Robert Owen

Anarchist Beginnings

Josiah Warren, “From ‘The March of Mind'” (1828)

July 20, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur
The acquisition of any new fact, always produces in my mind a feeling of pleasure, especially when I perceive that it will in any manner promote my future happiness; and the more does it increase my happiness if I can make it subservient to the happiness of others. This will be sufficient apology to the reader for my observations, when it is considered that they are not obtruded upon him as rules for his own conduct, but that they are here placed for his consideration, to be accepted or rejected as his own judgment shall determine. It is now about […]
Anarchism

Josiah Warren’s debt to Robert Owen

February 5, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur
The extent to which the individualist anarchists remained suprisingly orthodox students of the so-called “utopian socialists” is a question that interests me quite a bit. I recently suggested a sort of division between “post-Fourierists” and “post-Saint-Simonians” (or “post-Comteans”) among the early individualists. (See also my follow-up here.) Here is some additional, if circumstantial, evidence. The first piece is by Josiah Warren, from the Boston Investigator in the early 1860s. Defending himself against inclusion among the proponents of the “Community System,” he also defends Robert Owen, Robert Dale Owen, and Frances Wright against a variety of charges. But he also takes […]