Month: May 2019

market anarchism

Notes on “Le Commanditaire” (Anselme Bellegarrigue)

May 23, 2019 Shawn P. Wilbur
[one_third padding=”0 10px 0 0px”] “The world is only a vast market, where the individual appears at once as merchant and as merchandise.” Le Commanditaire is apparently among the least well known of Anselme Bellegarrigue’s projects. I stumbled on it while keyword-searching through the Gallica collection. The paper lasted for three issues before being shut down by the government. The focus seems to have been on the practical means of associating within the existing legal framework, but the charge of “outrage a la morale publique” makes it clear that Bellegarrigue did not withold his more radical opinions. The following articles […]
Ernest Cœurderoy
Ernest Cœurderoy

Hurrah!!! for Ernest Cœurderoy

May 23, 2019 Shawn P. Wilbur
[one_third padding=”0 10px 0 0px”] COMMENTARY AND LINKS: Max Nettlau, “Biographical Notice of Ernest Coeurderoy” (in progress) “La Barrière du Combat“ “Pruning the Rhizone” [Review of “Disruptive Elements”] Tag feed [/one_third][two_third_last padding=”0 0px 0 10px”] WORKING TRANSLATIONS: Ernest Coeurderoy, “Demolish Authority!” (1850) [from Days of Exile] Felix Pyat, Ernest Coeurderoy, etc., To the Socialist Democrats of the Department of the Seine (1850) Ernest Coeurderoy & Octave Vauthier, The Barrier of the Combat (1852) Ernest Coeurderoy, [Letter on the amnesty of August 1859] (FR/EN) Ernest Coeurderoy, Three Letters to the Journal l’Homme (1854) (in progress) Ernest Coeurderoy, “The Revolution in Man […]
Ernest Cœurderoy
Working Translations

Ernest Cœurderoy, Letter on the amnesty of August 1859

May 23, 2019 Shawn P. Wilbur
I declare that I have never accepted the amnesty that affects me. The motives for my resolution of the sort that every man with a heart will understand, and that it would be too long to outline in a journal. I reserve, moreover, the option of making them known when the time seems more opportune to me, and in the form that I judge best.

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Joseph Déjacque

Joseph Déjacque and the Humanisphere

May 22, 2019 Shawn P. Wilbur
COMMENTARY & LINKS: The Trial of Joseph Déjacque (1851) Excerpts from Pierre Leroux’s The Beach at Samarez (1863) Proudhon’s Critics Anarchist-communism, work, and the virtue of selfishness Déjacque and the First Emergence of “Anarchism” Joseph Déjacque or Imre Madách? Misc. clippings Tag feed CORVUS EDITIONS: In Which the Phantoms Reappear: Two Early Anarchists, Exiles Among the Exiles Down with the Bosses! and other Writings (Expanded Edition) WORKING TRANSLATIONS: Joseph Déjacque, et al, “To the Workers” (1848) Joseph Déjacque, “To the Ci-Devant Dynastics“ Joseph Déjacque, “Discourse Pronounced July 26, 1853 on the tomb of Louise Julien, exile“ Joseph Déjacque, The Revolutionary […]
Working Translations

Joseph Déjacque, Short prose works from “Le Libertaire” (1858)

May 21, 2019 Shawn P. Wilbur
Le Libertaire 1 no. 1 (June 9, 1858) Le Libertaire (1274 words)(signed) Beaucoup d’appelés et peu de venus (943 words) Le Père Enfantin et le Père Félix (136 words) Bourgeois contre Bourgeois (193 words) Un nouveau livre de J. P. Proudhon. Nous voudrions pouvoir parler à nos lecteurs du dernier livre de Proudhon : De la Justice dans la Révolution et dans l’Eglise. Malheureusement, nous n’en connaissons que le titre et les quelques lignes de la dédicace publiée par la Revue de l’Ouest. Si quelqu’un avait un exemplaire de cet ouvrage en sa possession et qu’il voulût nous faire un plaisir, […]
Featured articles

Joseph Déjacque, “Essay on Religion” (1861)

May 20, 2019 Shawn P. Wilbur
What is Religion today? It is the immutable synthesis of all errors, ancient and modern, the affirmation of absolutist arbitrariness, the negation of attractional anarchism, it is the principle and consecration of every inertism in humanity and universality, the petrification of the past, its permanent  immobilization.

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Utopian and Scientific

Pierre Leroux, “De l’Union européenne” / “Of the European Union” (1827)

May 9, 2019 Shawn P. Wilbur
Decentralizing empires, establishing in each province, in each city its own activity, and at the same time breaking down the barriers that separate nations, this is what liberty, science and industry aim for: so that, if their triumph was complete, we could say of the great society of men what Pascal said of the universe: Center everywhere, circumference nowhere.

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Pierre Leroux

Pierre Leroux and the Doctrine of Humanity

May 5, 2019 Shawn P. Wilbur
Pierre Leroux was, in his day, among the most important French socialist thinkers and he remains one of the under-documented influences on the anarchist movement. This page will contain links to French works, translations and commentary. Pierre Leroux in “The Present” and “The Spirit of the Age” (1843, 1849) — partial translations from Equality and Humanity Pierre Leroux, “Individualism and Socialism” (1834) — translation and notes Doctrine of Humanity: Aphorisms (1848) (pdf) Doctrine of Humanity: Nationalities and Fatherlands (Joseph Leroux) Pierre Leroux [tag feed] Jules Leroux [tag feed] Jules Leroux, “Proletarian Dialogues” (1840) “In Which the Phantoms Reappear“ “Individualism and […]
Our Lost Continent

Our Lost Continent: Episodes from an Alternate History of the Anarchist Idea, 1837–1936

May 3, 2019 Shawn P. Wilbur
My goal overall is to produce a work that is at least potentially useful and shareable among anarchists of a variety of tendencies, as well as students of “the anarchist idea.” (The phrase is one of Nettlau’s that was obscured in translation.) But, to be honest, I am also very interested not to get too deeply involved in certain kinds of debate about how inclusive anarchist history ought to be. I expect that the best version of the work would hold little interest for those for whom anarchism does not appear still nascent in some important senses. For those willing to at least weigh the possibility of really sharing a historical tradition, I have some hope of presenting a relatively compelling case, but for others, honestly, I got nothin’…

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Proudhon Library

Notes on Proudhon and the family

May 2, 2019 Shawn P. Wilbur
To say anything that is not simply superficial about Proudhon’s infamous anti-feminism requires us to look closely at the content and development of arguments scattered through his works. As part of that process, I’m gathering material from exchanges scattered across various social media platforms that has addressed the question in one way or another. Together with the translations from Sylvain Maréchal, whose theory of patriarchal government seems destined to be some kind of foil for Proudhon’s thought, I hope this notes will form the basis of a more systematic study.

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