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Notes on Occupancy & Use (The Infamous Summer House Thread)

July 15, 2012 Shawn P. Wilbur

[one_third][/one_third][two_third_last] The question of occupancy and use is one which seems particularly difficult to address in a way which escapes a constant return to the same questions. There are certainly logical reasons for that: There are arguably two different models for this sort of land tenure in Proudhon, one based on simple possession and the other on simple property. Questions of “use” quickly lead into questions about “rent,” and we are not always particularly careful to distinguish between “economic rent,” “rent” as a form of “increase,” and “rent” as payment for services directly rendered. As long as we stick close […]

A couple of notes on “The Molyneux Problem”

July 8, 2012 Shawn P. Wilbur

Just so that it is not necessary to reconstruct this every time the question of the adequacy of Universally Preferable Behavior arises, I’ll just place these comments (originally from Reddit) here for the benefit of posterity: [To see the problems with the book] you might look at the beginning of the section “UPB: Five Proofs,” where he lays out the supposed logical proof from UPB. When he lays it out as a syllogism, the key proposition is that: “Arguing against the validity of universally preferable behaviour demonstrates universally preferable behaviour.” Now, that’s not the clearest of sentences, but here’s the […]

W. M. Stannard, “Mr. Corndropper’s Hired Man” (1900)

July 8, 2012

Mr. Corndropper’s Hired Man. (A Companion to “Ely’s Automatic Housemaid.”) BY W. M. STANNARD. _____ THERE was a mild sensation at the East Slowcombe railway station when a stranger, bearing a two-gallon can, carefully crated, stepped off the 3.30 accommodation, and there were many speculations hazarded as to his identity, business and destination, but, without stopping to question or exchange words with any of the waiting crowd, he stepped across the platform to where Farmer Corndropper was waiting with his gray mare and buggy. He handed the fanner a letter, stepped into the buggy and was driven slowly away. Without […]

Elizabeth W. Bellamy, “Ely’s Automatic Housemaid” (1899)

July 8, 2012

Ely’s Automatic Housemaid. BY ELIZABETH W. BELLAMY. _____ IN order for a man to have faith in such an invention, he would have to know Harrison Ely. For Harrison Ely was a genius. I had known him in college, a man amazingly dull in Latin and Greek and even in English, but with ideas of his own that could not be expressed in language. His bent was purely mechanical, and found expression in innumerable ingenious contrivances to facilitate the study to which he had no inclination. His self-acting lexicon-holder was a matter of admiring wonder to his classmates, but it […]

The “FAQs”

July 7, 2012

One of the basic assumptions driving this blog is that we’re not really in a position for definitive answers to a lot of the most important, and most frequently asked questions about mutualism. We can say a lot of true things about a lot of mutualist tendencies, but MUTUALISM as such, has only had, or will have, the sort of unity that allows us to simply explain or define it at a few moments in the past and perhaps in some more orderly future—provided we can do the work now of getting a handle on the current, rather far-flung debate. […]

Mutualism at the Owenite High Tide

July 6, 2012

For a look at the concerns of the Owenite current at the moment, in the 1820s, when some members were trying on the label “mutualist” and Josiah Warren was taking the steps that would lead him to individualist anarchism, I’ve assembled a collection of texts in the first volume of a Documentary History of Mutualism: Mutualism at the Owenite High Tide. In it: The letters of the “1826 Mutualist” are followed by Josiah Warren’s “The Motives for Communism,”—an account of his involvement with the Owenite movement,—a speech given at New Harmony by communist Paul Brown,—author of Twelve Months in New […]

Notes on the origins of the term “mutualism” (1822-1850)

July 6, 2012

I contributed most of the following to Wikipedia, so we can just make use of it here to get started on a bit of basic mutualist history: Mutualism, as a term, has seen a variety of related uses. Charles Fourier first used the French term “mutualisme” in 1822, although the reference was not to an economic system. The first use of the noun “mutualist” was in the New-Harmony Gazette by an American Owenite in 1826. In the early 1830s, a labor organization in Lyons, France, called themselves the “Mutuellists.” Pierre Joseph Proudhon was involved with the Lyons mutualists and later […]

Possible & Impossible Worlds

July 6, 2012 Shawn P. Wilbur

For those who enjoy early science fiction, imaginary voyages, and utopian narratives, I’m sharing some of my favorites at Possible and Impossible Worlds. I’ve been playing around with some non-political translation, including the 1721 “Account of a Voyage from the Arctic to the Antarctic Pole by way of the Center of the Earth, with the description of that perilous Passage, and of the marvelous and astonishing things that were discovered beneath the Antarctic Pole” (which ought to be complete within the next week or so) and some work on a couple of incompletely translated Jules Verne novels. And I occasionally […]

Edward Page Mitchell, “The Ablest Man In The World” (1879)

July 6, 2012

The Ablest Man In The World. By Edward PageMitchell. 1879 [Originally published without attribution in the New York Sun May 4, 1879] It may or may not be remembered that in 1878 General Ignatieff spent several weeks of July at the Badischer Hof in Baden. The public journals gave out that he visited the watering-place for the benefit of his health, said to be much broken by protracted anxiety and responsibility in the service of the Czar. But everybody knew that Ignatieff was just then out of favor at St. Petersburg, and that his absence from the centres of […]

The Symmesonian Letters and Other Tales of the Hollow Earth

July 6, 2012 Shawn P. Wilbur

This collection of short fiction and satire about “Symmes’ Hole” is intended as a supplement to the archive on the Hollow Earth theories of John Cleves Symmes and includes texts destined for publication in Principles and Explorations of the Mundane System. “Symmesonian,” Cincinnati Literary Gazette (Feb 28, 1824): 66 Cincinnati Literary Gazette, Mar 6, 1824. p. 76 Cincinnati Literary Gazette, Mar 20, 1824. p. 90 W. L. Alden, “Symmes’ Hole,” Stone 17 no. 5 (October, 1898): 343–346. Symmesonian. No. 1 Having been informed, Mr. Editor, that your countrymen always require of every person when first introduced to them, a regular […]