Clarence Lee Swartz
American anarchist (1868–1936)
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Clarence Lee Swartz (1868–1936) was an American individualist anarchist, whose best-known work, What is Mutualism? (1927) is a book explaining the economic system of mutualism.
Clarence Lee Swartz | |
|---|---|
Portrait of Swartz in Paris (1 January 1900) | |
| Born | 1868 |
| Died | 1936 (aged 67–68) |
| Writing career | |
| Language | English |
| Years active | 1890s-on |
| Period | Progressive Era |
| Subjects | Mutualism and Individualistism |
| Notable work | What is Mutualism? |
Swartz was a friend of Benjamin Tucker and frequent contributor of signed and unsigned editorials to Tucker's newspaper Liberty.[1] In addition, he worked for a series of anarchist newspapers and journals. He worked in the mechanical department of Liberty beginning in 1891,[2] edited an anarchist journal called Voice of the People[3] and served as assistant editor for Moses Harman's journal Lucifer, the Light-Bearer in 1890.[4] Swartz was arrested in Kansas City, Missouri for distributing a newspaper called Sunday Sun in 1891. The charges were dropped when the prosecutor failed to show in court. He published two individualist anarchist periodicals at the turn of the century, I (beginning in 1898) and The Free Comrade (beginning in 1900).[5] In 1908, Tucker's publishing business, including most of his books and plates, were destroyed in a fire and after Tucker retired from publishing and moved to Europe, "practically all of the literature of individualist anarchism [went] out of print".[6]
Swartz made efforts throughout the 1920s to revive the individualist literature. He prepared and edited Individual Liberty: Selections from the Writings of Benjamin R. Tucker (New York: Vanguard Press), a collection of excerpts from Tucker's writing in Liberty, which was the first collection of Tucker's writing since Tucker's own collection Instead of a Book. In 1923 he worked together with Charles T. Sprading and J. William Lloyd on The Libertarian, a magazine opposed to blue laws, Prohibition and the censorship of arts and entertainment.[7]