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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 […]

From “The System of Economic Contradictions”

March 29, 2015 Shawn P. Wilbur

[I discovered that one section of the chapter on property did not appear among the translations I have posted online. After some searching, however, it did appear among my working files.] II The subject and object of science are found; the truth of thought and being are authentically established: it remains for us to find the method. Philosophy, in it more or less deep researches on the object and legitimacy of thought, has not been slow to perceive that it followed, without knowing it, certain forms of dialectic which recurred unceasingly, and which, studied more closely, were soon recognized as […]

Ernest Lesigne, Socialistic Letters — IX (1887)

January 30, 2015 Shawn P. Wilbur

SOCIALISTIC LETTERS IX Ten years ago, I wrote a study from which emerged the somewhat unexpected conclusion that every error is, as well as every truth, the product of experiment. In the case of error, the experiment is incomplete. That is all. But as those who are mistaken have seen, or what is called seeing, we mustn’t be surprised to see so many of them become hot and bothered when one assures them that they are mistaken. So I simply say this to the collectivists: You have concluded without having seen enough. It is always the story of that Englishman […]

Ricardo Mella, “Free Cooperation and Communities”

January 28, 2015 Shawn P. Wilbur

Things have been a little quiet on this front, while I finish the introduction to “Anarchies and Anarchisms: 1840-1920.” But part of the work on that project has allowed me to make some more progress on the Collectivism Reader for this project. I’ve been looking at collectivism in Spain, and the “anarchism without adjectives” current that emerged from the conflict between collectivist and communist anarchists, and have finally the chance to get better acquainted with the work of figures like Tarrida del Mármal and Ricardo Mella. I’ve just posted a translation of an essay by Ricardo Mella, “Free Cooperation and […]

Max Nettlau, pessimism and possibilities

January 14, 2015 Shawn P. Wilbur

In 1901 and 1903, Max Nettlau, arguably the greatest of anarchism’s historians, wrote a series of documents intended for “friends and comrades,” though not for general publication, addressing what he took to be problems in anarchist practice. The first of these seems to have been “Some criticism of some current anarchist beliefs,” a 49-page text written in English, and this was followed by at least two drafts of a more formally structured French manuscript of nearly 200 pages. All can be read in the digitized portions of the Max Nettlau Papers at the IISH site. The linked text is a […]

Henry Seymour, Michael Bakounine: A Biographical Sketch (1888)

January 8, 2015 Shawn P. Wilbur

MICHAEL BAKOUNINE: A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. BY HENRY SEYMOUR. Michael Bakounine was born of an ancient aristocratic Russian family in 1814. At an early age, his father, who was then a wealthy proprietor of Torchok in the governmental department at Twer, sent him to a cadet school in St. Petersburg; here he was soon entered as an artillery ensign. In those days this service was one which was reserved especially for the most favored nobles, the Czar’s traditional policy being to grant greater freedom of research in this than in other services. It is not to be wondered at, then, […]

2014: The Final Lessons

January 4, 2015 Shawn P. Wilbur

I had really hoped that I might get through the last week of 2014 without any new worldview-shaking epiphanies. As it turned out, there were a couple, which I’ll at least start to address here. That’s really been the way the year has gone, and, for the most part, it has been a remarkable, exciting experience. The questions raised in 2013 about just how many senses “anarchy” might have had in Proudhon’s writings have spawned a variety of other fairly fundamental questions about anarchist history and the contents of Proudhon’s theory. I’ve spent a lot of time feeling like a […]

Nelly Roussel, “By Rebellion!” (1904)

January 2, 2015

To all women, my sisters. To the Eternal Creatress, aching and unknown. By Rebellion! A SYMBOLIC SCENE By NELLY ROUSSEL (Mme. Godet) SCENE I. EVE, sorrowfully. Oh! My bruised wrists hurt me!… For so long they have borne chains!… My poor eyes, drowning in tears, will go blind!… For so many centuries they have cried!… Gazing at her chains and lifting them painfully. Ah! Alas! Alas! In my slavery and my abandonment, where will I find a drop of water to quench my thirst, manna to comfort my hunger, rest to relieve my exhausted flesh, and consoling words […]

Mary Putnam-Jacobi, obituary for Susan J. Dimock (1847-1875)

January 1, 2015

[one_third padding=”0 10px 0 0px”][/one_third][two_third_last padding=”0 0px 0 10px”] [It should come as no surprise that women who were rebels in other aspects of life would have connections to the anarchist movement. This was certainly true among the pioneering women physicians in the United States. The following obituary was written by Mary Putnam-Jacobi, who boarded with the Reclus family while studying in Paris, for Susan Dimock, whose medical training was partially supported by the family of William B. Greene. Greene’s daughter Bessie was traveling with Dimock when they both died in the shipwreck of the Schiller in 1875. I’ll be […]