Pierre-Joseph Proudhon Archives - Page 7 of 32

P.-J. Proudhon, Economy (Ms. 2863) — selected translations

October 2, 2022 Shawn P. Wilbur

It is this lack of definitions that establishes, as we will see, that Economy has been unable thus far to posit axioms, to demonstrate a method, to indicate its limits, and make known its object, that is to say to respond to that question, without which it cannot rank among the sciences: What is your name? Who are you?

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P.-J. Proudhon, “Property is Theft” (manuscript)

August 27, 2022 Shawn P. Wilbur

The theory of indefinites explains how this proposition is an absolute truth, and how nevertheless [property] is an organic and social necessity.

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Of Justice in the Revolution and in the Church: Popular Philosophy—Program (1860)

July 28, 2022 Shawn P. Wilbur

At the beginning of a new work, we should explain our title and our intentions.

Ever since humanity entered the period of civilization, for as long as anyone can recall, the people, said Paul Louis Courier, have prayed and paid.

They pray for their princes, for their magistrates, for their exploiters and their parasites;

They pray, like Jesus Christ, for their executioners;

They pray for the very ones who should, by rights, pray for them.

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New Things and Old Words in Proudhon’s Late Works

March 17, 2022 Shawn P. Wilbur

One of the things that makes those later works so difficult for anarchists to understand and use is that, while they are the occasion for some of the most interesting developments of Proudhon’s anarchistic social science, they are, almost without exception, addressed to problems within clearly archic social systems.

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Absolutes and Approximations (More Notes on the Development of Proudhon’s Thought)

February 6, 2022 Shawn P. Wilbur

“Humanity proceeds by approximations.” — Proudhon, Theory of Property — This statement by Proudhon was one of the central elements of what was, in retrospect, the first attempt to understand mutualism as a neo-Proudhonian anarchism in the unfinished series on “The Anarchism of Approximations,” way back in 2007.

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Notes on the Development of Proudhon’s Thought

October 4, 2021 Shawn P. Wilbur

Related links: These notes will obviously be of most use to those who have followed previous discussions of the individual texts, but it represents what seems to be a fairly promising attempt to deal with […]

Rambles in the Fields of Anarchist Individualism — No. 3

July 14, 2020 Shawn P. Wilbur

“Life as experience tears up programs, treads decorum under foot, breaks the windows, descends from the ivory tower. It abandons the City of Established Facts, out through the Gate of Settled Matters and roams, vagabond, […]

Notes on Liberty and neo-Proudhonian Anarchism

April 21, 2020 Shawn P. Wilbur

If we step entirely away from legal/governmental conceptions of liberty, where it is a question of permissions and prohibitions, then one of the options is to address liberty in terms similar to those used by Proudhon. He spoke about quantities of liberty within beings and social collectivities, determined by the complexity and intensity of their internal relations.

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Proudhon on Socialism (“Theory of Property” manuscripts)

February 29, 2020 Shawn P. Wilbur

Socialisme.—Tout mot et sujet a plusieurs acceptations. Si Théorie de la société, ou Science sociale ;—je l’affirmes. Si parti qui affirme une science sociale, la nécessité de réformer la société conformément à la science : […]

Authority, Liberty and the Federative Principle

February 19, 2020 Shawn P. Wilbur

Related links: Initial Thoughts Proudhon’s Du principe fédératif et de la nécessité de reconstituer le parti de la révolution occupies an interesting place among his works. It has been, prior to my translation of Théorie […]

The Libertarian Labyrinth

Encounters with the Anarchist Idea / Tools for an Anarchist Entente

Pierre-Joseph Proudhon