Blog - Page 128 of 287 - The Libertarian Labyrinth

Anarchy and Democracy: Examining the Divide

July 15, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur

[This post originally appeared at the Center for a Stateless Society, as part of the Mutual Exchange on Anarchy and Democracy.] Anarchy and Democracy: Examining the Divide ———- Philosophical Considerations If we had the luxury of sticking to the philosophical terrain, the question of distinguishing anarchy and democracy would, it seems to me, pose very few problems. Certainly, it would be unlikely to pose the persistent, seemingly intractable problems that it does at present. Anarchy describes the absence of rule, while democracy describes rule by “the people,” and it seems fairly uncontroversial to maintain that the two concepts fall on […]

Joseph Déjacque, et al, to the machine-breakers (1848)

July 14, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur

[one_third padding=”0 10px 0 0px”] [/one_third][two_third_last padding=”0 0px 0 10px”] TO THE WORKERS. Brothers! We learn that in the midst of the joy and triumph, some of our own, misled by dangerous advice, want to tarnish the glory of our revolution by excesses that we condemn with all our energies. They want to break the machinery. Brothers, that is wrong! We suffer like them from the disturbances that have been led to by the introduction of machines into industry; but, instead of taking it our on the inventions that shorten labor by multiplying production, let us accuse of the […]

P.-J. Proudhon, Application for the Suard Pension (1837)

July 14, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur

Besançon, May 31, 1837. PIERRE-JOSEPH PROUDHON, CANDIDATE FOR THE SUARD PENSION TO THE GENTLEMEN OF THE ACADÉMIE DE BESANCON. Gentlemen, I am a compositor and proofreader, son of a poor craftsman who, as the father of three boys, could never bear the cost of three apprenticeships. I knew evil and trouble early; my youth, to use a very popular expression, was passed through a fine sieve. Just so Suard, Marmontel, and a host of writers and scholars struggled with fortune. May you, gentlemen, upon reading this memoir, have the thought that between so many men famous for the gifts of […]

Occupancy-and-use: Response to Kevin Carson’s Rejoinder

July 14, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur

[ezcol_2third] [This post originally appeared at the Center for a Stateless Society, as part of an exchange on occupancy-and-use property.] At base, Kevin and I disagree about the possibility of, as I put it, “a truly anarchic space, outside the legal order and beyond the realm of permissions and prohibitions.” That’s a serious disagreement, since it amounts, for me, to a disagreement about the possibility of anarchy. If I was, as Kevin suggests, implicitly acknowledging any “set of rules” governing property, it would amount to a complete failure of my project. The point of giving familiar, more-or-less legal names to […]

Occupancy-and-Use: Neo-Proudhonian Remarks

July 14, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur

This post originally appeared at the Center for a Stateless Society, as part of an exchange on occupancy-and-use property. Those familiar with the rest of my work will recognize the proposal for “mutual extrication” as essentially a reintroduction, in different terms, of the “gift economy of property.” There is a great deal that could be said in response to Kevin Carson’s opening statement, from the “neo-Proudhonian” mutualist perspective, but I’ll try to keep things at least relatively short. Like Kevin, my introduction to the notion of occupancy-and-use land tenure was through the works of Benjamin R. Tucker and the Liberty […]

Proudhon, “Political Contradictions,” pages 105-109 (1863-64)

July 13, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur

[ezcol_1half] CHAPITRE V CRITIQUE GÉNÉRALE DES CONSTITUTIONS De l’unité et de l’indivisibilité organique : formule, conditions et limites de cette loi. Application à l’ordre politique. Grave erreur des publicistes, hommes d’État et auteurs de constitutions à ce sujet : exagération unitaire. Maintenant, lecteur, nous avons passé le plus difficile. Ce qui me reste à vous dire ne sera plus que pour votre curiosité et amusement : je suppose, bien entendu, que la destinée des nations vous intéresse, et que les mystifications des hommes d’État vous amusent. Lisez donc, et quand vous serez à la fin, vous en saurez plus en […]

Horace Traubel, “Free Speech in Philadelphia or Anywhere” (1909)

July 7, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur

Free Speech in Philadelphia or Anywhere.* I. I am glad that in speaking of Emma Goldman today you took high ground for free speech and shooed off the dogs of war. There’s no sense in trying to kill ideas with brickbats and guns. The policeman’s club is never an argument. It always vulgarly and brutally remains a policeman’s club. To suppress Emma Goldman is not an evidence of power but a confession of weakness. Imagine a whole nation put on edge by a little woman a few feet high who says a few things with which majorities do not agree! […]

Emma Goldman, “Walt Whitman”

July 6, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur

[two_third padding=”0 10px 0 0px”] The poet of Leaves of Grass is a true son of American soil and yet very un-American. So long as he sings the song of the wonders of nature, the beauties of the unlimited resources, old Walt feels part and parcel of the strength of Mother Earth, but our great poet becomes un-American when he arraigns the Puritanic interference which has paralyzed life to such an extent as to make it barren. In fact, Walt Whitman may be called the iconoclast of Puritanism. No other writer or poet in America has so thoroughly exposed the […]

Mutual Exchange on “Anarchy and Democracy”

July 2, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur

I’ve been participating in the C4SS “Mutual Exchange” on the topic of “Anarchy and Democracy,” along with a star-studded assembly of anarchists and libertarians from various tendencies. While this is technically the June exchange, it has actually been in progress since early April, with the most recent contribution appearing just a few days ago. As a result, some parts of the debate have had a long time to develop, while others have not, and the order of the contributions and the order of their publication are considerably different in some cases. In the interest of clarifying a few things that […]

Library Update — July 1, 2017

July 1, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur

Today is the anniversary of the death of Bakunin in 1876. It seems like as good an occasion as any to update folks on the progress of the library (particularly as I had really hoped to do an update back at the end of May, on the anniversary of his birth.) It’s been a comparatively quiet year for the project, with much of the work focused on how best to frame the new translations. Some of that task has involved working ahead, tackling material destined for later volumes, just to be as certain as possible that we’re on the right […]