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Constructing an Anarchism: Contr’un

We want to know how to act like anarchists. And what I’ve suggested in recent posts is that it will be easiest to answer that question in a wider variety of contexts if we can get it right in our most intimate associations—generally the kinds of associations that even non-anarchists might be inclined to keep free of political and economic modeling. […]

Working Translations

Joannès Tobas, “Arrestation de Ravachol / Arrest of Ravachol”

There is a single, blurry image floating around the internet of a poster or broadside featuring a poetic complainte on the topic of the “Arrestation de Ravachol.” What I am presenting here is a rather less poetic reconstruction of the piece, featuring a different—significantly less blurry—portrait of Ravachol and a rather literal rendering of the account presented.
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Constructing an Anarchism: Guarantism (Application)

I had anticipated the need for one last serious theoretical intervention at this point, in order to set up the comparatively programmatic elements in the remaining posts. The emergence of some new details in the “social system” section of Proudhon’s Justice—as discussed in the last post—offers a different and more direct path forward. […]

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Constructing an Anarchism: Guarantism (Theory)

For Charles Fourier, Guarantism was one of the stages between Civilization, the undesirable present state of things, and Harmony, a state in which the harmonious expression of the passions would occur more or less naturally, thanks to lessons learned and tendencies developed along the way. Guarantism wasn’t perfect, but it was good enough that he resisted describing it too fully, lest we be tempted by its relative splendors. […]

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Constructing an Anarchism: Aubaine

Aubaine is not, like anarchy, one of those notions that anarchists could hardly do without. It perhaps not even, like governmentalism, an old term that anarchists might consider reviving. Proudhon settled on the term in his early critique of property, but his usage was, I think, somewhat idiosyncratic and led Benjamin Tucker in some odds directions in his translation. […]