book a failure if the book doesn't hit it out of the park immediately. I can't speak for adult books, but on the kid's side, we don't really know what kind of longevity a book might have for probably at least a year, because there needs to be time for books to make their way onto state lists, into curriculum, and stuff like that -- for teachers to read it to classrooms, for kids to get hooked and tell friends, etc etc. Once a book is out in paperback and really getting imbedded into schools, we might see BONKERS sales that could never have been predicted from a sluggish start in bookstores a year or two earlier. Publishers are well aware of this -- books are not going out of print in the first year after release.

Especially with things like TikTok that can help bolster sales out of nowhere. It seems like there's so much pressure on authors for success straight away.

Yep, there are plenty of examples of books that have surprising late-in-life success bc of TikTok (or whatever) -- HOWEVER, the difference is, the publisher and author have little to no control over a book suddenly going viral "outta nowhere"! IT'S AMAZING AND GREAT when that happens, we can all wish for it and hope for it -- but it feels kind of out of our hands -- whereas things like pre-orders, getting blurbs, yadda yadda, are at least things that the publisher and author have a MODICUM of control over. They can't MAKE people pre-order, but they can TRY at least!

Do publishers just want their investment back ASAP?

That would be great, sure. But profit margins are slim, and many books never earn out. Publishers know that they are probably going to just break even on a lot of books, and lose money on some, and have big hits with a few. I don't think anyone is expecting every book to have massive pre-orders or huge initial sales or whatever else.

Further: Most of this "pressure" is coming from the authors themselves. Like, the call is coming from inside the house. I've NEVER heard a publisher insist that an author do some enormous pre-order campaign or hit social media relentlessly for months -- actually it's more likely that a publisher in the year of our lord 2024 will say that they don't really think a massive pre-order campaign is worth the effort. I've NEVER heard a publisher say that anything in particular rides on first week sales, or insist that a book must hit a bestseller list. Of course they are hoping for it, it would be great! But it would be foolish for them to say that it WILL or MUST happen, and if it doesn't, it doesn't diminish the author or their efforts in any way. Obviously when award-time comes, publishers AND authors are likely crossing their fingers that a book will get a big shiny medal, and they might be a little disappointed if their book doesn't get one (especially if armchair experts online were predicting that it might) -- but I've NEVER heard a publisher put pressure on an author about that kind of thing, either, if anything, the opposite.

Publishers are, in fact, much more likely to be trying to temper outsize author expectations, rather than stoking them. There might be a few outliers -- huge-name authors where everyone really does expect instant NYT success and glory, so if it doesn't happen for some reason, there's some disappointment all around - but truly? That level of expectation is quite rare, and if you happen to be in that echelon, you probably aren't asking questions like this on Tumblr, you're busy swanning around the Isle of Capri or something. And actually you probably don't feel PRESSURE to hit the list in that case anyway -- you just expect you will as that is normal for you. Bless.

Regular authors? Which is 99% of the authors reading this post? You can go ahead and calm down. We love you regardless of your pre-orders or initial sales. If you feel "enormous pressure" for "instant success" -- really take a look at where that pressure is coming from. Because it's probably not from agents or publishers, who know from long experience that almost no success is "instant" by any stretch of the imagination.

[roserunodays]

*Trigger Warnings for this post discussing self harm and suicide*

So I was talking with @mgjong about Mahiru, and we noticed a few things regarding her story that I wanted to go more in detail with and highlight! First, I wanted to talk about Mahiru’s behavior during her T1 VD:

Once Es gets to the heart of the conversation and starts reminding Mahiru about her crime, the tone notably shifts here, along with Mahiru’s reaction. Her words are trailing off, her voice is notably more subdued, and of course, she does not deny that she did "kill" someone:

And then, Mahiru changes the subject, with Es even pointing it out and wondering why she’s doing this. The topics she starts talking about are very interesting too:

Mahiru: “So first things first, you should gather up all your courage and be completely transparent about yourself. Doing so will make your partner feel at ease. And they’ll start opening up about themselves more.”

What interesting topics to talk about Mahiru! Communication and transparency? Wanting your partner to open up? Why would you bring up those kinds of things here? Right after Es mentioned your crime? Were you doing it subconsciously because you were reminded of the time when you couldn't do this? Specifically for your boyfriend in mind? I don't know, it's just very interesting how this is the very first topic about love that she brings up in her VD.

Mahiru's bf:

Speaking of her bf, do I think this guy is a saint? No, definitely not. Do I think he’s some asshole who deserved to die? No, I don’t think that either. To me, the bf is just another guy. He’s human, and he failed to communicate his boundaries with Mahiru, which contributed to their conflict.

Clearly, we don’t know much about this guy, outside of Mahiru’s perception of him, but here’s how I personally interpret this guy and the role he plays in Mahiru’s story:

1. Mahiru's bf was just someone who failed to communicate and establish his boundaries with Mahiru, with his mental health getting worse as time went on for their relationship.

2. Mahiru's bf had his own mental health and self-harm issues before he had met Mahiru, which were made worse because of their relationship.

I don't think these two options have to be mutually exclusive either. But I do think there's a bit of evidence that points to her bf having mental health issues before. In one of the magazine scans in TIHTBILWY and in Q16 of her T2 interrogation, Mahiru notes that she met her bf on the university terrace, which seems innocuous enough with how Mahiru describes it:

From user @shima1408 on YouTube:

But in ILY, Mahiru's bf has also been shown to have blood on his clothing while both of them are in the forest. It is possible that he could've gotten injured while they were walking through the forest, but more importantly, Mahiru does not have any blood on her clothing. Why is Mahiru the one not injured then, but her bf is? Did he inflict those wounds on himself? Why was he on the university terrace that fateful day he and Mahiru met? Did he fall in love with Mahiru because he thought she was the one? A fated partner who stopped him on that day and could give him another chance at a happy life?

So I do think it's a possibility that this guy had mental health problems before he had met Mahiru, which she inevitably made worse due to her love. He literally could’ve just been on the terrace chilling, but the meeting detail is still pretty odd to point out. It also stands out from all of Mahiru’s existing fluff dialogue and romanticization of the event and is even noted again in an interrogation question in T2, despite having been mentioned before.

But regardless of whether or not he did, Mahiru did not recognize how her love caused a strain on her bf's mental health. So when Mahiru became more obsessive and overbearing as time went on, as well as her bf not being able to communicate his needs and establish those boundaries with her, they both ended up being mutually toxic to each other as a result of this miscommunication.

Again, this is why I think she continued to emphasize “getting to know the other person better” and “being transparent” to Es in her T1 VD, because she had failed to do this with her bf before. Not only did she change the subject to avoid talking about her sin, but she also switched to a topic she knew deep down she failed to do with her bf, so she ends up compensating for it through her conversation with Es.

Cake:

The cake in ILY obviously represents love, but it also represents hurt and pain (as shown with how Mahiru feeds the cake/rat to her bf). Because both of them are shown to be feeding the cake to each other, it shows that in this conflict, blame cannot be placed on one or the other entirely. They had both failed in the relationship, despite genuinely loving each other.

Mahiru's bf feeds her a small piece, which she takes happily. He's careful with it, making sure the piece doesn't fall it to the ground. An important thing to note: Mahiru eats the slice willingly (Mahiru is so willing to accept that pain too, huh?), and her bf does not force her to eat it:

But Mahiru gives him a much bigger piece with no hesitation. Because she thinks that's what he wants. She thinks that more of her love will help quell his exhaustion, his pain. So she feeds him a bigger, more overwhelming slice of cake. She's careless, and the slice could fall so easily. And what does she do? Force her bf to eat the cake. She does not give him a choice to not accept it.

Suicide:

Now to the main setting in ILY: it’s a literal forest, which seems to allude to the Aokigahara Forest aka the "Suicide Forest" as it's known for in real life. We know that Mahiru's bf died from suicide based on ILY and the Undercover shot where he's missing his shoe, but we still don't know the reason why Mahiru was shown to be with him before his suicide. This leads me into thinking two possible scenarios on what possibly happened:

1: Mahiru’s bf was planning to kill himself, and Mahiru somehow found out about it and tried to join him, but had failed in doing so.

2: Both Mahiru and her bf were planning a "shinjū" (lover’s suicide) together, with Mahiru being unsuccessful with the attempt.

I am leaning more towards possibility #2 because of how it would fit in with Mahiru’s tendency to "share pain" as something she views as love. Since the lover's suicide is a concept that matches this sort of thing, I wouldn't put it past Mahiru and her bf to go along with this idea, and it was just that Mahiru was the one who survived this while her bf did not. Lover's suicides are also a thing common in literature, so it's definitely something Mahiru would find and know about given her literature and romance novel associations.

Other interesting details pointing to this in ILY: Mahiru's bow around her neck and the way it is here in ILY is very odd, like it’s supposed to be some kind of noose around her neck. It doesn’t even seem like it can normally come undone like that while they were trekking through the forest, especially since the bow itself is usually fastened and tied up neatly in the outfit she wears with it:

Mahiru is also shown to be barefoot, which doesn’t make a whole lot of sense? Why are you barefoot like your bf is, Mahiru? What is the reason for matching with your bf, who is about to commit suicide in this forest? Were you going to go along with him? Why were you even there in the first place, Mahiru?

Both of these theories could still work though! Whether it be them planning the suicide from the start, or her joining in willingly, I think both of these examples highlight how much little self-regard Mahiru has for her own life. Mahiru has established that she would do anything her lover does (including harmful behaviors such as smoking), and she would do anything for love itself at that. Mahiru would continue to endanger herself if it was for the sake of love, so it doesn't seem too far fetched that she would go along with something so extreme and life ending at that:

And what else does Mahiru say about love, the ultimate form of it? Being always together. Lover's suicides are often done with the intent of being reunited again in heaven and in the next life. A method such as this would definitely help Mahiru and her bf be together forever, right?

How interesting though, that she still does not quite understand why her bf isn't here anymore. Isn't the ultimate form of love always being together? So why then, is he not here anymore? She knows she’s responsible, that she had done something wrong.

But she was just showing her love. And yet, just why?

Why is he not here anymore?

[ilikekidsshows]

Marinette stan will always make up weird and non sensical reason to excuses her wrong doing, be it disability, doesn't know, she doesn't mean it, she's too stressed, etc. and I've been wondering for a loooooong time why they're so... Hell bend make an excuses to justify Marinette bad behaviour, like you can like a character and admit they made mistake and hurt others, not like those two are mutually exclusive anyway. But here we are...

Though someone I know on Twitter told me this kind of behavior, where they defend their favorite character while they attacking real human over it, has something to do with the fact that this behavior stemmed from the fact that that person see the character not as a character but rather the extension of themselves, that's why they will bend heaven and earth just to justify their favorite character mistake because for them the attack to their favorite is like a personal attack to them. I thought that was exaggeration but after seeing how Marinette stan doing this it become make senses.

---

I've noticed that Marinette stans always have an excuse at the ready, either for Marinette's behavior or their own. It is fitting, if we run with the idea that most of these people project a lot onto Marinette and view Marinette as an extension of themselves. They think Marinette is actually being mistrated by the other characters in the show, the writers and the fandom at large, because they're that dedicated to projecting their own underdog fantasies on her. Of course they treat anything criticizing her as a personal attack if they view Marinette that closely to their own sense of self, which explains why they think it's totally okay to act completely unreasonably over online arguments they themselves start; they think they're the underdogs rising up against the Chloés of the internet or something.

Like, the Maybe-a-Sockpuppet-Maybe-Not person went on to send private harrassment to the people on that reblog chain where we made it clear that Marinette should not, in fact, be trusted around other people's relationships based on things seen in the actual show. Because that's a completely reasonable reaction to getting clowned on on tumblr of all social media sites, and they dared to act like they were the victim when they were the one to resort to actual harrassment.

Every time I've seen harrassment in this fandom it's been done by Marinette stans "defending" their favorite character from people "bullying" her. Scratch a Marinette stan picking fights and you'll find a self-entitled victim complex every time.

[frickingnerd]

death can't keep me apart from you

pairing: aerith gainsborough x gn!reader

summary: you've got the ability to come back from the dead. but how is that ability affecting your relationship with aerith?

tags: fluff & angst, strangers to friends to lovers, death & revival, aerith worries about your future together, spoilerfree

the first time you met aerith you died in her arms.

you had crashed through the roof of the church in the slums, right onto the flower field. aerith held you in her arms, begging you to stay with her. she didn't even know you, yet she couldn't stand seeing you die. she cried bitterly, your death taking a huge toll on her.

and then the next day, you walked through the door of the church, as if nothing had happened. as if aerith hadn't seen you die, hadn't felt how your heart stopped beating and hadn't carried your lifeless body outside to bury you.

“i remember you.”

those were the words you greeted her with. aerith was too stunned to speak, but you seemed well enough to do the talking.

“i must've startled you quite a bit yesterday. i'm sorry for that” you said, as you stepped closer, kneeling down next to flowers. “i hope the flowers are still well…”

aerith was fascinated by you. at first, she feared you too. after all, you had come back from the dead, with death leaving seemingly no lasting effects on you. but as soon as the fear faded, aerith knew that she wanted to learn more about you. she wanted to understand what had happened and why. and she wanted to know the person who wielded the power to come back from the dead.

during the following months, you visited aerith quite a few times in the church. as she tended to the flowers, you told her about your life; your upbringing, your interests and, of course, your ability to come back from the dead.

to you, death was more like sleeping. whenever you had died, you awoke again as soon as the clock hit midnight and a new day began. and the day aerith and you first met hadn't been much different.

as the months passed, aerith's fascination with you faded. and in its place, romantic feelings began to blossom. with each visit to the church, the two of you fell deeper in love with one another. until one day, you shared a romantic kiss within the flower field, that marked the start of your relationship.

only a week later, you died once more. this time, aerith wasn't by your side to witness it. she only found out about your death when you told her about it during your next visit to the church.

“how can you be so calm about this?” aerith had scolded you, with tears in her eyes, as you casually mentioned your last death. “what if you hadn't come back this time? or what if–”

“i'm fine, aerith. i've always been fine. you have nothing to worry about, i promise.”

but aerith had quite a lot to worry about. for one, she worried that you wouldn't come back to her. that perhaps, you had only a few chances to come back from the dead and that you'd eventually run out on those. and then, she'd feel the same way she did that first time you died in her arms; helpless and all alone.

and then there was another worry aerith had. one that wasn't mutually exclusive to the prior one. what if you didn't value your own life? what if that ability to return from the dead was more a curse than a blessing, because it made you forget the value of your own life?

and of course, there was one last thing. if you never died, if you truly were immortal, than you'd outlive everyone around you, including aerith. while she would one day die and return to the lifestream, you'd still be here. and perhaps once aerith would be dead, you'd recognize the value of life. but by then, it would be too late for aerith to witness it…

[system-of-a-feather]

For realsie though, I really wish I could look at the people who are diagnosed with DID and get upset at people "making it look like a fun disorder to have" with some level of sympathy or empathy, but I really honestly think that rhetoric is really honestly destructive as a means for self soothing and one I really just can't stand personally.

