William Potter’s “Key of Wealth”

A funny thing happened on the way to the modern edition of William B. Greene’s Mutual Banking. We know that with Mutual Banking, as was so often the case with Greene’s work, the editorial refinement process over the years consisted largely of whittling away at his early works, Equality (1849) and Mutual Banking (1850), cutting down towards the kernel of occasionally sprawling explorations. The editors of Proudhon’s Solution to the Social Problem, who gave us the modern edition of Mutual Banking, only continued that trend. The result is a bit peculiar. While modern critics have at times taken pains to […]

Since this post was written, most of Greene’s works on mutual credit have become available in various digital archives. Here are some links: Equality (1849) Mutual Banking (1850) The Radical Deficiency Of The Existing Circulating Medium, And The Advantages Of A Mutual Currency (1857) Mutual Banking, Showing The Radical Deficiencies Of The Existing Circulating Medium, And The Advantages Of A Free Currency (1870) I’ve been spending more time scanning and proofing than posting lately. The most important result of that is that William Batchelder Greene’s 1870 Mutual Banking, Showing The Radical Deficiencies Of The Existing Circulating Medium, And The Advantages […]

[Alfred B. Westrup, “Co-operation,” Twentieth Century, November 3, 1892, 8-9.—This is a very interesting short piece by Westrup, showing a slightly different side of his individualist anarchism than in many of his writings, where the Mutual Bank Propaganda was his primary concern.] CO-OPERATION. BY ALFRED B. WESTRUP. Much has been written on this subject, and many are the efforts put forward to establish “cooperation” of one kind or another, but so far as there is any hope of settling the economic question, none of the experiments now being carried on can possibly accomplish it. The one essential principle upon which […]