The Legitimation League was an English advocacy organisation in the 1890s, which campaigned for the legitimation of illegitimate children and free love.
The Legitimation League was an English advocacy organisation in the 1890s, which campaigned for the legitimation of illegitimate children and free love.
The association was founded in Leeds, in 1893, by a group of individualist anarchists, who were close to Benjamin Tucker and his magazine Liberty . Founding members included John Badcock, Joseph Hiam Levy, Greevz Fisher, [1] Wordsworth Donisthorpe, as well as Gladys and Oswald Dawson. [2] Prominent advocates for the organisation included the poet and socialist Edward Carpenter and the sexologist and social reformer Havelock Ellis. [3]
In 1897, the League moved its headquarters to London, where its meetings commanded larger audiences. [4] In the same year, the anarchist and women's rights activist Lillian Harman became President of the League. [5] Originally, the League's main focus was the legitimacy and equality of children from non-church or state-sanctioned connections, now sexual liberation became the main goal. At this time Donisthorpe (President since 1893) and Fisher (Vice President) left the association. [2]
The League's journal, The Adult was published from 1897 to 1899, with the subtitles "A Journal for the Advancement of Freedom in Sexual Relationships" and "A Crusade Against Sex-Enslavement". [3] Lillian Harman wrote multiple articles for the journal. [5] It was originally edited by League's secretary George Bedborough, whose wife Louie was treasurer, [6] before his arrest in 1898 for selling a copy of Havelock Ellis' Studies in the Psychology of Sex Vol. 2 . [7] The League as a suspected anarchist organisation, had been under surveillance by Scotland Yard who used Bedborough's arrest as an opportunity to successfully destroy the League. [4] After pleading guilty to the charge of obscenity, Bedborough agreed to no longer be associated with the League. [8] Henry Seymour replaced Bedborough as editor until its last issue in March 1899. [8]
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. Although usually contrasted with social anarchism, both individualist and social anarchism have influenced each other. Some anarcho-capitalists claim anarcho-capitalism is part of the individualist anarchist tradition, while others disagree and claim individualist anarchism is only part of the socialist movement and part of the libertarian socialist tradition. Economically, while European individualist anarchists are pluralists who advocate anarchism without adjectives and synthesis anarchism, ranging from anarcho-communist to mutualist economic types, most American individualist anarchists of the 19th century advocated mutualism, a libertarian socialist form of market socialism, or a free-market socialist form of classical economics. Individualist anarchists are opposed to property that violates the entitlement theory of justice, that is, gives privilege due to unjust acquisition or exchange, and thus is exploitative, seeking to "destroy the tyranny of capital,—that is, of property" by mutual credit.
Individualism is the moral stance, political philosophy, ideology, and social outlook that emphasizes the intrinsic worth of the individual. Individualists promote realizing one's goals and desires, valuing independence and self-reliance, and advocating that the interests of the individual should gain precedence over the state or a social group, while opposing external interference upon one's own interests by society or institutions such as the government. Individualism makes the individual its focus, and so starts "with the fundamental premise that the human individual is of primary importance in the struggle for liberation".
Free love is a social movement that accepts all forms of love. The movement's initial goal was to separate the state from sexual and romantic matters such as marriage, birth control, and adultery. It stated that such issues were the concern of the people involved and no one else. The movement began during the 19th century and was advanced by hippies during the 1960s and early 70s.
Individualist feminism, also known as ifeminism, is a libertarian feminist movement that emphasizes individualism, personal autonomy, freedom from state-sanctioned discrimination against women, and gender equality.
The nature of capitalism is criticized by left-wing anarchists, who reject hierarchy and advocate stateless societies based on non-hierarchical voluntary associations. Anarchism is generally defined as the libertarian philosophy which holds the state to be undesirable, unnecessary and harmful as well as opposing authoritarianism, illegitimate authority and hierarchical organization in the conduct of human relations. Capitalism is generally considered by scholars to be an economic system that includes private ownership of the means of production, creation of goods or services for profit or income, the accumulation of capital, competitive markets, voluntary exchange and wage labor, which have generally been opposed by most anarchists historically. Since capitalism is variously defined by sources and there is no general consensus among scholars on the definition nor on how the term should be used as a historical category, the designation is applied to a variety of historical cases, varying in time, geography, politics and culture.
Mutualism is an anarchist school of thought and anti-capitalist market socialist economic theory that advocates for workers' control of the means of production, a market economy made up of individual artisans and workers' cooperatives, and occupation and use property rights. As proponents of the labour theory of value and labour theory of property, mutualists oppose all forms of economic rent, profit and non-nominal interest, which they see as relying on the exploitation of labour. Mutualists seek to construct an economy without capital accumulation or concentration of land ownership. They also encourage the establishment of workers' self-management, which they propose could be supported through the issuance of mutual credit by mutual banks, with the aim of creating a federal society.
