Anarchist Beginnings

Anarchist Beginnings

Jean Grave, “Moribund Society and Anarchy” (1893)

February 24, 2019 Shawn P. Wilbur
[one_third padding=”0 10px 0 0px”][/one_third][two_third_last padding=”0 0px 0 10px”] MORIBUND SOCIETY AND ANARCHY TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH OF JEAN GRAVE BY VOLTAIRINE DE CLEYRE [With a Preface from the French edition by Octave Mirbeau] [English translation published 1899] —– PREFACE. “Moribund Society and Anarchy” first appeared in France about a decade since, published by P. V. Stock, printer of numerous works pertaining to Anarchy. The conscience (?) of the French army, which the Dreyfus affair has since revealed in all its delicate scrupulosity, was immediately incensed by the chapter entitled “Militarism,” and the author was speedily arrested, tried, and sentenced […]
Anarchist Beginnings

William Holmes, “Why I, an Anarchist, Work with Socialists” (1890)

June 6, 2018 Shawn P. Wilbur
I believe Anarchism to be inevitable But while I believe in Anarchism as the highest truth yet evolved, and until I have more evidence of greater, shall disseminate its doctrines, I am not ready to say it contains no error. Perhaps, in the ever pregnant womb of nature there struggles a higher and grander truth which shall some day come to the world, uniting and harmonizing apparently conflicting theories making possible the quick realization of that noble dream of philosophers, prophets, and sages-the millennium on earth.

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Anarchist Beginnings

Louisa Sarah Bevington, “Why I Am an Expropriationist” (1894)

June 6, 2018 Shawn P. Wilbur
[two_third padding=”0 10px 0 0px”] WHY I AM AN EXPROPRIATIONIST. BY L.S. BEVINGTON. I advocate and I look forward to wholesale expropriation because I do not believe there is any such thing as a right to property, and because I hold that it is disastrous, nay, fatal, to the welfare of all individuals composing the community, to have to regulate their lives and affairs in accordance with a fictitious abstraction which has no warrant and no basis in the natural laws of life. I desire universal expropriation, not merely because the power that property-holding gives to man over man is […]
Anarchist Beginnings

Suggestions for Discussion (1928)

May 31, 2018 Shawn P. Wilbur
In 1928, Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman proposed a small gathering of sympathetic anarchists—including Goldman, Berkman, Max Nettlau, Rudolf Rocker, Luigi Fabbri, Marie Goldsmith, Sébastien Faure and Alexander Shapiro—to discuss the future of the anarchist movement. The meeting was to be a secret, even from most anarchist comrades. They circulated a “syllabus” of “Suggestions for Discussion,” asking for responses from those who could not attend and possible revisions for use in the discussion. I’m collecting material related to the proposed gathering here, for possible inclusion in a later volume of Anarchist Beginnings, focused on internal anarchist critique. SUGGESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION […]
Anarchist Beginnings

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. […]
Anarchist Beginnings

W. C. Owen, “Anarchism” (1895)

March 13, 2018 Shawn P. Wilbur
[ezcol_2third] ANARCHISM. 1.—Do Anarchist-Communists believe in the common ownership of land and capital? I myself do not; that is to say, I certainly do not believe in making such ownership compulsory. Whether common, or private ownership shall prevail under Anarchism, is merely a question of detail. The principle is individual freedom; equal liberty to every man, woman, and child to develop all that is in him or her, and to have access to the life-opportunities necessary for such development; i. e. freedom of production, and of distribution or exchange, which is, of course, only the final process of production. This—freedom […]
Anarchist Beginnings

Welcome to Anarchist Beginnings

December 18, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur
VOL. I — DECLARATIONS & PROFESSIONS OF FAITH Precursors & Related Tendencies: pre-1840 The Era of Anarchy: 1840—1880 The Era of Anarchism: 1881—1925 VOL. II — PROGRAMS & MANIFESTOS VOL. III — CATECHISMS, DIALOGUES, POEMS & STORIES VOL. IV — CRITIQUES & CARICATURES VOL. V — PROGRESS REPORTS & REASSESSMENTS 1850-1876 1877-1919 1920-1930 PROJECT PAGES: Anarchist Beginnings category feed The Why I Ams Beginnings The ANARCHIST BEGINNINGS project began as a series of pamphlets from my Corvus Editions project, simply titled “Anarchisms,” collecting a first assortment of the “Declarations & Professions of Faith,” together with some collective statements from the […]
Anarchist Beginnings

Joseph Déjacque, “The Humanisphere” (1858)

December 13, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur
[one_third padding=”0 10px 0 0px”] [This is an in-progress, working translation. A revised edition is being prepared for publication.] Joseph Déjacque Archive [/one_third][two_third_last padding=”0 0px 0 10px”] Joseph Déjacque, “The Humanisphere” The Humanisphere Anarchic Utopia ———— Utopia: “A dream not realized, but not unrealizable.” Anarchy: “Absence of government.” Revolutions are conservations. — (P. J. Proudhon) The only true revolutions are the revolutions of ideas. — (Jouffroy) Let us make customs, and no longer make laws. — (Emile de Girardin) So speak ye, and so do, as they that shall be judged by the law of liberty…. Stand fast therefore in […]
Anarchist Beginnings

P. R. Bennett, “The Anarchist” (1912)

November 7, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur
[From P. R. Bennett, Ducdame; a book of verses. 1912.] The Anarchist [A critic in the New Age suggests that modern thought can submit no longer to the tyranny of rhyme and metre.] Ravachol Needham was a man of letters, Who refused to submit to the wretched fetters That sought by rules of rhyme and scansion To prevent his soaring soul’s expansion. He had languished long on a dismal sonnet And wasted his eagle spirit on it, Till the poor old bird had been imprisoned So long that it grew depressed and wizened, Drooped its feathers and nearly moulted, Could […]
Anarchist Beginnings

“Anarchy and How To Overcome It” (1901)

November 7, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur
ANARCHY AND HOW TO OVERCOME IT. Following the intense excitement that prevailed at the time of the death of the President, many theories have been advanced concerning the meaning of the term “anarchy,” and each one has had as its accompaniment a plan for the suppression of the anarchist At the present the definition given by Webster suits the popular idea better than anything that is offered, and it is: “Absence of government; the state of society where there is no law or supreme power; a state of lawlessness; political confusion; disorder in general.” The blatant type of anarchist best […]