Month: May 2014

Bakunin Library

Fundamental Principles of the New Slavic Politics (1848)

May 31, 2014 Shawn P. Wilbur
Fundamental Principles of the New Slavic Politics. [June, 1848]   Having traversed centuries of slavery, of painful struggles and suffering, the Slavs gather today for the first time in a general congress, and clasp hands for a fraternal alliance, declares solemnly before God and before the nations that the following principles will from now on form the basis of their new political existence. 1. Arrived last in the march of European civilization, tested and formed by longs misfortunes, they feel themselves called to accomplish what the other peoples of Europe have prepared by their previous development, what is regarded today […]
Bakunin Library

Happy 200th, Bakunin!

May 30, 2014 Shawn P. Wilbur
Today is the 200th anniversary of the birth of Bakunin, and I’m personally celebrating by starting a new translation push. With one exception, the texts for the Bakunin Reader have been translated in draft form for a couple of months now, and I’ve been working on other aspects of the project while I’m waiting for that lone, but central translation to come in. There has been no shortage of relevant work to do, of course. The recent digitization project at the International Institute of Social History has made a number of related archives available online (Bakunin Papers, Max Nettlau Papers, Fédération […]
Bakunin Library

A fragment of a fragment

May 30, 2014 Shawn P. Wilbur
[There are some genuinely fragmentary bits and pieces among the Bakunin texts, including this piece, which appears in a manuscript, copied by Max Nettlau and dated January-February 1876, but seems to have been composed in late 1870 or early 1871, probably in connection with The Knouto-Germanic Empire. I had worked through most of this before realizing it was probably from an earlier period, and I’ll just pass the finished portion along until I can return to the longer fragment in that other context.] Nevertheless we see today in France, this noble country of France, which seems to have received the […]
Bakunin Library

Bakunin’s recollections of youth

May 29, 2014 Shawn P. Wilbur
Max Nettlau Contributions to the biography of Mikhail Bakunin La Société nouvelle, 1896 INTRODUCTORY REMARK It is only in these last two or three years that a mass of previously unknown documents, published for the first time, have begun to shed light on the lesser-known parts of Bakunin’s life, and even for the portions of that life that we believed sufficiently well known, an abundance of new and surprising facts present themselves. We cite, save the publications of theoretical writings after some manuscripts or rare publications, only the study of his relations with Byelinsky (by Milioukoff), the great correspondence with […]
French texts

Léon Abensour, “Proudhon et la Pologne” (1920)

May 23, 2014 Shawn P. Wilbur
I’m in the midst of a line-by-line comparison of the manuscript of The Theory of Property with the published version, as a step towards revising my draft translation and starting to get the work into publishable shape. Because The Theory of Property was initially intended to be part of a larger work, Pologne (Poland) I’ve been spending some time looking at the larger work in order to establish the context. (See my post on Proudhon’s “Pologne” and the federative project of the 1860s.) Much of that work involves working my way through Proudhon’s handwritten manuscripts, but a short section of […]
Glossary

Contr’un

May 19, 2014 Shawn P. Wilbur
Links: A Contr’un Glossary Basically, the Contr’un is the star of the show here, the Whitmanesque subject who contains multitudes and is not contained between hat and boots, who spills out over all the property lines we might draw, at the same time drawing the world in without attempting to claim exclusive domain. It is the subject understood in its general economy. It is an individual characterized by an antinomic relationship with its own individuality, a counter-self, the one against the (absolutist) One. It is frustrating, messy (at least in the context of our attempts to draw clean boundaries, improper […]
Contr'un

Who is the Contr’un?

May 19, 2014 Shawn P. Wilbur
[one_third padding=”0 10px 0 0px”][/one_third][two_third_last padding=”0 0px 0 10px”] Basically, the Contr’un is the star of the show here, the Whitmanesque subject who contains multitudes and is not contained between hat and boots, who spills out over all the property lines we might draw, at the same time drawing the world in without attempting to claim exclusive domain. It is the subject understood in its general economy. It is an individual characterized by an antinomic relationship with its own individuality, a counter-self, the one against the (absolutist) One. It is frustrating, messy (at least in the context of our attempts […]
Contr'un

Meta-ethics of reciprocity

May 18, 2014 Shawn P. Wilbur
Since the discussion about mutualism began to shift from economics to ethics and sociology, there have been lots of questions, and a few accusations, about the specific ethical framework involved. Let me cut to the chase: I’m not particularly concerned about whether anarchists are driven by deontology, consequentialism, virtue ethics, etc. Personally, I’m a ethical pragmatist, and I think Proudhon, with whom I’ve obviously found plenty of common ground, was as well. I think a thoroughly anarchistic account of the good and the right is likely to pretty closely resemble Proudhon’s account of the true. And maybe someday I’ll take […]
Proudhon Library

New tools at the Proudhon Library wiki

May 10, 2014 Shawn P. Wilbur
With all of the new material available online recently, it has been necessary to update some of my bibliographical resources. I’ve added a Chronological Bibliography page to the wiki, with links to most of Proudhon’s major works, and most of the major manuscripts, that are available online. I’ve also update the Responses to Proudhon page, which is a sort of catch-all of critical responses, biographies and commentaries, focused on material from Proudhon’s own lifetime. Expect regular updates on both pages, as long as new material keeps appearing online.
Contr'un

Moving forward with “The Theory of Property”

May 10, 2014 Shawn P. Wilbur
[ezcol_1third] Contr’un Revisited: [commentary coming soon] [/ezcol_1third] [ezcol_2third_end] I’ve been spending some quality time with the manuscript of Proudhon’s The Theory of Property, now that it is available through the Ville de Besançon site, and it’s been a fascinating experience. Having spent a lot of time with the published version over the last few years, there were a lot of moments when I could look at a page and, once I had deciphered the handwriting, could immediately place the manuscript material in the published work. On my first pass through, the page where Proudhon proclaims that “Humanity proceeds by approximation” […]