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Josiah Warren, Positions Defined

December 10, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur

[ezcol_1third]. . .[/ezcol_1third] [ezcol_2third_end] Positions Defined An impression is abroad, to some extent, that the “Equity movement” is necessarily characterized by an unusual latitude in the Marriage relations—I as one, protest against this idea. “The Sovereignty of every Individual” is as valid a warrant for retaining the present relations, as for changing them; and it is equally good for refusing to be drawn into any controversies or even conversations on the subject. I find no warrant in my “sovereignty” for invading, disturbing, or offending other people, whatever may be their sentiments or modes of life, while they act only at […]

1848 origins of “agro-industrial federation”

December 5, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur

[one_third padding=”0 10px 0 0px”] Contr’un Revisited: The work doesn’t always move from triumph to triumph. Sometimes there are missteps or bits that were a little less than fully thought through. [/one_third][two_third_last padding=”0 0px 0 10px”] We can’t say he didn’t warn us, but Proudhon, despite his explicit embrace of a certain kind of productive contradiction, challenges readers to keep his antinomies in play, and to follow along as he reasons from the most individualistic of starting positions—complete and absolute insolidarité, the denial of common interests—to something like agro-industrial federation, which involves at least some sort of intense “centralization.” In […]

Debate on Abolition and Disunion (1847)

December 5, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur

[one_third padding=”0 10px 0 0px”][/one_third][two_third_last padding=”0 0px 0 10px”] [Here is a slightly “pre-anarchist” Stephen Pearl Andrews and a Wendell Phillips eager not to be taken as a “no-government man, debating the question of disunion in the context of abolitionism.] ABOLITION REASONS FOR DISUNION. By Wendell Phillips. [A Reply to appear in our next Number.] THE youngest of us can remember the time when it was thought an offence next door to treason, to calculate the value of the Union. Of late years, there are many who not only calculate its value, but openly declare that they would rather part […]

My NaNoWriMo

December 3, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur

Well, I’ll admit with no regrets that I did not complete the 50,000 words of fiction necessary to “win” during November’s National Novel Writing Month. Some other realities intervened. I wrote a little over 25,000 words on The Distributive Passions, some of which is up on the site. (I may have covered the other half in other writings.) Winner or not, I had a very good time trying, and the pressure of trying to get ready for a month of sustained writing did wonders for my overall sense of where the novel is going. I did manage to write a […]

Anarchist-communism, work, and the virtue of selfishness

December 1, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur

[one_third padding=”0 10px 0 0px”] Contr’un Revisited: Obviously, it’s a big moment when Joseph Déjacque enters the mix, but there’s a lot going on here that would bear fruit later. Adding Déjacque to my list of early anarchist obsessions moved me closer to the recognition of an Era of Anarchy, and discovering the influence of both Fourier and Pierre Leroux in his work would sharpen my interest in the “utopian” roots of anarchism, but the first really dividend from my work on Déjacque was a sense that I had been underestimating the place of egoism among the early anarchists. At […]

An excellent resource on Proudhon

November 30, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur

[ezcol_1third] Contr’un Revisited: Ten years later, I finally have a copy of my own! [/ezcol_1third] [ezcol_2third_end] I’ve found very little in the literature on anarchism that does much justice to Proudhon’s work. His economic ideas—which were complex, based in a principle of “antinomies,” and expressed at different times in significantly different language—are generally treated without much attention to detail. (The anarchist literature is substantially better in this regard than the Marxist literature, which nearly always simply repeats the judgments of Marx.) One very fine exception to the general rule is Rob Knowles’ Political Economy from Below: Economic Thought in Communitarian […]

Mutualism: the Anarchism of Approximations — II

November 29, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur

Contr’un Revisited: Sometimes it’s the little things in these old posts that reminds me just how far I’ve traveled, even if I’ve ended up somewhere relatively close to where I started. For example, I had a vague memory that “The Lesson of the Pear-Growers’ Series” had not originally appeared on this blog, but had completely forgotten about On ALLiance, the short-lived blog dedicated specifically to exploring theory suitable for the multi-tendency Alliance of the Libertarian Left. In hindsight, I guess that the handful of posts that appeared there were an early attempt at what I’ve been calling a “shareable narrative” […]

Godek Gardwell (Edward Kellogg) to the Merchants’ Magazine

November 24, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur

Godek Gardwell, “Labor and Other Capital” The Merchants’ Magazine and Commercial Review, 18, 1 (January 1848), 65. Art. VIII.—LABOR AND OTHER CAPITAL:THE RIGHTS OF EACH SECURED, AND THE WRONGS TO BOTH ERADICATED. Freeman Hunt, Esq.—Dear Sir: Although it is universally admitted that nearly all wealth is the product of labor, yet the laboring classes of all civilized nations have been, and are, as a body, poor. If the natural product of labor be wealth, the natural result of toil would be competence or wealth to those who performed the labor, unless something intervened to deprive them of their natural rights. […]

The Lesson of the Pear Growers’ Series

November 21, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur

[ezcol_1third] Contr’un Revisited: At the time, I had only the vaguest notion of how important the influence of Fourier would be on my own thinking, although this is one in a series of instances where we have to make a note that there is much more work to be done. I still think it is fair to characterize Proudhon’s understanding of social forces as “relentlessly positive,” although my appreciation of the role that “universal antagonism” plays in his thought has grown enormously. There is clearly a side to Proudhon that is relentlessly critical, sometimes earning him the reputation he has […]

Josiah Warren on “Communism”

November 19, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur

I’ve finally posted all ten installments of Josiah Warren’s “The Motives for Communism: How It Worked and What It Led To” on the Libertarian Library blog. The series appeared in Woodhull and Claflin’s Weekly in 1872. I think it’s worth mentioning again that what Warren is most concerned about with regard to “communism” is not a system of economics or property, but the assumption of a community of interests prior to the individual investigation of individual interests. You can compare Warren’s account to that of Paul Brown, another New Harmony dissident. Speaking of Brown, I’ve been slowly transcribing his Gray […]