Year: 2024

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E. Armand on Anarchist Individualism

December 29, 2024 Shawn P. Wilbur
Links: Encounters with Anarchist Individualism (begins January 1, 2025) E. Armand (project page) What is an Anarchist? (translation in progress) Rambles in the Fields of Anarchist Individualism In preparation for a new project — essentially a year-long return to the “fields of anarchist individualism, involving a reading, revision and annotation of E. Armand’s Anarchist Individualist Initiation — I’ve been working to quickly translate a number of Armand’s other attempts to characterize anarchist individualism, including one that is apparently about to celebrate its hundredth birthday: The ABC of « our » anarchist individualist demands (dated December 31, 1924) (pdf) You’ll find […]
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E. Armand, “Noel! Noel! Noel!” (1900-1935)

December 25, 2024 Shawn P. Wilbur
The anarchist Christmas story is, perhaps, a somewhat unexpected genre, although the opportunities for propaganda are not hard to see. Certainly, it has made sense for anarchist newspapers to mark the holiday season in their own particular way. The result has been tales with names like “Jesus and Bonnot” (linked at the end of this post) — and, come to think of it, perhaps the real surprise is that there doesn’t seem to be a Ravachol Christmas story out there…

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From the Archives

Henri de Saint-Simon (1760 – 1825)

November 3, 2024 Shawn P. Wilbur
Links: Letters from an Inhabitant of Geneva to his Contemporaries (pdf) Researching the background and origins of anarchism means engaging to some extent with the works of most of the so-called “utopian socialists.” In recent years, I’ve had a chance to revisit and translate works by Pierre Leroux, Charles Fourier and some more obscure figure, but hadn’t had a chance to get reacquainted — and better acquainted — with Claude Henri de Rouvroy, comte de Saint-Simon. It has not been the most appealing of side-projects, simply because the literature of Saint-Simonianism is both extensive — 47 volumes in the main […]
Anarchist Beginnings

Benjamin Colin (1818-1884)

October 21, 2024 Shawn P. Wilbur
There are a handful of very early anarchist or at least anarchistic writings identified by Max Nettlau that have remained elusive in my searches. One in particular — “Plus de gouvernement!” by Benjamin Colin — has nagged at me a bit, since I have known that the paper it was published in, L’Homme, journal de la démocratie universelle, was accessible in various forms and included some other anarchism-related content. But I have never got around the making the extra effort or financial outlay necessary to get my hands on it.

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Text and Notes: Justice in the Revolution and in the Church: First Study

September 10, 2024 Shawn P. Wilbur
In the First Study, Proudhon attempts to establish the foundation for his study, presenting some basic definitions and axioms, much as he did at the beginning of The Creation of Order in Humanity. The first chapter, where that foundation-building is most elementary, was subject to very light revision in the revised and expanded edition, and I have, for the most part, simply provided the text from 1860. Subsequent chapters were subject to both considerable revision and considerable expansion — and the differences are instructive enough that I’ll focus on them a bit more than in most studies.

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Text and Notes: Justice in the Revolution and in the Church: Prologue / Preliminary Address

September 5, 2024 Shawn P. Wilbur
As a way to focus my efforts on the fine revision and annotation of my translation of Justice in the Revolution and in the Church, I’m going to post a series of annotated sections documenting the major changes in the work between the two editions, with preliminary notes for the New Proudhon Library Glossary and some thoughts about some of the major interpretive issues.

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P.-J. Proudhon, Proposal for a Society of the Perpetual Exhibition (1855)

April 18, 2024 Shawn P. Wilbur
The newest draft translation added to the New Proudhon Library project is the proposal for a Society of the Perpetual Exhibition, in answer to a call by Emperor Napoleon III for uses for the Palais de l’Industrie built in Paris for the 1855 World Fair. The project resembles Proudhon’s mutual credit proposals, as well as the various schemes for association proposed by Bellegarrigue in the 1850s.

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Emile Gautier, “Social Darwinism” (1877 / 1880)

April 14, 2024 Shawn P. Wilbur
Emile Gautier’s 1880 pamphlet, Le Darwinisme sociale, is often cited as the first French use of the term “social Darwinism,” three years after the term was first used in English. Gautier was an anarchist, the a political prisoner, and finally a popular science writer and novelist. He was tried alongside Kropotkin in the “Trial of the 66,” collaborated with Louise Michel, and provided the preface for Sébastien Faure’s La douleur universelle. Drawn into a debate about the application of Darwin’s theories to the solution of social problems, he championed a pro-socialist interpretation of the science, anticipating Kropotkin’s Mutual Aid in some ways. A translation of the pamphlet can be found in the pdf linked in the sidebar, but the research for that task also turned up an earlier essay, with the same name and much the same argument, in a periodical, Le Mot d’Ordre, in which Gautier was one of the principal contributors. That essay (also included in the pdf) is presented below.

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