Henry Seymour

fiction

Henry Seymour, “The Monomaniacs” (1895)

March 13, 2018 Shawn P. Wilbur
[ezcol_2third] THE MONOMANIACS: A FABLE IN FINANCE. Once upon a time there lived in the moon a race of people who subsisted principally by eating one another. In course of time their numbers became so diminished that they viewed with alarm the approaching extinction of their species. But the first law of nature sufficiently asserted itself to induce them to relinquish cannibalism except as a luxury, and by degrees they went to fishing, to pasturage and husbandry, ultimately developing a rude system of commodity production. By and by they found hand-labor to be excessively tiresome, and although they worked from […]
From the Archives

Bevington and Seymour, “The Prejudice against Property” (1895)

March 13, 2018 Shawn P. Wilbur
[one_third] Debate on Proudhon and property: [/one_third][two_third_last] The Prejudice against Property. To the Editor of Liberty. The main objections to the property idea which stand out clearly in L. S. Bevington’s contribution in the last issue, are two. One is that “there exists no individual producer”; the other, that the ownership of the product of one’s labour is essentially “an instrument of rulership and power over the opportunities of others.” (1) It is patent to everyone that the “individual producer” of a commodity merely puts the finishing touch, so to speak, to a mass of labor performed by other hands. […]
Anarchist Beginnings

Henry Seymour, “The Two Anarchisms” (1894)

August 29, 2016 Shawn P. Wilbur
[ezcol_2third] Anarchists are divided into MUTUALISTS, who hope to bring about their economic results by Banks of Exchange and a free currency; and COMMUNISTS, whose motto is: “From every man according to his capacity, to every man according to his needs.” Hazell’s Annual Encyclopaedia, 1886 There are two Anarchisms. That is to say, there are two schools of Anarchism. One is communistic, the other mutualistic. One is emotional, the other is philosophic. One is utopian, the other practical. One is dogmatic, the other rational. One is destructive, the other constructive. One is revolutionary, the other evolutionary. One relies on the […]
From the Archives

L. S. Bevington, “The Last Gasp of Propertyism”

July 10, 2011 Shawn P. Wilbur
[ezcol_1third] Debate on Proudhon and property: Contr’un Revisited: [commentary coming soon] [/ezcol_1third] [ezcol_2third_end] It’s not much fun to be in a debate where the participants consistently talk past one another, but it can be fairly instructive to observe them. The debate in Tochatti’s Liberty is potentially instructive, while it certainly is not anything like a model for real meetings of minds. To recap: the communists of Liberty published the final section of Proudhon’s Theory of Property, together with a provocative argument that Proudhon’s stated personal preference for “Slavonic or Communal possession of land” somehow put “so-called Proudhonians” at odds with […]