Anarchist Beginnings

Anarchist Beginnings

Anselme Bellegarrigue, “Anarchy is Order” (1850)

August 29, 2016 Shawn P. Wilbur
[from Anarchy, A Journal of Order, No. 1] I.—Anarchy is Order. Were I to pay heed to the meaning generally attached to certain words, a common error having made anarchy a synonym of civil war, I should hold in horror the title that I have placed at the head of this publication, for I have a horror of civil war. I both honor and flatter myself in never having belonged to a group of conspirators or to a revolutionary battalion, because it shows, on the one hand, that I have been too honest to dupe the people, and, on the […]
Anarchist Beginnings

Max Nettlau, “On Centralization” (1909)

August 26, 2016 Shawn P. Wilbur
[The essay “On Centralization” is one of the few texts from the collection Critica Libertarian that has remained untranslated. For those interested in the questions addressed here, there was ongoing discussion in Les Temps Nouveaux at the time.] I am happy that someone has finally thought about proportion (1), which, in my opinion, holds the true, practical (automatic, so to speak) solution of the differences between centralization and decentralization. The problem remains complicated nonetheless, for proportion is not a single, unchanging term. I mean that for every organism there must be a certain minimum of proportion in order for it […]
Anarchist Beginnings

Bibliography of Anarchy — II — First Works of Anarchist Literature in England

July 8, 2016 Shawn P. Wilbur
CHAPTER II First Works of Anarchist Literature in England. A Vindication of Natural Society: or, a view of the miseries and evils arising to mankind from every species of artificial society. By a late noble writer, namely St-John Viscount Bolingbroke (London, 1756, in-8°). Its true author was Edmund Burke. Other editions: in Fugitive pieces on various subjects by several authors, vol. 2 (London, 1761; Dublin 1762; London, 1765, 1771; London, 1780, XIV, 106 pp., 81); A Vindication of Natural Society… in a letter to Lord ***, by Edmund Burke, a new edition (Oxford, 1796, VIII, 62 pp. in-8°); The Inherent […]
Anarchist Beginnings

Bibliography of Anarchy — I — Precursors of Anarchy

July 8, 2016 Shawn P. Wilbur
CHAPTER I Precursors of Anarchy. The anarchist literature has no determined origin, not being the expression of a system invented and progressively elaborated, but the very of systems. It is born of the need to demolish arbitrary power in all its forms, the rules and duties imposed by prejudices or by force, and to give rise to the free development of humanity. Therefore every act that was accomplised and every word that was spoken in hatred of that constraint and in favor of that liberty are conscious or unconscious works of anarchy. Not having made detailed studies in the ancient […]
Anarchist Beginnings

Max Nettlau, “Bibliography of Anarchy” (1897)

July 8, 2016 Shawn P. Wilbur
Related links: Max Nettlau: Main Page Bibliography of Anarchy BY MAX NETTLAU (1897) PREFACE. The work that we publish today could only be attempted by an erudite bibliophile, having in addition the devoted collaboration of numerous friends. The friends have presented themselves and this unselfish convergence of forces appears to us to be one proof among a thousand that the anarchists, just by “doing as they wish,” know however how to unite their individual wills in a collective will. No leader, no elected or self-imposed council has given the that his book should appear. The bibliographic essay composed by our […]
Anarchist Beginnings

Max Nettlau, “Does Socialism Truly Want to Be International?” (1920s)

September 13, 2015 Shawn P. Wilbur
[ezcol_1half] Does Socialism Truly Want to Be International? (MS 1951, Max Nettlau Papers, IISH) (no date, 1920s) This question would appear to be useless after a century of international socialist professions of faith, after the flowering of several Internationals and the struggles of sincere socialists of all shades against nationalism. But it appears to me that it needs to be raised again in some connections, among other that of natural wealth, raw material dependent on the local fertility of the soil and other raw materials so unequally distributed in the subsoil. To whom do these natural resources, whose local distribution […]
Anarchist Beginnings

Max Nettlau, The Struggle against the State (1908)

August 12, 2015 Shawn P. Wilbur
[ezcol_2third] The Struggle against the State [Les Temps Nouveaux, 13 no. 51 (April 18, 1908) : 3-4.] ———– What follows is not a translation, but a free and somewhat expanded summary of an article [“Are there New Fields for Anarchist Activity?”] that I wrote for the revue Mother Earth of New-York (December 1907, pp. 433-444), and as I have been led to make some new digressions, the comrades who publish that revue are completely absolved of any literary responsibility for the present writing. I I have often asked myself why anarchist ideas, which appears so clear to us and add […]
Anarchist Beginnings

Max Nettlau, “The Attempted Murder of Hugo Bettauer” (1925)

July 28, 2015 Shawn P. Wilbur
[ezcol_2third] [The Max Nettlau Papers include correspondence from Benzion Liber, editor Rational Living (New York.) Among the letters is the English-language manuscript of an article written by Nettlau, which was returned by Liber. ]   April 10 [1925] Dear Dr. Nettlau and Comrade: I am sorry not to be able to use your latest and unexpected correspondence, as my magazine is suspended and as I do not know when it will reappear. I have tried to publish it in The Nation—had no time to ask your permission fearing the article would lose its actuality—but, although they found it interesting, they […]
Anarchist Beginnings

Max Nettlau, undated fragment on socialist progress

May 17, 2015 Shawn P. Wilbur
[ezcol_2third] Ever since some 150 years ago demands for social justice from isolate affirmation of thinkers or rebels, became objects of the urge of greater numbers of people who in the most various ways called attention to them and proposed or attempted remedies, the question of social changes was tackled from all sides—that of partial or total, peaceful or revolutionary, authoritatively imposed or voluntarily accepted changes and propaganda, agitation, organizations, plans and schemes and sometimes real action present a most varied and picturesque ensemble with ever so many separate currents, interlaced, wrestling, amalgamating, bursting forth fresh again and so on. […]
Anarchist Beginnings

Max Nettlau, Untitled Fragment (c. 1933)

May 16, 2015 Shawn P. Wilbur
[ezcol_2third] [IISH Ms. 2005—untitled fragment] By Max Nettlau The efforts of the greatest part of the human generations are always limited to their preservation by “the conquest of bread” and harvesting as [much as] possible the fruits of that struggle in improvements of their situation (pleasures, accumulations) and in power and guarantees of security and continuation. That permanent struggle,—like that of the animals that, in order to live, pick or hunt continually some [inert?] plants and weaker animals,—is aggravated among men by the thirst for the accumulation and the refinement of pleasures, culminating in wealth and power as a supreme […]