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Bakunin and Proudhon / Authority and Anarchy

April 25, 2016 Shawn P. Wilbur

[ezcol_2third] If (in the passage from God and the State discussed in the last post) Bakunin has not simply changed the meaning of the word “authority” from one paragraph to the next, as he moves from his general critique to his consideration of “the authority of the bootmaker,” then we presumably have a case in which authority must indeed be rejected when considered in general, but cannot be spurned or simply pushed away (repoussé) in the messy realm of practice, where the limits of our knowledge and the limitations of our animality confront us on a regular basis. We find […]

Bakunin and Proudhon / Authority and Anarchy

April 20, 2016 Shawn P. Wilbur

If (in the passage from God and the State discussed in the last post) Bakunin has not simply changed the meaning of the word “authority” from one paragraph to the next, as he moves from his general critique to his consideration of “the authority of the bootmaker,” then we presumably have a case in which authority must indeed be rejected when considered in general, but cannot be spurned or simply pushed away (repoussé) in the messy realm of practice, where the limits of our knowledge and the limitations of our animality confront us on a regular basis. We find ourselves […]

The “authority” of the bootmaker

April 15, 2016 Shawn P. Wilbur

I’ve remarked elsewhere on the curious phenomenon of self-proclaimed anarchists who are much more comfortable with the language of governmentalism and authority than they are with the concept of anarchy. It is curious, but it is far from inexplicable. After all, some of the most famous pioneers of anarchist thought muddied those waters rather enthusiastically at times. Over the years, I have spent quite a bit of time working through Proudhon’s complicated engagements with property, the State, anarchy and other terms. There are potentially cautionary tales there regarding just about any strategy we might take with these complex and contested […]

Library update: April 2016

April 14, 2016 Shawn P. Wilbur

[one_third padding=”0 10px 0 0px”][/one_third][two_third_last padding=”0 0px 0 10px”] [June update: See the posts on “Strategies of Interpretation” and “Strategies of Presentation” for some additional information on the edition.] The hardest thing about assembling an edition like the Bakunin Library is knowing when you can safely stop planning and exploring, and finally settle down to the work itself. Ideally, it would have been wonderful to take ten years to work through everything and then prepare the reader as a summary volume. But it’s been necessary to be realistic about where the English-speaking community is with respect to Bakunin and about […]

Letter to Albert Richard (April 1, 1870)

April 12, 2016 Shawn P. Wilbur

April 1, 1870. Geneva. Dear friend. I still find myself here and every day await news of the arrival of the relation that you know, in order to go to meet them. Complete reaction in the International of Geneva.—The factory [fabrique] has triumphed on all fronts in my absence, and no one has been found to halt that triumph. L’Egalité has become a reactionary paper. Here is the program: Cooperation and the local politics of bourgeois radicalism. From now on the International of Geneva will no longer be anything but a stepping-stone to bring the Perrets and Grosselins to power. […]

Notes on “La Pornocratie”

April 8, 2016 Shawn P. Wilbur

The manuscript carries the “Nouvelles de la Révolution” header, like the sections in the expanded “Justice,” and we know that Proudhon intended it as a follow-up to the studies on “Love and Marriage.” In a letter to Garnier Frères, December 12, 1860, Proudhon wrote: “At this moment I am studying our young literature. I have read, for example, all the novels of Mr. [Edmonde] About: you can be sure that I do not intend to have wasted my time. But I cannot thus leap from one order of ideas to another without transition; and the transitions for me are in […]

The “authority” of the bootmaker

April 4, 2016 Shawn P. Wilbur

I’ve remarked elsewhere on the curious phenomenon of self-proclaimed anarchists who are much more comfortable with the language of governmentalism and authority than they are with the concept of anarchy. It is curious, but it is far from inexplicable. After all, some of the most famous pioneers of anarchist thought muddied those waters rather enthusiastically at times. Over the years, I have spent quite a bit of time working through Proudhon’s complicated engagements with property, the State, anarchy and other terms. There are potentially cautionary tales there regarding just about any strategy we might take with these complex and contested […]

James Guillaume on “God and the State” (1908 and 1909)

March 27, 2016 Shawn P. Wilbur

In 1877, the various unpublished manuscripts that Bakunin had left were sent to me so that I could, in concert with my friends from the Jura Federation of the International, see to the publication of that which appeared worthy of printing. It was not possible then to gather the financial resources necessary for the printing of a volume; and when I left Switzerland in May 1878, I passed the little case containing these manuscripts, Élisée Reclus, by way of Kraftchinsky (Stepniak), into the hands of Élisée Reclus. Four more years would pass, and finally in 1882 there appeared in Geneva, […]

Notes on “Comment les affaires vont en France et pourquoi nous aurons la guerre”

March 20, 2016 Shawn P. Wilbur

Comment les affaires vont en France et pourquoi nous aurons la guerre NOTES: ___________________ Les cinq sous l’Empire By Alfred Darimon 226-227 Today I received the visit of G. [1], who has come on the part of Proudhon to make me a rather original proposition. Proudhon is in the course of composing a booklet that bears this title: Comment les affaires vont en France et pourquoi nous aurons la guerre. Several sheets of that booklet are already composed; it will be put on sale in a few days. It is a question of getting it into France and here is […]

The Incomplete Proudhon (draft)

March 19, 2016 Shawn P. Wilbur

[one_third padding=”0 10px 0 0″][/one_third][two_third_last padding=”0 0px 0 10px”] [This is a first draft of a first section of a strategy document for the consideration of other Proudhon scholars and students of anarchist studies. It is every bit as preliminary as that sounds, but everything has to start somewhere. With the Bakunin Library and Proudhon Library projects both moving steadily towards publication, a good deal of what I have been doing behind the scenes lately has been this kind of assessment of available resources and strategizing about how best to present relatively large bodies of work in print. For those who have […]