Uncategorized Archives - Page 10 of 39 - The Libertarian Labyrinth

Uncategorized

Getting collaborative at Collective Reason

January 8, 2009 Shawn P. Wilbur

Well, I had expected complications in my translating efforts, and they have come already. But the largest complication of the last several days has been of a rather fortunate sort: I have help. As I’ve mentioned before, there has been a fairly long-running, if somewhat desultory conversation about establishing a collaborative translation site. But there has also been a fair amount of practical tinkering going on as well, and it looks like we have one, and potentially more, projects really moving forward. Collective Reason, which I have been using for some of my work, now has a set of simple […]

Uncategorized

Proudhon’s “Kronos”

December 21, 2008 Shawn P. Wilbur

In the biographical introduction to Tucker’s edition of What is Property? is a brief mention that around 1851 Proudhon’s “entertained the idea of writing a universal history entitled “Chronos.” This project was never fulfilled.” There was probably no shortage of “universal history” in France by 1850, although an entry by Proudhon would no doubt have been novel and interesting. The Saint-Simonians and their allies, including P. J. B. Buchez, Auguste Ott, Pierre Leroux, had written volume after volume on the subject. In 1849, William B. Greene published his Remarks On The History Of Science; Followed By An Apriori Autobiography, which […]

Counter-development or Bust!

November 9, 2008 Shawn P. Wilbur

As it turns out, I’ve been welcoming in America’s bright new tomorrow with a kind of seething rage against everyone and everything. Not that some substantial fraction of all that hasn’t been asking for it. We are probably, thanks to the election results, a month or two further away from the Blackwater-run debtors’ prisons that would most likely be our NEW New Deal, but I still don’t see much of any indication that anyone in Washington has tripped to the fact that there are poor people in America. This week, my part-time job is a three-day, 16-hour (total) affair, which […]

What’s your four-year plan?

October 3, 2008 Shawn P. Wilbur

If the mayan-calendar-apocalypse folks are right, plans for 2013 might be a bit pointless. But if the poles don’t shift on December 21, 2012, or it they do, but the Earth’s crust doesn’t crack, we really ought to be thinking about goals. High on my list would be not throwing another election-related welcoming gala for the police state, since the cost of these just keeps getting higher. It seems like it’s time for a Call for New Memes. Maybe we want to aim for our own sort of “pole shift.” Maybe we want to hitch a ride on the prophecy […]

What ever happened to (the discourse on) Neoliberalism?

October 3, 2008 Shawn P. Wilbur

Not so long ago, it seemed to me that it was generally accepted among most of my political allies that NAFTA-style “globalization,” and the financial and legislative chicanery that went along with it, were part of a very conscious tilting of the political-economic playing field, which we referred to as “neoliberalism.” The term is one which has had a range of uses, but we were probably most influenced at the time by the writings of Subcommandante Marcos of the EZLN and by “first world” commentaries at least partially inspired by those same writings. And, in that context, “neoliberalism” was very […]

from better mousetraps to lemonade seas (Blog recycling, part 2)

September 24, 2008 Shawn P. Wilbur

In my post “Time to free ALL the political prisoners” I announced my intention to transform The Very Idea into a group blog for counter-institutional speculation and invention. I’ve got some redesigning to do to finish the “recycling,” but the new incarnation, retitled “from better mousetraps to lemonade seas” (the very idea, indeed!) is open for collaborative business, and I have established a discussion list as well. I’m hoping for practical results, but more than anything I am hoping to open a space for those, like me, who have more ideas than they can practically pursue, to document those things, […]

Reinvent and Relaunch!

September 24, 2008 Shawn P. Wilbur

For a number of years, this blog has hosted my work on intellectual history outside the “libertarian labyinth,” work posted for my students and posts on material that is simply interesting, without being particularly relevant to current issues and struggles. The long silence here suggests how little I have focused on those concerns lately. In part that is because I have been very focused on recovering material from the anarchist and libertarian traditions, but it has also been in part a result of my broadened sense of how for that “labyrinth” really extends. The next time I treat the struggles […]

“The current unintelligent tampering…with the moral order of business”

September 21, 2008 Shawn P. Wilbur

In 1873, William Batchelder Greene was asked by Ezra Heywood to explain Pierre-Joseph Proudhon’s ideas on property. Greene sent along translations of the first three, and last three pages of What is Property? and a short, fascinating account of Proudhon and his ideas, based on Greene’s acquaintance with Proudhon during his years in Paris, roughly 1853-1861. It is clear from the account that Greene was most familiar with Proudhon’s earlier works. Some of Greene’s explanation is not consistent with the works from the 1860s, and some of it is consistent, as when Greene likens property to Satan, but in ways […]

Puzzle pieces: W. H. Channing’s “The Present”

September 15, 2008 Shawn P. Wilbur

I’ve emphasized before the importance of William Henry Channing’s The Spirit of the Age, as the closest thing we have to a mid-19th century American mutualist paper. Channing is equally important as part of the late-transcendentalist/radical Unitarian/free-religionist current with which American individualist anarchism was in constant dialogue. William B. Greene was himself a part of that current, as was Sidney H. Morse and, at least early on, Joshua King Ingalls. Tucker was influenced by it, and his Radical Review was full of contributors from it. And a great deal of attention was paid in the early issues of Liberty, to […]

Proudhon on freedom and free will

September 12, 2008 Shawn P. Wilbur

[one_third padding=”0 10px 0 0px”][/one_third][two_third_last padding=”0 0px 0 10px”] I’m working away at the translation of Proudhon’s chapter (in Justice in the Revolution and in the Church) on “The Nature and Function of Liberty.” It’s a key piece in his overall work, and includes an explanation of the nature and function of “free will,” along with some suggestions about how that explanation would scale up to the realm of social or political liberty. Remember that Proudhon was, from the earliest of his works, concerned with the “collective force” which arises from associated production and exceeds the productive power of the […]