The General Critique: Josiah Warren’s Individualist Social Science
Warren’s Situation
For the Anarchists who don’t ape the economic doctrine of Marx, a united critique of Government and Capitalism is important. Anarchists see these institutions as different faces of despotism, materialized in different forms within human affairs. A critique that is flexible enough to suffocate these domineering modes of organization, and is not just two semi-related critiques stitched together, is vital for a holistic critique of authority. Shawn Wilbur suggested that a point from Proudhon’s work on the Right of Escheat [1] could be used, but, I believe the analysis of Equitable Commerce might be a better candidate, at least for the explicitly Left-Wing Market Anarchist side of things.
Josiah Warren, sometimes called “the First American Anarchist,” was a peculiar figure. He would become influential to more famous theorists like Benjamin Tucker and John Stuart Mill. His introduction into politics was Robert Owen’s Communism after he had attended one of his public speaking events, which wound him up to investigate social reform for the rest of his life. After participating in Owen’s social experiment at New Harmony, his reflections on its failure fit him to lay out his new ideology based on Individualism. Given that Warren’s experiments would last more than a decade with considerably less favorable starting conditions than Owen, whose own experiment only lasted for two years, it might be indicative that Warren was on the right track.
Warren laid out five significant points that made up his doctrine of Equitable Commerce, which was supposed to revolutionize society from top to bottom, and to abolish social ills stemming from false principles.
“I. INDIVIDUALITY.
S. SOVEREIGNTY OF EVERY INDIVIDUAL.
C. COST THE LIMIT OP PRICE,
M. CIRCULATING MEDIUM FOUNDED ON THE COST OF LABOR.
A. ADAPTATION OF THE SUPPLY TO THE DEMAND.” [2]
The General Critique
What might appear as distinct points that Warren was making, is actually more interconnected than how it may seem. At the heart of it, though, was a deep seeded belief in the virtues of Individualism. Warren was adamant that the root of social evils and their redemption can be understood only by a Study of Individuality. If you have read it, Crispin Sartwell’s introduction on Josiah Warren is fine, but it has a noticeable flaw. One does not get the sense of the unity in his analysis from basing his theories on individuality, the beginning and endpoint of the Warrenite program. I want to showcase this aspect of Warren, and more broadly, to show how Anarchist analysis can be more than anti-Statism with Marxist Political Economy grafted on top.
“After many years of patient watchfulness of the world’s movements and of laborious experiments, we see in this Individuality the germ of a future so magnificent, so bright and dazzling, that the eye can scarcely look upon it. … We see by it the violence of all disputes and controversies, whether religious, political, or domestic, or pecuniary, suddenly neutralised by a power as soft and genial as the gentle breath of a beneficent spirit! … We discover a reasonable explanation of the antagonisms between ruled and rulers, between despotism and liberty! and we have found the deep seated, unseen causes of the political, religious, and pecuniary confusion and sufferings of the race, and of the disastrous defeats of Revolutions and reformatory movements. We behold in INDIVIDUALITY the long-sought principle of order, harmony, and progress!” [2]
To contrast the principle of Individuality, which would become the foundation of his positive proposals, Warren formed a critique of “combination of interests” as he put it (or “combinations” for short). Combinations are found wherever the group, relationship, or interaction between two individuals supersedes any of the constituent members in importance. Combinations demand an artificial uniformity from its members in action.
The most conspicuous cases of combination are the governments of the World. Monarchies, democracies, aristocracies, oligarchies, theocracies, technocracies, any sort of government which supersedes its people due to some “right” is nothing but a massive combination. It is very overt. Under monarchy, the group’s power is wielded by a monarch who induces uniformity in the greater mass of people to their will. Under democracy, uniformity is derived from the votes of the majority. In Warren’s experience of Communism at New Harmony, he had observed the effects of combination, where fraternity was expected to arise from the dwarfing of competition by communitarian organization. Although, before critiquing combination, one needs to understand a little more about individuality.
From first reading Warren, it might seem out of place, but actually, the epistemological and ontological proceedings from his Study of Individuality are crucial to understand his broader critique of combination. Individuality, put simply, is the sum of the differences, peculiarities, and uniqueness of different people, things, or events. It presents itself as the basis for human knowledge, and even the scientific method. To communicate information, we have many unique letters in the alphabet to convey complex information. To create music, we use a variety of individual notes, taking care not to combine them, which would dull the sound into monotony. To understand this from that, we look at the individualities that differ this from that. Individuality within things produces definiteness, and mashing them together produces confusion. This is best seen in the scientific method, which seeks to disentangle individual elements — independent and dependent variables — to isolate the independent variable and manipulate it, and observe the differences pressed upon the dependent variable therefrom. Individuality is a constant production of the Universe — an absolute fact — that cannot be overcome, which makes it useful as a starting point.
