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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 […]

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 […]