Month: June 2015

Bakunin Library

Chapter from an erotic tale, 1848

June 24, 2015 Shawn P. Wilbur
There are some interesting items tucked away in the works of Bakunin, but I’m not sure I have come across one as peculiar as this “Ebauche d’un conte érotique” (fragment of an erotic tale), from a work apparently written in October and November, 1848. Further commentary would probably add nothing at this stage… Chapter III We soon made ourselves acquainted. A charming intimacy was established between us…. They spoke to me of their pastimes, of their pleasures, of their love for their father… of his goodness, of the tender solicitude that he had for them. I admired the guilelessness, the […]
Bakunin Library

Dedication to Sofija Karlovna Mel’gunova, 1845

June 22, 2015 Shawn P. Wilbur
To be free and to liberate others, that is the secret of life. Women have this vocation just as much as men. I would even add, contrary to the generally accepted idea that only a subordinate position and activity, that they have this calling even more than men, for their life and their acts are neither abstract, nor simplistic; on the contrary, they constitute a living fullness that needs the free air to blossom in all its beauty, and because they understand and feel much more deeply than men the misfortune and the humiliation of their brothers. I have long […]
Bakunin Library

Bakunin to Proudhon, November 11, 1864

June 22, 2015 Shawn P. Wilbur
November 11, Paris My dear Proudhon – I have just arrived in Paris and I will remain here only a very few days. You friend, and now mine also, Felix Delhasse has given me your address at Passy. I would like to come there to see you. But knowing that you are ill, I did not want to risk the journey before being sure that you would be in a state to receive me. So please inform me or have me informed in a few words, if I should come or not. Address your response to me in a double […]
Bakunin Library

Bakunin — A fragment on life and spirit (1837)

June 21, 2015 Shawn P. Wilbur
[one_third padding=”0 10px 0 0px”][/one_third][two_third_last padding=”0 0px 0 10px”] No 1 My Notes September 4, 1837 Yes, life is sheer happiness; to live means to understand, to understand life; evil does not exist, all is good; only limitation is evil, the limitation of the spiritual vision. Everything that exists is the life of the spirit, everything is penetrated by the spirit, nothing exists apart from the spirit. The spirit is absolute knowledge, absolute liberty, absolute love, and especially absolute felicity. The natural man, like everything that is natural, is the finite and limited moment of that absolute life. He is […]
Contr'un

Libertarian socialist historiography

June 4, 2015 Shawn P. Wilbur
Recently, I’ve been looking at some very interesting work by René Berthier and Gaston Leval, some of it relating to the familiar question of just how anarchists have used the language of anarchy (anarchist, anarchist, etc.) Berthier (whose various works on Bakunin and Proudhon I have been finding very useful) has written a nice little essay on “L’usage du mot « anarchie » chez Bakounine” (The Use of the Word ‘Anarchy’ by Bakunin), which covers some of the same ground as my work on “Anarchy in All its Senses,” but in the works of Bakunin, rather than Proudhon. Leval was […]
Bakunin Library

Bakunin to Elisée Reclus, February 15, 1875

June 1, 2015 Shawn P. Wilbur
February 15, 1875 – Lugano My very dear friend, I thank you so much for your kind words. I have never doubted your friendship. That feeling has always been mutual and I judge yours by my own. Yes, you are right. For the moment, the revolution has gone back to bed, and we fall once again into a period of evolutions, one of subterranean, invisible and often even insensible revolutions. The evolution that takes place today is very dangerous, if not for humanity, at least for certain nations. – it is the last incarnation of a used-up class, enjoying its […]