Year: 2015

Contr'un

Anarchism, Plain and Simple

December 22, 2015 Shawn P. Wilbur
  I’ll do a proper year-end round-up sometime soon and talk about a number of changes coming to the Libertarian Labyrinth, but I’ll start with some updates on publishing and translating projects. If things have been fairly quiet on the blog, it’s because virtually all my time and energy has been invested in attempting to finish up the manuscript of Anarchist Beginnings: Declarations and Professions of Faith, 1840-1920 (the book previously known as Anarchies and Anarchisms.) And that project has been a learning (and unlearning, and relearning) experience on a scale that I couldn’t have imagined when I started it, […]
Proudhon Library

Notes on An-archy (Carnet No. 9)

December 21, 2015 Shawn P. Wilbur
[from Carnet No. 9] [19] Revolutionary practice. — The great principles of society are principles of DIRECTION, rather than of application. So obviously we must act in politics as if we were pursuing the complete destruction of all government, not as if, presently, every governmental force must cease. Similarly [in the case of], property is theft… Similarly [in the case of], God is the Devil… Similarly [in the case of], Association, the salariat, etc., etc. No authority either of government over man; it is the law of direction! — Thus, simplification, repeal of the laws, abrogation of authority, greater and […]
Proudhon Library

Association.—PENALTY, death penalty (Carnet No. 4, 1847)

December 12, 2015 Shawn P. Wilbur
P.-J. Proudhon, Carnets, Vol. 2, Carnet No. 4, P. 25-26. Association.—Penalty, death penalty. Its legitimacy. Identity of justice and vengeance (talion, expiation, penitence, excommunication, etc.); Hatred, natural passion, legitimate and holy! Zelus domus tuæ comedit me! said Elijah. It is the hatred of the miscreant. To hate is to desire the death of someone, their retrenchment, they’re a long month. To hate is to wish the death of someone, their removal in some way. Man naturally, legally and honestly hates everything that harms him or does him ill: injustice, rudeness, ingratitude, discord, guile, perfidy, coarseness, dirtiness, cruelty, despotism, folly, mockery […]
Contr'un

Proudhon on Land Value Taxation

December 2, 2015 Shawn P. Wilbur
[This was written for the C4SS mutual exchange on occupancy-and-use land tenure and refers to the recently posted “General Summary” from The Theory of Taxation.] NOTE ON PROUDHON AND LAND VALUE TAXATION Those who have read all the contributions to this conversation so far might well marvel at how many different Proudhons had been invoked in its course. I think all of us are still in the blind man and the elephant stage with Proudhon, to some extent at least. His writings pose remarkable difficulties, beginning with the difficulty of even knowing what genre of writing we are dealing with […]
Contr'un

To “property” via “mutual extrication”

November 10, 2015 Shawn P. Wilbur
I’ve been taking part in a C4SS-sponsored discussion of occupancy-and-use property norms, “Occupancy and Use: Potential Applications and Possible Shortcomings,” which is now appearing on the Center’s website. The exchange opened with a piece by Kevin Carson, “Are We All Mutualists?,” which suggests that perhaps the answer is “yes.” A series of responses will be posted every other day, with my “Neo-Proudhonian Remarks” already posted under the title “Limiting Conditions and Local Desires.” For me, this first response was an opportunity to talk again about the development of Proudhon’s thoughts on property, but also to return to the question of […]
Proudhon Library

Proudhon on “the American question”

November 10, 2015 Shawn P. Wilbur
[from a letter to Gustave Chaudey, September 1, 1862.] On the American question, I can only tell you that my opinion changes every day; I have no faith in the philanthropy of the North; I do not accept that the federal Constitution prevents the separation; on both these connections, the English public is entirely turned around. Then there is the fact that the armies of the North experience failure upon failure; England, Belgium and France, devoured by pauperism, are clamoring for cotton; and if the imperial government, joining with a certain felicity the two questions of Mexico and the Confederates, […]
Proudhon Library

Unanimity.—Universal Consent (c. 1852)

October 30, 2015 Shawn P. Wilbur
[“Economie,” manuscripts at Gallica] Unanimity.—Universal Consent P.-J. Proudhon There are things, in the moral order, about which the human race is unanimous; there are even many of them. So isn’t it possible that all the questions of politics, economics and morals could be simplified or clarified in such a way that the response to them would be unanimous? In this way, the direct government of the people would be possible. It is according to that idea, confirmed by the testimony of the sciences, that [Pierre-Napoléon] Domenjarie [1852] has written his pamphlet, La loi morale, loi d’unanimité, which we have read […]
Proudhon Library

P.-J. Proudhon, Theory of Taxation (1861)

October 29, 2015 Shawn P. Wilbur
[two_third padding=”0 10px 0 10px”] THEORY OF TAXATION […] Relation of the State and Liberty, according to modern right. Modern right, by introducing itself in the place of the ancient right, has done one new thing: it has put in the presence of one another, on the same line, two powers which until now had been in a relation of subordination. These two powers are the State and the Individual, in other words Government and Liberty. The Revolution, indeed, has not suppressed that occult, mystical presence, that one called the sovereign, and that we name more willingly the State; it […]
Contr'un

Anarchy and Anarchism, Insides and Outsides

October 7, 2015 Shawn P. Wilbur
  “Dad blame anything a man can’t quit.”—Roger Miller Make a more or less angry break with the anarchist milieu. Settle down to write a book about anarchism. It might all seem a bit bizarre if it wasn’t, for a certain sort of anarchist, pretty much inevitable. I know that there are people who move from the anarchist scene to other political scenes, who trade in the beautiful idea for other ideas. Honestly, though, I don’t understand them and don’t imagine I have much in common with them. For me, the encounter with anarchy was a sort of Rubicon—or perhaps […]
Contr'un

Toward a General Theory of Archy

October 3, 2015 Shawn P. Wilbur
   A lot of my frustrations with the anarchist milieu have less to do with the sorts of internal problems we face, which seem to me to be logical manifestations of the larger social environment, and more to do with the fact that, even if we had the will to address the various things that hold us back, we might not have enough shared theory and vocabulary to get the job done. But, as I have said, my feelings of alienation have been parallel to, and undoubtedly also arise from, a very strong sense of having finally plumbed a lot […]