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I’ve been reading the Westrups’ The New Philosophy of Money (1895), and have been pleasantly surprised. I had read his Citizens’ Money (1891) and his contributions to Liberty several years ago and had, perhaps unfairly, considered them largely derivative of the work of William B. Greene. Of course, several years ago I had a much less interesting or thorough understanding of Greene’s work, so perhaps it’s no surprise that Westrup has provided considerably greater pleasures this time around, in large part because I’m a lot deeper into the debates in which he took part. By the time Westrup began his […]

I’m in the process of pulling together the “second generation” mutual bank writings of Alfred B. Westrup and Herman Kuehn. Here’s a tidbit from Liberty [Sept. 1893 (9: 46), p. 1.] . “For always in thine eyes, O Liberty!Shines that high light by which the world is saved;And though thou slay us, we will trust in thee.” JOHN HAY. The Capital Controversy. To the Editor of Liberty: I consider the question of the status of money—whether money be capital or not—as of very great importance. It is because money has been generally regarded as a form of wealth that interest […]

Alexander Campbell is the figure most associated with Kelloggism, the adoption of portions of Edward Kellogg’s currency and banking theory by elements in the greenback and labor movements. In the course of my recent w0rk on Kellogg, I ran across Campbell’s The True American System of Finance (1864) in the Samuel J. May Anti-Slavery Collection, a very nice digital archive at Cornell, which includes quite a number of works on currency and finance–a hot issue in the days of the first national currency in the US. (See, for example, “Greenbacks”; or, The evils and the remedy of using “Promise to […]

The more we dig, the more land-based currencies schemes we seem to dig up. Thomas Mendenhall was the author of two pamphlets proposing currencies “bottomed” (as he put it) in land value. These works influenced Edward Kellogg, subject of an ongoing debate with Adrian Kuzminski, who in turn influenced William B. Greene. The first of these pamphlets was National money, or a simple system of finance: which will fully answer the demands of trade, equalize the value of money, and keep the government out of the hands of stock-jobbers, published in 1816 by “A Citizen of Washington.” References in his […]

The Special Collections Library at University of Michigan has been digitizing pamphlets from the Labadie Collection for a web archive. There are currently 226 pamphlets online, and it’s a very nice selection of things, including some individualist classics like Stephen Pearl Andrews’ The Labor Dollar, Henry Bool’s Apology for his Jeffersonian Anarchism and his Liberty Luminants, and John Badcock’s When Love Is Liberty and Nature Law. There are multiple editions of some texts, such as Badcock’s Slaves to Duty. The archive is in the familiar Making of America format, so you’ll have to page through things. Plain text is available, […]

The most recent additions to the archive are Herman Kuehn’s The Problem of Worry (1901), a very interesting 20th century follow-up to William B. Greene’s mutual banking works, and an 1898 English translation of Jean-Marie Guyau’s A Sketch of Morality Independent of Obligation and Sanction (Esquisse d’une morale sans obligation, ni sanction, 1885). I’ll treat both of these figures in more depth soon…

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 […]