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.
Anarchist Beginnings
Max Nettlau, The Struggle against the State (1908)
[ezcol_2third] The Struggle against the State [Les Temps Nouveaux, 13 no. 51 (April 18, 1908) : 3-4.] ———– What follows is not a translation, but a free and somewhat expanded summary of an article [“Are there New Fields for Anarchist Activity?”] that I wrote for the revue Mother Earth of New-York (December 1907, pp. 433-444), and as I have been led to make some new digressions, the comrades who publish that revue are completely absolved of any literary responsibility for the present writing. I I have often asked myself why anarchist ideas, which appears so clear to us and add […]
anarchism without adjectives
Max Nettlau, “Can a General Strike Be Successful?” (1909)
[one_third][/one_third][two_third_last] CAN A GENERAL STRIKE BE SUCCESSFUL? Anarchism should receive the greatest attention just now when the insufficiency of Syndicalism becomes more patent. So many things happen which ought to set our friends thinking. Too many things are taken for granted which require continuous fresh examination, e.g., the General Strike, in light of recent French experience. Will an effective strike of the kind be possible before immense masses are filled with indignation and enthusiasm to such a degree that they might, and would just as well straightaway make a revolution and not stop at a passive strike? I think that […]
anarchism without adjectives
Max Nettlau, “A General Survey” (1910)
[one_third][/one_third][two_third_last] A GENERAL SURVEY. As time goes, by, an increasing number of social commotions of some kind seem to happen each year, periods of rest are hardly known, and it would not be difficult to. describe a number of events of a hopeful character tending towards freedom during the year that is just past. The first French postal strike, the anti-militarist revolt in Catalonia, the international Ferrer protest, the crushing of absolutism in Turkey and in Persia are each of them events of a magnitude that has not happened in years in the quiet past. But I do not wish […]