Year: 2017

The Sex Question

Joseph Kucera , “Voltairine de Cleyre” (1913)

July 31, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur
Voltairine de Cleyre (A Character Sketch) To meet an Intellectual face to face; to shake hands with the individual who champions our unpopular cause in poems, in prose and from the platform; to come in physical contact, through this handshake, with a person whom I admire from the distance; to see her really alive, and to see if she really corresponds with the picture I painted of her in my mind—that was the wish of many an Anarchist in regard to Voltairine de Cleyre. But as a rule he was disappointed when he met her. Disappointed, because in her presence […]
obituaries and funeral orations

Voltairine de Cleyre, “Dyer D. Lum” (1893)

July 31, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur
DYER D. LUM. BY VOLTAIRINE DE CLEYRE. DYER D. LUM, poet, philosopher and revolutionist, whose portrait appears as the frontispiece of this number of the Magazine, was born at Geneva, N. Y., February I5, 1839. In these days when the cry of “foreigner” is hurled at every one who dares to form a conception of society without government, it is perhaps worth while to trace the descent of a man so prominent in the extreme radical movement. In the year 1732 Samuel Lum came to this country from Scotland. Daniel Dyer Lum, or, as he afterwards wrote it, Dyer Daniel, […]
obituaries and funeral orations

Voltairine de Cleyre, “In Hora Mortis Nostrae” (1893)

July 31, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur
“IN HORA MORTIS NOSTRAE.” ON Wednesday, March 15th, Mrs. Ellen Harker died at Reading, Penna; and with the going out of her breath one of the stanchest and most long-tried friends of liberty of thought and speech went out into the great unknown. Philadelphia Liberals, to whom hers was a familiar figure for so many years, will feel that they have lost one of their central lights, have parted with one of those dear grandmothers of the movement whose white hair and kind smile denied the oft-repeated accusation that there is no veneration or reverence in the worshippers of liberty. […]
Contr'un

Archive Adjustments

July 29, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur
[dropcap]Time[/dropcap] passes, and projects that were serving some useful purpose in the larger work no longer seem so vital. The various archives in the Libertarian Labyrinth are no exception to this rule. So, after one of my periodical reassessments, several archival projects are merging with others. As I have noted in the past, the Labyrinth has always been a bit like leaving my file cabinets open on the internet–a working archive, rather than a formal exhibit, with all of the problems and untidiness you might expect from such a project. But it has allowed me to share a large amount […]
The Sex Question

Voltairine de Cleyre, “Economics of Dyer D. Lum” (1893)

July 29, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur
If Dyer D. Lum were living I doubt whether the articles of Mr. Black, recently copied by the Twentieth Century from the “Australian Workman,” would elicit anything further from him than a hearty laugh. Mr. Lum had a very keen appreciation of the ludicrous and the richness of being classed in company with Victor Yarros as a Communist would have touched what he called his “Sense of ticklety” sufficiently to have compensated him for being subjected to the treatment of such a reviewer. He can, indeed, well afford to be accounted as “lacking in understanding” by this “turgid and tangled” […]
The Sex Question

Voltairine de Cleyre, “The Commune is Risen” (1912)

July 29, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur
THE COMMUNE IS RISEN By VOLTAIRINE DE CLEYRE. “They say ‘She is dead; the Commune is dead’; That ‘If she were living her earthquake tread Would scatter the honeyless hornets’ hive.’ I am not dead, nor yet asleep; Nor tardy, though my steps seem slow; Nor feeble from the centuries’ sweep; Nor cold, though chill the north winds blow. My legions muster in all lands, From field, from factory, from mine, The workers of the world join hands Across the centuries and brine.” NEVER since those lines were sung by the great unknown poet, whose heart shone red through his […]
The Sex Question

Voltairine de Cleyre, “C. L. James” (1911)

July 29, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur
It is nearly eighteen years ago, back in the fall of 1893, that for the brief space of a half an hour I sat in the company of C. L. James. It happened so: it was the year of the world’s fair at Chicago, and everybody with an “ism,” orthodox or heterodox, was foregathering with his fellows in belief, in convention assembled. We the Anarchists also wanted a convention, and prepared to hold one; but the Chief of Police, hearing thereof, notified Will Holmes that no convention would be allowed unless his men were present at all our proceedings; as […]
The Sex Question

Voltairine de Cleyre, “Discussion at Meetings” (1911)

July 29, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur
I HAVE read, in the last issue of Mother Earth, Bolton Hall’s opinion on the mixed blessing of discussion after meetings with interest, and—disagreement; mixed also. I agree that a meeting of fifty with a good discussion is better than one of two hundred and fifty with none; but with a bad discussion—nine times in ten it is a bad discussion—meeting of two hundred and fifty and silence is preferable. For I do not agree that “almost anything is better than silence”; sometimes silence is better than almost anything; particularly the silence of a “buffoon.” Nor do I consider newspaper […]
The Sex Question

Voltairine de Cleyre, “The Mexican Revolt” (1911)

July 29, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur
THE MEXICAN REVOLT BY VOLTAIRINE DE CLEYRE. AT last we see a genuine awakening of a people, not to political demands alone, but to economic ones,—fundamentally economic ones. And in the brief period of a few months, some millions of human beings have sprung to a full consciousness of a system of wrong, beginning where all slaveries begin, in the sources of life. They have struck for Land And Liberty. And even if their revolt shall be crushed by the mailed hand of the United States Government (for I do not believe the present nondescript thing calling itself a government, […]
The Sex Question

Voltairine de Cleyre, “The Mexican Revolution” (1911)

July 29, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur
THE MEXICAN REVOLUTION A lecture delivered in Chicago October 29, 1911. By VOLTAIRINE DE CLEYRE. THAT a nation of people considering themselves enlightened, informed, alert to the interests of the hour, should be so generally and so profoundly ignorant of a revolution taking place in their backyard, so to speak, as the people of the United States are ignorant of the present revolution in Mexico, can be due only to profoundly and generally acting causes. That people of revolutionary principles and sympathies should be so, is inexcusable. It is as one of such principles and sympathies that I address you, […]