Year: 2007

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Lecture by Josiah Warren (January 17, 1849)

June 8, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur
“Lecture by Josiah Warren,” Boston Investigator, 18, 37 (January 17, 1849), 3. Lecture by Josiah Warren. PEOPLE’S SUNDAY MEETING —The usual discussion next Sunday will be suspended in order to allow Mr. Josiah Warren, lately of New Harmony, (Ind.,) an opportunity to deliver a lecture on the subject of “Equitable Commerce.” This new mode of Social Reformation is one that Mr. Warren has paid much attention to for several years, and from the very favorable manner in which we have seen him noticed in Western papers, we have no doubt of his being a gentleman of considerable ability and well-qualified […]
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Notice of Josiah Warren’s lard-lamp patent

June 8, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur
“Weekly Summary,” The Plough Boy, and Journal of the Board of Agriculture, 2, 52 (May 26, 1821), 415. Josiah Warren, of Cincinnati, is the patentee of a lamp on a new plan, which is said, to a single family, will produce an annual saving of 20 dollars. Its light is clear and pleasant, and the volume of flame equal to that of two common candles.
Anarchism

Hippolyte Havel on Voltairine de Cleyre

June 7, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur
Hippolyte Havel, “Introduction,” in Voltairine de Cleyre; Alexander Berkman, ed., Selected Works of Voltairine de Cleyre, New York: Mother Earth, 1914, 5-14. Introduction “NATURE has the habit of now and then producing a type of human being far in advance of the times; an ideal for us to emulate; a being devoid of sham, uncompromising, and to whom the truth is sacred; a being whose selfishness is so large that it takes in the whole human race and treats self only as one of the great mass; a being keen to sense all forms of wrong, and powerful in denunciation […]
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W. H. Van Ornum, Wheelbarrow and Land Values

June 7, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur
W. H. Van Ornum, “Wheelbarrow and Land Values,” The Open Court, 3, 80 (March 7, 1889), 1506. WHEELBARROW AND LAND VALUES. To the Editor of The Open Court:— * * * Wheelbarrow seems to be unable to distinguish between land and land-values, but there is no difficulty in it if he will do a little solid thinking. Let him first find out what value is, and then not confound it with anything else. May be we can help him a little. Suppose we say that value is what people will give for a thing. Now land may be very useful […]
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on Anarchism

June 6, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur
Anarchy is the goal, and anarchism the movement. Or movements. Or something. It’s hard to say anything too definitive without ending up looking like a bit of a buffoon, which doesn’t stop most of us from getting downright dogmatic from time to time about this anti/political whatchamacallit whose flag we fly. Anarchism is a “pretty big tent,” and it probably has been for nearly as long as there has been something worth calling by the name. And, as I suggested in an early post, it hasn’t always been crystal clear about its core goals and demands. My journey through some […]
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on An-archy

May 31, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur
What are we fightin’ for? Well, it’s not a word in a dictionary, and it’s not any very specific, single political project. We’re not utopians, with blueprints for the perfect society, which we would be happy to show you, if you would just clear off that table over there. . . . None of the usual anarchist slogans are really adequate. We’re “against all authority,” except, of course, all those sorts of authority that are derived from individual talents and qualities, and are a natural expression of human group dynamics. Rulers are unwelcome, as are states. Maybe anarchy is the […]
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Chaim Weinberg, Forty Years in the Struggle

May 30, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur
Robert Helms doesn’t need me to build him up; his work speaks for itself. That said, it’s nice to get an opportunity once again to point folks towards his excellent Dead Anarchists site. The occasion is the publication, by Helms and Wooden Shoe Books, of Forty Years in the Struggle: The Memoirs of a Jewish Anarchist, by Chaim Leib Weinberg. This is the result of years of labor by Helms and others. Check out the online edition at Dead Anarchists.
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on ALLiance

May 30, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur
Despite having a hand in its launching, I have let the existence of the Alliance of the Libertarian Left go pretty well unremarked here. Mark that down to the distractions of daily life, to continuing labors for the long term, and not to any lack of enthusiasm for the coalition. March saw a marvelous burst of activity in left-libertarian circles. I feel like I’m only now catching up—with comrades who were obviously ready to head off in a new direction, and with my own aspirations for the alliance. I’ve done a lot of thinking about what form organizing for the […]
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on Beginnings

May 30, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur
On March 19, 2007, the Alliance of the Libertarian Left (ALL) made its public debut, in a flurry of activity fueled by schism and in-fighting among partisans and allies of the agorist Movement of the Libertarian Left (MLL). From the main website: The Alliance of the Libertarian Left is a multi-tendency coalition of mutualists, agorists, voluntaryists, geolibertarians, left-Rothbardians, green libertarians, dialectical anarchists, radical minarchists, and others on the libertarian left, united by an opposition to statism, militarism, and the prevailing corporatist capitalism falsely called a free market, as well as by an emphasis on education, direct action, and building alternative […]
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What We Mean

May 28, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur
“What We Mean,” Liberty, 1, 19 (April 15, 1882), 2. What We Mean. Our purpose is the abolition, not only of all existing States, but of the State itself. Is not this a straightforward and well-defined purpose? There can be no mistaking it, and it admits of no equivocation. The least that our enemies can say of us is that we stand in the market-place of thought and action with a square protest and a square assertion. And what is the State? It is not a thing that can be especially defined by Russia, Germany, Great Britain, or Massachusetts. The […]