Like this disorder sucks ass and the reason it happened sucks ass and recovering with it sucks ass, but I don't see that rhetoric as any better than stating that "anyone who went through that could NEVER recover or live happy".

And I get where that comes from, I do, but at a certain point in trauma processing, stabilization and recovery, things start to click that trauma is over and PTSD inherently is referencing an event that has already passed. Trauma sucks. Severe chronic trauma SUCKS, but that's the past and - while its a LOT more difficult than it is to just say - that past REALLY doesn't have to define the present even a quarter as much as trauma makes it feel.

Of course, I understand and get those who feel like DID is horrible and a hell disorder - I 10000% understand that and its a valid feeling / opinion / statement to make, but to claim that it is impossible to have fun, be happy, and make casual content and just genuinely make the best out of a shit situation; or to claim that anyone with DID would be totally dysfunctional and miserable and unable to do XYZ - it's just... really self depricating and a huge negative self fulfilling prophecy don't you think? Also not to mention a LOT of projecting?

Other people don't deserve you forcing your self loathing and pain onto them. You are allowed to hate your situation, you are allowed to hate your disorder, you are allowed to feel and think and experience your experiences however you want, but a line is drawn when it comes to displacing that hatred, those feelings, those thoughts, and those experiences onto others and demand that they should meet your standards of misery.

I apologize, but I'm not going to pretend like DID stresses me out when I'm really not stressed by it anymore because most of our regular parts are actually decently connected and coordinated with one another. I'm not scared of them and they aren't scared of me. I'm not fighting them and they aren't fighting me. We got trauma but we also got, ya know, a life going and the trauma gets less and less prevalent and intrusive as time goes on so, life's honestly pretty lit and I really love to see other systems heading in that direction.

I think everyone should aim to be happy and at peace with their disorder. I don't understand, empathize, or support the idea that someone had to meet a standard of misery to be "real".

(TW: suicidal ideation and physical abuse mention)

If I take medication that makes it so I don't scrub my hands raw and have panic attacks over having not eaten a salad "recently" thus meaning I am going to rot from the inside out and die, does that mean I am faking having OCD? If I take medication and improve my life so that I only pluck my hair once a month, is my Trichitillomania faked? If I stop having suicidal ideation, does that mean I was faking being suicidal the whole time? If I stop having bruises, does that mean I faked being beaten as a kid?

(TW cleared)

Recovery and peace should and does not ever invalidate the truth of the pain suffered and the struggle overcome. Happiness and joy can co-exist with the truth of hurt, pain and suffering.

Trying to hold the two as mutually exclusive is a huge part of why a lot of people get stuck being miserable. If misery is vital for honoring your pain as real, it is very hard to let that go and let yourself be happy again, because if you are happy, what will attest to give your pain justice? But pain, justice, misery, and happiness - they can all co-exist and honestly, that's a really important thing to learn and understand in my healing journey as it really opens up doors to letting trauma go.

Your pain doesn't define your truth.

Your truth is your truth.

It will stay true regardless of if the pain persists or leaves.

[branmuffins22]

Every once in a while, I come across an Owl House fic in which someone does something romantic/sexual with someone who isn't their established partner, and I see it tagged as "Cheating". Which, in the context of that fic, is almost certainly exactly right! (I wouldn't know for sure, I don't really read these fics.)

But I can't help but imagine the leadup to this, how this situation comes about in the first place. And wonder how, at no point, did the previously-involved character bring this up to their established partner. And wonder how, at some point, they decided that doing these things with someone who isn't their established partner is bad, and wrong, and "Cheating".

The Boiling Isles were made to have few or none of the usual biases which brought about our cisnormative, heteronormative, amatonormative, allonormative, perisex-normative, etc. society. Some real-world biases remain, like ableism, classism, and (although it's quite different from its real-world counterpart) racism, but they're mostly reserved for the real jerks, not applied on a wider scale. In all, it's an absolute queer haven, and I somehow doubt that polyamory is where they draw the line.

Since the most recent ship I saw with this was Luz/Viney (cheating on established Luz/Amity), let's imagine two scenarios.

Scenario A:

Viney sends Luz some Signals: she wants something romantic and/or sexual from her. Luz, oblivious as she is, doesn't notice the implications until things have already progressed to a certain point with Viney's desparation to get the point across and/or mounting inability to reign in her impulses, so something has already been done, by Viney, to Luz. Stolen kiss, slap on the ass, whatever, doesn't matter. They're impulsive teens, so everything feels like the Most Thing. Luz talks to Amity about it in a panic, because of COURSE she does, those two are modern media's single most communicative leading ladies. Amity is like "Oh shit, but did she mention me?" because she's also kind of a massive lesbian, and Viney is the triple threat of Confident, Competent, and Chaotic. Even if Amity has no particular feelings for Viney (which is admittedly pretty likely), she must still admit that Viney is a hell of a catch. So far, she has no reason to feel anything but happy for Luz, and doesn't understand why Luz is panicking. Luz, having grown up in the modern, compulsively monogamous United States, is confused as fuck about Amity's seemingly blase attitude toward this development, and says something like "But isn't that/wouldn't that be cheating???" and Amity is like "What? Cheating how? Who's being cheated out of something? Viney? Me? You?" 'Cause like. Nobody loses. Luz gets to kiss or whatever with Viney and also kiss or whatever with Amity. Nothing about one says she can't do the other. Hell, dating someone who's dating someone is a great way to get to know someone, and a great way to gauge mutual interest, should you ever want to date someone. Luz predictably brings up that whole weird monogamous people thing with like. Assumed exclusivity, or whatever you call it. And Amity is like "Okay, but I don't own you??? I can't control everything you do and dictate who you can interact with and how, because what the FUCK, that would be super evil and controlling and manipulative and weird. And way too much like something Odalia would do." And Luz is like "Oh shit. Wow. Polyamory. Awesome. Once I'm done disavowing all notions of infidelity, and figure out my own feelings on the matter, will you hold my hand for moral support as an excuse to come along with me when I get back to Viney about it?" And Amity is like "Hell yeah. Let's fucking go." And then they do and maybe something comes of it but who fucking knows or cares because they Communicated. Like they are wont to do. Sike, actually. I care, and I think Viney/Luz/Amity is AWESOME.

VS

Scenario B:

Viney sends Luz some Signals. Luz reciprocates these signals immediately, despite herself, because she's an impulsive teen, I guess. One thing leads to another, and WHOOPS, now Luz is in some kind of not-strictly-platonic relationship with Viney, even though she was already in such a relationship with Amity. Luz internally berates herself for her infidelity, all the while still doing said infidelity. She doesn't tell Amity because she's way too deep now, it would ruin the relationship, or something! Amity finds out anyways and becomes so heartbroken that she breaks up with Luz on the spot and probably drinks herself into a coma or something. I don't know, this isn't really my subgenre. Luz only realizes her mistake after it has already cost her the love of her life (whom she already knowingly and willingly betrayed, somehow), and I dunno how much further into this scenario I need to go for you to get the point.

Which of these do you think is more likely? Which of these appeals more to you, personally? Which of these completely butchers the existing characters and their dynamics for the sake of a "hey wouldn't it be fucked up if ___" hypothetical? For the record: you and I might disagree on any or all of these.

I dunno. Maybe I'm just too poly for this. Or not allo enough for this. Or too much of a multi-shipper for this. Or haven't actually read the fics in question enough for this. Or haven't felt the touch of another recently enough for this. It sure has been almost a decade. Gosh. Who can say.

[sleepingdeath-light]

winged s/o hcs ; golden cheese cookie

requested by ; anonymous (04/11/23)

fandom(s) ; cookie run

fandom masterlist(s) ; hub | specific

character(s) ; golden cheese cookie

outline ; “if it’s not too much trouble, could I request golden cheese with a winged reader ?”

warning(s) ; none, just fluff!

you having wings wouldn’t impact your relationship with her too much — in that you’re still just as likely to be spoiled rotten and waited on hand and foot — but there would be a few distinct differences in how she’d approach physical affection and your dates as a couple

of course preening and mutual wing care becomes a big thing for the two of you once your relationship is official (she can’t have her beloved consort going out with their wings in such an unsightly state, after all) and it becomes something of a nightly ritual for the two of you to massage and preen and fluff each others wings until they look just right

it’s a slow process and done exclusively in private: delicately and slowly removing any damaged feathers, carefully washing each wing to make sure they’re as clean as possible and all debris and detritus is gone, smoothing out every feather until everything is in its proper place, gently pat each wing until they’re completely dry, and then turn around so that the process can be repeated on you

she buys you so many products and ornaments to help care for and decorate your wings safely — you will never be without something to make your wings look, feel, and smell nice so long as you’re with her (and she might even buy you matching decorations to go with all of your matching jewellery just to further emphasise the face that you’re in a relationship with the golden sovereign herself)

if you never learned how to fly then she’s more than happy to teach you — and despite her reputation she’s nothing short of patient and encouraging when it comes to you, which is exactly what you need when you’re trying to leap out of your comfort zone

you two go on random flights together all of the time — whether that’s just to take in the glory and beauty of the golden cheese kingdom, to visit her friends abroad, or just to clear your heads after a long day of doing your royal duties — and whilst they’re mostly very calming and filled with laughter and lightness, occasionally she’ll make it into a sort of friendly competition about who can go the fastest, who can perform the most impressive tricks in the air, etc.

really they’re just another way for her to show off to you and earn your awe and respect, but she’s more than happy to fawn over you in turn if you manage to win those friendly competitions (even if she’s a bit of a sore loser at times)

in addition to her usual collection of pet names she uses with you, she’ll also occasionally use some that allude to your wings — e.g. ‘my precious little bird’, or something more specific to your person whilst still being along those lines

if you wrap your wings around you whilst you’re hugging or sleeping in bed together then she’ll get the cutest little smile on her face as she pulls you closer and wraps her wings around you in return — of course by then you’re either already asleep or have your face buried in the crook of your neck so you’re unlikely to ever see it, but you don’t need to see her smiling to know that she is because she’s so very easy to read

[dailyanarchistposts]

G.4 Why do social anarchists reject individualist anarchism?

As James J. Martin notes, “paralleling” European social anarchism “chronologically was a kindred but nearly unconnected phenomenon in America, seeking the same ends through individualistic rather than collectivistic dynamics.” [Men Against the State, p. ix]

When the two movements meet in American in the 1880s, the similarities and differences of both came into sharp relief. While both social and individualist anarchists reject capitalism as well as the state and seek an end to the exploitation of labour by capital (i.e. to usury in all its forms), both schools of anarchism rejected each others solutions to the social problem. The vision of the social anarchists was more communally based, urging social ownership of the means of life. In contrast, reflecting the pre-dominantly pre-capitalist nature of post-revolution US society, the Individualist Anarchists urged possession of the means of life and mutual banking to end profit, interest and rent and ensure every worker access to the capital they needed to work for themselves (if they so desired). While social anarchists placed co-operatives (i.e., workers’ self-management) at the centre of their vision of a free society, many individualist anarchists did not as they thought that mutual banking would end exploitation by ensuring that workers received the full product of their labour.

Thus their vision of a free society and the means to achieve it were somewhat different (although, we stress, not mutually exclusive as communist anarchists supported artisan possession of the means of possession for those who rejected communism and the Individualist Anarchists supported voluntary communism). Tucker argued that a communist could not be an anarchist and the communist-anarchists argued that Individualist Anarchism could not end the exploitation of capital by labour. Here we indicate why social anarchists reject individualist anarchism (see section G.2 for a summary of why Individualist Anarchists reject social anarchism).

Malatesta summarises the essential points of difference as well as the source of much of the misunderstandings:

“The individualists assume, or speak as if they assumed, that the (anarchist) communists wish to impose communism, which of course would put them right outside the ranks of anarchism. “The communists assume, or speak as if they assumed, that the (anarchist) individualists reject every idea of association, want the struggle between men, the domination of the strongest — and this would put them not only outside the anarchist movement but outside humanity. “In reality those who are communists are such because they see in communism freely accepted the realisation of brotherhood, and the best guarantee for individual freedom. And individualists, those who are really anarchists, are anti-communist because they fear that communism would subject individuals nominally to the tyranny of the collectivity and in fact to that of the party or caste which, with the excuse of administering things, would succeed in taking possession of the power to dispose of material things and thus of the people who need them. Therefore they want each individual, or each group, to be in a position to enjoy freely the product of their labour in conditions of equality with other individuals and groups, with whom they would maintain relations of justice and equity. “In which case it is clear that there is no basic difference between us. But, according to the communists, justice and equity are, under natural conditions impossible of attainment in an individualistic society, and thus freedom too would not be attained. “If climatic conditions throughout the world were the same, if the land were everywhere equally fertile, if raw materials were evenly distributed and within reach of all who needed them, if social development were the same everywhere in the world … then one could conceive of everyone … finding the land, tools and raw materials needed to work and produce independently, without exploiting or being exploited. But natural and historical conditions being what they are, how is it possible to establish equality and justice between he who by chance finds himself with a piece of arid land which demands much labour for small returns with him who has a piece of fertile and well sited land?” Of between the inhabitant of a village lost in the mountains or in the middle of a marshy area, with the inhabitants of a city which hundreds of generations of man have enriched with all the skill of human genius and labour? [Errico Malatesta: His Life and Ideas, pp. 31–2]

The social anarchist opposition to individualist anarchism, therefore, resolves around the issues of inequality, the limitations and negative impact of markets and whether wage-labour is consistent with anarchist principles (both in general and in terms of individualist anarchism itself). We discuss the issue of wage labour and anarchist principles in the next section and argue in section G.4.2 that Tucker’s support for wage-labour, like any authoritarian social relationship, ensures that this is an inconsistent form of anarchism. Here we concentration on issues of inequality and markets.

First, we must stress that individualist anarchism plays an important role in reminding all socialists that capitalism does not equal the market. Markets have existed before capitalism and may, if we believe market socialists like David Schweickart and free market socialists like Benjamin Tucker and Kevin Carson, even survive it. While some socialists (particularly Leninists echoing, ironically, supporters of capitalism) equate capitalism with the market, this is not the case. Capitalism is a specific form of market economy based on certain kinds of property rights which result in generalised wage labour and non-labour incomes (exploitation). This means that the libertarian communist critique of capitalism is to a large degree independent of its critique of markets and their negative impact. Equally, the libertarian communist critique of markets, while applicable to capitalism, applies to other kinds of economy. It is fair to say, though, that capitalism tends to intensify and worsen the negative effects of markets.

