Month: March 2011

Contr'un

Two Socialist Catechisms

March 28, 2011 Shawn P. Wilbur
[ezcol_2third] I’ve been reading around Proudhon quite a bit lately, trying to establish contexts as a step towards further clarifying his ideas. And I have been in search of 19th century English translations of the French socialists, as a step towards establishing the contexts for people like William B. Greene and William Henry Channing. There are large chunks of the writings of Charles Fourier, Victor Considerant, and a number of the important French socialist-feminists tucked away in the pages of American papers. The translations are often partial, and occasionally untrustworthy, but I’ve been setting aside time each week for searching, […]
Contr'un

Proudhon, “Man is Free”

March 26, 2011 Shawn P. Wilbur
[ezcol_2third] The short article by Proudhon, “God is Evil,” which I posted awhile back, was essentially the introduction to a longer piece, “Man is Free,” which followed it. I now have both articles translated and posted to the Libertarian Labyrinth archive. [/ezcol_2third] [ezcol_1third_end] [/ezcol_1third_end]
Proudhon Library

Proudhon, The Theory of Property – Chapter 2

March 24, 2011 Shawn P. Wilbur
Here’s another short chapter from The Theory of Property: THE THEORY OF PROPERTY Pierre-Joseph Proudhon CHAPTER II That property is absolute: prejudice opposed to absolutism. The recognition or institution of property is the most extraordinary, if not the most mysterious, act of the Collective Reason, an act that much more extraordinary and mysterious as, by its principle, property rejects collectivity and reason equally. Nothing is more simple, more clear than the material fact of appropriation: a corner of land is unoccupied; a man comes and establishes himself there, exactly as the eagle does in his canton, the fox in a […]
Contr'un

Charles Fourier on the Papillon, or Butterfly Passion

March 2, 2011 Shawn P. Wilbur
[For Roderick, a bit from Charles Fourier’s Passions of the Human Soul, dealing with dinner parties and the passion for variation, the papillon. Some of Fourier’s influence no doubt comes through in Stephen Pearl Andrews analogy of the dinner party.] According to the property common to the three distributives, the papillon is of two species, distinguished into contrasted and identical. 1st. The contrasted papillon arises from transitions from one extreme to another. For example: a company of sybarites, accustomed to sumptuous banquets, will eat with great pleasure in a cottage, rustic fare,—milk and fruit served up in earthern vessels; they […]