Month: July 2017

Proudhon Library

Proudhon, Letter to the editor of the Dictionnaire Larousse (1864)

July 15, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur
Letter to the editor of the Dictionnaire Larousse Passy, August 20, 1864 Sir, I have received from our common friend, M. D…. the seven issues of your gigantic dictionary; I already possessed the first. I cannot wish too much for the success of your publication, and I admire the courage, the devotion to science, of Mr. Larousse, who has not shrunk from such an enterprise. During my convalescence, I have thumbed through some of your articles, and I am more and more astonished at the mass of material that you have gathered in your column. I would learn with true […]
Working Translations

Charles-Auguste Bontemps, “Synthesis of an Evolving Anarchism” (1952)

July 15, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur
Synthèse d’un anarchisme évolutif Pour être une permanence, pour durer et satisfaire le cœur et la pensée de qui lui consacre son effort et en fait la loi de sa vie, un anarchisme doit être fondé de telle sorte qu’il demeure valable en tout temps, quels que soient les évènements et independement des réalisations d’avenir qu’il envisage mais dont on ne peut savoir si elles seront ou comment elles seront. A mon sens, il doit répondre à cinq conditions nécessaires à l’activité d’une vie: 1) un philosophie de base; 2) une éthique en découlant; 3) un objet conforme à l’ethique; […]
Contr'un

Social, but Still Not Democratic

July 15, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur
[ezcol_1third] Contr’un Revisited: [commentary coming soon] [/ezcol_1third] [ezcol_2third_end] [This post originally appeared at the Center for a Stateless Society, as part of the Mutual Exchange on Anarchy and Democracy.] Social, but Still Not Democratic As long as there has been something called “anarchism,” anarchists have been struggling to define it—and, as often as not, they have been in struggle against other self-identified anarchists. At this point in our history, this seems both hard to deny and pointless to regret. These are not battles that can be won “once and for all,” since the struggle over meaning is just essentially the […]
Contr'un

Embracing the Antinomies

July 15, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur
  [This post originally appeared at the Center for a Stateless Society, as part of the Mutual Exchange on Anarchy and Democracy.] Embracing the Antinomies [including a response to Gabriel Amadej] It should be clear that one of the key conflicts in these debates about anarchy and democracy is a struggle over the nature of anarchism. And it is probably safe to say that nearly all anarchists wrestle with the difficulties of defining that term. Part of the difficulty is that anarchism is simultaneously a kind of system and a matter of tradition. It is at once a political—or anti-political—ideology, […]
Contr'un

Anarchy and Democracy: Examining the Divide

July 15, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur
[This post originally appeared at the Center for a Stateless Society, as part of the Mutual Exchange on Anarchy and Democracy.] Anarchy and Democracy: Examining the Divide ———- Philosophical Considerations If we had the luxury of sticking to the philosophical terrain, the question of distinguishing anarchy and democracy would, it seems to me, pose very few problems. Certainly, it would be unlikely to pose the persistent, seemingly intractable problems that it does at present. Anarchy describes the absence of rule, while democracy describes rule by “the people,” and it seems fairly uncontroversial to maintain that the two concepts fall on […]
Working Translations

Joseph Déjacque, et al, to the machine-breakers (1848)

July 14, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur
[one_third padding=”0 10px 0 0px”]   [/one_third][two_third_last padding=”0 0px 0 10px”] TO THE WORKERS. Brothers! We learn that in the midst of the joy and triumph, some of our own, misled by dangerous advice, want to tarnish the glory of our revolution by excesses that we condemn with all our energies. They want to break the machinery. Brothers, that is wrong! We suffer like them from the disturbances that have been led to by the introduction of machines into industry; but, instead of taking it our on the inventions that shorten labor by multiplying production, let us accuse of the […]
Proudhon Library

P.-J. Proudhon, Application for the Suard Pension (1837)

July 14, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur
Besançon, May 31, 1837. PIERRE-JOSEPH PROUDHON, CANDIDATE FOR THE SUARD PENSION TO THE GENTLEMEN OF THE ACADÉMIE DE BESANCON. Gentlemen, I am a compositor and proofreader, son of a poor craftsman who, as the father of three boys, could never bear the cost of three apprenticeships. I knew evil and trouble early; my youth, to use a very popular expression, was passed through a fine sieve. Just so Suard, Marmontel, and a host of writers and scholars struggled with fortune. May you, gentlemen, upon reading this memoir, have the thought that between so many men famous for the gifts of […]
Contr'un

Occupancy-and-use: Response to Kevin Carson’s Rejoinder

July 14, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur
[ezcol_2third] [This post originally appeared at the Center for a Stateless Society, as part of an exchange on occupancy-and-use property.] At base, Kevin and I disagree about the possibility of, as I put it, “a truly anarchic space, outside the legal order and beyond the realm of permissions and prohibitions.” That’s a serious disagreement, since it amounts, for me, to a disagreement about the possibility of anarchy. If I was, as Kevin suggests, implicitly acknowledging any “set of rules” governing property, it would amount to a complete failure of my project. The point of giving familiar, more-or-less legal names to […]
Contr'un

Occupancy-and-Use: Neo-Proudhonian Remarks

July 14, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur
This post originally appeared at the Center for a Stateless Society, as part of an exchange on occupancy-and-use property. Those familiar with the rest of my work will recognize the proposal for “mutual extrication” as essentially a reintroduction, in different terms, of the “gift economy of property.”  There is a great deal that could be said in response to Kevin Carson’s opening statement, from the “neo-Proudhonian” mutualist perspective, but I’ll try to keep things at least relatively short. Like Kevin, my introduction to the notion of occupancy-and-use land tenure was through the works of Benjamin R. Tucker and the Liberty […]
Proudhon Library

Proudhon, “Political Contradictions,” pages 105-109 (1863-64)

July 13, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur
[ezcol_1half] CHAPITRE V CRITIQUE GÉNÉRALE DES CONSTITUTIONS De l’unité et de l’indivisibilité organique : formule, conditions et limites de cette loi. Application à l’ordre politique. Grave erreur des publicistes, hommes d’État et auteurs de constitutions à ce sujet : exagération unitaire. Maintenant, lecteur, nous avons passé le plus difficile. Ce qui me reste à vous dire ne sera plus que pour votre curiosité et amusement : je suppose, bien entendu, que la destinée des nations vous intéresse, et que les mystifications des hommes d’État vous amusent. Lisez donc, et quand vous serez à la fin, vous en saurez plus en […]