Josiah Warren in the context of Antithesis

Mutualism is an anarchist school of thought and economic theory that advocates for workers' control of the means of production, a free market made up of individual artisans, sole proprietorships 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.

Mutualism has its roots in the utopian socialism of Robert Owen and Charles Fourier. It first developed a practical expression in Josiah Warren's community experiments in the United States, which he established according to the principles of equitable commerce based on a system of labor notes. Mutualism was first formulated into a comprehensive economic theory by the French anarchist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, who proposed the abolition of unequal exchange and the establishment of a new economic system based on reciprocity. In order to establish such a system, he proposed the creation of a "People's Bank" that could issue mutual credit to workers and eventually replace the state; although his own attempts to establish such a system were foiled by the 1851 French coup d'état.

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.

The first American anarchist publication was The Peaceful Revolutionist, edited by Warren, whose earliest experiments and writings predate Proudhon. According to historian James J. Martin, the individualist anarchists were socialists, whose support for the labor theory of value made their libertarian socialist form of mutualism a free-market socialist alternative to both capitalism and Marxism.

Benjamin Ricketson Tucker (/ˈtʌkər/; April 17, 1854 – June 22, 1939) 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".

Tucker looked upon anarchism as a part of the broader socialist movement. Tucker harshly opposed state socialism and was a supporter of free-market socialism and libertarian socialism which he termed anarchist or anarchistic socialism. He connected the classical economics of Adam Smith and the Ricardian socialists as well as that of Josiah Warren, Karl Marx and Pierre-Joseph Proudhon to socialism. Some modern commentators have described Tucker as an anarcho-capitalist, although this has been disputed by others. During his lifetime, Tucker opposed capitalism and considered himself a socialist due to his belief in the labor theory of value and disputed many of the dictionary definitions of the term which he believed were inaccurate.

Individualist anarchism or anarcho-individualism is a collection of anarchist currents that generally emphasize the individual and their will over external determinants such as groups, society, traditions, and ideological systems.

Individualist anarchism can be divided into two main distinct movements, each with its own ideological orientations and choices. On one hand, there is American individualist anarchism, which began with Warren in the 1860s. It focuses primarily on economic freedom, drawing upon Stirner's egoist anarchism and Proudhon's mutualism, and develops perspectives that are notably financial in nature. 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.

"Cost the limit of price" was a maxim coined by Josiah Warren, indicating a (prescriptive) version of the labor theory of value. Warren maintained that the just compensation for labor (or for its product) could only be an equivalent amount of labor (or a product embodying an equivalent amount). Thus, profit, rent, and interest were considered unjust economic arrangements. As Samuel Edward Konkin III put it, "The labor theory of value recognizes no distinction between profit and plunder."

In keeping with the tradition of Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations, the "cost" of labor is considered to be the subjective cost; i.e., the amount of suffering involved in it.

Socialism in the United States has encompassed various types of tendencies, including utopian socialists, anarchists, democratic socialists, social democrats, Marxist–Leninists, and Trotskyists. These movements trace their origins back to utopian communities that took root in the early 19th century, such as the Shakers, the activist visionary Josiah Warren, and intentional communities inspired by Charles Fourier. In the 1860s, immigration from Europe of radical labor activists, particularly of German, Jewish, and Scandinavian backgrounds, led to the establishment of the International Workingmen's Association in 1864 and the Socialist Labor Party of America in 1877.

During the 1870s, socialists of various tendencies actively participated in early American labor organizations and workers' demands to improve working conditions, as well as to officially recognize and practically implement the basic labor rights. These grievances culminated in the 1886 Haymarket massacre in Chicago, which resulted in the death of eleven people. One of the consequences of this tragic event was the establishment of International Workers' Day, which was proclaimed as a fundamental labor holiday. Apart from that, workers' organizations and socialist parties worldwide made the establishment of an eight-hour workday their primary objective.