William Batchelder Greene | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | (1819-04-04)April 4, 1819 |
| Died | May 30, 1878(1878-05-30) (aged 59) Somerset, England |
| Occupation(s) | Anarchist, minister, political scientist |
| Known for | Mutual Banking |
| Academic background | |
| Alma mater | Harvard (1841) |
| Thesis | De cosinuum et sinuum potestatibus secundum cosinus et sinus arcuum multiplicium evolvendis / von Ernst Eduard Kummer (1832) |
| Academic work | |
| Doctoral students | Paul Du Bois-Reymond |
William Batchelder Greene (April 4, 1819 – May 30, 1878) was anAmerican individualist anarchist,Unitarian minister, soldier,mutualist,[1] promoter offree banking in the United States, and member of theFirst International.[2]
Born inHaverhill, Massachusetts, Greene was the son of theDemocraticjournalist andBostonpostmasterNathaniel Greene. He was appointed to theUnited States Military Academy 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 thesecond Seminole War resigned in November 1841. Subsequently, he was connected withGeorge Ripley's utopian movement atBrook Farm, after which he met severaltranscendentalists includingOrestes Brownson,Elizabeth Peabody andRalph Waldo Emerson.[3]
According toJames J. Martin inMen 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 aChristian mutualism, drawing heavily on the writings of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon's sometimes-antagonistPierre Leroux (seeEquality; 1849 andMutual Banking; 1850), writing inThe 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 pamphletEquality, 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 ofcorporations.[4]
Greene spent his final days inSomerset, England. His remains were transported to Boston to be buried at Forest Hills, Roxbury (Jamaica Plain).[5]
(in French)Ronald Creagh (1983).L'Anarchisme aux États-Unis 1826–1896. Coll. Études Anglo-américaines. Pris: Klincksieck.ISBN 2864600234. See Chapter 8.William B. Greene et les origins du mouvement anarchiste dans leMassachusetts. pp. 343–398.
