1850 Archives - The Libertarian Labyrinth

Georges Duchêne, “Government” (1849-50)

January 31, 2024 Shawn P. Wilbur

Six thousand years of government have proven abundantly that power is, by its nature, spendthrift, prodigal, unproductive, invasive, despotic. Experience does not seem decisive for certain intelligences; and we are in the necessity, — if we do not want to attempt a new dictatorship, — of combatting the idea of authority, not by its historical antecedents, but in its very principle.

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William B. Greene, “Plutocracy” (1850)

January 6, 2018 Shawn P. Wilbur

[one_third padding=”0 10px 0 0px”] Plutocracy is the subject of several of the articles William B. Greene contributed to The Worcester Palladium. The term would have been familiar to him from Pierre Leroux’s 1842 essay, “De la ploutocratie,” but it had also featured prominently in an address by the Massachusetts Democrats, which prompted the Whig denials that motivated this essay. Wm. B. Greene in “The Worcester Palladium” [/one_third][two_third_last padding=”0 0px 0 10px”] For the Palladium. Plutocracy. “Ours is no “plutocracy” but a Constitution of Grecian model.”—Whig State Address. It was authoritatively determined, at the Council of the Whig Church recently […]

William B. Greene, “Equality—No. 6. Cain and Abel” (1850)

January 6, 2018 Shawn P. Wilbur

Like several of the other articles that he contributed to The Worcester Palladium, this early article by William Batchelder Greene contains some of his most direct expressions of anarchistic and socialistic ideas, but weaves them together with his rather esoteric readings of scripture. The result is both striking and perplexing. Equally perplexing is the question of just which essays we should consider to be the fourth and fifth entries in the “Equality” series. While the two installments of “Capital and Labor” were included in the book Equality, the themes here seem to be a continuation of the material covered in […]

Ernest Coeurderoy, “Demolish Authority!” (1850)

September 4, 2016 anarchisms_w4l2ii

From Days of Exile, Vol. 1: To make the Revolution pass, like a red-hot iron, across this century, one thing alone must be done: Demolish authority. This proposition has no need of demonstration.

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André Léo, “The Young Girl and the Bird” (1850)

February 8, 2014 anarchisms_w4l2ii

It’s certainly no surprise to find work by André Léo in Pierre Leroux’s journal La Revue Sociale. The prolific writer, whose real name was Victoire Léodile Béra, was married to the editor, Grégoire Champseix. But much of her literary output was later, after Champseix’s death, and despite all the very interesting material that I have pulled from La Revue Sociale, I’ll admit that I have never been able to steal the time to give the journal all the attention I’m sure it deserves. So it was nice to find that members of L’Association André Léo have identified a number of […]