Second, we must also note that social anarchists are a diverse grouping and include the mutualism of Proudhon, Bakunin’s collectivism and Kropotkin’s communism. All share a common hostility to wage labour and recognise, to varying degrees, that markets tend to have negative aspects which can undermine the libertarian nature of a society. While Proudhon was the social anarchist most in favour of competition, he was well aware of the need for self-managed workplaces to federate together to protect themselves from its negative aspects — aspects he discussed at length. His “agro-industrial federation” was seen as a means of socialising the market, of ensuring that competition would not reach such levels as to undermine the freedom and equality of those within it. Individualist anarchists, in contrast, tended not to discuss the negative effects of markets in any great depth (if at all), presumably because they thought that most of the negative effects would disappear along with capitalism and the state. Other anarchists are not so optimistic.

So, two key issues between social and individualist anarchism are the related subjects of property and competition. As Voltairine de Cleyre put it when she was an individualist anarchist:

“She and I hold many differing views on both Economy and Morals … Miss Goldmann [sic!] is a communist; I am an individualist. She wishes to destroy the right of property, I wish to assert it. I make my war upon privilege and authority, whereby the right of property, the true right in that which is proper to the individual, is annihilated. She believes that co-operation would entirely supplant competition; I hold that competition in one form or another will always exist, and that it is highly desirable it should.” [The Voltairine de Cleyre Reader, p. 9]

The question of “property” is subject to much confusion and distortion. It should be stressed that both social and individualist anarchists argue that the only true property is that produced by labour (mental and physical) and capitalism results in some of that being diverted to property owners in the form of interest, rent and profits. Where they disagree is whether it is possible and desirable to calculate an individual’s contribution to social production, particularly within a situation of joint labour. For Tucker, it was a case of creating “the economic law by which every man may get the equivalent of his product.” [quoted by George Woodcock and Ivan Avakumovic, The Anarchist Prince, p. 279] Social anarchists, particularly communist ones, question whether it is possible in reality to discover such a thing in any society based on joint labour (“which it would be difficult to imagine could exist in any society where there is the least complexity of production.” [George Woodcock and Ivan Avakumovic, Op. Cit., p. 280]).

This was the crux of Kropotkin’s critique of the various schemes of “labour money” and “labour vouchers” raised by other schools of socialism (like mutualism, collectivism and various state socialist systems). They may abolish wage labour (or, at worse, create state capitalism) but they did not abolish the wages system, i.e., payment according to work done. This meant that a system of individualist distribution was forced upon a fundamentally co-operative system of production and so was illogical and unjust (see Kropotkin’s “The Collectivist Wage System” in The Conquest of Bread). Thus Daniel Guérin:

“This method of remuneration, derived from modified individualism, is in contradiction to collective ownership of the means of production, and cannot bring about a profound revolutionary change in man. It is incompatible with anarchism; a new form of ownership requires a new form of remuneration. Service to the community cannot be measured in units of money. Needs will have to be given precedence over services, and all the products of the labour of all must belong to all, each to take his share of them freely. To each according to his need should be the motto of libertarian communism.” [Anarchism, p. 50]

Simply put, wages rarely reflect the actual contribution of a specific person to social well-being and production nor do they reflect their actual needs. To try and get actual labour income to reflect the actual contribution to society would be, communist-anarchists argued, immensely difficult. How much of a product’s price was the result of better land or more machinery, luck, the willingness to externalise costs, and so on? Voltairine de Cleyre summarised this problem and the obvious solution:

“I concluded that as to the question of exchange and money, it was so exceedingly bewildering, so impossible of settlement among the professors themselves, as to the nature of value, and the representation of value, and the unit of value, and the numberless multiplications and divisions of the subject, that the best thing ordinary workingmen or women could do was to organise their industry so as to get rid of money altogether. I figured it this way: I’m not any more a fool than the rest of ordinary humanity; I’ve figured and figured away on this thing for years, and directly I thought myself middling straight, there came another money reformer and showed me the hole in that scheme, till, at last , it appears that between ‘bills of credit,’ and ‘labour notes’ and ‘time checks,’ and ‘mutual bank issues,’ and ‘the invariable unit of value,’ none of them have any sense. How many thousands of years is it going to get this sort of thing into people’s heads by mere preaching of theories. Let it be this way: Let there be an end of the special monopoly on securities for money issues. Let every community go ahead and try some member’s money scheme if it wants; — let every individual try it if he pleases. But better for the working people let them all go. Let them produce together, co-operatively rather than as employer and employed; let them fraternise group by group, let each use what he needs of his own product, and deposit the rest in the storage-houses, and let those others who need goods have them as occasion arises.” [Exquisite Rebel, p. 62]

And, obviously, it must be stressed that “property” in the sense of personal possessions would still exist in communist-anarchism. As the co-founder of Freedom put it:

“Does Anarchism, then, it may be asked, acknowledge no Meum or Tuum, no personal property? In a society in which every man is free to take what he requires, it is hardly conceivable that personal necessaries and conveniences will not be appropriated, and difficult to imagine why they should not … When property is protected by no legal enactments, backed by armed force, and is unable to buy personal service, it resuscitation on such a scale as to be dangerous to society is little to be dreaded. The amount appropriated by each individual, and the manner of his appropriation, must be left to his own conscience, and the pressure exercised upon him by the moral sense and distinct interests of his neighbours.” [Charlotte Wilson, Anarchist Essays, p. 24]

To use an appropriate example, public libraries are open to all local residents and they are free to borrow books from the stock available. When the book is borrowed, others cannot come along and take the books from a person’s home. Similarly, an individual in a communist society can take what they like from the common stocks and use it as they see fit. They do not need permission from others to do so, just as people freely go to public parks without requiring a vote by the local community on whether to allow access or not. Communism, in other words, does not imply community control of personal consumption nor the denial of individuals to appropriate and use the common stock of available goods. Socialised consumption does not mean “society” telling people what to consume but rather ensuring that all individuals have free access to the goods produced by all. As such, the issue is not about “property” in the sense of personal property but rather “property” in the sense of access to the means of life by those who use them. Will owner occupiers be able to exclude others from, say, their land and workplaces unless they agree to be their servants?

Which brings us to a key issue between certain forms of individualist anarchism and social anarchism, namely the issue of wage labour. As capitalism has progressed, the size of workplaces and firms have increased. This has lead to a situation were ownership and use has divorced, with property being used by a group of individuals distinct from the few who are legally proclaimed to be its owners. The key problem arises in the case of workplaces and how do non-possessors gain access to them. Under social anarchism, any new members of the collective automatically become part of it, with the same rights and ability to participate in decision making as the existing ones. In other words, socialised production does not mean that “society” will allocate individuals work tasks but rather it ensures that all individuals have free access to the means of life. Under individualist anarchism, however, the situation is not as clear with some (like Tucker) supporting wage labour. This suggests that the holders of workplaces can exclude others from the means of life they possess and only allow them access only under conditions which create hierarchical social relationships between them. Thus we could have a situation in which the owners who actually manage their own workplaces are, in effect, working capitalists who hire others to do specific tasks in return for a wage.

The problem is highlighted in Tucker’s description of what would replace the current system of statism (and note he calls it “scientific socialism” thus squarely placing his ideas in the anti-capitalist camp):

“we have something very tangible to offer , .. We offer non-compulsive organisation. We offer associative combination. We offer every possible method of voluntary social union by which men and women may act together for the furtherance of well-being. In short, we offer voluntary scientific socialism in place of the present compulsory, unscientific organisation which characterises the State and all of its ramifications.” [quoted by Martin, Op. Cit., p. 218]

Yet it is more than possible for voluntary social unions to be authoritarian and exploitative (we see this every day under capitalism). In other words, not every form of non-compulsive organisation is consistent with libertarian principles. Given Tucker’s egoism, it is not hard to conclude that those in stronger positions on the market will seek to maximise their advantages and exploit those who are subject to their will. As he put it, ”[s]o far as inherent right is concerned, might is the only measure. Any man … and any set of men … have the right, if they have the power, to kill or coerce other men and to make the entire world subservient to their ends. Society’s right to enslave the individual and the individual’s right to enslave society are only unequal because their powers are unequal.” In the market, all contracts are based ownership of resources which exist before any specific contracts is made. If one side of the contract has more economic power than the other (say, because of their ownership of capital) then it staggers belief that egoists will not seek to maximise said advantage and so the market will tend to increase inequalities over time rather than reduce them. If, as Tucker argued, “Anarchic associations would recognise the right of individual occupants to combine their holdings and work them under any system they might agree upon, the arrangement being always terminable at will, with reversion to original rights” then we have the unfortunate situation where inequalities will undermine anarchism and defence associations arising which will defend them against attempts by those subject to them to use direct action to rectify the situation. [The Individualist Anarchists, p. 25 and p. 162]

Kropotkin saw the danger, arguing that such an idea “runs against the feelings of equality of most of us” and “brings the would-be ‘Individualists’ dangerously near to those who imagine themselves to represent a ‘superior breed’ — those to whom we owe the State … and all other forms of oppression.” [Evolution and Environment, p. 84] As we discuss in the next section, it is clear that wage labour (like any hierarchical organisation) is not consistent with general anarchist principles and, furthermore, in direct contradiction to individualist anarchist principles of “occupancy and use.” Only if “occupancy and use” is consistently applied and so wage labour replaced by workers associations can the inequalities associated with market exchanges not become so great as to destroy the equal freedom of all required for anarchism to work.

Individualist anarchists reply to this criticism by arguing that this is derived from a narrow reading of Stirner’s ideas and that they are in favour of universal egoism. This universal egoism and the increase in competition made possible by mutual banking will ensure that workers will have the upper-hand in the market, with the possibility of setting up in business themselves always available. In this way the ability of bosses to become autocrats is limited, as is their power to exploit their workers as a result. Social anarchists argue, in response, that the individualists tend to underestimate the problems associated with natural barriers to entry in an industry. This could help generate generalised wage labour (and so a new class of exploiters) as workers face the unpleasant choice of working for a successful firm, being unemployed or working for low wages in an industry with lower barriers to entry. This process can be seen under capitalism when co-operatives hire wage workers and not include them as members of the association (i.e. they exercise their ownership rights to exclude others). As Proudhon argued:

“I have shown the contractor, at the birth of industry, negotiating on equal terms with his comrades, who have since become his workmen. It is plain, in fact, that this original equality was bound to disappear through the advantageous position of the master and the dependent position of the wage-workers. In vain does the law assure the right of each to enterprise … When an establishment has had leisure to develop itself, enlarge its foundations, ballast itself with capital, and assure itself a body of patrons, what can a workman do against a power so superior?” [System of Economical Contradictions, p. 202]

Voltairine de Cleyre also came to this conclusion. Discussing the limitations of the Single Tax land reform, she noted that “the stubborn fact always came up that no man would employ another to work for him unless he could get more for his product than he had to pay for it, and that being the case, the inevitable course of exchange and re-exchange would be that the man having received less than the full amount, could buy back less than the full amount, so that eventually the unsold products must again accumulate in the capitalist’s hands; and again the period of non-employment arrives.” This obviously applied to individualist anarchism. In response to objections like this, individualists tend to argue that competition for labour would force wages to equal output. Yet this ignores natural barriers to competition: “it is well enough to talk of his buying hand tools, or small machinery which can be moved about; but what about the gigantic machinery necessary to the operation of a mine, or a mill? It requires many to work it. If one owns it, will he not make the others pay tribute for using it?” [Op. Cit., p. 60 and p. 61]

As such, a free market based on wage labour would be extremely unlikely to produce a non-exploitative society and, consequently, it would not be socialist and so not anarchist. Moreover, the successful business person would seek to secure his or her property and power and so employ police to do so. “I confess that I am not in love with all these little states,” proclaimed de Cleyre, “and it is … the thought of the anarchist policeman that has driven me out of the individualist’s camp, wherein I for some time resided.” [quoted by Eugenia C. Delamotte, Gates of Freedom, p. 25] This outcome can only be avoided by consistently applying “occupancy and use” in such as way as to eliminate wage labour totally. Only this can achieve a society based on freedom of association as well as freedom within association.

As we noted in section G.2, one of the worries of individualist anarchists is that social anarchism would subject individuals to group pressures and concerns, violating individual autonomy in the name of collective interests. Thus, it is argued, the individual will become of slave of the group in practice if not in theory under social anarchism. However, an inherent part of our humanity is that we associate with others, that we form groups and communities. To suggest that there are no group issues within anarchism seems at odds with reality. Taken literally, of course, this implies that such a version of “anarchy” there would be no forms of association at all. No groups, no families, no clubs: nothing bar the isolated individual. It implies no economic activity beyond the level of peasant farming and one-person artisan workplaces. Why? Simply because any form of organisation implies “group issues.” Two people deciding to live together or one hundred people working together becomes a group, twenty people forming a football club becomes a group. And these people have joint interests and so group issues. In other words, to deny group issues is implying a social situation that has never existed nor ever will. Thus Kropotkin:

“to reason in this way is to pay … too large a tribute to metaphysical dialectics, and to ignore the facts of life. It is impossible to conceive a society in which the affairs of any one of its members would not concern many other members, if not all; still less a society in which a continual contact between its members would not have established an interest of every one towards all others, which would render it impossible to act without thinking of the effects which our actions may have on others.” [Evolution and Environment, p. 85]

Once the reality of “group issues” is acknowledged, as most individualist anarchists do, then the issue of collective decision making automatically arises. There are two ways of having a group. You can be an association of equals, governing yourselves collectively as regards collective issues. Or you can have capitalists and wage slaves, bosses and servants, government and governed. Only the first, for obvious reasons, is compatible with anarchist principles. Freedom, in other words, is a product of how we interact with each other, not of isolation. Simply put, anarchism is based on self-management of group issues, not in their denial. Free association is, in this perspective, a necessary but not sufficient to guarantee freedom. Therefore, social anarchists reject the individualists’ conception of anarchy, simply because it can, unfortunately, allow hierarchy (i.e. government) back into a free society in the name of “liberty” and “free contracts.” Freedom is fundamentally a social product, created in and by community. It is a fragile flower and does not fare well when bought and sold on the market.

Moreover, without communal institutions, social anarchists argue, it would be impossible to specify or supply group or public goods. In addition, occupancy and use would, on the face of it, preclude such amenities which are utilised by members of a community such as parks, roads or bridges — anything which is used but not occupied continually. In terms of roads and bridges, who actually occupies and uses them? The drivers? Those who maintain it? The occupiers of the houses which it passes? Those who funded it construction? If the last, then why does this not apply to housing and other buildings left on land? And how are the owners to collect a return on their investment unless by employing police to bar access to non-payers? And would such absentee owners not also seek to extend their appropriations to other forms of property? Would it not be far easier to simply communalise such forms of commonly used “property” rather than seek to burden individuals and society with the costs of policing and restricting access to them?

