Month: October 2015

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 […]
Contr'un

Propositions for Discussion: The Scope of Anarchy

October 2, 2015 Shawn P. Wilbur
[Here is a rough outline for the second section of the “Propositions:] The Scope of Anarchy To claim that anarchy is sufficient as an anarchist goal or ideal is not, of course, to claim that it is in some way all-sufficient. Most of our arguments about the definition of anarchy turn out to be, on closer inspection, arguments about its proper scope of application—and there are questions still to be answered. On the one hand, we have defenders of various archic systems—capitalism, nationalism, racial and gender-based hierarchies—attempting to identify their systems with anarchy, on the basis that the proper scope […]