William Batchelder Greene (April 4, 1819 – May 30, 1878) was a 19th-century individualist anarchist, Unitarian minister, soldier, and promoter of free banking in the United States. Greene was a member of the

First International The International Workingmen's Association (IWA), often called the First International (1864–1876), was an international organisation which aimed at uniting a variety of different left-wing socialist, communist and anarchist groups and trad ...

Biography

Born in Haverhill, Massachusetts, Greene was the son of the Democratic

journalist A journalist is an individual that collects/gathers information in form of text, audio, or pictures, processes them into a news-worthy form, and disseminates it to the public. The act or process mainly done by the journalist is called journalis ...

and

Boston Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...

postmaster Nathaniel Greene. He was appointed to the

United States Military Academy The United States Military Academy (USMA), also known metonymically as West Point or simply as Army, is a United States service academy in West Point, New York. It was originally established as a fort, since it sits on strategic high groun ...

from Massachusetts in 1835, but he left before graduation. He was made 2nd lieutenant in the 7th infantry in July 1839 and after serving in the second Seminole War resigned in November 1841. Subsequently, he was connected with

George Ripley George Ripley may refer to: * George Ripley (alchemist) (died 1490), English author and alchemist *George Ripley (transcendentalist) George Ripley (October 3, 1802 – July 4, 1880) was an American social reformer, Unitarian minister, and journ ...

's utopian movement at

Brook Farm Brook Farm, also called the Brook Farm Institute of Agriculture and EducationFelton, 124 or the Brook Farm Association for Industry and Education,Rose, 140 was a utopian experiment in communal living in the United States in the 1840s. It was fo ...

, after which he met several transcendentalists including Orestes Brownson,

Elizabeth Peabody Elizabeth Palmer Peabody (May 16, 1804January 3, 1894) was an American educator who opened the first English-language kindergarten in the United States. Long before most educators, Peabody embraced the premise that children's play has intrinsic de ...

and

Ralph Waldo Emerson Ralph Waldo Emerson (May 25, 1803April 27, 1882), who went by his middle name Waldo, was an American essayist, lecturer, philosopher, abolitionist, and poet who led the transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century. He was seen as a champ ...

. According to James J. Martin in ''Men Against the State'', Greene did not become a "full-fledged anarchist" until the last decade of his life, but his writings show that by 1850 he had articulated a

Christian mutualism Mutualism is an anarchist school of thought and Anarchist economics, economic theory that advocates a socialist society based on free markets and usufructs, i.e. occupation and use property norms. One implementation of this system involves th ...

, drawing heavily on the writings of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon's sometimes-antagonist

Pierre Leroux Pierre Henri Leroux (7 April 1797 – 12 April 1871), was a French philosopher and political economist. He was born at Bercy, now a part of Paris, the son of an artisan. Life His education was interrupted by the death of his father, which co ...

(see ''Equality''; 1849 and ''Mutual Banking''; 1850), writing in ''The Radical Deficiency of Existing Circulating Medium'' (1857):

The existing organization of credit is the daughter of hard money, begotten upon it incestuously by that insufficiency of circulating medium which results from laws making specie the sole legal tender. The immediate consequences of confused credit are want of confidence, loss of time, commercial frauds, fruitless and repeated applications for payment, complicated with irregular and ruinous expanses. The ultimate consequences are compositions, bad debts, expensive accommodation-loans, law-suits, insolvency, bankruptcy, separation of classes, hostility, hunger, extravagance, distress, riots, civil war, and, finally, revolution. The natural consequences of mutual banking are, first of all, the creation of order, and the definitive establishment of due organization in the social body, and, ultimately, the cure of all the evils. which flow from the present incoherence and disruption in the relations of production and commerce.

In his radical, anonymously published pamphlet ''Equality'', Greene had this to say about equality before the law: "It is right that persons should be equal before the law: but when we have established equality before the law, our work is but half done. We ought to have EQUAL LAWS also". His comments were directed towards the creation of

corporation A corporation is an organization—usually a group of people or a company—authorized by the state to act as a single entity (a legal entity recognized by private and public law "born out of statute"; a legal person in legal context) and ...

s. Greene spent his final days in

Somerset ( en, All The People of Somerset) , locator_map = , coordinates = , region = South West England , established_date = Ancient , established_by = , preceded_by = , origin = , lord_lieutenant_office =Lord Lieutenant of Somerset , lord_ ...

, England. His remains were transported to Boston to be buried at Forest Hills, Roxbury (Jamaica Plain).Wilbur, Shawn (November 14, 2007)
"Masonic Tribute to William B. Greene"
''Libertarian Labyrinth''. Retrieved July 28, 2019.

Noted works

''Mutual Banking''
Boston: New England Labor Reform League, 1870.
on the Science of History, followed by an a priori Autobiography''
(1849).

West Brookfield, Mass.: O.S. Cooke, 1849.

West Brookfield, Mass.: O.S. Cooke, 1850. * ''Sovereignty of the People'', pamphlet (Boston, 1863). * Heywood, Ezra and William B. Greene.
Declaration of Sentiments and Constitution of the New England Labor Reform League
'. Boston, Weekly American Workman, 1869.
''Explanations of the Theory of the Calculus''
pamphlet (1870). * ''Transcendentalism'', pamphlet (1870).
''Theory of the Calculus''
(1870). * ''The Facts of Consciousness and the Philosophy of Mr. Herbert Spencer'', pamphlet (1871).
''The Blazing Star: With an Appendix Treating of the Jewish Kabbala. Also, a Tract on the Philosophy of Mr. Herbert Spencer and One on New-England Transcendentalism''
Boston: A. William and Co., 1872. *
The Working Woman: A letter to the Rev. Henry W. Foote, Minister of King's Chapel, in vindication of the poorer class of the Boston working-women
'. Princeton, Mass.: Co-operative Pub. Co. (1873).
''Socialistic, Communistic, Mutualistic, and Financial Fragments''
(1875). * ''International Address: An elaborate, comprehensive, and very entertaining Exposition of the principles of the Working-People's International Association''.

References

External links

''William Batchelder Greene''
Libertarian Labyrinth. * Ruch, John (August 2007)
"Anarchy in JP: Greene was early local radical"
''Jamaica Plain Gazette''.
"In Memoriam"
(1878). A tribute by the Massachusetts Masons. *
The Radical Pamphlet Collection
at the

Library of Congress The Library of Congress (LOC) is the research library that officially serves the United States Congress and is the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It is the oldest federal cultural institution in the country. The library ...

has material written by Greene. {{DEFAULTSORT:Greene, William Batchelder 1819 births 1878 deaths 19th-century American clergy 19th-century American male writers 19th-century American non-fiction writers 19th-century Unitarian clergy American anarchists American anti-capitalists American economics writers American male non-fiction writers American political writers American Unitarian clergy Anarchist writers Christian anarchists Burials in Massachusetts Harvard Divinity School alumni Individualist anarchists Massachusetts Democrats Mutualists People from Haverhill, Massachusetts Writers from Massachusetts

Biography

Noted works

See also

References

Further reading

External links