Year: 2008

Contr'un

Proudhon measures Progress

December 3, 2008 Shawn P. Wilbur
[ezcol_1third] [Commentary coming soon.] [/ezcol_1third] [ezcol_2third_end] Some of the reshuffling of my scholarly priorities has revolved around my decision to go back and finish a translation of Proudhon’s Philosophy of Progress, before tackling any more of Justice or going back to look at The General Idea of the Revolution. It was a work which scored low when I asked people what they would like to see in translation first, but it is one which seems particularly important to me at the moment, in part because it contains, in condensed and clear form, Proudhon’s own account of what ties his various […]
Contr'un

Trajectories

November 23, 2008 Shawn P. Wilbur
I’ve been shuffling real-world commitments, cutting back some projects, and preparing myself for what looks like a steady “speed-up” through the retail holiday season. (In retail, as elsewhere, increased worker productivity is supposed to make up for general decline, and “more with less” is the watchword for the season, meaning more promotions requiring more special effort, more contrived contests, more competition for hours, etc.) I left the radical bookstore collective I had been working with a week or so back, and have dodged a couple of other commitments in the meantime, while taking some time to figure out what’s worth […]
Contr'un

What could justify property?

November 23, 2008 Shawn P. Wilbur
[Commentary coming soon.] The shift in Proudhon’s work, from critique of property to arguments in favor of it (despite and based on the critiques), is hard to work through, perhaps because Proudhon was himself a little uncomfortable with the whole affair. We know that, to some extent, the defense of property ran counter to his personal desires. Theory of Property, which seems to turn his earlier work on its head, ends with this passage: A small, rented house, a garden to use, largely suffices for me: my profession not being the cultivation of the soil, the vine, or the meadow, […]
Contr'un

Unexpected dangers of the free market?

November 16, 2008 Shawn P. Wilbur
[ezcol_1third] [Commentary coming soon.] [/ezcol_1third] [ezcol_2third_end] We know the standard anti-market concern, that even the truly free relations which mutualists and other market anarchists propose (free-market anti-capitalism, equitable commerce, etc…), will lead inevitably (through a fatal flaw in contract theory, or a fatal flaw in human nature, etc…) to (bad) “capitalism,” rule by the possessors of capital, and the state. Answers to the problem (if it is such) generally involve rejections of “contract” and/or “commerce” tout court, along with, of course, “property” conceived on any model that includes exclusive, individual ownership. There seem to be problems with these answers, whether […]
Anarchism

An absolutely essential bit of anarchist philosophy

November 9, 2008 Shawn P. Wilbur
I finally picked up a copy of Daniel Colson’s 2001 Petit lexique philosophique de l’anarchisme – De Proudhon à Deleuze. It is simply remarkable; easily one of the best works of contemporary anarchist theory out there. As the title suggests, it takes the form of a lexicon, with entries ranging from “Action” to the “Will to power,” with a heavy emphasis on Proudhon’s mature work and its connections to, and elaborations in, philosophical and sociological works, from Bakunin up to Deleuze. Colson adds a few novel names to the mix: Gabriel Tarde and Gilbert Simondon feature prominently in the work. […]
Uncategorized

Counter-development or Bust!

November 9, 2008 Shawn P. Wilbur
As it turns out, I’ve been welcoming in America’s bright new tomorrow with a kind of seething rage against everyone and everything. Not that some substantial fraction of all that hasn’t been asking for it. We are probably, thanks to the election results, a month or two further away from the Blackwater-run debtors’ prisons that would most likely be our NEW New Deal, but I still don’t see much of any indication that anyone in Washington has tripped to the fact that there are poor people in America. This week, my part-time job is a three-day, 16-hour (total) affair, which […]
Proudhon Library

Another bit on “socialism,” from Proudhon’s “The Federative Principle”

November 5, 2008 Shawn P. Wilbur
Just another of those interesting definitions of “socialism,” from the mid-19th century. I first encountered this particular passage in Proudhon’s posthumously published study of Napoleon III, but is originally from the still-untranslated second part of The Federative Principle. “Qui dit socialisme, dans le bon et vrai sens du mot, dit naturellement liberté du commerce et de l’industrie, mutualité de l’assurance, réciprocité du crédit, peréquation de l’impôt, équilibre et sécurité des fortunes, participation de l’ouvrier aux chances des entreprises, inviolabilité de la famille dans la transmission héréditaire.” “Whoever says socialism, in the good and true sense of the word, says naturally […]
translations

More Proudhon on the origin of property

October 27, 2008 Shawn P. Wilbur
[one_third][/one_third][two_third_last] Here’s another little bit from “Justice,” which immediately follows the last passages linked. In it, Proudhon explains how, in the very early phases of the “shock of ideas,” property emerged as a social convention precisely because human beings had not yet learned to question their own absolutism. Elsewhere, however, he makes it clear that our “absolutism” is not simply something we need to “get over” or grow out of, but an important enabling component in ethical evolution. This is part of the revision of the material Rafael posted, once Proudhon had decided that the antinomies did not resolve themselves. […]
Contr'un

“It is the shock of ideas that casts the light”

October 27, 2008 Shawn P. Wilbur
[ezcol_1third] [Commentary coming soon.] [/ezcol_1third] [ezcol_2third_end] One good Proudhon tidbit deserves another, so here are the first couple of sections from Chapter 6 of the Seventh Study (“Ideas”) in Justice in the Revolution and in the Church. The chapter covers “Intellectual discipline, or method of elimination of the Absolute according to the principle of the Revolution. — Constitution of the public reason,” and it is here that Proudhon, having proven, to his own satisfaction at least, the existence of “collective beings” corresponding to the “collective force” which was such an important part of his critique of property, tackles the question […]