"It has a sound and rational circulating medium, a real and definite representative of wealth." -- Josiah Warren
Josiah Warren (1798-1874) was an individualist anarchist, inventor, musician, and author in the United States. Biographer William Bailie regarded him as the first American anarchist, and the four-page weekly paper he edited during 1833, The Peaceful Revolutionist, was the first anarchist periodical published, William Bailie, an enterprise for which he built his own printing press, cast his own type, and made his own printing plates.
"I decline all noisy, wordy, confused, and personal controversies.""It goes to establish a just and permanent principle of trade which puts an end to all serious fluctuations in prices and consequently, to all the insecurity and ruin which these fluctuations produce; and to build up those who are already ruined.""It has now become a very common sentiment, that there is some deep and radical wrong somewhere, and that legislators have proved themselves incapable of discovering, or, of remedying it.""Public influence is the real government of the world.""The circulating medium being issued only by those who labor, they would suddenly become invested with all the wealth and all the power; and those who did not labor, be they ever so rich now, would as suddenly become poor and powerless.""The necessity of every one paying in his own labor for what he consumes, affords the only legitimate and effectual check to excessive luxury, which has so often ruined individuals, states and empires; and which has now brought almost universal bankruptcy upon us.""This circulating medium has a natural tendency to lessen by degrees the value and the use of money, and finally to render it powerless; and consequently to sweep away all the crushing masses of fraud, iniquity, cruelty, corruption and imposition that are built upon it.""Those who have heard or read anything from me on the subject, know that one of the principal points insisted on is, the forming of societies or any other artificial combinations IS the first, greatest, and most fatal mistake ever committed by legislators and by reformers."
Warren was born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1798. He showed an early talent for music and was a member of the "Old Boston Brigade Band" at an early age. He married at age 20 and in 1821 moved to Cincinnati, Ohio. He invented a tallow-burning lamp in 1821 and manufactured his invention for a number of years in Cincinnati.
Owenism and New Harmony
In 1825, Warren became aware of the "social system" of Robert Owen and began to talk with others in Cincinnati about founding a communist colony. When this group failed to come to agreement about the form and goals of their proposed community, Warren decided to join Owen's community at New Harmony, Indiana. The Cincinnati colony was attempted without Warren's involvement, but failed. Warren traveled by flat-boat from Cincinnati, arriving in New Harmony in early May, 1825. By 1827, he had returned to Cincinnati, convinced that the complete individualization of interests was necessary to cooperation. He considered Owen's experiment "communism," which he rejected in no uncertain terms, but he developed a warm and lasting respect for Robert Owen and his sons. One of his earliest writings, published in The March of Mind in 1827, attests to this, as do later writings.
Warren died on April 14, 1874, amidst his friends, after developing edema.
Warren, like Proudhon, chose the path of anarchism and individualism. Benjamin Tucker dedicated his collection of essays, Instead of a Book, to the memory of Warren, "my friend and masterwhose teachings were my first source of light". Tucker credits Warren with being "the first man to expound and formulate the doctrine now known as Anarchism." 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." Warren's principle of the "sovereignty of the individual" was later taken up by Mill and Herbert Spencer.
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 an experiment." Warren is notable for expounding the idea of "sovereignty of the individual".
Josiah 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. This understanding of cost is congruent with that of the classical economist Adam Smith who said "The real price of every thing, what every thing really costs to the man who wants to acquire it, is the toil and trouble of acquiring it," though Warren reached different conclusions. 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. 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:
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.
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.
Miskelly, Matthew; and Jaime Noce. (eds) Political Theories For Students. Farmington Hills, MI: The Gale Group Inc., 2002. ISBN 0-7876-5645-3
Wunderlich, Roger. Low Living and High Thinking at Modern Times, New York. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1992. ISBN 0-8156-2554-5
