Month: April 2022

Contr'un

A Schematic Anarchism (Introduction)

April 27, 2022 Shawn P. Wilbur

One way to get at what is constant in the widest senses of anarchy and anarchism is to begin with what is least contestable about the elements of those terms. Etymology is certainly no definitive source of meaning — and few things are more tiresome than the attempt to resolve ideological debates with dictionaries — but if we are going to take inspiration from the interpretive freedom extended by Proudhon to his readers, we don’t really have much but the words themselves as references. […]

Bakunin Library

Bakunin — Article for “Il popolo d’Italia” (1865)

April 8, 2022 Shawn P. Wilbur

A letter from Paris, published in your newspaper on September 2, contains a serious attack against a little paper by the name of Candide, written by young Parisians, whose publication was immediately interrupted by order of the imperial censor. Your correspondent, who does not seem to be an enthusiastic admirer of the illustrious exterminator of thought and freedom who reigns over France today, takes his side this time to the point of almost congratulating him on having avenged religion and public morals by suppressing a newspaper written by young people “uneducated or unexperienced, who, impelled by base culpable vanity, have dared to calmly affirm things that will sow eternal doubt in the minds of all decent people.” […]