Joseph Déjacque Archives - Page 2 of 4 - The Libertarian Labyrinth

Joseph Déjacque, et al, to the machine-breakers (1848)

July 14, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur

[one_third padding=”0 10px 0 0px”] [/one_third][two_third_last padding=”0 0px 0 10px”] TO THE WORKERS. Brothers! We learn that in the midst of the joy and triumph, some of our own, misled by dangerous advice, want to tarnish the glory of our revolution by excesses that we condemn with all our energies. They want to break the machinery. Brothers, that is wrong! We suffer like them from the disturbances that have been led to by the introduction of machines into industry; but, instead of taking it our on the inventions that shorten labor by multiplying production, let us accuse of the […]

Joseph Déjacque and the First Emergence of “Anarchism”

August 29, 2016 Shawn P. Wilbur

[one_third padding=”0 10px 0 0px”] [/one_third][two_third_last padding=”0 0px 0 10px”] [From Contr’un, July 25, 2016] One of this week’s tasks was to finally go back and take a closer look at how Joseph Déjacque used the language of anarchy in his writings. I finally assembled a couple of text files of all the articles from Le Libertaire and worked through the required keyword searches. That process led me to focus on some pieces that I admit I had never read, or read closely, before and produce some new translations. I think the results are interesting and pose some new […]

Joseph Déjacque, “The Humanisphere” — Note on “The Extremes”

November 3, 2012 Shawn P. Wilbur

I’m working on completing Part I of The Humanisphere, but I decided to finish up this very interesting note before settling down to that task. There are tensions in the work which are pretty remarkable — as we saw in Part III, Déjacque was prepared to call for a war against Civilization (defined, following Fourier, as the form of society of the modern era, and thus something to be progressed beyond) exceeding even that proposed by Ernest Coeurderoy, but, as we will see in Part II, that didn’t prevent him from imagining his anarchic utopia as a kind of thoroughly […]

Joseph Déjacque, “The Humanisphere” (Part III)

November 1, 2012 Shawn P. Wilbur

[I’ve posted parts of The Humanisphere before, and talked a bit about the difficulties involved. Slowly, but surely, I’m working my way through the work, but not necessarily tackling the sections in order. This is the final section.] THE HUMANISPHERE by Joseph Déjacque Part III The Transitional Period. How will the progress be accomplished? What means will prevail? What route will be chosen? That is what is it is difficult to determine in an absolute manner. But whatever these means, whatever the route, if it is a step towards anarchic liberty, I will applaud it. Let the progress take place […]

Joseph Déjacque, The Humanisphere — I

June 16, 2012 Shawn P. Wilbur

[I posted some of this about a year and a half ago, but set it down again, not feeling comfortable enough with some of the contexts to be sure I was getting the details right. With the work that I’ve been doing recently translating Charles Fourier, Pierre Leroux, and some other works by Joseph Déjacque, I’m feeling much more certain that I’m catching nuances, so I’m going to start posting sections again, beginning with a considerably enlarged first helping.] The Humanisphere Anarchic Utopia Utopia: “A dream not realized, but not unrealizable.” Anarchy: “Absence of government.” Revolutions are conservations. (P. J. […]

Joseph Déjacque, “The Revolutionary Question”

May 13, 2012 Shawn P. Wilbur

La question révolutionnaire par Joseph Déjacque Notre ennemi, c’est notre maître (La Fontaine) The Revolutionary Question by Joseph Déjacque Our enemy is our master. (La Fontaine) Extrait du journal ” Le Républicain “ 1. La Société de la Montagne nous prie d’insérer la communication suivante : “La Société de la République universelle la Montagne désirant faciliter autant qu’il est en son pouvoir la propagande républicaine, a décidé qu’elle prêterait la salle de ses séances, chaque fois que la demande lui en serait adressée par une société démocratique n’ayant pas de lieu fixe de réunion, ou lorsqu’un citoyen désirerait faire un lecture ayant pour […]

Joseph Déjacque on Revolution (from The Revolutionary Question)

May 13, 2012 Shawn P. Wilbur

Of the Revolution Principles : Liberty, equality, fraternity Consequences: Abolition of government in all its forms, monarchic or republican, the supremacy of one alone or of majorities; But anarchy, individual sovereignty, complete, unlimited, absolute liberty of everyone to do everything which is in the nature of the human being. Abolition of Religion, whether catholic or Israelite, protestant or any other sort. Abolition of the clergy and the altar, of the priest,–curate or pope, minister or rabbi;–of the Divinity, idol in one or three persons, universal autocracy or oligarchy; But the human being,–at once creature and creator,–no longer having anything but […]

Joseph Déjacque, “The Universal Circulus” (revised translation)(1858)

May 9, 2012 Shawn P. Wilbur

[This remarkable bit of libertarian philosophy by Joseph Déjacque poses all sorts of difficulties for the modern reader, not the least of which is it borrowings from, and reworkings of, the works of Charles Fourier and Pierre Leroux. And there are places where it ha been necessary to translate things rather literally, since terms are used suggestively, according to the established uses of none of the writers or schools that they were drawn from. There are also a couple of times when Déjacque’s enthusiasm clearly ran away with the syntax: where catalogs of conditionals come to abrupt stops, without ever […]

Joseph Déjacque, “The Universal Circulus”

May 9, 2012 Shawn P. Wilbur

The Universal Circulus (1858) Joseph Déjacque I The universal circulus is the destruction of every religion, of all arbitrariness, be it elysian or tartarean, heavenly or infernal. The movement in the infinite is infinite progress. This being the case, the world can no longer be a duality, mind and matter, body and soul. It cannot be a mutable thing and an immutable one, which involves contradiction—movement excluding immobility and vice versa—but must be, on the contrary, an infinite unity of always-mutable and always-mobile substance, which implies perfectibility. It is through eternal and infinite movement that the infinite and eternal substance […]

Pierre Leroux on Joseph Déjacque

February 12, 2012 Shawn P. Wilbur

“… one day Déjacque harangued the crowd in the Faubourg Saint-Honore, where he lived, claiming to be a new reincarnation of Christ…” — from an account of Déjacque last days, before he died “mad from poverty.” The biographical details on Joseph Déjacque are scattered, though slowly but surely they’re coming together. And they have surfaced in some interesting places. One of the most interesting, especially for me, is Pierre Leroux’s The Beach at Samarez: A Philosophical Poem, a two-volume work combining a philosophical poem with reminiscences of life among the French exiles in the colony on the isle of Jersey. […]