1863 Archives - The Libertarian Labyrinth

Authority, Liberty and the Federative Principle

February 19, 2020 Shawn P. Wilbur

Related links: Initial Thoughts Proudhon’s Du principe fédératif et de la nécessité de reconstituer le parti de la révolution occupies an interesting place among his works. It has been, prior to my translation of Théorie de la propriété, the only extended portion of Proudhon’s final major project, the study of Poland, available in English. And my sense is that it has been considered one of the “good” late works, like De la capacité politique des classes ouvrières, rather than one of the potentially “bad” works, like the work on property—while also being, of course, the work most often cited in […]

César de Paepe, “Anarchy” (1863)

August 29, 2016 Shawn P. Wilbur

The two texts that follow are both translations of an excerpt from the speech published as “Discours du citoyen César de Paepe prononcé á Patignies (Namur) en 1863” in 1898. The first, an edited translation, first appeared under the title “Anarchy” in The Commonweal 7 no. 287 (October 31, 1891): 137-139. The second is my own complete translation of the same passage, which includes some remarks on the transition to anarchy not included in the 19th century translation. The ideal of the democracy can only be Anarchy; not Anarchy in the sense of disorder, confusion, but Anarchy in the sense, […]

Speech at Malmö, Sweden, March 30, 1863

July 2, 2015 Shawn P. Wilbur

The working documents of an international movement can pose complicated problems for translators. Here, for example, is the text of a speech, apparently written in French, first reported in English, then translated back to French for the Collected Works from a Russian translation, though it is not immediately clear from which source the Russian translation was made. Now I have translated the second French version into English. In this case, given the simplicity of the sentiments expressed, all of this translation probably obscures very little in the text, but we can easily imagine cases where the vagueries of document preservation […]