The Study of Individuality then translates to an analysis of social movement, which, like all things, rely on Individuality. [3*]
“The directing power, or the lead of every movement must be individual, or there is no lead, no order, nothing but confusion. The lead may be a person or a thing — an idea or a principle; but it must be an Individuality, or it cannot lead; and those who are led must have an individual or similar impulse, and both that and the lead must coincide or harmonize, to insure order and progress.” [2]
The reason why movements must be directed by individuality is that we live in a single timeline, in other words, the outcome of events is always singular. [4] Movements can only move in an individual way, or else they cease to be moved at all. This all circles back to understanding the combination. How do combinations move? If combinations are, by their very nature, heterogeneous individualities, then what must take place is a method to enforce conformity where there was none for there to be any movement of the combination. This inducement — this conformation to an alien individuality — must come from outside at least some of the people of that combination. This inevitably creates frustration and antagonism in combinations, where people who don’t agree are either forced to, or one part of the combination must heed the wills of the other.
This is what produces so much conflict in society. The failure of the combination is the root cause of social turmoil. In a democratic government, tensions arise because inevitably some people are unable to express their individuality. Whatever the system of “right” that justify the movements of combination is, discontent will arise because it alienates the wills of the subordinates from their movement. It retards progress by fixing the combination in the present, therefore resisting rather than following progress, since individual wills are prevented from self-directing themselves with an ever changing Universe. Therefore, for society to achieve harmony and progress — what we might call anarchy — we need to overcome the failures of combination, and, this is exactly what Warren sought to do. Common projects under combination, as we have seen, are defined by subsuming some or all the individuals involved to that project. [4*] What must be done then is to subordinate common projects to the individuals that engage with them, and that means nothing short of demolishing the entire existing social order.
For politics, this means that every individual is their own government. Social movement, in order to be harmonious, must originate in the wills of each individuality organically converging. Individualities are preserved, and no one is submerged into an anti-social uniformity.
Something less obvious to the reader is how this analysis transfers to a critique of Capitalism. Warren’s deference to the injustice of Capitalism is relatively simple — too simple to be taken at face value. He asks us to contemplate on various pricing methods in an economy — should articles of consumption be priced according to their cost to the producer or their value to the consumer. Given some of the norms already in vogue in society, which he thinks indicates some unacceptability with value-based commerce, he concludes that cost, and not value, should be the limit of price.
“The value of a loaf of bread to a starving man is equal to the value of his life : and if the price of a thing should be what it will bring, then a vender might demand of the passengers of a wrecked vessel, the whole of their future lives in servitude, as the proper price of the bread that saved their lives! But any one who should make such a demand would be looked upon as insane — a Cannibal; and one simultaneous voice would denounce the outrageous injustice, and Would cry aloud for retribution. Why ? What is it that constitutes the cannibalism in this case ? Is it not measuring the price of the bread according to its value instead of its cost, or setting a price upon the ‘thing’ according to ‘what it would bring ?’” [5]
In these forms of rhetoric, Warren at plays on the moral sentiments and intuitions of the reader, which may be useful in the sense of swaying an audience, but the argument is disconnected from the previous analysis — even though it isn’t. Warren is still looking to harmonize relations between people — this is only a different application of the Individualist analysis.
To continue we need to compare cost-based and value-based commerce. What makes value-based commerce undesirable? Why does cost-based commerce allow for the flourishing of individual freedom for all?
A clue is given to us by his analysis of combination, where individualities are subsumed to an outside will. Antagonism is created through the friction between irreconcilable forces, which must be neutralized and made to serve whatever “right” that determines the combination’s movement. In value-based commerce, there seems to be a certain co-operation that Warren desires, but on closer inspection there is something more insidious, something that he believed warranted the description: “civilized cannibalism.” Selling commodities based on the dependency of the consumer pits someone’s individual will, their self-interest, against them. This dependency neuters any sort of autonomous self-direction, negating the expression of the individuality of the cannibalized. This is the deeper meaning of Warren’s critique of Capitalism. It is why Warren continues to expand on the cooperative power of the Cost Principle. If someone is to have their goods at cost, then they are interested in cooperating to insure that they can get them as cheaply as possible. [6*] Under value-based commerce, the will of the cannibalized is confined to enriching the cannibal, and concentrating economic power further into a class outside of themselves.
