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Contr'un

Joseph Déjacque, The Humanisphere — I

June 16, 2012 Shawn P. Wilbur
[I posted some of this about a year and a half ago, but set it down again, not feeling comfortable enough with some of the contexts to be sure I was getting the details right. With the work that I’ve been doing recently translating Charles Fourier, Pierre Leroux, and some other works by Joseph Déjacque, I’m feeling much more certain that I’m catching nuances, so I’m going to start posting sections again, beginning with a considerably enlarged first helping.] The Humanisphere Anarchic Utopia Utopia: “A dream not realized, but not unrealizable.” Anarchy: “Absence of government.” Revolutions are conservations. (P. J. […]
Anarchist Beginnings

From “The Morning Star” (October 21, 1840)

June 15, 2012 Shawn P. Wilbur
[one_third padding=”0 10px 0 0px”] [In October, 1840, Hugh Doherty launched The Morning Star, or Phalansterian Gazette as the organ of the associationist movement in England. It lasted twelve issues, and was succeeded by The London Phalanx. The first issue announced an intention of providing weekly translation from Fourier’s work, and while that plan was ultimately not accomplished, there were a number of translations included in the paper. This first selection, from that first issue (October 21, 1840), is drawn from the “Foreword” of The Treatise on Domestic-Agricultural Association.] [/one_third][two_third_last padding=”0 0px 0 10px”] TRANSLATION OF THE MOST POPULAR PARTS […]
Contr'un

Disagreement on the Posthumous Works of Proudhon – First Letter

June 13, 2012 Shawn P. Wilbur
The complete translation can be downloaded in pdf form. The publication of Proudhon’s posthumous works occasioned a controversy among his literary executors, with some of the debate occurring in the pages of La Presse in November, 1865. The debate involved four of the six executors—J. A. Langlois, Georges Duchêne, A. A. Rolland, and Gustave Chaudey—and Proudhon’s old collaborator Alfred Darimon, which whom Proudhon had parted ways politically, plus a number of other allies and adversaries. The debate was important enough for Auguste Beauchery to include the two main letters from La Presse in his 1867 Economie Sociale de P.-J. Proudhon, […]
Contr'un

Jules Leroux, What is the Republic?

June 13, 2012 Shawn P. Wilbur
Over on the Libertarian Library site, I’ve posted a working translation of Jules Leroux’s 1848 pamphlet, What is the Republic? Jules was Pierre Leroux’s brother, and an important radical, with a career which took him from France all the way to the final Icarian community in northern California.
Contr'un

Proudhon, The various meanings of the word property

June 12, 2012 Shawn P. Wilbur
[Here’s the first section of Proudhon’s The Theory of Property, in rough English translation.] THEORY OF PROPERTY CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION § I. — The various meanings of the word property. In 1840, I promised to give a solution of the problem of property, and I renewed my promise in 1846. Today I keep my word. It is my turn to defend property, not against the phalansterians, the communists and the agrarians, who are no more, but against those who saved it in June 1848, in June 1849, in May 1830, in December 1851, and who have since brought it low. […]
Working Translations

Jules Leroux, “What is the Republic?”

June 6, 2012 Shawn P. Wilbur
[ezcol_2third] WHAT IS THE REPUBLIC? CONCERNING MR. LAMARTINE’S CIRCULAR Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, Unity. TO THE MEMBERS OF THE  PROVISIONAL GOVERNMENT. Holy and august Republic, keep your promises; produce Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, and Unity among us; make it so that there are no longer people who live in extreme opulence and those who die in extreme misery; destroy inequality, slavery, and hate, not in some of their effects, but in their deepest roots, or yours is a vain name! Such is, gentleman-agents of the Republic, such is the ardent prayer that the people who suffer, feel, and know, utter each day. […]
Bakunin Library

A possible plan for an edition in ten volumes

June 5, 2012 Shawn P. Wilbur
I have now had a chance to do a lot of the work of estimating just how many pages we are dealing with, just how marginal and fragmentary some of the fragments and variants are, etc., and have been laying out tentative volumes. My working assumption at this stage, based on the little feedback I’ve received, is that there is indeed a desire for a fairly complete edition, but perhaps not such a deep scholarly desire that every fragment and variant needs to make it into a print edition. For the moment, I’m also banishing the thought that we’ll run […]
Contr'un

The Bakunin Library: Request for Feedback

June 3, 2012 Shawn P. Wilbur
I’m in that messy, lonely stage, with the Collected Works of Bakunin project, of laying out possible volumes and trying to anticipate potential permissions problems. And, so far, I haven’t received much feedback from potential readers and buyers about whether or not the general strategy and set of priorities I outlined over on the Bakunin Library blog seems likely to meet the needs and/or desires of the intended audience. It is always nice to tackle big projects with at least a little bit of sense that you’re going to be meeting people’s needs. And I’m sure my publisher would be […]
Black and Red Feminism

Jenny d’Héricourt’s “Appeal to Women” and “Profession of Faith”

May 31, 2012 Shawn P. Wilbur
I’ve been working on an anthology of Jenny P. d’Héricourt’s works, combining her two-volume Woman Affranchised with an assortment of other works of feminist philosophy. d’Héricourt was, of course, one of Proudhon’s opponents on the question of women’s rights, and her response to him makes up an important part of the first volume of Woman Affranchised, but the second volume (about two-thirds of which was not included in the existing English translation) shows her as an accomplished social thinker and activist. I’ve been revising and completing the translation of the first volume of that work, and hope to have at […]