After all, social anarchists note, for Proudhon there was a series of industries and services that he had no qualms about calling “public works” and which he considered best handled by communes and their federations. Thus “the control undertaking such works will belong to the municipalities, and to districts within their jurisdiction” while “the control of carrying them out will rest with the workmen’s associations.” This was due to both their nature and libertarian values and so the “direct, sovereign initiative of localities, in arranging for public works that belong to them, is a consequence of the democratic principle and the free contract: their subordination to the State is .. . a return to feudalism.” Workers’ self-management of such public workers was, again, a matter of libertarian principles for “it becomes necessary for the workers to form themselves into democratic societies, with equal conditions for all members, on pain of a relapse into feudalism.” [The General Idea of the Revolution, p. 276 and p. 277]

In the case of a park, either it is open to all or it is fenced off and police used to bar access. Taking “occupancy and use” as our starting point then it becomes clear that, over time, either the community organises itself communally or a park becomes private property. If a group of people frequent a common area then they will have to discuss how to maintain it — for example, arrange for labour to be done on it, whether to have a play-ground for children or to have a duck pond, whether to increase the numbers and types of trees, and so forth. That implies the development of communal structures. In the case of new people using the amenity, either they are excluded from it (and have to pay for access) or they automatically join the users group and so the park is, in effect, common property and socialised. In such circumstances, it would be far easier simply to ignore the issue of individual contributions and base access on need (i.e., communistic principles). However, as already indicated in section G.2.1, social anarchists reject attempts to coerce other workers into joining a co-operative or commune. Freedom cannot be given, it must be taken and social anarchism, like all forms of anarchy, cannot be imposed. How those who reject social anarchism will gain access to common property will depend, undoubtedly, on specific circumstances and who exactly is involved and how they wish to utilise it. As such, it will be difficult to generalise as each commune will determine what is best and reach the appropriate contracts with any individualist anarchists in their midst or vicinity.

It should also be pointed out (and this may seem ironic), wage labour does have the advantage that people can move to new locations and work without having to sell their old means of living. Often moving somewhere can be a hassle if one has to sell a shop or home. Many people prefer not to be tied down to one place. This is a problem in a system based on “occupancy and use” as permanently leaving a property means that it automatically becomes abandoned and so its users may be forced to stay in one location until they find a buyer for it. This is not an issue in social anarchism as access to the means of life is guaranteed to all members of the free society.

Most social anarchists also are critical of the means which individualists anarchists support to achieve anarchy, namely to abolish capitalism by the creation of mutual banks which would compete exploitation and oppression away. While mutual banks could aid the position of working class people under capitalism (which is why Bakunin and other social anarchists recommended them), they cannot undermine or eliminate it. This is because capitalism, due to its need to accumulate, creates natural barriers to entry into a market (see section C.4). Thus the physical size of the large corporation would make it immune to the influence of mutual banking and so usury could not be abolished. Even if we look at the claimed indirect impact of mutual banking, namely an increase in the demand of labour and so wages, the problem arises that if this happens then capitalism would soon go into a slump (with obvious negative effects on small firms and co-operatives). In such circumstances, the number of labourers seeking work would rise and so wages would fall and profits rise. Then it is a case of whether the workers would simply tolerate the slump and let capitalism continue or whether they would seize their workplaces and practice the kind of expropriation individualist anarchists tended to oppose.

This problem was recognised by many individualist anarchists themselves and it played a significant role in its decline as a movement. By 1911 Tucker had come to the same conclusions as communist-anarchists on whether capitalism could be reformed away. As we noted in section G.1.1, he “had come to believe that free banking and similar measures, even if inaugurated, were no longer adequate to break the monopoly of capitalism or weaken the authority of the state.” [Paul Avrich, Anarchist Voices, p. 6] While admitted that political or revolutionary action was required to destroy the concentrations of capital which made anarchy impossible even with free competition, he rejected the suggestion that individualist anarchists should join in such activity. Voltairine de Cleyre came to similar conclusions earlier and started working with Emma Goldman before becoming a communist-anarchist sometime in 1908. Perhaps unsurprisingly, one historian argues that as the “native American variety of anarchism dissolved in the face of increasing State repression and industrialisation, rationalisation, and concentration of capital, American anarchists were forced either to acquiesce or to seek a more militant stain of anarchism: this latter presented itself in the form of Communist Anarchism … Faith in peaceful evolution toward an anarchist society seemed archaic and gradually faded.” [Kline, The Individualist Anarchists, p. 83]

So while state action may increase the degree of monopoly in an industry, the natural tendency for any market is to place barriers (natural ones) to new entries in terms of set-up costs and so on. This applies just as much to co-operatives as it does to companies based on wage-labour. It means that if the relation between capital and labour was abolished within the workplace (by their transformation into co-operatives) but they remained the property of their workers, it would only be a matter of time before the separation of the producers from their means of production reproduced itself. This is because, within any market system, some firms fail and others succeed. Those which fail will create a pool of unemployed workers who will need a job. The successful co-operatives, safe behind their natural barriers to entry, would be in a stronger position than the unemployed workers and so may hire them as wage labourers — in effect, the co-operative workers would become “collective capitalists” hiring other workers. This would end workers’ self-management (as not all workers are involved in the decision making process) as well as workers’ ownership, i.e. “occupancy and use,” (as not all workers’ would own the means of production they used). The individual workers involved may “consent” to becoming wage slaves, but that is because it is the best option available rather than what they really want. Which, of course, is the same as under capitalism.

This was why Proudhon argued that “every worker employed in the association” must have “an undivided share in the property of the company” in order to ensure workers’ self-management. [Op. Cit., p. 222] Only this could ensure “occupancy and use” and so self-management in a free society (i.e. keep that society free). Thus in anarchism, as de Cleyre summarised, it is “a settled thing that to be free one must have liberty of access to the sources and means of production” Without socialisation of the means of life, liberty of access could be denied. Little wonder she argued that she had become “convinced that a number of the fundamental propositions of individualistic economy would result in the destruction of equal liberty.” The only logical anarchist position is “that some settlement of the whole labour question was needed which would not split up the people again into land possessors and employed wage-earners.” Hence her movement from individualism towards, first, mutualism and then communism — it was the only logical position to take in a rapidly industrialising America which had made certain concepts of individualism obsolete. It was her love of freedom which made her sensitive to the possibility of any degeneration back into capitalism: “the instinct of liberty naturally revolted not only at economic servitude, but at the outcome of it, class-lines.” [Op. Cit., p. 58, p. 105, p. 61 and p. 55] As we argue in section G.4.2 such a possibility can be avoided only by a consistent application of “occupancy and use” which, in practice, would be nearly identical to the communalisation or socialisation of the means of life.

This issue is related to the question of inequality within a market economy and whether free exchanges tend to reduce or increase any initial inequalities. While Individualist Anarchists argue for the “cost principle” (i.e. cost being the limit of price) the cost of creating the same commodity in different areas or by different people is not equal. Thus the market price of a good cannot really equal the multitude of costs within it (and so price can only equal a workers’ labour in those few cases where that labour was applied in average circumstances). This issue was recognised by Tucker, who argued that “economic rent … is one of nature’s inequalities. It will probably remain with us always. Complete liberty will every much lessen it; of that I have no doubt.” [“Why I am an Anarchist”, pp. 132–6, Man!, M. Graham (ed.), pp. 135–6] However, argue social anarchists, the logic of market exchange produces a situation where the stronger party to a contract seeks to maximise their advantage. Given this, free exchange will tend to increase differences in wealth and income over time, not eliminate them. As Daniel Guérin summarised:

“Competition and the so-called market economy inevitably produce inequality and exploitation, and would do so even if one started from complete equality. They could not be combined with workers’ self-management unless it were on a temporary basis, as a necessary evil, until (1) a psychology of ‘honest exchange’ had developed among the workers; (2) most important, society as a whole had passed from conditions of shortage to the stage of abundance, when competition would lose its purpose … The libertarian communist would condemn Proudhon’s version of a collective economy as being based on a principle of conflict; competitors would be in a position of equality at the start, only to be hurled into a struggle which would inevitably produce victors and vanquished, and where goods would end up by being exchanged according to the principles of supply and demand.” [Op. Cit., pp. 53–4]

Thus, even a non-capitalist market could evolve towards inequality and away from fair exchange. It was for this reason that Proudhon argued that a portion of income from agricultural produce be paid into a central fund which would be used to make equalisation payments to compensate farmers with less favourably situated or less fertile land. As he put it, economic rent “in agriculture has no other cause than the inequality in the quality of land … if anyone has a claim on account of this inequality … [it is] the other land workers who hold inferior land. That is why in our scheme for liquidation [of capitalism] we stipulated that every variety of cultivation should pay a proportional contribution, destined to accomplish a balancing of returns among farm workers and an assurance of products.” [Op. Cit., p. 209] His advocacy of federations of workers’ associations was, likewise, seen as a means of abolishing inequalities.

Unlike Proudhon, however, individualist anarchists did not propose any scheme to equalise income. Perhaps Tucker was correct and the differences would be slight, but in a market situation exchanges tend to magnify differences, not reduce them as the actions of self-interested individuals in unequal positions will tend to exacerbate differences. Over time these slight differences would become larger and larger, subjecting the weaker party to relatively increasingly worse contracts. Without equality, individualist anarchism would quickly become hierarchical and non-anarchist. As the communist-anarchist paper Freedom argued in the 1880s:

“Are not the scandalous inequalities in the distribution of wealth today merely the culminate effect of the principle that every man is justified in securing to himself everything that his chances and capacities enable him to lay hands on? “If the social revolution which we are living means anything, it means the destruction of this detestable economic principle, which delivers over the more social members of the community to the domination of the most unsocial and self-interested.” [Freedom, vol. 2, no. 19]

Freedom, it should be noted, is slightly misrepresenting the position of individualist anarchists. They did not argue that every person could appropriate all the property he or she could. Most obviously, in terms of land they were consistently opposed to a person owning more of it than they actually used. They also tended to apply this to what was on the land as well, arguing that any buildings on it were abandoned when the owner no longer used them. Given this, individualist anarchists have stressed that such a system would be unlikely to produce the inequalities associated with capitalism (as Kropotkin noted, equality was essential and was implicitly acknowledged by individualists themselves who argued that their system “would offer no danger, because the rights of each individual would have been limited by the equal rights of all others.” [Evolution and Environment, p. 85]). Thus contemporary individualist anarchist Joe Peacott:

“Although individualists envision a society based on private property, we oppose the economic relationships of capitalism, whose supporters misuse words like private enterprise and free markets to justify a system of monopoly ownership in land and the means of production which allows some to skim off part or even most of the wealth produced by the labour of others. Such a system exists only because it is protected by the armed power of government, which secures title to unjustly acquired and held land, monopolises the supply of credit and money, and criminalises attempts by workers to take full ownership of the means of production they use to create wealth. This state intervention in economic transactions makes it impossible for most workers to become truly independent of the predation of capitalists, banks, and landlords. Individualists argue that without the state to enforce the rules of the capitalist economy, workers would not allow themselves to be exploited by these thieves and capitalism would not be able to exist … “One of the criticisms of individualist economic proposals raised by other anarchists is that a system based on private ownership would result in some level of difference among people in regard to the quality or quantity of possessions they have. In a society where people are able to realise the full value of their labour, one who works harder or better than another will possess or have the ability to acquire more things than someone who works less or is less skilled at a particular occupation … “The differences in wealth that arise in an individualist community would likely be relatively small. Without the ability to profit from the labour of others, generate interest from providing credit, or extort rent from letting out land or property, individuals would not be capable of generating the huge quantities of assets that people can in a capitalist system. Furthermore, the anarchist with more things does not have them at the expense of another, since they are the result of the owner’s own effort. If someone with less wealth wishes to have more, they can work more, harder, or better. There is no injustice in one person working 12 hours a day and six days a week in order to buy a boat, while another chooses to work three eight hour days a week and is content with a less extravagant lifestyle. If one can generate income only by hard work, there is an upper limit to the number and kind of things one can buy and own.” [Individualism and Inequality]

However, argue social anarchists, market forces may make such an ideal impossible to achieve or maintain. Most would agree with Peter Marshall’s point that ”[u]ndoubtedly real difficulties exist with the economic position of the individualists. If occupiers became owners overnight as Benjamin Tucker recommended, it would mean in practice that those with good land or houses would merely become better off than those with bad. Tucker’s advocacy of ‘competition everywhere and always’ among occupying owners, subject to the only moral law of minding your own business might will encourage individual greed rather than fair play for all.” [Demanding the Impossible, p. 653]

Few social anarchists are convinced that all the problems associated with markets and competition are purely the result of state intervention. They argue that it is impossible to have most of the underlying pre-conditions of a competitive economy without the logical consequences of them. It is fair to say that individualist anarchists tend to ignore or downplay the negative effects of markets while stressing their positive ones.

While we discuss the limitations of markets in section I.1.3, suffice to say here that competition results in economic forces developing which those within the market have to adjust to. In other words, the market may be free but those within it are not. To survive on the market, firms would seek to reduce costs and so implement a host of dehumanising working practices in order to compete successfully on the market, things which they would resist if bosses did it. Work hours could get longer and longer, for example, in order to secure and maintain market position. This, in turn, affects our quality of life and our relationship with our partners, children, parents, friends, neighbours and so on. That the profits do not go to the executives and owners of businesses may be a benefit, it matters little if people are working longer and harder in order to invest in machinery to ensure market survival. Hence survival, not living, would be the norm within such a society, just as it is, unfortunately, in capitalism.

Ultimately, Individualist Anarchists lose sight of the fact that success and competition are not the same thing. One can set and reach goals without competing. That we may loose more by competing than by co-operating is an insight which social anarchists base their ideas on. In the end, a person can become a success in terms of business but lose sight of their humanity and individuality in the process. In contrast, social anarchists stress community and co-operation in order to develop us as fully rounded individuals. As Kropotkin put it, “the individualisation they so highly praise is not attainable by individual efforts.” [Anarchism, p. 297]

As we noted in section D.1, the capitalist state intervenes into the economy and society to counteract the negative impact of market forces on social life and the environment as well as, of course, protecting and enhancing the position of itself and the capitalist class. As individualist anarchism is based on markets (to some degree), it seems likely that market forces would have similar negative impacts (albeit to a lesser degree due to the reduced levels of inequality implied by the elimination of non-labour incomes). Without communal institutions, social anarchists argue, individualist anarchism has no means of counteracting the impact of such forces except, perhaps, by means of continual court cases and juries. Thus social issues would not be discussed by all affected but rather by small sub-groups retroactively addressing individual cases.

Moreover, while state action may have given the modern capitalist an initial advantage on the market, it does not follow that a truly free market will not create similar advantages naturally over time. And if it did, then surely a similar system would develop? As such, it does not follow that a non-capitalist market system would remain such. In other words, it is true that extensive state intervention was required to create capitalism but after a time economic forces can usually be relied upon to allow wage workers to be exploited. The key factor is that while markets have existed long before capitalism, that system has placed them at the centre of economic activity. In the past, artisans and farmers produced for local consumers, with the former taking their surplus to markets. In contrast, capitalism has produced a system where producers are primarily geared to exchanging all goods they create on an extensive market rather simply a surplus locally. This implies that the dynamics of a predominantly market system may be different from those in the past in which the market played a much smaller role and where self-sufficiency was always a possibility. It is difficult to see how, for example, car workers or IT programmers could produce for their own consumption using their own tools.

