Contr'un Revisited Archives - Page 3 of 5 - The Libertarian Labyrinth

Thoughts on mutualist land theory

January 6, 2011 Shawn P. Wilbur

[ezcol_1third] Contr’un Revisited: [/ezcol_1third] [ezcol_2third_end] There’s a call at the Center for a Stateless Society for responses to a document on “Land Tenure and Anarchic Common Law,” which “which synthesizes remarks by Kevin Carson, Brad Spangler, and Gary Chartier.” The basic argument is that “occupancy and use” and “Lockean” (non-proviso neo-lockean) theories differ primarily over the question of abandonment of “justly acquired” property. The assumption is that the theories are in something like agreement on “just acquisition” because both employ a homesteading mechanism. It’s the sort of thing that first makes me want to say: “Property is theft!” I’ve been […]

Turning a new page…

January 2, 2011 Shawn P. Wilbur

Contr’un Revisited: If we were being precise, the “Contr’un Revisited” phase would start here, with the name change at the beginning of 2011. But, just as some posts are being imported that were not originally posted on this blog and some posts that were posted here are now migrating to other collections, all of the theoretical writing from the earlier period is explicitly becoming what it, in fact, eventually became: part of the Contr’un project. This blog has gone through two previous phases, under two other names: The first was exploratory, a series of rambles “In the Libertarian Labyrinth,” with […]

“property must justify itself or disappear”

October 23, 2010 Shawn P. Wilbur

[one_third padding=”0 10px 0 0px”] Contr’un Revisited: [commentary coming soon] [/one_third][two_third_last padding=”0 0px 0 10px”] Once more into the breach. Proudhon’s The Theory of Property is one of those books I have been wrestling with for several years now. It’s a complicated, frustrating work, being both an attempt to summarize, clarify and rectify errors in Proudhon’s many previous writings on property and an 11th-hour departure into new territory, inspired by the major works of history and sociology which occupied much of his later career. As a posthumous work, it lacks the careful revision and finishing that Proudhon habitually gave his […]

Property is impossible?

July 4, 2010 Shawn P. Wilbur

[one_third] Contr’un Revisited: [commentary coming soon] [/one_third][two_third_last] We’re getting closer to the river’s edge, but we’re not quite prepared to “take our draught” yet. It has always seemed to me that libertarian property theory is prone to leaping straight to property’s defense—the occasions for legitimate use of force—without lingering overlong on just what it is defending. The broader the discussion—and terms like “left-libertarian” and “market anarchist” attempt to cover pretty broad swathes of ideological territory—the more pronounced the problem. The left-libertarian theory of a “spectrum” of abandonment theories seems to me pretty sound, and useful, but I have my doubts […]

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 […]

Contr'un

War: What’s it good for?

December 30, 2008 Shawn P. Wilbur

It turns out that Proudhon’s answer to the musical question is rather interesting, and challenging. His two-volume War and Peace represents an further exploration of some of the ideas he had developed in Justice in the Revolution and in the Church. The turning point in Proudhon’s philosophy came in the 1850s, between the Philosophy of Progress and Justice, when he realized that, as he later put it, “the antinomy does not resolve itself.” The immediate consequence of this realization was a move from the emphasis on synthesis, which had dominated his work from the last sections of What is Property? […]

Who benefits most economically from state centralization?

December 10, 2008 Shawn P. Wilbur

[ezcol_1third] [Commentary coming soon.] [/ezcol_1third] [ezcol_2third_end] The conversation surrounding Roderick Long’s recent article at Cato Unbound, “Corporations versus the Market; or, Whip Conflation Now,” has been pretty remarkable, starting with the fact that it began at Cato. There’s been some sloppy, even, shabby stuff along the way, including some weird speculative stuff about Kevin Carson’s work, and its ability to stand academic criticism. As a recovering academic, I would just like to remind folks that loose talk about whose father’s theory can whip whose theory is the stuff of Wikipedia talk pages and chat rooms: scholars have to bring it […]

Proudhon measures Progress

December 3, 2008 Shawn P. Wilbur

[ezcol_1third] [Commentary coming soon.] [/ezcol_1third] [ezcol_2third_end] Some of the reshuffling of my scholarly priorities has revolved around my decision to go back and finish a translation of Proudhon’s Philosophy of Progress, before tackling any more of Justice or going back to look at The General Idea of the Revolution. It was a work which scored low when I asked people what they would like to see in translation first, but it is one which seems particularly important to me at the moment, in part because it contains, in condensed and clear form, Proudhon’s own account of what ties his various […]

What could justify property?

November 23, 2008 Shawn P. Wilbur

[Commentary coming soon.] The shift in Proudhon’s work, from critique of property to arguments in favor of it (despite and based on the critiques), is hard to work through, perhaps because Proudhon was himself a little uncomfortable with the whole affair. We know that, to some extent, the defense of property ran counter to his personal desires. Theory of Property, which seems to turn his earlier work on its head, ends with this passage: A small, rented house, a garden to use, largely suffices for me: my profession not being the cultivation of the soil, the vine, or the meadow, […]

Unexpected dangers of the free market?

November 16, 2008 Shawn P. Wilbur

[ezcol_1third] [Commentary coming soon.] [/ezcol_1third] [ezcol_2third_end] We know the standard anti-market concern, that even the truly free relations which mutualists and other market anarchists propose (free-market anti-capitalism, equitable commerce, etc…), will lead inevitably (through a fatal flaw in contract theory, or a fatal flaw in human nature, etc…) to (bad) “capitalism,” rule by the possessors of capital, and the state. Answers to the problem (if it is such) generally involve rejections of “contract” and/or “commerce” tout court, along with, of course, “property” conceived on any model that includes exclusive, individual ownership. There seem to be problems with these answers, whether […]