1894 Archives - The Libertarian Labyrinth

J. William Lloyd, et al., “White-Flag Anarchism”—A Debate (1894)

December 23, 2018 Shawn P. Wilbur

[one_third padding=”0 10px 0 0px”] J. William Lloyd, “White-Flag Anarchism—A Color Line,” Liberty 10 no. 6 (July 28, 1894): 9. Lizzie M. Holmes, “That ‘Color Line,’” Liberty 10 no. 7 (August 11, 1894): 8. C. J. Zeitinger, “The White Flag” Liberty 10 no. 7 (August 11, 1894): 8. J. William Lloyd, “White Anarchism, Force and Sentiment,” Liberty 10 no. 9 (September 8, 1894): 8. William Bailie, “Away with the Red Flag,” Liberty 10 no. 9 (September 8, 1894): 8–9. E. C. Walker, “Timely Utterance to Sane Thought,” Liberty 10 no. 11 (October 6, 1894): 5. F. D. Tandy, “Reds We […]

Adam Anarchist, “The Decalogue as Revised” (1894)

December 21, 2018 Shawn P. Wilbur

[one_third padding=”0 10px 0 0px”][/one_third][two_third_last padding=”0 0px 0 10px”] The Decalogue as Revised. I. Thou shalt have no gods save Liberty, Reason, and Justice. II. Thou shalt not take unto thee any legal image, for instance, a wife. III. Thou shalt pay no taxes, nor collect them. IV. The Sabbath exists for thee, not thou for it, therefore thou shalt on that as on all other days follow faithfully thy ego’s promptings. V. Honor render to all to whom it is due—mayhap to thy parents. But let not ﬁlial affection blind thee to the fact that the vast majority of […]

Louisa Sarah Bevington, “Why I Am an Expropriationist” (1894)

June 6, 2018 Shawn P. Wilbur

[two_third padding=”0 10px 0 0px”] WHY I AM AN EXPROPRIATIONIST. BY L.S. BEVINGTON. I advocate and I look forward to wholesale expropriation because I do not believe there is any such thing as a right to property, and because I hold that it is disastrous, nay, fatal, to the welfare of all individuals composing the community, to have to regulate their lives and affairs in accordance with a fictitious abstraction which has no warrant and no basis in the natural laws of life. I desire universal expropriation, not merely because the power that property-holding gives to man over man is […]

William Morris, “Why I Am a Communist” (1894)

June 6, 2018 Shawn P. Wilbur

[two_third padding=”0 10px 0 0px”] WHY I AM A COMMUNIST. BY WILLIAM MORRIS. Objection has been made to the use of the word “Communism” to express fully-developed Socialism, on the ground that it has been used for the Community-Building, which played so great a part in some of the phases of Utopian Socialism, and is still heard of from time to time nowadays. Of Communism in this sense I am not writing now; it may merely be said in passing that such experiments are of their nature non-progressive; at their best they are but another form of the Mediæval monastery, […]

Voltairine de Cleyre, “Relation of Sex in Humanity” (1894)

April 7, 2018 Shawn P. Wilbur

[two_third] RELATION OF SEX IN HUMANITY. By Voltairine de Cleyre. A Lecture Delivered before the Ladies Liberal League, Philadelphia, Pa., Dec. 12, ’93, in Reply to Professor Cope. Before proceeding to state my own position on the subject of the relation of sex, I will very briefly restate the principal points of Professor Cope’s argument. He viewed the question from the two standpoints of biology and sociology, beginning with the former which, he declared, furnishes the foundation facts from which sociological conclusions are to be drawn. And having done so, arrived at the conclusion that the natural position of woman […]

Voltairine De Cleyre, “Mary Wollstonecraft” (1894)

August 20, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur

For the Boston Investigator. MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT. Mr. Editor:—Yourself and readers will be interested to learn that the plan of establishing a “female saint’s day” among freethinkers, by commemorating the birth of Mary Wollstonecraft, proposed by myself at the international congress of freethinkers, last October, has taken practical form in this city. The Ladies’ Liberal League, of Philadelphia, (which is not, by the way, an auxiliary of the Friendship Liberal League, as state by Mr. Charlesworth in a communication last fall, and I correct the error in the interest of both societies, the former being a much more radical group than […]

Francis W. L. Adams, “Anarchism” (1894)

July 20, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur

“Anarchism.” ‘Tis not when I am here, In these homeless homes, Where sin and shame and disease And foul death comes; ‘Tis not when heart and brain Would be still and forget Men and women and children Dragged down to the pit. But when I hear them declaiming Of “liberty,” “order” and “law,” The husk-hearted gentleman And the mud-hearted bourgeois, That a sombre, hateful desire Burns up slow in my breast, To wreck the great, guilty temple. And give us rest! — Francis W. L. Adams. Francis William Lauderdale Adams, “Anarchism,” Songs of the Army of the Night (London: William […]

Commonweal Anarchist Group, “Why We Are Anarchists” (1894)

July 20, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur

WHY WE ARE ANARCHISTS. REPRINTED FROM “THE COMMONWEAL.” 1894 PART I. It may be well to give some of the arguments for our belief in Anarchism as the coming form of our social and political institutions. We are confronted, it appears, on all sides by obstacles and difficulties. Here, the inveterate belief in law and authority, in religious superstitions and in the educational powers of compulsion and coercion; there, the various forms of political humbug, the representative system, the struggle for political power, expressed in the shape of self-advertizing electioneering political swindlers on one side and the ever befooled, hero-worshipping, […]

Emile Henry, “Letter to the Director of the Conciergerie” (1894)

August 29, 2016 Shawn P. Wilbur

During the visit you made to my cell Sunday, the 18th of this month, we had a quite friendly discussion of anarchist ideas. You said you were very surprised to learn our theories in a different light, and you asked me to summarize our conversation in writing, in order to better know what the anarchists want. You can easily understand, monsieur, that in just a few pages one can’t expound upon a theory which analyses our current social life in all of its manifestations; that studies these manifestations the way a doctor examines a sick body, and which then condemns […]

J. A. Andrews, “A Handbook of Anarchy” (1894)

August 29, 2016 Shawn P. Wilbur

Anarchy is freedom. The literal meaning of the word “free” is to love or like; thus when we say that a man is free we imply that he is “to like,” that is, he has only to like in order to decide what he will do, or try to do. Among the things which people in general like, is to avoid hurting others, and as sometimes to do a particular thing which one would like would come in conflict with this, it becomes a matter for consideration which course one likes the best. From this people have roughly set out […]