Blog - Page 13 of 286 - The Libertarian Labyrinth

Second Study—Personnes—Parallel French

December 6, 2022 Shawn P. Wilbur

— Formatting in progress — 1858 1860 ESSAIS D’UNE PHILOSOPHIE POPULAIRE. — NO. 2 DEUXIÈME ÉTUDE LES PERSONNES CHAPITRE PREMIER. Principe de la dignité personnelle. Monseigneur, Puisque c’est à l’occasion d’un fait personnel que j’ai conçu l’idée de mon livre, permettez-moi d’abord de revenir sur ce fait, auquel vous n’êtes pas étranger, et de vous poser une question. Le particulier, dit la logique, reproduit le général ; le fait est nécessairement l’expression de l’idée. En partant d’un fait, nous n’arriverons que mieux à la loi, tandis que le contraire serait impossible. Telle n’est pas, j’en conviens, la méthode des révélateurs ; mais […]

Constructing an Anarchism: Privation

December 2, 2022 Shawn P. Wilbur

So we are in a peculiar position as anarchists and proponents of anarchism, since, by standards that even we must acknowledge we recognize, that identification and advocacy make us—among other things, of course—champions of privation.

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Constructing Anarchisms (Reimagined)

November 30, 2022 Shawn P. Wilbur

When Constructing Anarchisms was interrupted by “reopening” and a growing pile of unanswered questions, plenty of unfinished business remained. I’ve been chipping away at it ever since. The fundamental questions I needed to answer before I could start my historical survey have largely been answered. The toolkit from “A Schematic Anarchism” has been an unexpected bonus. The process of answering those questions seems to have been useful to others as well.

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Reading Proudhon Today

November 16, 2022 Shawn P. Wilbur

There is a lot of interesting material in Proudhon’s unpublished manuscripts, not all of which is vital to understanding his project, but there are two sets of texts in particular that any serious student should at least be aware of—if only to know what we don’t know.

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P.-J. Proudhon, “Psychology” (1838)

November 13, 2022 Shawn P. Wilbur

This is the most complete and exact map that has been drawn of the human soul to date; consequently, and if our title is true, it is the system of the world. Any man can grasp the whole of it, but no one has sounded its depths.

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A Schematic Anarchism: Notes on Application

November 9, 2022 Shawn P. Wilbur

It’s no very great leap from the position I had already taken in “A Schematic Anarchism” to the one I’ve been exploring in Proudhon’s manuscripts. In general, I have been proposing that we shift our approach from endless, more or less interminable arguments about whether or not a given ideology or practice is anarchism or not to analyses of proposed anarchisms that ask: “If we treat X as an instance of anarchism, in what sense is that claim true and how does it compare to other instances?” The answers to that question ought to demonstrate that some of the proposed anarchisms only qualify in the most trivial senses, on the basis of the most implausible explanations, while others can be plausibly situated among the ranks of anarchisms on the basis of a variety of plausible narratives.

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Rambles in the Fields calendar — 2023

October 12, 2022 Shawn P. Wilbur

The local landscape is woven into the work that appears here. My daily walks through the parks near my home are an explicit part of the process in the “Rambles in the Fields of Anarchist Individualism,” but, in general, the out-of-doors is where the fine points tend to get worked out. Last year, I published a calendar of photographs taken in several local green spaces. This year, I limited things to a single park and focused on the cycle of gradual, but steady change that takes place through the year.

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Plucked from the fields of 1930

October 9, 2022 Shawn P. Wilbur

Vous avez à cœur la prospérité de L’EN DEHORS. Bravo ! Achetez-en donc deux numéros là où il est en vente, ou souscrivez à un abonnement de propagande, ou trouvez-nous d’ici six mois un nouvel abonnement. l’en dehors 9 no. 174 (mi-Janvier 1930): 1. You have the prosperity of L’EN DEHORS at heart. Bravo! So buy two issues where it is on sale, or take out a subscription for propaganda, or find us a new subscription in the next six months. Quelques mots sur la propagande de l’individualisme Pour être individualiste il ne suffit pas de se dénommer « individualiste […]

P.-J. Proudhon, Economy (Ms. 2863) — selected translations

October 2, 2022 Shawn P. Wilbur

It is this lack of definitions that establishes, as we will see, that Economy has been unable thus far to posit axioms, to demonstrate a method, to indicate its limits, and make known its object, that is to say to respond to that question, without which it cannot rank among the sciences: What is your name? Who are you?

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Further Reflections on Anarchist Tendencies and Mutualist History

September 28, 2022 Shawn P. Wilbur

This is a collection of another Twitter thread, in the course of which I’ve been sharing some reminiscences on how “neo-proudhonian” mutualism emerged and how those who have adopted the label or encounter it in anarchist circles might understand the particular gambits involved in its construction. These things necessarily get away from us, once loosed upon the world—and that’s fine, perhaps simply as it should be—but I suspect they may serve others better if they retain some of the character of their origins.

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