Stephen Pearl Andrews (March 22, 1812 – May 21, 1886) was an American
libertarian socialist
Libertarian socialism, also known by various other names, is a left-wing,Diemer, Ulli (1997)"What Is Libertarian Socialism?" The Anarchist Library. Retrieved 4 August 2019. anti-authoritarian, anti-statist and libertarianLong, Roderick T. (20 ...
,
individualist anarchist
Individualist anarchism is the branch of anarchism that emphasizes the individual and their will over external determinants such as groups, society, traditions and ideological systems."What do I mean by individualism? I mean by individualism t ...
,
linguist
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Lingu ...
,
political philosopher
Political philosophy or political theory is the philosophical study of government, addressing questions about the nature, scope, and legitimacy of public agents and institutions and the relationships between them. Its topics include politics ...
, outspoken
abolitionist
Abolitionism, or the abolitionist movement, is the movement to end slavery. In Western Europe and the Americas, abolitionism was a historic movement that sought to end the Atlantic slave trade and liberate the enslaved people.
The British ...
and author of several books on the
labor movement
The labour movement or labor movement consists of two main wings: the trade union movement (British English) or labor union movement (American English) on the one hand, and the political labour movement on the other.
* The trade union movement ...
and
individualist anarchism
Individualist anarchism is the branch of anarchism that emphasizes the individual and their will over external determinants such as groups, society, traditions and ideological systems."What do I mean by individualism? I mean by individualism th ...
.
Early life and work
Andrews was born in
Templeton, Massachusetts on March 22, 1812, the youngest of eight children of the Reverend Elisha Andrews and his wife Ann Lathrop.
He grew up thirty-five miles northeast in
Hinsdale, New Hampshire
Hinsdale is a town in Cheshire County, New Hampshire, United States. The population was 3,948 at the 2020 census. Hinsdale is home to part of Pisgah State Park in the northeast, and part of Wantastiquet Mountain State Forest in the northwest.
T ...
.
[ Andrews went to ]Louisiana
Louisiana , group=pronunciation (French: ''La Louisiane'') is a state in the Deep South and South Central regions of the United States. It is the 20th-smallest by area and the 25th most populous of the 50 U.S. states. Louisiana is bord ...
at age 19 and studied and practiced law there. Appalled by slavery
Slavery and enslavement are both the state and the condition of being a slave—someone forbidden to quit one's service for an enslaver, and who is treated by the enslaver as property. Slavery typically involves slaves being made to perf ...
, he became an abolitionist
Abolitionism, or the abolitionist movement, is the movement to end slavery. In Western Europe and the Americas, abolitionism was a historic movement that sought to end the Atlantic slave trade and liberate the enslaved people.
The British ...
. He was the first counsel of Mrs. Myra Clark Gaines in her celebrated suits. Having moved to Texas in 1839, Andrews and his family were almost killed because of his abolitionist lectures and had to flee in 1843. Andrews travelled to England, where he was unsuccessful at raising funds for the abolitionist movement back in the United States.
While in England, Andrews became interested in Isaac Pitman
Sir Isaac Pitman (4 January 1813 – 22 January 1897) was a teacher of the :English language who developed the most widely used system of shorthand, known now as Pitman shorthand. He first proposed this in ''Stenographic Soundhand'' in 183 ...
's new shorthand
Shorthand is an abbreviated symbolic writing method that increases speed and brevity of writing as compared to longhand, a more common method of writing a language. The process of writing in shorthand is called stenography, from the Greek ''s ...
writing system and upon his return to the United States he taught and wrote about the shorthand writing system and devised a popular system of phonographic reporting. To further this, he published a series of instruction books and edited two journals, ''The Anglo-Saxon'' and ''The Propagandist''. Andrews devised a "scientific" language he called Alwato in which he was wont to converse and correspond with pupils. At the time of his death, Andrews was compiling a dictionary of Alwato which was published posthumously. A remarkable linguist
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Lingu ...
