At least three American magazines since the late nineteenth century have called themselves Liberty. The most commonly known is the mass-circulation pulp magazine that reached a circulation of 2.4 million during the 1930s, when it was controlled by the eccentric publisher Bernarr Macfadden. Liberty was, however, also the name appropriately chosen by philosophical anarchist Benjamin Ricketson Tucker (1864-1939) for the organ he published from 1881 to 1908. In more recent years, a small libertarian periodical that advocated tax reform and government non-interference in personal freedoms was also called Liberty.

The first issue of Benjamin Ricketson Tucker's Liberty made its appearance in Boston in August of 1881; the magazine moved to New York in 1892 where it was based until a fire put it out of business 16 years later. Its statement of purpose as expressed in the first issue was a militant one: "Monopoly and privilege must be destroyed, opportunity afforded, and competition encouraged...