Bakunin Library Archives - Page 4 of 13 - The Libertarian Labyrinth

Speech on the 17th Anniversary of the Polish Revolution

July 19, 2016 Shawn P. Wilbur

Speech delivered November 29, 1847 and published in La Réforme, December 14, 1847. Gentlemen, This is a very solemn moment for me. I am Russian, and I come into the midst of this large assembly, which has gathered to celebrate the anniversary of the Polish revolution, whose very presence here is a sort of challenge, a threat, like a curse thrown the face of all the oppressors of Poland; – I come here, gentlemen, animated by a profound love and unalterable respect for my homeland. I am not unaware of how unpopular Russia is in Europe. The Polish regard it, […]

Letter to Nikolai Bakunin, February 1, 1861

July 16, 2016 Shawn P. Wilbur

Working on the Bakunin Library involves a lot of working back and forth through the writings, keeping important details fresh and seeing what new details seem fresh and important as things develop. As part of that process, I’m going to spend some time working through parts of Bakunin’s correspondence, starting with the years 1861-1868, preparing to work on the introduction for the first full volume of the edition. I’ll share rough translations of as many of those letters as time allows. The first fruits of that project is the last surviving letter from Bakunin during his exile in Siberia, written […]

An appealing, but apocryphal tale

July 1, 2016 Shawn P. Wilbur

“So you see those fellows yonder?” said a man to me in a Russian village in 1871, pointing to a group of sallow, bearded, low-browed peasants, who were slouching past in their ragged frocks of sheepskin. “These are the men who carry all Russia on their backs, and the moment they find out how much they have to bear, down we all go together; but they endure it because they don’t know how ill off they are!” Few more striking truths have ever been uttered, and the utterer could hardly be accused of speaking without experience, for he was no […]

The Three Lives of “God and the State”

June 29, 2016 Shawn P. Wilbur

I have been thinking about “God and the State” in terms of a choice between two texts: the fragment, “God and the State,” and the incomplete work from which it was drawn, “The Knouto-Germanic Empire and the Social Revolution.” This is the choice proposed by James Guillaume, when he suggested that the publication of the latter should be the occasion for no longer publishing in the former. But, if Guillaume’s suspicions were correct and Reclus and Cafiero knew what they were publishing, and engaged in a bit of “literary artifice” when they presented it as a fragment, what we have […]

Strategies of Presentation

June 25, 2016 Shawn P. Wilbur

[two_third padding=”0 0px 0 0px”] Beneath all the (hopefully useful) chatter, the strategy of interpretation I’m pursuing has three main elaments: To treat the body of Bakunin’s works as rich and relatively coherent, suffering much more from various kinds of incompleteness than from inconsistency; To remind ourselves of the long periods during which we, particularly in the English-speaking world, have not always adhered to that kind of strategy; and To look to Bakunin’s own texts for inspiration when trying to solve the problems posed by their notoriously untidy state. So what are the consequences of those strategic commitments, when it […]

Strategies of Interpretation

June 13, 2016 Shawn P. Wilbur

SIDEBAR I. Engaging with the Texts. Don’t let anyone tell you that organizing a multi-volume edition is easy. It’s not. And organizing an anarchist edition, for an anarchist audience and taking into account even some basic anarchist theory, is much more complicated. I thought I understood all that pretty well when I took on the Bakunin Library project, but there’s nothing like living through the inevitable trial and error to remind you of the difference between theoretical and practical understanding. In general, I’m of a mind to follow Proudhon’s lead with regard to mistakes and “measure my valor by the […]

Bernard Lazare, “Michel Bakounine” (1895)

May 6, 2016 Shawn P. Wilbur

Quelqu’un qui connut et aima Michel Bakounine, publie aujourd’hui un volume d’œuvres de celui qu’on se plaît encore à appeler le père du Nihilisme (1). Ce volume ne comprend que des fragments et ceux qui le doivent suivre ne contiendront aussi que des opuscules inachevés. On pourrait quand même essayer d’exposer ici la métaphysique de Bakounine et indiquer quelles furent ses conceptions économiques. Il vaut cependant mieux, pour un tel travail, attendre de posséder l’œuvre complète, car il ne siérait pas de commettre les erreurs de jugement ou de fait qui furent commises par ceux qui, précédemment, parlèrent de Bakounine […]

Émile Buré, “Michel Bakounine” (1901)

May 6, 2016 Shawn P. Wilbur

Michel Bakounine Le docteur Nettlau, dans un important ouvrage qui a été remis aux bibliothèques, s’emploie à faire revivre Michel Bakounine, « révolutionnaire émérite, conspirateur expérimenté et grand charmeur d’hommes ». Il nous suffira, dans cette courte notice, de préciser quelques dates en nous aidant de la thèse de M. A. François : Michel Bakounine et la Philosophie de l’Anarchie. Michel Bakounine naquit dans le district de Torjok, entre Pétersbourg et Moscou, d’un père, ancien attaché à la légation russe de Florence, que ses idées libérales avaient éloigné de la Cour. En 1832, à dix-huit ans, le jeune Michel est […]

Bakunin and Proudhon / Authority and Anarchy

April 25, 2016 Shawn P. Wilbur

[ezcol_2third] If (in the passage from God and the State discussed in the last post) Bakunin has not simply changed the meaning of the word “authority” from one paragraph to the next, as he moves from his general critique to his consideration of “the authority of the bootmaker,” then we presumably have a case in which authority must indeed be rejected when considered in general, but cannot be spurned or simply pushed away (repoussé) in the messy realm of practice, where the limits of our knowledge and the limitations of our animality confront us on a regular basis. We find […]

The “authority” of the bootmaker

April 15, 2016 Shawn P. Wilbur

I’ve remarked elsewhere on the curious phenomenon of self-proclaimed anarchists who are much more comfortable with the language of governmentalism and authority than they are with the concept of anarchy. It is curious, but it is far from inexplicable. After all, some of the most famous pioneers of anarchist thought muddied those waters rather enthusiastically at times. Over the years, I have spent quite a bit of time working through Proudhon’s complicated engagements with property, the State, anarchy and other terms. There are potentially cautionary tales there regarding just about any strategy we might take with these complex and contested […]