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Anarchy 101

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. […]

Anarchist Beginnings

“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. […]

Featured articles

E. E. Fribourg, “The International Workingman’s Association” (1871)

April 8, 2025 Shawn P. Wilbur

The history of the International Workingman’s Association is obviously contested territory, with Marxist and anarchist accounts competing for attention with works, like Timothy Messer-Kruse’s very interesting account of The Yankee International, which emphasize other factions and other dynamics within the International. Of the existing histories, I am probably most partial to Robert Graham’s We Do Not Fear Anarchy, We Invoke It: The First International and the Origins of the Anarchist Movement, which strikes me as a balanced account. But I’ll admit a fascination with a number of clearly partisan accounts that manage to cover comparatively unfamiliar ground. […]

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Guy Antoine and Ch.-Aug. Bontemps, “What is Situationism?” (1966)

April 4, 2025 Shawn P. Wilbur

Nine years ago, a movement was born, similar in many respects to the libertarian movement and very distant in others. Why isn’t it being discussed? It seems to be linked, on the one hand, to the highly developed theoretical aspect of the Situationist International’s texts and, on the other, to Situationist concerns, which seem to interest only a small minority. What are the causes? Among them, one of the most important is undoubtedly that professional revolutionaries from Lenin to Bakunin always separated political-economic action from action in culture. In their view, it was first necessary to change the material basis of life and only address the rest (the problem of art and lifestyle) in a second phase, without realizing that they were thus leaving “culture” in the hands of the bourgeoisie. […]

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A René Fugler miscellany

March 28, 2025 Shawn P. Wilbur

Back in 2020, I shared a translation of René Fugler’s pamphlet “The Anarchist Question,” as part of the Constructing Anarchisms project. At the time, I made a start at translating “The Forms and Tendencies of Anarchism,” another of his pamphlets, but never found the time to finish the work. This week, I found the time to complete that translation and to supplement it with a odd assortment of other texts by Fugler under his various pseudonyms — René Furth, René Forain, etc. […]

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Ixigrec (Robert Collino), “Individualism: Crucible of Future Worlds” (1967)

March 28, 2025 Shawn P. Wilbur

Raised outside constraints and distorting systems, giving free rein to their adventurous genius, to their creative spirit, to this explosive force which propels man ever further towards the conquest of life and duration, the strong individualities which we will have been able to favor by our efforts will perhaps justify, — for our sense of causalities and responsibilities — the appearance of intelligence, conscience and goodness in a universe which we know to be without purpose and without gods. […]

Anarchy 101

A Return to the Question of the “Polity-Form”

March 2, 2025 Shawn P. Wilbur

The polity-form, then, in its simplest sense, is the form given to social collectivities when they are accounted for, explained, “realized” (in the language used by Louis Blanc in 1849-50), etc. by a transformation into political units. In this process, individuals — participants in the social relations that give rise to these social collectivities — are reimagined as citizens, subjects, members of the political unit, with rights, duties, privileges, etc. granted or imposed as a result. This governmental relation seems inescapably hierarchical — although in certain instances of extensive, stable consensus that hierarchy might be considered more or less “voluntary” (if only because there is no occasion for enforcement.) […]

Working Translations

E. Armand, “Epistle to MM. the Intellectuals” (1919)

February 26, 2025 Shawn P. Wilbur

That we have learned much from this small number of men whom we call Intellectuals because — belonging to the so-called liberal classes — they have made that which relates to the things of Intelligence the great, the principal, the essential business of their life; that we have learned much from them, this is something we cannot deny without missing the most elementary of established facts. And not only have they taught us much, but, whatever the branch of human knowledge to which they were devoted, their example — their example above all — has contributed not a little to forming us. The history of their existence, at once fertile and eventful, has awakened, aroused, created in us the desire to resemble them. […]