Anarchist Beginnings

Anarchist Beginnings

Ricardo Mella, “La reacción en la Revolución” (1887-8)

December 18, 2016 Shawn P. Wilbur
LA REACCIÓN EN LA REVOLUCIÓN I Con frecuencia, no ya entre los ignorantes, sino entre los más ilustrados, suele ocurrir que la bondad de una idea se extravía y se pervierte por aquellos mismos que más la quieren y la estudian, de tal forma, que lo mismo que en la practica debiera dar un resultado satisfactorio lo da abiertamente contrario y negativo. Tal metamorfosis es por desgracia común á cuantos son más ó menos revolucionarios y nunca es inútil estudiar y determinar las causas que la originan. Así, por ejemplo, en la siempre citada revolución francesa, hubo un elemento, el […]
Anarchist Beginnings

Frédéric Tuefferd, Letter to Albert Parsons from an Anticrat (1886)

November 21, 2016 Shawn P. Wilbur
Eufaula, April 13, 1886 Dear Comrade Parsons:—I have received your papers and am very much obliged for them. Glad that you like my article. I am writing now for To-Day, of London, and for the Alarm, and am going to write for La Tribune du Peuple de Paris. Situated as I am now, I can be of no good but by writing, and I intend to avail myself of it. You may be astonished if I tell you that I never use the word “Anarchy.” I stick to the old word “Socialism.” It can be understood and does not require […]
Anarchist Beginnings

A Socialist Dialogue and Catechism (1898)

November 20, 2016 Shawn P. Wilbur
A SOCIALIST DIALOGUE. Question. What is a Socialist? Answer. One who believes in collective ownership of the means of production and distribution. Q. What do you mean by collective ownership? A. Ownership by all the people. Q. What would be the result of collective ownership? A. The general welfare. Q. How do you know this? A. Because collective ownership has been productive of good wherever tried. Q. Where has it been tried? A. All over the world. Q. How? A. In the management of corporations. Q. Upon what principles do corporations act? A. Upon the principles of collective ownership in […]
Anarchist Beginnings

William Henry van Ornum, “What is Anarchy?” (1897)

November 18, 2016 Shawn P. Wilbur
The average man has imbibed a general idea that anarchy is something quite terrible; and it is only necessary to brand a man as an anarchist to damn him in the eyes of the unthinking multitude. If you wish to kill a dog you have only to raise the cry of “mad dog,” and the cry will outrun the unfortunate beast until some one will succeed in ending his life, whether he were mad or not, for everyone feels, in duty bound, to help kill him. Just so, must people regard it as incumbent upon them to help destroy any […]
Anarchist Beginnings

William J. Gorsuch, “Tags” (1891)

November 18, 2016 Shawn P. Wilbur
The other day a friend, who is so much of a Tolstoian as to be pleased to work for a living, remarked: “You are the first person ever pointed out to me as an Anarchist. Are you an Anarchist?” I replied: “Some folks say so.” I wish if possible to explain that answer. I hold that one of the greatest hinderances to social progress is man’s proneness to accept and wear tags, labels, badges. One of the limitations of language, due to differences of experience and therefore of knowledge on the part of individuals, is that the tag attached to […]
Anarchist Beginnings

Victor Yarros, “Anarchistic Socialism” (1889)

November 17, 2016 Shawn P. Wilbur
State Socialists are in the habit of charging the Anarchists with a partiality for middle-class ideas and institutions, and nothing is more common than the statement that we wish to retain the bourgeois arrangements, while endeavoring to give them an ideal flavor. Our teachings are taken to be identical with those of the individualistic economists of the Cobden-Bastiat school, and we are constantly told that the principles of individualism, inaugurated and embodied by the great revolution in France, have been tried and found wanting, have been condemned and utterly discredited by life itself. Our present social evils are alleged to […]
Anarchist Beginnings

Rosa Slobodinsky and Voltairine de Cleyre, “The Individualist and the Communist” (1891)

November 12, 2016 Shawn P. Wilbur
THE INDIVIDUALIST AND THE COMMUNIST. A DIALOGUE. INDIVIDUALIST: “Our host is engaged and requests that I introduce myself to—I beg your pardon, sir, but have I not the pleasure of meeting the Communist speaker who addressed the meeting on Blank street last evening?” COMMUNIST: “Your face seems familiar to me, too.” INDV.: “Doubtless you may have seen me there, or at some kindred place. I am glad at the opportunity to talk with you as your speech proved you to be somewhat of a thinker. Perhaps—” COM.: “Ah, indeed, I recognize you now. You are the apostle of capitalistic Anarchism!” […]
Anarchist Beginnings

Voltairine de Cleyre, “A Correction” (1907)

October 31, 2016 Shawn P. Wilbur
Owing to a perhaps natural misunderstanding, it was stated in the American report to the Amsterdam Congress that I am a worker in the cause of Anarchist Communism. The report should have said Anarchism, simply, as I am not now, and never have been at any time, a Communist. I was for several years an individualist, but becoming convinced that a number of the fundamental propositions of individualistic economy would result in the destruction of equal liberty, I relinquished those beliefs. In doing so, however, I did not accept the proposed economy of Communism, which in some respects would entail […]
Anarchist Beginnings

Benjamin Colin, “To France” (1852)

October 20, 2016 Shawn P. Wilbur
[ezcol_1half] TO FRANCE. You sleep, France, and you are in irons! You, the advance guard of progress and the future, how long will you tolerate the ignominious régime that oppresses you, and remain sunk in torpor? Does the blood of the victors of the Bastille and of the 10 August no longer flow in your veins? Are 1830 and 1848 dead dates in your history? Would you drink the cup of shame to the lees, without spewing it in the face of the eunuchs who present it to you? If this were the case, nearly all hope would be lost […]
Anarchist Beginnings

Sébastien Faure, “Anarchy” (1934) (excerpt)

October 18, 2016 Shawn P. Wilbur
From the Anarchist Encyclopedia, Vol. I ANARCHY n. (from the Greek: a privative and archè, command, power, authority) Preliminary observation. The object of this Anarchist Encyclopedia being to make known the full range of conceptions—political, economic, philosophical, moral, etc.—that arise from the anarchist idea or lead there, it is in the course of this work and in the very place that each of them must occupy within it, that the multiples theses contained in the exact and complete study of this subject will be explained. So it is only by drawing and joining together, methodically and with continuity, the various […]