Month: November 2016

Proudhon Library

Proudhon, “LVIII. — System of public reason, or social system” (Justice)

November 28, 2016 Shawn P. Wilbur
LVIII. — Système de la raison publique, ou système social. Que de fois ne me suis-je pas entendu adresser ce compliment que la critique jalouse se hâterait, pour l’honneur du siècle, de retirer, si elle en comprenait la portée : Vous êtes un admirable destructeur; mais vous ne construisez rien. Vous jetez les gens à la rue, et vous ne leur offrez pas le moindre abri. Que mettez-vous à la place de la religion? Que mettez-vous à la place du gouvernement? Que mettez-vous à la place de la propriété? On me dit à présent: Que mettez-vous à la place de […]
Anarchist Beginnings

Frédéric Tuefferd, Letter to Albert Parsons from an Anticrat (1886)

November 21, 2016 Shawn P. Wilbur
Eufaula, April 13, 1886 Dear Comrade Parsons:—I have received your papers and am very much obliged for them. Glad that you like my article. I am writing now for To-Day, of London, and for the Alarm, and am going to write for La Tribune du Peuple de Paris. Situated as I am now, I can be of no good but by writing, and I intend to avail myself of it. You may be astonished if I tell you that I never use the word “Anarchy.” I stick to the old word “Socialism.” It can be understood and does not require […]
Anarchist Beginnings

A Socialist Dialogue and Catechism (1898)

November 20, 2016 Shawn P. Wilbur
A SOCIALIST DIALOGUE. Question. What is a Socialist? Answer. One who believes in collective ownership of the means of production and distribution. Q. What do you mean by collective ownership? A. Ownership by all the people. Q. What would be the result of collective ownership? A. The general welfare. Q. How do you know this? A. Because collective ownership has been productive of good wherever tried. Q. Where has it been tried? A. All over the world. Q. How? A. In the management of corporations. Q. Upon what principles do corporations act? A. Upon the principles of collective ownership in […]
Anarchist Beginnings

William Henry van Ornum, “What is Anarchy?” (1897)

November 18, 2016 Shawn P. Wilbur
The average man has imbibed a general idea that anarchy is something quite terrible; and it is only necessary to brand a man as an anarchist to damn him in the eyes of the unthinking multitude. If you wish to kill a dog you have only to raise the cry of “mad dog,” and the cry will outrun the unfortunate beast until some one will succeed in ending his life, whether he were mad or not, for everyone feels, in duty bound, to help kill him. Just so, must people regard it as incumbent upon them to help destroy any […]
Anarchist Beginnings

William J. Gorsuch, “Tags” (1891)

November 18, 2016 Shawn P. Wilbur
The other day a friend, who is so much of a Tolstoian as to be pleased to work for a living, remarked: “You are the first person ever pointed out to me as an Anarchist. Are you an Anarchist?” I replied: “Some folks say so.” I wish if possible to explain that answer. I hold that one of the greatest hinderances to social progress is man’s proneness to accept and wear tags, labels, badges. One of the limitations of language, due to differences of experience and therefore of knowledge on the part of individuals, is that the tag attached to […]
Anarchist Beginnings

Victor Yarros, “Anarchistic Socialism” (1889)

November 17, 2016 Shawn P. Wilbur
State Socialists are in the habit of charging the Anarchists with a partiality for middle-class ideas and institutions, and nothing is more common than the statement that we wish to retain the bourgeois arrangements, while endeavoring to give them an ideal flavor. Our teachings are taken to be identical with those of the individualistic economists of the Cobden-Bastiat school, and we are constantly told that the principles of individualism, inaugurated and embodied by the great revolution in France, have been tried and found wanting, have been condemned and utterly discredited by life itself. Our present social evils are alleged to […]
Anarchist Beginnings

Rosa Slobodinsky and Voltairine de Cleyre, “The Individualist and the Communist” (1891)

November 12, 2016 Shawn P. Wilbur
THE INDIVIDUALIST AND THE COMMUNIST. A DIALOGUE. INDIVIDUALIST: “Our host is engaged and requests that I introduce myself to—I beg your pardon, sir, but have I not the pleasure of meeting the Communist speaker who addressed the meeting on Blank street last evening?” COMMUNIST: “Your face seems familiar to me, too.” INDV.: “Doubtless you may have seen me there, or at some kindred place. I am glad at the opportunity to talk with you as your speech proved you to be somewhat of a thinker. Perhaps—” COM.: “Ah, indeed, I recognize you now. You are the apostle of capitalistic Anarchism!” […]
The Sex Question

Emma Goldman, “Simion Koldofsky, the Friend” (1936)

November 2, 2016 Shawn P. Wilbur
I first met Simion Koldofsky in Moscow in 1920, during the so-called military communism. Life was cruelly hard and the struggle bitter… Russia, surrounded by four fronts,–blockaded by all the European powers–was not in the mood for sociability. In the face of hunger, epidemics and death, the life of everyone was grim and self-centered; no-one cared for the tragedy of the other. My old pal, Alexander Berkman, and I, had been in Russia only a short time. We naturally felt the tragedy of the Revolution that was being played in the day-by-day struggle. We missed close comradeship and the fellowship […]
The Sex Question

Emma Goldman, “Has My Life Been Worth While?” (1933)

November 2, 2016 Shawn P. Wilbur
HAS MY LIFE BEEN WORTH WHILE? Have I wasted my life? Measured by the ordinary standards of value, my life may be considered wasted. I have nothing in social prestige, wealth and power—that holy alliance commonly called success—to show for my struggle of forty-three years. But then, I had never aspired to those treasures. I am therefore spared the bitter disappointment of those who had considered them fixed and unchangeable for all time. Station, power, wealth—how inadequate they have proved! How useless and insecure! The mighty of yesterday now standing before the world as the most successful failures of our […]