Bakunin Library

Bakunin Library

Library update: April 2016

April 14, 2016 Shawn P. Wilbur
[one_third padding=”0 10px 0 0px”][/one_third][two_third_last padding=”0 0px 0 10px”] [June update: See the posts on “Strategies of Interpretation” and “Strategies of Presentation” for some additional information on the edition.] The hardest thing about assembling an edition like the Bakunin Library is knowing when you can safely stop planning and exploring, and finally settle down to the work itself. Ideally, it would have been wonderful to take ten years to work through everything and then prepare the reader as a summary volume. But it’s been necessary to be realistic about where the English-speaking community is with respect to Bakunin and about […]
Bakunin Library

Letter to Albert Richard (April 1, 1870)

April 12, 2016 Shawn P. Wilbur
April 1, 1870. Geneva. Dear friend. I still find myself here and every day await news of the arrival of the relation that you know, in order to go to meet them. Complete reaction in the International of Geneva.—The factory [fabrique] has triumphed on all fronts in my absence, and no one has been found to halt that triumph. L’Egalité has become a reactionary paper. Here is the program: Cooperation and the local politics of bourgeois radicalism. From now on the International of Geneva will no longer be anything but a stepping-stone to bring the Perrets and Grosselins to power. […]
Bakunin Library

James Guillaume on “God and the State” (1908 and 1909)

March 27, 2016 Shawn P. Wilbur
In 1877, the various unpublished manuscripts that Bakunin had left were sent to me so that I could, in concert with my friends from the Jura Federation of the International, see to the publication of that which appeared worthy of printing. It was not possible then to gather the financial resources necessary for the printing of a volume; and when I left Switzerland in May 1878, I passed the little case containing these manuscripts, Élisée Reclus, by way of Kraftchinsky (Stepniak), into the hands of Élisée Reclus. Four more years would pass, and finally in 1882 there appeared in Geneva, […]
Bakunin Library

Ricardo Mella, “Collectivism” (1891)

August 2, 2015 Shawn P. Wilbur
Collectivism Gone are the days when socialist sentimentality expected everything from the mother country and demanded everything of her. Gone are the days when the revolution was just a feeling, and declaimed comically against individualism face to face with the supreme power of the state or of society, its client. Gone are the days when socialism and revolution had no philosophy but that of the heart, no principle of right and justice but that of universal love. All these concepts, all these ideas are only among us as a remnant of what was never to be, as a residue pointing […]
Bakunin Library

The International Movement of the Workers (1869)

July 27, 2015 Shawn P. Wilbur
[published in L’Egalité, May 22, 1869] GENEVA, May 21. The International Movement of the Workers. If, today, there is one fact that strikes the minds of the most recalcitrant conservatives, it is the always more general and always more imposing movement of the working masses, not only in Europe, but in America as well. The men of state and the politicians of all countries, whether aristocratic or bourgeois, are worried, and we have the proof of it in every speech they make; they do not pass up any occasion to express their sympathies—so deep and above all so sincere—for that […]
Bakunin Library

Looking forward (July 2015)

July 9, 2015 Shawn P. Wilbur
[ezcol_2third] “Chaque commentateur de Bakounine fait un choix.” – Frank Mintz, Saint-Imier, 2012. It’s been a while since I’ve done an update on the publishing side of the Bakunin Library project. Work on the Bakunin Reader inches along steadily, as I wrestle with the content of the introduction. At the same time, I am making yet another pass through the correspondence, as well as minor, fragmentary and lesser-known texts, comparing my rough plan for the various volumes of the Library against the available work and existing editions. I’ve been trying to balance my developing plan with the criticisms I have […]
Bakunin Library

Letter to Ogarev and Ozerov (April 5, 1871)

July 5, 2015 Shawn P. Wilbur
Letter to Nikolay Platonovich Ogarev and Vladimir Michajlovich Ozerov April 5, 1871, Locarno 1. To Jean. Here is a letter to Varlin for you. I send it to you today in case, enflamed by our impatient friend Ross, you should decide to leave Paris before circumstances and especially financial means have allowed me to join you. On that subject, I have already written to Ross and to you yesterday. Return the letter to Varlin only from hand to hand. In all probability the Parisians succumb, but they will not succumb in vain, having accomplished their task, and posed the question; […]
Bakunin Library

Letter to Nikolay Ivanovich Zhukovsky (May 5, 1870)

July 5, 2015 Shawn P. Wilbur
[Letter to Nikolay Ivanovich Zhukovsky, in Russia]                              May 5, 1870. Locarno.                              Casa Pedrazzini. Dear Zhuk, The day after my arrival, I responded briefly to you few words. Now I want to discuss with you. You probably already know that I have punctually fulfilled, towards Guillaume and Fritz Robert, what we have decided among us; and I see, in the latest issues of Solidarité, which I have found here in the home of a friend, that Guillaume has held strictly to the direction fixed. The last two issues are excellent. I wish very much to know the impression that […]