Year: 2008

Contr'un

Proudhon, Liberty, Satan, and The Ladies Repository (oh, my!)

September 18, 2008 Shawn P. Wilbur
Very little of Proudhon’s 6-volume work on Justice in the Revolution and in the Church has been translated, but one in/famous passage has been treated to a number of English renderings. Section XLVII, which ends Chapter 5, “Function of Liberty,” which is itself the final chapter of the Eighth Study, “Conscience and Liberty” (which appears in Justice, Tome III in the Lacroix collected works) contains a passage that begins “Come, Satan, come. . . ,” and which has naturally been handy for those who wanted to demonstrate what an evil dude that French socialist Proudhon was. There is a really […]
Uncategorized

Puzzle pieces: W. H. Channing’s “The Present”

September 15, 2008 Shawn P. Wilbur
I’ve emphasized before the importance of William Henry Channing’s The Spirit of the Age, as the closest thing we have to a mid-19th century American mutualist paper. Channing is equally important as part of the late-transcendentalist/radical Unitarian/free-religionist current with which American individualist anarchism was in constant dialogue. William B. Greene was himself a part of that current, as was Sidney H. Morse and, at least early on, Joshua King Ingalls. Tucker was influenced by it, and his Radical Review was full of contributors from it. And a great deal of attention was paid in the early issues of Liberty, to […]
Uncategorized

Proudhon on freedom and free will

September 12, 2008 Shawn P. Wilbur
[one_third padding=”0 10px 0 0px”][/one_third][two_third_last padding=”0 0px 0 10px”] I’m working away at the translation of Proudhon’s chapter (in Justice in the Revolution and in the Church) on “The Nature and Function of Liberty.” It’s a key piece in his overall work, and includes an explanation of the nature and function of “free will,” along with some suggestions about how that explanation would scale up to the realm of social or political liberty. Remember that Proudhon was, from the earliest of his works, concerned with the “collective force” which arises from associated production and exceeds the productive power of the […]
Uncategorized

One’s-self/En-masse

September 9, 2008 Shawn P. Wilbur
“One’s-self I Sing,” by Walt Whitman ONE’S-SELF I sing—a simple, separate Person;Yet utter the word Democratic, the word En-masse. Of Physiology from top to toe I sing;Not physiognomy alone, nor brain alone, is worthy for the muse—I say theForm complete is worthier far;The Female equally with the male I sing. Of Life immense in passion, pulse, and power,Cheerful—for freest action form’d, under the laws divine,The Modern Man I sing.
Uncategorized

Time to free ALL the political prisoners

September 7, 2008 Shawn P. Wilbur
{Immoderate thoughts on the eve of my return to the corporate retail world. . .} Denver and the Twin Cities taught us very little we didn’t already know, I suspect, but the experiences, even for those of us who only experienced them vicariously, ought to have drawn in some big, fat exclamation points and underlines on what we already knew, but had imperfectly internalized. We can predict at this moment that the next round will be moreso, in almost every way. No matter who wins the elections, there is little chance that the climate of intolerance of dissent will change, […]
equitable commerce

Sidney H. Morse’s alternate history of equitable commerce

September 5, 2008 Shawn P. Wilbur
Tucked away in the pages of Liberty, Sidney H. Morse, Josiah Warren’s literary executor, contributed an odd item, a kind of “what-if” history of Robert Owen’s New Harmony, as if, at the critical moment, Josiah Warren’s equitable commerce had been the model for continuing on after the failure of the original project. The story, Liberty and Wealth, may be the very best introduction I know of to Warren’s thought as filtered through another individuality. There is a difficulty in dealing with Warren’s writings, since he insisted that, in practice, equitable commerce must be based in a complete individualization of interests […]
equitable commerce

The Ethics of the Homestead Strike

August 30, 2008 Shawn P. Wilbur
In his Liberty review of William Bailie’s The First American Anarchist, Clarence L. Swartz noted that, “Sidney H. Morse, the sculptor, was, during the last two years of Warren’s life, his most active propagandist. Furthermore, Morse’s efforts were so great that they did not fail of appreciation by Warren, and the latter showed his full recognition of their value by making Morse his literary executor.” Morse is one of those major figures who never seems to get quite the attention he deserves. He was the editor of The Radical, a contributor to The Radical Review, as well as to Liberty, […]
Contr'un

Constitutions and Organic Bases

August 19, 2008 Shawn P. Wilbur
Tomorrow night’s discussion at Laughing Horse Books will be on “Panarchy and Pantarchy, with a brief look at Proudhon’s theory of the state.” As I told the collective yesterday, “It will be breezier than it sounds.” I had initially meant to pair Paul Émile de Puydt’s 1860 “Panarchy,” which proposes a free market in governments, just with some documents relating to Stephen Pearl Andrews’ Pantarchy, which was an anarchistic outlier, from roughly the same year, strongly influenced by August Comte and heavy on voluntary hierarchy, with Andrews expecting to find himself, voluntarily, pretty much at the top of the heap. […]
Uncategorized

Missing pieces

August 18, 2008 Shawn P. Wilbur
I’ve been working on a collection of short biographies of radical figures, sort of an introductory miscellany, and had been translating Elisée Reclus’ “John Brown” to include there. Gallica has a rough, but readable scan of what appears to be a pamphlet version of the text. Now that I’ve translated it, it also appears to be an incomplete version. Some text, probably at least a few lines, is pretty clearly missing. Brown’s capture, trial and death seem to have disappeared between one line and the next. This looks like an “original” error, rather than a recent scanning error. It’s still […]
Anarchism

Radical History night at Laughing Horse

August 9, 2008 Shawn P. Wilbur
A new weekly event, at Laughing Horse Books! R@dical History SeriesMAJOR MOMENTS, MINOR MOVEMENTS, LITTLE-KNOWN FACTS, CONTROVERSIES, AND CHARACTERS. EACH WEEK: A SHORT, INFORMAL PRESENTATION, FOLLOWED BY COFFEE-DRINKING AND DISCUSSION. AUGUST TOPICS: 8/12: P.-J. Proudhon and “Property is theft!” (Theme and Variations) A survey of the uses to which Proudhon put his famous phrase. 8/19: Panarchy and Pantarchy: Hierarchy in a free society P. E. Depuydt and Stephen Pearl Andrews push the envelope of anarchy. 8/26: Anarchists as Inventors: From desk-top publishing 1830-style to the Lysander Spooner’s “elastic bottom.” With Shawn P. Wilbur (Laughing Horse Collective, Alliance of the Libertarian […]