Year: 2016

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 […]
Anarchist Beginnings

Voltairine de Cleyre, “A Correction” (1907)

October 31, 2016 Shawn P. Wilbur
Owing to a perhaps natural misunderstanding, it was stated in the American report to the Amsterdam Congress that I am a worker in the cause of Anarchist Communism. The report should have said Anarchism, simply, as I am not now, and never have been at any time, a Communist. I was for several years an individualist, but becoming convinced that a number of the fundamental propositions of individualistic economy would result in the destruction of equal liberty, I relinquished those beliefs. In doing so, however, I did not accept the proposed economy of Communism, which in some respects would entail […]
anarchist synthesis

Voline, “On Synthesis” (1924)

October 29, 2016 Shawn P. Wilbur
  On Synthesis I. Legend maintains that Jesus Christ gave no response to the question of Pontius Pilate: “What is truth?” And it is very likely that in these tragic moments he hardly had the heart to concern himself with philosophical arguments. But even if he had had the time and the desire to engage in a controversy concerning the essence of truth, it would not have been easy for him to respond in a definitive manner. Many centuries have passed since then. Humanity has made more than one step toward knowledge of the world. The question of Pontius Pilate […]
Anarchist Beginnings

Benjamin Colin, “To France” (1852)

October 20, 2016 Shawn P. Wilbur
[ezcol_1half] TO FRANCE. You sleep, France, and you are in irons! You, the advance guard of progress and the future, how long will you tolerate the ignominious régime that oppresses you, and remain sunk in torpor? Does the blood of the victors of the Bastille and of the 10 August no longer flow in your veins? Are 1830 and 1848 dead dates in your history? Would you drink the cup of shame to the lees, without spewing it in the face of the eunuchs who present it to you? If this were the case, nearly all hope would be lost […]
Contr'un

Anarchism: Elements of a Synthesis

October 20, 2016 Shawn P. Wilbur
In a new series of posts, under the general title Anarchism: Elements of a Synthesis, I’ll be engaging in a sort of back-to-basics exploration of anarchy, anarchism and the practice of being an anarchist. I’ll be going back through a lot of material that has appeared here, in the sometimes unfathomable order dictated by my own research, and reintroducing whatever seems most useful. At the same time, I’ll be fleshing out the outlines of two monographs, Anarchism, Plain and Simple and A Good Word, that I have sketched out. I’ll also be opening one important line of new research, as I’ll be […]