Blog - Page 236 of 285 - The Libertarian Labyrinth

Unexpected dangers of the free market?

November 16, 2008 Shawn P. Wilbur

[ezcol_1third] [Commentary coming soon.] [/ezcol_1third] [ezcol_2third_end] We know the standard anti-market concern, that even the truly free relations which mutualists and other market anarchists propose (free-market anti-capitalism, equitable commerce, etc…), will lead inevitably (through a […]

An absolutely essential bit of anarchist philosophy

November 9, 2008 Shawn P. Wilbur

I finally picked up a copy of Daniel Colson’s 2001 Petit lexique philosophique de l’anarchisme – De Proudhon à Deleuze. It is simply remarkable; easily one of the best works of contemporary anarchist theory out […]

Counter-development or Bust!

November 9, 2008 Shawn P. Wilbur

As it turns out, I’ve been welcoming in America’s bright new tomorrow with a kind of seething rage against everyone and everything. Not that some substantial fraction of all that hasn’t been asking for it. […]

Another bit on “socialism,” from Proudhon’s “The Federative Principle”

November 5, 2008 Shawn P. Wilbur

Just another of those interesting definitions of “socialism,” from the mid-19th century. I first encountered this particular passage in Proudhon’s posthumously published study of Napoleon III, but is originally from the still-untranslated second part of […]

More Proudhon on the origin of property

October 27, 2008 Shawn P. Wilbur

[one_third][/one_third][two_third_last] Here’s another little bit from “Justice,” which immediately follows the last passages linked. In it, Proudhon explains how, in the very early phases of the “shock of ideas,” property emerged as a social convention […]

“It is the shock of ideas that casts the light”

October 27, 2008 Shawn P. Wilbur

[ezcol_1third] [Commentary coming soon.] [/ezcol_1third] [ezcol_2third_end] One good Proudhon tidbit deserves another, so here are the first couple of sections from Chapter 6 of the Seventh Study (“Ideas”) in Justice in the Revolution and in […]

What’s your four-year plan?

October 3, 2008 Shawn P. Wilbur

If the mayan-calendar-apocalypse folks are right, plans for 2013 might be a bit pointless. But if the poles don’t shift on December 21, 2012, or it they do, but the Earth’s crust doesn’t crack, we […]

What ever happened to (the discourse on) Neoliberalism?

October 3, 2008 Shawn P. Wilbur

Not so long ago, it seemed to me that it was generally accepted among most of my political allies that NAFTA-style “globalization,” and the financial and legislative chicanery that went along with it, were part […]

William Henry Channing, “Call of the Present” (1843)

October 2, 2008 Shawn P. Wilbur

William Henry Channing, editor of The Present (1843-44) and The Spirit of the Age (1849-50), was well placed to gather together the radical threads of the early 1840s. The nephew of the prominent Unitarian minister […]

The Gift Economy of Property

September 26, 2008 Shawn P. Wilbur

Contr’un Revisited: This may well be the best known of my anarchist writings, thanks to its inclusion in Markets Not Capitalism, where, I’m afraid, it is a bit of an anomaly. It is, I suppose, […]