Month: January 2014

Contr'un

The Challenge in Proudhon’s Thought

January 31, 2014 Shawn P. Wilbur
  Part of the project here has to be presenting a picture of Proudhon that is a more useful alternative to those we have inherited. I have been arguing that there is a Proudhon who is not the failed precursor we so often think of, but who is instead a pioneer who still remains in some very important ways out in from of us, waiting for us to catch up.  So what is the defining character of that Proudhon’s thought? I still can’t think of a more exemplary text for addressing that question than The Philosophy of Progress. In the […]
Contr'un

Scraping some rust off the “two guns” of mutualism

January 28, 2014 Shawn P. Wilbur
[one_third padding=”0 10px 0 0px”]   [/one_third][two_third_last padding=”0 0px 0 10px”] As I mentioned in the last post, one of the results of turning my back on the “Two-Gun Mutualism” project, and focusing specifically on the anarchic “social system” of “the encounter,” has been to reawaken my interest in the abandoned TGM: Rearmed book project. Much of that interest comes, as I’ve said, from my continuing interest in that atercratic counter-history that I expect will be occupying a lot of my time in upcoming months. But there is another element of my original mutualist project which I have had a […]
Contr'un

History and Possibility

January 25, 2014 Shawn P. Wilbur
This year’s million-word translation push has a couple of different motives behind it. At a basic level, it’s a way to make productive what looks like an otherwise disastrous year for me. Last year was a year of wrong guesses, zigs that probably should have been zags, and an increasingly isolation on most fronts. I’m having to rethink a lot of things, make even more of my very limited resources, and try to keep my chin up through the process. In the past, really bad years have meant that Liberty got scanned and much of the deep background research that […]
Bakunin Library

Progress Report: January 2014

January 25, 2014 Shawn P. Wilbur
While I’ve been posting plenty of draft translations to the blog, it’s been some time since I’ve been able to say much about the progress of the Bakunin Library project. The publisher and I spent quite a bit of last year negotiating the shape of the Bakunin Reader and the subsequent volumes, and there has been a lot of mostly useful back and forth in the process. But progress has not always been without a hitch, and as we entered December of last year I found myself at the beginning of another look through Bakunin’s works, trying to outline a […]
Bakunin Library

Letters to a Frenchman on the Present Crisis (6 of 6) (1870)

January 24, 2014 Shawn P. Wilbur
Letter VI September 15   Having said what I think of the possible union of the workers and peasants to save France, I want to return again to the essential point of my thesis, namely the absolute impossibility for any government, republican or not, and especially of the government of Gambetta et Co., to prevent the catastrophe that is brewing and that can be averted only by the direct and almighty action of the people themselves. If it return, in the course of my demonstration, to some arguments that I have already used, it is because there are some things we […]
Contr'un

A Million Words

January 19, 2014 Shawn P. Wilbur
It’s been quiet here on the blog, which usually means I’ve been busy elsewhere. This time is no exception. The next phase of the work on Proudhon involves writing up some truly introductory material, which is always slow, meticulous work. The Corvus Editions project is at another awkward transitional point, unsurprisingly given the state of the book trade, so I’ve been trying to take a hard look at the viable options there. And I’ve also made a number of publishing commitments, which are taking big bites out of my work day. Mostly, though, 2014 looks like it’s shaping up to […]
Bakunin Library

Letters to a Frenchman on the Present Crisis (1870)

January 19, 2014 Shawn P. Wilbur
  Letters to a Frenchman on the Present Crisis (September 1-8, 1870, Locarno, Switzerland) Letter to a Frenchman ___________ My dear friend, The latest events have placed France in such a position, that it can no longer be saved from a long and terrible slavery, from ruin, poverty, and annihilation, except by a rising en masse of the armed people. Your principal army being destroyed, — and that is no longer in doubt today, — there remains to France only two outcomes: either to submit sheepishly, shamefully, to the insolent yoke of the Prussians, to bow beneath the staff of […]
Bakunin Library

Speech of the citizen Bakunin to a public assembly of foreign socialists (1868)

January 19, 2014 Shawn P. Wilbur
Speech of the citizen Bakunin to a public assembly of foreign socialists November 23, 1868 [After saying that the Assembly had not only gathered to pay homage to the memory of the brave republican Baudin, murdered by the brigands of December, but also to express its devotion to the principles of the democratic and social Republic, the citizen Bakunin expressed himself in these terms:] We are socialists, [he said,] that is to say that we all want: Equality of political, economic and social conditions for all; Equality of the means of support, education, and instruction for all children of both […]
Bakunin Library

The Swiss Police (1870)

January 18, 2014 Shawn P. Wilbur
[I found this article in the midst of revising a translation of “The Bears of Berne and the Bear of Saint Petersburg,” which covers much the same topic at considerably more length.] The Swiss Police It appears that all the police of Europe have now put themselves in the service of the Russian government. Some very active searches continue, it is said, in Germany, in Switzerland, in France and even in England. Who are they seeking? Is it some political conspirators? No, doubtless, that would be too awkward, for excepting the governments of England, which have never ceased to conspicuously […]
Bakunin Library

A Poster from the Lyon Commune (1870)

January 18, 2014 Shawn P. Wilbur
[Poster, Lyon, September, 27 1870] French Republic  REVOLUTIONARY FEDERATION OF THE COMMUNES The disastrous situation in which the Country finds itself; the impotence of the official powers and the indifference of the privileged classes have put the French nation on the edge of the abyss. If the People organized in a revolutionary manner do not make haste to act, their future is lost, the Revolution is lost, all is lost. Inspired by the immensity of the danger, and considering that the People’s desperate action can not be delayed for a single moment, the delegates of the Federated Committeesfor the Salvation […]