LONG, Roderick T.- How Victor Yarros Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the State

YARROS, Victor S. Journaliste américain

There is no danger of my finding Anarchism ridiculous and abandoning it.
– Victor S. Yarros, Liberty, 13 August 1887
Victor Yarros, who now parades in the role of a mere observer, was for years my most active participant in Anarchistic propaganda, – a fact which he is now at pains to conceal. I once admired him; I now despise him. – Benjamin R. Tucker, Free Vistas 2 (1937)

Victor Yarros – our mystery philosopher from a few weeks back – was one of the leading figures of 19th-century American anarchism: disciple of Herbert Spencer, populariser of Lysander Spooner, and sometime co-editor of Benjamin Tucker’s periodical Liberty.
In the 20th century, however, Yarros eventually repudiated anarchism in favour of social democracy – becoming an admirer of the policies of Wilson and FDR, waxing enthusiastic about the T.V.A., and apparently even making his peace with the Soviet Union, though he remained skeptical of Marxism. (He also became an adherent to logical positivism, though oddly still combining this with a kind of ethical naturalism à la Spencer. He had already long since repudiated his brief flirtation with Tucker’s Stirnerite egoism in favour of a more Spencerian natural-rights position; for my own take on the Stirnerians-versus-Spencerians controversy, see my blog post Egoism and Anarchy.)