Josiah Warren

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Josiah Warren was the first American individualist market anarchist
Josiah Warren was the first American individualist market anarchist

Josiah Warren (1798-1874) was an individualist anarchist, inventor, musician, and author in the United States. He is widely regarded to be the first American anarchist, and some regard the periodical he edited in 1833, The Peaceful Revolutionist, to be the first anarchist periodical ever published.

Contents

[edit] Philosophy

Warren is credited by Benjamin Tucker as being one of the originators of the "socialist" criticism of capitalism [1], who, like Proudhon chose the path of anarchy and individualism over authoritarian state socialism. Tucker dedicated his collection of essays, Instead of a Book, to the memory of Warren, "my friend and master...whose teachings were my first source of light". Tucker says that Warren "was the first man to expound and formulate the doctrine now known as Anarchism." (Liberty XIV (December, 1900):1) John Stuart Mill said Warren's philosophy, "though being a superficial resemblance to some of the project of the Socialists, is diametrically opposed to them in principle, since it recognizes no authority whatever in Society, over the individual, except to enforce equal freedom of development for all individuals."[1] Warren's principle of the "sovereignty of the individual" was later taken up by Mill and Herbert Spencer.[2]

Warren's individualistic philosophy arose out of his rejection of Robert Owen's cooperative movement, of which he was an early participant, witnessing in person the failure of Owen's New Harmony commune. Of it, he wrote: "It seemed that the difference of opinion, tastes and purposes increased just in proportion to the demand for conformity […] It appeared that it was nature's own inherent law of diversity that had conquered us […] our 'united interests' were directly at war with the individualities of persons and circumstances and the instinct of self-preservation". According to Warren, there should be abolutely no community of property; all property should be individualized, and "those who advocated any type of communism with connected property, interests, and responsibilities were doomed to failure because of the individuality of the persons involved in such as experiment."[3] Warren is notable for expounding the idea of "sovereignty of the individual". In his Manifesto Warren states:

"the forming of societies or any other artificial combinations IS the first, greatest, and most fatal mistake ever committed by legislators and by reformers. That all these combinations require the surrender of the natural sovereignty of the INDIVIDUAL over her or his person, time, property and responsibilities, to the government of the combination. That this tends to prostrate the individual-To reduce him to a mere piece of a machine ; involving others in responsibility for his acts, and being involved in responsibilities for the acts and sentiments of his associates ; he lives & acts, without proper control over his own affairs, without certainty as to the results of his actions, and almost without brains that he dares to use on his own account ; and consequently never realizes the great objects for which society is professedly formed."

[edit] Ethics of Pricing

Warren termed the phrase "Cost the limit of price," with "cost" here referring not to monetary price paid but the labor one exerted to produce an item.[4] He believed that goods and services should trade according to how much labor was exerted to produce them and bring them to market, instead of according to how individuals believed them to be subjectively worth. To charge more labor for something that entailed less labor was "cannibalism," according to him.[5] Moreover, he believed that trading according to "cost the limit of price" would promote increasing efficiency in an economy, as he explains in Equitable Commerce:

If cost is made the limit of price, every one becomes interested in reducing COST, by bringing in all the economies, all the facilities to their aid. But, on the contrary, if cost does not govern the price, but every thing is priced at what it will bring, there are no such co-operating interests. If I am to have my supply of flour at cost, then, any facility I can afford to the wheat grower, reduces the cost to me, and it does the same for all who have any portion of the wheat, I am promoting all their interests while pursuing my own... Now if the wheat were NOT TO BE SOLD TO us AT COST, but at "whatever it would bring" according to our necessities, then none of us would have any interest in affording facilities, repairing breaches, nor in any other way co-operating with the producer of it. The same, motive would act in the production, preservation, and use of every thing." (p. 77-78)

He put his theories to the test by establishing an experimental "labor for labor store" called the Cincinnati Time Store where trade was facilitated by notes backed by a promise to perform labor. The store proved successful and operated for three years after which it was closed so that Warren could pursue establishing colonies based on mutualism. These included "Utopia" and "Modern Times." Warren said that Stephen Pearl Andrews' The Science of Society, published in 1852, was the most lucid and complete exposition of Warren's own theories.[6]

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Mill, John Stuart. Autobiography (1873), Oxford University Press, World's Classics edition (1935), p. 217
  2. ^ Harvey Wish. Stephen Pearl Andrews, American Pioneer Sociologist. Social Forces, Vol. 19, No. 4. (May, 1941), p. 481
  3. ^ Butler, Ann Caldwell. Josiah Warren and the Sovereignty of the Individual. The Journal of Libertarian Studies, Vol. IV, No. 4 (Fall 1980)
  4. ^ Warren says in Equitiable Commerce, "A watch has a cost and a value. The COST consists of the amount of labor bestowed on the mineral or natural wealth, in converting it into metals..."
  5. ^ In Equitable Commerce, Warren writes, "If a priest is required to get a soul out of purgatory, he sets his price according to the value which the relatives set upon his prayers, instead of their cost to the priest. This, again, is cannibalism. The same amount of labor equally disagreeable, with equal wear and tear, performed by his customers, would be a just remuneration
  6. ^ Charles A. Madison. Anarchism in the United States. Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 6, No. 1. (Jan., 1945), pp. 53

[edit] See also

[edit] Academic references

  • Bailie, William. Josiah Warren: The First American Anarchist. Boston: Small, Maynard & Co., 1906.
  • Martin, James J. Men Against the State: The Expositors of Individualist Anarchism in America, 1827-1908. Colorado Springs, CO.: Ralph Myles Publishers, 1970.
  • Wunderlich, Roger. Low Living and High Thinking at Modern Times, New York. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1992. ISBN 0-8156-2554-5

[edit] External references

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