Blog

Contr'un

Echoes and Fragments: Collective Egoism

April 14, 2010 Shawn P. Wilbur
One of the elements of Proudhon’s social theory which sometimes strikes people as odd or objectionable is his emphasis on “collective force” and his insistence on the existence of collective beings or individuals. I’ve had some understandably skeptical responses to my claim that Proudhon’s philosophy is essentially a philosophy of individualism—but encompassing individuals at every conceivable scale. That is, of course, a bit of a simplification—even a simplism—if we neglect to mention that, for Proudhon, individualism had a tendency to lead into socialism, and vice versa. Recall, for instance, that he expected an absolutely free and individualistic society, based on […]
Contr'un

DIY: Paper

April 13, 2010 Shawn P. Wilbur
As part of the process of developing my workflow for Corvus, I’ve been trying to find the best way to handle the fairly considerable amount of scrap paper which is generated by the publishing process. Printing errors, test printings, failed experiments, unused corners and ends–all of this stuff piles up, and there is a lot more of it as I start to experiment with handbinding and with formats other than the 8.5×5.5 pamphlet. I’m fortunate to have very good recycling options here, so presumably nothing need go to waste. But an awful lot of what is piling up in the […]
Contr'un

Taking Wing…Once Again

April 11, 2010 Shawn P. Wilbur
It’s been an up-and-down ride for Corvus Editions, in its first, exploratory year. But a combination of my growing confidence in the general soundness of the project and my growing dissatisfaction with the options have finally pushed me to “quit the day job” at Borders, and give Corvus another year—this time as a full-time business. I know things have been rather quiet on that front, as I’ve been reinventing myself and the business in a variety of ways. But I’ve been working steadily at new pamphlets, attending book-fairs, finding new supplier and honing some new skills. I expect the full […]
Contr'un

Echoes and Fragments: Edward Carpenter’s progressive philosophy

April 8, 2010 Shawn P. Wilbur
With the most unappealing of the nominally “progressive” schools in the limelight, it’s sometimes hard to recall any of the others, but, of course, mutualism, as the “anarchism of approximations,” is another claimant to the label (and there has been some overlap of the traditions in figures like Golden Rule Jones.) I’ve been arguing that the original mutualist project of “synthesizing” or “harmonizing” individualism and socialism was replaced by a wide spectrum of less comprehensive approaches, all of which addressed some part of the larger project, and which therefore have something to say to anyone attempting to take up that […]
Contr'un

The Mutualist #1 – Intro

April 1, 2010 Shawn P. Wilbur
I’m putting the finishing touches on issue #1 of The Mutualist, and will start shipping orders over the next couple of days. Here is the introduction to that issue: Out of the Labyrinth This first issue of THE MUTUALIST continues the work begun in the two issues of LEFTLIBERTY, but with significant difference in context and approach. The earlier works were part of a tentative, exploratory phase of my work, a kind of preliminary mapping of the “Libertarian Labyrinth,” where the focus was really on establishing the radical diversity of our anarchist/libertarian heritage. There is certainly much, much more exploring […]
Proudhon Library

Proudhon on Force and Rights (War and Peace)

March 31, 2010 Shawn P. Wilbur
These extracts from Proudhon’s War and Peace will appear in The Mutualist #1 (which will itself appear in the next couple of days.) It’s useful to recall that Proudhon treated “justice” almost entirely as a matter of the balance of forces, and acknowledged that there would be “degrees” of justice, just as there are of liberty, or of the strength and present expression of all human faculties. As early as What is Property?, Proudhon gave a historical account of the development of justice in its earliest stages: balance of strength, followed by balance of strength and guile. His scattered treatments […]
Contr'un

A Note on “Another note on the term ‘private property’”

March 18, 2010 Shawn P. Wilbur
I posted this reply to Brad Spangler’s “Another note on the term ‘private property.’” I think it’s worth posting here, since it sums up my own present approach to the question of what makes a useful and theoretically “elegant” theory of property: I’m constantly uncertain why modern Lockeans support Locke’s analysis. It seems to me that the strength of the model is that it gives us a clear mechanism for appropriation (labor mixing), a rationale for that appropriation (extension of the self), and a rule for avoiding the monopolization of property (the provisos.) That’s pretty elegant. Add an active, “unmixing” […]
Contr'un

Anselme Bellegarrigue on “The Revolution”

March 18, 2010 Shawn P. Wilbur
Bellegarrigue’s Anarchy: A Journal of Order only lasted for two issues, although he had projected several more. The first issue contained his “Manifesto”  — translated and published in part by Benjamin Tucker in Liberty, and in full by the Kate Sharpley Library — and the second was dedicated to “The Revolution.” Like Proudhon, Bellegarrigue was a strong critic of the direction that the 1848 revolution had taken: “In theory, the Revolution is the development of well-being. In practice, it has only been the extension of malaise.” And, like Proudhon, he pointed to certain essential contradictions which prevented that “development of […]
Bakunin Library

Bakunin’s “Political Theology of Mazzini”

March 11, 2010 Shawn P. Wilbur
[one_third padding=”0 10px 0 0px”] There are still lots of gems hidden in the pages of Liberty, and some of them are not, perhaps, quite what you would expect to find. For instance, Sarah Holmes translated Bakunin’s lengthy essay, “The Political Theology of Mazzini and the International,” and Tucker serialized it in his paper. I’ve collected the text here in the Libertarian Labyrinth archive and will be releasing a pamphlet version at the Bay Area Anarchist Book Fair next weekend. It’s a very interesting read. Give it a look. [/one_third][two_third_last padding=”0 0px 0 10px”] The Political Theology of Mazzini And […]