Month: March 2014

The Sex Question

Pauline Roland, “Have Women the Right to Labor?” (1851)

March 31, 2014 anarchisms_w4l2ii
  A Letter from Pauline Roland We extract from the Espérance a letter of a courageous and intelligent woman, a martyr of modern times, a heroine of Socialism, dead fighting for Progress and for Humanity. Pauline Roland is no more—and yet she still fights among us, with the drops of her blood as with the pearls of her thought, she shakes the scourge at the heads of the reactionaries, revolution in the faces of the civilized? Have Women the Right to Labor? [1] A Simple Question Addressed by a captive to the citizen Emile de Girardin, editor of the Bien-Etre […]
Bakunin Library

James Guillaume, “Federalism” (1871)

March 31, 2014 Shawn P. Wilbur
In the second issue of Solidarité, dated April 1871, James Guillaume contributed this piece on the federative principle, in the context of the Paris Commune. Note the use of Proudhon’s concept of “collective force.” I’m working on translating a series of texts on nationality and the federative principle, to go with forthcoming issues of LeftLiberty. _____ Federalism. The true character of the revolution that was accomplished at Paris commence has been outlined in so marked a fashion that you, even the minds most unfamiliar with political theories, can now perceive it clearly. The revolution of Paris is federalist. The Parisian […]
Bakunin Library

The Bears of Berne and the Bear of Saint-Petersburg (1870)

March 31, 2014 Shawn P. Wilbur
THE BEARS OF BERNE AND THE BEAR OF SAINT-PETERSBURG ___________ Patriotic lament for a humiliated and hopeless Switzerland March, 1870 The Russian government has judged our Federal Council well, when it dared to demand the extradition of the Russian patriot Nechayev. Everyone knows that the order has been given to all the cantonal police to seek and arrest that revolutionary, as intrepid as tireless, who, after having escaped twice from the claws of the czar, that is from death preceded by the most dreadful tortures, would probably have believed, that once having taken refuge in the Swiss republic, he would […]
Bakunin Library

“My dear Grand Papa” (1824)

March 31, 2014 Shawn P. Wilbur
My dear Grand Papa. I congratulate you on your big day. I wish you great joy, and to pass this day very happily. I promised you to always do better and better, and I make my best efforts to keep my word, and another time I will do better still. This great party is so uncommon, but for that reason very diverting. My sisters and brothers are very contents with this party, and congratulate you on your big day, and wish you much joy. My sisters have made you some presents, but, me, I have nothing to give you at […]
Bakunin Library

Bakunin, Plan for a revolutionary association (fragment)

March 31, 2014 Shawn P. Wilbur
[From an undated manuscript, probably written in 1866.] Plan for a revolutionary association.  ───────── 1) Those only can be international brothers who accept in their entirety and in their spirit these principles their bases for revolutionary politics. 2) An international brother must put the interests of the general revolution of Europe above the exclusive and narrow interests of his own country; he must at least understand that even by sacrificing to the general revolution the fleeting interests of his country, he assures that much better its permanent emancipation. 3) The international brothers must not be brothers in name, but in […]
Anarchism

Undated fragment on pan-Slavism and anarchism

March 30, 2014 Shawn P. Wilbur
Manuscript fragment: …and which has consequently rendered impossible at present the constitution of a centralist, bureaucratic and military Slavic State… In the end that fine Slavic brotherhood, which could no longer exist from the moment that the Slavs, sacrificing Abel to Cain, received the latter, as their elder brother, into their midst… in a word all the precious elements that the Slavs have guarded, in the midst of the terrible vicissitudes that they have experienced for centuries, which, rendered fertile by a new spirit—that of great justice, great liberty and universal fraternity—could well become one day those of a new […]
Contr'un

Return of the Proudhon Seminar

March 26, 2014 Shawn P. Wilbur
Starting in May, one of the projects I’ll be working on is the evaluation, revision and/or annotation of the existing translations of Proudhon’s works, starting with Tucker’s translations of the first two memoirs on property. As part of the process, I’ve proposed a group reading of the material. When we read What is Property? five years ago, in the original “Proudhon Seminar,” our shared understanding of Proudhon’s work was, I think, very different than it is now. I’ve recently come back to the work in a couple of different contexts and been amazed at how different it looks to me. […]
Contr'un

A Million Words: Day 115

March 26, 2014 Shawn P. Wilbur
As expected, this has been a slightly more distracted month. I managed to get sick for a week, and had to burn a couple of my allocated “sick/vacation days,” and then made up most of the lost time with a couple of unusually easy bits of translation. I’m nearing the halfway mark in the main text of Fribourg’s history of the International, and have probably a third of the supplementary documents and endnotes completed. I’m also making pretty good headway through Jenny P. d’Héricourt’s Woman Affranchised. I finished a draft translation of all the material for the collection of Fourier’s […]
Bakunin Library

Letter to Zamfir Arbore, September 1873

March 26, 2014 Shawn P. Wilbur
[Letter to Zamfir Arbore (Zamfir Ralli), September 1873, Locarno, Switzerland.] My friend Ralli, So you are already informed about the Congress of Geneva, the decision has been taken to remove the General Council. Three propositions have been made, all three by people who do not understand very well what is necessary for us, anarchists; some propose to organize, by replacing the suppressed General Council, [with] a common central commission, others want three commissions, and a third group proposes to delegate the powers to one of the federations for the general administration of the international. It has occurred to none of […]
drama

Claude Pelletier, Preface to “The Revolutionary Socialist Heretics of the 15th Century”

March 20, 2014 Shawn P. Wilbur
[one_third padding=”0 10px 0 0px”] Claude Pelletier was in exile in the United States in 1867, when he wrote The Revolutionary Socialist Heretics of the 15th Century, a five-act play that transplanted the concerns of the French revolution of 1848, and the thought of some familiar figures, onto the events of the Hussite rebellion. Here is his explanation of the work, which I will probably translate in full at some point: [/one_third][two_third_last padding=”0 0px 0 10px”] PREFACE As the 19th century is called to resolve the problem of the proletariat by putting into practice the ideas of the modern Revolutionaries […]