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Voltairine de Cleyre, “The Quaker City” (1888)

August 8, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur

It was nearing the close of that May-time which is the morning of summer, when one fair, bright day I was borne away to the southward, through long, shining levels of grassy sea, shot over with yellow dandelion gleams like little baby sunshines playing in the sink and swell of the emerald waves. Up from that silent, dreaming, hazy, green ocean came floating the songs of its toilers; and the light-bathed airs which rested above it grew redolent with perfume, purple and silver with the sheen of the wings floating through it. and night came down like the gathered brooding […]

Voltairine de Cleyre, “Pennsylvania Conventions and Ohio Workers” (1888)

August 7, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur

Pennsylvania Conventions and Ohio Workers After a long, tiresome jolt over that paragon of bad roads, the L. S. & M. S., your correspondent arrived at Girard station on the forenoon of the 24th of January. The day was cold, the station-house was cold, the baggage-master was cold, very cold, as I asked him, in my most persuasiv accents, when the Erie and Pittsburgh train left for Louisville. “Five hours, miss,” and he wiped the young and budding icicles from his mustache. Five hours! and only one weary, forlorn passenger with which to while away the time. It looked dubious, […]

Extrications: History, Tradition, Theory

August 7, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur

The initial task in these Extrications is analytic: we want to pull things apart a bit, enough to see if we can’t isolate some terms and make some useful distinction. I want to set aside this notion of the anarchist milieu as our intentionally vague term for the thing that we are examining and pulling apart. Let’s just say for now that the milieu is the social space occupied by anarchism and anarchists—and hopefully, with a little care and luck, we’ll be able to say something a bit more definite before too long.

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Voltairine de Cleyre, “Secular Education” (1887)

August 7, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur

There are four instruments which, wielded by dominant minds, bend and mold the sentiments of the masses to meet the form and spirit of the times: The force of early influence, the school, the platform, and the press. These are the four grand educators, and education is the strong right arm of progress, that arm which bares its mighty muscles and strikes upon the hewn rock of time the chisel-blows which carve the tablets of an advancing era, there to remain until the surges of the incoming ages shall hav swept them away, leaving a smooth face whereon shall be […]

Extrications

August 6, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur

[one_third padding=”0 10px 0 0px”] Posts in the series: [/one_third][two_third_last padding=”0 0px 0 10px”] It’s been roughly 25 years since I first committed myself to the study of anarchist history and theory. And I can break that span down into three general periods: two decades during which I understood the work as a simple matter of “filling the gaps” in a traditional anarchist narrative that I had not yet come to seriously challenge, five years during which the tensions between anarchist history and anarchist tradition have posed all kinds of theoretical and practical problems, and, at this point, a few […]

V. de C., “A Poetic Swing Around the Circle” (1888)

August 6, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur

A Poetic Swing Around the Circle Now, all he truth seekers, attend my tale. I am not writing “no such word as dale” (Which, Truth Seeker observes, is common sense Beyond the average poem’s just pretense), But scribbling out a simple little story. For any fibs you’ll please giv God glory, For any merit please giv me the credit, And render all due thanks when you hav read it. There is a place that’s called the Smoky City; It has that reputation, more’s the pity That nicknames cling when we hav long outgrown them; In cases like thi people shouldn’t […]

Sadakichi Hartmann, “Voltairine de Cleyre” (1915)

August 5, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur

VOLTAIRINE DE CLEYRE By Sadakichi Hartmann THE first and only time I heard Voltairine de Cleyre lecture was at Walker’s N. Y. Liberal Club, way back in 1894. The topic was “Mary Wollstonecraft, the Apostle of Equal Rights.” The even delivery, the subdued enthusiasm of her voice, the abundance of information, thought and argument, and the logical sequence of the same made a deep impression upon me. I was at that time a lecture fan, and able to make comparisons of her straightforward method with the performances of other public speakers. She had nothing of the pompous, climax-building elocutionary oratory […]

Leonard D. Abbott, “Voltairine de Cleyre’s Posthumous Book” (1914)

August 5, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur

VOLTAIRINE DE CLEYRE’S POSTHUMOUS BOOK By Leonard D. Abbott. THERE is a famous painting which shows the Statue of Liberty looming up through the mists of New York Harbor. At the base of the statue ships are concealed by a fog. In the background, the sky-scrapers of the metropolis are stained by a heavy and unwholesome atmosphere. The only sunlight in the picture falls on the head and the uplifted torch of the womansymbol of Liberty. She is rising triumphant over commercialism, and her torch is strong and steadfast. It is in some such way as this that I think […]

Sébastien Faure, “The Anarchist Synthesis” (1928)

August 3, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur

THE ANARCHIST SYNTHESIS by Sébastien FAURE The Three Great Anarchist Currents In France, as in the majority of other countries, we distinguish three great anarchist currents, which can be designated in this way: Anarcho-syndicalism; Libertarian communism; Anarchist individualism. It was natural and inevitable that, having reached a certain development, an idea as vast as anarchism would result in this triple manifestation of life. A philosophical and social movement, a movement of ideas and action, intending to make a clean break with all authoritarian institutions, must inevitably give rise to these distinctions necessarily determined by the variety of the situations, milieus […]

Lilian Hiller Udell, “An American Anarchist” (1914)

August 3, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur

An American Anarchist Selected Works of Voltairine de Cleyre. [Mother Earth Publishing Association, New York.] Into every generation are born certain personalities that have the gift of attracting vast multitudes within their orbit, dominating them, animating them with a single purpose, directing them to a common goal. There are other personalities more richly gifted, of more extended vision, who nevertheless live and die unknown to the greater number of their contemporaries. Aristocrats of the mind, these latter disdain to practice the arts by which popularity is gained and held. They attract, but do not seek to dominate. They persuade, but […]