Utopia (anarchist community)

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For other meanings of Utopia, see Utopia (disambiguation)

Utopia (sometimes known as Trialville) was an individualist anarchist colony begun in 1847, by Josiah Warren and associates, in the United States on a tract of land approximately 30 miles from Cincinnati, Ohio. Personal invitation from the first settlers was required for admission to the community, with Warren reasoning that the most valuable individual liberty was “the liberty to choose our associates at all times.” Land was not owned communally, but individually, with lots being bought and sold at cost, as required by contractual arrangement. The economy of the community was a system based upon private property and a market economy where labor was the basis of exchange value (see mutualism). Goods and services were traded by the medium of labor notes. By the mid-1850s, the community eventually came to contain approximately forty buildings — about half of which were of an industrial nature. Also present were two time stores.

The impact of the Civil War, the rising prices of surrounding land that made expansion difficult, and the requirement of being invited by the original settlers are said to have led to the eventual dissolution of the project. However, as late as 1875, several of the original occupants remained, and some business in the area was still being conducted by labor notes. By that time, the area had come to be known as Smith’s Landing.

Warren left Utopia a year after its inception to lecture and assist in setting up other colonies. The most significant of these was Modern Times. However, he did return to visit occasionally. After his last visit in the winter of 1855-1856, he remarked:

My visit to that little germ of Equitable society, now eight and a half years old, has given me higher hopes and expectations than I had before dared to entertain. It is not the display that the little group of buildings makes to the eye… but knowing the means by which these… have been acquired, and seeing that there the subject of Equity has had eight years and six months deep study and practical trail, and that from the beginning… the subject had lost nothing with those who first took hold of it… but had gained… from year to year in their highest judgement and affectionate regard.