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Anarchy 101: General Thoughts on Appropriation

May 22, 2025 Shawn P. Wilbur

Links: “Take me to the river…” (2010) “Practicing the Encounter: Appropriation (and Ecology)” (2013) “Notes on What is Property?” (2019) “New Things and Old Words in Proudhon’s Late Works” (2022) This is the second in a series of documents addressing the various questions surrounding the notion of property. Archic property is theft. — Let’s start with a very minor revision of Proudhon’s infamous judgment, clarifying that, having started to address property in its full range of meanings, we can specify a particular variety of property that is the natural object of anarchistic critique. We can then — after a few […]

Anarchy 101: Archy, Property and the Possibility of An-archic Property

May 20, 2025 Shawn P. Wilbur

Links: “Notes on Anarchy and Hegemony in the Realm of Definitions” This is the first in a series of documents addressing the various questions surrounding the notion of property. One key difficulty in providing a general account of basic anarchist theory is that, once a few basics have been established, it’s hard not to find yourself talking — or trying to talk — about everything all at once. Anarchists often get around this difficulty by relying instead on narrower accounts, where the general programs of particular anarchist tendencies take the place of a broad and general theory of anarchism as […]

Félix P….., “Philosophy of Insubmission” (1854)

May 14, 2025 Shawn P. Wilbur

At any given point in my research, there are always a few texts that top the list of things I would love to read, but am unlikely to get my hands on. Some are of more general interest than others. I remember, for example, that during my early work on mutualism, I was equally keen to track down William Batchelder Greene’s “Omega” articles articles in the Worcester Palladium — arguably one of the key early contributions to the tradition — and a little book called Money and Banking, or Their Nature and Effects Considered, Together with a Plan for the […]

Anarchy 101: Notes on Force and Authority

April 26, 2025 Shawn P. Wilbur

Some of the most basic concepts in anarchist theory can prove terribly slippery when we try to apply them — sometimes even when we apply them with great care. Authority is arguably the most difficult of these notions to tame, which obviously poses problems for us, given the central place of anti-authoritarian critique in anarchist analyses. So, in response to some questions that have emerged since the first post on authority and hierarchy, I want to spend just a little more time exploring the concept in the context of anarchist theory.

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E. E. Fribourg, “The International Workingman’s Association” (1871)

April 8, 2025 Shawn P. Wilbur

The history of the International Workingman’s Association is obviously contested territory, with Marxist and anarchist accounts competing for attention with works, like Timothy Messer-Kruse’s very interesting account of The Yankee International, which emphasize other factions and other dynamics within the International. Of the existing histories, I am probably most partial to Robert Graham’s We Do Not Fear Anarchy, We Invoke It: The First International and the Origins of the Anarchist Movement, which strikes me as a balanced account. But I’ll admit a fascination with a number of clearly partisan accounts that manage to cover comparatively unfamiliar ground.

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Guy Antoine and Ch.-Aug. Bontemps, “What is Situationism?” (1966)

April 4, 2025 Shawn P. Wilbur

Nine years ago, a movement was born, similar in many respects to the libertarian movement and very distant in others. Why isn’t it being discussed? It seems to be linked, on the one hand, to the highly developed theoretical aspect of the Situationist International’s texts and, on the other, to Situationist concerns, which seem to interest only a small minority. What are the causes? Among them, one of the most important is undoubtedly that professional revolutionaries from Lenin to Bakunin always separated political-economic action from action in culture. In their view, it was first necessary to change the material basis of life and only address the rest (the problem of art and lifestyle) in a second phase, without realizing that they were thus leaving “culture” in the hands of the bourgeoisie.

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A René Fugler miscellany

March 28, 2025 Shawn P. Wilbur

Back in 2020, I shared a translation of René Fugler’s pamphlet “The Anarchist Question,” as part of the Constructing Anarchisms project. At the time, I made a start at translating “The Forms and Tendencies of Anarchism,” another of his pamphlets, but never found the time to finish the work. This week, I found the time to complete that translation and to supplement it with a odd assortment of other texts by Fugler under his various pseudonyms — René Furth, René Forain, etc.

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Ixigrec (Robert Collino), “Individualism: Crucible of Future Worlds” (1967)

March 28, 2025 Shawn P. Wilbur

Raised outside constraints and distorting systems, giving free rein to their adventurous genius, to their creative spirit, to this explosive force which propels man ever further towards the conquest of life and duration, the strong individualities which we will have been able to favor by our efforts will perhaps justify, — for our sense of causalities and responsibilities — the appearance of intelligence, conscience and goodness in a universe which we know to be without purpose and without gods.

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A Return to the Question of the “Polity-Form”

March 2, 2025 Shawn P. Wilbur

The polity-form, then, in its simplest sense, is the form given to social collectivities when they are accounted for, explained, “realized” (in the language used by Louis Blanc in 1849-50), etc. by a transformation into political units. In this process, individuals — participants in the social relations that give rise to these social collectivities — are reimagined as citizens, subjects, members of the political unit, with rights, duties, privileges, etc. granted or imposed as a result. This governmental relation seems inescapably hierarchical — although in certain instances of extensive, stable consensus that hierarchy might be considered more or less “voluntary” (if only because there is no occasion for enforcement.)

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E. Armand, “Faire quelque chose… mais quoi?” / “Do something… but what?” (1911)

February 25, 2025 Shawn P. Wilbur

The anarchist is neither a scholar, nor a therapist, nor a geometer, nor a worker. He is a being who “wants to live,” but to live as a misfit, as an insubordinate, as an undisciplined person, as a rebel, as an original.

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