Year: 2016

Proudhon Library

Of the Ideal, and of Supernaturalism in Nature (1851)

January 11, 2016 Shawn P. Wilbur
P.-J. Proudhon, Carnets, Vol. 4 (Carnet No. 8, 311-312): 154-155. — The Marvelous [or the Supernatural] in Humanity, third cause of revolution. — Subordinate to the common sense, but distinct from it. — It is not a malady, a pathological state or transition, like teething or puberty in individuals: it is a faculty, a real function of the soul, [but one that is] little known, like the spleen or tonsils in animals. Everything provided by that faculty constantly vanishes before analysis, but it still exerts the greatest influence on the acts of the Species. Already we have seen that God […]
Proudhon Library

On human emancipation (1850)

January 8, 2016 Shawn P. Wilbur
P.-J. Proudhon, Carnets, Vol. 4, Carnet No. 8, P. 43-44. __________ The history of the human race has only been one long effort of the working classes to free themselves from tyranny and theft.– All government is tyrannical. All property is theft. All religion is mystification. [177] It seems that tyranny, theft and illusion are eternal in the human race. As for me I would dare to affirm otherwise! In any case, this is what takes place. That effort of emancipation is the very life of our species. – The economic order is beneath all that; and itself, steeped in […]
Proudhon Library

On the necessity of following the revolution

January 8, 2016 Shawn P. Wilbur
[From Proudhon’s Carnets] Necessity of renouncing every utopia, every system, and of following the revolution. If not, nothing. There are Communists who still say every day: I am a communist first, a revolutionary after. — I have not, after February, proposed the abolition of property, although I have posited and confirmed on several occasions that proposition: Property is theft. Neither have I proposed to the equality of wages, of consumption, and of all goods: although I have constantly repeated that absolute equality is the law of society, because it is its tendency. That is because we do not make revolution […]
Proudhon Library

REVOLUTIONARY PRACTICE.—Propositions (1851)

January 8, 2016 Shawn P. Wilbur
Carnet 8, 322 REVOLUTIONARY PRACTICE.—Propositions: Every revolution is caused by the displacement of interests; the oscillation of ideas; the exhaustion of an ideal. These three causes do not form a triad: the first two are correlatives of one another; — the 3rd is an addition of the mind: (the first two are objective; the 3rd subjective). The Ideal is the infinite in thought. It demands a real and intelligible basis. It strays from it endlessly. There is a tendency of the mind to give the ideal an ontological value apart from its basis; to affirm as reality what had at […]
Contr'un

Notes on the Malheur refuge occupation

January 7, 2016 Shawn P. Wilbur
I don’t do a lot of current events commentary here, but there are occasions where it seems both useful and necessary. What follows is notes drawn from my responses to the occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, outside Burns, OR. They range from quips to more extended analysis and draw on my family connections to the US Fish and Wildlife Service, including a stint living on refuges much like Malheur in my extreme youth. I have tried not to rely on information that is not available elsewhere online. I’m posting the material because it has garnered interest on social […]
Contr'un

2015-16

January 1, 2016 Shawn P. Wilbur
I’ll admit a fairly deep ambivalence about 2015. On the one hand, it was supposed to be the year when I cleared my desk of a stack of book projects, while, in the end, only one of those projects got wrapped up. On the other hand, that project turned into something much more interesting than I had originally envisioned, and all the other delays really come from the same source—me getting my ideas in order and growing into my role as a historian and anthologist. I set myself a challenge last year, that none of the works would go to […]