William Batchelder Greene (April 4, 1819 – May 30, 1878) was an American individualist anarchist, Unitarian minister, soldier, mutualist, promoter of free banking in the United States, and member of the First International.
William Batchelder Greene (April 4, 1819 – May 30, 1878) was an American individualist anarchist, Unitarian minister, soldier, mutualist, promoter of free banking in the United States, and member of the First International.
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.