Benjamin R. Tucker

Contr'un

Benjamin R. Tucker in Printers’ Ink, 1892

October 25, 2011 Shawn P. Wilbur
Here’s another letter from Benjamin R. Tucker relating to the publishing trade, which refers to his experiences publishing the Weekly Bulletin of Newspaper and Periodical Literature, one of three non-political papers he published—the others were The Transatlantic and the elusive Five Stories a Week—which haven’t received much attention. HAS HAD A SIMILAR EXPERIENCE.  Benj. R, Tucker, Publisher and Bookseller, 224 Tremont St., Boston, Jan. 31, 189-2. } Geo. P. Rowell & Co., Publishers of Printers’ Ink: I am sorry that you are made a victim of official stupidity at Washington, and glad that you are disposed to use your wide […]
Contr'un

Tucker on “fake” translations

October 19, 2011 Shawn P. Wilbur
Here’s a bit of fun from the 1891 volume of The Bookseller and Newsman, where Benjamin R. Tucker got very actively involved in the debate about translations of Emile Zola’s “Money.” It’s classic Tucker. The American Edition of “Money.” _____ WHAT THE PUBLISHERS SAY OF IT. The editorial notice of The Nile Publishing Company’s edition of “Money,” by Emile Zola, in the March Newsman, was the cause of much comment in trade circles. The following correspondence from the publishers of this book will interest The Newsman readers and throw much light on the matter of translating and publishing foreign works: […]
Contr'un

“I hope to do some work for the Labor Cause…”

July 10, 2011 Shawn P. Wilbur
[one_third padding=”0 10px 0 0px”][/one_third][two_third_last padding=”0 0px 0 10px”] One of the bits of Liberty‘s prehistory that undoubtedly needs to be better documented is Tucker’s entry into the anarchist movement. I recently purchased microfilm of The Word, Ezra Heywood’s paper, and just ran across this in the Nov. 1872 issue: B. R. Tucker, New Bedford, Mass. ‘I hope to do some work for the Labor Cause but first wish to study the question that I may thoroughly understand it. For this reason I send for your publications. I wish you would hold a Convention in New Bedford. The conservatives here […]
Contr'un

Exploring intellectual history with Benjamin R. Tucker

July 9, 2011 Shawn P. Wilbur
[ezcol_1third] Contr’un Revisited: [commentary coming soon] [/ezcol_1third] [ezcol_2third_end] There is probably no figure in the history of anarchism about whom I am as, well, “passionately ambivalent” as Benjamin R. Tucker. He was the great popularizer of Proudhon, Greene and Warren, and an important partisan of Stirner, but also, in each case, something of a bowdlerizer. The plumb-line approach was worlds away from Proudhon’s notion of truth-in-relations, and his wholly “negative” understanding of anarchism ultimately at odds, to some degree at least, with the projects of all of his mutualist predecessors. He was the prototype for every left-libertarian who has trouble […]
Contr'un

Tucker’s “Radical Review”

March 7, 2010 Shawn P. Wilbur
A complete collection of Benjamin R. Tucker’s “Radical Review” is now available on Google Books. The searchable text is incomplete, but the page prints are better than those that I used to put together my archive of the magazine. With two sets to work from, the process of getting a fully searchable text archive—already well underway—should be accelerated considerably.
Corvus Distribution

Benjamin R. Tucker and Gertrude B. Kelly on Education

July 21, 2009 Shawn P. Wilbur
It’s a rare pleasure these days to stumble on something by Benjamin R. Tucker that I didn’t know was out there to find. When these items surface, it usually means some obscure radical journal or paper has surfaced. In this case, however, the source was the decidedly mainstream Educational Review, which dedicated half an issue in 1898 to “Some Socialist and Anarchist Views on Education.” Two of the contributors were political candidates of the Socialistic Labor Party, but the other two were figures familiar to readers of Tucker’s Liberty: Tucker himself and Dr. Gertrude B. Kelly. For the details, download […]
Proudhon Library

J.-A. Langlois, “P.-J. Proudhon: His Life and His Works” (1875)

July 1, 2008 Shawn P. Wilbur
The Tucker translation of What Is Property? is prefaced by a translation of J. A. Langlois’ “P. J. Proudhon: His Life and Work,” the biographical introduction to Proudhon’s collected Correspondence. Tucker includes a disclaimer regarding Langlois’ account: In the French edition of Proudhon’s works, the above sketch of his life is prefixed to the first volume of his correspondence, but the translator prefers to insert it here as the best method of introducing the author to the American public. He would, however, caution readers against accepting the biographer’s interpretation of the author’s views as in any sense authoritative; advising them, […]
mutualism

Should labor be paid or not? part 1

September 20, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur
I’ve been involved in a number of discussions recently on the issue of wages, as it was understood by the mutualists and their successors among the Liberty group. There seems to be a widespread sense, among social anarchists, but also among some who consider themselves of the mutualist-individualist school, that wages per se are a Bad Thing. Very few anarchists of any stripe would disagree that waged labor, under present conditions and under any conditions where large accumulations of capital, what we used to call “monopoly power,” and state-backed privilege exist, is unlikely to return to labor its fair share […]
Anarchism

Tucker’s “Radical Review”

August 8, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur
I had a happy coincidence of time and ambition today, with the result that the four issues of Benjamin R. Tucker’s Radical Review have joined Liberty in the archive. Once again, these are scans from microfilm, with all the defects you would expect, but I’ll be working to complete the OCR work on these in the near future. I have broken the 826 pages down by article (with an occasional pdf covering two or three book reviews.) Everything is linked from the oddly arranged contents page published in the bound volume. Use that one to browse, or go straight to […]