Month: May 2018

From the Archives

Max Nettlau, “The War in the Balkans” (1913)

May 25, 2018 Shawn P. Wilbur

The present struggle is, in my opinion, not a struggle between little Montenegro and big Turkey, little Servia and big Austria, but between the isolated Turkish and Austro-German interests, strictly on the defence, and unfettered Panslavist greed, egged on and supported by the bitter and absolute enmity of France and England against everything that is German. We saw how public opinion was “educated” by politicians and the Press, until the South African War become “inevitable;” the same game is going on about Germany—these are the first-fruits of this campaign. […]

Contr'un

PROJECT: Vital Things

May 23, 2018 Shawn P. Wilbur

There is an element of anarchist theory that keeps imposing itself on my studies, often in the most unexpected times and places, which I think of — very imprecisely, I’ll admit — as a kind of vitalist tendency. By this I mean that there is a surprisingly common tendency, when attempting to speak about anarchy in its positive aspects, to make a connection to a range of ideas (life, sex, fecundity, progression, etc.) that are at once “natural” and disruptive of any very fixed, authoritative form of living or organizing social life. […]