Month: January 2013

Contr'un

Notes on Proudhon’s changing notion of the state

January 18, 2013 Shawn P. Wilbur
[one_third padding=”0 10px 0 0px”] Contr’un Revisited: [/one_third][two_third_last padding=”0 0px 0 10px”] I. The most incredible confusion is that between the government and the State. I am an anarchist, as Proudhon was, for like him I want to abolish government, the principle of authority in the State, in order to replace it by an responsible and controllable administration of the public interests; but I do not want, with Bakunin, to abolish the State. The word State comes from stare, to hold, to persist; the State is thus the organized collectivity. Just as the commune is the local collectivity, the State […]
Bakunin Library

Guy A. Aldred, “Michel Bakunin: Communist” (1920)

January 17, 2013 Shawn P. Wilbur
MICHEL BAKUNIN: COMMUNIST GUY ALDRED 1920 FOREWORD. “A spectre,” wrote Karl Marx in 1847, “is haunting Europe, the spectre of Communism. All the Powers of Old Europe have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre.” But the exorcism has failed. In vain does the holy alliance reconstitute itself in order to perform its chosen task. The spectre of 1847 is a mere sprite no longer. It has emerged from the darkness in which it was wont formerly to play the part of a miserable shadow. It has become an embodied spirit, a power incarnate; and to-day it boldly […]
Bakunin Library

Paul Eltzbacher, “A Synopsis of Bakunin’s Teaching” (1900)

January 17, 2013 Shawn P. Wilbur
A Synopsis of Bakunin’s Teaching[1] To escape its wretched lot the populace has three ways, two imaginary and one real. The two first are the rum-shop and the church, the third is the social revolution. A cure is possible only through the social revolution — that is, through the destruction of all institutions of inequality, and the establishment of economic and social equality. The revolution wall not be made by anybody. Revolutions are never made, neither by individuals nor yet by secret societies. They come about automatically, in a measure; the power of things, -the current of events and facts, […]
Bakunin Library

Hippolyte Havel, “Bakunin” (1914)

January 17, 2013 Shawn P. Wilbur
BAKUNIN BY HIPPOLYTE HAVEL. No man can emancipate himself, except by emancipating with him all the men around him. My liberty is the liberty of everyone, for I am not truly free, free not only in thought but in deed, except when my liberty and my rights find their confirmation, their sanction, in the liberty and the rights of all men, my equals. — Bakunin. THE LIFE OF BAKUNIN Mikhail Alexandrovitch Bakunin was descended from an old aristocratic family, which according to tradition had emigrated to Russia from Transylvania. He was born on his father’s estate at Pryamukhino, district of […]
Bakunin Library

Max Nettlau, “The St. Imier Congress of the International” (1922)

January 17, 2013 Shawn P. Wilbur
THE ST. IMIER CONGRESS OF THE INTERNATIONAL, September 15 and 16, 1872. This September our Swiss comrades in the Jura mountains will commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the anti-authoritarian Congress of the old International held at St. Imier, September 15 and 16, 1873; and they will also recall the memory of the Jurassian Federation of the International, which for many years stood in the front ranks of the struggles of the ‘60s and ‘70s which created the Anarchist and revolutionary Syndicalist movements of our time. The Congress in question did more: it saved the continuity of the internationalist movement and […]
Bakunin Library

Max Nettlau, “Marx and Engels and the IWMA” (1907)

January 17, 2013 Shawn P. Wilbur
Marx and Engels and the International Working Men’s Association, 1872 to 1876. I. F. A. Sorge, a German refugee of 1849, the chief American correspondent of Marx and Engels in the seventies and eighties, a few months before his death published a volume of letters addressed to him by Marx (1868-1881), Engels (1872-1895), J. Ph. Becker, Dietzgen and others (Stuttgart, 1906, xii., pp. 422, 8vo.) We have already had glimpses of Marx’s personal life and doings in F. Lassalle’s letters addressed to him during the fifties, in Marx’s own letters to Dr. Kugelmann during the sixties, and in his letters […]
Bakunin Library

Max Nettlau, “Michael Bakunin” (1914)

January 16, 2013 Shawn P. Wilbur
[one_third padding=”0 10px 0 0px”]   [/one_third][two_third_last padding=”0 0px 0 10px”] Michael Bakunin. by Max Nettlau Most centenarians, even when born much later and still among us, are but dried-up relics of a remote past; whilst some few, though gone long since, remain full of life, and rather make us feel ourselves how little life and energy there is in most of us. These men, in advance of their age, prepared new ways for coming generations, who are often but too slow to follow them up. Prophets and dreamers, thinkers and rebels they are called, and of those who, in […]
Utopian and Scientific

Charles Fourier, “Melons that Never Deceive”

January 14, 2013 Shawn P. Wilbur
THE THEORY OF UNIVERSAL UNITY   VOLUME 3, pages 47-50.   CIS-AMBLE,   Melons that never deceive, or prodigies of composite serial Gastronomy.   Let us give some articles to each of the classes of readers. There are those who love amusing demonstrations, connected to their favorite pleasures; the gastronomes are among this number: I attempt, in this mediant, their conversion. I suppose that they are already moved by the depictions of the refinement that the Passional Series introduces into good food. I will give gormandizing some more nobles colors, and present it as the principle aide of the economic […]
Utopian and Scientific

Charles Fourier, “Major or Gastrosophic War”

January 14, 2013 Shawn P. Wilbur
  A colleague and I have been working on a translation from Fourier’s New Amorous World, which focuses on the “wars” between the armies of Harmony to determine the most generally pleasing series of means of preparation for petits pâtés. This is a companion piece from The Theory of Universal Unity, which describes variations on the same process.    Major or Gastrosophic War.   Let us banish calculations from an article dedicated to beautiful subjects, to nice tastes. Let us not, however, entirely neglect method. We call nice tastes those with which we can form at least a regular series […]
Bakunin Library

Mikhail Bakunin, “Madame Léo and l’Egalité” (1869)

January 11, 2013 Shawn P. Wilbur
Madame Léo and l’Egalité [L’Egalité(Geneva), March 13 & 27, 1869] We have inserted this letter all the more willingly because it eloquently summarizes the reasons that militate in favor of a rapprochement of the different democratic parties. We will take the occasion to explain ourselves once and for all on the subject. We understand the lofty sentiment which has dictated the letter we have just read, but we cannot let ourselves be led by these impulses of the heart; we know too well that they have always managed to doom the people’s cause, and we cannot, and must not forget […]