Year: 2012

Uncategorized

Labor and subjective value

May 14, 2012 Shawn P. Wilbur
Debates about anarchist economics would probably be frustrating and difficult under the best of circumstances, but the truth is that we steer well clear of even relatively good circumstances much of the time, returning again and again to a few debates which, in practice, can’t be resolved because they are merely symptoms of hardened, irreconcilable presuppositions, but which, under those elusive “best of circumstances” might well turn out to be no big deal—and may be at least a very different deal than our disagreements seem to suppose.  Take the standard attack on mutualists for their adherence to the labor theory […]
Working Translations

Joseph Déjacque, “The Revolutionary Question”

May 13, 2012 Shawn P. Wilbur
La question révolutionnaire par Joseph Déjacque Notre ennemi, c’est notre maître (La Fontaine) The Revolutionary Question by Joseph Déjacque Our enemy is our master. (La Fontaine) Extrait du journal ” Le Républicain “ 1. La Société de la Montagne nous prie d’insérer la communication suivante : “La Société de la République universelle la Montagne désirant faciliter autant qu’il est en son pouvoir la propagande républicaine, a décidé qu’elle prêterait la salle de ses séances, chaque fois que la demande lui en serait adressée par une société démocratique n’ayant pas de lieu fixe de réunion, ou lorsqu’un citoyen désirerait faire un lecture ayant pour […]
communism

Joseph Déjacque on Revolution (from The Revolutionary Question)

May 13, 2012 Shawn P. Wilbur
Of the Revolution Principles : Liberty, equality, fraternity Consequences: Abolition of government in all its forms, monarchic or republican, the supremacy of one alone or of majorities; But anarchy, individual sovereignty, complete, unlimited, absolute liberty of everyone to do everything which is in the nature of the human being. Abolition of Religion, whether catholic or Israelite, protestant or any other sort. Abolition of the clergy and the altar, of the priest,–curate or pope, minister or rabbi;–of the Divinity, idol in one or three persons, universal autocracy or oligarchy; But the human being,–at once creature and creator,–no longer having anything but […]
Uncategorized

Note on slavery and the origins of property

May 9, 2012 Shawn P. Wilbur
Several people, knowing my interest in the question of property, have sent me links to a blog post by Stephen Keating, “Are Freedom and Violence Linked?,” which discusses some of what David Graeber has to say about slavery and the origins of property in his book, Debt: The First 5000 Years. There are parts of Keating’s argument to which I’m sympathetic, such as his concern that the notion of individual property rights may mask the essentially social nature of property. But his key point seems to be this: “The dirty secret is that this conception of property emerged out of […]
Anarchist Beginnings

Joseph Déjacque, “The Universal Circulus” (revised translation)(1858)

May 9, 2012 Shawn P. Wilbur
[This remarkable bit of libertarian philosophy by Joseph Déjacque poses all sorts of difficulties for the modern reader, not the least of which is it borrowings from, and reworkings of, the works of Charles Fourier and Pierre Leroux. And there are places where it ha been necessary to translate things rather literally, since terms are used suggestively, according to the established uses of none of the writers or schools that they were drawn from. There are also a couple of times when Déjacque’s enthusiasm clearly ran away with the syntax: where catalogs of conditionals come to abrupt stops, without ever […]
translations

Joseph Déjacque, “The Universal Circulus”

May 9, 2012 Shawn P. Wilbur
The Universal Circulus  (1858) Joseph Déjacque I The universal circulus is the destruction of every religion, of all arbitrariness, be it elysian or tartarean, heavenly or infernal. The movement in the infinite is infinite progress. This being the case, the world can no longer be a duality, mind and matter, body and soul. It cannot be a mutable thing and an immutable one, which involves contradiction—movement excluding immobility and vice versa—but must be, on the contrary, an infinite unity of always-mutable and always-mobile substance, which implies perfectibility. It is through eternal and infinite movement that the infinite and eternal substance […]
individualist anarchism

E. Armand’s Individualist Anarchist Initiation

May 5, 2012 Shawn P. Wilbur
I’ve started posting consecutive sections from E. Armand’s The Individualist Anarchist Initiation on the Libertarian Library blog. I started translating back in October, with the section on reciprocity, and promised at that point to begin at the beginning and work my way through the book. A number of things have intervened, most of them exciting and worthwhile, like the Bakunin project (about which there should be more news soonish), but here we go: Some lines of introduction Sketches of the Social Environment [2018 update — See the link above for the translations.] It’s a big book, with 279 numbered sections, […]
individualist anarchism

The Individual Anarchist Initiation: Sketches of the Social Environment

May 4, 2012 Shawn P. Wilbur
   THE INDIVIDUALIST ANARCHIST INITIATION PART ONE THE THEORETICAL BASES OF ANARCHIST INDIVIDUALISM 1. Sketches of the Social Environment, Harmful Authority. 1) The social milieu. A chaos of beings, facts and ideas; a harsh, disorderly struggle, without mercy; a perpetual lie; a wheel which turns blindly, one day lifting one to the pinnacle and the next crushing one ruthlessly. A mass, rich and poor, slaves of age-old, inherited prejudices, the first because they find their interests there, and the others because they are immersed in an ignorance from which one does not want they leave; a multitude whose religion is […]
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 […]