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Lewis & Ann Masquerier in the “Boston Investigator” (1834-1888)

June 19, 2018 Shawn P. Wilbur

INTRODUCTION January 5, 2026. — I have stood on the top of Mount Moosilauke, on the western end of New Hampshire’s White Mountains, and looked down over the Connecticut River valley. It’s a spectacular spot, which I wish I had been able to visit more often. These days, that view to the west has gained a surprising significance, as I have gradually come to think of a twenty-mile stretch, between Wells River, Vermont, in the north, and Orford, New Hampshire, in the south, as something of a hotbed, in the years when anarchism was emerging, of the kind of thought […]

William B. Greene, “Capital and Labor” (1849)

June 18, 2018 Shawn P. Wilbur

[one_third padding=”0 10px 0 10px”] This was the last series of articles from The Worcester Palladium incorporated into Equality (1849). The first installment underwent minor revisions, but “Socialism in Massachusetts” both begins and ends with substantially different sections. This was not, of course, the end of the articles by “OMEGA” or even the end of the “Equality” series. Greene would contribute at least another dozen articles to the Palladium, but that material never found a place in Greene’s book-length works. In the end, both Greene and Pierre Leroux would leave their respective series on equality unfinished. Wm. B. Greene in […]

William B. Greene, “Equality” (Worcester Palladium, 1949)

June 18, 2018 Shawn P. Wilbur

This series of articles from The Worcester Palladium would be incorporated into Equality (1849) and Mutual Banking (1850), which would, in turn, become the basis for the subsequent editions of William Batchelder Greene’s Mutual Banking. The first did not actually appear in Equality, but became the “Introduction” to the later book, where it appeared with only very minimal changes. The other two installments did appear in Equality, with a few revisions in the second and some fairly significant revisions in the third. Returned to their original sequence, with their original conclusion restored, aspects of Greene’s craft become apparent, as the parallels between the sections are clearer and the wide breadth of material addressed appears considerably less random.

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Letter from William B. Greene to Edward Atkinson, on the State of the Currency (1868)

June 18, 2018 Shawn P. Wilbur

[one_third padding=”0 10px 0 10px”] This is perhaps the last article by William Batchelder Greene to appear in The Worcester Palladium. As it happens, it is also the next to last article left on a list I’ve been trying to track down for a very long time now, so I’m very pleased to be able to present it here. Wm. B. Greene in “The Worcester Palladium” [/one_third][two_third_last padding=”0 0px 0 10px”] LETTER FROM WM. B. GREENE TO EDWARD ATKINSON, ESQ., On the State of the Currency —– Brookline, Mass., Oct. 21st, 1868. Dear Sir: — In our debate, last Saturday […]

Journal: June 16, 2018

June 17, 2018 Shawn P. Wilbur

[one_third padding=”0 10px 0 0px”][/one_third][two_third_last padding=”0 0px 0 10px”] AN ERA OF REFLECTION: For the last week, my research has been focused very much on the 1920s, right at the end of the period that I ordinarily treat in historical work. I’ve been working with a rough-and-ready periodization scheme that breaks the long formative period of anarchism (1840-1920) in a forty-year “era of anarchy,” before the popularization of anarchism as an idea, during which “being an anarchist” meant engaging with an anarchy-without-anarchism, and a forty-year “era of anarchism,” during which the a largely communistic “modern anarchism” attempted to develop its […]

Sébastien Faure, “A Work of Immense Utility” (1925)

June 16, 2018 Shawn P. Wilbur

[one_third padding=”0 a0px 0 0px”][/one_third][two_third_last padding=”0 0px 0 10px”] A Work of Immense Utility To gather all the material introduced in Anarchist Thought by the theorists and propagandists of the entire world; to present in a sweeping and luminous synthesis the essential elements of that Thought; to gather the facts through which that Thought is most clearly expressed; to summarize the events that have continued to justify it and to emphasize more and more forcefully its superiority over all the other social doctrines: this is the intended aim of those comrades who have decided to publish, as soon as possible, […]

L’Œuvre Internationale des Editions anarchistes in “La Revue Anarchiste” (1924-1925)

June 15, 2018 Shawn P. Wilbur

Every manifestation of anarchist propaganda—by speech, by writing, by action—must therefore have a global impact and a universal significance.

In practice, this is not the case and, as a result, anarchists are only informed about anarchist movement and action in the countries where they live and are little, badly or even completely uneducated about what happens in other countries.

One of the causes of this regrettable state of things — and it is not the least of them — is the diversity of languages.

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Proposal for an Anarchist Survey

June 15, 2018 Shawn P. Wilbur

Anything that might have been said then about anarchism’s internal diversity and anarchists’ uneven knowledge almost certainly falls far short of the present reality. So it is worth asking whether it is once again time to make the attempt to consult among ourselves regarding some basic aspects of our present anarchist reality. My own sense is that the time is indeed again ripe, so I want to simply push forward and propose a first set of basic questions, which might be expanded or amended, then distributed and translated, so that the collected responses might serve as a resource.

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Rev. W. D. P. Bliss, “Why Am I a Christian Socialist?” (1890)

June 15, 2018 Shawn P. Wilbur

[one_third padding=”0 10px 0 0″][/one_third][two_third_last padding=”0 0px 0 10px”] WHY AM I A CHRISTIAN SOCIALIST? BY W. D. P. BLISS. Because I was made a Christian by Karl Marx and a Socialist by Jesus Christ. I do not strive to be paradoxical; to me this is a life-fact. I had supposed myself a Christian long before I read Karl Marx. I called myself one; I believed in Christ; I worshipped Him; I prayed to Him; I preached Him; I did everything except follow Him—in other words I was anything except a Christian. But one day I became interested in Socialism, […]

Steubenville Survey: Response by Max Nettlau (1926)

June 14, 2018 Shawn P. Wilbur

[one_half padding=”0 10px 0 0″] RESPESTA DE M. NETTLAU I. La anarquía quiere decir, en suma, la manera como la vida humana se desarrollará en sus infinitas manifestaciones en un medio de libertad, depurado de todos los obstáculos opuestos al libre florecimiento, como el aire de los campos, de los bosques, de la montaña y del mar está forzado a respirar en los zaquizamís y en la fabricas, en las cuidadas mal saneadas de nuestra época. El primer punto de la encuesta: Sobre los problemas actuales del anarquismo y medios par provocar un esfuerzo anarquista internacional contra la reacción autoritaria, […]