Uncategorized Archives - Page 2 of 39 - The Libertarian Labyrinth

Dyer D. Lum, “Evolution and Revolution” (1886)

August 10, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur

For Lucifer. Evolution or Revolution Many of your Radical friends are loud in their denunciation of revolutionary agencies. Evolution they hold to be a peaceful process, and the exact opposite of revolution. They would “educate the people” to the desired state of intelligence as “the bettor way.” In dissenting from this rose-colored view of human progress I affirm that revolutionary efforts have been the result of evolutionary processes. The fifteenth century, in which we had the rebirth of intellectual activity had its roots in preceding centuries and was revolutionary because it was opposed by established modes of thought. Luther in […]

George Schumm, “Benj. R. Tucker—A Brief Sketch Of His Life And Work” (1893)

August 8, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur

BENJ. R. TUCKER—A BRIEF SKETCH OF HIS LIFE AND WORK. ‘ By GEORGE SCHUMM. BENJ. R. TUCKER, whose portrait is the frontispiece of this issue of the Magazine, was born in South Dartmouth, near New Bedford, in Massachusetts, April I7, 1854. His parents were in comfortable circumstances, and belonged to the enlightened portion of the community. In politics, his father was a Jeffersonian Democrat; in religion, both his father and his mother were radical Unitarians and as such members of W. J. Potter’s church. Mr. Tucker’s maternal grandfather was a great admirer of Thomas Paine. Thus it will be seen […]

Josiah Warren, “Reduction in the Cost of Printing Apparatus” (1830)

July 20, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur

COMMUNICATIONS. PRINTING IN PRIVATE FAMILIES. (I have received the following from my friend, Mr. Warren, for insertion in the Free Enquirer. The sheet from which it is copied, and which affords a specimen of the results obtained, is very tolerably printed, and seems go confirm the anticipation of the writer.) REDUCTION IN THE COST OF PRINTING APPARATUS. It is well known, by those who have considered the subject, that printing is a power that governs the destinies of mankind: and therefore, those who can control the Printing Press can control their fellow creatures. While men continue the practice of interfering […]

Josiah Warren, “From ‘The March of Mind'” (1828)

July 20, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur

The acquisition of any new fact, always produces in my mind a feeling of pleasure, especially when I perceive that it will in any manner promote my future happiness; and the more does it increase my happiness if I can make it subservient to the happiness of others. This will be sufficient apology to the reader for my observations, when it is considered that they are not obtruded upon him as rules for his own conduct, but that they are here placed for his consideration, to be accepted or rejected as his own judgment shall determine. It is now about […]

A Josiah Warren miscellany

July 20, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur

Josiah Warren, of Cincinnati, is the patentee of a lamp on a new plan, which is said, to a single family, will produce an annual saving of 20 dollars. Its light is clear and pleasant, and the volume of flame equal to that of two common candles. “Weekly Summary,” The Plough Boy, and Journal of the Board of Agriculture, 2, 52 (May 26, 1821), 415.

Frédéric Tuefferd, Letter to Albert Parsons from an Anticrat (1886)

November 21, 2016 Shawn P. Wilbur

Eufaula, April 13, 1886 Dear Comrade Parsons:—I have received your papers and am very much obliged for them. Glad that you like my article. I am writing now for To-Day, of London, and for the Alarm, and am going to write for La Tribune du Peuple de Paris. Situated as I am now, I can be of no good but by writing, and I intend to avail myself of it. You may be astonished if I tell you that I never use the word “Anarchy.” I stick to the old word “Socialism.” It can be understood and does not require […]

The Incomplete Proudhon (draft)

March 19, 2016 Shawn P. Wilbur

[This is a first draft of a first section of a strategy document for the consideration of other Proudhon scholars and students of anarchist studies. It is every bit as preliminary as that sounds, but everything has to start somewhere. With the Bakunin Library and Proudhon Library projects both moving steadily towards publication, a good deal of what I have been doing behind the scenes lately has been this kind of assessment of available resources and strategizing about how best to present relatively large bodies of work in print. For those who have not read the draft outline for Proudhon: Between Science […]

Back to Basics (now that we may know a few of them)

August 16, 2015

Welcome to the new Mutualism.info, the last of my old Blogger sites to be integrated into the new Libertarian Labyrinth. It’s been just over a decade since I launched the blog In the Libertarian Labyrinth, which was not my first blog, but was the first dedicated primarily to anarchist history and theory. The site has had a number of other names along the way (Out of the Libertarian Labyrinth, Two-Gun Mutualism and the Golden Rule and Contr’un) and has migrated once, but the overall project has developed steadily, if sometimes in directions that couldn’t have been predicted ten years ago. […]

Thoughts on a Mutualist Minimum

August 16, 2015

Thoughts on a Mutualist Minimum Fragments from a Facebook forum [These remarks, written several years ago, was originally archived in a section of the Labyrinth that no longer exists, but since the question of UBI seems to have become much more common than when I initially made these comments, it seems worth re-archiving them here.] 1 Let me be more explicit: A certain minimum level of food, shelter, clothing and fun is going to be deemed “essential” by just about everyone, and at the subsistence-level there will probably even be some rough consensus on more or less what that consists […]

Max Nettlau, A Travesty of Bakunin (1929)

May 11, 2015 Shawn P. Wilbur

A TRAVESTY OF BAKUNIN* By. M. NETTLAU [Freedom Bulletin, 7 (May, 1929): 2.] Bakunin’s fair name, like everybody else’s, is dear to all of us, and it has been cleared by most careful research from all the Marxian and other aspersions shoveled upon it in fanatical party strife. It has now become his lot to be defined from another side, by the book of an Italian author, Riccardo Bacchelli, which has been translated into English. I have not seen this book, but from what I have heard from various sides it purports to deal with events, partially private, in Bakunin’s […]