Utopian and Scientific

Anarchist Beginnings

Charles Fourier on the Papillon, or Butterfly Passion

May 25, 2012 Shawn P. Wilbur
[A bit from Charles Fourier’s Passions of the Human Soul, dealing with dinner parties and the passion for variation, the papillon. Some of Fourier’s influence no doubt comes through in Stephen Pearl Andrews analogy of the dinner party.] According to the property common to the three distributives, the papillon is of two species, distinguished into contrasted and identical. 1st. The contrasted papillon arises from transitions from one extreme to another. For example: a company of sybarites, accustomed to sumptuous banquets, will eat with great pleasure in a cottage, rustic fare,—milk and fruit served up in earthern vessels; they will find […]
Utopian and Scientific

Gabriel-Desire Laverdant, “Of Property” (1846)

May 25, 2012 Shawn P. Wilbur
  FROM THE FRENCH OF “LA PHALANGE.” Translated for the Harbinger.   OF PROPERTY, AND THE VARIOUS LEGITIMATE MODES OF ACQUIRING IT. ——————- Attractions are proportional to Destinies. The Series distribute the Harmonies. ——————- FIRST SECTION. ATTRACTIONS. I. Unity, the Fundamental Principle. The theory of Association is true simply because it is true that Attractions are proportional to Destinies. It is upon Attractions that the great Social Architect has framed the edifice of our terrestrial destiny. In other words, the Phalanstery is made in the image of Man. What constitutes the supreme science of Fourier, is the thorough knowledge of […]
Utopian and Scientific

Charles Fourier on the Pear-Grower’s Series

May 25, 2012 anarchisms_w4l2ii
This illustration of Fourier’s theory of the play of passional attractions and progressive series is something I have referred to in the past, in “The Lesson of the Pear-Growers’ Series.” Ian Patterson has done a lovely, complete translation of it for the Cambridge edition of The Theory of the Four Movements, but I’ve wanted for some time to spend enough time with the French to work up a usable translation of my own, since I expect to have recourse to the example again in forthcoming work. Working through Fourier’s prose is at once maddening and delightful, since there is frequently […]
Contr'un

Charles Fourier on the Pear-Growers’ Series

June 3, 2011 Shawn P. Wilbur
This illustration of Fourier’s theory of the play of passional attractions and progressive series is something I have referred to in the past, in “The Lesson of the Pear-Growers’ Series.”Ian Patterson has done a lovely, complete translation of it for the Cambridge edition of The Theory of the Four Movements, but I’ve wanted for some time to spend enough time with the French to work up a usable translation of my own, since I expect to have recourse to the example again in forthcoming work. Working through Fourier’s prose is at once maddening and delightful, since there is frequently a […]
Contr'un

Charles Fourier on the Papillon, or Butterfly Passion

March 2, 2011 Shawn P. Wilbur
[For Roderick, a bit from Charles Fourier’s Passions of the Human Soul, dealing with dinner parties and the passion for variation, the papillon. Some of Fourier’s influence no doubt comes through in Stephen Pearl Andrews analogy of the dinner party.] According to the property common to the three distributives, the papillon is of two species, distinguished into contrasted and identical. 1st. The contrasted papillon arises from transitions from one extreme to another. For example: a company of sybarites, accustomed to sumptuous banquets, will eat with great pleasure in a cottage, rustic fare,—milk and fruit served up in earthern vessels; they […]
Contr'un

A Fourierist account of property

February 9, 2011 Shawn P. Wilbur
[one_third padding=”0 10px 0 0px”][/one_third][two_third_last padding=”0 0px 0 10px”] I’ve been ranging through my personal archives, and through pretty much everything else I can get my hands on lately, looking for material to help fill gaps in the general analysis of property that I’m writing for The Mutualist #2: “Owning Up.” The plan is to dedicate the whole issue to a fleshed-out summary of the property theory I’ve been developing over the last 3-4 years (hopefully in time for the Bay Area Bookfair), and finish up a radically-rewritten version of “The Anarchism of Approximations,” so I can focus much of […]
Utopian and Scientific

Pierre Leroux, “Individualism and Socialism” (1834)

February 4, 2010 Shawn P. Wilbur
At times, even the most resolute hearts, those most firmly fixed on the sacred belief of progress, come to lose courage and to feel full of disgust at the present. In the 16th century, when one murdered in our civil wars, it was in the name of God and with a crucifix in the hand; it was a question of the most sacred things, of things which, when once they have procured our conviction and our faith so legitimately dominate our nature that it has nothing to do but obey, and even its most beautiful appanage disappears thus voluntarily before the divine will. In the name of what principle does one today send off, by telegraph, pitiless orders, and transform proletarian soldiers into the executioners of their own class? Why has our epoch seen cruelties which recall St. Bartholemew? Why have men been fanaticized to the point of making them coldly slaughter the elderly, women, and children? Why has the Seine rolled with murders which recalls the arquebuscades of window of the Louvre? It is not in the name of God and eternal salvation that it is done. It is in the name of material interests.

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Utopian and Scientific

William Henry Channing, “Call of the Present” (1843)

October 2, 2008 Shawn P. Wilbur
William Henry Channing, editor of The Present (1843-44) and The Spirit of the Age (1849-50), was well placed to gather together the radical threads of the early 1840s. The nephew of the prominent Unitarian minister William Ellery Channing, and a friend or acquaintance of figures like Elizabeth Palmer Peabody, William Batchelder Greene, Orestes Brownson, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Charles Lane, Bronson Alcott, etc., he was in touch with much of what was bubbling up in the years prior to the 1848 revolutions. The works of Fourier, Swedenborg, Saint Simon and Proudhon all appeared in his publications, and he translated a number […]
Utopian and Scientific

J. William Lloyd, “The World’s Future—A Prophecy” (1882)

March 22, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur
[one_third padding=”0 10px 0 0px”][/one_third][two_third_last padding=”0 0px 0 10px”] THE WORLD’S FUTURE—A PROPHECY. I BELIEVE that a time is approaching when terrestrial nature, at least, will be in almost complete subjection to mankind. Man will then indeed be “the lord of creation.” The deserts will be turned into inland seas, or converted by irrigation into fertile and fruitful plains. The swamps will be ditched and drained until they become the very gardens of the earth, and the planting of malaria-destroying vegetation and other sanitary precautions will render them as healthful as the most salubrious locations. A similar plan to that […]
Utopian and Scientific

The New Columbia, or, The Re-United States (1909)

May 1, 2006 Shawn P. Wilbur
Today’s addition to the Libertarian Labyrinth is an obscure gem, The New Columbia, or, The Re-United States. It was originally published in Findlay, Ohio, by the the New Columbia Publishing Co., and written by attorney George H. Phelps, under the pseudonym “Patrick Quinn Tangent.” Phelps had been something of a cipher to me, despite the fact he lived just down the road a piece. Some recent researches have turned up some very interesting material. The New Columbia was published in 1909. At that time, Phelps was known, along with his law partner, William L. David, as something of a crusader […]