This letter from Ezra H. Heywood is the first fruits of several days spent researching in Eugene, OR and Berkeley, CA, over the last couple of months. When I discovered that both André Léo and Jenny d’Héricourt had corresponded with the American women’s rights papers The Revolution and The Agitator, and that both papers had published partial translations of André Léo’s La femme et les mœurs, it became obvious that I needed to track those papers down. I was already familiar with Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Parker Pillsbury’s paper, The Revolution, which contained contributions by Ezra Heywood, Josiah Warren, C. […]
[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 […]
In 1873, William Batchelder Greene was asked by Ezra Heywood to explain Pierre-Joseph Proudhon’s ideas on property. Greene sent along translations of the first three, and last three pages of What is Property? and a short, fascinating account of Proudhon and his ideas, based on Greene’s acquaintance with Proudhon during his years in Paris, roughly 1853-1861. It is clear from the account that Greene was most familiar with Proudhon’s earlier works. Some of Greene’s explanation is not consistent with the works from the 1860s, and some of it is consistent, as when Greene likens property to Satan, but in ways […]
