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Glitchfix

July 4, 2009 Shawn P. Wilbur
Although nobody mentioned it, it looks like the pdf files for the Dyer Lum and Tchernychevsky booklets were not available yesterday. They should be accessible now, and I hope to have pdfs, in both pamphlet and 2-up form, up on the Corvus Shop server over the next couple of days. Sorry for any inconvenience.
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A document for discussion

July 2, 2009 Shawn P. Wilbur
Some thoughts on the nature and function of the ALLiance, stemming from our recent internal conflicts: The ALLiance should be welcoming to women, men, trans-women and trans-men, of whatever sexual preference, people of all nationalities and ethnicities, all faiths or lack thereof, transhumanists and survivalists, etc., that is, to all people seriously struggling for anarchism, along whatever economic or philosophical path, using whatever language or lingo. Members of the ALLiance should be expected to pursue this vision diligently, on their own responsibility, using their own best judgment, and respecting, as much as possible, the judgment of their ALLies. Strategic and […]
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Really small firm size

April 30, 2009 Shawn P. Wilbur
In a little less than a month, I’ll voluntarily end my employment at the big box bookstore where I’ve been working for the better part of a year, and strike off again into the realm of self-employment. The change has everything to do with the sorts of discussions we have been having about the merits and ultimate sustainability of the big-box model, and there will undoubtedly be occasions to talk here about the ways in which that model is already failing to provide either a pleasant shopping experience or a tolerable work environment. But that’s for another day. What the […]
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What I did on my anarchist vacation

April 2, 2009 Shawn P. Wilbur
It’s been a couple of weeks since we got back from the San Francisco Bay Area Anarchist Bookfair, and I have few excuses to offer for not having posted a report on the trip until now. The primary one is, of course, that my participant-observation of the collapse of big-box retail (if it was a job, I would be making a living, right?) has pretty well absorbed my time and energy in the interim. But I’ve also been taking a little vacation from some of my usual activities, and trying to absorb the experience a bit. The trip was a […]
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A Pierre-Joseph Proudhon Reader, etc

February 13, 2009 Shawn P. Wilbur
Iain McKay (An Anarchist FAQ) has proposed a Proudhon reader to AK Press, and they seem enthused enough to have posted something about it on their UK site. He has posted his tentative ideas about works to be included and organization for the volume at the Anarchist Writers blog site, including some of my notes about the relative importance of Proudhon’s works. There are important questions to be answered, in order to provide the most useful slice of a very large body of work. It would be useful to hear from a range of potential readers, so pass on any […]
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LeftLiberty #1 – (revised) – call for submissions

January 30, 2009 Shawn P. Wilbur
It was a good day for a variety of reasons. I got a chance to hike around Mt. Tabor, the extinct volcano that sits in the middle of Portland’s eastside, wandering around the top as the fog burned off over the city. And I completed, except for a few thorny passages here and there, a draft of my translation of Proudhon’s Philosophy of Progress. I actually tapped in the last couple of pages on my Nokia tablet while riding into town. I’m excited about the translation for a number of reasons. Although there have been a couple of important partial […]
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Deal or No Deal? – II

January 27, 2009 Shawn P. Wilbur
I’m trying to feel my way around this moment in the politics of the US, which is supposed to be historic and charged with the potential for CHANGE, groping for something in the still-scattered flurry of symbolic and practical bits being tossed around as our “New Deal” that might actually respond to what seems to me a very serious, systemic crisis. My readers should know the punchline: All real change comes from the people themselves, acting together in mutual relations. But we probably satisfy ourselves with the punchline a bit too often, without exploring all the ways to get there. […]
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Deal or No Deal?

January 25, 2009 Shawn P. Wilbur
The media keep talking about Obama’s “New Deal” and/or “stimulus package” with lots of vague references to the past, and often even vaguer explanations of what those labels refer to in practical terms. So far, it looks like we’re in for a lot of tax-tinkering and a little infrastructure-building, wrapped up in a lot of hype and self-historification, employing references to all those past struggles and historical figures that America has decided to see in its new leader. All the talk of “job creation” seems to be wishful thinking, based on the logic of “stimulus.” As someone working in an […]
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Looking at the wrong depression, and finding the wrong solutions? – I

January 20, 2009 Shawn P. Wilbur
The question: If America needs specifically political heroes, and specifically political solutions in the present crisis, why, aside from our general lack of historical memory, are we looking to FDR and the New Deal as a model, rather than say, Potato Patch Pingree? “Who?” you ask. . . Before I answer, do me a favor: Set aside all the easy responses to the rather vague proposals of the Obama administration, and all the visceral responses to governmentalist bullshit which sometimes stop us from digging into problems, take a minute to read Kevin Carson’s most recent C4SS column, and then ask […]