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Notes on Proudhon’s “Justice”

Contr'un

One key challenge for modern readers of Proudhon’s Justice is that the sections where he presumably provides his mature “solution of the social problem,” his account of basic social relations organized according to principles of immanent justice, are also the sections where his anti-feminism poses the most significant challenges for us. The account itself is hardly a mystery. I translated the “Catechism of Marriage” late in that 2014 campaign. Proudhon’s appropriation of the androgyne theory that had been popular in Saint-Simonian circles is straightforward enough — and, I think, there are also very few obstacles to making of it something useful, which dispenses with the particular forms of biological essentialism that we cite among the sources of the problem in Proudhon’s work. What does seem to remain a bit mysterious is a fairly wide range of details, through which Proudhon moved from some biological notions of dubious validity to a theory of social organization that is in some ways tantalizingly close to what we might hope for from an anarchist social science. […]

The Three Eras (May 22, 1848)

Anarchist Beginnings

What does anarchy mean in the streets, if not the absence of informers and armed police? But if, without armed police, without informers, without gendarmes, order reigns in the streets; if no one is robbed there, if no one is murdered there, if no one is insulted there, will the population not have proven that it can do without this power called gendarmes, police and municipal guards? Will it not have proven that it knows how to guard, protect and govern itself? […]

Justice—and “Justice”—as the Center of Proudhon’s Work

Contr'un

Work on the translation of Proudhon’s Justice in the Revolution and the Church continues steadily and is now well ahead of the schedule I had set myself, despite a bout of the still-lurking plague complicating matters in March. Today, I started translating the Fifth Study, on education and the draft files for the project contain roughly 411,000 words (1280 double-spaced pages) of new or previously unshared translation. […]

“Justice” — A Second Attempt

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The goal is to translate the twelve studies in Justice in the Revolution and in the Church—and to do so, where necessary, twice, producing translations of both the 1858 first edition and the expanded and corrected 1860 edition. I’m revising my 2009 translation of the 1860 “Program” for about the third time and will I will tackle the extensive notes and “Nouvelles de la Révolution” (which make up two of the six volumes of the second edition) as I complete the relevant studies, including La Pornocratie, which appears in manuscript form as one more of the “Nouvelles” sections and was originally intended by Proudhon to follow the two studies on “Love and Marriage.” […]

Justice in the Revolution and in the Church: Preliminary Discourse (Parallel English)

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These draft translations are part of on ongoing effort to translate both editions of Proudhon’s Justice in the Revolution and in the Church into English, together with some related works, as the first step toward establishing an edition of Proudhon’s works in English. They are very much a first step, as there are lots of decisions about how best to render the texts which can only be answered in the course of the translation process. It seems important to share the work as it is completed, even in rough form, but the drafts are not suitable for scholarly work or publication elsewhere in their present state. […]

Anarchist History: Our Lost Continent

Corvus Editions: Anarchistic Frontiers

Corvus Editions

I am not sure there is any way forward but to gather together the fruits of the last couple of decades or research and present them for use, as if there was an audience ready and willing to use them. And since we’re talking about works deemed insufficiently commercial even for the niches filled by anarchist publishers and academic presses, the way to do that is through print-on-demand volumes. So the next phase of the Corvus Edition story involves a line of collections published through Lulu. […]

Our Lost Continent: Episodes from an Alternate History of the Anarchist Idea, 1837–1936

Our Lost Continent

My goal overall is to produce a work that is at least potentially useful and shareable among anarchists of a variety of tendencies, as well as students of “the anarchist idea.” (The phrase is one of Nettlau’s that was obscured in translation.) But, to be honest, I am also very interested not to get too deeply involved in certain kinds of debate about how inclusive anarchist history ought to be. I expect that the best version of the work would hold little interest for those for whom anarchism does not appear still nascent in some important senses. For those willing to at least weigh the possibility of really sharing a historical tradition, I have some hope of presenting a relatively compelling case, but for others, honestly, I got nothin’… […]

Welcome to Anarchist Beginnings

Anarchist Beginnings

VOL. I — DECLARATIONS & PROFESSIONS OF FAITH Precursors & Related Tendencies: pre-1840 The Era of Anarchy: 1840—1880 The Era of Anarchism: 1881—1925 VOL. II — PROGRAMS & MANIFESTOS VOL. III — CATECHISMS, DIALOGUES, POEMS […]

Featured Archives

Libertatia Laboratories: Audio Experiments

  1. three twenty six hors du troupeau 5:39
  2. For All the Brave Pianos Lost at Sea - Third Movement hors du troupeau 6:28
  3. For All the Brave Pianos Lost at Sea - First Movement (draft) hors du troupeau 7:30
  4. Damaged Atmospheres - One Libertatia Laboratories 1:02:18
  5. Genbaku Dome Guinea-Pig Fleet 41:14
  6. Rainy Christmas Eve hors du troupeau 4:40
  7. above the city (drinking in the view) hors du troupeau 3:22

Plucked from the Fields of Anarchist Individualism