Utopia is an unincorporated community in far southern Franklin Township, Clermont County, Ohio, United States, [1] along the banks of the Ohio River. Utopia has been referred to as a "ghost town" although there are still people who live there.
Utopia is an unincorporated community in far southern Franklin Township, Clermont County, Ohio, United States, [1] along the banks of the Ohio River. Utopia has been referred to as a "ghost town" although there are still people who live there.
Utopia was founded in 1844 by the followers of Charles Fourier, after the failure of an earlier Fourierist phalanstère called the Clermont Phalanx. Fourier's writings inspired his readers to create their own utopian society—hence the name "Utopia." [2]
Within three years, the community broke up. It was soon reorganized by Josiah Warren, who founded the town as a means of a small cooperative community that could still carry out functions like the outside world. For instance, the town existed with a market socialist economy based on Warren's version of the labor theory of value. . [3]
The sect believed that the world would enter a 35,000-year-long period of peace, and that in order to achieve enlightenment, they must live in communes with one another. Fourier's followers had attracted several families to live in Utopia for the fee of $25 a year, and in turn each family would receive a wooden house on a small parcel of land. [4]
The land that was owned by the sect was then sold to John O. Wattles, the leader of another group of Spiritualists. Despite the warnings of the locals, Wattles and the Spiritualists moved the dining hall/town hall brick by brick to the river's edge. The move was completed in December 1847 mere days before one of the biggest floods of the 19th century.
On the night of December 13, the Ohio River had flooded its banks dramatically and was getting dangerously close to the town hall. However, people were still seeking shelter in the hall because their houses were becoming flooded. During a party that was being held at the hall that evening, the river, many feet above flood stage, washed out the south wall of the building, sweeping out a large number of Spiritualists. Some who were swept away did survive, but most drowned or were overcome by hypothermia in the icy river. [5]
The settlement was reorganized in 1847 as an individualist anarchist colony by Josiah Warren and associates. Personal invitation from the first settlers was required for admission to the community, with Warren reasoning that the most valuable individual liberty was "the liberty to choose our associates at all times." Land was not owned communally, but individually, with lots being bought and sold at cost, as required by contractual arrangement. The economy of the community was a system based upon private property and a market economy where labor was the basis of exchange value (see mutualism ). Goods and services were traded by the medium of labor notes. By the mid-1850s, the community eventually came to contain approximately forty buildings — about half of which were of an industrial nature. Also present were two time stores.
The impact of the Civil War, the rising prices of surrounding land that made expansion difficult, and the requirement of being invited by the original settlers are said to have led to the eventual dissolution of the project. However, as late as 1875, several of the original occupants remained, and some business in the area was still being conducted by labor notes. By that time, the area had come to be known as Smith's Landing.
Warren left Utopia a year after its inception to lecture and assist in setting up other colonies. The most significant of these was Modern Times. However, he did return to visit occasionally. After his last visit in the winter of 1855-1856, he remarked:
My visit to that little germ of Equitable society, now eight and a half years old, has given me higher hopes and expectations than I had before dared to entertain. It is not the display that the little group of buildings makes to the eye ... but knowing the means by which these ... have been acquired, and seeing that there the subject of Equity has had eight years and six months deep study and practical trial, and that from the beginning ... the subject had lost nothing with those who first took hold of it ... but had gained ... from year to year in their highest judgement and affectionate regard.[ citation needed ]
Utopia is located on the northern bank of the Ohio River in the southeast corner of Clermont County, in southwest Ohio. 38°46′34″N84°03′26″W / 38.77611°N 84.05722°W It lies along U.S. Route 52.
The Harmony Society was a Christian theosophy and pietist society founded in Iptingen, Germany, in 1785. Due to religious persecution by the Lutheran Church and the government in Württemberg, the group moved to the United States, where representatives initially purchased land in Butler County, Pennsylvania. On February 15, 1805, the group of approximately 400 followers formally organized the Harmony Society, placing all their goods in common.
Warren County is a county located in the southwestern part of the U.S. state of Ohio. As of the 2020 census, the population was 242,337. Its county seat is Lebanon and largest city is Mason. The county is one of Ohio's most affluent, with the highest median income of the state's 88 counties. The county was established on May 1, 1803, from Hamilton County; it is named for Dr. Joseph Warren, a hero of the Revolution who sent Paul Revere and the overlooked William Dawes on their famous rides and who died at the Battle of Bunker Hill. Warren County is part of the Cincinnati, OH-KY-IN Metropolitan Statistical Area.
Clermont County, popularly called Clermont, is a county in the U.S. state of Ohio. As of the 2020 census, the population was 208,601. Ordinanced in 1800 as part of the Virginia Military District, Clermont is Ohio's eighth oldest county, the furthest county west in Appalachian Ohio, and the eleventh oldest county of the former Northwest Territory. Clermont County is part of the Cincinnati, OH-KY-IN Metropolitan Statistical Area. The county is named from the French "clear hills or mountain." Its county seat is Batavia, while its largest city is Milford.
