equitable commerce Archives - Page 3 of 4 - The Libertarian Labyrinth

Was Josiah Warren a spiritualist?

November 2, 2011 Shawn P. Wilbur

We know that there were plenty of spiritualists in Josiah Warren’s circle—including his wife, Stephen Pearl Andrews and his wife Esther, Ezra and Angela Heywood, and Mary and Thomas Nichols—we have the claim of Clarence L. Swartz that “not only in his later life, but almost from the beginning of modern Spiritualism, Warren was a believer in it.” But there’s been a real lack of testimony from Warren himself on the subject, at least in the sources I’ve been able to dig up. But I may have finally found an article by Warren addressing the question of “spiritual rappings” and […]

Thomas and Maria L. Varney—The Other “Equitable Commerce” of 1846

September 19, 2009 Shawn P. Wilbur

[one_third padding=”0 10px 0 0″] Maria L. Varney, “Equitable Commerce, or, Association without Combination,” Boston Investigator 15 no. 48 (April 8, 1846): 1. [editorial notice], Boston Investigator 15 no. 48 (April 8, 1846): 6. Maria L. Varney, “Equitable Commerce, or, Association without Combination,” [concluded] Boston Investigator 15 no. 49 (April 15, 1846): 1. G. W. Rollins, “Reply to Maria L. Varney,” Boston Investigator 15 no. 51 (April 29, 1846): 1. Thomas Varney, “Equitable Commerce, or, Association without Combination,” Boston Investigator 15 no. 52 (May 6, 1846): 1. W. Chase, “Association with Combination,” Boston Investigator 15 no. 8 (July 1, 1846): […]

Digital editions of Josiah Warren, etc.

April 9, 2009 Shawn P. Wilbur

I was recently asked to clarify my notes on Warren’s publications: Think of the sequence in this way: First, there were two editions of Equitable Commerce in the 1840s, composed by Warren alone. Second, there is a period in the 1850s when Warren collaborated with Stephen Pearl Andrews. Andrews substantially revised Equitable Commerce and published his Science of Society, based on Warren’s work. Warren also published a new work, Practical Details in Equitable Commerce. Third, in the 1860s, Warren published another new work, True Civilization an Immediate Necessity, and the Last Ground of Hope for Mankind (which become the second […]

Sidney H. Morse’s alternate history of equitable commerce

September 5, 2008 Shawn P. Wilbur

Tucked away in the pages of Liberty, Sidney H. Morse, Josiah Warren’s literary executor, contributed an odd item, a kind of “what-if” history of Robert Owen’s New Harmony, as if, at the critical moment, Josiah Warren’s equitable commerce had been the model for continuing on after the failure of the original project. The story, Liberty and Wealth, may be the very best introduction I know of to Warren’s thought as filtered through another individuality. There is a difficulty in dealing with Warren’s writings, since he insisted that, in practice, equitable commerce must be based in a complete individualization of interests […]

The Ethics of the Homestead Strike

August 30, 2008 Shawn P. Wilbur

In his Liberty review of William Bailie’s The First American Anarchist, Clarence L. Swartz noted that, “Sidney H. Morse, the sculptor, was, during the last two years of Warren’s life, his most active propagandist. Furthermore, Morse’s efforts were so great that they did not fail of appreciation by Warren, and the latter showed his full recognition of their value by making Morse his literary executor.” Morse is one of those major figures who never seems to get quite the attention he deserves. He was the editor of The Radical, a contributor to The Radical Review, as well as to Liberty, […]

Josiah Warren, Letter to Mechanics’ Free Press

December 10, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur

(c) A LETTER FROM JOSIAH WARREN Mechanics’ Free Press, May 10, 1828, p. 2, col. 2. Cincinnati, April 20, 1828. Dear S- The perusal of your letter which I received about three weeks since, gave me great satisfaction. It affords me pleasure to find that you still feel such interest in the subject to which I am devoted. You inquire what progress has been made since you left here; to this I could reply more than the limits of a letter will permit, but I will endeavour to enable you to form some idea. I think you left before the […]

Josiah Warren, Plan of the Cincinnati Labour for Labour Store

December 10, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur

3. CO-OPERATION (a) THE PLAN OF THE CINCINNATI LABOUR FOR LABOUR STORE Mechanics’ Free Press, Aug. 9, 1828, p. I, col. I, 2. EXPLANATION OF THE DESIGN AND ARRANGEMENTS of the Co-operative Magazine, which has recently been commenced in Cincinnati. Whoever can for a moment, so far abstract his thoughts from his pecuniary concerns, as to look around him, and observe the evils, which the established laws and customs, with respect to the administration of property, are daily producing in what is called Civilized Society, must, if he is possessed of the least degree of sensibility, feel a strong desire, […]

Josiah Warren, “The Motives for Communism” (1872-73)

November 19, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur

How often have I said to myself, “Oh, for a paper of world-wide circulation, through which we could pour into the public lap the most important results of our lives’ experience! That others who come after us may avoid the thorny paths that have lacerated our feet—may profit by our errors and successes. I hope and believe that your is, or will be, such a paper: and in it I propose to furnish a series of articles, showing the practical workings of Communism and other reform experiments running through the forty-six years devoted to peaceful social revolution; and it will be seen that some facts are more strange than fiction, more philosophical than philosophy, more romantic than romance and more conservative than conservatism.

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Clarence L. Swartz on Warren and Bailie

June 17, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur

Josiah Warren and His Work. Josiah Warren, as Liberty’s readers know, was the original founder and teacher of Philosophical Anarchism in America. A scion of the Massachusetts puritan house of Warren, which numbers among its many distinguished members the revolutionary hero of Bunker Hill, Gen. Joseph Warren, Josiah, who was born in Boston toward the close of the eighteenth century, became one of the most noted social reformers of his time. As the exponent of the doctrine of Individual Sovereignty and Cost the Limit of Price, he blazed the path which Liberty, for twenty-five years, has followed as its […]

John Pickering on “Equitable Commerce” (1847)

June 14, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur

John Pickering, The working man’s political economy: founded upon the principle of immutable justice and the inalienable rights of man; designed for the promotor of national reform. Cincinnati : Stereotyped in Warren’s new patent method by Thomas Varney, 1847. CHAPTER XIX. “EQUITABLE COMMERCE.” A work bearing the above title, published by Josiah Warren, New Harmony, Indiana, has lately appeared before the public. The work professes to be, “A new development of principles for the harmonious adjustment and regulation of the pecuniary, intellectual and moral intercourse of mankind, proposed as elements of new society.” The author of this work, and myself, […]