Month: July 2006

The Index, the free religionist paper, continues to be a source of interesting material by individualist anarchists and their associates. The 1875 volume contains bits and pieces of interest, including some additional “cost the limit of price” discussion by Edward Linton, notices of the death of Susan Dimock, and contributions by Dyer Lum—all of which suggests that the 1874 volume, which I have not yet seen, is probably worth tracking down. The 1876 volume, however, is pure paydirt. Lum and Henry Appleton appear. Ezra H. Heywood debates Elizur Wright about something called “The Family Bank.” And Stephen Pearl Andrews’ review […]

Sometimes it really seems there is a website for everything. The Société des Études Colinsiennes, dedicated to the work and legacy of Jean-Guillaume-César-Alexandre-Hippolyte de COLINS de Ham, the originator of the doctrine of “rational socialism” and possible coiner of the term “collectivism,” is something of a gem. Colins was something of a rival of Proudhon’s, although the anarchist apparently never responded to his work as seriously as he would have liked. The debate was finally staged posthumously by Adolphe Hugentobler, a Swiss disciple of the Belgian Colins, in Dialogue Des Morts Entre Proudhon Et Colins (1867). I’m working my way […]

The Center for Research Libraries at the University of Chicago has a fine online collection of Pamphlets and Periodicals of the French Revolution of 1848. You’ll find large scans of lots of fascinating ephemera from the February Revolution and the period of the provisional government. Check out, for example, the Lettre de Mme. Calomnie au citoyen Proudhon or Le Cholera Electoral. De Profundis Proudhonien, for a couple of shots at the mutualist everyone loved to hate.

Anyone interested in libertarian electoral politics, particularly those frustrated with the current direction of the Libertarian Party, should check out The Boston Tea Party. Thomas L. Knapp describes the new party’s raison d’etre thus: “The Boston Tea Party is a reaction to the Libertarian Party’s decision, at its 2006 national convention, to abdicate its political responsibilities to the American people.” This isn’t the time or place to go far into the merits of electoral politics. What I will say is that, though i am not a member, I respect a number of the organizers of The Boston Tea Party, and […]

The newest additions to the Proudhon archive in the Labyrinth are two translations of his essay “The State,” a polemic against Louis Blanc and Pierre Leroux, and a defence of anarchy as the logical outcome of the February 1848 Revolution. William B. Greene published a partial translation in The Word, August 1872. Benjamin Tucker published a more complete version in Liberty (January 28 and February 11, 1888). Side by side, they reveal more than a bit about the translators. Notice that Greene, who was strongly influenced by Leroux and remained committed to his “heretical” Christian faith long after leaving the […]

My posting of the 1870 Mutual Banking has already brought forth interesting fruit. Adrian Kuzminski, who is interested in Edward Kellogg, sent the following via email. For now, I simply want to clarify what I know of the Greene-Kellogg relationship. It is clear that Greene read Kellogg, whom he cites several times in his essays entitled MUTUAL BANKING, apparently first published in 1849. Kellogg, who died in 1858, began publishing his views in 1841. Greene’s first essay in MUTUAL BANKING, “The Usury Laws,” seem to be largely a gloss on Kellogg. He not only quotes Kellogg’s assessment of the concentration […]

While I was looking through The Radical Review yesterday (looking for a Francis Abbot contribution that James Martin mentions, but which does not actually seem to exist), I ran across Joshua King Ingalls’ Work and Wealth, which I hadn’t looked at in some time. The Radical Review is something of a gold mine, and one which Benjamin Tucker himself mined for pamphlet material. Work and Wealth was one of the essays that Tucker published separately (in 1881). There is still a good deal of work to be done on Ingalls, who made the familiar journey from clergyman to labor and […]

Wm. B. Greene2d. Lieut. 7th U.S. Infy. [1840] Here’s the autograph of William Batchelder Greene during his first period of service in the U.S. Army, during the Second Seminole War. This was an auction find, and a pleasantly inexpensive one. The dealer informs me that he purchased this as part of a collection in the town where I’m currently living. It is truly a small world.