Warren County is a county in the U.S. state of Indiana. It lies in the western part of the state between the Illinois state line and the Wabash River. According to the 2020 census, it had a population of 8,440. Its county seat is Williamsport.
New Richmond, also known as New Richmond on the Ohio, is a village in Ohio and Pierce townships in Clermont County, Ohio, United States, founded in 1814, along the Ohio River. The population was 2,727 at the 2020 census.
Loveland is a city in Hamilton, Clermont, and Warren counties in the southwestern part of the U.S. state of Ohio. The population was 13,307 at the 2020 census. Considered part of the Cincinnati metropolitan area, Loveland is located near exit 52 off Interstate 275, about 15 miles (24 km) northeast of the Cincinnati city limits. It borders Symmes, Miami and Hamilton townships and straddles the Little Miami River. Once a busy railroad town, Loveland is now a major stop along the Little Miami Scenic Trail.
François Marie Charles Fourier was a French philosopher, an influential early socialist thinker, and one of the founders of utopian socialism. Some of his views, held to be radical in his lifetime, have become mainstream in modern society. For instance, Fourier is credited with having originated the word feminism in 1837.
Modern Times was a Utopian community existing from 1851 to 1864 in what is now Brentwood, New York, United States. Founded by Josiah Warren and Stephen Pearl Andrews, the community based its structure on Warren’s ideas of individual sovereignty and equitable commerce. Modern Times existed until 1864 when its citizens decided to change the name of the town to Brentwood. Writers have cited different reasons for the community’s failure.
Henry Watkin, was an expatriate English printer and cooperative socialist in Cincinnati, Ohio during the mid-to-late 19th century.
Point Pleasant is a small unincorporated community in southern Monroe Township, Clermont County, Ohio, United States. It is located on the Ohio River, around 25 miles (40 km) southeast of Cincinnati. U.S. Route 52 passes through Point Pleasant, where it intersects State Route 232.
Ralph Borsodi was an American agrarian theorist and practical experimenter interested in ways of living useful to the modern family desiring greater self-reliance. Much of his theory related to living in rural surroundings on a modern homestead and was rooted in his Georgist beliefs.
The Warren County Canal was a branch of the Miami and Erie Canal in southwestern Ohio about 20 miles (32 km) in length that connected the Warren County seat of Lebanon to the main canal at Middletown in the mid-19th century. Lebanon was at the crossroads of two major roads, the highway from Cincinnati to Columbus and the road from Chillicothe to the College Township (Oxford), but Lebanon businessmen and civic leaders wanted better transportation facilities and successfully lobbied for their own canal, part of the canal fever of the first third of the 19th century. The Warren County Canal was never successful, operating less than a decade before the state abandoned it.
Mutualism is an anarchist school of thought and 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.
Josiah Warren 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 James J. Martin and Peter Marshall among others as the first American anarchist and the four-page weekly paper he edited during 1833, The Peaceful Revolutionist, the first anarchist periodical published, was an enterprise for which he built his own printing press, cast his own type, and made his own printing plates.
The Cincinnati Time Store (1827–1830) was the first in a series of retail stores created by American individualist anarchist Josiah Warren to test his economic labor theory of value. The experimental store operated from May 18, 1827, until May 1830. He sold things at-cost plus a small markup for his time. It is usually considered to be the first time alternative currency labor notes were used, and as such the first experiment in what would later be called mutualism. He also founded stores in New Harmony, Indiana, and at Modern Times, Long Island. The store in Cincinnati closed in 1830 with Warren being satisfied he demonstrated running and managing a business without the "erection of any power over the individual". His theory — replacing money with time — was turned into an actual practical demonstration project. It was the first such activity, preceding similar labor notes in Europe by more than 20 years, and still has implications for other concepts of currency such as cryptocurrencies. Nonetheless, at the time it was the most popular mercantile institution in Cincinnati.
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.
Fourierism is the systematic set of economic, political, and social beliefs first espoused by French intellectual Charles Fourier (1772–1837). Based upon a belief in the inevitability of communal associations of people who worked and lived together as part of the human future, Fourier's committed supporters referred to his doctrines as associationism. Political contemporaries and subsequent scholarship has identified Fourier's set of ideas as a form of utopian socialism—a phrase that retains mild pejorative overtones.
Old Economy Village is an historic settlement that is located in Ambridge, Beaver County, Pennsylvania, United States. Administered by the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, it lies on the banks of the Ohio River and is surrounded by downtown Ambridge.
Phalanx is an unincorporated community in Braceville Township, Trumbull County, Ohio, United States. It is identified by signage as Phalanx Mills.
Municipalities and communities of Clermont County, Ohio, United States | ||
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| Footnotes | ‡This populated place also has portions in an adjacent county or counties | |