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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.

Here’s an interesting item: a very early use of the term “anarchist,” and one which is rather more sympathetic than most early uses, although it is still, in this instance, a pejorative. I’m inclined to read this one against the grain, and be rather fond of the anarchistic Mr. Anything. Mr. Anything, the “Anarchist.” To the Editor of the Christian Observer. [May, 1807] – – SHOULD your observing eye, in the course of its comprehensive range, have lighted on any character in the religious world at all resembling the picture I am about to exhibit; I shall depend on the […]

Caroline Dall’s report of Margaret Fuller’s March, 1841 “coversation” on mythology, Margaret and Her Friends, is now available in pdf in the Labyrinth. This set of ten meetings between Fuller, Emerson, Elizabeth Palmer Peabody, James Freeman Clarke and others, is superb reading, and gives a taste of what members of the transcendentalist circle were reading and discussing. Give it a look.

I’m nearing the finish line in my work archiving Greene’s Socialistic, Communistic, Mutualistic and Financial Fragments. The most recent additions include the Letter To The Rev. H. Foote, Minister Of King’s Chapel, which addresses the status of poor working women in the Boston area, and probably reflects the Greenes’ involvement with local labor activism and philanthropic activity. (William and Anna, as well as their daughter Elizabeth, were active in various ways addressing “the social problem” in Boston.) Appendices to this essay include Greene’s translation of St. Simon’s “Parable,” which appeared in slightly-altered form in his early currency writings, and as […]