Year: 2014

Contr'un

Avengers who never assemble

June 13, 2014 Shawn P. Wilbur
Related text: “My Testament, or Society of Avengers” (FR/EN, partial translation) [click image] “By what sign shall we recognize that an individual who has been struck has been struck by the society of avengers? If the victim is notorious depraved, or corrupt, or criminal, or villainous; if they are an enemy of the people; if their political importance  corresponds to their criminality; if a sign is left on the corpse; if they are not stripped or robbed; if no author of the murder can be assumed from self-interest, rivalry, etc.” A notorious enemy of society is struck down and a […]
Contr'un

What if?

June 9, 2014 Shawn P. Wilbur
[one_third padding=”0 10px 0 0px”] The Great Atercratic Revolution [tag feed] [/one_third][two_third_last padding=”0 0px 0 10px”] If we’re doing really radical history, it’s hard not to engage in some “What is”? Much of the attraction of knowing the details of the radical movements of the past is the possibility that we’ll find tools and lessons useful in the present and future. And we can’t very well limit ourselves to examining the successes of the past, since without a little of that “if at first you don’t succeed…” spirit, there wouldn’t seem to be much point in trying to be radical […]
Contr'un

May 31, 1874

June 5, 2014 Shawn P. Wilbur
[one_third padding=”0 10px 0 0px”] The Great Atercratic Revolution [tag feed] [/one_third][two_third_last padding=”0 0px 0 10px”] A 16-year-old Jack Deames has just been introduced to Henri Rochefort, Paris Communard and escapee from New Caledonia. He shakes the famous hand, mumbles something and retreats. Although young, he has shown the sort of youthful enthusiasm and energy that sometimes gets you introduced as a representative of the next generation. Rochefort is both familiar and largely unknown. Jack’s world is full of stories about the Paris Commune and its protagonists. He has been aware of Rochefort’s escape and journey, and vaguely aware of […]
Proudhon Library

Dividing “Pologne”

June 2, 2014 Shawn P. Wilbur
It appears that even when writing about Poland, Proudhon ultimately tended toward division. While much of the work of the last few years of his life seems to have been connected to the work on Poland, of which The Theory of Property was an important element, when we look at the notes he left to his literary executors, we see that the manuscript of Pologne, as it has been passed down to us, was ultimately destined to be split into two works: The History of Poland and Political Geography and Nationality. Based on a table of contents included in the […]
Proudhon Library

Proudhon’s “Pologne” and the federative project of the 1860s

June 2, 2014 Shawn P. Wilbur
  “Ma Théorie fédérative est déjà un fragment enlevé à mon travail polonais; la Propriété sera le second…” “My Federative Theory is already a fragment lifted from my Polish work; the [Theory of] Property will be the second…” (Letter to Grandclément, Nov. 17, 1863) One of the nearly miraculous effects of the recent manuscript digitization projects at the International Institute of Social History and the Ville de Besançon has been a sudden and dramatic change in the kinds of questions we can wrestle with, with real hope of success, without international travel or expensive duplication of materials. For me, it […]
Contr'un

The Character and Scope of the Mutualist Market

June 2, 2014 Shawn P. Wilbur
A Short History of Mutualism: Mutualism (The Palgrave Handbook of Anarchism) Scattered Reflections on Mutualism as “Market Anarchism:” Mutualism and “Market Anarchism” (2012) Encounters and Transactions (2013) The Character and Scope of the Mutualist Market (2014) Embracing the Antinomies (2017) Notes on Mutualism and the Problem(?) of Exchange (2019) Note on Mutualism and the Market-Form (2020) Collective Force: Notes on Contribution and Disposition (2020) Historical Mutualist Texts and Proposals: What Mutualism Was (project outline) One of the traditional elements of mutualism that seems to endure is the attraction of what we lovingly call “money crankery.” I’m not sure that there […]
Bakunin Library

A Fragment from 1848

June 1, 2014 Shawn P. Wilbur
A Fragment from 1848 “The revolution will circle the earth!” Such was the prophetic cry that resounded in France at the end of the 18th century when the old world of lies, the world of an age-old servitude shaken by the powerful arms of an angry people, perceived the first cry. That call expressed the certainty that the revolution was a common call for all the peoples, the redemption of all the oppressed. And even more, the solidarity of men and nations in good as in evil: such is the last word of ancient civilization, but at the same time […]
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 […]