Month: April 2012

Contr'un

The Gift Economy of Property: From Property to Gifts

April 30, 2012 Shawn P. Wilbur
The Gift Economy of Property Thesis From the Self to Property From Property to Gifts Gifting Property    3. I’m obviously not talking about “property” in any of the very narrow senses that it has been given, including the narrower senses given to it by Proudhon. Or, rather, I am seeking a broad, underlying definition, which will allow us to relate those more limited senses of the term to one another. We’ll probably find ourselves drowning in specific definitions pretty quickly here, but for a moment or two more, let’s stay general and try to clarify just what sort of […]
Contr'un

The Gift Economy of Property: From the Self to Property

April 29, 2012 Shawn P. Wilbur
The Gift Economy of Property Thesis From the Self to Property  From Property to Gifts Gifting Property  2. Having laid out a little more clearly the philosophical moves I’m making with the “gift economy of property,” I probably need to clarify again the rationale for such a idiosyncratic approach to the question of property. Because it is explicitly a mutualist anarchist approach, and specifically a neo-Proudhonian approach, there’s a whole lot of critique of property at the foundations, a strong sense that, as desirable as the aims of property might be, the available means of founding it appear to be […]
Contr'un

The Larger Antinomy

April 22, 2012 Shawn P. Wilbur
[one_third padding=”0 10px 0 0px”] Contr’un Revisted: [commentary coming soon] [/one_third][two_third_last padding=”0 0px 0 10px”] I. “When Jesus Christ, explaining to the people the different articles of the Decalogue, taught them that polygamy had been permitted to the ancients because of the rudeness of their intelligence, but that it had not been thus in the beginning; that a bad desire is equal to a fornication consummated; that insult and affront are as reprehensible as murder and blows; that he is a parricide who says to his poor father: “This morning I have prayed to God for you; that will benefit […]
Contr'un

The Gift Economy of Property (2.0)

April 22, 2012 Shawn P. Wilbur
Contr’un Revisited: Related: The Gift Economy of Property Trajectories: Proudhon and Property The Larger Antinomy The Gift Economy of Property I. Thesis An adequate, non-simplist, mutualist theory of what is proper to individual human beings, seeking to do justice to the range of things we denominate by the word “property,” will have to account for the nearly unbridgeable separateness that we experience in consciousness, as well as the inextricable interconnection which is our material reality. It will have to, in essence, respond to Max Stirner and Pierre Leroux (or any number of other advocates of a roughly ecological universal circulus.) […]
Contr'un

Picking up dropped threads

April 20, 2012 Shawn P. Wilbur
Lots of things have intervened in the discussion of mutualist property theory over the last two years, not the least of which has been a whole lot of additional research and translation. It has, for one reason or another, been a little more than I could manage to pick up where I left the fairly straightforward exploration of the question which was interrupted in the midst of the “property is impossible” series, way back in June 2010. But there’s no getting on to the next phase of things without wrapping up this particular discussion, so I’m working on finally pulling […]
Contr'un

Emile Digeon, Rights and Duties in Rational Anarchy (1882)

April 18, 2012 Shawn P. Wilbur
Let’s be honest. I initially took a look at Emile Digeon’s Rights and Duties in Rational Anarchy because of its weird title. But it turns out that he was a fascinating individual, who played a key role in one of the other communes that rose with the Paris Commune. So I’ve already translated a couple of minor texts, and now I can add his most famous work to the file. There remains one major pamphlet to translate, Revolutionary Remarks, and then I’ll probably bind an edition of “Selected Works.” Rights and Duties displays an interesting mix of tendencies. Digeon wants […]
Ernest Cœurderoy
Working Translations

Ernest Coeurderoy, Three Letters to the Journal l’Homme – I

April 12, 2012 Shawn P. Wilbur
[one_third padding=”0 10px 0 0px”]   [/one_third][two_third_last padding=”0 0px 0 10px”] THREE LETTERS TO THE JOURNAL L’HOMME, ORGAN OF FRENCH DEMAGOGY ABROAD, BY ERNEST CŒURDEROY. “No force can stop the movement of social decomposition. And Demagogy is not even a force.” (Ernest Cœurderoy. — Days of Exile.) LONDON; JOSEPH THOMAS, 2, CATHERINE STREET, STRAND.  ———– THREE LETTERS TO THE JOURNAL L’HOMME, Following a simple complaint that I addressed to it, the journal l’Homme having challenged me to a serious discussion which it later recognized itself incapable of defending against me, I publish the responses that the impartial editing of that […]
Corvus Editions

Corvus Editions: Spring releases

April 11, 2012 Shawn P. Wilbur
For this year’s Bay Area Anarchist Book Fair, I decided to simplify my selection, and my tabling patter, and focus on the translation side of my project. A number of the pamphlets linked below are also first installments of larger projects. Anyway, here’s what you missed if you didn’t make the show: Working Translations #1 “An unsystematic selection of radical writings, translated from the French.”In hardcover, Working Translations will be a series of 200+ page omnibus volumes, collecting all of my translation work as it appears. For pamphlet release, I’ll be issuing many of the longer texts separately, and assembling […]
Contr'un

Felix P….., “The Philosophy of Defiance” (New York, 1854)

April 9, 2012 Shawn P. Wilbur
I’ve just posted a translation of selections from The Philosophy of Defiance, an 1854 anarchist pamphlet published in New York and written by a French exile who signed the work “Felix P…..” Max Nettlau discovered the text, and published portions of it in La Revue Anarchiste for July, 1922. That’s fortunate, because the original text seems to be rare to the point of nonexistence, and because it’s a very interesting example of early anarchist thought.
Contr'un

Felix P….., “The Philosophy of Defiance” (New York, 1854)

April 9, 2012 Shawn P. Wilbur
THE PHILOSOPHY OF DEFIANCE, or, A Pardon for Cain 1854 FELIX P….. Edited by Max Nettlau … Give me any epithets you wish; I accept them all in advance. I have only one thought, and envision only one glory: it is to strike everywhere and always, as much as I can, at the principle of domination. Satan, in his revolt, is my father, and, in his courage, Cain is my brother! … We do not take a single step in society without hearing that human beings must believe in a God, in a sovereign being, master of all things, according […]