Working Translations

Anarchist Beginnings

Benjamin Colin, “To France” (1852)

October 20, 2016 Shawn P. Wilbur
[ezcol_1half] TO FRANCE. You sleep, France, and you are in irons! You, the advance guard of progress and the future, how long will you tolerate the ignominious régime that oppresses you, and remain sunk in torpor? Does the blood of the victors of the Bastille and of the 10 August no longer flow in your veins? Are 1830 and 1848 dead dates in your history? Would you drink the cup of shame to the lees, without spewing it in the face of the eunuchs who present it to you? If this were the case, nearly all hope would be lost […]
Anarchist Beginnings

Mikhail Bakunin, “What is Authority” (1870)

September 7, 2016 Shawn P. Wilbur
NOTE: This passage is generally known as part of “God and the State” (Dieu et l’État, first published in 1882), but it appears in Bakunin’s manuscript as part of “Sophismes historiques de l’école doctrinaire des communistes allemands,” the second section of the unfinished book L’Empire Knouto-Germanique et la Révolution Sociale (The Knouto-Germanic Empire and the Social Revolution.) This new translation seeks to clarify some passages that may appear contradictory in existing translations. In particularly the verb repousser, which previous translators have tended to simply render as “reject,” has been brought closer to its literal sense of “push back” and some […]
Anarchist Beginnings

Elisée Reclus in the Era of Anarchy

September 1, 2016 Shawn P. Wilbur
I’ve been splitting the formative period of the anarchist tradition into two eras: an Era of Anarchy, running roughly from 1840 to 1880, and then an Era of Anarchism, running on to around 1920, with the emergence of anarchism as a common keyword marking the division between them. The scheme is not without its weaknesses, but one of the striking facts in support of it is the very limited number of figures who identified as anarchists in both periods. There is almost no one who called for anarchy before Proudhon’s death in 1865 who was both alive and still in […]
Working Translations

Emile Digeon, “Rights and Duties in Rational Anarchy” (1882)

August 30, 2016 Shawn P. Wilbur
  Rational anarchy consists of admitting no authority apart from the authority of the people, exercised directly in voting for the laws, and mediated by delegates who are always revocable in the execution of its decisions. (Rational Anarchy, by E. Digeon). I Certain libertarian socialists, seeking, with good reason, to react against the authoritarian tendencies of certain other socialists, have fallen into an excess of individualism which is dangerous to the liberty that they wish to defend. Reasoning as if nature could furnish spontaneously, without human labor, everything that is necessary or agreeable to everyone, several even go so far […]
A Good Word

Gaston Leval, “Libertarian Socialist! Why? (1956)

August 29, 2016 Shawn P. Wilbur
In the past, I’ve discussed the “libertarian socialist” current that broke away from language and organizational commitments of the anarchist movement and summarized some of their arguments, but I thought it would be useful to present some of the material in English, starting with a couple of Gaston Leval’s articles. The translation here is a little rough, in part because I don’t yet have a copy of the original publication in hand, and there are some questions about the transcription available online. But I think the general argument is clear enough, and I will update the translation when the original […]
anarchist individualism

E. Armand, “A Little Manual for the Anarchist Individualist” (1911/1934)

August 29, 2016 Shawn P. Wilbur
Petit Manuel anarchiste individualiste I Etre anarchiste c’est nier l’autorité et rejeter son corollaire économique : l’exploitation. Et cela dans tous les domaines où s’exerce l’activité humaine. L’anarchiste veut vivre sans dieux ni maîtres ; sans patrons ni directeurs ; alégal, sans lois comme sans préjugés ; amoral, sans obligations comme sans morale collective. Il veut vivre librement, vivre sa conception personnelle de la vie. En son for intérieur, il est toujours un asocial, un réfractaire, un en dehors, un en-marge, un à-côté, un inadapté. Et pour obligé qu’il soit de vivre dans une société dont la constitution répugne à […]