Blog - Page 87 of 286 - The Libertarian Labyrinth

Mary Hansen, “A Vision of Sacrifice” (1907)

May 20, 2018 Shawn P. Wilbur

[two_third] A VISION OF SACRIFICE. We selected the tallest of the bluffs, and climbed to its edge to view the sunrise. The air about us was thick and moist, the gaunt old trees stood out like ragged giants, while the bluff itself on which we stood seemed but one of the many vapouring clouds which floated about its edge. Suddenly from the east there swept upon us a white light, and we sprang to our feet, all but one, who, exhausted by the long climb, lay stretched full length on the trunk of a fallen tree. The light swept up […]

Max Nettlau, “New Tactics For Trade Unionists” (1897)

May 20, 2018 Shawn P. Wilbur

[one_third][/one_third][two_third_last] NEW TACTICS FOR TRADE UNIONISTS. In labor struggles at every juncture, the solidarity of labor and public opinion are appealed to, and prove valuable, or rather invaluable helps to the isolated action of smaller or larger groups of workers. Fortunately their strength and broadness and soundness of views are ever improving—yet this increase of solid co-operation with individual labor struggles seems very far from attaining its full height, for in that case labor would simply be invincible and the end of the capitalist system would be at hand. Hence the question of means to increase this solidarity must be […]

Address of the Internationals

May 2, 2018 Shawn P. Wilbur

[one_third padding=”0 10px 0 0px”][/one_third][two_third_last padding=”0 0px 0 10px”] ADDRESS OF THE INTERNATIONALS. The title of the International Association is sometimes rendered, in English, in translated documents, as follows, “Workingmen’s International Association,” and it is wrongly affirmed, in view of this fact, that the International Association of Working-People aims mainly to secure the welfare of the masculine element among the working-people, leaving the interests of the women at the mercy of the men. Many persons, misled by a simple error of translation, entirely mistake the aim of the association. It appears to be the dream of many otherwise estimable working-men, […]

Angela T. Heywood in “The Word”

May 2, 2018 Shawn P. Wilbur

Men’s wars are grotesque and bloody; but wars between men’s and women’s eyes and ideas will become unique and renovating, and the unsheathed, two-edged sword will be the human tongue. Religion will repent of the subjection it has imposed on women; learning will confess its ignorance to us; books (simply become they are he books) will move forward from their alcove-shelves and come down ashamed longer to be books; and male science will dissolve itself to escape from the infamy of its rude and savage treatment of us. The impression that man can do as he likes without being responsible therefor is base folly, and arises largely from the great selfishness which grows out of his unnatural ascendency over woman through property usurpations and the subtle relations of physical force to her as his mate in primitive stages of growth, as from the animal to the human animal. Having arrived at a human identity, we wish to be recognized as a part of the collective identity

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Eliphalet Kimball in “Woodhull and Claflin’s Weekly”

May 1, 2018 Shawn P. Wilbur

Supposing that all man-made laws in the United States were abolished at once, disturbance and violence would take place only where they were needed. In parts of the country cursed with luxury, monopoly and rich men, society could be equalized and purified without violence. In neighbor hoods where the people were plain and none very rich, things would go on as they did before. If any undertook to commit crimes they would soon be straightened. Society would ferment and work itself clear like a barrel of new cider. Habitual rum-drinkers and opium-takers experience great distress when they undertake to leave off the habit. If they persevere in their abstinence they come right at last. Just so with law-drunken society. Within ten or fifteen years after the reign of natural law commenced, everything would be right.

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André Colomer, “Reflections on Nietzsche and Anarchy” (1922)

April 26, 2018 Shawn P. Wilbur

[one_half padding=”0 10px 0 0px”] Réflexions sur Nietzsche et l’Anarchie Tant de jeunes gens ont lu Nietzsche de 1890 à 1914 — ceux-là qui ont été mourir pour la patrie et ceux-ci encore qui ont présidé aux nationaux massacres et ceux-ci même qui profitent de ces carnages ! Pourquoi Nietzsche a-t-il eu tant de mauvais disciples — tant de disciples — tant de Nietzschéens qui ont recréé en son nom tout ce que ce que Nietzsche lui-même avait détruit ? Des patriotes nietzschéens, des grands bourgeois nietzschéens, des mercantis nietzschéens, des moralistes nietzschéens… Je relis Nietzsche. Certes il est encore loin de […]

Stephen Pearl Andrews, “The Pantarchy Defined” (1873)

April 21, 2018 Shawn P. Wilbur

[one_third padding=”0 10px 0 0px”][/one_third][two_third_last padding=”0 0px 0 10px”] THE PANTARCHY DEFINED—THE WORD AND THE THING. BY STEPHEN PEARL ANDREWS. New ideas require new words: either wholly new, or old words raised and stretched to a higher and broader meaning; and the promulgator of the new thought has to choose between these two alternatives. Pantarchy is a newly-formed word; from the Greek, to denote what is sometimes called “The New,” as constrasted with “The Old,” in respect to the progress of the world’s affairs, and that to which the revolutionary events of our day are a transition and an introduction. […]

Looking Forward—Mapping our “Lost Continent”

April 19, 2018 Shawn P. Wilbur

Despite the potentially daunting number of research and publishing projects I have in progress, I really don’t get overwhelmed by the variety.

That’s not to say, of course, that I don’t get overwhelmed. I do, at fairly frequent intervals, but what is truly daunting about the project-load that I’ve accumulated over the last decade or so is the fact that it is all really just one big project.

Somehow — for my sins, as like as not — I’ve found myself committed to some deep explorations of just how the anarchist tradition developed in its earliest, formative years

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Neo-Proudhonian Anarchism (A Step toward Synthesis)

April 19, 2018 Shawn P. Wilbur

The more we learn about the history of mutualism, the clearer it becomes that the conception we have inherited was conceived—primarily by rivals of Proudhon’s thought—as a sort of theoretical foil for the communist “modern anarchism” of the late 19th century. It’s a rather complicated tale, since what Kropotkin called “modern anarchism” was, in fact, anarchism emerging for the first time, unless we count the purely literary emergence of the term in the works of Joseph Déjacque. There had, of course, been anarchists and theories of anarchy.

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Proudhon to Villiaumé, July 13, 1857

April 17, 2018 Shawn P. Wilbur

My dear Villiaumé, it is too warm for me to venture, with my sick head, all the way to Rue Marsollier. I am thinking instead of fleeing for ten or twelve days to some hole in Franche-Comté, where the devil may perhaps not come to torment me with his pomps and work. But you, who are spry, come some evening after your dinner and we will have a mug at the local cabaret, which will do you as much good as an ample banquet. Friendship, and understanding as well, is surely found in a modest “to your health.”

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