So in a market economy with a well developed division of labour it is possible for a separation of workers from their means of production to occur. This is particularly the case when the predominant economic activity is not farming. Thus the net effect of market transactions could be to re-introduce class society simply by their negative long-term consequences. That such a system developed without state aid would make it no less unfree and unjust. It is of little use to point out that such a situation is not what the Individualist Anarchists desired for it is a question of whether their ideas would actually result in what they wanted. Social anarchists have fears that it will not. Significantly, as we noted in section G.3, Tucker was sensible enough to argue that those subject to such developments should rebel against it.

In response, individualist anarchists could argue that the alternative to markets would be authoritarian (i.e., some form of central planning) and/or inefficient as without markets to reward effort most people would not bother to work well and provide for the consumer. So while markets do have problems with them, the alternatives are worse. Moreover, when social anarchists note that there is a remarkable correlation between competitiveness in a society and the presence of clearly defined “have” and “have-not” groups individualist anarchists would answer that the causation flows not from competitiveness to inequality but from inequality to competitiveness. In a more equal society people would be less inclined to compete as ruthlessly as under capitalism and so the market would not generate as many problems as it does today. Moreover, eliminating the artificial barriers erected by the state would allow a universal competition to develop rather than the one sided form associated with capitalism. With a balance of market power, competition would no longer take the form it currently does.

Yet, as noted above, this position ignores natural barriers to competition The accumulation needs of a competitive market economy do not disappear just because capitalism has been replaced by co-operatives and mutual credit banks. In any market economy, firms will try to improve their market position by investing in new machinery, reducing prices by improving productivity and so on. This creates barriers to new competitors who have to expend more money in order to match the advantages of existing firms. Such amounts of money may not be forthcoming from even the biggest mutual bank and so certain firms would enjoy a privileged position on the market. Given that Tucker defined a monopolist as “any person, corporation, or institution whose right to engage in any given pursuit of life is secured, either wholly or partially, by any agency whatsoever — whether the nature of things or the force of events or the decree of arbitrary power — against the influence of competition” we may suggest that due to natural barriers, an individualist anarchist society would not be free of monopolists and so of usury. [quoted by James J. Martin, Men Against the State, p. 210]

For this reason, even in a mutualist market certain companies would receive a bigger slice of profits than (and at the expense of) others. This means that exploitation would still exist as larger companies could charge more than cost for their products. It could be argued that the ethos of an anarchist society would prevent such developments happening but, as Kropotkin noted, this has problems, firstly because of “the difficulty if estimating the market value” of a product based on “average time” or cost necessary to produce it and, secondly, if that could be done then to get people “to agree upon such an estimation of their work would already require a deep penetration of the Communist principles into their ideas.” [Environment and Evolution, p. 84] In addition, the free market in banking would also result in its market being dominated by a few big banks, with similar results. As such, it is all fine and well to argue that with rising interest rates more competitors would be drawn into the market and so the increased competition would automatically reduce them but that is only possible if there are no serious natural barriers to entry.

This obviously impacts on how we get from capitalism to anarchism. Natural barriers to competition limit the ability to compete exploitation away. So as to its means of activism, individualist anarchism exaggerates the potential of mutual banks to fund co-operatives. While the creation of community-owned and -managed mutual credit banks would help in the struggle for a free society, such banks are not enough in themselves. Unless created as part of the social struggle against capitalism and the state, and unless combined with community and strike assemblies, mutual banks would quickly die, because the necessary social support required to nurture them would not exist. Mutual banks must be part of a network of other new socio-economic and political structures and cannot be sustained in isolation from them. This is simply to repeat our earlier point that, for most social anarchists, capitalism cannot be reformed away. As such, social anarchists would tend to agree with the summary provided by this historian:

“If [individualist anarchists] rejected private ownership of property, they destroyed their individualism and ‘levelled’ mankind. If they accepted it, they had the problem of offering a solution whereby the inequalities [of wealth] would not amount to a tyranny over the individual. They meet the same dilemma in ‘method.’ If they were consistent libertarian individualists they could not force from ‘those who had’ what they had acquired justly or unjustly, but if they did not force it from them, they perpetuated inequalities. They met a stone wall.” [Eunice Minette Schuster, Native American Anarchism, p. 158]

So while Tucker believed in direct action, he opposed the “forceful” expropriation of social capital by the working class, instead favouring the creation of a mutualist banking system to replace capitalism with a non-exploitative system. Tucker was therefore fundamentally a reformist, thinking that anarchy would evolve from capitalism as mutual banks spread across society, increasing the bargaining power of labour. And reforming capitalism over time, by implication, always means tolerating boss’s control during that time. So, at its worse, this is a reformist position which becomes little more than an excuse for tolerating landlord and capitalist domination.

Also, we may note, in the slow transition towards anarchism, we would see the rise of pro-capitalist “defence associations” which would collect rent from land, break strikes, attempt to crush unions and so on. Tucker seemed to have assumed that the anarchist vision of “occupancy-and-use” would become universal. Unfortunately, landlords and capitalists would resist it and so, ultimately, an Individualist Anarchist society would have to either force the minority to accept the majority wishes on land use (hence his comments on there being “no legal power to collect rent”) or the majority are dictated to by the minority who are in favour of collecting rent and hire “defence associations” to enforce those wishes. With the head start big business and the wealthy have in terms of resources, conflicts between pro- and anti-capitalist “defence associations” would usually work against the anti-capitalist ones (as trade unions often find out). In other words, reforming capitalism would not be as non-violent or as simple as Tucker maintained. The vested powers which the state defends will find other means to protect themselves when required (for example, when capitalists and landlords backed fascism and fascist squads in Italy after workers “occupied and used” their workplaces and land workers and peasants “occupied and used” the land in 1920). We are sure that economists will then rush to argue that the resulting law system that defended the collection of rent and capitalist property against “occupancy and use” was the most “economically efficient” result for “society.”

In addition, even if individualist mutualism did result in an increase in wages by developing artisan and co-operative ventures that decreased the supply of labour in relation to its demand, this would not eliminate the subjective and objective pressures on profits that produce the business cycle within capitalism (see section C.7). In fact, it was increase the subjective pressures considerably as was the case under the social Keynesian of the post-war period. Unsurprisingly, business interests sought the necessary “reforms” and ruthlessly fought the subsequent strikes and protests to achieve a labour market more to their liking (see section C.8.2 for more on this). This means that an increase in the bargaining power of labour would soon see capital moving to non-anarchist areas and so deepening any recession caused by a lowering of profits and other non-labour income. This could mean that during an economic slump, when workers’ savings and bargaining position were weak, the gains associated with mutualism could be lost as co-operative firms go bust and mutual banks find it hard to survive in a hostile environment.

Mutual banks would not, therefore, undermine modern capitalism, as recognised by social anarchists from Bakunin onward. They placed their hopes in a social revolution organised by workplace and community organisations, arguing that the ruling class would be as unlikely to tolerate being competed away as they would be voted away. The collapse of social Keynesianism into neo-liberalism shows that even a moderately reformed capitalism which increased working class power will not be tolerated for too long. In other words, there was a need for social revolution which mutual banks do not, and could not, eliminate.

However, while social anarchists disagree with the proposals of individualist anarchists, we do still consider them to be a form of anarchism — one with many flaws and one perhaps more suited to an earlier age when capitalism was less developed and its impact upon society far less than it is now (see section G.1.4). Individualist and social anarchism could co-exist happily in a free society and neither believes in forcing the other to subscribe to their system. As Paul Nursey-Bray notes “linking all of these approaches … is not just the belief in individual liberty and its corollary, the opposition to central or state authority, but also a belief in community, and an equality of community members.” The “discussion over forms of property … should not be allowed to obscure the commonality of the idea of the free community of self-regulating individuals.” And so “there are meeting points in the crucial ideas of individual autonomy and community that suggest, at least, a basis for the discussion of equality and property relations.” [Anarchist Thinkers and Thought, p. xvi]

G.4.1 Is wage labour consistent with anarchist principles?

No, it is not. This can be seen from social anarchism, where opposition to wage labour as hierarchical and exploitative is taken as an obvious and logical aspect of anarchist principles. However, ironically, this conclusion must also be drawn from the principles expounded by individualist anarchism. However, as noted in section G.1.3, while many individualist anarchists opposed wage labour and sought it end not all did. Benjamin Tucker was one of the latter. To requote him:

“Wages is not slavery. Wages is a form of voluntary exchange, and voluntary exchange is a form of Liberty.” [Liberty, no. 3, p. 1]

The question of wage labour was one of the key differences between Tucker and communist-anarchist Johann Most. For Most, it signified that Tucker supported the exploitation of labour. For Tucker, Most’s opposition to it signified that he was not a real anarchist, seeking to end freedom by imposing communism onto all. In response to Most highlighting the fact that Tucker supported wage labour, Tucker argued as followed:

“If the men who oppose wages — that is, the purchase and sale of labour — were capable of analysing their thought and feelings, they would see that what really excites their anger is not the fact that labour is bought and sold, but the fact that one class of men are dependent for their living upon the sale of their labour, while another class of men are relieved of the necessity of labour by being legally privileged to sell something that is not labour, and that, but for the privilege, would be enjoyed by all gratuitously. And to such a state of things I am as much opposed as any one. But the minute you remove privilege, the class that now enjoy it will be forced to sell their labour, and then, when there will be nothing but labour with which to buy labour, the distinction between wage-payers and wage-receivers will be wiped out, and every man will be a labourer exchanging with fellow-labourers. Not to abolish wages, but to make every man dependent upon wages and secure to every man his whole wages is the aim of Anarchistic Socialism. What Anarchistic Socialism aims to abolish is usury. It does not want to deprive labour of its reward; it wants to deprive capital of its reward. It does not hold that labour should not be sold; it holds that capital should not be hired at usury.” [Liberty, no. 123, p. 4]

Social anarchists, in reply, would argue that Tucker is missing the point. The reason why almost all anarchists are against wage labour is because it generates social relationships based on authority and, as such, it sets the necessary conditions for the exploitation of labour to occur. If we take the creation of employer-employee relationships within an anarchy, we see the danger of private statism arising (as in “anarcho”-capitalism) and so the end of anarchy. Such a development can be seen when Tucker argued that if, in an anarchy, “any labourers shall interfere with the rights of their employers, or shall use force upon inoffensive ‘scabs,’ or shall attack their employers’ watchmen … I pledge myself that, as an Anarchist and in consequence of my Anarchistic faith, I will be among the first to volunteer as a member of a force to repress these disturbers of order, and, if necessary, sweep them from the earth.” [Op. Cit., p. 455] Tucker’s comments were provoked by the Homestead strike of 1892, where the striking steelworkers fought with, and defeated, their employer’s Pinkerton thugs sent to break the strike (Tucker, it should be stressed supported the strikers but not their methods and considered the capitalist class as responsible for the strike by denying workers a free market).

In such a situation, these defence associations would be indeed “private states” and here Tucker’s ideas unfortunately do parallel those of the “anarcho”-capitalists (although, as Tucker thought that the employees would not be exploited by the employer, this does not suggest that Tucker can be considered a forefather of “anarcho”-capitalism). As Kropotkin warned, ”[f]or their self-defence, both the citizen and group have a right to any violence [within individualist anarchy] … Violence is also justified for enforcing the duty of keeping an agreement. Tucker … opens … the way for reconstructing under the heading of the ‘defence’ all the functions of the State.” [Anarchism, p. 297]

Such an outcome is easy to avoid, however, by simply consistently applying individualist anarchist principles and analysis to wage labour. To see why, it is necessary simply to compare private property with Tucker’s definition of the state.

How did Tucker define the state? All states have two common elements, “aggression” and “the assumption of sole authority over a given area and all within it, exercised generally for the double purpose of more complete oppression of its subjects and extension of its boundaries.” This monopoly of authority is important, as “I am not aware that any State has ever tolerated a rival State within its borders.” So the state, Tucker stated, is “the embodiment of the principle of invasion in an individual, or a band of individuals, assuming to act as representatives or masters of the entire people within a given area.” The “essence of government is control, or the attempt to control. He who attempts to control another is a governor, an aggressor, an invader … he who resists another’s attempt to control is not an aggressor, an invader, a governor, but simply a defender, a protector.” In short, “the Anarchistic definition of government: the subjection of the non-invasive individual to an external will.” [The Individualist Anarchists, p. 24]

The similarities with capitalist property (i.e., one based on wage labour) is obvious. The employer assumes and exercises “sole authority over a given area and all within it,” they are the boss after all and so capitalists are the “masters of the entire people within a given area.” That authority is used to control the employees in order to maximise the difference between what they produce and what they get paid (i.e., to ensure exploitation). As August Spies, one of the Haymarket Martyrs, noted:

“I was amazed and was shocked when I became acquainted with the condition of the wage-workers in the New World. “The factory: the ignominious regulations, the surveillance, the spy system, the servility and lack of manhood among the workers and the arrogant arbitrary behaviour of the boss and his associates — all this made an impression upon me that I have never been able to divest myself of. At first I could not understand why the workers, among them many old men with bent backs, silently and without a sign of protest bore every insult the caprice of the foreman or boss would heap upon them. I was not then aware of the fact that the opportunity to work was a privilege, a favour, and that it was in the power of those who were in the possession of the factories and instruments of labour to deny or grant this privilege. I did not then understand how difficult it was to find a purchaser for ones labour, I did not know then that there were thousands and thousands of idle human bodies in the market, ready to hire out upon most any conditions, actually begging for employment. I became conscious of this, very soon, however, and I knew then why these people were so servile, whey suffered the humiliating dictates and capricious whims of their employers.” [The Autobiographies of the Haymarket Martyrs, pp. 66–7]

That this is a kind of state-like authority becomes clear when we consider company towns. As Ward Churchill notes, the “extent of company power over workers included outright ownership of the towns in which they lived, a matter enabling employers to garner additional profits by imposing exorbitant rates of rent, prices for subsistence commodities, tools, and such health care as was available. Conditions in these ‘company towns’ were such that, by 1915, the Commission on Industrial Relations was led to observe that they displayed ‘every aspect of feudalism except the recognition of special duties on the part of the employer.’ The job of the Pinkertons — first for the railroads, then more generally — was to prevent workers from organising in a manner that might enable them to improve their own circumstances, thus reducing corporate profits.” [“From the Pinkertons to the PATRIOT Act: The Trajectory of Political Policing in the United States, 1870 to the Present”, pp. 1–72, CR: The New Centennial Review, vol. 4, No. 1, pp. 11–2] In the words of one historian of the Pinkerton Agency ”[b]y the mid-1850s a few businessmen saw the need for greater control over their employees; their solution was to sponsor a private detective system. In February 1855, Allan Pinkerton, after consulting with six midwestern railroads, created such an agency in Chicago.” [Frank Morn, quoted by Churchill, Op. Cit., p. 4] As we have noted in section F.7.1, such regimes remained into the 1930s, with corporations having their own well armed private police to enforce the propertarian hierarchy (see also section F.6.2).

