Year: 2017

Anarchist Beginnings

Josiah Warren and Cosmopolite, “To the Public” (1828)

July 20, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur
Cincinnati, April 20, 1828. Dear S— The perusal of your letter which I received about three weeks since, gave me great satisfaction. It affords me pleasure to find that you still feel such interest in the subject to which I am devoted. You inquire what progress has been made since you left here; to this I could reply more than the limits of a letter will permit, but I will endeavour to enable you to form some idea. I think you left before the cold weather commenced, and therefore have not witnessed the most important of our operations. As soon […]
Anarchist Beginnings

A Josiah Warren miscellany

July 20, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur
Josiah Warren, of Cincinnati, is the patentee of a lamp on a new plan, which is said, to a single family, will produce an annual saving of 20 dollars. Its light is clear and pleasant, and the volume of flame equal to that of two common candles. “Weekly Summary,” The Plough Boy, and Journal of the Board of Agriculture, 2, 52 (May 26, 1821), 415.  
Anarchist Beginnings

Francis W. L. Adams, “Anarchism” (1894)

July 20, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur
“Anarchism.” ‘Tis not when I am here, In these homeless homes, Where sin and shame and disease And foul death comes; ‘Tis not when heart and brain Would be still and forget Men and women and children Dragged down to the pit. But when I hear them declaiming Of “liberty,” “order” and “law,” The husk-hearted gentleman And the mud-hearted bourgeois, That a sombre, hateful desire Burns up slow in my breast, To wreck the great, guilty temple. And give us rest! — Francis W. L. Adams. Francis William Lauderdale Adams, “Anarchism,” Songs of the Army of the Night (London: William […]
Anarchist Beginnings

J. William Lloyd, “A Grandeur and a Dreaming” (1901)

July 20, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur
HUMAN Life seems but a seeming, A phantasm & a dreaming, Of a grandeur & a gleaming That no one life may possess. ‘Tis a downward, dark ward groping, Upward soaring, high and hoping Search for pathways, easy-sloping, That no human feet yet press. Yet it may be that the glory, Dreamed of now since ages hoary, Kindling still in song and story, Each man somewhat, all men know. All the downward, dark ward groping, All the sky-ward, sunward hoping, Finds at last the roadway sloping, Where all feet together go. J Wm. Lloyd. J. William Lloyd, “A Grandeur and […]
Anarchist Beginnings

Marjorie Peacock, “The Day after Tomorrow” (1915)

July 20, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur
THE DAY AFTER TO-MORROW. FREEDOM = NO GOVERNMENT. We are now travelling towards Socialism: a system of the most tortuously interlocked Government control. But surging its way to the surface is a powerful wave—a wave which, when it breaks, will wash away all before it, will explode into a thousand pieces the counter-forces which now surround it,—a wave which, by its very compression, is gathering in intensity and energy; this wave is called the Desire for Freedom. It is to the Socialists of to-day that we believers in Freedom look for a great many of to-morrow’s recruits, and we know […]
Anarchist Beginnings

L. A. M., “The New Anarchism” (1919)

July 20, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur
THE NEW ANARCHISM. This is not the beginning of a new cult. It is a restatement of what we want and what we intend to do towards realising it. The New Anarchism is the old Anarchism in new clothes. It is set out in a way that he who runs may read. What Anarchists Want. We want to place certain ideas before the people. These ideas we believe will contribute towards the making of a better people and a better world. Anarchists are not alone in holding such ideas. But the ideas of Anarchists differ essentially from others in some […]
Anarchist Beginnings

Charles Clark Rodolf, “The Unrighteousness of Government” (1895)

July 20, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur
THE UNRIGHTEOUSNESS OF GOVERNMENT, AS VIEWED BY A PHILOSOPHICAL ANARCHIST. BY CHARLES CLARK RODOLF, M. D. Whoever applies to himself the term anarchist should add a definition, if he does not wish to be misjudged, for no word in the English language is more misused and misunderstood. Some of this misuse is viciously intentional, but most of it is the result of pure ignorance. It is less than half a dozen years since the public began to learn that anarchist, nihilist, and socialist are not synonymous; and even now the three words are more or less confounded in popular usage, […]
Anarchist Beginnings

Commonweal Anarchist Group, “Why We Are Anarchists” (1894)

July 20, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur
WHY WE ARE ANARCHISTS. REPRINTED FROM “THE COMMONWEAL.” 1894 PART I. It may be well to give some of the arguments for our belief in Anarchism as the coming form of our social and political institutions. We are confronted, it appears, on all sides by obstacles and difficulties. Here, the inveterate belief in law and authority, in religious superstitions and in the educational powers of compulsion and coercion; there, the various forms of political humbug, the representative system, the struggle for political power, expressed in the shape of self-advertizing electioneering political swindlers on one side and the ever befooled, hero-worshipping, […]
equitable commerce

Bibliography of Equitable Commerce

July 19, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur
Equitable Commerce was the name given to Josiah Warren’s social system, which combined the principles of individual autonomy and “cost the limit of price.” Warren’s approach attracted a fairly substantial following at various times and was influential among anarchists. The works collected here are either writings by Warren and his associates, elaborating the system, or outside accounts of the movement. 1821 Josiah Warren’s 1821 lamp patent — “Weekly Summary,” The Plough Boy, and Journal of the Board of Agriculture, 2, 52 (May 26, 1821), 415. “Patent Lamp,” Liberty Hall and Cincinnati Gazette, New Series, 3 no. 221 (April 18, 1921): […]
anarchism without adjectives

Max Nettlau, “More Heretical Views” (1911)

July 19, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur
MORE HERETICAL VIEWS * To my mind, at least, the more modern Socialism and Syndicalism spread, the more our ideal of many years is left behind, and real Socialism seems more remote than ever. We all feel, I think, that if intensity of feeling and energy for action were in any way corresponding to numerical strength, we should not see, side by side with immense Socialist and Labour Parties, Capitalism more flourishing than ever, monarchism and militarism triumphant, parsons and priests unabashed and prospering. Socialism, degraded to “Labourism,” now forms part and parcel of a system which it once meant […]