mutualism Archives - Page 4 of 8 - The Libertarian Labyrinth

Educational counter-institutions, I

October 31, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur

Thanks to those who have responded, either on the blog or through email, to my post on the “Roots of American Anarchism” course. I suspect that our pilot course online will fall somewhere between self-paced instruction and a basic online seminar, or, more likely, that we’ll end up offering both options. There is no reason not to offer options tailored to a variety of learning styles and schedules. I’m open, and I think a viable educational counter-institution has to be open, to a great deal of user-customization of the process. That means being willing to provide a bare minimum, as […]

John Gray (1799-1883)

October 29, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur

John Gray, best known for his Lecture on Human Happiness, is frequently listed among the earliest of mutualists. Certainly, he was an important figure among the more-or-less-Owenite socialists of the mid-1820s. His Lecture was cited by the “Mutualist” of 1826. But we know that at least some of the accounts of this “first mutualist moment” are at least a bit garbled, particularly where Gray is involved. I’m still deciding how to classify Gray’s contribution to the history of mutualism, but the work has recently become easier, thanks to the appearance of a number of digital editions of Gray’s works. The […]

1919 Mutual Banking online

October 26, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur

Henry Cohen published a number of editions of William Batchelder Greene’s Mutual Banking in the 20th century. The pieces of that particular bibliographic puzzle have been hard to assemble. Thanks to archive.org, we have at least one more piece: a digital facsimile of the 1919 edition by The Reform League of Denver, Colo. It’s available in a number of formats. Cohen’s editions closely follow the 1870 edition, with notes and an introduction by Cohen.

“Roots of American Anarchism” course, and Beyond(?)

October 22, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur

Well, it looks now like a fairly sure thing that I’ll be teaching a graduate-level course on “The Roots of American Anarchism.” This course is really concerned with the roots of the American anarchist traditions, and with their earliest flowerings. I’ve been half-joking that I would follow the development only up to about the time that the term “anarchism” came into widespread use. In realtity, I’ll go a little further than that, but not a lot. The course is for students of American Culture Studies, but we’ll also spend quite a bit of time looking at European sources.I’m pretty excited […]

Should labor be paid or not? part 1

September 20, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur

I’ve been involved in a number of discussions recently on the issue of wages, as it was understood by the mutualists and their successors among the Liberty group. There seems to be a widespread sense, among social anarchists, but also among some who consider themselves of the mutualist-individualist school, that wages per se are a Bad Thing. Very few anarchists of any stripe would disagree that waged labor, under present conditions and under any conditions where large accumulations of capital, what we used to call “monopoly power,” and state-backed privilege exist, is unlikely to return to labor its fair share […]

“The Spirit of the Age” at Google Books!

September 13, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur

It’s a very, very good day for those interested in the earliest manifestations of mutualism in the United States. William Henry Channing’s The Spirit of the Age (1849-1850) is now available, in its entirety, with minimal scanning defects, from Google Books. I had previously had the chance to read through an original bound volume, and transcribe some contributions. Now I can finally sit down to read through the entire run. 150 or so pages in, my sense of the importance of this early journal just keeps increasing. Go check it out!

Anarchy in Jamaica Plain, etc.

August 16, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur

I had some contact with John Ruch, a writer for the Jamaica Plain Gazette, awhile back. He had seen a letter from William Batchelder Greene to Gen. Benjamin Franklin Butler, posted here. I gave him a general rundown on Greene’s life, and what I knew about his time in Jamaica Plain. His article, “Anarchy in JP,” is now available, and thanks largely to Dan Clore has been getting quite a bit of attention in anarchist circles. John did a very nice job, particularly as there are very few very complete biographical sources on Greene. (You can see my own first […]

Proudhon at Google Books

July 16, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur

As I mentioned in the last post, Google Books’ search engines do miraculous things sometimes, the sort of miraculous things that make finding anything an iffy proposition. I make no claims for the completeness of the list that follows. Finding what I did find was something of an adventure. However, I can happily announce that most of Proudhon’s major work is available, if not obviously so, on Google Books. Volumes undoubtedly lack pages, have text obscured by the fingers of workers, are blurred or bleed of the edge of the screen, but these are just the things we are learning […]

Tucker on Right and Rights, 1882

May 1, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur

There have been a series of discussions / arguments / pointless pissing contests in recent months, revolving around the question of just what sorts of property, and what sorts of actions, are authorized by mutualist theory. Mutualism begins—literally, in Proudhon’s What Is Property?—with a sense that “property” may be a problem without a really satisfactory solution. What, then, does that mean about the mutualist understanding of property relations, particularly in a setting where other property systems may be in place, or in competition. The short answer is probably that mutualism authorizes very little. If the best we can do is […]

William B. Greene, Communism vs. Mutualism

April 28, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur

[This is a repost, probably the first of several, highlighting some of the more important statements about the philosophy of mutualism. Long-time readers and students of mutualism should note, particularly as I did not note it myself before, Greene’s apparent adoption of the “cost principle,” and the linked principle of deferred and social profit: “so much as the individual laborer will then get over and above what he has earned will come to him as his share in the general prosperity of the community of which he is an individual member.” That does not mean, however, that Greene had jumped […]