Month: February 2019

French texts

Charles Fourier, “Sur les charlataneries commerciales” (1807/1808)

February 10, 2019 Shawn P. Wilbur
English translation (pdf) UN PAMPHLET DE FOURIER. La discussion qui vient d’avoir lieu sur les ventes des marchandises neuves à l’encan donne de l’à-propos à la reproduction d’un article assez curieux publié à Lyon, par Fourier, il y a environ trente-trois ou trente-quatre ans, sous forme de pamphlet, Nous voyons avec plaisir de beaux esprits découvrir chaque jour les vices de la concurrence anarchique et de la liberté illimitée et déréglée du commerce; mais il est intéressant aussi de trouver dans une simple boutade de Fourier, lancée en 1807 ou 1808, plus de bonne critique et de bons principes que […]
Utopian and Scientific

Bibliography of the works of Charles Fourier

February 9, 2019 Shawn P. Wilbur
Notes (from Wiki): Lettre de Fourier au grand juge (with material by Charles Pellarin) at Google Books Oeuvres complètes (1841) THÉORIE DES QUATRE MOUVEMENTS ET DE DESTINÉES GÉNÉRALES. TROISIÈME ÉDITION. at Google Books THÉORIE DE L’UNITÉ UNIVERSELLE. PRÈMIERE VOLUME. DEUXIÈME ÉDITION at Google Books THÉORIE DE L’UNITÉ UNIVERSELLE. DEUXIÈME VOLUME. DEUXIÈME ÉDITION at Google Books THÉORIE DE L’UNITÉ UNIVERSELLE. TROISIÈME VOLUME. DEUXIÈME ÉDITION at Google Books THÉORIE DE L’UNITÉ UNIVERSELLE. QUATRIÈME VOLUME DEUXIÈME ÉDITION at Google Books LE NOUVEAU MONDE INDUSTRIEL ET SOCIÉTAL. TROISIÈME ÉDITION. at Google Books De l’anarchie industrielle et scientifique at Google Books La fausse industrie morcelée, […]
Glossary

Simplism

February 6, 2019 Shawn P. Wilbur
Simplisme / Simplism 3. du SIMPLISME ou cause de la cataracte. Ce reproche de cataracte intellectuelle, adressé à un siècle savant sur divers points, pourrait sembler indécent si je ne l’étayais de preuves très-palpables. Je serai bref sur ce sujet peu flatteur ; il va débrouiller une vieille querelle qui s’élève entre chaque siècle et ses inventeurs. Tout siècle se hâte de dire que les inventeurs ont perdu la raison, parce qu’ils ne sont pas d’accord avec le préjugé d’impossibilité ; mais d’ordinaire, c’est le siècle entier qui, comme au temps de Colomb , manque de raison. La cause de […]
art-liberty

Calvin Blanchard in the Boston Investigator (1861–1866)

February 5, 2019 Shawn P. Wilbur
[one_third padding=”0 10px 0 0px”][/one_third][two_third_last padding=”0 0px 0 10px”] A STATEMENT AND PROPOSITION. Mr. President:—If it is not out of order, I should like to make a short communication for the consideration of the meeting over which you have the honor to preside. I presume that the object of the Infidel Association is to eradicate superstition. Superstition is but the form which man’s ignorance takes. The Bible, the great bugbear of “Infidels,” is not a cause of superstition, or of ignorance; it is but one of the manifestations of it, Is there no superstition where man is so savage that […]
Utopian and Scientific

Paul Brown in the “Boston Investigator” (1832–1847)

February 4, 2019 Shawn P. Wilbur
[one_third padding=”0 10px 0 0px”] B, “The Radical—No. III,” Boston Investigator 2 no. 1 (March 30, 1832): 1. B, “The Radical…No. 4,” Boston Investigator 2 no. 4 (April 20, 1832): 1. B, “The Radical…No. 5,” Boston Investigator 2 no. 5 (April 27, 1832): 1. B, “The Radical…No. 6,” Boston Investigator 2 no. 6 (May 4, 1832): 1. B, “The Radical…No. 7,” Boston Investigator 2 no. 7 (May 11, 1832): 1. B, “The Radical…No. 8,” Boston Investigator 2 no. 8 (May 18, 1832): 1. B, “The Radical…No. 9,” Boston Investigator 2 no. 9 (May 25, 1832): 1. B, “The Radical…No. 10,” […]
Contr'un

Joseph Déjacque or Imre Madách?

February 3, 2019 Shawn P. Wilbur
The internet is often much better at creating and perpetuating mistakes than it is at correcting them. An exemplary case is the confusion that has grown around the question of whether or not a portrait existed of Joseph Déjacque. For a long time, it appeared that Déjacque was among those important early anarchist figures for whom we could not put a face to the name. And then a portrait appeared on Wikimedia Commons—and what a portrait! Perhaps we should have know that mustache was simply too good to be true.

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Utopian and Scientific

Paul Brown, “Twelve Months in New Harmony” (1827)

February 3, 2019 Shawn P. Wilbur
For several years I had been addicted to the contemplation of a new social order, in which all property should be held in common stock, being fully persuaded that this was the only equitable mode of subsisting of mankind in a state of society. I was driven to meditate on this subject by my suffering from the inadequacy of the existing institutions to extend justice to the poor, and the odious grinding influence of individual wealth and unequal usurped power, which in several instances had borne grievously afflictively upon me. I became acquainted with several persons in New-York City and in the state of Ohio, who were in the same train of speculation.

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Utopian and Scientific

“Gray Light”—Paul Brown in the New Harmony Gazette (1825–1827)

February 3, 2019 Shawn P. Wilbur
The inception and first instance of any mode, when not immediately perceived, is not an object of intuition or demonstrative knowledge. Such as that of the commencing of a customary way of subsisting, among the individuals of a race of animals with whatever degree of intelligence endued, must be abstracted to the most general sense, before it can be an object of assurance. To go to particulars, as of time, words, &c., is to carry the subject into the province of fiction. If we take into our purport the ideas of the names or shapes of persons,—the place where and the time when, i. e. the number of revolutions of the earth since, such a circumstance took place, as the herding together of several individuals of the human species, or the consociating of two individuals of that species, we cannot make the proposition an object of assurance, by the scale of a dialectic process. True logic excludes sophistry.

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