Month: January 2015

Working Translations

Ernest Lesigne, Socialistic Letters — IX (1887)

January 30, 2015 Shawn P. Wilbur
SOCIALISTIC LETTERS IX Ten years ago, I wrote a study from which emerged the somewhat unexpected conclusion that every error is, as well as every truth, the product of experiment. In the case of error, the experiment is incomplete. That is all. But as those who are mistaken have seen, or what is called seeing, we mustn’t be surprised to see so many of them become hot and bothered when one assures them that they are mistaken. So I simply say this to the collectivists: You have concluded without having seen enough. It is always the story of that Englishman […]
anarchism without adjectives

Ricardo Mella, “Free Cooperation and Communities”

January 28, 2015 Shawn P. Wilbur
Things have been a little quiet on this front, while I finish the introduction to “Anarchies and Anarchisms: 1840-1920.” But part of the work on that project has allowed me to make some more progress on the Collectivism Reader for this project. I’ve been looking at collectivism in Spain, and the “anarchism without adjectives” current that emerged from the conflict between collectivist and communist anarchists, and have finally the chance to get better acquainted with the work of figures like Tarrida del Mármal and Ricardo Mella. I’ve just posted a translation of an essay by Ricardo Mella, “Free Cooperation and […]
Contr'un

Max Nettlau, pessimism and possibilities

January 14, 2015 Shawn P. Wilbur
In 1901 and 1903, Max Nettlau, arguably the greatest of anarchism’s historians, wrote a series of documents intended for “friends and comrades,” though not for general publication, addressing what he took to be problems in anarchist practice. The first of these seems to have been “Some criticism of some current anarchist beliefs,” a 49-page text written in English, and this was followed by at least two drafts of a more formally structured French manuscript of nearly 200 pages. All can be read in the digitized portions of the Max Nettlau Papers at the IISH site. The linked text is a […]
Bakunin Library

Henry Seymour, Michael Bakounine: A Biographical Sketch (1888)

January 8, 2015 Shawn P. Wilbur
MICHAEL BAKOUNINE: A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. BY HENRY SEYMOUR.   Michael Bakounine was born of an ancient aristocratic Russian family in 1814. At an early age, his father, who was then a wealthy proprietor of Torchok in the governmental department at Twer, sent him to a cadet school in St. Petersburg; here he was soon entered as an artillery ensign. In those days this service was one which was reserved especially for the most favored nobles, the Czar’s traditional policy being to grant greater freedom of research in this than in other services. It is not to be wondered at, then, […]
Contr'un

2014: The Final Lessons

January 4, 2015 Shawn P. Wilbur
I had really hoped that I might get through the last week of 2014 without any new worldview-shaking epiphanies. As it turned out, there were a couple, which I’ll at least start to address here. That’s really been the way the year has gone, and, for the most part, it has been a remarkable, exciting experience. The questions raised in 2013 about just how many senses “anarchy” might have had in Proudhon’s writings have spawned a variety of other fairly fundamental questions about anarchist history and the contents of Proudhon’s theory. I’ve spent a lot of time feeling like a […]
drama

Nelly Roussel, “By Rebellion!” (1904)

January 2, 2015
To all women, my sisters. To the Eternal Creatress, aching and unknown. By Rebellion! A SYMBOLIC SCENE  By NELLY ROUSSEL (Mme. Godet)    SCENE I. EVE, sorrowfully. Oh! My bruised wrists hurt me!… For so long they have borne chains!… My poor eyes, drowning in tears, will go blind!… For so many centuries they have cried!…           Gazing at her chains and lifting them painfully.  Ah! Alas! Alas! In my slavery and my abandonment, where will I find a drop of water to quench my thirst, manna to comfort my hunger, rest to relieve my exhausted flesh, and consoling words […]
biography

Mary Putnam-Jacobi, obituary for Susan J. Dimock (1847-1875)

January 1, 2015
[one_third padding=”0 10px 0 0px”][/one_third][two_third_last padding=”0 0px 0 10px”] [It should come as no surprise that women who were rebels in other aspects of life would have connections to the anarchist movement. This was certainly true among the pioneering women physicians in the United States. The following obituary was written by Mary Putnam-Jacobi, who boarded with the Reclus family while studying in Paris, for Susan Dimock, whose medical training was partially supported by the family of William B. Greene. Greene’s daughter Bessie was traveling with Dimock when they both died in the shipwreck of the Schiller in 1875. I’ll be […]
The Sex Question

Nelly Roussel, “What is ‘Feminism’?” (1906)

January 1, 2015 anarchisms_w4l2ii
WHAT IS “FEMINISM”? No French word is more often badly understood and falsely interpreted than the one that designates the ensemble of our demands. And I do not fear to affirm that some men, and men women, are “feminists” without knowing it, all while rejecting the title. Some—despite the evidence—persist in seeing in “feminism” only a masculinization of woman, a servile and grotesque copy of the male by his envious companion. Others believe they have discovered there a disturbing tendency to invert the roles, to replace masculine domination with an equally unjust, equally abusive feminine domination, and to reduce the […]
biography

Suzanne Voilquin, “Suicide of Claire Démar and Perret Desessarts” (1855)

January 1, 2015 Shawn P. Wilbur
SUICIDE of Claire Démar and Perret Desessarts. My soul painfully gripped by the dismal drama that has just played out before our eyes, I can, today, only deplore the loss of these two victims of the social and religious anarchy of the century, and share the reflections that this sad event has engendered in me. But, above all, I must seek to destroy a calumny that all the newspapers have been pleased to repeat. All have made known, coldly citing the event, that intimate relations existed between Claire and Desessarts. For those who have sounded the depths of the human […]