Baruch Spinoza’s necessitarian philosophy, as presented in his Ethics, is found in modern anarchist literature, as in the work of William Godwin or Mikhail Bakunin. Further, Spinoza’s psychology has been affirmed by the frustration-aggression theory, and so may be considered to be scientific. This scientific view of social psychology was at the heart of Radical Enlightenment thought, which is at the foundation of the Western revolutionary tradition. This tradition ultimately aims at interfering with the chain of frustration and aggression, themselves having their foundation in ignorance and superstition, and expression in political and religious authority. It is from the Spinozan thought behind the Radical Enlightenment that radicalism, and anarchism more specifically, came to be.
Spinoza, Necessity, and Blessedness
Spinoza’s philosophy was a complex relationship between his theological, political, ethical, and psychological understanding. A pantheist, he held God to be another name for Nature. A democratic republican, he opposed monarchy and ecclesiastical authority. A rational egoist and eudaemonist, he held ethical behavior to be that which is virtuous or rewards its user. As a precursor to social psychology, he held that one could nearly abolish one’s passions (overwhelming emotions) through a rational love of necessity, understood as God’s perfection.
Scholars such as Jonathan Israel center the Radical Enlightenment—which preceded and gave rise to the more familiar Moderate Enlightenment— on Spinoza and his immediate circle. This would make him the father of Western Enlightenment. Spinoza was a revolutionary, democratic republican. His Theological-Political Treatise is a manifesto for clandestine, democratic revolution, and in fact established the Western revolutionary tradition that has, so far, culminated in republican revolutions such as those in France and the Americas. Spinoza has been claimed, by Jonathan Israel, to be the first democratic philosopher.[1] He has also been suggested, by Daniel Garber, as the first proponent of philosophical anarchism,
because the more rational we become the less will we need external constraints. So at the limit when we are all perfectly rational—impossible, Spinoza realizes, but at that limit—there will be no need for government whatsoever. We will all simply, by virtue of our reason, behave well toward one another.[2]
Like the first philosopher to call himself an anarchist, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (over a century after Spinoza), Spinoza saw superstition, ignorance, and religious and political authority at the foundation of societal ills, and, like Proudhon—who named collective reason as a solution to superstition and ignorance— he believed reason, as produced in the democratic process, to be the means of abolishing these ills. By the combined mental effort of humanity, society could operate on reason rather than superstition, ignorance, or their corollary, authority. He says, in the Theological-Political Treatise, that
In a democracy, irrational commands are […] less to be feared: for it is almost impossible that the majority of a people, especially if it be a large one, should agree in an irrational design: and, moreover, the basis and aim of a democracy is to avoid the desires as irrational, and to bring men as far as possible under the control of reason, so that they may live in peace and harmony: if this basis be removed the whole fabric falls to ruin.[3]
Spinoza understood only God to have freedom of will, saying, this time in Ethics, “God acts solely by the laws of his own nature, and is not constrained by anyone.” This is very similar to Proudhon’s conception of the free instinct of society as a collective whole, and Spinoza’s use of democracy anticipates that of Proudhon’s conception of collective reason as a means of steering the individual away from superstition. For instance, Constance Margaret Hall, in The Sociology of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, says,
Proudhon insisted that only society as a collective being could follow its “instinct” freely. This was so because the superior reason in the group would disengage itself gradually from the reflections of individual members of the group and would consequently always lead the group in the “right” direction, namely in the direction of the constructive working out of the principle of justice.[4]
Substitute society as a collective being, for God, and Spinoza and Proudhon are in agreement about the nature of freedom for collectives. Both Spinoza and Proudhon concerned themselves with the freedom of both the collective and the individual, and the interaction between their freedoms. The difference is that Spinoza presents absolute freedom only to Nature as a whole, whereas Proudhon presents it to society. Constance says,
Flowing from the collective reason of society, social justice would harness social forces which would otherwise oppress individual liberty as well as collective liberty, especially the liberty of groups.[5]
Another radical, Condorcet—the father of social choice theory and the Condorcet method of voting—would make mathematical arguments favoring democracy, preferred to enlightened magistrates. Collective reason, in some form or another, was at the heart of the Radical Enlightenment’s fight for collective liberty. And at the heart of collective reason was Spinoza’s influence.
