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Anarchism

I would say “mark your calendars”…

August 13, 2009 Shawn P. Wilbur
…but some critical details are lacking. The Canadian Magazine, in 1902, included a short item on the origins of anarchism, which included these details: “The professional anarchist is a loafer and an idler, a gambler and a lover of dark living. Once a year a great anarchist gathering is held on Long Island, New York. The leading sport at the latest gathering there was shooting with rifles at targets made to represent the crowned heads of Europe.”
Corvus Distribution

Corvine Call #4 – LeftLiberty #2

August 8, 2009 Shawn P. Wilbur
I spent our week of record heat digging around in various archives, when I would much rather have been concentrating on writing, as well as getting a few things ready for my weekend of tabling. And then I’ve spent the last week playing catch-up on the writing and attempting to process the lessons of the weekend. In the end, it’s made for a very productive few days, as all of that came together. Even after splitting the issue, LeftLiberty #2 will be at least twenty pages longer than the first issue, and it should also be far superior in almost […]
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LeftLiberty – Best-laid plans, hopefully improved

August 3, 2009 Shawn P. Wilbur
Just a heads-up for those waiting for LeftLiberty 2. With the launch of Corvus, some unexpected breakthroughs in the “new approximation” writing, and the little shifts in my emphases and affiliations, the issue started to balloon well beyond the capacity of my zine stapler, so it has now officially split into two issues: 2 – “The Gift Economy of Property,” which will pull together and revise the blog and forum posts that have been the basis for the “new approximation,” and 3 – “A Doctrine of Life and Humanity,” which can expand a little to address some new material from […]
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A little practical application

August 3, 2009 Shawn P. Wilbur
I spent the last three days, reunited with my friends at Laughing Horse Books, tabling the Western States Center’s “Community Strategic Training Initiative” conference, an event that brings together broadly “progressive” community organizers from all over the western US for workshops and networking. It’s always an odd weekend for me. It takes place at Reed College, site of my first, disastrous year of college (but a really beautiful site for that sort of thing), and the crowd is generally involved in a different set of struggles than I am. But it’s a wonderfully diverse, and genuinely nice crowd, with lots […]
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Orestes Brownson and Pierre Leroux

July 25, 2009 Shawn P. Wilbur
Pierre Leroux was the other half, along with P.-J. Proudhon, of the mutualist mix, as formulated by William B. Greene. Greene was introduced to Leroux’s work by Orestes A. Brownson, and adopted a number of Brownson’s criticisms of Leroux’s works. Greene’s first major writings were, in fact, attempts to come to terms with the thought of Leroux and Brownson. From this perspective, Brownson’s most important works were a review of Leroux’s Humanity and “The Mediatorial Life of Jesus,” both from 1842 – and they’re both available now in Corvus Editions. If you want to understand Greene’s mutualism, or want another […]
Corvus Distribution

Benjamin R. Tucker and Gertrude B. Kelly on Education

July 21, 2009 Shawn P. Wilbur
It’s a rare pleasure these days to stumble on something by Benjamin R. Tucker that I didn’t know was out there to find. When these items surface, it usually means some obscure radical journal or paper has surfaced. In this case, however, the source was the decidedly mainstream Educational Review, which dedicated half an issue in 1898 to “Some Socialist and Anarchist Views on Education.” Two of the contributors were political candidates of the Socialistic Labor Party, but the other two were figures familiar to readers of Tucker’s Liberty: Tucker himself and Dr. Gertrude B. Kelly. For the details, download […]
Anarchism

JUSTICE: Program – Conclusion

July 19, 2009 Shawn P. Wilbur
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Justice in the Revolution and in the Church, Volume I, “Program,” section XIII. § XIII. — CONCLUSION The papacy having been broken, Catholicism is brought low: there is no more religion in the civilized world. The Protestant churches, a sort of middle term between religious thought and philosophical thought, that remained in opposition to the Roman Church, perish in their turn, obliged as they will be either to decisively adopt philosophy, and consequently to consummate their abjuration, or to undergo a restoration of unity, and consequently to contradict themselves. Eclecticism itself no longer has any raison d’être; of […]
Anarchism

JUSTICE: A word about the situation

July 19, 2009 Shawn P. Wilbur
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Justice in the Revolution and in the Church, Volume I, “Program,” section XII. § XII. — A word about the situation. It is by their principles, religious or philosophical, that societies live. Before 89, France was Christian: its monarchy was of divine right, its economic constitution established on feudality. Christian, monarchical and feudal, the French nation could be said to be as well disciplined in its thought as it was in its government. She had principles, doctrines, a tradition, a morals; she had rights. Under Louis XIV it arrived, using its principles, at the highest degree of power […]
Corvus Distribution

Taking Wing: Games We Can’t Win

July 19, 2009 Shawn P. Wilbur
It is often said, in justification of the opportunities for monopoly, which our present business arrangements afford, that it is an encouragement to enterprise; and, that without such encouragement, all men would become drones and idlers.—Joshua King Ingalls, “Competition.” The model of competition that presently has us in its grip really comes pretty close to to that “inhuman struggle for the mastery, which characterizes all grades of business, under existing social conditions,” of which Ingalls complains. Aside from the obvious big-fish-eaten-by-bigger-fish stuff that is playing out in so many areas of business, at the level of the firm, one of […]