It’s a very, very good day for those interested in the earliest manifestations of mutualism in the United States. William Henry Channing’s The Spirit of the Age (1849-1850) is now available, in its entirety, with minimal scanning defects, from Google Books. I had previously had the chance to read through an original bound volume, and transcribe some contributions. Now I can finally sit down to read through the entire run. 150 or so pages in, my sense of the importance of this early journal just keeps increasing. Go check it out!
Uncategorized
Might Makes Right (a bad book is good to find…)
Ragnar Redbeard’s infamous work, “Might is Right,” aka “The Survival of the Fittest, or the Philosophy of Power” (1896), has shown up at Archive.org. Those inclined to hate egoism should cherish this work, which has few—arguably none—of the pesky redeeming features so common in works by Stirner, Badcock, Walker, etc.
Anarchism
Our ideas are in everyone’s archives
From the Support from Unexpected Quarters Department: I’m a big fan of Archive.org’s moving pictures collection, but hadn’t spent a lot of time looking at their texts. There are some gems tucked away there, including: John Henry Mackay, The Anarchists; a Picture of Civilization at the Close of the Nineteenth Century Sadakichi Hartmann, My Rubaiyat Both of these are, amusingly enough, sponsored by MSN. Other finds: Anna Bowman Dodd, The Republic of the Future, or, Socialism a Reality (1888) Laurence Gronlund, Our Destiny : the influence of socialism on morals and religion : an essay in ethics (1891) Jack London, […]
Anarchism
New Anarchist Platformist archive
Anarchism and the Platformist Tradition is a new archive with a nice collection of platformist texts, starting, naturally, with the 1926 Organisational Platform of the General Union of Anarchists (Draft), but including both prior and subsequent contributions to the platformist tradition. Whether or not you ultimately agree with the approaches represented here, there are important issues being wrestled with in all of this stuff, and the more practical issues are not unlike those that any anarchist society will face as it attempts to give itself a working shape. I’m ultimately unsympathetic to the solutions offered by platformism, but value the […]