Spinoza’s philosophy was one of necessitarianism, the view that everything happens according to necessity. By this view, there is no such thing as true chance, freedom of will, accidents of Nature, or etc. because everything is the product of a myriad of causes that have ensured that the outcome would be the exact way that it is. For another outcome to be produced, one would have to exist in an entirely different Universe, with a different history and laws of causation. One appears to make choices, but those choices are the necessary outcome of one’s environment, inner impulses, and learned behavior, which are exactly as they are at the time a decision is reached. While they may differ from time to time; in any given moment, they cause us to make the choices that we do.
For Spinoza, as well as many other freethinkers and rational mystics, the only surefire way to make better choices is to abolish one’s own ignorance, to come to know the causes that make things as they are, that make us who we are. When one comes to understand that there are causes for everything, and that these causes are a part of God’s perfect necessity, which one loves with all of one’s heart, one is said to be “blessed,” and is understood to be capable of overcoming their passions to some degree or another. Spinoza says, “In proportion as the mind understands more things by reason and intuition, it is less subject to those emotions which are evil, and stands in less fear of death.”[6]
Spinoza lays out a precursor to social psychology’s frustration-aggression theory, which will be a focal point for the rest of this paper. Spinoza holds that humans are afflicted by what he calls “the passions,” referring to strong emotions. These emotions are, evidently, a result of our understanding of the things that happen to us, and so are connected to causes of their own. However, these emotions correspond to behaviors as well. Spinoza suggests that people will try to harm those that they hate and benefit those they love, as seen as good or evil elements in their lives. However, he also suggests—something like a Christian arguing for agape, or brotherly love— that love is the only way to conquer hate.
For Spinoza, “Hatred is increased by being reciprocated, and can on the other hand be destroyed by love.”[7] This is achieved by abolishing the concept of evil by appreciating all of existence as a part of God’s perfection, and loving God with all of one’s being. When one understands one’s enemies as a part of God’s perfection, by understanding all causes as a part of God, one can then love one’s enemies and abolish evil and hatred. The goal becomes to understand the causes of the undesired behavior, both for mental relief and in order to ensure the future is different. And Spinoza certainly did want to make changes to the flows of frustration and aggression, and he felt the most important way to do this way through socio-political action. While he found religious and political authority to be a source of frustration and aggression, Spinoza’s revolution was to be established upon a foundation of love, rather than hate. His blessedness (his name, Baruch, means “blessed”) was the vehicle by which he could overturn ignorance and authority with rational love of God, the whole of existence.
Frustration-Aggression in Social Psychology and Spinoza’s Ethics
Baruch Spinoza’s conceptions of the development of, and interactions between, love and hate anticipates the frustration-aggression theory in social psychology that was developed hundreds of years after his death. Spinoza held that negative things that happen to us, which excite our passions (or strong emotions), and which are not understood, develop into hatred and a desire to cause harm to the object of our hate. However, he held that by understanding the ultimate causes of our suffering—gaining blessedness—we may avoid our hatred, and approach the world with rational love.
The frustration-aggression theory was established by John Dollard, Neal Miller, Leonard Doob, Orval Mowrer, and Robert Sears, in the book Frustration and Aggression. Similar to Spinoza, this theory strongly suggests that aggression always results as a consequence of frustration. With some care as to the details, and with some slight modification, this holds to be so. Frustration can be avoided, there are other causes of aggression (such as opportunism), and aggression can be displaced. Further, contributors to the theory, such as Leonard Berkowitz, suggest an intermediary stage of anger between frustration and aggression. Nonetheless, frustration develops at least into anger, which, if not alleviated, develops into aggression or remains as residual anger, waiting to be released.
