For a look at the concerns of the Owenite current at the moment, in the 1820s, when some members were trying on the label “mutualist” and Josiah Warren was taking the steps that would lead him to individualist anarchism, I’ve assembled a collection of texts in the first volume of a Documentary History of Mutualism: Mutualism at the Owenite High Tide. In it:
The letters of the “1826 Mutualist” are followed by Josiah Warren’s “The Motives for Communism,”—an account of his involvement with the Owenite movement,—a speech given at New Harmony by communist Paul Brown,—author of Twelve Months in New Harmony,—“How I Became a Shaker,”—by one of the young men involved in the Owenite colony at Valley Forge,—and a short account the trial of one of John Adolphus Etzler’s “Satellites,”—sent by Andrew Smolnikar to William Henry Channing, for inclusion in The Present. This odd assortment of texts form part the skeleton around which we may eventually be able to flesh out a more complete history. We have tantalizing details to work with, such as an account of Warren and Brown travelling together to visit the Owenite community at Kendal, and ultimately there doesn’t seem to be more than a degree or two of separation between any of these figures—or between these figures and others we know from other segments of radical history. For now, it’s probably enough to keep those potential histories in mind as you encounter some of the most interesting figures of the Owenite “high tide.”
