Month: May 2012

Black and Red Feminism

Jenny d’Héricourt’s “Appeal to Women” and “Profession of Faith”

May 31, 2012 Shawn P. Wilbur
I’ve been working on an anthology of Jenny P. d’Héricourt’s works, combining her two-volume Woman Affranchised with an assortment of other works of feminist philosophy. d’Héricourt was, of course, one of Proudhon’s opponents on the question of women’s rights, and her response to him makes up an important part of the first volume of Woman Affranchised, but the second volume (about two-thirds of which was not included in the existing English translation) shows her as an accomplished social thinker and activist. I’ve been revising and completing the translation of the first volume of that work, and hope to have at […]
Black and Red Feminism

Adrien Ranvier — Jeanne Deroin, A Feminist of 1848 — I

May 30, 2012 Shawn P. Wilbur
A FEMINIST OF 1848: Jeanne DEROIN This study of Jeanne Deroin is the work left by Adrien Ranvier, who died September 18, 1905, at Asniéres (Seine). Adrien Ranvier, born in 1807, son of Gabriel Ramier, member of the Commune, was raised, from 1871, by Madames Vincent and Mauriceau. Her father, Gabriel Ranvier, imprisoned after October 31 1870, was elected mayor of the XXth arrondissement and member of the Commune, March 26, 1871; was one of the last combatants of the Commune and only escaped from prison thanks to the shelter than he found in Asniéres, with the Girard and Mauriceau […]
Contr'un

William Henry Channing, “Letters to Associationists”

May 29, 2012
LETTERS TO ASSOCIATIONISTS. Number One. As Corresponding Secretary of the “American Union of Associationists,” allow me thus publicly to present a view of our duties in the Social Movement. Judge, each reader, of the truth of what is said! Freely challenge and correct errors! Let us commune together! Thus will the latent spirit be prepared for outward manifestation. Your thoughts are invited to consider I. Our Position. 1. In Actual Life, we take the ground of mediating between Revolutionary and Conservative tendencies. We propose a detailed scheme of practical reconciliation, whereby Capital and Labor may combine in a work of […]
Contr'un

William Henry Channing, “Charles Fourier” (1843)

May 29, 2012
CHARLES FOURIER.  The zeal and ability with which Albert Brisbane has for several years devoted himself to the propagation of Fourier’s doctrines of association, begin to be appreciated as they deserve. And whatever conclusive judgment his countrymen may pass upon this peculiar system, all must admit, that this earnest advocate of social reorganization has hastened and widened the great reform movement of our day. Few who have paid Fourier the respect he merits, of deep study, will deny that he has cast light, much needed and timely, upon the darkest problems, whether they adopt his social science without modification or […]
Utopian and Scientific

Charles Fourier, “Cosmogony”

May 28, 2012 Shawn P. Wilbur
[one_third padding=”0 10px 0 0px”][/one_third][two_third_last padding=”0 0px 0 10px”] COSMOGONY. FROM A MANUSCRIPT OF FOURIER. Translated for the Harbinger. —— PREAMBLE. Having reached this twenty-first section, I feel the same temptation which Montesquieu did at his twenty-first book. He wanted to address an invocation to the Muses; I read it in a journal which seemed astonished, and with reason, at this weakness. Montesquieu, amongst other complaints, said to the virgins of Pindus: “I have run a long career, and I am overburdened with cares.” Nevertheless he had, to support his labors and distract him from his cares, an income of […]
Contr'un

Notes on a “mutualist minimum”

May 28, 2012 Shawn P. Wilbur
One of the more “collectivist” economic heresies that I’m interested in is the notion of a “basic minimum.” As expressed by the followers of Fourier, and people like Joseph Charlier, it was one of the long list of intrusive measures that Proudhon hoped to avoid through the establishment of the Bank of the People. And I appreciate that sentiment, but I am also tempted by Pierre Leroux’s assertion that a basic subsistence is a basic right. In any event, in response to one of those constant “what would a mutualist do?” questions on Facebook, I sketched just a bit of […]
Utopian and Scientific

Victor Considerant, The Ideal of a Perfect Society

May 27, 2012
THE IDEAL OF A PERFECT SOCIETY. I. Let us in thought construct upon some globe a society, in which social causes of evil shall not exist, and where humanity shall employ its activity and power in the development of the elements needed for the happiness of its members. There would be, on such a globe, an order like that which reigns in the system of the stars. In this system, the worlds of different orders are arranged in hierarchies—the satellites burn around their planets, and the planets around the central sun, which concentrates all the attractions of the group, and […]
Anarchist Beginnings

Not just for pear-growers anymore

May 27, 2012 Shawn P. Wilbur
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 Fourier’s disciples wrote a work illustrating […]
Contr'un

Molinari’s “Soirées” in translation

May 27, 2012 Shawn P. Wilbur
Good translation news, with a tip of the hat to Roderick Long: the Liberty Fund will be publishing an English translation of Gustave de Molinari’s 1849 work, Les Soirées de la rue Saint-Lazare: entretiens sur les lois économiques et défense de la propriété (Evenings on Saint Lazarus Street: Discussions on Economic Laws and the Defence of Property), and a draft is already online. I think mutualists will find plenty here to disagree with, but it will be very useful to have a translation of the work available. So far, it seems very well done, and rather massively footnoted.
Utopian and Scientific

Charles Fourier on Free Will — I

May 26, 2012
[ezcol_2third] FREE WILL ____ NOTICE ON THE TREATISE ON FREE WILL. ____ The Treatise on Free Will does not appear in the first edition of the Treatise on Universal Unity. It is the first of Fourier’s manuscripts delivered for publication since the death of the author. The notebooks left by Fourier are in general only preliminary sketches that he condensed and published when he published then. Quite a number of these manuscripts date from the period prior to the appearance of the first edition of the Treatise on Universal Unity (1822). The Treatise on Free Will is of this number. […]