The idea behind the theory is that a frustrant in the environment causes anger, which develops into aggression. Frustration is presented as the result of being hampered from ends being sought, or, in other words, as the result of interruption of one’s goals. When one has their goals interrupted, one becomes frustrated. This frustration develops into anger toward the frustrant, which is either released by aggression immediately or becomes a residue in the individual, causing later outbursts (often at something vaguely or directly relatable to the frustrant) or, I might add (from studies outside of social psychology), poor health. Spinoza, similarly, describes something like frustration, anger, and aggression when he says that “He who conceives that the object of his love is affected […] painfully will himself be affected […] painfully; and the […] emotion will be greater or less in the lover, according as it is greater or less in the thing loved.”[8] He says, “if we conceive that [anything] affects an object of our love painfully, we shall be affected with hatred toward it.”[9] And, “He who conceives an object of his hatred as painfully affected will feel pleasure.”[10]
Aggression can be displaced. N.E. Miller suggested that displaced aggression would be displaced onto a victim found to be similar to a frustrant who is unavailable or who may retort in a costly fashion. Spinoza, likewise, says that, “He who hates anyone will endeavor to do him an injury, unless he fears that a greater injury will be thereby accrue to himself […]”[11] and that “If a man has been affected pleasurably or painfully by anyone of a class or nation different from his own, and if the pleasure or pain has been accompanied by the idea of the said stranger as cause, under the general category of the class or nation, the man will feel love or hatred not only to the individual stranger, but also to the whole class or nation, whereto he belongs.”[12] Further, “Simply from the fact that we conceive that a given object has some point of resemblance with another object which is wont to affect the mind […] painfully […] we shall […] regard the […] object with […] hate.”[13] But, he warns, “Joy arising from the fact that anything we hate is destroyed or suffers other injury, is never unaccompanied by a certain pain in us.”[14] For Spinoza, cathartic release never comes without consequence, and so the world is better approached with rational love.
The frustration-aggression theory would present aggression as a product of necessity, an inevitable result of the interaction between one’s environment, inner impulses, and learned behavior. However, the work of Nicholas Pastore, in “The role of arbitrariness in the frustration-aggression hypothesis,” and others such as Zillman and Cantor, suggests that frustration can be avoided if one understands and has empathy with the causes of being hampered. That is, if one understands the cause as necessary, rather than arbitrary, frustration can be avoided. So— as Spinoza might suggest as well— frustration is ultimately the result of the ignorance of the causes of the inevitability of the undesired result. The distinction between arbitrariness and necessity, which is the same as that between ignorance and understanding, is the key to Spinoza’s blessedness. Spinoza says, “The mind has greater power over the emotions, and is less subject thereto, in so far as it understands all things as necessary.”[15] He says, “Love or hatred toward a thing, which we conceive to be free, must, other conditions being similar, be greater than if it were felt toward a thing acting by necessity.”[16] For Spinoza, there is no such thing as a free cause outside of God, but all things are products of necessity. If this is understood, one is “blessed” and thereby avoids frustration. Of course, even for Spinoza, frustration is not entirely unavoidable. Social structures must change, too. But this must start with blessed individuals.
The frustration-aggression theory affirms Spinoza’s revolutionary, necessitarian psychology, which has been at the heart of radical thinking since at least the time of the Radical Enlightenment and is carrying on to the present day. This necessitarian outlook informs thinkers such as William Godwin, Mikhail Bakunin, Herbert Spencer, Francis Tandy, and is found in modern comics such as The ABCs of Bosses (put out by Kropotkin’s Freedom Press). This demonstrates an intricate connection between necessitarian psychology, political constructionism, and conceptions of freedom that provide a foundation for much of what would become radical and anarchist thought moving forward to succeed the bourgeois Moderate Enlightenment.
Godwin and the ABCs of Bosses
The discussion around Spinoza’s work had led to the designation of his philosophy as pantheism, the identification of God with Nature, by John Toland, the first man called a “freethinker.” The freethinkers were generally inclined toward necessitarianism, as well as to pantheist, agnostic, deist, unitarian, or atheist views of deity, with strong Radical Reformation convictions of the freedom of conscience. Freethinkers included people such as John Toland, Matthew Tindal, and even Benjamin Franklin, who once authored A Dissertation on Free Will and Necessity (he later collected and burned as many copies as he could find, minus a copy for history’s sake). But it was Anthony Collins, perhaps, who delivered the strongest rendition of the necessitarian outlook popularized among radicals and freethinkers. Collins says, “As to […] whether we are at liberty to will, or not to will? It is manifest, we have not that liberty.”[17] He says, “Liberty […], or a power to act or not to act, to do this or another thing under the same causes, is an impossibility […]”[18] and that “[…] [T]ho’ I have contended, that Liberty from Necessity is contrary to experience; that it is impossible […], I think myself oblig’d to declare my opinion, that I take man to have a truly valuable liberty of another kind. He has a power to do as he wills, or pleases.”[19] It is when we have the power to do as we please, despite our will having causes of its own, that we say that we are free, and not hampered. What is freedom but the ability to do as we please?
