Blog - Page 245 of 286 - The Libertarian Labyrinth

Josiah Warren, “The Motives for Communism” (1872-73)

November 19, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur

How often have I said to myself, “Oh, for a paper of world-wide circulation, through which we could pour into the public lap the most important results of our lives’ experience! That others who come after us may avoid the thorny paths that have lacerated our feet—may profit by our errors and successes. I hope and believe that your is, or will be, such a paper: and in it I propose to furnish a series of articles, showing the practical workings of Communism and other reform experiments running through the forty-six years devoted to peaceful social revolution; and it will be seen that some facts are more strange than fiction, more philosophical than philosophy, more romantic than romance and more conservative than conservatism.

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William Beck’s “Money and Banking”

November 14, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur

Money and Banking, Or Their Nature and Effects Considered (Cincinnati, 1839), published, and presumably written, by William Beck, was one of the major sources of William B. Greene’s mutual bank writings. It has also been the most difficult one to access in its entirety, since the microfilm, which is relatively common, has a number of unreadable pages, thanks to an early era of sloppy reproduction. A quick look suggests that this is one that Google Books got right. One more piece in place for the critical edition of Equality and Mutual Banking (1850), which will be my top priority, once […]

Mutualism, the Anarchism of Approximations, I

November 14, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur

What is Mutualism? It is a question that even self-proclaimed mutualists may hesitate to answer. Since 1826, when the term mutualist first appeared in print, there have, in fact, been only a handful of attempts to present mutualism in systematic form. The most important of these, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon’s De la capacité politique des classes ouvrières (1865), has yet to be translated into English. The most accessible, Clarence L. Swartz’ What Is Mutualism? (1927), dates from a period when mutualism had, by most accounts, waned almost to insignificance as a political force.

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Masonic Tribute to William B. Greene

November 14, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur

[one_third padding=”0 10px 0 10px”] [/one_third][two_third_last padding=”0 10px 0 10px”] COL. WILLIAM B. GREENE, 33°. This Supreme Council and the Council of Deliberation for the Order in Massachusetts are called upon to deplore the death of their Ill. Bro. WILLIAM BATCHELDER GREENE, Sov. Gr. Inspector-General Honorary of the Thirty-third Degree of the Scottish Rite of this Jurisdiction. Col. Greene was made a Mason in Paris when a resident there, and after resuming his citizenship in this State, was advanced through the various Bodies of the Scottish Rite, taking his Thirty-second Degree in the Massachusetts Consistory Nov. 17, 1871; and […]

Proudhon and Tucker get psychedelic!

November 14, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur

Wow, man! Tucker’s edition of Proudhon’s The Malthusians, in a very special digital edition. Google Books raises the Art of Screwing Up to the level of, well, ART.

Too much anarchism at Google Books?

November 8, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur

Curiouser and curiouser. While doing some research on early appearances of the word “anarchism,” prior to 1870, I ran across numerous hits on Google Books for very early texts, many of them in French. Now, given the proof-reading and quality control issues I’ve blogged about before, it wasn’t out of the question that perhaps I was seeing some early use of the French word anarchisme, together with some sloppy OCR work, in, for example, Charles Fourier’s Traité de l’association domestique-agricole. But the search engine at Google Books informed me that the word anarchism appeared on thirty different pages in that […]

An Early Libertarian Communist

November 7, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur

Paul Brown, whose Twelve Months in New Harmony I posted some time ago, was, from various indications, a friend of Josiah Warren. He was also the most articulate voice in favor of property-in-common that we have from the New Harmony community. He was the author of a number of books, on a range of subjects, as well as some uncollected writings, under the title “Gray Light,” which appeared in the New Harmony Gazette. I’m working on transcribing Gray Light, which is probably one of the five or six most interesting uncollected works I’ve run across in the last few years. […]

Onward and upward!

November 3, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur

I’m obviously disappointed about the early cancellation of the “Roots of American Anarchism” course, but I’ve also already done much of the work to make the course possible. I had already started breaking the graduate-level course down into undergrad/continuing education-sized bites. What I am currently trying to make happen is a 12-week course covering European philosophical roots, Fourier, some early Proudhon, the 1826 Mutualist, John Gray, Paul Brown, Thomas Skidmore and a lot of Josiah Warren. This would be an expansion of the early phases of the announced course and, if successful, would probably be followed by a similar course […]

Ah, Well…

November 2, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur

I’ve just been informed that the Spring course on “The Roots of American Anarchism” will not run.

Educational counter-institutions, I

October 31, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur

Thanks to those who have responded, either on the blog or through email, to my post on the “Roots of American Anarchism” course. I suspect that our pilot course online will fall somewhere between self-paced instruction and a basic online seminar, or, more likely, that we’ll end up offering both options. There is no reason not to offer options tailored to a variety of learning styles and schedules. I’m open, and I think a viable educational counter-institution has to be open, to a great deal of user-customization of the process. That means being willing to provide a bare minimum, as […]