Max Nettlau Archives - Page 7 of 8 - The Libertarian Labyrinth

Max Nettlau, Responsibility and Solidarity in the Labor Struggle (1899)

May 4, 2015 Shawn P. Wilbur

[ezcol_2third] The following remarks, based on an article published by me in Freedom, November 1897, must not be understood as wishing to replace direct Anarchist propaganda by a “remedy or a “hobby,” they simply raise a general subject which has been, as far as I know and am told, neglected up till now: the possibility of some new form and combination in the labor struggle; and I am anxious for Anarchist criticism, which, apart from the general possibility has to examine whether the means suggested are on the road to freedom or the contrary; consequently, whether they merit the support […]

Max Nettlau, pessimism and possibilities

January 14, 2015 Shawn P. Wilbur

In 1901 and 1903, Max Nettlau, arguably the greatest of anarchism’s historians, wrote a series of documents intended for “friends and comrades,” though not for general publication, addressing what he took to be problems in anarchist practice. The first of these seems to have been “Some criticism of some current anarchist beliefs,” a 49-page text written in English, and this was followed by at least two drafts of a more formally structured French manuscript of nearly 200 pages. All can be read in the digitized portions of the Max Nettlau Papers at the IISH site. The linked text is a […]

Max Nettlau, “The St. Imier Congress of the International” (1922)

January 17, 2013 Shawn P. Wilbur

THE ST. IMIER CONGRESS OF THE INTERNATIONAL, September 15 and 16, 1872. This September our Swiss comrades in the Jura mountains will commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the anti-authoritarian Congress of the old International held at St. Imier, September 15 and 16, 1873; and they will also recall the memory of the Jurassian Federation of the International, which for many years stood in the front ranks of the struggles of the ‘60s and ‘70s which created the Anarchist and revolutionary Syndicalist movements of our time. The Congress in question did more: it saved the continuity of the internationalist movement and […]

Max Nettlau, “Marx and Engels and the IWMA” (1907)

January 17, 2013 Shawn P. Wilbur

Marx and Engels and the International Working Men’s Association, 1872 to 1876. I. F. A. Sorge, a German refugee of 1849, the chief American correspondent of Marx and Engels in the seventies and eighties, a few months before his death published a volume of letters addressed to him by Marx (1868-1881), Engels (1872-1895), J. Ph. Becker, Dietzgen and others (Stuttgart, 1906, xii., pp. 422, 8vo.) We have already had glimpses of Marx’s personal life and doings in F. Lassalle’s letters addressed to him during the fifties, in Marx’s own letters to Dr. Kugelmann during the sixties, and in his letters […]

Max Nettlau, “Michael Bakunin” (1914)

January 16, 2013 Shawn P. Wilbur

[one_third padding=”0 10px 0 0px”] [/one_third][two_third_last padding=”0 0px 0 10px”] Michael Bakunin. by Max Nettlau Most centenarians, even when born much later and still among us, are but dried-up relics of a remote past; whilst some few, though gone long since, remain full of life, and rather make us feel ourselves how little life and energy there is in most of us. These men, in advance of their age, prepared new ways for coming generations, who are often but too slow to follow them up. Prophets and dreamers, thinkers and rebels they are called, and of those who, in […]

Max Nettlau, Biographical Notice of Ernest Coeurderoy

December 26, 2012 Shawn P. Wilbur

In June 1852, two events, quickly covered with the veil of silence, would deeply effect the exile community in London. Ledru-Rollin, Louis Blanc, Pierre Leroux, Cabet, Félix Pyat and their friends, some Blanquists, Proudhonians and independent socialists, some refugees from May 15 and June of 1848, as well as June 13, 1849, and the great majority of the outcasts from the coup d’état, rubbed elbows then in a common exile.

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Felix P….., “The Philosophy of Defiance” (New York, 1854)

April 9, 2012 Shawn P. Wilbur

I’ve just posted a translation of selections from The Philosophy of Defiance, an 1854 anarchist pamphlet published in New York and written by a French exile who signed the work “Felix P…..” Max Nettlau discovered the text, and published portions of it in La Revue Anarchiste for July, 1922. That’s fortunate, because the original text seems to be rare to the point of nonexistence, and because it’s a very interesting example of early anarchist thought.

Felix P….., “The Philosophy of Defiance” (New York, 1854)

April 9, 2012 Shawn P. Wilbur

THE PHILOSOPHY OF DEFIANCE, or, A Pardon for Cain 1854 FELIX P….. Edited by Max Nettlau … Give me any epithets you wish; I accept them all in advance. I have only one thought, and envision only one glory: it is to strike everywhere and always, as much as I can, at the principle of domination. Satan, in his revolt, is my father, and, in his courage, Cain is my brother! … We do not take a single step in society without hearing that human beings must believe in a God, in a sovereign being, master of all things, according […]

Anarchism

Max Nettlau, Anarchism: Communist or Individualist?—Both

August 10, 2010 Shawn P. Wilbur

ANARCHISM: COMMUNIST OR INDIVIDUALIST?—BOTH By Max Nettlau. ANARCHISM is no longer young, and it may be time to ask ourselves why, with all the energy devoted to its propaganda, it does not spread more rapidly. For even where local activity is strongest, the results are limited, whilst immense spheres are as yet hardly touched by any propaganda at all. In discussing this question, I will not deal with the problem of Syndicalism, which, by absorbing so much of Anarchist activity and sympathies, cannot by that very fact be considered to advance the cause of Anarchism proper, whatever its other merits […]

French mutualism beyond Proudhon

May 8, 2009 Shawn P. Wilbur

[one_third padding=”0 10px 0 10px”][/one_third][two_third_last padding=”0 10px 0 10px”] There’s been an interesting, if not terribly productive, discussion on Wikipedia, regarding the scope of the entry on Individualist Anarchism. It has been charged, with some justice, that the article overemphasizes Anglophone market anarchism, and virtually ignores a number of other currents that might be included with equal reason and justice. That’s one way of thinking about the problem. I’m inclined to beat my usual drum, and suggest that this is another of those cases where Wikipedia simply has no way to resolve what should be in article when essentially all […]