When one understands that frustration and aggression are naturally-occurring phenomena that have causes attached to them, one may begin to wonder about the causes of those causes, so as to get a hold on them, to be a greater cause. Eventually, when taken far enough, one is left to conclude that causes originate either from within or from outside of human influence. Further, the chief agent of human influence—that which is under our collective control— is the political structure. This has led radicals to target the political structure, so as to gain the reins of the forces that make them who they are, and, thereby, to gain a sense of control in their own destiny.
The contemporary anarchist comic from Kropotkin’s Freedom Press, The ABCs of Bosses, presents an excellent example that connects the frustration-aggression theory with a radical criticism of institutionalized authority:
The anarchist critique of the State, perhaps starting in modern times with William Godwin, often presents the State as the point of origin for sustained aggression in society. Anarchists desire a society established upon non-aggression, which they equate to a society free from externalized government. One sees in the image above the flow of frustration and aggression throughout society, from top to bottom. Because of the nature of authority, which often entails consequences for counter-aggression, aggression is displaced onto more opportune victims. Thus, if we are interested in a society free from aggression, in which even the weaker members are respected, we must consider the opportunities that allow for original aggression. But original aggression does not begin as counter-aggression. This original aggression does, however, get passed along, and it is perhaps even amplified along the way. According to a Spinozist perspective, original aggression is rooted in ignorance of, and lack of love for, necessity.
From the anarchist position of people such as William Godwin, antisocial behavior has its roots largely in the social structures that influence people’s behavior. William Godwin was a freethinker and philosophical anarchist who took to the necessitarian position, perhaps by way of influence from Anthony Collins. He was a strong social constructionist, believing the individual to be a product of their environment. Like many philosophers (such as Proudhon), himself a product of the Radical Enlightenment but immersed in the more popular Moderate Enlightenment, he attempted to explain influences from his radical vital-organicist inspirations in the popularized language from the mechanistic philosophy.[20] Godwin says,
Consider, that man is but a machine! He is just what his nature and circumstances have made him: he obeys the necessities which he cannot resist. If he is corrupt, it is because he has been corrupted. If he is unamiable, it is because he has been ‘mocked, and spitefully entreated, and spit upon.’ Give him a different education, place him under other circumstances, treat him with as much gentleness and generosity, as he has experienced of harshness, and he would be altogether a different creature.[21]
For Godwin, people cannot be blamed for their conditions, of which they are merely an expression. For Godwin, people are perfectible, if only the circumstances are right. He says,
We shall […] unquestionably, as our minds grow enlarged, be brought to the entire and unreserved conviction, that man is a machine, that he is governed by external impulses, and is to be regarded as the medium only through the intervention of which previously existing causes are enabled to produce certain effects. We shall see, according to an expressive phrase, that he ‘could not help it,’ and, of consequence, while we look down from the high tower of philosophy upon the scene of human affairs, our prevailing emotion will be pity, even towards the criminal, who, from the qualities he brought into the world, and the various circumstances which act upon him from infancy, and form his character, is impelled to be the means of the evils, which we view with so profound disapprobation, and the existence of which we so entirely regret.[22]
Godwin’s empathetic view is in contrast, perhaps, to Anthony Collins’s position, that the only reason that punishment works is because of necessity performing its function as a threat to the choices of would-be criminals. Nonetheless, he, like Spinoza and Godwin, held that no human could “choose evil as evil.”[23] Necessitarianism, then, explains both the perfectibility of humans, as well as the means by which to deal with their imperfections, and both Godwin’s empathy and Collins’s punishment find their home in Spinoza. However, as Peter Marshall suggests, in The Anarchist Writings of William Godwin, “[Godwin] was left with the dilemma that human beings cannot become wholly rational as long as government exists and yet government must exist while human beings remain irrational.”[24] This seems to be the problem deterring the heaven of the anarchists from touching base with us here on Earth. While the Kingdom of Heaven may be “within you,” as Leo Tolstoy suggests, it seems that we have trouble letting it out.
