Contr'un Revisited Archives - Page 4 of 5 - The Libertarian Labyrinth

“It is the shock of ideas that casts the light”

October 27, 2008 Shawn P. Wilbur

[ezcol_1third] [Commentary coming soon.] [/ezcol_1third] [ezcol_2third_end] One good Proudhon tidbit deserves another, so here are the first couple of sections from Chapter 6 of the Seventh Study (“Ideas”) in Justice in the Revolution and in the Church. The chapter covers “Intellectual discipline, or method of elimination of the Absolute according to the principle of the Revolution. — Constitution of the public reason,” and it is here that Proudhon, having proven, to his own satisfaction at least, the existence of “collective beings” corresponding to the “collective force” which was such an important part of his critique of property, tackles the question […]

The Gift Economy of Property

September 26, 2008 Shawn P. Wilbur

Contr’un Revisited: This may well be the best known of my anarchist writings, thanks to its inclusion in Markets Not Capitalism, where, I’m afraid, it is a bit of an anomaly. It is, I suppose, a fine enough example of the content here, rich in suggestive bits, if a little short on elaboration. At the same time, however, it is probably not a surprise that almost ten years after I first came up with the notion, the gift economy of property remains little more than a phrase. We’ve made some headway over the years in bringing various discourses into some […]

Not just for pear-growers anymore

February 18, 2008 Shawn P. Wilbur

[ezcol_1third] [Commentary coming soon.] [/ezcol_1third] [ezcol_2third_end] The anarcho-Fourierist renaissance continues. In “The Lesson of the Pear Growers’ Series,” I had suggested that there might still be some lessons to be learned from Charles Fourier’s approach to questions of individual passion, competition, etc. Unfortunately, “Note A,” which contains the most concise explanation of Fourier’s associative model, is not available (yet) in a public-domain translation online—and it is a bit of a stretch, at times, to make the analogies between growing pears (and apples, and quinces) and other sorts of labor we might actually be planning on engaging in. Fortunately, one of […]

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-communism, work, and the virtue of selfishness

December 1, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur

[one_third padding=”0 10px 0 0px”] Contr’un Revisited: Obviously, it’s a big moment when Joseph Déjacque enters the mix, but there’s a lot going on here that would bear fruit later. Adding Déjacque to my list of early anarchist obsessions moved me closer to the recognition of an Era of Anarchy, and discovering the influence of both Fourier and Pierre Leroux in his work would sharpen my interest in the “utopian” roots of anarchism, but the first really dividend from my work on Déjacque was a sense that I had been underestimating the place of egoism among the early anarchists. At […]

An excellent resource on Proudhon

November 30, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur

[ezcol_1third] Contr’un Revisited: Ten years later, I finally have a copy of my own! [/ezcol_1third] [ezcol_2third_end] I’ve found very little in the literature on anarchism that does much justice to Proudhon’s work. His economic ideas—which were complex, based in a principle of “antinomies,” and expressed at different times in significantly different language—are generally treated without much attention to detail. (The anarchist literature is substantially better in this regard than the Marxist literature, which nearly always simply repeats the judgments of Marx.) One very fine exception to the general rule is Rob Knowles’ Political Economy from Below: Economic Thought in Communitarian […]

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” […]

The Lesson of the Pear Growers’ Series

November 21, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur

[ezcol_1third] Contr’un Revisited: At the time, I had only the vaguest notion of how important the influence of Fourier would be on my own thinking, although this is one in a series of instances where we have to make a note that there is much more work to be done. I still think it is fair to characterize Proudhon’s understanding of social forces as “relentlessly positive,” although my appreciation of the role that “universal antagonism” plays in his thought has grown enormously. There is clearly a side to Proudhon that is relentlessly critical, sometimes earning him the reputation he has […]

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 […]

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.

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