Year: 2007

mutualism

Proudhon at Google Books

July 16, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur
As I mentioned in the last post, Google Books’ search engines do miraculous things sometimes, the sort of miraculous things that make finding anything an iffy proposition. I make no claims for the completeness of the list that follows. Finding what I did find was something of an adventure. However, I can happily announce that most of Proudhon’s major work is available, if not obviously so, on Google Books. Volumes undoubtedly lack pages, have text obscured by the fingers of workers, are blurred or bleed of the edge of the screen, but these are just the things we are learning […]
Uncategorized

Google Books is hiding things again

July 13, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur
More stupid search engine tricks. Back in May, I noted some peculiarities of Google Books’ search engines. If you follow the links from that original post, you will notice some new peculiarities, including the disappearance of the 1849 Amos E. senter edition of Equitable Commerce from the results for: inauthor:josiah inauthor:warren. That important edition is still available from Google Books; you can follow the link above to see what Equitable Commerce looked like before Stephen Pearl Andrews edited it. But it, and one other listing, no longer show up in a general search for Warren’s work. There are still five […]
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Bits of Liberty’s History

July 12, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur
Labors of love are notoriously bad at paying the rent, and other work has been a little slow, so I’m digging into my personal archive a bit to keep a roof over my head while I work on the Josiah Warren book and Liberty archive. I was fortunate enough, some years ago, to pick up a lot of original issues of Liberty, along with a few related items: letterhead stationary from the Liberty offices and the portrait of Michael Bakunin which Tucker claimed was the first faithful likeness published in the United States. I have put one each of the […]
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Burke + Warren, 1850

July 12, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur
In an article on “Anarchism in England Fifty Years Ago,” reprinted in the February 1906 issue of Liberty, Max Nettlau discussed two very early anarchist publications printed in England. One of these was an edition of Edmund Burke’s Vindication of Natural Society, published By Holyoake and Co., in 1850, under the title The Inherent Evils of all State Governments Demonstrated. The particular interest in this edition of Burke’s work comes from the Appendix which followed it, probably the work of Ambrose C. Cuddon, in which Josiah Warren’s “system” (he hated the word but…) of equitable commerce is presented as an […]
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Reading around / Dyer D. Lum’s Alarm

July 9, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur
I’ve been reading pretty broadly lately, pulling together articles related to the Liberty archive project and Utopia, OH, the Josiah Warren anthology. That’s taken me into the pages of The Egoist, where Benjamin Tucker, Bolton Hall, and Stephen Byington shared pages with the likes of Ezra Pound, and fairly familiar debates about the nature of egoism and anarchism appeared alongside early reviews of Italian Futurism. It’s also taken me into the pages of Max Nettlau’s 1897 Bibliographie de l’Anarchie, which I had never tackled before, and which has been full of pleasant surprises. A steady regimen of Proudhon translation has […]
postanarchism

Cohn and Wilbur, What’s Wrong with Postanarchism

July 8, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur
What’s Wrong With Postanarchism? http://www.anarchist-studies.org/article/articleview/26/1/1/ by Jesse Cohn and Shawn Wilbur What is now being called “postanarchism” by some thinkers, including Saul Newman, can take on many forms, but the term generally refers to an attempt to marry the best aspects of poststructuralist philosophy and the anarchist tradition. One way to read the word, thus, is as a composite: poststructuralism and anarchism. However, the term also suggests that the post- prefix applies to its new object as well—implying that anarchism, at least as heretofore thought and practiced, is somehow obsolete. Together, these two senses of the word form a narrative: […]
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Independence Days

July 4, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur
Happy 4th of July! May we celebrate independence in all its best senses. All these days seem to get overrun by commercial and governmental concerns, which obscures what is radical and oppositional about the events they celebrate, what, for example, was really revolutionary about the American Revolution and the Declaration. Perhaps this is the time to think about a lost tradition of radical celebrations, the celebration of Tom Paine’s birthday, January 29. The Thomas Paine Institute has a birthday celebration page. It’s not too early to start planning an event!
poetry

“Josiah Warren” (poem) (1874)

June 29, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur
[one_third padding=”0 10px 0 0px”]     JOSIAH WARREN. Who gave the world the boldest thought, That ever has by man been taught, And set the pride of wealth at naught? Josiah Warren. Who gave the parlor lectures best, From glowing love in his own breast, Which is to be by nations blest? Josiah Warren. Who made the good of man his prayer, And did to all around declare, The glory of a millionaire? Josiah Warren. Who taught the best industrial law, Which wit or wisdom ever saw, That after him shall millions draw? Josiah Warren. Who set the usury […]
communism

Josiah Warren, a Most Unlikely Internationalist

June 29, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur
[one_third padding=”0 10px 0 0px”][/one_third][two_third_last padding=”0 0px 0 10px”] Josiah Warren was, famously, not a joiner. He habitually quarreled with anyone who suggested that he had followers or had founded a school. By his own account, after his early adventures with Owenite socialism, he only ever joined one organization—but what an organization! It appears that, for roughly a month in the summer of 1873, Josiah Warren was affiliated with Section 26, of Philadelphia, of the International Workingmen’s Association. Warren was certainly not the only individualist anarchist who took an interest in the I. W. A., and participated to some extent […]
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Eliphalet Kimball, Suggestions

June 29, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur
Eliphalet Kimball, “Suggestions,” Woodhull and Claflin’s Weekly, 8, 3 (June 20, 1874), 4. SUGGESTIONS. The reasons are many and powerful why husband and wife should not sleep in the same bed or even the same room. It is a familiarity that in time extinguishes love. Even by day, absence a good share of the time is necessary to the life of love. What is the cause that brother and sister have no love for each other? It is not because they are brother and sister; it is because they have lived from earliest childhood in the same family. Sleeping in […]