So, in terms of monopoly of authority over a given area the capitalist company and the state share a common feature. The reason why wage labour violates Individualist Anarchist principles is clear. If the workers who use a workplace do not own it, then someone else will (i.e. the owner, the boss). This in turn means that the owner can tell those who use the resource what to do, how to do it and when. That is, they are the sole authority over the workplace and those who use it. However, according to Tucker, the state can be defined (in part) as “the assumption of sole authority over a given area and all within it.” Tucker considered this element as “common to all States” and so opposition to the state logically implies support for workers’ self-management for only in this case can people govern themselves during the working day (see section B.4 for more discussion). Even with Tucker’s other aspect, “aggression”, there are issues. Competition is inherently aggressive, with companies seeking to expand their market share, go into new markets, drive their competitors out of business, and so forth. Within the firm itself, bosses always seek to make workers do more work for less, threatening them with the sack if they object.

Tucker’s comments on strikers brings to light an interesting contradiction in his ideas. After all, he favoured a system of “property” generally defined by use and occupancy, that is whoever uses and possesses is to be consider the owner. As we indicated in section G.1.2, this applied to both the land and what was on it. In particular, Tucker pointed to the example of housing and argued that rent would not be collected from tenants nor would they be evicted for not paying it. Why should this position change when it is a workplace rather than a house? Both are products of labour, so that cannot be the criteria. Nor can it be because one is used for work as Tucker explicitly includes the possibility that a house could be used as a workplace.

Thus we have a massive contradiction between Tucker’s “occupancy and use” perspective on land use and his support for wage labour. One letter to Liberty (by “Egoist”) pointed out this contradiction. As the letter put it, “if production is carried on in groups, as it now is, who is the legal occupier of the land? The employer, the manager, or the ensemble of those engaged in the co-operative work? The latter appearing the only rational answer.” [Op. Cit., no. 143, p. 4] Sadly, Tucker’s reply did not address this particular question and so we are left with an unresolved contradiction.

Looking at the Homestead strike which provoked Tucker’s rant against strikers, the similarities between wage labour and statism become even clearer. The 3,800 workers locked out by Carnegie at Homestead in 1892 definitely occupied and used the works from which they were barred entry by the owners. The owners, obviously, did not use the workplace themselves — they hired others to occupy and use it for them. Now, why should “occupancy and use” be acceptable for land and housing but not for workplaces? There is no reason and so wage labour, logically, violates “occupancy and use” — for under wage labour, those who occupy and use a workplace do not own or control it. Hence “occupancy and use” logically implies workers’ control and ownership.

The Homestead lockout of 1892, ironically enough, occurred when the owners of the steel mill provoked the union in order to break its influence in the works. In other words, the property owners practised “aggression” to ensure their “sole authority over a given area and all within it” (to use Tucker’s words). As such, the actions of the capitalist property owners meets Tucker’s definition of the state exactly. According to the Carnegie Steel Company, it had “a legal right to the enjoyment of our property, and to operate it as we please … But for years our works have been managed … by men who do not own a dollar in them. This will stop right here. The Carnegie Steel Company will hereafter control their works in the employment of labour.” Secretary Lovejoy of the corporation was clear on this, and its wider impact, arguing that ”[t]his outbreak will settle one matter forever, and that is that the Homestead mill hereafter will be run non-union .. . other mills heretofore union [will] become non-union and thus free their owners from the arbitrary dictation of labour unions.” [quoted by Peter Krause, The Battle for Homestead 1880–1892, p. 12 and pp. 39–40]

In other words, the workers will henceforth be submit to the arbitrary dictation of the owners, who would be free to exercise their authority without hindrance of those subject to it. Unsurprisingly, for the workers, the strike was over their freedom and independence, of their ability to control their own labour. As one historian notes, the “lockout crushed the largest trade union in America … the victory at Homestead gave Carnegie and his fellow steelmasters carte blanche in the administration of their works. The lockout put ‘the employers in the saddle’ — precisely where they would remain, without union interference, for four decades.” The Pinkerton agents “were preparing to enforce the authority putatively designated to them by Henry Clay Frick” (although Frick “had been counting on the ultimate authority of the state from the outset.”). [Peter Krause, Op. Cit., p. 13, p. 14 and p. 25]

Nor was the 1892 lockout an isolated event. There had been a long history of labour disputes at Homestead. In 1882, for example, a strike occurred over the “question of complete and absolute submission on the part of manufacturers to the demands of their men,” in the words of one ironmaster. [quoted by Krause, Op. Cit., p. 178] It was a question of power, whether bosses would have sole and total authority over a given area and all within it. The workers won that strike, considering it “a fight for freedom.” As such, the 1892 lockout was the end result of years of management attempts to break the union and so “in creating and fortifying the system that had, over the years, produced the conditions for this violence, Carnegie’s role cannot be denied. What provoked the apparently ‘barbaric’ and ‘thankless’ workers of Homestead was not, as an account limited to that day might indicate, the sudden intrusion of Pinkerton agents into their dispute but the slow and steady erosion of their rights and their power, over which Carnegie and his associates in steel and politics had presided for years, invisibly but no less violently.” [Krause, Op. Cit., p. 181 and p. 43]

The conflict at Homestead was thus directly related to the issue of ensuring that the “sole authority over a given area and all within it” rested in the hands of the capitalists. This required smashing the union for, as Tucker noted, no state “has ever tolerated a rival State within its borders.” The union was a democratic organisation, whose “basic organisation … was the lodge, which elected its own president and also appointed a mill committee to enforce union rules within a given department of the steelworks. The union maintained a joint committee of the entire works.” Elected union officials who “act[ed] without the committee’s authorisation” were “replaced. Over and above the Advisory Committee stood the mass meeting” which was “often open to all workers,” not just union members. This union democracy was the key to the strike, as Carnegie and his associates “were deeply troubled by its effects in the workplace. So troubled, in fact, that beyond the issue of wages or any issues related to it, it was unionism itself that was the primary target of Carnegie’s concern.” [Krause, Op. Cit., p. 293]

Instead of a relatively libertarian regime, in which those who did the work managed it, the lockout resulted in the imposition of a totalitarian regime for the “purpose of more complete oppression of its subjects” and by its competitive advantage on the market, the “extension of its boundaries” (to use Tucker’s description of the state). “Without the encumbrance of the union,” notes Krause, “Carnegie was able to slash wages, impose twelve-hour workdays, eliminate five hundred jobs, and suitably assuage his republican conscience with the endowment of a library.” And so “the labour difficulties that precipitated the Homestead Lockout had less to do with quantifiable matter such as wages and wage scales than with the politics of the workers’ claim to a franchise within the mill — that is, the legitimacy, authority, and power of the union.” [Op. Cit., p. 361 and p. 294]

The contradictions in wage labour become clear when Secretary Lovejoy stated that with the lockout the owners had declared that “we have decided to run our Homestead Mill ourselves.” [quoted by Krause, Op. Cit., p. 294] Except, of course, they did no such thing. The workers who occupied and used the steel mills still did the work, but without even the smallest say in their labour. A clearer example of why wage labour violates the individualist anarchist principle of “occupancy and use” would be harder to find. As labour historian David Montgomery put it, the Homestead lockout was a “crisp and firm declaration that workers’ control was illegal — that the group discipline in the workplace and community by which workers enforced their code of mutualism in opposition to the authority and power of the mill owners was tantamount to insurrection against the republic — clearly illuminated the ideological and political dimensions of workplace struggles.” [The Fall of the House of Labour, p. 39] This defeat of America’s most powerful trade union was achieved by means of a private police, supported by the State militia.

Thus we have numerous contradictions in Tucker’s position. On the one hand, occupancy and use precludes landlords renting land and housing but includes capitalists hiring workers to “occupancy and use” their land and workplaces; the state is attacked for being a monopoly of power over a given area while the boss can have the same authority; opposing voluntary wage labour shows that you are an authoritarian, but opposing voluntary landlordism is libertarian. Yet, there is no logical reason for workplaces to be excluded from “occupancy and use.” As Tucker put it:

“Occupancy and use is the only title to land in which we will protect you; if you attempt to use land which another is occupying and using, we will protect him against you; if another attempts to use land to which you lay claim, but which you are not occupying and using, we will not interfere with him; but of such land as you occupy and use you are the sole master, and we will not ourselves take from you, or allow anyone else to take from you, whatever you may get out of such land.” [Liberty, no. 252, p. 3]

Needless to say, neither Carnegie nor Frick were occupying and using the Homestead steel-mills nor were any of the other shareholders. It was precisely the autocratic authority of the owners which their private army and the state militia sought to impose on those who used, but did not own, the steel-mills (as the commander of the state troops noted, others “can hardly believe the actual communism of these people. They believe the works are theirs quite as much as Carnegie’s.” [quoted by Jeremy Brecher, Strike!, p. 60] As we discuss in the next section, this is precisely why most anarchists have opposed wage labour as being incompatible with general anarchist principles. In other words, a consistent anarchism precludes all forms of authoritarian social relationships.

There is another reason why wage labour is at odds with anarchist principles. This is to do with our opposition to exploitation and usury. Simply put, there are the problems in determining what are the “whole wages” of the employer and the employee. The employer, of course, does not simply get his “share” of the collectively produced output, they get the whole amount. This would mean that the employer’s “wages” are simply the difference between the cost of inputs and the price the goods were sold on the market. This would imply that the market wage of the labour has to be considered as equalling the workers’ “whole wage” and any profits equalling the bosses “whole wage” (some early defences of profit did argue precisely this, although the rise of shareholding made such arguments obviously false). The problem arises in that the employer’s income is not determined independently of their ownership of capital and their monopoly of power in the workplace. This means that the boss can appropriate for themselves all the advantages of co-operation and self-activity within the workplace simply because they owned it. Thus, “profits” do not reflect the labour (“wages”) of the employer.

It was this aspect of ownership which made Proudhon such a firm supporter of workers associations. As he put it, a “hundred men, uniting or combining their forces, produce, in certain cases, not a hundred times, but two hundred, three hundred, a thousand times as much. This is what I have called collective force. I even drew from this an argument, which, like so many others, remains unanswered, against certain forms of appropriation: that it is not sufficient to pay merely the wages of a given number of workmen, in order to acquire their product legitimately; that they must be paid twice, thrice or ten times their wages, or an equivalent service rendered to each one of them.” Thus, “all workers must associate, inasmuch as collective force and division of labour exist everywhere, to however slight a degree.” Industrial democracy, in which “all positions are elective, and the by-laws subject to the approval of the members, would ensure that “the collective force, which is a product of the community, ceases to be a source of profit to a small number of managers” and becomes “the property of all the workers.” [The General Idea of the Revolution, pp. 81–2, p. 217, p. 222 and p. 223]

Proudhon had first expounded this analysis in What is Property? in 1840 and, as K. Steven Vincent notes, this was ”[o]one of the reasons Proudhon gave for rejecting ‘property’ [and] was to become an important motif of subsequent socialist thought.” Thus “collective endeavours produced an additional value” which was “unjustly appropriated by the proprietaire.” [Pierre-Joseph Proudhon the Rise of French Republican Socialism p. 64 and p. 65] Marx, it should be noted, concurred. Without mentioning Proudhon, he stressed how a capitalist buys the labour-power of 100 men and “can set the 100 men to work. He pays them the value of 100 independent labour-powers, but does not pay them for the combined labour power of the 100.” [Capital, Vol. 1, p. 451] Only co-operative workplaces can ensure that the benefits of co-operative labour are not monopolised by the few who happen to own, and so control, the means of production.

If this is not done, then it becomes a case of simply renaming “profits” to “wages” and saying that they are the result of the employers work rather than their ownership of capital. However, this is not the case as some part of the “wages” of the employer is derived purely from their owning capital (and is usury, charging to allow use) while, for the workers, it is unlikely to equal their product in the short run. Given that the major rationale for the Homestead strike of 1892 was to secure the despotism of the property owner, the results of breaking the union should be obvious. According to David Brody in his work The Steel Workers, after the union was broken “the steel workers output doubled in exchange for an income rise of one-fifth … The accomplishment was possible only with a labour force powerless to oppose the decisions of the steel men.” [quoted by Jeremy Brecher, Op. Cit., p. 62] At Homestead, between 1892 and 1907 the daily earnings of highly-skilled plate-mill workers fell by a fifth while their hours increased from eight to twelve. [Brecher, Op. Cit., p. 63] Who would dare claim that the profits this increased exploitation created somehow reflected the labour of the managers rather than their total monopoly of authority within the workplace?

The logic is simple — which boss would employ a worker unless they expected to get more out of their labour than they pay in wages? And why does the capitalist get this reward? They own “capital” and, consequently, their “labour” partly involves excluding others from using it and ordering about those whom they do allow in — in exchange for keeping the product of their labour. As Marx put it, “the worker works under the control of the capitalist to whom his labour belongs” and “the product is the property of the capitalist and not that of the worker, its immediate producer.” And so ”[f]rom the instant he steps into the workshop, the use-value of his labour-power and therefore its use, which is labour, belongs to the capitalist.” [Op. Cit., p. 291 and p. 292] This suggests that exploitation takes place within production and so a contract for wages made beforehand simply cannot be expected to anticipate the use-value extracted by the boss from the workers subjected to his authority. Thus wage labour and exploitation would go hand-in-hand — and so Most’s horror at Tucker’s support for it.

As best, it could be argued that such “wages” would be minimal as workers would be able to swap jobs to get higher wages and, possibly, set up co-operatives in competition. However, this amounts to saying that, in the long run, labour gets its full product and to say that is to admit in the short term that labour is exploited. Yet nowhere did Tucker argue that labour would get its full product eventually in a free society, rather he stressed that liberty would result in the end of exploitation. Nor should we be blind to the fact that a market economy is a dynamic one, making the long run unlikely to ever appear (“in the long run we are all dead” as Keynes memorably put it). Combine this with the natural barriers to competition we indicated in section G.4 and we are left with problems of usury/exploitation in an individualist anarchist system.

