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Hugh O. Pentecost, “The Anarchistic Method” (1890)

September 28, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur

EVOLUTION AND SOCIAL REFORM III. THE ANARCHISTIC METHOD. Those who accept the conclusions of Anarchism believe that it is a science; or, if you please, a philosophy supported by facts scientifically discovered and collated. It is not a religion based upon assumptions, unwarranted or contradicted by facts. It is not a system of metaphysics consisting of undemonstrable speculations. They freely admit that Sociology is not yet an exact science; that, strictly speaking, there is no Science of Society. But they speak of Anarchism as a science because its methods of investigation and accomplishment are scientific. In so far as it […]

“Anarchy” (Americanized Encyclopædia Britannica, 1890)

September 28, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur

ANARCHY is that system of voluntary socialism—sometimes called individualism or mutualism—whose battle-cry is “Down with the State.” Its earliest exponent in America was Josiah Warren. He was an associate of Robert Dale Owen, at New Harmony, Ind., where in 1825 a Communistic society started under the most favorable auspices. But it was not until the failure of his experiment that Mr. Warren worked out his new principle of “cost the limit of price.” Mr. Warren maintains that labor expended forms the only equitable element in the cost of an article, and insists that all natural elements, such as land, should […]

Claude Pelletier, “Socialist Dictionary: Quarry” (1874)

September 28, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur

QUARRY. A location dug in the ground, where one extracts by means of shafts and galleries, or even from a single level, stone, coal and other minerals, such as lead, copper, gold, silver, etc… Today the quarries, which should belong to the nation, are abandoned to capitalists who exploit them for their own personal interests; and their private interest drives them to convert them into a monopoly in order to reap enormous profits, by augmenting, as it says in the entry for MONOPOLIZATION, the sale price of their product, and reducing the wages of their workers. It follows that they […]

Anarchist Encyclopedia: Absolutism

September 28, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur

Entries from the Anarchist Encyclopedia [one_half padding=”0 10px 0 0px”] ABSOLUTISME n. m. Théorie ou pratique d’une autorité absolue. Système de gouvernement où l’autorité du monarque est absolue. Exemple : monarchie absolue. Sous une monarchie absolue, c’est le règne du bon plaisir, de l’arbitraire et les citoyens sont livrés sans défense à l’autorité tyrannique d’une caste. Toutefois, de nos jours, il n’est presque plus de gouvernements pratiquant le pouvoir absolu d’un seul. Les derniers rois n’ont pas plus de puissance qu’un président de république. Mais il ne faut pas se fier aux apparences. L’autorité, quoique moins ouvertement absolue, n’en existe […]

Anarchist Encyclopedia: Antinomy

September 26, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur

Entries from the Anarchist Encyclopedia [one_half padding=”0 10px 0 0px”] ANTINOMIE (Etym. : gr. anti, et Nomos, lois) Impossibilité d’accorder le pour et le contre, le oui et le non. Opposition de deux sentiments, de deux phénomènes inconciliables. Ainsi, l’individu ne fera pas bon ménage avec l’autorité, le génie ne supportera pas la médiocrité (et la médiocrité supportera encore moins le génie), la beauté et la laideur ne s’accorderont jamais. Il est impossible d’aimer à la fois le néant et la vie. Il faut être pour ou contre. Pas d’attitude équivoque, pas de compromis. La rupture est inévitable entre le […]

Contr’un collections 6 & 7

September 8, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur

Corvus Editions made an appearance at the Seattle Anarchist Book Fair last month, and among the new titles were two new collections from the Contr’un blog: Contr’un 6: “God and the State” and the Question of “Legitimate” Authority Contr’un 7: Anarchy and Democracy They are now available online.

Joseph Déjacque, “Scandal” (1858)

September 4, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur

I have this nagging fear that perhaps readers of the blog have not been reading the translations by Joseph Déjacque. It’s hard for me to imagine any other reason for the failure of at least a minor Déjacque cult emerging. His work strikes me as an exciting amalgamation of revolutionary fervor and socialist social science, with literary qualities which range from the heights to the depths in entirely entertaining ways. This essay is from Le Libertaire No. 4 (August 2, 1858), and is a sort of explanation for his approach to anarchist propaganda. Along the way it includes one of […]

Joseph Déjacque, “The Universal Circulus” (1858)

September 4, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur

[This remarkable bit of libertarian philosophy by Joseph Déjacque poses all sorts of difficulties for the modern reader, not the least of which is it borrowings from, and reworkings of, the works of Charles Fourier and Pierre Leroux. And there are places where it ha been necessary to translate things rather literally, since terms are used suggestively, according to the established uses of none of the writers or schools that they were drawn from. There are also a couple of times when Déjacque’s enthusiasm clearly ran away with the syntax: where catalogs of conditionals come to abrupt stops, without ever […]

Voltairine De Cleyre, “Mary Wollstonecraft—The Apostle of Woman’s Freedom” (1893)

August 24, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur

For the Boston Investigator. MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT—THE APOSTLE OF WOMAN’S FREEDOM. — AN ADDRESS Delivered at the International Congress of Freethinkers at Chicago. — By Voltairine de Cleyre. — “Quietly does the clear light, shining day after day, refute the ignorant surmise, or malicious tale, which has thrown dirt on a pure character.”—[Mary Wolstonecraft’s “Vindication of the Rights of Woman,” p. 143, Humboldt Library Edition. — To touch with the commanding fire of the resurrection the crumbling bones of one who rots these hundred years; to call from our her grave in Bournmouth churchyard the form stricken from the passion and […]

Voltairine De Cleyre, “Mary Wollstonecraft” (1894)

August 20, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur

For the Boston Investigator. MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT. Mr. Editor:—Yourself and readers will be interested to learn that the plan of establishing a “female saint’s day” among freethinkers, by commemorating the birth of Mary Wollstonecraft, proposed by myself at the international congress of freethinkers, last October, has taken practical form in this city. The Ladies’ Liberal League, of Philadelphia, (which is not, by the way, an auxiliary of the Friendship Liberal League, as state by Mr. Charlesworth in a communication last fall, and I correct the error in the interest of both societies, the former being a much more radical group than […]