, he also became interested in phonetics and the study of foreign languages, eventually teaching himself "no fewer than 32" languages.[
By the end of the 1840s, he began to focus his energies on utopian communities. Fellow ]individualist anarchist
Individualist anarchism is the branch of anarchism that emphasizes the individual and their will over external determinants such as groups, society, traditions and ideological systems."What do I mean by individualism? I mean by individualism t ...
Josiah Warren
Josiah Warren (; 1798–1874) was an American utopian socialist, American individualist anarchist, individualist philosopher, polymath, social reformer, inventor, musician, printer and author. He is regarded by anarchist historians like Jam ...
was responsible for Andrew's conversion to radical individualism and in 1851 they established Modern Times in Brentwood, New York
Brentwood is a hamlet in the Town of Islip in Suffolk County, on Long Island, in New York, United States. The population was 62,387 at the 2020 Census, making it the most populous in Suffolk County and on all of Long Island outside of New Yor ...
. He was elected an Associate Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (abbreviation: AAA&S) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, a ...
in 1846. In 1857, Andrews established Unity Home in New York City. By the 1860s, he was propounding an ideal society called pantarchy
Pantarchy is a social theory proposed by Stephen Pearl Andrews in the 19th century. Andrews was considered the "American rival of Comte," because of his work on an all-encompassing philosophy of universology, and his political proposals had simi ...
which is a society with a voluntary government strongly connected with a New Catholic Church and from this he moved on to a philosophy he called universology which stressed the unity of all knowledge and activities. He was also among the first Americans to discover Karl Marx
Karl Heinrich Marx (; 5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, economist, historian, sociologist, political theorist, journalist, critic of political economy, and socialist revolutionary. His best-known titles are the 1848 ...
and the first to publish his ''Communist Manifesto
''The Communist Manifesto'', originally the ''Manifesto of the Communist Party'' (german: Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei), is a political pamphlet written by German philosophers Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Commissioned by the Comm ...
'' in the United States.[
Andrews was one of the first to use the word ]scientology
Scientology is a set of beliefs and practices invented by American author L. Ron Hubbard, and an associated movement. It has been variously defined as a cult, a Scientology as a business, business, or a new religious movement. The most recent ...
. The word is defined as a neologism
A neologism Ancient_Greek.html"_;"title="_from_Ancient_Greek">Greek_νέο-_''néo''(="new")_and_λόγος_/''lógos''_meaning_"speech,_utterance"is_a_relatively_recent_or_isolated_term,_word,_or_phrase_that_may_be_in_the_process_of_entering_com ...
in his 1871 book ''The Primary Synopsis of Universology and Alwato: The New Scientific Universal Language''. In the 1870s, Andrews promoted Joseph Rodes Buchanan
Joseph Rodes Buchanan (December 11, 1814 – December 26, 1899) was an American physician and professor of physiology at the Eclectic Medical Institute in Cincinnati, Ohio. Buchanan proposed the terms Psychometry (soul measurement) and Sarcogno ...
's psychometry besides his own universology predicting that a priori
("from the earlier") and ("from the later") are Latin phrases used in philosophy to distinguish types of knowledge, justification, or argument by their reliance on empirical evidence or experience. knowledge is independent from current ex ...
derived knowledge would supersede empirical science as exact science. Andrews was also considered a leader in the religious movement of spiritualism
Spiritualism is the metaphysical school of thought opposing physicalism and also is the category of all spiritual beliefs/views (in monism and dualism) from ancient to modern. In the long nineteenth century, Spiritualism (when not lowercase ...
. Anarcho-syndicalist
Anarcho-syndicalism is a political philosophy and anarchist school of thought that views revolutionary industrial unionism or syndicalism as a method for workers in capitalist society to gain control of an economy and thus control influence i ...
Rudolf Rocker
Johann Rudolf Rocker (March 25, 1873 – September 19, 1958) was a German anarchist writer and activist. He was born in Mainz to a Roman Catholic artisan family.
