Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

Contr'un

Bevington and Seymour, “Proudhon and Communism” (1894)

July 8, 2011 Shawn P. Wilbur
Debate on Proudhon and property: Contr’un Revisited: [commentary coming soon] I’ve long admired the “other” Liberty, the anarchist-communist paper published in England by James Tochatti in the 1890s. (You can admire some of the later issues here.) But I hadn’t had an opportunity to sit down with more than just scattered issues until last week, when I spent several hours going through the microfilm of the run. There are a number of articles that I’ll be reproducing here, or in the Labyrinth archive, but the material that is probably of most immediate interest to the readership of this blog is […]
Contr'un

Proudhon’s critics

June 1, 2011 Shawn P. Wilbur
[one_third padding=”0 10px 0 0px”] Contr’un Revisited: [commentary coming soon] [/one_third][two_third_last padding=”0 0px 0 10px”] As I’ve mentioned, I’m working on assembling—and in some cases, translating—responses to Proudhon’s work, with particular emphasis on those responses that really help to contextualize and illuminate that work. In some cases that means tackling head-on some of the thorniest problems posed by Proudhon’s method, the sheer bulk of his output, and, of course, his various failures as a consistent libertarian. The trajectories of my various Proudhon-related projects seem fairly obvious—to me at least. The thing I started with “The Gift Economy of Property” isn’t […]
Contr'un

Proudhon, What is Government? What is God?

May 26, 2011 Shawn P. Wilbur
Proudhon’s essay “What is Government? What is God?” appeared first in the Voix du Peuple, November 5, 1849, then as the preface to The Confessions of a Revolutionary, as well as in the Melanges volumes of the Lacroix collected works. It was the occasion for one of the more important responses by Pierre Leroux—a response which seems to have influenced William Batchelder Greene.
Contr'un

Maxime Leroy, Stirner vs. Proudhon (1905)

May 26, 2011 Shawn P. Wilbur
I’ve posted a working translation of Maxime Leroy’s essay,  “Stirner vs. Proudhon,” which originally appeared in 1905 in La Renaissance latine. The essay is really not much about Proudhon, and is perhaps ambivalent in its approach to Stirner, but it is certainly interesting enough to have been worth the work.
Black and Red Feminism

From “L’Opinion des Femmes,” August 1848

May 16, 2011 Shawn P. Wilbur
These two short articles by Désirée Gay (Jeanne Desirée Véret Gay, 1810-1891) appeared in the August 1848 issue of L’Opinion des Femmes, which seems to have been a kind of testing of the waters before the launch of the official “First Year” of the paper. That issue had been preceded by a 4-page “Prospectus,” written by Jeanne Deroin, and the paper was essentially a continuation of La Politique des Femmes, but there was still a certain amount of work to do setting the tone for the project, and Gay seems to have taken on much of that work in the […]
Black and Red Feminism

Jeanne Deroin to Proudhon, January 1849

May 16, 2011 Shawn P. Wilbur
[Jeanne Deroin. “Lettre a M. Proudhon.” L’Opinion des Femmes. No. 1, Year 1. January 28, 1849.] Letter to Proudhon. Monsieur, I know that, preoccupied most especially with questions of political economy, you have not accepted all the consequences of the principles on which our social future rests. You are one of the most formidable adversaries of the principle of equality—a principle which does not allow unjust exclusion and privileges of sex. I know that you do not wish to recognize the right of women to civil and political equality. This right, which contain in it the abolition of all social […]
Contr'un

Bakunin on Proudhon and Marx

April 24, 2011 Shawn P. Wilbur
James Guillaume, in the “Biographical Notice” in his French edition of Bakunin’s Works, includes part of an 1870 manuscript written by Bakunin on the subject of Proudhon and Marx: Proudhon, despite all his efforts to shake off the traditions of classical idealism, nonetheless remained all his life an incorrigible idealist, inspired, as I told him two months before his death, sometimes by the Bible, sometimes by Roman law, and always a metaphysician to the fingertips. His great misfortune is that he never studied the natural sciences, and he never adopted its methods. He had some instincts of genius that made […]
Contr'un

Proudhon to Jeanne Deroin

April 20, 2011 Shawn P. Wilbur
[A letter, apparently not included in the Correspondence, from Proudhon to Jeanne Deroin. The date is uncertain. Working translation; all the usual cautions apply.] Paris, August 4 [1848?]. Madame. You have understood me perfectly: what I pursue under the name of the abolition of usury and of property, is the restoration of the family, it is the advent of the man-king, and of the woman-queen. Until this great reform is accomplished, men and women will not love one another: cupidity will infect their union, and behind cupidity comes brutality of the senses. Libertinism replaces love, and murder, finally, takes its […]
Contr'un

“Property is Theft!” book launch in London

April 15, 2011 Shawn P. Wilbur
[From Iain McKay] Freedom Bookshop is hosting the book launch of“Property is Theft! A Pierre-Joseph ProudhonAnthology”. This is the new comprehensive anthology of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon’s writings published by AK Press. Proudhon was the first person to call themselves an anarchist and his ideas on property, state, exploitation, workers self-management, federalism and anarchy defined anarchism as a socio-economic theory. Join Iain McKay, the editor of “Property is Theft!”and author of “An Anarchist FAQ”, to discuss Proudhon’s ideas and why they are still importanttoday. “Property is Theft!” book launch: Saturday, 2pm to 4pm,21st May 2011 Freedom Bookshophttp://www.freedompress.org.uk/news/bookshop/ Angel Alley84b Whitechapel High StreetLondon […]
From the Archives

Joseph Déjacque, “The Human Being” (1857)

April 4, 2011 Shawn P. Wilbur
I’ve been working to track down the various feminist critiques of Proudhon by his contemporaries, and translate those which have not been translated. I was actually about half-way through a translation of Déjacque’s “On the Human Being, Male and Female,” when I stumbled across this translation that appeared in Lucifer the Lightbearer. I’ll try to post my own translation later , but Jonathan Mayo Crane rendering of the French certainly captures the spirit of Déjacque’s assault. Mayo’s translation appeared in two sections, and I’m posting them separately. THE HUMAN BEING. (Letter written to P. J. Proudhon by Joseph Déjacque in […]