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La Barrière du Combat

February 20, 2012 Shawn P. Wilbur

The title of La Barrière du Combat, a short 1852 work by Ernest Coeurderoy and Octave Vauthier, at first appeared a bit of a mystery to me. It is an attack on various figures associated with the radical left in the French Revolution of 1848, an account of “the last great assault which has just been engaged between the citoyens Mazzini, Ledru-Rollin, Louis Blanc, Étienne Cabet, Pierre Leroux, Martin Nadaud, Malarmet, A. Bianchi (de Lille) and other Hercules of the north.” It was apparently written before many of those figures, and the authors, ended up in exile in England, following […]

The Ungovernability of Anarchism

February 18, 2012 Shawn P. Wilbur

There is a lesson about anarchism that seems extraordinarily hard to learn, even though we are constantly confronted with it: As a tradition and as an idea, anarchism is essentially ungovernable. As an idea, it is too basic and logical a response to the statist status quo to remain the exclusive domain of any particular class or faction of dissenters. As a tradition, it emerged alongside many of the categories we presently use to distinguish those classes and factions, positing itself, at its origins, as much as an alternative to those classificatory schemes as fodder for their work. When it […]

From my notebooks

February 17, 2012 Shawn P. Wilbur

[This may, or may not, end up being part of “Owning Up,” the next issue of The Mutualist, but it seems useful enough to share at this point.] I certainly never anticipated spending years wrestling with property theory, let alone the sort of detailed work that I’ve ended up doing on Proudhon’s property writings, but it has ultimately been a lot of fun, as well as a lot of preconception-stretching, difficult work. My hope, however, is that, thanks to a couple of fortuitous turns in the research recently, pretty much all of the pieces of the puzzle—the elements of a […]

Pierre Leroux on Joseph Déjacque

February 12, 2012 Shawn P. Wilbur

“… one day Déjacque harangued the crowd in the Faubourg Saint-Honore, where he lived, claiming to be a new reincarnation of Christ…” — from an account of Déjacque last days, before he died “mad from poverty.” The biographical details on Joseph Déjacque are scattered, though slowly but surely they’re coming together. And they have surfaced in some interesting places. One of the most interesting, especially for me, is Pierre Leroux’s The Beach at Samarez: A Philosophical Poem, a two-volume work combining a philosophical poem with reminiscences of life among the French exiles in the colony on the isle of Jersey. […]

Eliphalet Kimball’s “Thoughts”

February 12, 2012 Shawn P. Wilbur

I’ve finished transcribing Eliphalet Kimball’s 1867 Thoughts on Natural Principles, which is about a defense of anarchism, in articles that originally appeared in The Boston Investigator. The rest is frequently inspired medical and culinary crankery, which should be read carefully for the analogies presented between it and the political thought. Analogy was, after all, all the rage in the 19th century, even, apparently, if you were a radical New England doctor. I’m now working on transcribing a couple of additional essays and some responses, so I can reissue the book in expanded form this spring.

Anselme Bellegarrigue’s Revolution

February 9, 2012 Shawn P. Wilbur

Anselme Bellegarrigue published two issues of Anarchy: A Journal of Order. The first issue, the “Manifesto,” is relatively well-known, thanks to a partial translation in Benjamin R. Tucker’s Liberty and a more recent full translation by Paul Sharkey, which was published by the Kate Sharpley Library. Those familiar with that work will not be surprised by the relentless anti-governmentalism in the second issue, “The Revolution,” but they may be somewhat taken aback by his identification of “The Revolution” with the flux of interests, and his claim that “the Revolution is purely and simply a matter of business.” I started working […]

Anselme Bellegarrigue, “Anarchy is Order” (from Liberty)

February 9, 2012 Shawn P. Wilbur

Anarchy, a Journal of Order Issue One I.—Anarchy is Order. Were I to pay heed to the meaning generally attached to certain words, a common error having made anarchy a synonym of civil war, I should hold in horror the title that I have placed at the head of this publication, for I have a horror of civil war. I both honor and flatter myself in never having belonged to a group of conspirators or to a revolutionary battalion, because it shows, on the one hand, that I have been too honest to dupe the people, and, on the other, […]

Anselme Bellegarrigue, “The Revolution” (4 of 4)

February 9, 2012 Shawn P. Wilbur

Anarchy: A Journal of Order Anselme Bellegarrigue Issue Two [continued from Part 3] XII Now when, instead of a single store of money, the country possesses, for the sale of that merchandise, as many shops as there are capitalists, that metallic commodity cannot fail to be cheap. Woolen cloth is not expensive in France thanks to the expansion which free commerce has given to its sale! If it came to be monopolized, as money is at present, the frock coat would become a rare distinction. Capital being freed, it is labor which is stimulated. Capital and labor are one and […]

Anselme Bellegarrigue, “The Revolution” (3 of 4)

February 8, 2012 Shawn P. Wilbur

Anarchy: A Journal of Order Anselme Bellegarrigue Issue Two [continued from Part 2] VIII The Revolution is the emancipation of the individual or it is nothing; it is the end of the political and social tutelage, or it means nothing. In this I am, and indeed must be, in agreement with everyone, even with those we are accustomed to call reactionaries and who are, after all, only minors promised to the tutelage of the self-styled democrats, as the democrats are today minors under the tutelage of the so-called reactionaries. From a national point of view, the names of the parties […]

Anselme Bellegarrigue, “The Revolution” (2 of 4)

February 8, 2012 Shawn P. Wilbur

Anarchy: A Journal of Order Anselme Bellegarrigue Issue Two [continued from Part 1] IV February 24, at two o’clock in the afternoon, the Tuileries, the legislative palace, the ministerial hotels, the Hôtel de Ville, and the Prefecture of police were all deserted; the official hierarchy was eclipsed. Authority had physically disappeared, and the people were free. And understand well what that word people means, coming from my pen: when I make use of that word, I mean to designate everyone, smocks and coats, patent leather shoes and hobnailed boots. On February 24, I say, the people were free, that is […]