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Note on the intitiation into justice

July 15, 2014 Shawn P. Wilbur

“It is through marriage that man learns, from nature itself, to sense himself as double.” A point that I probably haven’t explored sufficiently, in the course of working through Proudhon’s thoughts on the family, is the extent to which his concept of marriage appears to be not just distanced from sexual and reproductive concerns, but perhaps transformed in a way that makes those concerns almost inessential. His emphasis on chastity was certainly in part a reflection of his own predilections, but those tastes were shared rather widely in his context and were not uncommon among the radical women with whom […]

DILEMMA: Red or White (from “Economy”)

July 7, 2014 Shawn P. Wilbur

Ms. 2863 (Economy) Paris, March 16 DILEMMA: Red or White A captain of the line assures me—the papers friendly to the government will say tomorrow if the information is exact—that on the occasion of the next elections, the order has been given to prevent, by all possible means, the gentlemen of the military from attending the electoral gatherings. Any disobedience in this regard will be punished by eight days in jail. The government is right. It is consistent with itself. It follows, imperturbably, like Mr. Cabet, its straight line. For sixty years, the French people, leading the rest of the […]

Un Etat, c’est moi

July 6, 2014 Shawn P. Wilbur

[two_third padding=”0 10px 0 10px”] The manuscript of Proudhon’s Pologne keeps slowly giving up its secrets, and some of them are perfectly designed to blow 21st century anarchist minds. Reexamining The Theory of Property as Chapter VII of Pologne has meant that one of the things I have become most interested in is the reason why a “guarantism” involving individual property seems to be called for by the social and political evolution described in the first six chapters. That has meant reuniting the two manuscripts on the Besançon site, as much as is possible, and looking particularly closely for whatever […]

A passage missing from “The Theory of Property”

July 5, 2014 Shawn P. Wilbur

PROJECT: Principles of Nationality and Property I think that most of the concerns that readers have had regarding The Theory of Property have involved the possibility that something alien to Proudhon’s thought might have been introduced by the editors. Having checked most of the published work against the manuscript, I feel fairly confident that that wasn’t the case. It has been a bit more complicated to determine if any important parts of Proudhon’s argument were excluded from the published text. At some point, I will have a copy of the manuscript with all of the material that was incorporated marked […]

Poland: Part One, Contents

July 3, 2014 Shawn P. Wilbur

Besançon, Ms. 2834 POLAND: A STUDY OF HISTORY AND POLITICS [Considerations on the Life and Death of Nationalities] PART ONE: PRINCIPLES I.—History and Nationality. The Polish Question.—History understood as a legal inquiry: necessity, in order to write history and judge a nation, of positing some principles.—Doctrine of immanence: that the political organism is the product of social spontaneity, and that where that spontaneity is lacking, the State becoming powerless and impossible, the nationality remains non-existent.—Exhaustion of the spontaneity in nations: Jews, Greeks, Romans and Italians.—Divisions of the history of Poland: conclusion unfavorable to the demands of the Poles. II.—The […]

The Capitalist, the Prince, the Père de famille, and the alternative

June 23, 2014 Shawn P. Wilbur

It is common to debate whether anarchists attach too much importance to the struggle against capitalism vs. the struggle against statism, or to either or both of those vs. the struggle against patriarchy and other forms of oppression. But how much difference is there really between the various struggles? Without downplaying various real differences, I want to suggest that the oppressions involved at least share a dynamic familiar to students of Proudhon’s work, with the result that a commitment to some very basic aspects of Proudhon’s anarchism ought to simultaneously set us against capitalism, statism, and the patriarchy (to start […]

Catechism of Marriage

June 22, 2014 Shawn P. Wilbur

CATECHISM OF MARRIAGE [from Justice in the Revolution and in the Church, New Edition, Vol. IV] Question. — What is the conjugal couple? Answer. — Every power of nature, every faculty of life, every affection of the soul, every category of the intelligence, needs an organ, in order to manifest itself and act. The sentiment of Justice can be no exception to that law. But Justice, which rules all the other faculties and surpasses liberty itself, not being able to have its organ in the individual, would remain for man a notion without efficacy, and society would be impossible, if […]

The Extremes

June 18, 2014 Shawn P. Wilbur

Ms. 18255—Économie. [Gallica] The Extremes. Avoid the extremes, and seek the happy medium, says the Wisdom of the Nations. That aphorism, of course, is very true: but it must be well understood. It is up to philosophy to look into it and demonstrate it. I say that every extreme, in itself, is false and implies a contradiction; but by extreme I mean the element constitutive of every synthesis, an element to which it does not [ ], which constitutes it [i.e. synthesis] that much better as it is found employed more energetically. Thus, the proprietor is a constitutive element of […]

Moral Education

June 17, 2014 Shawn P. Wilbur

MORAL EDUCATION [Undated fragment from Ms. 2871, Ville de Besançon] I always see the fathers of families, sufficiently enlightened regarding the value of religious fables, worry nonetheless about the Education to give their children, and ask on what the moral principles that they will be taught will rest. Morals and superstition have been so thoroughly mixed together that the majority of men do not manage to separate them, and, for them, to destroy the latter it is always a matter of compromising the former. I am an honest man, says a father, and I know where I stand on […]

Avengers who never assemble

June 13, 2014 Shawn P. Wilbur

Related text: “My Testament, or Society of Avengers” (FR/EN, partial translation) [click image] “By what sign shall we recognize that an individual who has been struck has been struck by the society of avengers? If the victim is notorious depraved, or corrupt, or criminal, or villainous; if they are an enemy of the people; if their political importance corresponds to their criminality; if a sign is left on the corpse; if they are not stripped or robbed; if no author of the murder can be assumed from self-interest, rivalry, etc.” A notorious enemy of society is struck down and a […]