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Responding to terrorism

July 19, 2005 Shawn P. Wilbur

[ezcol_2third] Since the London bombings, the question has been raised again – just what sort of response should anarchists have to acts of terrorism? Actual responses have been a little weird sometimes, among the weirder ones the suggestion that anarchists shouldn’t get themselves worked up about such things, as that only plays into the “spectacle” of the “War on Terror.” The problem with that sort of response is that the victims of all aspects of the current world conflict are not merely “spectacular,” though it’s harder and harder to maintain their concrete reality and specificity within the context of mass-mediated […]

Bolton Hall – sketch for a bibliography

July 5, 2005 Shawn P. Wilbur

It’s been awhile since i’ve put together any new bibliographies. Since there seems to be interest in non-state Georgism, i guess i’ll keep at my work on Bolton Hall. At this stage, I’m concentrating on WorldCat, Union Catalog and bookseller records, so i’m getting mostly book-length works. He was extremely prolific, so the list of shorter publications will be extensive. In any event, here’s a start: Crime and criminals, 2nd edition. By Bolton Hall; Clarence Darrow; Eugene V Debs E Haldeman-Julius. Girard, Kan. : Appeal to Reason, ????. The disease of charity. Philadelphia, Justice Pub. Co., 1894. “Emerson the anarchist.” […]

“a toast to dear old Bolton Hall”

July 2, 2005 Shawn P. Wilbur

[ezcol_2third] Bolton Hall, single tax anarchist – the song! The great things you find online! Kevin Carson’s recent post on Georgism led me back to the work of Bolton Hall. I read through his collection of children’s stories, “Monkey Shines,” over coffee yesterday and read parts of “The Game of Life” last night. It’s hard to overstate what a fine writer and sane thinker Hall was. But here’s a taste: The Social Poultice Society The subject for the evening was, “How to Abolish War.” The President suggested, that, as a matter of course, we should prohibit the use of dum-dum […]

A Labyrinthine Plan of Research

July 1, 2005 Shawn P. Wilbur

Contr’un Revisited: There’s a remark in a later post—about the time I moved west, I think—about how the next reshuffling of priorities would leave some projects by the wayside, without anyone really noticing, since their moment and their likely audiences had moved on. To be honest, even I only have a faint memory of this particular proposal for a history of mutualism, so I probably wasn’t far off. We’ll see if What Mutualism Was, my current attempt at a short history of mutualism, manages to appear within its window of opportunity. I’m in the process of finalizing plans for my […]

Happiness is a warm bunker

July 1, 2005 Shawn P. Wilbur

But if this is a potentially fascinating work of architecture, it is, sadly, fascinating in the way that Albert Speer’s architectural nightmares were fascinating: as expressions of the values of a particular time and era. The Freedom Tower embodies, in its way, a world shaped by fear. That’s Nicolai Ouroussoff, in yesterday’s New York Times, talking about the redesigned Freedom Tower. Read the rest of the article, as it gets straight to the heart of at least some of the absurdities of the project. The Freedom Tower will rest on a 200-foot-tall, nearly windowless, cement pedestal, gussied up a bit […]

Varieties of Mutualist History

June 30, 2005 Shawn P. Wilbur

[ezcol_1third] Contr’un Revisited: Looking at this material in the context of more recent work, it’s hard to miss the extent to which a process of extrication is already central to the project. A decade ago, there was nothing particularly controversial about treating mutualism as something that might need to be pulled apart before we really understood what it was. Even the folks who objected more-or-less loudly to talk about splitting mutualism into rival camps were engaged in some splitting of their own. Now, when it is a question of pulling apart anarchism, well, a large number of anarchists seem firmly […]

The Historical Character of Mutualism

June 24, 2005 Shawn P. Wilbur

[ezcol_1third] Contr’un Revisited: I asked some of the same questions you’ll find here in the chapter on mutualism that I just completed for the Palgrave Handbook of Anarchism. I’ve finally decided that the right answers are the ones that are useful in the present situation, provided they’re backed up by a solid understanding of the history. The “mutualist tradition” has really been the battle over “mutualism,” and that’s a battle that a truly surprising number of individuals and tendencies have felt the urge to fight. As it result, it’s hard for any new analysis to be anything but yet another […]

EZLN on Red Alert / Americans “generally in a funk”

June 23, 2005 Shawn P. Wilbur

[ezcol_2third] Scattered thoughts today. . . Things are happening in Chiapas again. The Zapatistas have announced a General Red Alert and are withdrawing the active bases from the communities, suspending some operations, including the Good Government Committees, asking international members of civil society to leave the region of revolt, etc. The context appears to be some showy drug war maneuvers by Fox’s government, including large scale troop movements in Chiapas. Al Giordano has a summary, Mexico: The False Narco-Smear Against the Zapatistas, up at Narconews. Breaking news there indicates that there were marijuana fields siezed in the southern Mexico state, […]

Confessions of a latter day mutualist

June 22, 2005 Shawn P. Wilbur

[ezcol_1third] Contrun Revisited: This is still one of my favorite bits of personal position-taking and much of it still rings true for me, even if I am much less eclectic in my associations these days and much more focused on that anarchy that “accepts no adjectives.” Indeed, the notion of a Babel-in-reverse in the workers’ movements is probably a pretty good summary of much of what I think has gone wrong over time among anarchists. As for the prediction of wild swoops, well, I think it has been fulfilled. [/ezcol_1third] [ezcol_2third_end] What is this Mutualism of which you speak? I […]

A Fork in the Labyrinth (Already), pt. 1

June 21, 2005 Shawn P. Wilbur

Well, dissemination seems to be at work, splitting a blog that, to my knowledge, nobody has actually read, into two blogs that may be just a bit more readable. I would like to take my own sweet time thrashing out some background and theoretical issues and journaling the last throes of my cross-town relocation in the Libertatia Lab Reports, but also feel like i should be getting on with some more direct responses to world events and ongoing critical discussions. So i’ll do the more focused stuff here. One of the conversations that seems well worth being a part of […]