What ought to be clarified is that the Cost Principle goes deeper than the mere pricing of things, but fundamentally is about the distribution of wealth. In his own words, the Cost Principle abolishes the distinction between rich and poor, because suddenly, the hardest working people are the greatest rewarded. Without a denial of equity, no longer can the rich idle in luxury. Warren saw this conflict in full effect in the strife and antagonism present to the Capitalist society that was beginning to develop in the United States. Abolishing the role of the idle class removes the root cause of conflict over the share of social wealth.
He thus saw the Cost Principle as a key element in economic transformation, since it at once 1) facilitated co-operation without combination, 2) elevated the status of the worker within society allowing him to express his own individuality, and 3) presents an opportunity for a harmonious distribution of wealth.
From here, we can then easily connect the use of the labor note to Warren’s program. The labor note was seen as the medium by which the Cost Principle could be materialized. Money, which is based on value, was unsuitable to being used to represent cost. Labor, the basis for all cost, was a universal foundation by which we could exchange wealth. More specifically, the labor note was a form of credit that people would exchange. Meaning that purchases could be done via a labor note, which could then be redeemed by the vendor at a later point in time, or, if inconvenient for the original purchaser, could be exchanged for a commonly desired commodity — corn, tobacco, silver, or something else. Essentially, this was Warren’s way to de-monopolize the circulating medium, making everyone their own banker, being able to capitalize on the wealth they had access to.
The adaptation of supply to demand was his last point, and served as the basis of economy and the production of wealth. Production occurs in society to attain wealth serving the constituent’s individual wills. Organizing to adapt supply to the demands of society was intended to accompany the adjusting prices to represent cost, which, was supposed to remedy the needless fluctuation inherent in value-based commerce from the interference of speculation.
Both of these two points by Warren were seen as practical necessities for harmonious workings within an economy based on his Cost Principle. To use a medium of exchange based on cost to make proper estimation of cost-price, and adaption of supply to demand as the natural object of economy and mutual self-interest.
There is certainly room to criticize Warren, and not just for his fair share of anachronism. Warren seems aloof to the nature of institutional influence that might provide the basis for cost-based commerce more generally without the need to change the mode of exchange per se. He makes few comments on property norms other than a deference to Cost the Limit of Price being the regulating factor. These deficiencies can largely be fixed with readings of other Individualists like Tucker, who were more concerned with those institutional factors regulating the general flow of wealth, rather than the absolute standard of pricing Warren was proposing. Nevertheless, his greatest achievement in his writings, in my opinion, is the general critique of authority based on individuality. Using Warren’s writings as a basis, I suspect that it can be used in many radical directions that he had not foreseen, against many different authorities and combinations we deal in the present, against modern Governments, Capitalism, and religious domination; against patriarchy, racism, psychiatry, ableism, allocisheteronormativity, etc.
In any sense, Anarchists need a general critique. Warren’s seems to be a mighty fine candidate for any Individualist.
Notes and References
[1] Wilbur, Shawn P. “Escheat and Anarchy.” The Libertarian Labyrinth, 22 Aug. 2022, https://www.libertarian-labyrinth.org/featured-articles/escheat-and-anarchy/.
[2] Warren, Josiah. Equitable Commerce: A New Development of Principles, As Substitutes For Laws And Governments, For The Harmonious Adjustment and Regulation Of The Pecuniary, Intellectual, And Moral Intercourse Of Mankind. Proposed As Elements Of New Society., Fowler and Wells Publication, 1852.
[3*] As a side note, this fact coincides nicely with Lysander Spooner’s arguments for the legalization of vice. Paternalism cannot succeed because all the aggregated data in the world pales in comparison to understanding the unique circumstance of how unique actions affect unique individuals, which, can only be tested and learned from by the individuals themselves.
[4*] Another critique of government is that of the Constitution. Constitutions in a government operate under a false pretense of objectivity, in the sense that it has universal interpretation. When, in actuality, it does not. It is inevitably interpreted in different ways, which only leads to more conflict, as combinations must enforce some sort of conformity where there is none. In contrast, the contract is part of an exchange created and maintained by the mutual subjectivities of its participants, and is only enforced insofar as it brings the two subjects together.
[5] Warren, Josiah. True Civilization: an Immediate Necessity, and the Last Ground of Hope for Mankind: Being the Results and Conclusions of Thirty-Nine Years’ Laborious Study and Experiments in Civilization as It Is, and in Different Enterprises for Reconstruction. J. Warren, 1863.
[6*] “Thus, then, upon the principle of COST being made the limit of price, is the interest of all made to CO-OPERATE (but not to COMBINE with) the interest of each.” [2]
