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Max Nettlau, Fragment (1902)

May 4, 2015 Shawn P. Wilbur

[one_third padding=”0 10px 0 0px”][/one_third][two_third_last padding=”0 0px 0 10px”] All my arguments are based on the fact that men are different from one another, so that the same thing cannot be known to the same degree by everyone. If we accept in theory that all the possibilities of development exist in a rudimentary state or develop in all of us, the practical life shows that these possibilities develop in a different manner for each of us. We do think nor wish to render men uniform — just as we do not think of leveling the mountains and the plains. We […]

Max Nettlau, “Panarchy, a Forgotten Idea of 1860” (1909)

May 4, 2015 Shawn P. Wilbur

For a long time I have been fascinated by the thought how wonderful it would be if at last, in public opinion on the succession of political and social institutions, the fateful term “one after another” would be replaced through the very simple and self-evident “simultaneously.” “Down with the State!” and “Only upon the ruins of the State…” express emotions and wishes of many but it seems that only the cool “Opt out of the State” (No. 2 of “The Socialist”) can help them towards their realization. When a new scientific insight appears, then those convinced of it do […]

Max Nettlau, “Are there New Fields for Anarchist Activity?” (1907)

May 4, 2015 Shawn P. Wilbur

[ezcol_2third] Are there New Fields for Anarchist Activity? I have often wondered why, with millions of people taking part in progressive and labor movements of all kinds, comparatively few accept Anarchism fully as we do. What is better known than the exploitation of labor by capital, the oppression of the individual by the State, to the student the least interested in social matters and to the practical observer of everyday life? Again, if Anarchist propaganda has not yet touched every remote place in all countries, there are numerous localities where it has been carried on for a generation and more, […]

Max Nettlau, Responsibility and Solidarity in the Labor Struggle (1899)

May 4, 2015 Shawn P. Wilbur

[ezcol_2third] The following remarks, based on an article published by me in Freedom, November 1897, must not be understood as wishing to replace direct Anarchist propaganda by a “remedy or a “hobby,” they simply raise a general subject which has been, as far as I know and am told, neglected up till now: the possibility of some new form and combination in the labor struggle; and I am anxious for Anarchist criticism, which, apart from the general possibility has to examine whether the means suggested are on the road to freedom or the contrary; consequently, whether they merit the support […]

Max Nettlau, Adjectives and the Possibility of Panarchy

May 4, 2015 Shawn P. Wilbur

[Originally posted at Responsibility, Solidarity, Strategy] I’m setting up this new corner of the Libertarian Labyrinth archive in order to gather material for some forthcoming volumes of work by Max Nettlau, but also to explore more fully his persistent “heresy,” the possibility of “mutual tolerance” between anarchist and non-anarchist currents as a key to advancing the anarchist project. Nettlau drew from the current of “anarchism without adjectives” among Spanish collectivists in his day, but also found inspiration in Paul-Émile de Puydt‘s 1860 proposal for “panarchy,” a sort of “free market in governmental systems.” More than anything, however, he seems to […]

Benjamin R. Tucker on Bakunin (1881)

April 11, 2015 Shawn P. Wilbur

Michael Bakounine. As announced in our last number, we present on this page, for the first time in America, a faithful portrait of the founder of Nihilism,— the physical lineaments of an heroic reformer, of whom we are willing to hazard the judgment that coming history will yet place him in the very front ranks of the world’s great social saviours. The grand head and face speak for themselves regarding the immense energy, lofty character, and innate nobility of the man. We should have esteemed it among the chief honors of our life to have known him personally, and […]

God and the State (continuation)

April 10, 2015 Shawn P. Wilbur

GOD AND THE STATE ————– EXTRACTS FROM UNEDITED MANUSCRIPTS OF MICHAEL BAKUNIN. (TRANSLATED FOR “LIBERTY” BY “N.”) [Liberty (UK) May, 1894] I. During the time of his staying in Marseilles in October 1870 until his departure from Locarno to the Jura in April 1871, Bakunin and wrote a long, though not finished, book, the first part of which was published in July 1871 as “L’Empire Knoutogermaique et la Révolution Sociale;” of the second part, “Sophismes historique de l’école des Communistes allemandes,” only a few pages were printed but not published: this part was rewritten at the end of 1872 […]

New Uncertainties and Opportunities

April 6, 2015 Shawn P. Wilbur

Having identified our “Era of Anarchy,” and recognized some of the ways in which the anarchist history and tradition we have inherited have obscured and distorted that early era, we have to be careful not to simply replace the old distortions with new ones. The difficulty is that we are products, as well as inheritors, of that history and tradition, and the way in which we “are anarchists”—the range of possible meanings accessible to us for the phrase “I am an anarchist”—is inevitably shaped by that fact. None of us will ever repeat Proudhon’s experience of making that declaration for […]

The “Benthamite” anarchism and the origins of anarchist history

April 5, 2015 Shawn P. Wilbur

There is, perhaps, healing for some of our divisions to be found, a little farther down this road. But it is probably necessary, first, to take an unusually clear look at some of the wounds that that have served as foundations for our tradition. Wounds and foundations—wounds as foundations—that’s metaphor-mixing worthy of a Joseph Déjacque, but it also cuts directly to a fundamental problem with anarchist history and tradition: the extent to which organized anarchism and explicitly anarchist history both emerged as distinctly partisan affairs, both built upon and set against the an-archy of the earliest anarchists. “Them’s fightin’ words…,” […]

Our Lost Continent

April 4, 2015 Shawn P. Wilbur

The “lost continent” of anarchist history has been there all along, not so much lost but rather willfully ignored or dismissed, a blank spot on our map marked, not with some dire warning of the “Here be dragons” variety, but rather with the dismissive “Here be precursors.” The problem is that our attempts to simply sail around most of the period between 1840, when we can unquestionably say that there were anarchists, and 1880 or so, when we can point with equal confidence to the emergence of anarchism in one or more forms, tend to commit us to a history—and […]