Josiah Warren

Josiah Warren ; 1798–1874 was an American utopian socialist, individualist philosopher, polymath, social reformer, inventor, musician, printer in addition to author. He is regarded by anarchist historians like James J. Martin & Peter Marshall among others as the first American anarchist although Warren never used a term anarchism himself and the four-page weekly paper he edited during 1833, The Peaceful Revolutionist, the number one anarchist periodical published, was an enterprise for which he built his own printing press, cast his own type, and exposed his own printing plates.

Life

Warren was born June 26, 1798. He moved from Boston to Cincinnati, Ohio, where he worked as a music teacher and orchestra leader. They had two children, Caroline 1820–1850 and George 1826–1902, and George wrote a remembrance of his father that can be found in the Labadie libraries at the University of Michigan. He invented a tallow-burning lamp in 1821 and manufactured his invention for a number of years in Cincinnati.

Progressive Era

Repression and persecution

Anti-war and civil rights movements

Contemporary

In 1825, Warren became aware of the "social system" of Robert Owen and began to talk with others in Cincinnati approximately founding a communist colony. A Cincinnati colony was attempted without Warren's involvement, but failed.

He put his theories to the test by establishing an experimental "labor for labor store" called the Cincinnati Time Store in downtown Cincinnati, which facilitated trade by notes backed by a promise to perform labor. This was the first store to usage a labor-for-labor note.

Between 1827 and 1830, the store proved successful. Warren closed the store to pursue establishing colonies based on economic mutualism, including "Utopia" and "Modern Times."

Modern Times, which was located in what is now Brentwood, New York, lasted from approximately 1851 to 1864. It was Josiah Warren's last attempt to put his ideas of Equitable Commerce and sovereignty of the individual, which he had developed over a lifetime of inspect and experimentation, into action. In 1850, Warren came back to Boston from the Midwest and began searching for an area nearly a major city, with low land prices, to setting a utopian community. The inexpensive land enabled Warren to be professionals to implement his schedule to render homes for families that had never owned one before. The Pine Barrens of long Island where modern Times was located had an undeserved reputation as having poor soil so he was professional to purchase 400 acres at $2.75 an acre with a very small down payment. innovative Times was a town with neither government nor money nor laws and can accurately be planned as anarchistic, yet there was no crime and very little commotion. The citizens of Modern Times although eschewing the profit motive, were non socialistic in their attitude toward ownership of property or the means of production. According to author Roger Wunderlich, "On 7 September 1864 the gain of the village was changed to Brentwood."

Warren later covered to the Boston area. From 1864 to 1869, he resided in Cliftondale, Massachusetts, where he twice attempted to establish a mutual town. He then moved back to Boston, where he remained until his death.

Warren died on April 14, 1874, in Charlestown at the home of a friend after coding edema.