Max Nettlau Archives - Page 5 of 8 - The Libertarian Labyrinth

Bibliography of Anarchy — I — Precursors of Anarchy

July 8, 2016 Shawn P. Wilbur

CHAPTER I Precursors of Anarchy. The anarchist literature has no determined origin, not being the expression of a system invented and progressively elaborated, but the very of systems. It is born of the need to demolish arbitrary power in all its forms, the rules and duties imposed by prejudices or by force, and to give rise to the free development of humanity. Therefore every act that was accomplised and every word that was spoken in hatred of that constraint and in favor of that liberty are conscious or unconscious works of anarchy. Not having made detailed studies in the ancient […]

Max Nettlau, “Bibliography of Anarchy” (1897)

July 8, 2016 Shawn P. Wilbur

Related links: Max Nettlau: Main Page Bibliography of Anarchy BY MAX NETTLAU (1897) PREFACE. The work that we publish today could only be attempted by an erudite bibliophile, having in addition the devoted collaboration of numerous friends. The friends have presented themselves and this unselfish convergence of forces appears to us to be one proof among a thousand that the anarchists, just by “doing as they wish,” know however how to unite their individual wills in a collective will. No leader, no elected or self-imposed council has given the that his book should appear. The bibliographic essay composed by our […]

Max Nettlau, “Does Socialism Truly Want to Be International?” (1920s)

September 13, 2015 Shawn P. Wilbur

[ezcol_1half] Does Socialism Truly Want to Be International? (MS 1951, Max Nettlau Papers, IISH) (no date, 1920s) This question would appear to be useless after a century of international socialist professions of faith, after the flowering of several Internationals and the struggles of sincere socialists of all shades against nationalism. But it appears to me that it needs to be raised again in some connections, among other that of natural wealth, raw material dependent on the local fertility of the soil and other raw materials so unequally distributed in the subsoil. To whom do these natural resources, whose local distribution […]

Max Nettlau, The Struggle against the State (1908)

August 12, 2015 Shawn P. Wilbur

[ezcol_2third] The Struggle against the State [Les Temps Nouveaux, 13 no. 51 (April 18, 1908) : 3-4.] ———– What follows is not a translation, but a free and somewhat expanded summary of an article [“Are there New Fields for Anarchist Activity?”] that I wrote for the revue Mother Earth of New-York (December 1907, pp. 433-444), and as I have been led to make some new digressions, the comrades who publish that revue are completely absolved of any literary responsibility for the present writing. I I have often asked myself why anarchist ideas, which appears so clear to us and add […]

Max Nettlau, “The Attempted Murder of Hugo Bettauer” (1925)

July 28, 2015 Shawn P. Wilbur

[ezcol_2third] [The Max Nettlau Papers include correspondence from Benzion Liber, editor Rational Living (New York.) Among the letters is the English-language manuscript of an article written by Nettlau, which was returned by Liber. ] April 10 [1925] Dear Dr. Nettlau and Comrade: I am sorry not to be able to use your latest and unexpected correspondence, as my magazine is suspended and as I do not know when it will reappear. I have tried to publish it in The Nation—had no time to ask your permission fearing the article would lose its actuality—but, although they found it interesting, they […]

Max Nettlau on the Ravachol Meetings (July 20, 1892)

July 11, 2015 Shawn P. Wilbur

[one_third padding=”0 0px 0 0px”][/one_third][two_third_last padding=”0 0px 0 0px”] [MAX NETTLAU ON THE RAVACHOL MEETINGS] JULY 20, 1892 Comrade, Having been present at the two meetings held with the object to discuss Ravachol’s acts, I should like to make a few remarks on the two currents dividing at the present time the anarchist movement. I have not read everything publishing on both sides as I am too old to crave for knowing what opinion this, that or the other authority expresses on the subject, but as I understand the three languages used at the meetings I could fairly follow the […]

Max Nettlau, undated fragment on socialist progress

May 17, 2015 Shawn P. Wilbur

[ezcol_2third] Ever since some 150 years ago demands for social justice from isolate affirmation of thinkers or rebels, became objects of the urge of greater numbers of people who in the most various ways called attention to them and proposed or attempted remedies, the question of social changes was tackled from all sides—that of partial or total, peaceful or revolutionary, authoritatively imposed or voluntarily accepted changes and propaganda, agitation, organizations, plans and schemes and sometimes real action present a most varied and picturesque ensemble with ever so many separate currents, interlaced, wrestling, amalgamating, bursting forth fresh again and so on. […]

Max Nettlau, an early manuscript (1895)

May 17, 2015 Shawn P. Wilbur

Whilst our conviction of the rightness of our anarchist opinions remains unaltered, we may at times feel disheartened at the comparatively small number of our active propagandists and it becomes every so much more important that no energy shall be lost and all action turned in the right direction. After all, on looking closer, we are more numerous than we may think; ours is not a superficial movement attracting the biggest crowd by pandering to the prejudices of people with a view to their exploitation—it is a movement of so high and noble aims that if can attract at […]

Max Nettlau, Untitled Fragment (c. 1933)

May 16, 2015 Shawn P. Wilbur

[ezcol_2third] [IISH Ms. 2005—untitled fragment] By Max Nettlau The efforts of the greatest part of the human generations are always limited to their preservation by “the conquest of bread” and harvesting as [much as] possible the fruits of that struggle in improvements of their situation (pleasures, accumulations) and in power and guarantees of security and continuation. That permanent struggle,—like that of the animals that, in order to live, pick or hunt continually some [inert?] plants and weaker animals,—is aggravated among men by the thirst for the accumulation and the refinement of pleasures, culminating in wealth and power as a supreme […]

Max Nettlau, The three worlds we all live in

May 16, 2015 Shawn P. Wilbur

[ezcol_1half] We all live in these three worlds: a world of friends and libertarian comrades; a world of unsociable authoritarian enemies, present and future rulers; and that great world of men who do not know one another, the suspicious, seeing only the hardness and cruelty of men and feigning indifference in order to protect themselves from torment. There is also the world of the past and the future, memories, dreams, hopes and the daily effort to contribute a bit. To set aside, finally, the unsocial, and thus sterile and purely parasitical, world of authority and to awaken, encourage, and inspire […]