The practical anarchist : writings of Josiah Warren

313 Pages·2011·3.65 MB·English

by  Josiah Warren

W R I T I N G S or
JOSIAH WARREN
EDITED, WITH AN INTRODUCTION, BY
THE PRACTICAL ANARCHIST
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AMERICAN PHILOSOPHY
Douglas R. Anderson and Jude Jones, series editors

THE PRACTICAL
ANARCHIST
Writings of Josiah Warren
Edited and with an Introduction by
CRISPIN SARTWELL
FORDHAM UNIVERSITY PRESS NEW YORK 2011
Copyright © 2011 Fordham University Press
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Warren, Josiah, 1798-1874.
The practical anarchist: writings ofJosiah Warren I edited and with
an introduction by Crispin Sartwell.-1st ed.
p. cm.- (American philosophy)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-8232-3370-0 (cloth : alk. paper)
ISBN 978-0-8232-3372-4 (pbk. : alk. paper)
L Warren, Josiah, 1798-1874. 2. Anarchism-United States.
3. Utopian socialism-United States. I. Sartwell, Crispin, 1958-
II. Title.
HX843.7.W27 2011
335' .83092-dc22
2011013452
Printed in the United States of America
13 12 11 5 4 3 2 1
First edition
Contents
Acknowledgments IX
Introduction
1
Equitable Commerce 54
The Peaceful Revolutionist 99
"Notebook D" 124
True Civilization 139
Narrative of Practical Experiments
Ephemera and Miscellanea 219
Early Writings 219
"From the March of Mind" 220
"Improvement of the Machinery of Law" 222
Modern Education 225
Against Compulsory Education 230
Written Music Remodeled 231
"A Few Words to the Writer in a Paper Called the
Circular on the Sovereignty of the Individual" 235
''Manifesto'' 237
"My Dear Sir" 242
Open Letter to Louis Kossuth 246
Simplicity 249
{ vii }
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Appendixes
A. Chronology of Warren's Life 253
B. American Individualist Anarchists of the Nineteenth
Century 264
C. American Utopias 2 6 8
D. Josiah Warren: An Annotated Bibliography 273
Notes 281
Index 291
Acknowledgments
A
summer grant from Dickinson College helped to fund research
in collections and to obtain photocopies. I thank Dickinson for
that and many other forms of support. My work on Warren has pig
gybacked on the exemplary research of Shawn Wilbur. Dana Ward's
"Anarchy Archives" website gave me my first real contact with War
ren's texts, and earlier versions of some of texts reprinted here, in
cluding versions typeset by Warren, can be found there. The
Wisconsin Historical Society, the Indiana Historical Society, the La
badie Collection at the University of Michigan, the Houghton Library
at Harvard University, and the Working Men's Institute at New Har
mony, Indiana, were of extraordinary aid in obtaining the materials
contained in this book. Finally, I want to express my admiration for
Josiah Warren: a half-cracked monomaniac but also an omni-compe
tent human being. I admire his style of anti-leadership, based on anti
charisma: too reticent to tell you how to live. Rarely have extreme
idealism and extreme realism been so idiosyncratically or so compel
lingly combined. It is a combination we may require yet.
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