Blackwell Reference Online

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Josiah Warren, “the peaceful revolutionist,” was an American writer, inventor, musician, and social experimenter. His system of “equitable commerce” influenced radical individualists such as Frances Wright, Stephen Pearl Andrews, Ezra Heywood, and Benjamin R. Tucker, and, through them, the American individualist anarchist tradition. Born in Boston, Massachusetts, Warren was involved, between 1825 and 1827, in unsuccessful attempts, near Cincinnati, Ohio and at New Harmony, Indiana to establish communities based on the philosophy of Robert Owen. Warren attributed these failures to the principle of the “unity of interests,” and proposed instead the “sovereignty of the individual” and “cooperation without combination.” In 1827 Warren opened his Cincinnati “time store,” based on the principles of “cost the limit of price” and “labor for labor exchange.” At the time store, Warren charged only his cost, including labor time. Labor notes facilitated exchange. Finding his principles sound in practice, he turned to other experiments, from cost-price vocational training, at Spring Hill, Ohio, to equitable villages at Utopia, Ohio and Modern Times, New York. A newspaper, The Peaceful Revolutionist , was launched by Warren in 1833. His key work, Equitable Commerce , was published in 1846 and followed by Practical Details In Equitable Commerce (1852) and two volumes of True Civilization ... log in or subscribe to read full text