Mikhail Bakunin was a revolutionary anarchist and an atheist mystic. Like Godwin and other radical freethinkers, Bakunin held to a necessitarian position wherein there cannot be seen a difference between freedom and necessity. Brian Morris, in “Bakunin, historical materialism, and social philosophy,” says that “Like Spinoza and Godwin, Bakunin argues that as the human subject was essentially determined by the natural and social milieu, it was futile to posit the notion of ‘free will’ […]”[25] For Bakunin— like Spinoza, something of a rational mystic—, and like Spinoza, Collins, and Godwin, freedom could only be conceived of as a logical embrace of Nature and her necessity, whereby one could have influence in the world, express one’s unfree will. Bakunin says,
In his relation to natural laws but one liberty is possible to man—that of recognizing and applying them on an ever-extending scale in conformity with the object of collective and individual emancipation or humanization which he pursues.
[…]
The liberty of man consists solely in this: that he obeys natural laws because he has himself recognized them as such, and not because they have been externally imposed upon him by any extrinsic will whatever, divine or human, collective or individual.[26]
Bakunin rejected the concept of God, but nonetheless maintained much influence from Spinoza, including a concern for wholeness and necessity. For this reason, Brian Morris comments that “Bakunin was […] a kind of mystic, but a romantic mystic who found his absolute in the popular masses—the people.”[27] Bakunin’s philosophy, reflecting this concern for wholeness, was called collectivist anarchism.
Taking much influence from William Godwin, and representing the vital-organicist arm in the early debates about biological evolution, Herbert Spencer was also a necessitarian who held that human beings were ultimately perfectible. Piers J. Hale, in Political Descent: Malthus, Mutualism, and the Politics of Victorian England, presents us with Herbert Spencer as the radical whose mutualism stood in contrast to the doctrines of Thomas Malthus. He says, “whereas Darwin rejected Godwin for Malthus, Spencer remained true to the Godwinian cause.”[28] It must be remembered that Godwin inherited the radical tradition, which had its foundations in the vitalism and organicism of Bruno and Paracelsus. This vital-organicist thinking, perhaps indirectly by way of the radicals, inspired the evolutionary thought not only of Herbert Spencer, but also of Charles Darwin. But, for Herbert Spencer it is clear, “Progress […] is not an accident, but a necessity. Instead of civilization being artificial, it is a part of nature […]”[29]
William Godwin, Herbert Spencer, and even Mikhail Bakunin would gain influence on a young Benjamin Tucker, the famed popularizer of American individualist anarchism (by way of his journal Liberty). Among those influenced by Tucker was Francis Dashwood Tandy, who also expressed a necessitarian foundation for voluntaryism. Tandy says, in Voluntary Socialism, summing up the necessitarian position nicely, that,
If every individual always attempts to attain the greatest amount of happiness, the doctrine of Necessity follows as a logical deduction. Given a complete knowledge of all the environments in which an individual is placed and a complete knowledge of that individual’s conception of happiness (this latter includes an exact idea of his intelligence) and we could determine with mathematical certainty what course of action he would pursue. That this exactness is never reached is due to the practical impossibility of obtaining all the necessary data.[30]
We can, perhaps, thank Aristotle’s eudaemonism for the origins of necessitarianism. It is no secret that Spinoza was an Aristotlean eudaemonist.
Freedom and Necessity
That there is no free will does not mean that there is no meaningful sense of freedom for the human person. Rather, it means that freedom is found in expression of the will of Nature as it flows through our own being, ourselves a caused cause of her necessity.[31] Freedom is doing what we want, regardless of the fact that we do not ultimately have control over our desires. Though it is true, as Arthur Schopenhauer once remarked, that “One can do as one wills, but cannot will what one wills,”[32] we nonetheless find satisfaction, and a sensation of freedom, when our will is unhampered by external forces.
Bakunin asks, “What is authority? Is it the inevitable power of the natural laws which manifest themselves in the necessary concantenation and succession of phenomena in the physical and social worlds?” He says,
Indeed, against these laws revolt is not only forbidden—it is even impossible. We may misunderstand them or not know them at all, but we cannot disobey them; because they constitute the basis and fundamental conditions of our existence; they envelop us, penetrate us, regulate all of our movements, thoughts and acts: even when we believe that we disobey them, we only show their omnipotence.[33]
For political radicals, anarchists chief among them, the goal is to achieve freedom in the sense that one can live with one’s will unhampered. Herbert Spencer explained this in terms of his Law of Equal Freedom, in which he suggested that one should be free to that extent to which one’s freedom does not limit the like freedom of others. This view, or others like it—such as Josiah Warren’s cost principle or Pierre Proudhon’s reciprocity of rights—, were embraced, and even presented in new forms, such as in Benjamin Tucker’s non-aggression principle. Benjamin Tucker’s non-aggression principle suggested that practically defensive violence was excusable, while acts of aggression—the initiation of violence[34]— were not able to be justified. All of these approaches were attempts at thwarting the political aggression, cost externalization, or unilateral freedoms of the state and the economic aggressions it fostered, and thereby to create a more peaceable and just society.
