Year: 2014

Contr'un

Pruning the Rhizome (review of “Disruptive Elements”)

April 8, 2014 Shawn P. Wilbur
  Disruptive Elements: The Extremes of French Anarchism Ardent Press, 2014 available from Little Black Cart —— a review —— “Tant pis pour ceux qui souffrent et n’osent pas prêcher l’extermination et l’incendie!” Most history worth bothering with shakes things up. This is particularly true of radical history, and of that branch of radical history that involves rediscovering and re-presenting primary works from various radical currents. Sometimes, the shake-ups are comparatively pleasant, and we find, unexpectedly, that we have inherited marvelous gems, glimpses into the personalities and practices of those who came before us. Sometimes, they seem more like attacks, […]
Contr'un

More anarchist archives online

April 5, 2014 Shawn P. Wilbur
The International Institute of Social History has digitized several more of their important collections, as part of a large-scale digitization project. The collections include Max Nettlau’s papers, the Bakunin collection, the Louise Michel collection, the Alexander Berkman papers, the Fédération Jurassienne Archives, the Lucien Descaves papers, the Gustave Landauer papers, and several others. Many of the downloadable files are manuscript pages, varying dramatically in legibility, but there are also files of collected pamphlets, periodical issues, fliers, etc. So far, I’ve run across some issues of Josiah Warren’s Periodical Letter, a good scan of J. Wm. Lloyd’s “Anarchists’ March,” the published […]
Contr'un

Proudhon on the Criterion of Certainty (1841-1858)

April 2, 2014 Shawn P. Wilbur
I’ve pulled together some rough translations from Proudhon’s The Creation of Order in Humanity with existing translations from the Second Memoir on Property and Justice in the Revolution and in the Church. Together with The Philosophy of Progress, the collected texts cover some of the major stages in Proudhon’s treatment of the question of “the criterion of certainty.” I remember really being puzzled, the first time I read the book on Progress, about the extent to which this summary of Proudhon’s thought was focused on the question of certainty, and it has taken a long time, even after discovering his […]
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. […]