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Proudhon Library

P.-J. Proudhon, Theory of Taxation (1861)

October 29, 2015 Shawn P. Wilbur
[two_third padding=”0 10px 0 10px”] THEORY OF TAXATION […] Relation of the State and Liberty, according to modern right. Modern right, by introducing itself in the place of the ancient right, has done one new thing: it has put in the presence of one another, on the same line, two powers which until now had been in a relation of subordination. These two powers are the State and the Individual, in other words Government and Liberty. The Revolution, indeed, has not suppressed that occult, mystical presence, that one called the sovereign, and that we name more willingly the State; it […]
Contr'un

Anarchy and Anarchism, Insides and Outsides

October 7, 2015 Shawn P. Wilbur
  “Dad blame anything a man can’t quit.”—Roger Miller Make a more or less angry break with the anarchist milieu. Settle down to write a book about anarchism. It might all seem a bit bizarre if it wasn’t, for a certain sort of anarchist, pretty much inevitable. I know that there are people who move from the anarchist scene to other political scenes, who trade in the beautiful idea for other ideas. Honestly, though, I don’t understand them and don’t imagine I have much in common with them. For me, the encounter with anarchy was a sort of Rubicon—or perhaps […]
Contr'un

Toward a General Theory of Archy

October 3, 2015 Shawn P. Wilbur
   A lot of my frustrations with the anarchist milieu have less to do with the sorts of internal problems we face, which seem to me to be logical manifestations of the larger social environment, and more to do with the fact that, even if we had the will to address the various things that hold us back, we might not have enough shared theory and vocabulary to get the job done. But, as I have said, my feelings of alienation have been parallel to, and undoubtedly also arise from, a very strong sense of having finally plumbed a lot […]
Contr'un

Propositions for Discussion: The Scope of Anarchy

October 2, 2015 Shawn P. Wilbur
[Here is a rough outline for the second section of the “Propositions:] The Scope of Anarchy To claim that anarchy is sufficient as an anarchist goal or ideal is not, of course, to claim that it is in some way all-sufficient. Most of our arguments about the definition of anarchy turn out to be, on closer inspection, arguments about its proper scope of application—and there are questions still to be answered. On the one hand, we have defenders of various archic systems—capitalism, nationalism, racial and gender-based hierarchies—attempting to identify their systems with anarchy, on the basis that the proper scope […]
Proudhon Library

“Questions Eliminated…” and “Revolutionary Practice”

September 29, 2015 Shawn P. Wilbur
[I’ve been working through the texts in Ms. 2867, part of Economie, looking for material to include in the forthcoming edition of The Philosophy of Progress, and I’ve been finding all sorts of interesting things. The following section comes immediately after the “New Propositions Demonstrated in the Practice Of Revolutions,” so we should perhaps understand by “this organization” the program laid out at the end of that section: “To set aside the notion of substance and Cause, and move onto the terrain of Phenomena and Law, or of the Group.” While the translation here has a fair number of gaps […]
Proudhon Library

New Propositions Demonstrated in the Practice Of Revolutions

September 28, 2015 Shawn P. Wilbur
NEW PROPOSITIONS DEMONSTRATED IN THE PRACTICE OF REVOLUTIONS 1 — The interests established by society are mobile, subject to a constant and fundamentally unstable shifting. 2 — Fixity, permanence or perpetuity in the relations of interests is a chimera. 3 — That mobility of interests is the primary source of revolutions. 4 — An interest, however unjust it may be, can only be abolished on the condition of being replaced by another, which itself could appear every bit as unjust later. 5 — The human mind has a horror of the void; it does not accept pure negation, even if […]
Anarchist Beginnings

Max Nettlau, “Does Socialism Truly Want to Be International?” (1920s)

September 13, 2015 Shawn P. Wilbur
[ezcol_1half] Does Socialism Truly Want to Be International? (MS 1951, Max Nettlau Papers, IISH) (no date, 1920s) This question would appear to be useless after a century of international socialist professions of faith, after the flowering of several Internationals and the struggles of sincere socialists of all shades against nationalism. But it appears to me that it needs to be raised again in some connections, among other that of natural wealth, raw material dependent on the local fertility of the soil and other raw materials so unequally distributed in the subsoil. To whom do these natural resources, whose local distribution […]
Contr'un

Propositions for Discussion (on Anarchy and Anarchism) — I

September 7, 2015 Shawn P. Wilbur
Anarchy is a simple, accessible notion, sufficient to provide the necessary glue for a real anarchist current or movement. I’ve been struck by the number of times recently that I have encountered the argument that a really thoroughgoing idea of anarchy was an impediment, and perhaps the great impediment, to the anarchist movement. It seems obvious that attempting to do justice to the notion of anarchy could be an impediment to any number of other kinds of products or movements, but it is hard for me to wrap my head around the notion that anarchism—as an ideology, movement, individual aspiration […]
Contr'un

The Bottom Line

September 5, 2015 Shawn P. Wilbur
Yesterday, I was foolhardy enough to post a sort of love/breakup letter to “the anarchist movement.” By this morning, what I had intended as a very personal gesture was just another bit of anarchist news, subject to the usual anarchist scorn, but not, it seems, worthy of any personal response. I know. I know: Don’t read the comments… But, honestly, the thing that makes comments so consistently unreadable is the thing that makes the things I wanted to say so damn nearly unspeakable. Anyway, since the whole thing feels like an embarrassing falling-out with an imaginary friend, I will try […]