Year: 2008

Uncategorized

Announcing “LeftLiberty”

April 4, 2008 Shawn P. Wilbur
OK, folks. It’s time for me to start really working on the first issue of “LeftLiberty,” which I’m announcing for July 4 (about 5 weeks after I move). I’ve roughed out a logo and regular columns. You can check them out. This is the project that has grown out of the somewhat stillborn earlier discussion of an ALL zine. The plan is to “shake the debate from both ends,” by presenting original material from early 19th-century sources, much of it newly translated, along with contemporary responses to the same issues, from a range of anarchist and libertarian positions. I’ll be […]
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“I’ve been down to Washington, That cit-y of renown…”

February 24, 2008 Shawn P. Wilbur
“. . . I was there the morning that Cox-ey struck the town. It was fun to see the plu-to-crats and hear the gold-bugs squeal, As they march’d along three hundred strong the Coxey Commonweal.” I’ve posted an 1898 pamphlet from the Coxey Good Roads and Non-Interest Bond Library. The “library,” despite appearances, may not have had more than an issue or two, or perhaps Coxey’s publications, of which there seem to have been many, have been particularly ephemeral. This appears to be the most common issue, and it is a nice introduction to Coxey’s economic proposals.
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J. K. Ingalls, “Social Wealth”

February 19, 2008 Shawn P. Wilbur
At long last, Joshua King Ingalls’ Social Wealth, is available online, in a (largely) searchable pdf edition. (The text will follow soon.) At 320 pages, the file is a little over 16 megs, but well worth the time to download and read through. Let me know if you have any problems with the file. I’m still experimenting with adding searchable texts to files, while maintaining broad compatibility. I’m slowly, but surely working my way through the Liberty archive, making those files as searchable as the rough image scans will allow. (For now, check out the issues from volumes 12 and […]
Contr'un

Not just for pear-growers anymore

February 18, 2008 Shawn P. Wilbur
[ezcol_1third] [Commentary coming soon.] [/ezcol_1third] [ezcol_2third_end] The anarcho-Fourierist renaissance continues. In “The Lesson of the Pear Growers’ Series,” I had suggested that there might still be some lessons to be learned from Charles Fourier’s approach to questions of individual passion, competition, etc. Unfortunately, “Note A,” which contains the most concise explanation of Fourier’s associative model, is not available (yet) in a public-domain translation online—and it is a bit of a stretch, at times, to make the analogies between growing pears (and apples, and quinces) and other sorts of labor we might actually be planning on engaging in. Fortunately, one of […]
Contr'un

Pierre Leroux “De l’égalité” (1838)

January 22, 2008 Shawn P. Wilbur
[one_third padding=”0 10px 0 0px”] Contr’un Revisited: [/one_third][two_third_last padding=”0 0px 0 10px”] Pierre Leroux’s book De l’égalité is one of those sources of the mutualist tradition seldom read by anyone these days, despite the fact that it was one of the primary inspirations and sources for William Batchelder Greene’s own Equality, as well as his Mutual Banking. The first three “Omega” articles in the Worcester Palladium took their title from Leroux’s work, and began with a fragmentary translation of part of it. One reason for its neglect has been its untranslated status, another, its scarcity. It will take some time […]
Contr'un

The hunt begins again

January 17, 2008 Shawn P. Wilbur
[ezcol_2third] Well, I started out the new semester with a bad case of something flu-like—just one of several slightly inauspicious signs for 2008. But the tea leaves are thus far pleasantly mixed. Having batted 0 for 2 (or 3) on teaching this semester, I am, under the circumstances, pleasantly ensconced as an unfunded Visiting Faculty Fellow of the Center for Popular Culture Studies, here at BGSU. It’s a chance to keep at my scholarly work, end in connection with one of the programs that brought me here in the first place, 18 years ago, and do a last little bit […]
anarchist mutualism

Lessons from the Worcester Palladium

January 3, 2008 Shawn P. Wilbur
I finally sat down to collate some of the “Omega” articles (which William B. Greene wrote for the Worcester Palladium in 1949) against Equality and the 1850 Mutual Banking. In his scan through the paper Brady Campbell identified six articles under the “Omega” pen name. Equality – – No.1 by OMEGA. – Wednesday 18 July 1849 – Deals with Moses, and equality among Christian brotherhood Equality – – No.2 by OMEGA. – Wednesday 25 July 1849 – Deals with the banking system Equality – – No.3 by OMEGA. – Wednesday 1 August 1849 – Deals the repeal of usury laws […]