Proudhon Library Archives - Page 17 of 20 - The Libertarian Labyrinth

Dividing “Pologne”

June 2, 2014 Shawn P. Wilbur

It appears that even when writing about Poland, Proudhon ultimately tended toward division. While much of the work of the last few years of his life seems to have been connected to the work on Poland, of which The Theory of Property was an important element, when we look at the notes he left to his literary executors, we see that the manuscript of Pologne, as it has been passed down to us, was ultimately destined to be split into two works: The History of Poland and Political Geography and Nationality. Based on a table of contents included in the […]

Proudhon’s “Pologne” and the federative project of the 1860s

June 2, 2014 Shawn P. Wilbur

“Ma Théorie fédérative est déjà un fragment enlevé à mon travail polonais; la Propriété sera le second…” “My Federative Theory is already a fragment lifted from my Polish work; the [Theory of] Property will be the second…” (Letter to Grandclément, Nov. 17, 1863) One of the nearly miraculous effects of the recent manuscript digitization projects at the International Institute of Social History and the Ville de Besançon has been a sudden and dramatic change in the kinds of questions we can wrestle with, with real hope of success, without international travel or expensive duplication of materials. For me, it […]

Léon Abensour, “Proudhon et la Pologne” (1920)

May 23, 2014 Shawn P. Wilbur

I’m in the midst of a line-by-line comparison of the manuscript of The Theory of Property with the published version, as a step towards revising my draft translation and starting to get the work into publishable shape. Because The Theory of Property was initially intended to be part of a larger work, Pologne (Poland) I’ve been spending some time looking at the larger work in order to establish the context. (See my post on Proudhon’s “Pologne” and the federative project of the 1860s.) Much of that work involves working my way through Proudhon’s handwritten manuscripts, but a short section of […]

New tools at the Proudhon Library wiki

May 10, 2014 Shawn P. Wilbur

With all of the new material available online recently, it has been necessary to update some of my bibliographical resources. I’ve added a Chronological Bibliography page to the wiki, with links to most of Proudhon’s major works, and most of the major manuscripts, that are available online. I’ve also update the Responses to Proudhon page, which is a sort of catch-all of critical responses, biographies and commentaries, focused on material from Proudhon’s own lifetime. Expect regular updates on both pages, as long as new material keeps appearing online.

Moving forward with “The Theory of Property”

May 10, 2014 Shawn P. Wilbur

[ezcol_1third] Contr’un Revisited: [commentary coming soon] [/ezcol_1third] [ezcol_2third_end] I’ve been spending some quality time with the manuscript of Proudhon’s The Theory of Property, now that it is available through the Ville de Besançon site, and it’s been a fascinating experience. Having spent a lot of time with the published version over the last few years, there were a lot of moments when I could look at a page and, once I had deciphered the handwriting, could immediately place the manuscript material in the published work. On my first pass through, the page where Proudhon proclaims that “Humanity proceeds by approximation” […]

Property? It’s just a phase… (Proudhon to the Academy of Besançon, 1840)

May 3, 2014 Shawn P. Wilbur

This response by Proudhon to the Academy of Besançon fills in a bit of the story told in the introduction to What is Property? I’ve been tracking down some of these bits and pieces in order to establish more of the context for that work, as we get ready to do a group reading of the text. This letter has at least one unintentionally funny bit, when Proudhon explains that this property stuff is just a passing interest. Besançon, August 3, 1840 TO THE MEMBERS OF THE ACADEMY OF BESANÇON Gentlemen, I have learned through the confidences of some of […]

Note on the disposition of products and the role of principles

April 24, 2014 Shawn P. Wilbur

“[I]f property is a truth, this can only be on one condition: that the principles of Immanent Justice, Individual Sovereignty and Federation are accepted.” (Theory of Property) I get very little feedback on the theoretical posts here, so it’s hard to know to what extent the implications of Proudhon’s federalist-mutualist-guarantist theory are obvious or, alternately, still pretty uncertain. I know that I frequently get to a point in my own thinking where, having laid out the demands on the application of the theory, I can’t get much past “THAT WOULD BE ANARCHY!” But in my calmer moments, it often […]

More on Proudhon’s “Theory of Property”

April 9, 2014 Shawn P. Wilbur

I needed a change of pace for a couple of days, and went back to work on the still-daunting task of taking Proudhon’s The Theory of Property from the current draft translation to something well-contextualized and publishable. There’s a lot of work to do, including revisiting Proudhon’s earlier works on property, finishing work on the Appendix, translating more contextual material and consulting Proudhon’s manuscripts. Fortunately, more of the relevant manuscript material has become available, and I’ve been able to take some time away from other tasks to finish translating the “Disagreement Regarding the Posthumous Publication of Unpublished Works by P.-J. […]

The criterion of certainty in 1841

March 9, 2014 Shawn P. Wilbur

Related texts: A funny thing happened on the way to “property is theft!” In the Second Memoir on property (1841), Proudhon explained the course of study that led him, somewhat indirectly, to his work on property: By taste as well as by discretion and lack of confidence in my powers, I was slowly pursuing some commonplace studies in philology, mingled with a little metaphysics, when I suddenly fell upon the greatest problem that ever has occupied philosophical minds: I mean the criterion of certainty. Those of my readers who are unacquainted with the philosophical terminology will be glad to be […]

From the “Sixty” to the International

March 1, 2014 Shawn P. Wilbur

One of the tasks of this phase of the exploration here is to fill in some of the details about the period of transition, during which the anarchist movement began to take on collectivism in the realms of production and property as one of its key principles. Given all of the historical attention given to the First International, that might seem like a fairly simple project, but the truth is that the currents that it is necessary to trace on the mutualist/proudhonist side of things often just appear in the accounts of the International as the opposition to the […]