New Proudhon Library

New Proudhon Library

P.-J. Proudhon, “The Creation of Order in Humanity” — Chapter III

August 23, 2023 Shawn P. Wilbur
I must admit it at this solemn moment: what worries me is less the uncertainty of my route than the deep feeling of my weakness; the distractions of my life, and the misfortune of an entirely philosophical and religious education have hardly allowed me to learn anything. It’s not the design, it’s the materials that I lack for the reconstruction. All I know I owe to despair; fortune depriving me of the means of acquiring, I want one day, from shreds picked up during my short studies, to create a science by myself alone.

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New Proudhon Library

P.-J. Proudhon, “The Creation of Order in Humanity” — Chapter II

August 19, 2023 Shawn P. Wilbur
Through Religion, the mind remains absorbed in substance: through Philosophy, it frees itself from this passive contemplation, and begins to seek the cause of the phenomena that pass before it, the force that incessantly moves and changes the stage of the world. Hence it is that Philosophy has been defined by some as the science of causes, a lying title, since the cause is as impenetrable to us as the substance.

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Black and Red Feminism

Feminist Responses to Proudhon

August 1, 2023 Shawn P. Wilbur
The effort to translate Proudhon’s Justice in the Revolution and in the Church is just one step in the much larger project of coming to terms with the fundamental tensions in his thought, which have their clearest expression in his discussions of love, marriage and the alleged biological differences between men and women.

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Black and Red Feminism

Jenny P. d’Héricourt, “La Femme affrancie / Woman Emancipated” — Volume II

July 31, 2023 Shawn P. Wilbur
A daughter of my century, raised with the doctrines summarized by our glorious Revolution, I will not seek the sources of Right and Duty in the world of Supernaturalism. No. I will leave to the last echoes of the ancient world the irrational fantasy of using their argumentation, based on the unknown, to prove that Right is granted and Duty imposed by some God. On the contrary, I say that both have their origins within us; that they result from the ensemble of our faculties, from our destiny, from the necessary relations that sustain us with ourselves, with our fellows, and with nature.

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Black and Red Feminism

André Léo, “Woman and Mores” (1869)

July 28, 2023 Shawn P. Wilbur
It is almost overnight that this question rejected at first as chimerical, then combated by ridicule, which however, today, in spite of so many prejudices and sarcasms, is agitated in the two worlds, and each day grows. It was born out of the French Revolution, which created or renewed all questions by the new principle that it proclaimed, in which the equality of woman, like all the others, is contained.

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New Proudhon Library

Proudhon Explained by Himself (Letter to Villaumé, 1856)

July 24, 2023 Shawn P. Wilbur
PROUDHON EXPLIQUÉ PAR LUI-MÊME LETTRES INÉDITES DE P.-J. PROUDHON A M. N. VILLIAUMÉ SUR L’ENSEMBLE DE SES PRINCIPES ET NOTAMMENT SUR SA PROPOSITION LA PROPRIÉTÉ, C’EST LE VOL 1866 AVERTISSEMENT DE L’ÉDITEUR Le 21 décembre 1855, M. Villiaumé, qui composait alors son Nouveau Traité d’économie politique, crut devoir interroger Proudhon touchant ses principes, qu’il avait à mentionner en traitant du communisme; car il craignait de se tromper sur le sens de ses livres, dont divers passages semblaient en contredire d’autres. Il lui écrivit à ce sujet. Proudhon répondit par la lettre suivante, qui est une exposition toute nouvelle de ses […]
Featured articles

A Rough “Justice” and More

July 22, 2023 Shawn P. Wilbur
Last night I was able to complete a rough first-draft translation of Proudhon’s six-volume masterpiece, Justice in the Revolution and in the Church. When I started the project at the beginning of the year, I wasn’t at all certain that I could finish it in a year’s time. But here it is, mid-July, and my translation drafts for the year amount to more than 1,050,000 words, roughly 3250 double-spaced pages of material.

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New Proudhon Library

P.-J. Proudhon, “Demonstration of Socialism, Theoretical and Practical”

July 6, 2023 Shawn P. Wilbur
DÉMONSTRATION DU SOCIALISME, THÉORIQUE ET PRATIQUE OU RÉVOLUTION PAR LE CRÉDIT Pour servir d’instruction aux souscripteurs et actionnaires de la Banque du Peuple, Par P.-J. PROUDHON, représentant de la Seine. I Je forme une entreprise qui n’eut jamais d’égale, qu’aucune n’égalera jamais. Je veux changer la base de la société, déplacer l’axe de la civilisation, faire que le monde qui, sous l’impulsion de la volonté divine, a tourné jusqu’à ce jour d’occident en orient, mû désormais par la volonté de l’homme, tourne d’orient en occident. Il ne s’agit pour cela que de renverser les rapports du travail et du capital, […]