Blog - Page 230 of 286 - The Libertarian Labyrinth

Fragments and Approximations – 1

January 23, 2010 Shawn P. Wilbur

[from the Forums of the Libertarian Left] From my perspective, the mutualist norm of reciprocity is more like a tool than a law. Even in the form of a “law of love,” it’s at most a conventional law — and conventions are just approximations, levers that may get the next work done. “Justice” is nothing more than a level, separate indeed from good consequences, but for different reasons, maybe, than Roderick suggests. By 1858, Proudhon had pretty clearly laid out a world in which we had the justice-level, and pretty much everything else was a hammer — and the ethical […]

Reality intervenes

December 4, 2009 Shawn P. Wilbur

My position as an aging, underemployed, uninsured part-time worker in a deskilled industry, in an economy where even the “jobless recovery” is in the hands of rather hapless politicians and stock-market gamblers, doesn’t leave a lot of time or energy for the sort of activism by public scholarship that I’ve been pursuing for some years. And I find myself with less and less in common with most of my anarchist and libertarian comrades. So if the work on mutualism is going to go forward, I have to find other methods and motivations. At this point, I’ll leave readers with this […]

Edualc Reitellep defines “Quarry”

October 9, 2009 Shawn P. Wilbur

New York, 1874: Claude Pelletier, who liked to sign his books backwards, was developing his system of Atercratie—anarchy by a name with none of the baggage of the original—in a series of French-language texts, drawing heavily on familiar figures like Proudhon and Pierre Leroux. His Socialist Soirees of New York lays out the basics of atercratie, but he also wrote a long play about the Hussites which included quite a bit of commentary on 19th century socialists. And he compiled one of the various socialist dictionaries which were produced in the period. The project of producing a political program by […]

Dyer Lum on Mutualism, and a note on Proudhon

October 2, 2009 Shawn P. Wilbur

I’m working on gathering the pieces for a series of pamphlets documenting the mutualist tradition, and ran across this rather strange, but very interesting piece, by the frequently strange, but always interesting Dyer D. Lum. Tucker’s translation of the first volume of The System of Economical Contradictions was published in 1888, and Lum’s 1892 piece seems to be a fairly idiosyncratic commentary on it. [I admit that I have tended to treat the Contradictions as a sort of badly flawed middle-step between the initial critique of property in 1840 and the realization that “the antinomy does not resolve itself” in […]

James Guillaume on Federation

September 20, 2009 Shawn P. Wilbur

In the second issue of Solidarité, dated April 1871, James Guillaume contributed this piece on the federative principle, in the context of the Paris Commune. Note the use of Proudhon’s concept of “collective force.” I’m working on translating a series of texts on nationality and the federative principle, to go with forthcoming issues of LeftLiberty. _____ Federalism. The true character of the revolution that was accomplished at Paris commence has been outlined in so marked a fashion that you, even the minds most unfamiliar with political theories, can now perceive it clearly. The revolution of Paris is federalist. The Parisian […]

Thomas and Maria L. Varney—The Other “Equitable Commerce” of 1846

September 19, 2009 Shawn P. Wilbur

[one_third padding=”0 10px 0 0″] Maria L. Varney, “Equitable Commerce, or, Association without Combination,” Boston Investigator 15 no. 48 (April 8, 1846): 1. [editorial notice], Boston Investigator 15 no. 48 (April 8, 1846): 6. Maria L. Varney, “Equitable Commerce, or, Association without Combination,” [concluded] Boston Investigator 15 no. 49 (April 15, 1846): 1. G. W. Rollins, “Reply to Maria L. Varney,” Boston Investigator 15 no. 51 (April 29, 1846): 1. Thomas Varney, “Equitable Commerce, or, Association without Combination,” Boston Investigator 15 no. 52 (May 6, 1846): 1. W. Chase, “Association with Combination,” Boston Investigator 15 no. 8 (July 1, 1846): […]

Kevin Carson on Corvus, and an update

September 15, 2009 Shawn P. Wilbur

Kevin Carson’s latest post talks about my micropublishing project, Corvus Editions, as an example of “household and informal microenterprise.” It includes some details about operating costs and such, taken from a mailing list exchange, which will be new to readers of this blog. I’ll be producing a report on the first three months of operations, in the first issue of M. Corbeau’s Blackbird, sometime around October 1. I expect to have about 100 titles in the catalog at that point, including a third issue of LeftLiberty, a collection of mutualist, proto-mutualist, and near-mutualist texts from the Owenite “high tide” of […]

Instead of a Translation – Proudhon on the clubs

September 13, 2009 Shawn P. Wilbur

Some 19th century “translations” end up being little more than summaries, and some summaries end up being haphazard translations of bits and pieces. A number of the pieces that introduced Americans to Proudhon and Leroux fit one of these two categories. A series of summaries of chapters from Proudhon’s Confessions appeared in The Spirit of the Age in 1849-50. This is certainly a work that needs full translation, but the summaries are interesting, both for the information they contain and as an example of how many Americans first encountered Proudhon. THE CONFESSIONS OF A REVOLUTIONIST. BY P. J. PROUDHON. CHAPTER […]

Mutualism is Approximate (from LeftLiberty 2)

September 11, 2009 Shawn P. Wilbur

Mutualism: The Anarchism of Approximations[continued from Part II]__________ Mutualism is approximate. Mutualism values justice, in the form of reciprocity. Mutualism is dialectical. (Or “trialectical.” Or serial.) Mutualism is individualism and socialism—or it is neither. Mutualism recognizes positive power. Mutualism is progressive and conservative. Mutualism is market anarchism. __________ Philosophical Observations (continued) Mutualism is approximate. It rejects absolutism, fundamentalism, and the promotion of supposedly foolproof blueprints for society. What it seeks to approximate, however, is the fullest sort of human freedom. In The Theory of Property, Proudhon claimed that “humanity proceeds by approximation,” and proceeded to list seven “approximations” that he […]

Uncategorized

LeftLiberty 2 – The Gift Economy of Property

August 17, 2009 Shawn P. Wilbur

The second issue of LeftLiberty, “The Gift Economy of Property,” is now available. It’s 100 pages of mutualism, new and old, fiction and non-fiction. It feels to me like a considerable step forward from the first issue. I hope others will find it useful, or at least provocative. download pdf booklet download 2-up pdf purchase pamphlet