What Mutualism Was Archives - The Libertarian Labyrinth

“The Mutualist” (1826)

August 11, 2018 Shawn P. Wilbur

[one_third padding=”0 10px 0 0px”] What Mutualism Was: An Incomplete History of Mutualist Tendencies What Mutualism Was: Coming to Terms with Our Past ⁂ The Mutualist—at once the name of the tract and its author—appeared in five installments, starting in the summer of 1826. The first 24 Remarks are practical in nature and, while the author is definitely critical of the New Harmony settlement and elements, they are presented in a much more conciliatory tone than those written some months later, after criticism of the first three installments had been published in the Gazette. The later Remarks focus on the […]

Lewis Masquerier’s “Sociology” Reconstructed

July 7, 2018 Shawn P. Wilbur

Bibliography: Lewis Masquerier, “Godology.—No. 1,” Boston Investigator 39 no. 27 (November 3, 1869): 209. Lewis Masquerier, “Godology.—No. 2,” Boston Investigator 39 no. 28 (November 10, 1869): 217. Lewis Masquerier, “An Oecumenical Convention of the World’s Political and Religious Reformers. No. 2,” Boston Investigator 40 no. 29 (November 16, 1870): 1. Lewis Masquerier, “An Oecumenical Convention of the World’s Political and Religious Reformers. No. 3,” Boston Investigator 40 no. 30 (November 23, 1870): 1. Lewis Masquerier, “An Oecumenical Convention of the World’s Political and Religious Reformers. No. 4,” Boston Investigator 41 no. 9 (June 28, 1871): 1. Lewis Masquerier, “An Oecumenical […]

1848-1868: William B. Greene in “The Worcester Palladium”

January 6, 2018 Shawn P. Wilbur

EPISODES in another history: Omega, [Letter to the editor], The Worcester Palladium 15 no. 23 (June 07, 1848): 3. [see below] Omega, “Equality.—No. 1,” The Worcester Palladium 16 no. 29 (July 18, 1849): 3 Omega, “Equality.—No. 2. The Banking System,” The Worcester Palladium 16 no. 30 (July 25, 1849): 3 Omega, “Equality.—No. 3. The Repeal of the Usury Laws,” The Worcester Palladium 16 no. 31 (August 1, 1849): 2-3. Omega, “Capital and Labor.—No. I,” The Worcester Palladium 16 no. 37 (September 12, 1849): 2-3. Omega, “Capital and Labor.—No. II. Socialism in Massachusetts,” The Worcester Palladium 16 no. 38 (September 19, […]

Henry Seymour, “The Two Anarchisms” (1894)

August 29, 2016 Shawn P. Wilbur

[ezcol_2third] Anarchists are divided into MUTUALISTS, who hope to bring about their economic results by Banks of Exchange and a free currency; and COMMUNISTS, whose motto is: “From every man according to his capacity, to every man according to his needs.” Hazell’s Annual Encyclopaedia, 1886 There are two Anarchisms. That is to say, there are two schools of Anarchism. One is communistic, the other mutualistic. One is emotional, the other is philosophic. One is utopian, the other practical. One is dogmatic, the other rational. One is destructive, the other constructive. One is revolutionary, the other evolutionary. One relies on the […]

What Mutualism Was: An Incomplete History of Mutualist Tendencies

August 29, 2015 anarchisms_w4l2ii

It has been well over a decade since I started piecing together the pieces of mutualist history. At the time, the work had a curious urgency, as the handful of us who had gravitated to the “mutualist” label had a lot of ground to cover in order to really understand just what we had implicated ourselves in. The specific project of sketching all that early history is one in which I have invested less energy as the years went on, but I’ve never stopped documenting the bits of history that I have found. The links here will form an evolving […]

Mapping Mutualism

March 19, 2014 Shawn P. Wilbur

[ezcol_1third] [/ezcol_1third] [ezcol_2third_end] As I’ve mentioned, several of my projects have been intersecting recently, and I’ve been feeling better able to start mapping out the various currents and traditions that we would have to account for in any really adequate history of mutualism. Let’s just get some of those elements laid out so we can refer back to them: Proudhon’s own writings. We are fortunate to have a great deal of Proudhon’s work now available online, including quite a number of the manuscripts. There are a number of articles that remain uncollected and there are some omissions in the Mélanges […]

Mutualism at the Owenite High Tide

July 6, 2012

For a look at the concerns of the Owenite current at the moment, in the 1820s, when some members were trying on the label “mutualist” and Josiah Warren was taking the steps that would lead him to individualist anarchism, I’ve assembled a collection of texts in the first volume of a Documentary History of Mutualism: Mutualism at the Owenite High Tide. In it: The letters of the “1826 Mutualist” are followed by Josiah Warren’s “The Motives for Communism,”—an account of his involvement with the Owenite movement,—a speech given at New Harmony by communist Paul Brown,—author of Twelve Months in New […]

Notes on the origins of the term “mutualism” (1822-1850)

July 6, 2012

I contributed most of the following to Wikipedia, so we can just make use of it here to get started on a bit of basic mutualist history: Mutualism, as a term, has seen a variety of related uses. Charles Fourier first used the French term “mutualisme” in 1822, although the reference was not to an economic system. The first use of the noun “mutualist” was in the New-Harmony Gazette by an American Owenite in 1826. In the early 1830s, a labor organization in Lyons, France, called themselves the “Mutuellists.” Pierre Joseph Proudhon was involved with the Lyons mutualists and later […]

Bevington and Seymour, “Proudhon and Communism” (1894)

July 8, 2011 Shawn P. Wilbur

Debate on Proudhon and property: Contr’un Revisited: [commentary coming soon] I’ve long admired the “other” Liberty, the anarchist-communist paper published in England by James Tochatti in the 1890s. (You can admire some of the later issues here.) But I hadn’t had an opportunity to sit down with more than just scattered issues until last week, when I spent several hours going through the microfilm of the run. There are a number of articles that I’ll be reproducing here, or in the Labyrinth archive, but the material that is probably of most immediate interest to the readership of this blog is […]

Mutualist Townships: Albert Brisbane and J. K. Ingalls (1849–1850)

March 26, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur

In early 1850, The Spirit of the Age featured two proposals for a “mutualist township.” One, by Joshua King Ingalls, was a practical follow-up to his “Method of Transition.” The other was by Albert Brisbane, the well-known popularizer of Charles Fourier. Brisbane was also an acquaintance of Proudhon, having visited him in prison in France. In this sense, Brisbane had the most direct connection to the French mutualist tradition of any of the American writers in 1850. Greene would eventually meet Proudhon, later in the 1850s. What follows is, in a sense, Brisbane’s mutualist resumé, including his account of his […]