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Proudhon to Villiaumé, July 13, 1857

April 17, 2018 Shawn P. Wilbur
My dear Villiaumé, it is too warm for me to venture, with my sick head, all the way to Rue Marsollier. I am thinking instead of fleeing for ten or twelve days to some hole in Franche-Comté, where the devil may perhaps not come to torment me with his pomps and work. But you, who are spry, come some evening after your dinner and we will have a mug at the local cabaret, which will do you as much good as an ample banquet. Friendship, and understanding as well, is surely found in a modest “to your health.”

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Proudhon Library

P.-J. Proudhon, Selections from the “Carnets”

April 13, 2018 Shawn P. Wilbur
[two_third] Selections from the Carnets Pierre-Joseph Proudhon ————— Carnets, Vol. 1 (Carnet No. 1, 17): 27. Serial law. Everything in nature is simple and complex. What we call a simple idea or element is nothing but the term with which we ended our analysis. Each day I experience the truth of that observation, […] Carnets, Vol. 1 (Carnet 2, 38): 133. In order to organize society, to reestablish order, we must not wish to escape antinomic principles; we must seek one that coordinates with them. This principle exists, simpler and more common than anything the laws have ever prescribed: return […]
Proudhon Library

P.-J. Proudhon, The Creation of Order in Humanity

March 31, 2018 Shawn P. Wilbur
Related links: Auguste Beauchery, “Solution of the Problem of Certainty” THE CREATION OF ORDER IN HUMANITY, OR, PRINCIPLES OF POLITICAL ORGANIZATION —————————- DEFINITIONS 1. I call Order every seriated or symmetrical arrangement. Order necessarily presupposes division, distinction, difference. Nothing undivided, indistinct, undifferentiated, can be understood as ordered: these notions are mutually exclusive. [1] 2. The ideas of intelligence and final cause are foreign to the idea of order. In fact, order can appear to us as an unforeseen result of properties inherent in the various parts of a whole: intelligence cannot, in this case, be designated as a principle of […]
Proudhon Library

Proudhon, Justice: Eleventh Study

March 29, 2018 Shawn P. Wilbur
[two_third padding=”0 10px 0 10px”] JUSTICE IN THE REVOLUTION AND IN THE CHURCH ELEVENTH STUDY LOVE AND MARRIAGE [continued] […] CATECHISM OF MARRIAGE Question. — What is the conjugal couple? Answer. — Every power of nature, every faculty of life, every affection of the soul, every category of the intelligence, needs an organ, in order to manifest itself and act. The sentiment of Justice can be no exception to that law. But Justice, which rules all the other faculties and surpasses liberty itself, not being able to have its organ in the individual, would remain for man a notion without […]
Proudhon Library

P.-J. Proudhon, “War and Peace,” Volume II

March 28, 2018 Shawn P. Wilbur
[one_third padding=”0 10px 0 10px”] War and Peace, Vol. I How Business Goes in France and Why We Will Have War [/one_third][two_third_last padding=”0 10px 0 10px”]   WAR AND PEACE INVESTIGATIONS REGARDING THE PRINCIPLE AND CONSTITUTION OF THE RIGHTS OF NATIONS BOOK THREE WAR IN ITS FORMS [continued] […] BOOK FIVE TRANSFORMATION OF WAR Pacis imponers morem. Virgil. SUMMARY. THESIS. — War, according to its partisans, primitive form of justice with its basis in nature and consciousness, is susceptible to reform. The abuse that sullies it is no more an argument against it than the aberrations of love, paternity or […]
anarchist individualism

E. Armand, “Without Amoralization, No Anarchization” (1926)

March 27, 2018 Shawn P. Wilbur
The Larousse dictionary defines the word morality as: the relation of an act, of the sentiments of a person, with the rule of morals. From this comes the expression “certificate of morality,” to designate an official confirmation of a clean criminal record. Each time that I hear morality spoken of in a publication that calls itself anarchist, to whatever degree, there comes to my mind, unbidden, the idea of a “certificate of good behavior,” delivered by the police chief of the district.

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Proudhon Library

P.-J. Proudhon, “War and Peace,” Volume I

March 24, 2018 Shawn P. Wilbur
[two_third padding=”0 10px 0 10px”]   WAR AND PEACE INVESTIGATIONS REGARDING THE PRINCIPLE AND CONSTITUTION OF THE RIGHTS OF NATIONS TABLE OF CONTENTS Preface BOOK ONE: PHENOMENOLOGY OF WAR Chapter One. — Of the phenomenality of war Chap. II. — War is a divine fact Chap. III. — War, religious revelation Chap. IV. — War, revelation of justice Chap. V. — War, revelation of the ideal Chap. Vl. — War, discipline of humanity Chap. VII. — The man of war is greater than nature Chap. VIII. — War and peace, correlative expressions Chap. IX. — Problem of war and peace BOOK […]
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P.-J Proudhon, “The Social Revolution Demonstrated by the Coup d’Etat” (1852)

March 21, 2018 Shawn P. Wilbur
The Social Revolution is a radical book with a strangely reactionary reputation. Having already addressed his ideas to all the most likely audiences, during the period when revolutionary hopes were still widespread in France, he turned, during his prison sentence, to less likely audiences. For example, The General Idea of the Revolution in the Nineteenth Century, which has retained a very radical reputation, was addressed to the bourgeoisie. So it is only through an escalation of his existing strategy that his next work became a call to the newly self-proclaimed Emperor Napoleon III to recognize the inevitability of the Social […]
Working Translations

The Present Institutions of the International from the Point of View of the Future (1869)

March 20, 2018 Shawn P. Wilbur
In the Archives Bakounine, this text is attributed to César de Paepe. Les institutions actuelles de l’Internationale au point de vue de l’avenir. L’Association internationale des Travailleurs porte dans ses flancs la régénération sociale. Il en est beaucoup qui conviennent que si l’Association vient à réaliser son programme, elle aura effectivement instauré le règne de la justice, mais qui croient que certaines institutions actuelles de l’Internationale ne sont que temporaires, et destinées à disparaître. Nous voulons montrer que l’Internationale offre déjà le type de la société à venir, et que ses diverses institutions, avec les modifications voulues, formeront l’ordre social […]
progress reports

Gérard de Lacaze-Duthiers, “The True Revolutionaries” (1922)

March 10, 2018 Shawn P. Wilbur
The true revolutionaries have always been, in all times and all countries, those whose minds have been broad enough to grasp the most conflicting formulas, to extract from each of them the portion of truth that they contain and to attempt to reconcile them in a higher harmony. The “revolutionaries” are not always those whom we designate by that name: instead, these often deserve the epithet of “reactionaries,” as their acts entirely justify.

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