Lysander Spooner

Lysander Spooner (Athol, Massachusetts, 1808 - Boston, 1887) was an American lawyer, entrepreneur and writer, a central figure of individualist anarchism in his country. His thought rests on the tradition of natural rights, and it has influenced both left-libertarian and right-libertarian thinkers.

He trained as a lawyer without attending college, and soon clashed with the legal barriers that, in his view, protected the rich from the competition of the poor. He joined the abolitionist cause, and his book The Unconstitutionality of Slavery (1845) argued that the Constitution did not support slavery, a position that split the abolitionists themselves. In 1844 he founded the American Letter Mail Company, a private postal service that competed with the government's and that, by most accounts, helped bring down letter postage rates. An 1851 law strengthening the federal postal monopoly put the company out of business.

His central ideas are gathered in No Treason (1870), where he argues that a government without the consent of the individuals it governs has no legitimate authority, and that laws violating natural rights do not bind anyone. He held that each person has absolute ownership of the fruit of their labour, and he opposed wage labour, which he saw as close to slavery. He thought vices that harm no one else should not be punished, proposed free banking, and imagined a society of small property owners governing themselves through voluntary associations and juries able to judge the justice of the laws. His influence reaches Murray Rothbard's natural-rights anarcho-capitalism, which acknowledged his legacy, and left-libertarian currents that regard him as a champion of anti-privilege thought.