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Joseph Déjacque – The Humanisphere (Preface)

December 26, 2010 Shawn P. Wilbur

The Humanisphere: Anarchic Utopia Joseph Déjacque UTOPIA: “A dream not realized, but not unrealizable.” ANARCHY: “Absence of government.” Revolutions are conservations. (P. J. PROUDHON)The only true revolutions are the revolutions of ideas. (JOUFFROY) Let us make customs, and no longer make laws. (EMILE DE GIRARDIN) So speak ye, and so do, as they that shall be judged by the law of liberty…. Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage. For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers […]

Jeanne Deroin, “Letter to the Associations on the Organization of Credit” (1851)

December 15, 2010 Shawn P. Wilbur

[ezcol_2third] The radical literature that any of us are actually familiar with always seems to be just a drop in the bucket. There are masses of largely ephemeral publications in every language, and all of the advances in digital archiving have only really begun to make any sort of dent in the work to be done. We can’t ignore all that ephemera, unless we’re content with a sort of abstract, top-down understanding of our traditions. After all, for every Proudhon, there were a dozen Greenes and Langlois, and for every one of them there were dozens of Junquas and Blackers, […]

Working Translations

Emile Pouget, “Sabotage” (from the Almanach du Père Peinard, 1898)

November 29, 2010 Shawn P. Wilbur

This short essay on sabotage covers some of the same ground as Pouget’s famous book, but where that work is in some ways rather scholarly, this piece, from the 1898 Almanach du Père Peinard, is written in the language of the street. It’s profane in places, sometimes rather gratuitously so, and that poses some translation problems. Mitch Abidor has previously translated the piece for the Marxists.org archive, and in a few places I have followed his translation more or less word-for-word. In others, our translations diverge significantly. And then there are a whole series of stylistic differences. Enjoy! LE SABOTTAGE […]

Contr'un

M. Corbeau’s Corvine Call – the Corvus Editions blog

November 27, 2010 Shawn P. Wilbur

Last weekend, I took Corvus Editions out to my first juried arts and crafts bazaar, and yesterday deposited a handful of books in a brand new boutique space for goods made from recycled and repurposed materials. Today, I launched M. Corbeau’s Corvine Call, a blog dedicated to Corvus Editions, book arts, sustainable craft production, micro-enterprise and related topics. After a lot of experimentation of the sort that leaves your fingers too glue-covered to blog much, it’s time to get back to the account I started in the “Taking Wing” posts, and start to talk more specifically about the logistics of […]

Corvus Editions: The Mission

November 27, 2010 Shawn P. Wilbur

Corvus Editions is in the throes of yet another reinvention — something the current book trade makes necessary on a remarkably frequent basis — and this page will soon be updated to cover the movement of the project into the realm of print-on-demand publishing. But, for now, this last reimagining of the project will do nicely as an introduction to its goals and philosophy. Corvus Editions publishes memorable, if often forgotten, works of literature, history and philosophy, in attractive, sturdy, affordable hand-bound editions, made from recycled and reused materials. It is a micro-publishing enterprise, committed to supporting other microenterprises—particularly those […]

Contr'un

Sustainable counter-media — Radix Media on Kickstarter

November 14, 2010 Shawn P. Wilbur

Radix Media, a Portland-based radical offset printing and design operation, has launched a modest $5000 Kickstarter campaign, to upgrade their presses and invest in booklet-making equipment. They describe the project as representing the difference between continuing the project, and making it sustainable. Sustainable operation is the goal that so few radical projects reach—and the failure to properly plan, capitalize and equip projects carries a hefty cost in failed projects, badly-used resources and harried radicals, beaten down by the constant difficulties associated with just getting by. When you’re working on a shoe-string, a wing and a prayer, every set-back is a […]

Proudhon’s “New Theory” (3 of 3)

November 11, 2010 Shawn P. Wilbur

[Part 1] [Part 2] §2.—Abstention from all regulatory law in that which concerns the possession, production, circulation and consumption of things. Analogies from love and art. Mobilization of the immovable. Character of the true proprietor. If the reader has understood what has just been said, from the political point of view, of property, namely: one the one hand, that it can only be a right if it is function; on the other, that it is in the very abuse of property that it is necessary to seek that function, he will have not trouble grasping what remains to be said […]

What is property? — Some thoughts about how to proceed

October 29, 2010 Shawn P. Wilbur

I’ve had a couple of useful discussions of property over the last few weeks—over coffee and ale with Apio Ludicrus and online with Derek Wittorff—where the question of the points of contact between Proudhon and Stirner have come up again. There is work being translated that will eventually help to clarify similarities and differences, but there’s also a bit of analytic preparing of the terrain that needs to be done, and could easily be done right now. What I want to try to do right now is to differentiate some of the things that “property” means in these two […]

“property must justify itself or disappear”

October 23, 2010 Shawn P. Wilbur

[one_third padding=”0 10px 0 0px”] Contr’un Revisited: [commentary coming soon] [/one_third][two_third_last padding=”0 0px 0 10px”] Once more into the breach. Proudhon’s The Theory of Property is one of those books I have been wrestling with for several years now. It’s a complicated, frustrating work, being both an attempt to summarize, clarify and rectify errors in Proudhon’s many previous writings on property and an 11th-hour departure into new territory, inspired by the major works of history and sociology which occupied much of his later career. As a posthumous work, it lacks the careful revision and finishing that Proudhon habitually gave his […]

Proudhon’s “New Theory” (2 of 3)

October 19, 2010 Shawn P. Wilbur

Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, The Theory of Property, Chapter VI: “The New Theory” (1865) [continued from section 1] § 1. —”Necessity, after having organized the State, of creating a counter-weight to the State in the liberty of each citizen. Federalist and republican character of property. Observations on the electoral census and confiscation.” Considered in its political tendencies and its connections with the State, property tends to make of government and instrument of exploitation, nothing more, nothing less. In that which concerns the system of power—whether monarchic, democratic, aristocratic, constitutional or despotic—property is by nature perfectly indifferent: what is wants is for the […]