Anarchism
JK Ingalls bibliography
Just posted, but down the page, due to some 11th-hour revisions. A work-in-progress, but coming along nicely.
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Guess WTO’s Coming to Dinner
An earlier (2000) lo-fi video project, put together in the midst of a redevelopment project in the downtown where my now-defunct bookstore was located. Pre-Podcast Era commentary and construction-zone ambience. Heliograph2000 – Guess WTO’s Coming to Dinner
Anarchism
Voltairine de Cleyre: two articles on communism
My work in the files of the Twentieth Century keeps dredging up gems, including a handful of pieces by Voltairine de Cleyre. Here are two connected items. I’ll post the sequel before the original, in part because it gives some context and clarification. From the February 9, 1893 issue: A GLANCE AT COMMUNISM.BY VOLTAIRINE DE CLEYRE “Cast thy bread upon the waters,Find it after many days.” Two years ago, in a little uptown parlor, the home of a Philadelphia weaver, a group of inquirers after truth were wont to assemble bi-weekly for the discussion of “Communism vs. Individualism.” There were […]
Anarchism
Joshua King Ingalls, bibliography update
[NOTE: The most current version of the Joshua King Ingalls bibliography can be found at the Libertarian Labyrinth archive.] Here’s an updated bibliography of works by, about and in response to Joshua King Ingalls, consisting primarily of items I have in hand. I’m sharing this more as an indication of progress being made on the first Ingalls Lab Report volume than as a finished project. It is far from finished, which is fairly good news, given the quality of Ingalls’ contributions to the literature. I have yet to begin with his contributions to The Word, Fair Play, the Univercoelum, Social […]
Anarchism
Josiah Warren’s debt to Robert Owen
The extent to which the individualist anarchists remained suprisingly orthodox students of the so-called “utopian socialists” is a question that interests me quite a bit. I recently suggested a sort of division between “post-Fourierists” and “post-Saint-Simonians” (or “post-Comteans”) among the early individualists. (See also my follow-up here.) Here is some additional, if circumstantial, evidence. The first piece is by Josiah Warren, from the Boston Investigator in the early 1860s. Defending himself against inclusion among the proponents of the “Community System,” he also defends Robert Owen, Robert Dale Owen, and Frances Wright against a variety of charges. But he also takes […]
Anarchism
Practical application of the cost principle in Massachusetts, 1863
Lots of material on Josiah Warren and equitable commerce has surfaced in the Boston Investigator, while I’ve been looking for material by Lewis Masquerier. This is a particularly interesting account of an equity store being opened in Massachusetts in 1863. The note at the end might go some distance in clarifying the terms under which at least some of the Warren-inspired businesses actually traded with suppliers. Some critics have fixated on the labor note and “corn standard” as the central points of Warren’s scheme, which, I think, confuses two projects: the implementation of the “cost principle” and “labor for labor […]
From the Archives
The Anarchist View of Money, Benjamin R. Tucker, 1896
I am asked by THE. INDEPENDENT to give my views on the financial question. At the outset, therefore, I must give my definition of the term “money.”
Col. William B. Greene, the author of “Mutual Banking” (which represents my views on finance perhaps more thoroughly than any other work), was accustomed to say that “that is money which does the work of the tool, money”; and the work of the tool, money, is that of mediating exchange. Anything, therefore, that is used as a medium of exchange is money to the extent that it is so used.
Anarchism
Socialism in Massachusetts, the Palladium version
You can look at this wiki page for a comparison of the Worcester Palladium and Equality versions of William B. Greene’s essay, “Socialism in Massachusetts,” both from late 1849. MediaWiki’s ability to collate versions should be a very useful tool for demonstrating the development or aguments in archived texts. For those unfamiliar with the publishing history involved, you can start with my comments on the 1870 Mutual Banking.
Contr'un
An embarrassment of riches, redux
This the sort of problem we should have—so much new, interesting anarchist material coming out of the archives that it’s nearly impossible to keep track of it all. I’ve been trying to work through roughly a roll of microfilmed periodicals each day this past couple of weeks, and I can’t think when I have been so pleasantly overwhelmed. Specifically, with regard to the J. K. Ingalls volume, I’m running a little behind, largely because of some difficulties with interlibrary loan, but I will be able to add a series on “Women’s Industrial Subjection,” from the Woman’s Tribune and a debate […]
Anarchism
At last, “Omega”!
There are quite a number of things I didn’t find in my searches through the Boston Investigator this week, but one of the things I did find was “Capital and Labor: Socialism in Massachusetts,” by OMEGA—one of the essays by William Batchelder Greene that was incorporated into his Equality (1849), reprinted from the Worcester Palladium. For some time, I have been wrestling with the question whether or not I could justify research travel to track down these articles, since they, and the book they were turned into, all appear to have been written in a matter of months, late in […]