I’ve just posted a translation of selections from The Philosophy of Defiance, an 1854 anarchist pamphlet published in New York and written by a French exile who signed the work “Felix P…..” Max Nettlau discovered the text, and published portions of it in La Revue Anarchiste for July, 1922. That’s fortunate, because the original text seems to be rare to the point of nonexistence, and because it’s a very interesting example of early anarchist thought.
Contr'un
Max Nettlau, pessimism and possibilities
In 1901 and 1903, Max Nettlau, arguably the greatest of anarchism’s historians, wrote a series of documents intended for “friends and comrades,” though not for general publication, addressing what he took to be problems in anarchist practice. The first of these seems to have been “Some criticism of some current anarchist beliefs,” a 49-page text written in English, and this was followed by at least two drafts of a more formally structured French manuscript of nearly 200 pages. All can be read in the digitized portions of the Max Nettlau Papers at the IISH site. The linked text is a […]
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Burke + Warren, 1850
In an article on “Anarchism in England Fifty Years Ago,” reprinted in the February 1906 issue of Liberty, Max Nettlau discussed two very early anarchist publications printed in England. One of these was an edition of Edmund Burke’s Vindication of Natural Society, published By Holyoake and Co., in 1850, under the title The Inherent Evils of all State Governments Demonstrated. The particular interest in this edition of Burke’s work comes from the Appendix which followed it, probably the work of Ambrose C. Cuddon, in which Josiah Warren’s “system” (he hated the word but…) of equitable commerce is presented as an […]
anarchism without adjectives
Max Nettlau, “Panarchy, a Forgotten Idea of 1860” (1909)
For a long time I have been fascinated by the thought how wonderful it would be if at last, in public opinion on the succession of political and social institutions, the fateful term “one after another” would be replaced through the very simple and self-evident “simultaneously.” “Down with the State!” and “Only upon the ruins of the State…” express emotions and wishes of many but it seems that only the cool “Opt out of the State” (No. 2 of “The Socialist”) can help them towards their realization. When a new scientific insight appears, then those convinced of it do […]