The obvious solution to these problems is to be found in Proudhon, namely the use of co-operatives for any workplace which cannot be operated by an individual. This was the also the position of the Haymarket anarchists, with August Spies (for example) arguing that “large factories and mines, and the machinery of exchange and transportation … have become too vast for private control. Individuals can no longer monopolise them.” [contained in Albert Parsons, Anarchism: Its Philosophy and Scientific Basis, pp. 60–1] Proudhon denounced property as “despotism”, for Albert Parsons the “wage system of labour is a despotism.” [Op. Cit., p. 21]

As Frank H. Brooks notes, “producer and consumer co-operatives were a staple of American labour reform (and of Proudhonian anarchism).” This was because they “promised the full reward of labour to the producer, and commodities at cost to the consumer.” [The Individualist Anarchists, p. 110] This was the position of Voltairine de Cleyre (during her individualist phase) as well as her mentor Dyer Lum:

“Lum drew from the French anarchist Proudhon … a radical critique of classical political economy and … a set of positive reforms in land tenure and banking … Proudhon paralleled the native labour reform tradition in several ways. Besides suggesting reforms in land and money, Proudhon urged producer co-operation.” [Frank H. Brooks, “Ideology, Strategy, and Organization: Dyer Lum and the American Anarchist Movement”, pp. 57–83, Labor History, Vol. 34, No. 1, p. 72]

So, somewhat ironically given his love of Proudhon, it was, in fact, Most who was closer to the French anarchist’s position on this issue than Tucker. Kropotkin echoed Proudhon’s analysis when he noted that “the only guarantee not to be robbed of the fruits of your labour is to possess the instruments of labour.” [The Conquest of Bread, p. 145] In other words, for a self-proclaimed follower of Proudhon, Tucker ignored the French anarchist’s libertarian arguments against wage labour. The key difference between the communist-anarchists and Proudhon was on the desirability of making the product of labour communal or not (although both recognised the right of people to share as they desired). However, it must be stressed that Proudhon’s analysis was not an alien one to the individualist anarchist tradition. Joshua King Ingalls, for example, presented a similar analysis to Proudhon on the issue of joint production as well as its solution in the form of co-operatives (see section G.1.3 for details) and Dyer Lum was a firm advocator of the abolition of wage labour. So integrating the insights of social anarchism on this issue with individualist anarchism would not be difficult and would build upon existing tendencies within it.

In summary, social anarchists argue that individualist anarchism does not solve the social question. If it did, then they would be individualists. They argue that in spite of Tucker’s claims, workers would still be exploited in any form of individualist anarchism which retained significant amounts of wage labour as well as being a predominantly hierarchical, rather than libertarian, society. As we argue in the next section, this is why most anarchists consider individualist anarchism as being an inconsistent form of anarchism.

G.4.2 Why do social anarchists think individualism is inconsistent anarchism?

From our discussion of wage labour in the last section, some may consider that Tucker’s support for wage labour would place him outside the ranks of anarchism. After all, this is one of the key reasons why most anarchists reject “anarcho”-capitalism as a form of anarchism. Surely, it could be argued, if Murray Rothbard is not an anarchist, then why is Tucker?

That is not the case and the reason is obvious — Tucker’s support for wage labour is inconsistent with his ideas on “occupancy and use” while Rothbard’s are in line with his capitalist property rights. Given the key place self-management holds in almost all anarchist thought, unsurprisingly we find Chomsky summarising the anarchist position thusly:

“A consistent anarchist must oppose private ownership of the means of production and the wage slavery which is a component of this system, as incompatible with the principle that labour must be freely undertaken and under the control of the producer … A consistent anarchist must oppose not only alienated labour but also the stupefying specialisation of labour that takes place when the means for developing production.” [“Notes on Anarchism”, Chomsky on Anarchism, p. 123]

Thus the “consistent anarchist, then, will be a socialist, but a socialist of a particular sort.” [Op. Cit., p. 125] Which suggests that Tucker’s position is one of inconsistent anarchism. While a socialist, he did not take his libertarian positions to their logical conclusions — the abolition of wage labour. There is, of course, a certain irony in this. In response to Johann Most calling his ideas “Manchesterism”, Tucker wrote “what better can a man who professes Anarchism want than that? For the principle of Manchesterism is liberty, and consistent Manchesterism is consistent adherence to liberty. The only inconsistency of the Manchester men lies in their infidelity to liberty in some of its phases. And these infidelity to liberty in some of its phases is precisely the fatal inconsistency of the ‘Freiheit’ school … Yes, genuine A narchism is consistent Manchesterism, and Communistic or pseudo-Anarchism is inconsistent Manchesterism.” [Liberty, no. 123, p. 4]

In other words, if individualist anarchism is, as Tucker claimed, “consistent Manchesterism” then, argue social anarchists, individualist anarchism is “inconsistent” anarchism. This means that some of Tucker’s arguments contradict some of his own fundamental principles, most obviously his indifference to wage labour. This, as argued, violates “occupancy and use”, his opposition to exploitation and, as it is a form of hierarchy, his anarchism.

To see what we mean we must point out that certain individualist anarchists are not the only “inconsistent” ones that have existed. The most obvious example is Proudhon, whose sexism is well known, utterly disgraceful and is in direct contradiction to his other ideas and principles. While Proudhon attacked hierarchy in politics and economics, he fully supported patriarchy in the home. This support for a form of archy does not refute claims that Proudhon was an anarchist, it just means that certain of his ideas were inconsistent with his key principles. As one French anarcha-feminist critic of Proudhon put it in 1869: “These so-called lovers of liberty, if they are unable to take part in the direction of the state, at least they will be able to have a little monarchy for their personal use, each in his own home … Order in the family seems impossible to them — well then, what about in the state?” [André Léo, quoted by Carolyn J. Eichner, ”‘Vive La Commune!’ Feminism, Socialism, and Revolutionary Revival in the Aftermath of the 1871 Paris Commune,”, pp. 68–98, Journal of Women’s History, Vol. 15, No.2, p. 75] Rejecting monarchy and hierarchy on the state level and within the workplace while supporting it — in the form of rule by the father — on the family level was simply illogical and inconsistent. Subsequent anarchists (from Bakunin onwards) solved this obvious contradiction by consistently applying anarchist principles and opposing sexism and patriarchy. In other words, by critiquing Proudhon’s sexism by means of the very principles he himself used to critique the state and capitalism.

Much the same applies to individualist anarchists. The key issue is that, given their own principles, individualist anarchism can easily become consistent anarchism. That is why it is a school of anarchism, unlike “anarcho”-capitalism. All that is required is to consistently apply “occupancy and use” to workplaces (as Proudhon advocated). By consistently applying this principle they can finally end exploitation along with hierarchy, so bringing all their ideas into line.

Tucker’s position is also in direct opposition to Proudhon’s arguments, which is somewhat ironic since Tucker stressed being inspired by and following the French anarchist and his ideas (Tucker referred to Proudhon as being both “the father of the Anarchistic school of socialism” as well as “being the Anarchist par excellence” [Tucker, Instead of a Book, p. 391]). Tucker is distinctly at odds with Proudhon who consistently opposed wage-labour and so, presumably, was also an advocate of “pseudo-Anarchism” alongside Kropotkin and Most. For Proudhon, the worker has “sold and surrendered his liberty” to the proprietor, with the proprietor being “a man, who, having absolute control of an instrument of production, claims the right to enjoy the product of the instrument without using it himself.” This leads to exploitation and if “the labourer is proprietor of the value which he creates, it follows” that “all production being necessarily collective, the labourer is entitled to a share of the products and profits commensurate with his labour” and that, “all accumulated capital being social property, no one can be its exclusive proprietor.” [What is Property?, p. 130, p. 293 and p. 130] With “machinery and the workshop, divine right — that is, the principle of authority — makes its entrance into political economy. Capital … Property … are, in economic language, the various names of … Power, Authority.” Thus, under capitalism, the workplace has a “hierarchical organisation.” There are three alternatives, capitalism (“that is, monopoly and what follows”), state socialism (“exploitation by the State”) “or else … a solution based on equality, — in other words, the organisation of labour, which involves the negation of political economy and the end of property.” [System of Economical Contradictions, pp. 203–4 and p. 253]

For Proudhon, employees are “subordinated, exploited” and their “permanent condition is one of obedience.” The wage worker is, therefore, a “slave.” Indeed, capitalist companies “plunder the bodies and souls of wage workers” and they are “an outrage upon human dignity and personality.” However, in a co-operative the situation changes and the worker is an “associate” and “forms a part of the producing organisation” and “forms a part of the sovereign power, of which he was before but the subject.” Without co-operation and association, “the workers … would remain related as subordinates and superiors, and there would ensue two industrial castes of masters and wage-workers, which is repugnant to a free and democratic society.” [The General Idea of the Revolution in the Nineteenth Century, p. 216, p. 219 and p. 216] As Robert Graham notes, “Proudhon’s market socialism is indissolubly linked to his notions of industry democracy and workers’ self-management.” [“Introduction”, Op. Cit.,, p. xxxii]

This analysis lead Proudhon to call for co-operatives to end wage labour. This was most consistently advocated in his The General Idea of the Revolution but appears repeatedly in his work. Thus we find him arguing in 1851 that socialism is “the elimination of misery, the abolition of capitalism and of wage-labour, the transformation of property, … the effective and direct sovereignty of the workers, .. . the substitution of the contractual regime for the legal regime.” [quoted by John Ehrenberg, Proudhon and his Age, p. 111] Fourteen years later, he argued the same, with the aim of his mutualist ideas being “the complete emancipation of the workers … the abolition of the wage worker.” Thus a key idea of Proudhon’s politics is the abolition of wage labour: “Industrial Democracy must… succeed Industrial Feudalism.” [quoted by K. Steven Vincent, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and the Rise of French Republican Socialism p. 222 and p. 167] “In democratising us,” Proudhon argued, “revolution has launched us on the path of industrial democracy.” [Selected Writings of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, p. 63]

(As an aside, it is deeply significant how different Proudhon’s analysis of hierarchy and wage-labour is to Murray Rothbard’s. For Rothbard, both “hierarchy” and “wage-work” were part of “a whole slew of institutions necessary to the triumph of liberty” (others included “granting of funds by libertarian millionaires, and a libertarian political party”). He strenuously objected to those “indicting” such institutions “as non-libertarian or non-market”. [Konkin on Libertarian Strategy] For Proudhon — as well as Bakunin, Kropotkin, and others — both wage-labour and hierarchy were anti-libertarian by their very nature. How could hier-archy be “necessary” for the triumph of an-archy? Logically, it makes no sense. An-archy, by definition, means no-archy rather than wholehearted support for a specific form of archy, namely hier-archy! At best, Rothbard was a “voluntary archist” not an anarchist.)

As Charles A. Dana put it (in a work published by Tucker and described by him as “a really intelligent, forceful, and sympathetic exposition of mutual banking”), ”[b]y introducing mutualism into exchanges and credit we introduce it everywhere, and labour will assume a new aspect and become truly democratic.” Labour “must be reformed by means of association as well as banking” for “if labour be not organised, the labourers will be made to toil for others to receive the fruit thereof as heretofore.” These co-operatives “to a great extent abolish the exploitation of the employed worker by the employing capitalist, and make the worker his own employer; but, in order to completely gain that end, the associations must be associated, united in one body for mutual aid.” This is “the Syndicate of Production.” [Proudhon and His “Bank of the People”, p. 45, p. 50 and p. 54] Tucker, however, asserted that Proudhon included the syndicate of production “to humour those of his associated who placed stress on these features. He did not consider them of any value.” [Op. Cit., pp. 51–2] However, he was simply incorrect. Industrial democracy was a key aspect of Proudhon’s ideas, as was the creation of an “agro-industrial federation” based on these self-managed associations. This can be seen from Tucker’s own comparison of Marx and Proudhon made on the formers death:

“For Karl Marx, the ‘egalitaire’, we feel the profoundest respect; as for Karl Marx, the ‘authoritaire’, we must consider him an enemy… . Proudhon was years before Marx [in discussing the struggle of the classes and the privileges and monopolies of capital]… . The vital difference between Proudhon and Marx [was] to be found in their respective remedies which they proposed. Man would nationalise the productive and distributive forces; Proudhon would individualise and associate them. Marx would make the labourers political masters; Proudhon would abolish political mastership entirely … Man believed in compulsory majority rule; Proudhon believed in the voluntary principle. In short, Marx was an ‘authoritaire’; Proudhon was a champion of Liberty.” [Liberty, no. 35, p. 2]

Ironically, therefore, by Tucker placing so much stress in opposing capitalist exploitation, instead of capitalist oppression, he was actually closer to the “authoritaire” Marx than Proudhon and, like Marx, opened the door to various kinds of domination and restrictions on individual self-government within anarchism. Again we see a support for contract theory creating authoritarian, not libertarian, relationships between people. Simply out, the social relationships produced by wage labour shares far too much in common with those created by the state not to be of concern to any genuine libertarian. Arguing that it is based on consent is as unconvincing as those who defend the state in similar terms.

And we must add that John Stuart Mill (who agreed with the Warrenite slogan “Individual Sovereignty”) faced with the same problem that wage labour made a mockery of individual liberty came to the same conclusion as Proudhon. He thought that if “mankind is to continue to improve” (and it can only improve within liberty, we must add) then in the end one form of association will predominate, “not that which can exist between a capitalist as chief, and workpeople without a voice in management, but the association of the labourers themselves on terms of equality, collectively owning the capital with which they carry on their operations, and working under managers elected and removable by themselves.” [quoted by Carole Pateman, Participation and Democratic Theory, p. 34]

Tucker himself pointed out that “the essence of government is control. .. He who attempts to control another is a governor, an aggressor, an invader.” [Instead of a Book, p. 23] So when Tucker suggests that (non-exploitative, and so non-capitalist) wage labour could exist in individualist anarchy there is a distinct contradiction. Unlike wage labour under capitalism, workers would employ other workers and all would (in theory) receive the full product of their labour. Be that as it may, such relationships are not libertarian and so contradict Tucker’s own theories on individual liberty (as Proudhon and Mill recognised with their own, similar, positions). Wage labour is based on the control of the worker by the employer; hence Tucker’s contract theory can lead to a form of “voluntary” and “private” government within the workplace. This means that, while outside of a contract an individual is free, within it he or she is governed. This violates Tucker’s concept of “equality of liberty,” since the boss has obviously more liberty than the worker during working hours.

Therefore, logically, individualist anarchism must follow Proudhon and support co-operatives and self-employment in order to ensure the maximum individual self-government and labour’s “natural wage.” So Tucker’s comments about strikers and wage labour show a basic inconsistency in his basic ideas. This conclusion is not surprising. As Malatesta argued:

“The individualists give the greatest importance to an abstract concept of freedom and fail to take into account, or dwell on the fact, that real, concrete freedom is the outcome of solidarity and voluntary co-operation … They certainly believe that to work in isolation is fruitless and that an individual, to ensure a living as a human being and to materially and morally enjoy all the benefits of civilisation, must either exploit — directly or indirectly — the labour of others . .. or associate with his [or her] fellows and share their pains and the joys of life. And since, being anarchists, they cannot allow the exploitation of one by another, they must necessarily agree that to be free and live as human beings they have to accept some degree and form of voluntary communism.” [The Anarchist Revolution, p. 16]

Occupancy and use, therefore, implies the collective ownership of resources used by groups which, in turn, implies associative labour and self-management. In other words, “some degree and form of voluntary communism.” Ultimately, as John P. Clark summarised, opposition to authority which is limited to just the state hardly makes much sense from a libertarian perspective:

“Neither … is there any reason to consider such a position a very consistent or convincing form of anarchism … A view of anarchism which seeks to eliminate coercion and the state, but which overlooks other ways in which people dominate other people, is very incomplete and quite contradictory type of anarchism. The most thorough-going and perceptive anarchist theories have shown that all types of domination are interrelated, all are destructive, and all must be eliminated … Anarchism may begin as a revolt against political authority, but if followed to its logical conclusion it becomes an all-encompassing critique of the will to dominate and all its manifestations.” [Max Stirner’s Egoism, pp. 92–3]

Certain individualist anarchists were keenly aware of the fact that even free association need not be based on freedom for both parties. Take, for example, marriage. Marriage, correctly argued John Beverley Robinson, is based on “the promise to obey” and this results in “a very real subordination.” As part of “the general progress toward freedom in all things,” marriage will “become the union of those who are both equal and both free.” [Liberty, no. 287, p. 2] Why should property associated subordination be any better than patriarchal subordination? Does the fact that one only lasts 8 or 12 hours rather than 24 hours a day really make one consistent with libertarian principles and the other not?

