John William Lloyd

J. William Lloyd (never using his given name John) (June 4, 1857 - October 23, 1940) was an American individualist anarchist from 1884 to around 1904. He was born in Westfield, New Jersey of humble origin; he later moved to Kansas, then Iowa, then to experimental colonies in Tennessee and Florida, before returning to New Jersey in 1888. He based his anarchism upon natural law, rather than on egoism as Benjamin Tucker did. His first book, "Wind-Harp Songs" (poetry), was published in 1895 ("Anarchists' March," a printed musical score with words by Lloyd, had been issued by Tucker in 1888). He founded an anarchist group, The Comradeship of Free Socialists, in 1897. His work, "The Red Heart in a White World: A Suggestive Manual of Free Society; Containing a Method and a Hope," formed the basis for it.

His life changed when in that year, reading Edward Carpenter while riding on a train to N.Y., he mystically experienced "Cosmic Consciousness" (R.M. Bucke devoted a chapter to Lloyd in his 1901 book of that title). This inspired his book, "Dawn-Thought on the Reconciliation: a Volume of Pantheistic Impressions and Glimpses of Larger Religion" (1900).

He founded his magazine, "The Free Comrade," which first ran from 1900 to 1902. There he championed anarchism, free love, Whitman ("Our American Shakespeare, and greater than he") and Edward Carpenter ("The greatest man of modern England"). In 1902 and 1904 were published his two utopian novels, "The Natural Man: A Romance of the Golden Age" and "The Dwellers in Vale Sunrise: How They Got Together and Lived Happy Ever After. A Sequel to 'The Natural Man,' Being an Account of the Tribes of Him."

The Free Comrade resumed publication in a new series, which ran from 1910 to 1912. Lloyd now co-edited it with his friend Leonard D. Abbott, who financed its publication. Between the end of the original series and the beginning of the new, Lloyd had stopped considering himself a pure anarchist, indeed joining the Socialist Party ("I am still anarchistic in the essential sense.... the great need of Socialism is a stronger infusion of Anarchism...."). Meanwhile his friend Abbott had moved from socialism towards anarchism. They saw the new series "as an advocate of the juncture of the Anarchist and Socialist forces."

Lloyd's writings appeared in Benjamin Tucker's "Liberty"; in Moses Harman's anarchist and free love journal, "Lucifer the Light Bearer"; the anarchist and sex-radical newspaper "Fair Play"; the anarchist paper "Free Society," Horace Traubel's "Conservator"; etc. He had a column in "Ariel," published by the Christian Socialist George Littlefield.

He wrote hundreds of poems, many of which appeared in anarchist periodicals.

He wrote many books. Besides those listed above, they include "Aw-Aw Tam Indian Nights: Being the Myths and Legends of the Pimas of Arizona" (1911); "Karezza Method," a sex manual (first published clandestinely ca. 1918); "Eneres," published by Allen & Unwin in 1929 and Houghton Mifflin in 1930, with an introduction by Havelock Ellis; and at least 14 other works, mostly poetry.

In "Edward Carpenter: In Appreciation," edited by Gilbert Beith (Allen & Unwin, 1931), Will S. Monroe wrote, "Carpenter's most devoted American disciple is J. William Lloyd, who did more than any other follower in the United States (Ernest Crosby excepted) to familiarize our countrymen with his doctrines."

He contrasted his idea of free love to that of "the artistic free-lovers, the Bohemians": "My view of sex is religious, I might almost say, touched with austerity. Sex and love to me are sacred and woman their priestess. Sex should not be cultivated as a sybaritic indulgence, but with reference always to spiritual uplift, mental inspiration, physical health, individual fulfillment and racial progress-- always with reference to higher uses." (Free Comrade, July 1910).

A sex theorist, he strongly criticized patriarchy and sexual possessiveness and exclusivity. He viewed the historical fall of Matriarchy as "the great crime," and saw jealousy as akin to monopoly attained by legal power. He developed a concept which he called "The Larger Love." As he wrote in 1929, "In my later twenties I conceived the most beautiful ideal of my whole life; one that has remained with me ever since, thru all the years, and which I feel is my special message to humanity, my gospel and prophecy for the future.... The Larger Love, actualized, would be a state of human love- and sex-relation in which each human being of adult age, male or female, would normally have a Central Love, that is a mate who in loyalty, tenderness, reliability and fitness would fill the place of the mate in monogamic ideals, excepting that it would be expected and usually occur that each partner in this union would also have one or several Side Lovers, that is, close friends or mates of the opposite sex, whose affection might not express itself sexually, but could do so without any social surprize or reproach, and probably usually would do so, at least at certain times. This whole group to form affectionally and spiritually a Love Family, or Love Group, socially recognized and approved as such, but not legally bound together in any way. But as each side Lover would also normally have a Central Lover and center another group, it is plain that these love groups would be very closely intertwined and woven together."

His "Karezza Method" advocated sexual intercourse without seminal emission. ("In the highest form and best expression of the art neither man nor woman has or desires to have the orgasm...")

Lloyd supported the Allies in World War I. He moved to California in 1922. In the 1930's he promoted the ideas of Edward Bellamy. But throughout his life he maintained friendly relations with former associates. He died in 1940.

Archival material by Lloyd can be found in the Labadie collection at the University of Michigan and at the von Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama.