Blog - Page 5 of 286 - The Libertarian Labyrinth

Henri de Saint-Simon (1760 – 1825)

November 3, 2024 Shawn P. Wilbur

Links: Letters from an Inhabitant of Geneva to his Contemporaries (pdf) Researching the background and origins of anarchism means engaging to some extent with the works of most of the so-called “utopian socialists.” In recent years, I’ve had a chance to revisit and translate works by Pierre Leroux, Charles Fourier and some more obscure figure, but hadn’t had a chance to get reacquainted — and better acquainted — with Claude Henri de Rouvroy, comte de Saint-Simon. It has not been the most appealing of side-projects, simply because the literature of Saint-Simonianism is both extensive — 47 volumes in the main […]

Benjamin Colin (1818-1884)

October 21, 2024 Shawn P. Wilbur

There are a handful of very early anarchist or at least anarchistic writings identified by Max Nettlau that have remained elusive in my searches. One in particular — “Plus de gouvernement!” by Benjamin Colin — has nagged at me a bit, since I have known that the paper it was published in, L’Homme, journal de la démocratie universelle, was accessible in various forms and included some other anarchism-related content. But I have never got around the making the extra effort or financial outlay necessary to get my hands on it.

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Text and Notes: Justice in the Revolution and in the Church: First Study

September 10, 2024 Shawn P. Wilbur

In the First Study, Proudhon attempts to establish the foundation for his study, presenting some basic definitions and axioms, much as he did at the beginning of The Creation of Order in Humanity. The first chapter, where that foundation-building is most elementary, was subject to very light revision in the revised and expanded edition, and I have, for the most part, simply provided the text from 1860. Subsequent chapters were subject to both considerable revision and considerable expansion — and the differences are instructive enough that I’ll focus on them a bit more than in most studies.

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Text and Notes: Justice in the Revolution and in the Church: Preliminary Address (concluded)

September 6, 2024 Shawn P. Wilbur

This selection concludes the “Preliminary Address.” I have repeated the few paragraphs from the third section that I included at the end of the first installment.

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Text and Notes: Justice in the Revolution and in the Church: Prologue / Preliminary Address

September 5, 2024 Shawn P. Wilbur

As a way to focus my efforts on the fine revision and annotation of my translation of Justice in the Revolution and in the Church, I’m going to post a series of annotated sections documenting the major changes in the work between the two editions, with preliminary notes for the New Proudhon Library Glossary and some thoughts about some of the major interpretive issues.

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Justice in the Revolution and in the Church: Revised Translation Sample

August 10, 2024 Shawn P. Wilbur

I have started to carefully revise my translation of Proudhon’s Justice in the Revolution and in the Church, polishing the completed text of the 1860 expanded edition and simultaneously completing a uniform draft of the 1858 first edition. A first sample, consisting of the Prologue and First Study from the 1858 edition, is available online.

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P.-J. Proudhon, Proposal for a Society of the Perpetual Exhibition (1855)

April 18, 2024 Shawn P. Wilbur

The newest draft translation added to the New Proudhon Library project is the proposal for a Society of the Perpetual Exhibition, in answer to a call by Emperor Napoleon III for uses for the Palais de l’Industrie built in Paris for the 1855 World Fair. The project resembles Proudhon’s mutual credit proposals, as well as the various schemes for association proposed by Bellegarrigue in the 1850s.

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Emile Gautier, “Social Darwinism” (1877 / 1880)

April 14, 2024 Shawn P. Wilbur

Emile Gautier’s 1880 pamphlet, Le Darwinisme sociale, is often cited as the first French use of the term “social Darwinism,” three years after the term was first used in English. Gautier was an anarchist, the a political prisoner, and finally a popular science writer and novelist. He was tried alongside Kropotkin in the “Trial of the 66,” collaborated with Louise Michel, and provided the preface for Sébastien Faure’s La douleur universelle. Drawn into a debate about the application of Darwin’s theories to the solution of social problems, he championed a pro-socialist interpretation of the science, anticipating Kropotkin’s Mutual Aid in some ways. A translation of the pamphlet can be found in the pdf linked in the sidebar, but the research for that task also turned up an earlier essay, with the same name and much the same argument, in a periodical, Le Mot d’Ordre, in which Gautier was one of the principal contributors. That essay (also included in the pdf) is presented below.

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P.-J. Proudhon, “The Creation of Order in Humanity” — Chapter V

February 25, 2024 Shawn P. Wilbur

OF THE CREATION OF ORDER IN HUMANITY OR PRINCIPLES OF POLITICAL ORGANIZATION BY P.-J. PROUDHON Istæ sunt generationes cœli et terræ… Juxtà genus suum et speciem suam. (Gen. i et ii.) NEW EDITION 1873 [originally published 1843, revised 1849] [These draft translations are part of on ongoing effort to translate both editions of Proudhon’s Justice in the Revolution and in the Church into English, together with some related works, as the first step toward establishing an edition of Proudhon’s works in English. They are very much a first step, as there are lots of decisions about […]

P.-J. Proudhon, “The Creation of Order in Humanity” — Chapter IV

February 22, 2024 Shawn P. Wilbur

OF THE CREATION OF ORDER IN HUMANITY OR PRINCIPLES OF POLITICAL ORGANIZATION BY P.-J. PROUDHON Istæ sunt generationes cœli et terræ… Juxtà genus suum et speciem suam. (Gen. i et ii.) NEW EDITION 1873 [originally published 1843, revised 1849] [These draft translations are part of on ongoing effort to translate both editions of Proudhon’s Justice in the Revolution and in the Church into English, together with some related works, as the first step toward establishing an edition of Proudhon’s works in English. They are very much a first step, as there are lots of decisions about […]