[I think an appropriate fountainhead for the libertarian tradition] is Josiah Warren, whom the historian James J. Martin believes was the first person to adopt the label anarchist.
Josiah Warren began his radical career as a follower of the socialist and communitarian Robert Owen. Warren was one of the original participants in the famous New Harmony community that began in 1826, and he saw firsthand what was wrong with the organizing principle of socialist communities. After decades and decades of discussion by utopian planners — both in England and America — New Harmony put their theories to the test. Warren saw how quickly a practical test made their schemes deteriorate into folly. It took less than a year and a half for New Harmony to dissolve. Warren blamed the community's failure on its denial of personal-property rights, on the demand for communal property that stifled all individual initiative.
