Year: 2007

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Too much anarchism at Google Books?

November 8, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur
Curiouser and curiouser. While doing some research on early appearances of the word “anarchism,” prior to 1870, I ran across numerous hits on Google Books for very early texts, many of them in French. Now, given the proof-reading and quality control issues I’ve blogged about before, it wasn’t out of the question that perhaps I was seeing some early use of the French word anarchisme, together with some sloppy OCR work, in, for example, Charles Fourier’s Traité de l’association domestique-agricole. But the search engine at Google Books informed me that the word anarchism appeared on thirty different pages in that […]
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An Early Libertarian Communist

November 7, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur
Paul Brown, whose Twelve Months in New Harmony I posted some time ago, was, from various indications, a friend of Josiah Warren. He was also the most articulate voice in favor of property-in-common that we have from the New Harmony community. He was the author of a number of books, on a range of subjects, as well as some uncollected writings, under the title “Gray Light,” which appeared in the New Harmony Gazette. I’m working on transcribing Gray Light, which is probably one of the five or six most interesting uncollected works I’ve run across in the last few years. […]
Anarchism

Onward and upward!

November 3, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur
I’m obviously disappointed about the early cancellation of the “Roots of American Anarchism” course, but I’ve also already done much of the work to make the course possible. I had already started breaking the graduate-level course down into undergrad/continuing education-sized bites. What I am currently trying to make happen is a 12-week course covering European philosophical roots, Fourier, some early Proudhon, the 1826 Mutualist, John Gray, Paul Brown, Thomas Skidmore and a lot of Josiah Warren. This would be an expansion of the early phases of the announced course and, if successful, would probably be followed by a similar course […]
Anarchism

Educational counter-institutions, I

October 31, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur
Thanks to those who have responded, either on the blog or through email, to my post on the “Roots of American Anarchism” course. I suspect that our pilot course online will fall somewhere between self-paced instruction and a basic online seminar, or, more likely, that we’ll end up offering both options. There is no reason not to offer options tailored to a variety of learning styles and schedules. I’m open, and I think a viable educational counter-institution has to be open, to a great deal of user-customization of the process. That means being willing to provide a bare minimum, as […]
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Calculus, Poetry, the two William Batchelder Greenes, etc

October 29, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur
As much as I complain, and will continue to complain, about the quality of Google Books’ digital archive, their access to materials is remarkable. I have very mixed feelings about that access, given the rather cavalier way in which scanning appears to be done. I worry that scarce, fragile volumes are being subjected to the rigors of the duplication process—without any complete and usable edition resulting! But the other side of the coin is that today I finally have access to a copy of William Batchelder Greene’s 1859 An Expository Sketch of a New Theory of the Calculus, the work, […]
mutualism

John Gray (1799-1883)

October 29, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur
John Gray, best known for his Lecture on Human Happiness, is frequently listed among the earliest of mutualists. Certainly, he was an important figure among the more-or-less-Owenite socialists of the mid-1820s. His Lecture was cited by the “Mutualist” of 1826. But we know that at least some of the accounts of this “first mutualist moment” are at least a bit garbled, particularly where Gray is involved. I’m still deciding how to classify Gray’s contribution to the history of mutualism, but the work has recently become easier, thanks to the appearance of a number of digital editions of Gray’s works. The […]
mutualism

1919 Mutual Banking online

October 26, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur
Henry Cohen published a number of editions of William Batchelder Greene’s Mutual Banking in the 20th century. The pieces of that particular bibliographic puzzle have been hard to assemble. Thanks to archive.org, we have at least one more piece: a digital facsimile of the 1919 edition by The Reform League of Denver, Colo. It’s available in a number of formats. Cohen’s editions closely follow the 1870 edition, with notes and an introduction by Cohen.