Thus Tucker’s comments on wage labour indicates a distinct contradiction in his ideas. It violates his support for “occupancy and use” as well as his opposition to the state and usury. It could, of course, be argued that the contradiction is resolved because the worker consents to the authority of the boss by taking the job. However, it can be replied that, by this logic, the citizen consents to the authority of the state as a democratic state allows people to leave its borders and join another one — that the citizen does not leave indicates they consent to the state (this flows from Locke). When it came to the state, anarchists are well aware of the limited nature of this argument (as one individualist anarchist put it: “As well say that the government of New York or even of the United States is voluntary, and, if you don’t like New York Sunday laws, etc., you can secede and go to — South Carolina.” [A. H. Simpson, The Individualist Anarchists, p. 287]). In other words, consent of and by itself does not justify hierarchy for if it did, the current state system would be anarchistic. This indicates the weakness of contract theory as a means of guaranteeing liberty and its potential to generate, and justify, authoritarian social relationships rather than libertarian and liberty enhancing ones.

This explains anarchist opposition to wage labour, it undermines liberty and, as a result, allows exploitation to happen. Albert Parsons put it well. Under capitalism labour “is a commodity and wages is the price paid for it. The owner of this commodity — of labour — sells it, that is himself, to the owner of capital in order to live … The reward of the wage labourer’s activity is not the product of his labour — far from it.” This implies exploitation and so class struggle as there is a “irreconcilable conflict between wage labourers and capitalists, between those who buy labour or sell its products, and the wage worker who sells labour (himself) in order to live.” This is because the boss will seek to use their authority over the worker to make them produce more for the agreed wage. Given this, during a social revolution the workers “first act will, of necessity, be the application of communistic principles. They will expropriate all wealth; they will take possession of all foundries, workshops, factories, mines, etc., for in no other way could they be able to continue to produce what they require on a basis of equality, and be, at the same time, independent of any authority.” [Anarchism: Its Philosophy and Scientific Basis, p. 99, p. 104 and p. 166] Hence Kropotkin’s comment that “anarchism … refuses all hierarchical organisation and preaches free agreement.” [Anarchism, p. 137] To do otherwise is to contradict the basic ideas of anarchism.

Peter Kropotkin recognised the statist implications of some aspects of anarchist individualism which Tucker’s strike example highlights. Tucker’s anarchism, due to its uncritical support for contract theory, could result in a few people dominating economic life, because “no force” would result in the perpetuation of authority structures, with freedom simply becoming the “right to full development” of “privileged minorities.” But, Kropotkin argued, “as such monopolies cannot be maintained otherwise than under the protection of a monopolist legislation and an organised coercion by the State, the claims of these individualists necessarily end up in a return to the State idea and to that same coercion which they so fiercely attack themselves. Their position is thus the same as that of Spencer and of the so-called ‘Manchester school’ of economists, who also begin by a severe criticism of the State and end up in its full recognition in order to maintain the property monopolies, of which the State is the necessary stronghold.” [Op. Cit., p. 162]

Such would be the possible (perhaps probable) result of the individualists’ contract theory of freedom without a social background of communal self-management and ownership. As can be seen from capitalism, a society based on the abstract individualism associated with contract theory would, in practice, produce social relationships based on power and authority (and so force — which would be needed to back up that authority), not liberty. As we argued in section A.2.14, voluntarism is not enough in itself to preserve freedom. This result, as noted in section A.3, could only be avoided by workers’ control, which is in fact the logical implication of Tucker’s and other individualists’ proposals. This is hardly a surprising implication, since as we’ve seen, artisan production was commonplace in 19th-century America and its benefits were extolled by many individualists. Without workers’ control, individualist anarchism would soon become a form of capitalism and so statism — a highly unlikely intention of individualists like Tucker, who hated both.

Therefore, given the assumptions of individualist anarchism in both their economic and political aspects, it is forced along the path of co-operative, not wage, labour. In other words, individualist anarchism is a form of socialism as workers receive the full product of their labour (i.e. there is no non-labour income) and this, in turn, logically implies a society in which self-managed firms compete against each other on the free market, with workers selling the product of their labour and not the labour itself. As this unites workers with the means of production they use, it is not capitalism and instead a form of socialism based upon worker ownership and control of the places they work.

For individualist anarchists not to support co-operatives results in a contradiction, namely that the individualist anarchism which aims to secure the worker’s “natural wage” cannot in fact do so, while dividing society into a class of order givers and order takers which violates individual self-government. It is this contradiction within Tucker’s thought which the self-styled “anarcho”-capitalists take advantage of in order to maintain that individualist anarchism in fact implies capitalism (and so private-statism), not workers’ control. In order to reach this implausible conclusion, a few individualist anarchist ideas are ripped from their social context and applied in a way that makes a mockery of them.

Given this analysis, it becomes clear why few social anarchists exclude individualist anarchism from the anarchist tradition while almost all do so for “anarcho”-capitalism. The reason is simple and lies in the analysis that any individualist anarchism which supports wage labour is inconsistent anarchism. It can easily be made consistent anarchism by applying its own principles consistently. In contrast, “anarcho”-capitalism rejects so many of the basic, underlying, principles of anarchism and has consistently followed the logical conclusions of such a rejection into private statism and support for hierarchical authority associated with private property that it cannot be made consistent with the ideals of anarchism. In constrast, given its own principles, individualist anarchism can easily become consistent anarchism. That is why it is a school of anarchism, unlike “anarcho”-capitalism. All that is required is to consistently apply “occupancy and use” to workplaces (as Proudhon advocated as did many individualist anarchists). By consistently applying this principle it finally ends exploitation along with hierarchy, so bringing all its ideals into line.

As Malatesta argued, “anarchy, as understood by the anarchists and as only they can interpret it, is based on socialism. Indeed were it not for those schools of socialism which artificially divide the natural unity of the social question, and consider some aspects out of context . .. we could say straight out that anarchy is synonymous with socialism, for both stand for the abolition of the domination and exploitation of man by man, whether exercised at bayonet point or by a monopoly of the means of life.” Without socialism, liberty is purely “liberty … for the strong and the property owners to oppress and exploit the weak, those who have nothing … [so] lead[ing] to exploitation and domination, in other words, to authority … for freedom is not possible without equality, and real anarchy cannot exist without solidarity, without socialism.” [Anarchy, p. 48 and p. 47]

[randomthefox]

I don't think Eggman is capable of feeling love, not in the same way a "normal" person is. Like Robin Williams said "love is when you care about something else more than you care about yourself." I don't think Eggman is capable of caring about something else more than he cares about himself. But that doesn't mean he's completely devoid of the capacity to feel positively towards other people. Especially if he can relate those feelings back to himself.

The most obvious example being with his own family members, Gerald and Maria who he is able to readily view in a positive light because they're related to him. He looked upon his grandfather's achievements with admiration and was inspired by them, and he readily takes credit for Geralds accomplishments. The way he calls him "MY grandfather", as if he can soak up some of the credit due to Gerald by virtue of being his grandson. And the first and only time he EVER directly talks about Maria is when he's doing so for the sake of saying that he believes his own creation Sage could have inherited the things that made Maria so special - he remembers how people spoke of her and thinks about how that which people saw in Maria could be found now in Sage. As if he's trying to claim ownership of the positive things people said of his cousin by transposing them onto something he brought into existence.

He also very readily admits to Sonic's effective abilities and speaks of him as a worthy adversary on several occasions, many biographies even mentioning his has a respect for Sonic deep down. This seems contrary to how he views Sonic as a thorn in his side he would be happy to see disposed of, but those two feelings aren't mutually exclusive. There's an expression “A tribes greatness is figured on how mighty it's enemies be”. And Eggman has no enemy greater than Sonic. Eggman has fought him for decades and always produces a greater challenge against him and keeps coming back no matter how many times he's defeated, whereas others that Sonic has fought were one and dones. So the more he admits to Sonic's greatness, the better it reflects on himself - after all if he spoke of Sonic as a pathetic nuisance who was weak and pitiful and worthless, then what would that say about Eggman considering he continuously loses to Sonic? Sonic is the whetstone upon which Eggmans own greatness is sharpened.

Eggman has even directly taken inspiration from Sonic. Creating Metal Sonic, a robot that is just as fast as Sonic is proving that his technological prowess is capable of producing something that matches Sonic's natural innate abilities. Devising contingency plans and backups to always ensure his ultimate goals are fulfilled even if Plan A is thwarted by Sonic, stacking the deck so that he'll always win. Turning his intellect to lateral solutions and leashing the gods themselves in an effort to overcome Sonic and conquer the world. Eggman is a better tyrant than he would be if Sonic wasn't around, he's a challenge that he has to constantly improve in order to try and overcome, and admitting to Sonic as such reflects positively back upon himself. He WANTS Sonic gone so he can finally take over the world, but as long as Sonic is around he's happy to steal as much residual adulation as he can given that he's around.

And of course he's more than happy to praise his own creations, because everything he says about them is just a reflection upon himself since after all he brought them into existence. If they're effective and capable it's because he made them so. If they perform his tasks and duties exactly as he ordered them to it's because they're loyal and obedient to him (and of course if they fail it's due to their own incompetence and not his fault at all).

Eggman CAN perform external actions that for anyone else would appear to be acts of love. But love is a very self serving thing to a megalomaniacal narcissist like him.

[leelreallylikespersona]

Decaying Godhood- Chapter 2: Solemn Freedom

<- Chapter 1 ● Chapter 3 ->

“Nothing is moving…”

Nyx sat quietly on the ground, watching the three look out the giant golden door. Occasionally one of them would look back at her. It made her feel something unpleasant, she wasn’t entirely sure what it was though.

“No one is collapsing, either…” Minako said, “it’s like they’re frozen in time.”

“Do you think it’s just the view we have from here?” Minato asked.

“No,” Ryoji answered, “something doesn’t feel right… at all.”

Minako glanced back at Nyx, “do things feel off to you?”

She nodded.

“Well… what do we do?” Minako moved her attention to the other two.

“Wait.” Ryoji pointed out of the door, “something’s moving.”

The twins looked carefully.

“It looks like a person…” Minato said.

“No way,” Minako gently pulled the hair away from his eyes, “look again, no human has hair that white.”

“Akihiko-senpai had white hair, though.”

Minako shook her head, “but not that bright!”

Ryoji cleared his throat, “how about the feathers? Humans don’t have wings.”

“Are they wings? It looks more like a cape.” Minako let go of Minato’s hair, “check out all that gold too…”

“Either this guy is just really rich, or not human.” Minato said flatly, turning away.

“And those are mutually exclusive?” Ryoji moved away from the door. “They could be both.”

“I suppose so.”

“Guys.” Nyx flinched when all three quickly looked at her, “they’re moving, right? Does it matter what they look like?”

Ryoji sighed, “no, you’re right.” He faced the twins, “what should we do?”

“I don’t know, but…” Minako gestured out the door, “there’s someone else there now.”

Ryoji and Minato quickly looked out again.

“I’m going to investigate.” Ryoji said suddenly, “you two stay here… whatever is happening seems to only be affecting humans.”

“Wait, how do we know it’s safe?” Minako questioned, folding her arms.

“I can’t die, remember?”

“Yes but-“

“Ryoji!”

The three slowly looked at Nyx. She bit her tongue, “I’m sorry I didn’t mean to shout… it’s just.” She stood up, “have you felt anyone die?”

Ryoji narrowed his eyes, “what are you saying?”

“You’re Death,” she said, “you should be able to tell if people are leaving this world.”

Ryoji paused. Nyx could tell he didn’t want to take her words, but he pondered anyway.

“No one is dying.”

“There you have it,” Nyx said, “the world is at a standstill.“

Minato glanced at Ryoji.

“…You’re coming with me.” Ryoji slashed the chains off of Nyx’s wrists and neck, “I don’t trust you to stay with them.”

“That’s fair…” Nyx nodded, holding her wrist.

Minato placed a hand on Ryoji’s shoulder, “may I speak with you first?”

Nyx watched them wander off. Minako approached her, grabbing her hands.

“Listen, I know… he has every right to be mad at you, but…” Minako picked up her evoker, placing it in Nyx’s hands, “I hope you’ll protect him. Even if he doesn’t want you to.”

Nyx felt her eyes begin to water.

Minako smiled, “I don’t know if I can stay mad at you… it wasn’t really your fault, was it?”

“You don’t have to make excuses for me.”

“I know, but it wasn’t you, was it?”

Nyx could feel her heart sting. Minako was right, but she felt as though she couldn’t admit it.

“Does it matter?” Nyx asked, “I still tried to do it.”

“Nyx, you weren’t even a person, then,” Minako patted her shoulder, “you were… an idea, a force of nature. Of course you didn’t know the harm it would bring.” She held her hand, “I… know about Erebus. I’m sure reflecting on all of that now must…” Minako shook her head. “I’m putting my trust in you. Now is your chance to become a great individual.”

Now she couldn’t see. Tears flooded from her eyes, dropping onto her hands below.

“I know gods probably can’t get Personas, but… I want you to take that evoker with you.” Minako attempted to wipe away the tears with her stone fingers, “ah sorry! That probably isn’t very comforting.”

Nyx laughed slightly, “thank you, Minako.”

“Damn, you made her cry?”

Nyx could barely make out Minato’s form before her.

“I didn’t mean to…” Minako said.

Nyx wiped her eyes, looking at Ryoji. His gaze still held disdain, but had softened slightly.

“Oh that’s a good idea!” Minako noted Ryoji wearing a SEES armband. She removed her own, the bright red colour returning as she wrapped it around Nyx’s arm. “Now you guys gotta go be the heroes, okay?”

Nyx smiled softly, bowing to her, “I won’t let you down.”

“Ryoji,” Minato said, “are you gonna give it to her?”

Ryoji sighed, “if you act out I’m taking this back,” he held out the sword he had used while he was Nyx Avatar.

Nyx carefully took it, “thank you, Ryoji.”

Ryoji nodded, facing Minato again, “we’ll be back.”

Minato smiled softly, “and we’ll be watching over you two.”