His father died when he was a child, and his mother when he was in his teens, so he ...
called Andrews a significant exponent of libertarian socialism
Libertarian socialism, also known by various other names, is a left-wing,Diemer, Ulli (1997)"What Is Libertarian Socialism?" The Anarchist Library. Retrieved 4 August 2019. anti-authoritarian, anti-statist and libertarianLong, Roderick T. (2 ...
in the United States.
The sovereignty of the individual
Andrews talks in his writings about the sovereignty of the individual and how it relates to his political views. In ''The Science of Society'', he says:
Andrews considered the sovereignty of the individual to be "the basis of harmonious intercourse amongst equals, precisely as the equal Sovereignty of States is the basis of harmonious intercourse between nations mutually recognizing their independence of each other."
Wage theory
Andrews supported a socialistic system of employment
Employment is a relationship between two parties regulating the provision of paid labour services. Usually based on a contract, one party, the employer, which might be a corporation, a not-for-profit organization, a co-operative, or any o ...
and wages based on labor notes. Andrews believed that in the capitalist system within which he was living individuals were not receiving a wage commensurate with the amount of labor they exerted, saying:
For Andrews, to be paid "justly" was to be paid according to the "Cost Principle" which held that individuals should be paid according to the amount of labor they exert rather than according to the benefit that another receives from that labor (the latter being called the "Value Principle"). To help make this simple, like Josiah Warren
Josiah Warren (; 1798–1874) was an American utopian socialist, American individualist anarchist, individualist philosopher, polymath, social reformer, inventor, musician, printer and author. He is regarded by anarchist historians like Jam ...
, he advocated an economy that uses labor notes. Labor notes are a form of currency marked in labor hours (adjusted for different types of labor based on their difficulty or repugnance). In this way, it is not how much the employer values the employee's labor that determines the employee's pay, but simply how much the employee has labored. For similar reasons, Andrews did not believe people should be paid interest
In finance and economics, interest is payment from a borrower or deposit-taking financial institution to a lender or depositor of an amount above repayment of the principal sum (that is, the amount borrowed), at a particular rate. It is distin ...
for loaning capital. In other words, he did not see the loaning of capital as requiring any labor or deprivation on the part of the loaner. He insisted that the benefit received from goods or labor is not a just measure of price, writing:
Andrews was following Warren's labor theory of value
The labor theory of value (LTV) is a theory of value that argues that the economic value of a good or service is determined by the total amount of " socially necessary labor" required to produce it.
The LTV is usually associated with Marxian ...
and hence Andrews' individualist anarchism is considered a form of economic mutualism.[Martin, James J. (1970). ''Men Against the State''. Colorado Springs: Ralph Myles Publisher. p. 44.]
Bibliography
* ''The Phonographic Reader: A Complete Course of Inductive Reading Lessons in Phonography'' (1846), with Augustus Boyle
* ''Cost the Limit of Price'' (1851)
* ''The Constitution of Government in the Sovereignty of the Individual'' (1851)
*
The Science of Society
' (1851)
* ''The Sovereignty of the Individual'' (1853)
* ''Discoveries in Chinese or the Symbolism of the Primitive Characters'' (1854)
* ''Principles of Nature, Original Physiocracy, the New Order of Government'' (1857)
* ''The Pantarchy'' (1871)
*
The Primary Synopsis of Universology and Alwato: The New Scientific Universal Language
' (1871)
*
The Basic Outline of Universology
' (1872)
* ''The Primary Grammar of Alwato'' (1877)
*
The Labor Dollar
' (1881)
* ''Elements of Universology'' (1881)
* ''The New Civilization'' (1885)
Notes
Further reading
*
*
External links
*
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Andrews, Stephen Pearl
1812 births
1886 deaths
19th-century American journalists
19th-century American male writers
19th-century American non-fiction writers
American abolitionists
American anarchists
American magazine editors
American male journalists
American male non-fiction writers
American political philosophers
American political writers
American spiritualists
Anarchist writers
Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
Free love advocates
Individualist anarchists
Libertarian socialists
Linguists from the United States
Mutualists
People from Templeton, Massachusetts
Philosophy writers
Writers from Massachusetts