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Mini-Canon Assignment: How-To posts

March 18, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur

[Here’s an archive of the “how-to” posts for the Mini-Canon assignment, from a previous semester:] We want to keep focused on the realm of “great ideas,” even while we research stuff that more specifically interesting to us. The common oppositions help us start pretty high up on the ladder of abstraction: Us / ThemMine / YoursKnown / UnknownHeaven / Earth All of these oppositions involve drawing pretty basic distinctions. If we tried to get much more abstract than this, we would be looking at ideas like “unity” and “difference,” “the one” and “the other,” etc. When we’re talking about our […]

possible scanning breakthough

March 16, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur

This project is always slowed down by my desire to make much of the pertinent original material available as I comment on it. Working from microfiche originals makes this process somewhat cumbersome, expensive and time-consuming. Or, it has done so in the past. I’ve just changed my scanning process somewhat, while working with material from The Twentieth Century, and have been able to at least double my scanning speed in many cases. I hope to get a chance, perhaps even yet this evening, to attempt the same process with some issues of Liberty. Think good thoughts…

Pierre Leroux, The Nature of Man

March 13, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur

William B. Greene’s two early works on mutualism are very similar, to the point of repeating some sections, but the differences are also telling. Greene was attempting to combine elements of the thought of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and Pierre Leroux in both volumes, but it probably fair to say that Equality (1849) is philosophically dominated by Leroux’s influence, as Mutual Banking (1850) is dominated by Proudhon’s. I have lamented at various times the lack of knowledge of Proudhon’s work, even among anarchists. Leroux is virtually unknown, although interest in his work appears to have been a common denominator among an early […]

Fragments of Proudhon on Property and Liberty

March 12, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur

Some Proudhonian fragments, recently translated:The phrase “la propriété, c’est la liberté” appears in the Memoirs of a Revolutionist (1867, Lacroix, p.128) and in the posthumous Théorie de la propriété, (1867, Lacroix, p. 183) where Proudhon writes as if he had said that in 1846, in the System of Economic Contradictions. What he says in the 1846 is actually this, as far as I can tell: “Property, with regard to facts and to rights, is essentially contradictory, and it is for this reason that it is anything at all. Indeed, Property is the right of occupation, and at the same time […]

One mystery of mutualism solved—probably…

March 11, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur

[Originally posted in discussion on Wikipedia.] Swartz’ reference to John Gray in What Is Mutualism? is puzzling. He says mutualism “seems to have been first used by John Gray, an English writer, in 1832,” but does not name the work. The only book or pamphlet from 1832 is Production the cause of demand being a brief analysis of a work entitled “The social system, a treatise on the principle of exchange, by John Gray : with a short illustration of the principles of equitable labour exchange,” which probably isn’t by Gray at all, although it relies on long passages from […]

Joshua King Ingalls, “Property and Its Rights”

March 11, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur

Here’s the third installment in J. K. Ingalls’ series on property and rights, from The Spirit of the Age. Notice that Ingalls had by this time already encountered Edward Kellogg’s work. He had, in fact, written a two-part review of Labor and Other Capital in the Univercoelum (which I’ll be travelling to track down in the next week or so). In his Reminiscences, Ingalls talks about arguing face to face with Kellogg about the latter’s belief that the power of increase through interest was an essential feature of money. This is obviously germane to the issue here, and Ingalls, like […]

Joshua King Ingalls, “Man and His Rights”

March 10, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur

This is the second installment of J. K. Ingalls’ series on the “natural rights of man.” In it, we find the general plan that unites the majority of Ingalls’ contributions to The Spirit of the Age. “When the subject of property, its rights, and the relation it sustains naturally to man, have been discussed, there may be an outline given of a translatory association, the aim of which shall be to unite the efforts of all friends of the race, who look with hope to the future, all friends of industrial reform, all oppressed producers, who feel the injustice of […]

J. K. Ingalls—Man and Property, 1849

March 8, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur

The Spirit of the Age is a really remarkable paper. I’ve been aware of it for some time, as the place where William B. Greene’s “Human Pantheism” appeared, and as one of the projects of William Henry Channing, who, like Greene and Orestes Brownson, was enthusiastic about the work of Proudhon’s rival, Pierre Leroux. Charles A. Dana’s work on Proudhon was published there as well, in the revised form that was eventually published separately. As I’ve turned so much of my attention to Joshua King Ingalls—for reasons which I trust are plain enough—The Spirit of the Age has assumed a […]

Joshua King Ingalls, Grave of the Landless

March 8, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur

Here’s another item from The Spirit of the Age, a poem by J. K. Ingalls. THE GRAVE OF THE LANDLESS On a lovely “green isle,” where the billows of oceanRoll on in their might, where the loud tempests rave,The victim lies still, for not toll or devotionCould in life rear a home or in death buy a grave.The flowers may bloom, and the harvests mature,He heeds them no more as they taunt the oppressed;He has suffered the last which the wronged may endure;He sleeps, and no landlord disturbs his last rest. Oh England, say where are the sons of the […]

Joshua King Ingalls’ 1849 “Creed”

March 8, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur

I’m working my way through the radical transcendentalist / associationist / spiritualist journal The Spirit of the Age, which lasted for two volumes in 1849-50, edited by William Henry Channing. Joshua King Ingalls, the libertarian land reformer who is occupying much of my scholarly time right now, contributed ten articles and a poem to the periodical. I’ve already posted “Books—Their Sphere and Influence,” which is in many ways a very nice companion piece to the “Creed” I’m posting today. Ingalls was no doubt still dealing with his break with the Unitarians, which occured early in 1848. In the Evangelical Magazine […]