Anarchism in the United States began in the mid-19th century and started to grow in influence as it entered the American labor movements, growing an anarcho-communist current as well as gaining notoriety for violent propaganda of the deed and campaigning for diverse social reforms in the early 20th century. By around the start of the 20th century, the heyday of individualist anarchism had passed and anarcho-communism and other social anarchist currents emerged as the dominant anarchist tendency.
Ezra Hervey Heywood, known as Ezra Hervey Hoar before 1848, was an American individualist anarchist, slavery abolitionist, and advocate of equal rights for women.
Individualist anarchism in the United States was strongly influenced by Benjamin Tucker, Josiah Warren, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Lysander Spooner, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Max Stirner, Herbert Spencer and Henry David Thoreau. Other important individualist anarchists in the United States were Stephen Pearl Andrews, William Batchelder Greene, Ezra Heywood, M. E. Lazarus, John Beverley Robinson, James L. Walker, Joseph Labadie, Steven Byington and Laurance Labadie.
Wordsworth Donisthorpe was an English barrister, individualist anarchist and inventor, pioneer of cinematography and chess enthusiast.
Philosophical anarchism is an anarchist school of thought which focuses on intellectual criticism of authority, especially political power, and the legitimacy of governments. The American anarchist and socialist Benjamin Tucker coined the term philosophical anarchism to distinguish peaceful evolutionary anarchism from revolutionary variants. Although philosophical anarchism does not necessarily imply any action or desire for the elimination of authority, philosophical anarchists do not believe that they have an obligation or duty to obey any authority or conversely that the state or any individual has a right to command. Philosophical anarchism is a component especially of individualist anarchism.
Egoist anarchism or anarcho-egoism, often shortened as simply egoism, is a school of anarchist thought that originated in the philosophy of Max Stirner, a 19th-century philosopher whose "name appears with familiar regularity in historically orientated surveys of anarchist thought as one of the earliest and best known exponents of individualist anarchism". Egoist anarchism places the individual at the forefront, crafting ethical standards and actions based on this premise. It advocates personal liberation and rejects subordination, emphasizing the absolute priority of self-interest.
Major anarchist thinkers, past and present, have generally supported women's equality. Free love advocates sometimes traced their roots back to Josiah Warren and to experimental communities, viewing sexual freedom as an expression of an individual's self-ownership. Free love particularly stressed women's rights. In New York's Greenwich Village, "bohemian" feminists and socialists advocated self-realisation and pleasure for both men and women. In Europe and North America, the free love movement combined ideas revived from utopian socialism with anarchism and feminism to attack the "hypocritical" sexual morality of the Victorian era.
Henry Albert Seymour was an English secularist, individualist anarchist, gramophone innovator and survey author, and Baconian. He published the first English language anarchist periodical in Britain and is credited, in 1913, with introducing the Edison disc into the country.
Benjamin Ricketson Tucker was an American individualist anarchist and self-identified socialist. Tucker was the editor and publisher of the American individualist anarchist periodical Liberty (1881–1908). Tucker described his form of anarchism as "consistent Manchesterism" and "unterrified Jeffersonianism".
Angela Fiducia Heywood (1840–1935) was a radical writer and activist, known as a free love advocate, suffragist, socialist, spiritualist, labor reformer, and abolitionist.
Lillian Susan Harman-O'Brien was an American sex radical feminist and editor. Her father Moses Harman edited Lucifer, the Light-Bearer, a regional, weekly paper that introduced her to issues of women's sexual freedom. She became a national icon for that cause following her "free marriage", which took place outside state and church recognition, and her subsequent imprisonment. Upon her release, Harman edited multiple publications, including an anarchist periodical with her husband. Her work culminated with her being named president of a British organization that campaigned to legitimize non-marital sex. Her first child was born under a contract that stipulated the father's responsibilities in supporting the daughter. She moved from Kansas to Chicago, remarried, and had a son. Little is known about her life following the death of her father in 1910.
George Bedborough Higgs was an English bookseller, journalist, writer and editor. He advocated for a number of causes, including sex reform, freethought, secularism, eugenics, animal rights, vegetarianism, and free love. He was the secretary of the Legitimation League and editor of the League's publication The Adult: A Journal for the Advancement of freedom in Sexual Relationships. Bedborough was convicted for obscenity in 1898, after being caught selling a book on homosexuality; the case of Regina v. Bedborough, has also been referred to as the Bedborough trial or Bedborough case.
Greevz Fisher was an Anglo-Irish businessman, anarchist, activist, philologist, and co-founder of the Legitimation League.
Sada Bailey Fowler was an American feminist writer.
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