Because political systems are external forces that we have some control over, we can, collectively, gain some control over our sense of freedom. If we learn about the causes of Nature, and come to love necessity, we can abolish our ignorance and superstitions, and can grasp a greater degree of agency in the world, to cause our environment from within us, to break the chain of aggression, and thereby gain a greater sense of freedom. We can express our will, and thereby feel free, despite being a product of necessity. It’s the only freedom that can really exist for us.
Notes
[1] Israel1, 39:20
[2] Garber, 44:15
[3] Spinoza1, 190
[4] Hall, 35
[5] Hall, 93
[6] Spinoza2, xxvi
[7] Spinoza2, xvii
[8] Spinoza2, xv
[9] Spinoza2, xv
[10] Spinoza2, xv
[11] Spinoza2, xvii
[12] Spinoza2, xvii
[13] Spinoza2, xiv
[14] Spinoza2, xvii
[15] Spinoza2, xxiv
[16] Spinoza2, xvii
[17] Collins, 37
[18] Collins, 53
[19] Collins, 97
[20] Radicalism was associated with the vitalist or organicist elements of the Scientific Revolution, which had carried over from influences such as Paracelsus and Giordano Bruno. Unlike the Newtonian or Baconian mechanistic philosophy that was embraced by the Moderate Enlightenment, the organicism of the radicals was rooted in more magical elements as expressed in Hermeticism. The radicals would tend more toward pantheism, while the moderates tended to theism, with deism as something of a middle ground dominated by the moderates, but bleeding into radical outlooks. The organicism of the radicals would produce evolutionary thinkers such as Herbert Spencer.
[21] Marshall, 55
[22] Marshall, 55
[23] Collins, 94
[24] Marshall, 47
[25] Morris
[26] Curtis, 352
[27] Morris
[28] Hale, 68
[29] Spencer, 80
[30] Tandy, 29
[31] Only God is an uncaused cause.
[32] Commonly-attributed quote
[33] Curtis, 352
[34] This is a different definition of aggression than is used in social psychology, wherein aggression includes “counter-aggression” or defensive action against frustrants, as well as displacement of aggression onto innocent victims.
References
Collins, Anthony, A Philosophical Inquiry Concerning Human Liberty (London: Forgotten Books, 2015)
Curtis, Michael (Ed.), The Great Political Theories (New York: Harper Perennial, 2008)
Garber, Daniel, “Hobbes vs Spinoza on Human Nature: Political Ramifications” (USA: GBH Forum Network, 2014) Accessed 2021: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tn9NpyHtnMw
Hale, Piers J., Political Descent: Malthus, Mutualism, and the Politics of Evolution in Victorian England (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014)
Hall, Margaret Constance, The Sociology of Pierre Joseph Proudhon (New York: Philosophical Library, 1971)
Israel1, Jonathan, “How Spinoza Was a Revolutionary Thinker” (Washington: Stroum Center, 2017) Accessed 2021: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xdgATa1Pr8
Marshall, Peter (Ed.), The Anarchist Writings of William Godwin (London: Freedom Press, 1986)
Morris, Brian, “Bakunin, Historical Materialism, and Social Philosophy” (N/A: Libcom, 2006) Accessed 2021: https://libcom.org/library/bakunin-historical-materialism-social-philosophy-brian-morris
Spencer, Herbert, Social Statics; or, the Conditions Essential to Human Happiness Specified, and the First of them Developed (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1873)
Spinoza1, Benedict, Theological-Political Treatise (New York: Barnes & Noble, 2009)
Spinoza2, Benedict, Ethics, including the Improvement of the Understanding (Amherst, New York: Prometheus Books, 1989)
Tandy, Francis Dashwood, Voluntary Socialism: A Sketch (New York: Revisionist Press, 1979)
