anarchist mutualism Archives - The Libertarian Labyrinth

Clarence Lee Swartz, “The Practicability of Mutualism” (1926)

December 30, 2018 Shawn P. Wilbur

Mutualism is applicable to every human relations. Throughout the whole gamut of existence, from birth to death, mutuality—voluntary association for reciprocal action—is everywhere and at every moment waiting to solve every problem of social intercourse, to decide every issue that arises in commerce and industry. In order to practice mutualism, it is necessary to name only two conditions; that the non-invasive individual shall not be coerced, and that no part of the product of any one’s labor shall be taken from him without his consent. With those negative generalizations thus postulated, thereby affirming the sovereignty of the individual, therefrom flows naturally the positive and constructive corollary—reciprocity; which implies individual initiative, free contract, and voluntary association.

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John Beverley Robinson, “The Economics of Liberty” (1916)

December 26, 2018 Shawn P. Wilbur

[one_third padding=”0 10px 0 0px”] While this text is fairly widely available online, some key tables, which were folded in the back of the volume, are not. I do have a copy of the original and will take on the delicate task of scanning them at some point in the near future. The other two illustrations can be found at the end of the text. [/one_third][two_third_last padding=”0 0px 0 10px”] The Economics of Liberty by John Beverley Robinson Herman Kuehn 31 Prince Street, Minneapolis 1916 This book is intended to be a brief and clear statement of the system of […]

Herman Kuehn, “The Problem of Worry” (1901)

February 20, 2018 Shawn P. Wilbur

THE PROBLEM OF WORRY SOLVED BY HERMAN KUEHN THE PRINCIPLES OF SCIENTIFIC MUTUALISM APPLIED TO MODERN COMMERCE 1901 PREFACE. There came to me one day an earnest, intelligent, industrious man tormented by his worries. He wanted me to tell him what caused “hard times” and panics; and whether it was not in the power of the industrial classes to do something to avert them. In a series of letters I unfolded to my questioner a plan of Industrial and Commercial Credit Cooperation. These letters, just as they were written, have been collected, forming this booklet. The author is persuaded […]

Reconstructing the “Anarchism of Approximations”

January 9, 2018 Shawn P. Wilbur

The Anarchism of Approximations (2007) Part I Part II There have been a lot of opportunities recently to think about the last decade or two of mutualist history. Part of what I will have to do, if I follow the plan laid out for What Mutualism Was, is to treat the whole period of mutualist resurgence with a certain amount of critical distance, applying the lessons of mutualism’s long history to a period during which we knew little about the mutualist past and muddled along as best we could. It’s an interesting project, not least because I’m still not quite […]

William B. Greene, “The Red Republic” (1849)

January 6, 2018 Shawn P. Wilbur

[one_third padding=”0 10px 0 10px”] This early article by William Batchelder Greene is one of three written for The Worcester Palladium on the topic of plutocracy. It consists of a translation of most of the eighth chapter of Pierre Leroux’s De la ploutocratie, with commentary by Greene. Wm. B. Greene in “The Worcester Palladium” [/one_third][two_third_last padding=”0 0px 0 10px”] For the Palladium. The Red Republic. The French national flag is composes, as every one knows, of three colors, read, white, and blue. These three colors represent the three estates of the former French realm: the white denotes the nobility, with […]

1848-1868: William B. Greene in “The Worcester Palladium”

January 6, 2018 Shawn P. Wilbur

EPISODES in another history: Omega, [Letter to the editor], The Worcester Palladium 15 no. 23 (June 07, 1848): 3. [see below] Omega, “Equality.—No. 1,” The Worcester Palladium 16 no. 29 (July 18, 1849): 3 Omega, “Equality.—No. 2. The Banking System,” The Worcester Palladium 16 no. 30 (July 25, 1849): 3 Omega, “Equality.—No. 3. The Repeal of the Usury Laws,” The Worcester Palladium 16 no. 31 (August 1, 1849): 2-3. Omega, “Capital and Labor.—No. I,” The Worcester Palladium 16 no. 37 (September 12, 1849): 2-3. Omega, “Capital and Labor.—No. II. Socialism in Massachusetts,” The Worcester Palladium 16 no. 38 (September 19, […]

William Batchelder Greene, “The Blazing Star” (1871)

December 31, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur

Some men — not all men — see always before them an ideal, a mental picture if you will, of what they ought to be, and are not. Whoso seeks to follow this ideal revealed to the mental vision, whoso seeks to attain to conformity with it, will find it enlarge itself, and remove from him. He that follows it will improve his own moral character; but the ideal will remain always above him and before him, prompting him to new exertions. What is the natural conscience if it be not a condemnation of ourselves as we are, mean, pitiful, weak, and a comparison of ourselves with what we ought to be, wise, powerful, holy? It is this Ideal of what we ought to be, and are not, that is symbolically pictured in the Blazing Star.

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“Proudhon’s Mutualism and Anarchism” (1902)

October 19, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur

[ezcol_2third] PROUDHON’S MUTUALISM AND ANARCHISM Notwithstanding the fatal influence of the dialectical metaphysics of Hegel, Proudhon has been able to develop all the ideas which were already expressed in his first memoir on property. We have in mind not only his famous and at once striking and courageous aphorisms, such as: “Slavery is assassination,” “Property is theft,” “God is the evil,” but also the claims which, though not his exclusively, were however formulated and developed for the first time by him in his works, and which may be reduced to the following three fundamental principles of the whole philosophy of […]

What Mutualism Was: An Incomplete History of Mutualist Tendencies

August 29, 2015 anarchisms_w4l2ii

It has been well over a decade since I started piecing together the pieces of mutualist history. At the time, the work had a curious urgency, as the handful of us who had gravitated to the “mutualist” label had a lot of ground to cover in order to really understand just what we had implicated ourselves in. The specific project of sketching all that early history is one in which I have invested less energy as the years went on, but I’ve never stopped documenting the bits of history that I have found. The links here will form an evolving […]

Anarchism’s Ungovernability, and What it Means to Be a Mutualist

November 15, 2012 Shawn P. Wilbur

Some time back I posted an unexpectedly controversial post on “The Ungovernability of Anarchism.” My goal was to start to talk about how the things that we are in the process of learning about the early phases of the anarchist movement, together with the struggles we are currently having to determine the limits of the tradition, raise interesting and potentially troubling questions about the ways in which we can lay claim to the various aspects of “anarchism.” I fully intended to “raise the bar,” but what I said was taken, by a variety of folks with an interest in […]