anarchist mutualism

anarchist mutualism

The Mutualist’s Dilemma

July 4, 2012 anarchisms_w4l2ii
Contr’un Revisited: This post originally appeared as the introduction to the Mutualism.info site. As the text suggests, that project was an attempt to focus on what could be said about mutualism in general, while other blogs pursued lines of inquiry that were different and generally more partisan. Two-Gun Mutualism and the Golden Rule, the blog that would become Contr’un, was the most important of those other blogs. There, I was in the midst of a very serious encounter with property theory and just beginning a more serious engagement with Proudhon’s work. The logic of spinning off an introductory blog, as […]
anarchist mutualism

On occupancy and use

January 17, 2011 Shawn P. Wilbur
[ezcol_2third] [This piece first appeared at the Forums of the Libertarian Left, in a thread on “Occupancy and Use.” It seems to add enough to the current series on mutualist land tenure to repost here. The thread began with some very basic questions about how occupancy and use land tenure would play out, and how to respond to the common silliness about people out shopping losing their homes to mutualists, etc.] With any of the basic principles of “property,” you’re going to have to eventually confront a bunch of messy details before you’ve got the “anarchic common law” that could […]
anarchist mutualism

Two-Gun Mutualism and the Golden Rule

February 28, 2010 Shawn P. Wilbur
Related links: Pierre Leroux, “Individualism and Socialism“ “Scraping Some Rust off the ‘Two Guns’ of Mutualism” (January 28, 2014) “Avengers Who Never Assemble” (June 13, 2014) “The Capitalist, the Prince, the Père de famille, and the Alternative” (June 23, 2014) “In Search of the Justicier” (July 18, 2014) “TWO-GUN” MUTUALISM and the GOLDEN RULE Thus one remains in perplexity and uncertainty, equally attracted and repulsed by two opposite attractors. Yes, the sympathies of our era are equally lively, equally energetic, whether it is a question of liberty or equality, of individuality or association. The faith in society is complete, but […]
anarchist mutualism

French mutualism beyond Proudhon

May 8, 2009 Shawn P. Wilbur
[one_third padding=”0 10px 0 10px”][/one_third][two_third_last padding=”0 10px 0 10px”] There’s been an interesting, if not terribly productive, discussion on Wikipedia, regarding the scope of the entry on Individualist Anarchism. It has been charged, with some justice, that the article overemphasizes Anglophone market anarchism, and virtually ignores a number of other currents that might be included with equal reason and justice. That’s one way of thinking about the problem. I’m inclined to beat my usual drum, and suggest that this is another of those cases where Wikipedia simply has no way to resolve what should be in article when essentially all […]
anarchist mutualism

Lessons from the Worcester Palladium

January 3, 2008 Shawn P. Wilbur
I finally sat down to collate some of the “Omega” articles (which William B. Greene wrote for the Worcester Palladium in 1949) against Equality and the 1850 Mutual Banking. In his scan through the paper Brady Campbell identified six articles under the “Omega” pen name. Equality – – No.1 by OMEGA. – Wednesday 18 July 1849 – Deals with Moses, and equality among Christian brotherhood Equality – – No.2 by OMEGA. – Wednesday 25 July 1849 – Deals with the banking system Equality – – No.3 by OMEGA. – Wednesday 1 August 1849 – Deals the repeal of usury laws […]
anarchist mutualism

William B. Greene’s “A Priori Autobiography”

December 18, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur
[ezcol_1third] Contr’un Revisited: [/ezcol_1third] [ezcol_2third_end] 1849 was a busy year for William Batchelder Greene. In that year, he published at least six articles, under the pseudonym “Omega,” in The Worcester Palladium, then collected some of that material and some new work in Equality, the first of his major mutual banking works. He published the first pamphlet edition of his Transcendentalism, which had previously appeared as two articles in The American Review, and he also published Remarks on the Science of History, followed by an A priori Autobiography, a work integrating his apparently wide reading in European philosophies of history with […]
anarchist mutualism

1848 origins of “agro-industrial federation”

December 5, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur
[one_third padding=”0 10px 0 0px”] Contr’un Revisited: The work doesn’t always move from triumph to triumph. Sometimes there are missteps or bits that were a little less than fully thought through. [/one_third][two_third_last padding=”0 0px 0 10px”] We can’t say he didn’t warn us, but Proudhon, despite his explicit embrace of a certain kind of productive contradiction, challenges readers to keep his antinomies in play, and to follow along as he reasons from the most individualistic of starting positions—complete and absolute insolidarité, the denial of common interests—to something like agro-industrial federation, which involves at least some sort of intense “centralization.” In […]
anarchist mutualism

Mutualism: the Anarchism of Approximations — II

November 29, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur
Contr’un Revisited: Sometimes it’s the little things in these old posts that reminds me just how far I’ve traveled, even if  I’ve ended up somewhere relatively close to where I started. For example, I had a vague memory that “The Lesson of the Pear-Growers’ Series” had not originally appeared on this blog, but had completely forgotten about On ALLiance, the short-lived blog dedicated specifically to exploring theory suitable for the multi-tendency Alliance of the Libertarian Left. In hindsight, I guess that the handful of posts that appeared there were an early attempt at what I’ve been calling a “shareable narrative” […]
anarchist mutualism

Responses to some objections

November 19, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur
[ezcol_1third] Contr’un Revisited: Honestly, some of this post has a real Twilight Zone feel to it for me. Consider it evidence of my brief Carsonian period. For me, it also marks an important tension in my own work. Obviously, there was a time when I was content speaking a political language that was very Tuckerite. I get a lot of guff these days for slighting poor old Benjamin R. Tucker, usually from people who have no idea how many hours I spent putting together the first online pdf set of Liberty. And I’ll grant that the various, seemingly endless struggles […]
anarchist mutualism

Mutualism, the Anarchism of Approximations, I

November 14, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur
What is Mutualism? It is a question that even self-proclaimed mutualists may hesitate to answer. Since 1826, when the term mutualist first appeared in print, there have, in fact, been only a handful of attempts to present mutualism in systematic form. The most important of these, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon’s De la capacité politique des classes ouvrières (1865), has yet to be translated into English. The most accessible, Clarence L. Swartz’ What Is Mutualism? (1927), dates from a period when mutualism had, by most accounts, waned almost to insignificance as a political force.

[…]