Year: 2016

Contr'un

But What About the Children? (A Note on Tutelage)

September 5, 2016 Shawn P. Wilbur
It’s a question again of “legitimate authority” and “justified hierarchy,” and specifically of the favorite example used by those who want to leave a space within anarchist theory for those things: the care of very young children. The argument I have encountered repeatedly is that parenting is, at least in the case of those very young children, a necessarily authoritarian relation: children must be ordered about in order to protect them from hazards; parents have a duty and presumably also a right to dictate to their children; and children have an obligation to obey. It’s one of those debates that […]
Anarchist Beginnings

Mikhail Bakunin, “I believe neither in constitutions, nor in laws” (1848)

September 4, 2016 Shawn P. Wilbur
[Max Nettlau has pointed to this letter as the first evidence of anarchist leanings in Bakunin’s writings.] [Early August, 1848] To Citizen George Herwegh. Paris. [Rue St. Augustins] 40 9 [r. sur Cirque] To George My dear friend, since the letter that I have written from Cologne, which I do not know if you have received, I have no longer written a single word. Many things have changed since then, but not our friendship, not the confidence that we have in one another. The thoughts that are essential to us, the aspirations that are essential to us non plus. I […]
Anarchist Beginnings

Ernest Coeurderoy, “Demolish Authority!” (1850)

September 4, 2016 Shawn P. Wilbur
[From Days of Exile, Vol. 1] To make the Revolution pass, like a red-hot iron, across this century, one thing alone must be done: Demolish authority. This proposition has no need of demonstration. Let each inquire within and let them say whether it is willingly or by force that they accept the fact that another proclaims themselves their master and acts as such. Let them say if they do not believe that they are worth as much as any other. Let them say if they are in the mood to maintain popes, emperors, kings, representatives, monopolists, doctors, teachers, judges, journalists, […]
Anarchist Beginnings

Josiah Warren, “Manifesto” (1841)

September 2, 2016 Shawn P. Wilbur
An impression has gone abroad that I am engaged in forming societies. This is a very great mistake, which I feel bound to correct. Those who have heard or read anything from me on the subject, know that one of the principal points insisted on is, the forming of societies or any other artificial combinations IS the first, greatest, and most fatal mistake ever committed by legislators and by reformers. That all these combinations require the surrender of the natural sovereignty of the INDIVIDUAL over her or his person, time, property and responsibilities, to the government of the combination. That […]
Anarchist Beginnings

P.-J. Proudhon, “The Third Form of Society” (1840)

September 2, 2016 Shawn P. Wilbur
[From Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, What is Property?] 3. Determination of the third social form. Conclusion Therefore, no government, no public economy, no administration is possible with property for a basis. Community seeks equality and law. Property, born of the autonomy of reason and the feeling of individual worth, wants, above all things, independence and proportionality. But community, taking uniformity for law, and leveling for equality, becomes tyrannical and unjust. Property, through its despotism and its invasions, soon shows itself oppressive and unsociable. What property and community seek is good; what both produce is bad. And why? Because both are exclusive, and […]
Anarchist Beginnings

Elisée Reclus, “The Development of Liberty in the World” (c. 1850)

September 2, 2016 Shawn P. Wilbur
The Development of Liberty in the World An Unpublished Study Elisée Reclus I. In past centuries, peoples only fought for their passions or their immediate interests; it was without remorse, it was even with gladness that, in order to satisfy their ambition or greed, they exterminated entire nations and dragged behind them multitudes of slaves. Without any link of solidarity between them, men stole their selfish well-being from the well-being of their neighbors, and the world, given over to chance, was sometimes the prey of the stronger, sometimes that of the most skillful. However, from the beginnings of humanity, some […]
Anarchist Beginnings

Elisée Reclus in the Era of Anarchy

September 1, 2016 Shawn P. Wilbur
I’ve been splitting the formative period of the anarchist tradition into two eras: an Era of Anarchy, running roughly from 1840 to 1880, and then an Era of Anarchism, running on to around 1920, with the emergence of anarchism as a common keyword marking the division between them. The scheme is not without its weaknesses, but one of the striking facts in support of it is the very limited number of figures who identified as anarchists in both periods. There is almost no one who called for anarchy before Proudhon’s death in 1865 who was both alive and still in […]