Workshops Archives - The Libertarian Labyrinth

A Schematic Anarchism: Anarchy and the Governmental Series

January 21, 2026 Shawn P. Wilbur

OUR LOST CONTINENT Related links: A New Proudhon Library [project page] Voline, “On Synthesis” (1924) Anarchy as a Beacon and as a Focus for Synthesis (2018) EXPLORATIONS: PHASE ONE: RELATED: “Our Lost Continent” (April 4, […]

Readings in Popular and Practical Philosophy

November 23, 2023 Shawn P. Wilbur

With the translation of Proudhon’s Of Justice in the Revolution and in the Church now halfway through its first major revision, the time appears ripe for a more active sort of sharing of the text, in the form of a group reading. That is, however, no small task, given the length and complexity of the work — and the fact that I’m still wrestling the other half into shape, along with a variety of other related texts. So I’m going to try to take my cues from what work during the Constructing Anarchisms project, set myself a task that ought to facilitate the readings of others, establish some forums in which discussion is encouraged and then extend a general invitation to others to play along to whatever extend suits them.

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Constructing Anarchisms (Reimagined)

November 30, 2022 Shawn P. Wilbur

When Constructing Anarchisms was interrupted by “reopening” and a growing pile of unanswered questions, plenty of unfinished business remained. I’ve been chipping away at it ever since. The fundamental questions I needed to answer before I could start my historical survey have largely been answered. The toolkit from “A Schematic Anarchism” has been an unexpected bonus. The process of answering those questions seems to have been useful to others as well.

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A Schematic Anarchism: Notes on Application

November 9, 2022 Shawn P. Wilbur

It’s no very great leap from the position I had already taken in “A Schematic Anarchism” to the one I’ve been exploring in Proudhon’s manuscripts. In general, I have been proposing that we shift our approach from endless, more or less interminable arguments about whether or not a given ideology or practice is anarchism or not to analyses of proposed anarchisms that ask: “If we treat X as an instance of anarchism, in what sense is that claim true and how does it compare to other instances?” The answers to that question ought to demonstrate that some of the proposed anarchisms only qualify in the most trivial senses, on the basis of the most implausible explanations, while others can be plausibly situated among the ranks of anarchisms on the basis of a variety of plausible narratives.

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A Schematic Anarchism: Anarchism-in-General

June 10, 2022 Shawn P. Wilbur

For me, the last few years have involved a rather public renegotiation of my relationship with anarchism—and more specifically with the possibility of an anarchism-in-general that is not just a jumble of incommensurable theories with some superficial resemblances. I have most often presented that work as a matter of synthesis, with a very specific reference to Voline’s 1924 essay, “On Synthesis,” where he gives that notion—so often limited in anarchist discourse to debates about the organization of federations—a considerably more general significance.

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A Schematic Anarchism: Rethinking Anarchism Without Adjectives and Synthesis

May 7, 2022 Shawn P. Wilbur

The schematic anarchism introduced over the last few months is at once a comparatively adjectiveless anarchism and a tool for synthesis. It is, however, not an example of anarchism without adjectives or anarchist synthesis in their most familiar senses. Exploring the ways in which those ideas are transformed in the context of this new conceptual toolkit should help clarify the character and uses of the new apparatus.

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A Schematic Anarchism (Introduction)

April 27, 2022 Shawn P. Wilbur

One way to get at what is constant in the widest senses of anarchy and anarchism is to begin with what is least contestable about the elements of those terms. Etymology is certainly no definitive source of meaning — and few things are more tiresome than the attempt to resolve ideological debates with dictionaries — but if we are going to take inspiration from the interpretive freedom extended by Proudhon to his readers, we don’t really have much but the words themselves as references.

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Embracing Anarchy — Introduction

December 13, 2021 Shawn P. Wilbur

We become anarchists by embracing and internalizing anarchy. We express that internalized anarchy by constructing anarchisms. I take this to be a kind of general formula, describing the relations between three key concepts — anarchy, anarchist and anarchism — in their most general senses. This formula should be applicable to any form of anarchism that defines itself in terms of a commitment to anarchy. It should serve us as a rough schematic as we analyze and construct various anarchisms.

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Polity-form (External constitution)

December 5, 2021 Shawn P. Wilbur

If we are to follow Proudhon’s an-archic account of social organization, we can expect the social collectivities that we encounter to be self-organizing associations of human beings, onto which some kind of governmental framework has been imposed from the outside. The authoritarian pretense is that society — human association in all its dynamic forms — has not really been established until the material relations of association have been seconded in some way by the establishment of an authority, sitting atop some kind of fundamentally political hierarchy. The anarchic response is that authority and hierarchy are inessential elements that we must learn to do without.

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Legal Order

November 28, 2021 Shawn P. Wilbur

In the anarchist context, it is common to approach the question of legal order by asking whether anarchists truly desire a society in which nothing is prohibited. This is, it seems to me, only half of the question that needs to be asked, as an anarchic society would also be one in which nothing is permitted. And it is probably this second aspect that is most helpful in evaluating the antinomian character of anarchy.

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