Blog - The Libertarian Labyrinth

Revenge of the Return of Anarchy and Democracy (Revisited)

June 27, 2025 Shawn P. Wilbur

The most recent issue of Anarcho-Syndicalist Review includes an article by Wayne Price, “Do Anarchists Support Democracy? The Opinions of Errico Malatesta,” in which he once again takes up the defense of “democracy” as at least consistent with anarchist principles. A brief discussion of the article on the North American Anarchist Studies Association list picked up threads from the 2017 C4SS “Mutual Exchange” on anarchy and democracy. […]

E. Armand, “A vous, les humbles” / “To you, the humble ones” (1917) (FR/EN)

June 23, 2025 Shawn P. Wilbur

O humble ones, we know your jealousies and your grudges. We know that in your morals, you ape the social exalted, when you do not surpass them in ridicule or narrowness. We are fully aware of your prejudices, your fear of what others will say, your servility, your flattening before anyone who exercises authority, wears fine clothes or clinks a purse full of coins. […]

James Guillaume, “Ideas on Social Organization” (1876)

June 17, 2025 Shawn P. Wilbur

This is another impromptu translation, from the neglected non-Proudhon to-do pile. Much of the essay will be familiar from the partial translation widely available online, but roughly 5000 words of the 13,000 in the original remained to be translated. […]

Mikhail Bakunin, “Philosophical Considerations on the Divine Phantom, the Real World and Man” (1870)

June 13, 2025 Shawn P. Wilbur

Bakunin’s great unfinished work, The Knouto-Germanic Empire and the Social Revolution, covers a lot of ground, but one of its more interesting sections, the “Appendix” called “Philosophical Considerations on the Divine Phantom, the Real World and Man,” is concerned with questions that will be familiar to readers of its best-known fragment, “God and the State.” It is again a question of Bakunin’s elaboration and defense of materialism, with sections on “The System of the World” and “Religion.” Much of the focus is on the nature and proper subject matter of science. Part of the account takes the form of a critique of positivist philosophy, as pursued by the followers of Auguste Comte. […]

“Rational Socialists” vs. the Anarchists

May 31, 2025 Shawn P. Wilbur

In 2010, I posted a partial translation of Summary of Social Economy, According to the Ideas of Colins, by Agathon de Potter, one of the most active of Colins’ followers. It took fifteen years to come back and finish the job, but — one thing having led to another — the completed translation is one of three newly translated texts by de Potter that I’m sharing today. […]

Anarchy 101: General Thoughts on Appropriation

May 22, 2025 Shawn P. Wilbur

Links: “Take me to the river…” (2010) “Practicing the Encounter: Appropriation (and Ecology)” (2013) “Notes on What is Property?” (2019) “New Things and Old Words in Proudhon’s Late Works” (2022) This is the second in […]

Anarchy 101: Archy, Property and the Possibility of An-archic Property

May 20, 2025 Shawn P. Wilbur

Links: “Notes on Anarchy and Hegemony in the Realm of Definitions” This is the first in a series of documents addressing the various questions surrounding the notion of property. One key difficulty in providing a […]

Félix P….., “Philosophy of Insubmission” (1854)

May 14, 2025 Shawn P. Wilbur

At any given point in my research, there are always a few texts that top the list of things I would love to read, but am unlikely to get my hands on. Some are of […]

Anarchy 101: Notes on Force and Authority

April 26, 2025 Shawn P. Wilbur

Some of the most basic concepts in anarchist theory can prove terribly slippery when we try to apply them — sometimes even when we apply them with great care. Authority is arguably the most difficult of these notions to tame, which obviously poses problems for us, given the central place of anti-authoritarian critique in anarchist analyses. So, in response to some questions that have emerged since the first post on authority and hierarchy, I want to spend just a little more time exploring the concept in the context of anarchist theory. […]

“What Anarchy Is” (Le Monde Libertaire, 1967)

April 18, 2025 Shawn P. Wilbur

Anarchists, precisely because of the positive spirit that makes them reject the moral authority of all clergy, the economic authority of all forms of capitalism, the political authority of all states, are the most resolute supporters and defenders of the construction of a society with full responsibility for everyone, a society based on the constant relationship between producers and consumers, at the level that concerns them, and any centralization can only have a coordinating character. […]