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.
anarchism without adjectives
Max Nettlau, “More Heretical Views” (1911)
MORE HERETICAL VIEWS * To my mind, at least, the more modern Socialism and Syndicalism spread, the more our ideal of many years is left behind, and real Socialism seems more remote than ever. We all feel, I think, that if intensity of feeling and energy for action were in any way corresponding to numerical strength, we should not see, side by side with immense Socialist and Labour Parties, Capitalism more flourishing than ever, monarchism and militarism triumphant, parsons and priests unabashed and prospering. Socialism, degraded to “Labourism,” now forms part and parcel of a system which it once meant […]
anarchism without adjectives
Max Nettlau, “Anarchism and the Unemployed” (1908)
[one_third][/one_third][two_third_last] ANARCHISM AND THE UNEMPLOYED. (To the Editor of Freedom.) Dear Comrade,—May I make a few remarks on Anarchism and the unemployed? A problem of suffering humanity ought not to be considered from an exclusive propaganda standpoint but at the same time none of our ideas ought to be relegated, even temporarily, to the background. We believe that our ideas will help us to find an adequate solution for all such problems, only our own different personal dispositions make us sometimes disagree on these proposed solutions, which, after all, experience alone can verify. Thus I fail to see that authoritarian […]
encyclopedia entries
Anarchist Encyclopedia: INDIVIDUALISM (or Communism?)
Entries from the Anarchist Encyclopedia INDIVIDUALISME (ou Communisme ?) Depuis longtemps j’ai été frappé par le contraste existant entre la largeur des buts de l’anarchisme et de bien-être pour tous — et l’étroitesse du programme économique de l’anarchisme individualiste et communiste. Je suis très porté à croire que la faiblesse de base économique — exclusivement communiste ou individualiste (les termes communisme ou individualisme s’appliquent, tout le long de cet article, aux anarchistes partisans de l’un ou de l’autre. Il n’est nullement question du communisme, IIIe Internationale), selon l’école – faiblesse dont ils ont conscience — empêche les hommes d’avoir pratiquement […]