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A New Boston Tea Party

July 18, 2006 Shawn P. Wilbur

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 […]

Proudhon’s “The State” – Two Translations

July 17, 2006 Shawn P. Wilbur

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 […]

An embarassment of riches, or, Auguste Ott tips the scales

July 17, 2006 Shawn P. Wilbur

It was probably about the third time I looked at the list of books donated by Elizabeth Palmer Peabody to the Boston Athenaeum that I noticed the third William B. Greene-related item. Ott, Auguste (1814-1903). Manuel d’Histoire Universelle … Tome Premier. Première Partie. Histoire Ancienne. Paris: Paulin, 1840. iii, 588 pages. Half leather, marbled paper boards. Inscribed in ink on front paste-down endpaper: “W.B. Greene / Brookfield.” Marginal markings and notes in pencil throughout. There’s a kind of obsessive visiting and revisiting of the minor details that’s a part of a work like the William B. Greene project, where nearly […]

Adrian Kuzminski on Kellogg and Greene

July 13, 2006 Shawn P. Wilbur

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 […]

Joshua King Ingalls: Work and Wealth, 1878

July 11, 2006 Shawn P. Wilbur

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 […]

Benjamin Tucker enters the fray

July 10, 2006 Shawn P. Wilbur

[ezcol_2third] On January 5, 1873, 18-year-old Benjamin R. Tucker sent a letter to Francis Abbot, the editor of The Index, the journal of the Free Religious Association. In it, he took Abbot to task for the following remarks: “Usury laws, in especial, which sometimes work great detriment to the business interests of whole communities, are in fact based upon the Bible conception that it is a crime to take interest for money loaned; although the common sense of mankind reject the notion in fact.” The free religionists were engaged in one of a series of attempts to reconstruct religion on […]

Mutualist Show and Tell

July 10, 2006 Shawn P. Wilbur

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.

William B. Greene’s 1870 “Mutual Banking”

July 6, 2006 Shawn P. Wilbur

Since this post was written, most of Greene’s works on mutual credit have become available in various digital archives. Here are some links: Equality (1849) Mutual Banking (1850) The Radical Deficiency Of The Existing Circulating Medium, And The Advantages Of A Mutual Currency (1857) Mutual Banking, Showing The Radical Deficiencies Of The Existing Circulating Medium, And The Advantages Of A Free Currency (1870) I’ve been spending more time scanning and proofing than posting lately. The most important result of that is that William Batchelder Greene’s 1870 Mutual Banking, Showing The Radical Deficiencies Of The Existing Circulating Medium, And The Advantages […]

Mr. Anything, an “Anarchist” of 1807

June 14, 2006 Shawn P. Wilbur

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 […]

Margaret Fuller’s March 1841 Conversation on Mythology

June 6, 2006 Shawn P. Wilbur

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.