Louisa Sarah Bevington Archives - The Libertarian Labyrinth

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 […]

Henry Seymour, “The Whereabouts of Communist Logic” (1895)

March 18, 2018 Shawn P. Wilbur

[one_third] Debate on Proudhon and property: [/one_third][two_third_last] THE WHEREABOUTS OF COMMUNIST LOGIC. To the Editor of Liberty. Failing a superfluity of copy, I send you a line or two in conclusion upon L. S. B.’s extraordinary effusion in the June number, such as I have gathered the patience to pen, for I am in no mood to follow her unprofitable pastime of splitting hairs. I defined the word “right” for the purpose of this discussion, as an individual limitation to appropriation, such limitation being set by an equality of opportunity. I furthermore held that this constituted the sole case for […]

L. S. Bevington, “The Whereabouts of Property Ethics” (1895)

March 18, 2018 Shawn P. Wilbur

[one_third] Debate on Proudhon and property: [/one_third][two_third_last] THE WHEREABOUTS OF PROPERTY ETHICS By L. S. BEVINGTON. In Mr. Seymour’s useful rejoinder (see April No.) to my recent survey of his position, he charges me with “sophistry.” Which may pass: readers will judge. The present article concludes my share in this particular controversy, and before saying farewell to my courteous opponent, it may be well to draw our mutual readers’ attention to the valuable verbal concessions we free communists have obtained from him. The preliminary questions have been answered precisely in the fashion that was to be foreseen. They were awkward […]

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. […]

Louisa Sarah Bevington, “Wanted: Order” (1893)

August 29, 2016 Shawn P. Wilbur

Yes! order. That is what we Anarchists are struggling to get in the place of the shameful “chaos and disorder” that we see around us. The disorder in the World and the Misery of the Workers is caused by the system of Monopoly and Capitalism, and by the brutal working of the laws, made by Monopolists and Profitmongers to protect themselves and their dishonest gains. It is to the interest of Monopolists and Capitalists to make you believe that Anarchists are “enemies of society”. They tell you that Anarchists want to turn the world “upside down.” Workers! “The world is […]

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 […]