18 Facts About Josiah Warren

Josiah Warren was an American utopian socialist, American individualist anarchist, individualist philosopher, polymath, social reformer, inventor, musician, printer and author.

Josiah Warren is regarded by anarchist historians like James J Martin and Peter Marshall among others as the first American anarchist and the four-page weekly paper he edited during 1833, The Peaceful Revolutionist, the first anarchist periodical published, was an enterprise for which he built his own printing press, cast his own type, and made his own printing plates.

Josiah Warren moved from Boston to Cincinnati, Ohio, where he worked as a music teacher and orchestra leader.

Josiah Warren invented a tallow-burning lamp in 1821 and manufactured his invention for a number of years in Cincinnati.

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.

Josiah Warren 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.

In 1850, Josiah Warren came back to Boston from the Midwest and began searching for an area near a major city, with low land prices, to establish a utopian community.

The inexpensive land enabled Josiah Warren to be able to implement his plan to provide homes for families that had never owned one before.

Josiah Warren then moved back to Boston, where he remained until his death.

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

Josiah Warren has been considered the "American Proudhon" due to his belief in his labor theory of value "cost the limit of price" in a free-market socialism system in addition to his support for mutualism through encouraging Mutualist Banks:.

Josiah 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.

Josiah Warren believed that labor was robbed through rent, interest, and profit and his aim, like that of the Socialists, was to prevent these modes of exploitation.

In 1827, Josiah Warren conceived the idea of labor notes, a scheme which was later practised in socialist Owenite labour exchanges in the mid-1830s.

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.

Josiah Warren 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.

Josiah Warren is the inventor of the first rotary press.

Catalan historian Xavier Diez reports that the intentional communal experiments pioneered by Josiah Warren were influential in European individualist anarchists of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries such as Emile Armand and the intentional communities started by them.