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“The Complete Works of P.-J. Proudhon” (advertisement)

May 1, 2019 Shawn P. Wilbur

[one_third padding=”0 10px 0 0px”] [/one_third][two_third_last padding=”0 0px 0 10px”] Under the title Complete Works, we collect all the publications (books, pamphlets, and journal articles) published during Proudhon’s lifetime, which it would be impossible to find stocked in bookstores today. These works, along with his “posthumous works,” which will be published in the same format and by the same house, will comprise –- if we may allow ourselves to say so –- a veritable Encyclopedia of the issues raised by the Social Revolution. Philosophy, ethics, politics, economics, religious exegesis, literary and artistic criticism: nothing has escaped the great thinker, […]

Reading “What is Property? — The Third Social Form

May 1, 2019 Shawn P. Wilbur

[one_third padding=”0 10px 0 0px”] Back in 2014, in the midst of some very general questioning of how we tell anarchist history, I retranslated some of the final sections of Proudhon’s What is Property? and started a close reading of the material. It was two years before I got a chance to fully complete the translation and it’s only really now, in the context of a group reading of the work on Reddit, that I’m getting a chance to return to the close reading. The largest distraction, of course, has been that more general questioning, which has borne fruit quite […]

William B. Greene to D. B. Whittier, September 4, 1873

April 30, 2019 Shawn P. Wilbur

[one_third padding=”0 10px 0 0px”] “In 1838 or 1839, or thereabouts, I met schoolmaster [Joshua] Coffin on a Mississippi steamboat, near Baton Rouge. … I was on the boat as a military man, and in uniform.” [/one_third][two_third_last padding=”0 0px 0 10px”] Turn we now to the maternal ancestry of Whittier. In 1873 the poet wrote to Mr. D. B. Whittier, of Boston, as follows:— “My mother was a descendant of Christopher Hussey, of Hampton, N. H., who married a daughter of Rev. Stephen Bachelor, the first minister of that town. ”Daniel Webster traces his ancestry to the same pair, so […]

PROJECT: Proudhon’s Essays in Popular Philosophy

April 28, 2019 Shawn P. Wilbur

The centerpiece of Proudhon’s mature work is almost certainly the 1860 second edition, in six volumes, of his longest published work: Of Justice in the Revolution and in the Church. First published in 1858, with the subtitle “New Principles of Practical Philosophy,” it was substantially revised and expanded for the new edition, which was presented as a series of “essais d’une philosophie populaire” — and we should probably allow the French term essai its full range of possible meanings: essay, but also trial, attempt, etc., to capture the experimental element in Proudhon’s work. The twelve studies in the work on […]

Notes on “What is Property?” (2019)

April 20, 2019 Shawn P. Wilbur

Commentary on What is Property? These notes are from a group reading of the book on Reddit. While fragmentary, they do raise a number of questions that I haven’t had a chance to raise elsewhere. If nothing else, I’m archiving them to use in a future revision of Tucker’s translation. CHAPTER ONE: Think of this work specifically as a product of the French June Monarchy and as a prize essay, written as a kind of “open letter” to a panel of judges at the academy where he had been studying. It actually became a regular feature of many of Proudhon’s […]

P.-J. Proudhon, “Le droit au travail et le droit de propriété” (1848)

April 16, 2019 Shawn P. Wilbur

[one_third padding=”0 10px 0 0px”][/one_third][two_third_last padding=”0 0px 0 10px”] LE DROIT AU TRAVAIL ET LE DR0IT DE PROPRIÉTÉ PAR P. J. PROUDHON REPRÉSENTANT DU PEUPLE PARIS 1848 —- PROLOGUE Il est deux points sur lesquels j’ai besoin d’édifier mes lecteurs, et qui motivent cette publication. 1° Je n’ai pas pris la parole sur le droit au travail, lors de la discussion du préambule de la Constitution, d’abord parce que le droit au travail, tel qu’il m’est donné de le comprendre, étant repoussé par tout le monde, par la gauche révolutionnaire comme par la droite conservatrice, je n’avais rien de mieux […]

Sylvain Maréchal: Pastoral Simplicity and Patriarchal Government

April 15, 2019 Shawn P. Wilbur

SYLVAIN MARÉCHAL TRANSLATIONS: Dieu et les prêtres, Fragments d’un poème moral sur Dieu (1780) Le livre de tous les ages: ou, Le Pibrac moderne; quatrains moraux (1781) L’Âge d’Or (1782) Livre échappé au déluge (1784) Apologues modernes, à l’usage d’un dauphin (1788) Dame Nature à la barre de l’Assemblée nationale (1791) Jugement dernier des rois (théâtre, 1793) Corrective à la révolution (1793) Culte et lois d’une société d’hommes sans Dieu (1798) Pensées libres sur les prêtres (1798) Manifeste des Égaux (1801) Projet d’une loi portant défense d’apprendre à lire aux femmes (1801) De la Vertu (1807) I’ve found myself perhaps […]

Sylvain Marechal, “A Book Escaped from the Deluge” (1784)

April 15, 2019 Shawn P. Wilbur

A BOOK ESCAPED FROM THE DELUGE, OR, NEWLY DISCOVERED PSALMS; Composed in the primitive language BY S. AR-LAMECH, Of the Family of Noah the Patriarch; TRANSLATED INTO FRENCH BY P. LAHCERAM, Parisipolitan. —– AT SIRAP Or at PARIS. [TRANSLATION IN PROGRESS] […] A BOOK ESCAPED FROM THE DELUGE. PSAUME I. Le Psalmiste annonce sa mission, & prédit les suites qu’elle aura. Dieu de Vérité ! délie ma langue ; je veux t’annoncer aux hommes. Qu’ils ne disent pas de moi : l’Apôtre de la Vérité bégaye. A l’âge où le Christ prêche sur la montagne ; longtemps avant lui, humble Disciple du plus modeste […]

Sylvain Maréchal, “The Golden Age” (1782)

April 13, 2019 Shawn P. Wilbur

The Golden Age consists of roughly thirty “pastoral tales,” touching on subjects that will be familiar to readers of almost any of Maréchal’s work. I’ve begun at the end of the collection, with “The Just Man,” and will add others as time allows. On dit qu’il fut un Temps appelle l’âge d’or, Où l’on sacrifioit à la Vérité nue, Où marchoit d’un pas sûr l’Innocence ingénue : Pour les cœurs Vertueux ce Temps existe encore. They say there was a Time called the Golden Age, When sacrifices were made to the naked Truth, When artless Innocence walked with a sure step: […]

Sylvain Maréchal, “Modern Apologues for the Use of the Dauphin” (1788)

April 11, 2019 Shawn P. Wilbur

[one_third padding=”0 10px 0 0px”] When available, parallel French/English texts are linked below the lesson. Related Texts: The Last Judgment of Kings (1793) Posts with commentary: “The Desert Island“ Sylvain Maréchal anticipates the “general strike”? [/one_third][two_third_last padding=”0 0px 0 10px”] MODERN APOLOGUES, FOR THE USE OF THE DAUPHIN. First Lessons for the Elder Son of a King. —– FIRST LESSON. PROMETHEUS. Thus far, the mythologists have misreported the allegorical history of Prometheus. Here are the facts: that ingenious artist of antiquity, having kneaded clay in water, made from it several figures of men, which he animated with the elemental fire. […]