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Varieties of “theft” and “property”

December 27, 2011 Shawn P. Wilbur

[one_third padding=”0 10px 0 0″] Contr’un Revisited: [commentary coming soon] [/one_third][two_third_last padding=”0 0px 0 10px”] It’s generally nice to avoid taking complex problems and making them even more complex—but not always. There may be some real advances in clarity to be gained from incorporating our new questions about “theft” into the larger puzzle regarding Proudhon and “property.” But we’re going to have to proceed cautiously. Let’s begin with a sort of catalog of the concepts that may or may not be in play, as we try to unpack Proudhon’s infamous phrase, “property is theft,” in the contents of his remarks […]

Two new translations from “l’Almanach de la Question Sociale” for 1895

December 26, 2011 Shawn P. Wilbur

I’ve been puttering away at translating some short items from one of the radical socialist almanacs available online. This evening, I’ve posted an article on “Worker Mortality,” by Paule Mink, and an obituary of Emile Digeon, the hero of the Narbonne Commune and theorist of “rational anarchism.” There are quite a number of other interesting items in the Almanach de la Question Sociale. I’m working on a letter about Louise Michel at the moment [now complete], and I’ll probably return to a couple of other items by Paule Mink and Louise Michel as time allows.

Letter of Henri Rochefort on Louise Michel

December 26, 2011 Shawn P. Wilbur

Letter of Henri Rochefort on Louise Michel (1) Dieppe, July 6, 1883. My Dear Citizen Argyriadès, I have only known our friend aboard the warship that transported us to New Caledonia. But I know that during the siege she had heroically fait le coup de l’eu against the Prussians, under whose guns she went to gather the wounded. It is likely that none of those who condemned her could have accomplished such exploits. I have recounted before the court of assizes her devotion for her fellow deportees, to whom she gave even her coat and her socks, keeping for herself […]

Obituary for Emile Digeon, hero of the Narbonne Commune

December 25, 2011 Shawn P. Wilbur

[ezcol_2third] Our Dead EMILE DIGEON Long ago, a young man, who had been a soldier under Digeon at Narbonne, spoke of him in the best possible terms, but I had never seen him, when some years ago—four or five years—I had the occasion to find myself in his company. It was the first and last time—alas!—that I would see him. It was at a meeting, at the Salle de Bretagne, organized, I believe, by the Egalité or the Socialist League founded by that journal. Odin, Zevaco and others were to speak. We were, some friends and I, sitting close to […]

Worker Mortality, by Paule Mink (1895)

December 25, 2011 Shawn P. Wilbur

WORKER MORTALITY While so much noise is made about the anarchist attacks (attentats) and the victims they have produced, it is not without interest to consider briefly the conditions of the worker’s labor and to see how many victims have been made by the capitalist, that devourer of strengths and of workers’ lives. We do not want, at present, to enumerate the victims of the frequent accidents in the mines, the railroads, and construction sites, which can add up to millions and millions each year; we will concern ourselves, for the moment, only with those unfortunates who die slowly as […]

1839: Proudhon on property and theft

December 23, 2011 Shawn P. Wilbur

EPISODES in another history: I. Over the last few years, I’ve spent a lot of time demonstrating how the very suggestive general observations in Proudhon’s What is Property? only really emerge as a property theory when we bring them together with developments in his later writings—and how, even then, we are arguably left to pick up his positive project, imagining a property that would not be theft, ourselves. As it turns out, there are also some clarifications to be made by looking back at Proudhon’s earlier work, from 1839, The Celebration of Sunday. The Celebration of Sunday is a peculiar […]

A couple of historical gems

December 23, 2011 Shawn P. Wilbur

Roderick Long has posted a translation of a chapter from Gustave de Molinari’s 1893 work on “Labor-Exchanges.” I doubt anyone not already interested in Molinari’s work will be won over, but it’s a very interesting bit of that particular puzzle—and it’s good to see more of Molinari’s work in translation. Our understanding of all the players in anarchist/libertarian circles is enhanced by making more works available to more readers. Readers of French may be interested in P.-J. Proudhon’s review of the “Essai sur l’analyse physique des langues, ou Alphabet méthodique,” by Paul Ackermann, which Woodcock cites as Proudhon’s first published […]

M. Corbeau’s Gallery of Rogues

December 20, 2011 Shawn P. Wilbur

‎”M. CORBEAU’S Gallery of ROGUES” is the monthly miscellany of radical auto/biography that I’m hoping to launch about January 15, 2012. I’ve said that I won’t release an issue until I have three ready to print, so there are minimal hassles with subscriptions and standing orders. I’m just a couple of dozen pages of translation from that point, and feeling pretty good about how things are coming together. Here are tentative contents for those first three issues. M. CORBEAU’S Gallery of ROGUES #1 1. Shawn P. Wilbur—“Who was Eliphalet Kimball?” (with texts and working bibliography)2. Charles Malato—“Some Anarchist […]

Stephen Pearl Andrews on Equitable Commerce, 1850

December 20, 2011 Shawn P. Wilbur

[one_third padding=”0 10px 0 0px”] Stephen Pearl Andrews was a bizarre, multi-faceted character, whose contributions to anarchism have sometimes been overshadowed by the peculiarity of his contributions in other fields of study. I’ve been slowly-but-surely trying to make sense of my notes on Andrews, and in the course of trying to fill some gaps in the story of his involvement with a sort of perpetual-motion machine scheme (a story in which Josiah Warren also plays at least a bit part), I discovered that the Library of Congress had made large runs of the New York Daily Tribune available online. They […]

bibliography

An Index to “Mother Earth”—Phase One

December 20, 2011 Shawn P. Wilbur

My friend Barry Pateman, of the Kate Sharpley Library, recently provided me with the raw data for an index of Mother Earth magazine. I had a couple of very specific questions that I needed to answer, but looking through the listings reminded me that I had gone as far as copying the contents pages for the full run and starting to digitize them some years back. I set myself the task of at least typing in the listings for a handful of major figures—Emma Goldman, Voltairine de Cleyre, C. L. James, etc. As it turns out, I managed to accomplish […]