pierre leroux Archives - The Libertarian Labyrinth

Pierre Leroux, “De la doctrine du progrès continu” (1834)

August 13, 2019 Shawn P. Wilbur

The second volume of the Œuvres de Pierre Leroux begins with a lengthy essay “De la doctrine de la perfectibilité et du progrès continu,” which combines material from this essay and two others. Pierre Leroux and the Doctrine of Humanity [main page] Aux souscripteurs de la Revue [Identified in the index as “De la doctrine du progrès continu”] Nous publions enfin, au milieu de l’année 1834, le complément de notre recueil pour 1833. Nous devons à nos abonnés une franche explication sur un si long retard. La Revue, au moment où nous nous sommes chargés de sa rédaction, avait éprouvé […]

Pierre Leroux, “De l’Union européenne” / “Of the European Union” (1827)

May 9, 2019 Shawn P. Wilbur

Decentralizing empires, establishing in each province, in each city its own activity, and at the same time breaking down the barriers that separate nations, this is what liberty, science and industry aim for: so that, if their triumph was complete, we could say of the great society of men what Pascal said of the universe: Center everywhere, circumference nowhere.

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Pierre Leroux and the Doctrine of Humanity

May 5, 2019 Shawn P. Wilbur

Pierre Leroux was, in his day, among the most important French socialist thinkers and he remains one of the under-documented influences on the anarchist movement. This page will contain links to French works, translations and commentary. Pierre Leroux in “The Present” and “The Spirit of the Age” (1843, 1849) — partial translations from Equality and Humanity Pierre Leroux, “Individualism and Socialism” (1834) — translation and notes Doctrine of Humanity: Aphorisms (1848) (pdf) Doctrine of Humanity: Nationalities and Fatherlands (Joseph Leroux) Pierre Leroux [tag feed] Jules Leroux [tag feed] Jules Leroux, “Proletarian Dialogues” (1840) “In Which the Phantoms Reappear“ “Individualism and […]

Pierre Leroux in “The Present” and “The Spirit of the Age”

August 10, 2018 Shawn P. Wilbur

[one_third padding=”0 10px 0 0px”] From Humanity Pierre Leroux, “The Nature and Destiny of Man,” The Present 1 no. 2 (October 15, 1843): 65-68. Pierre Leroux, “The Education of the Human Race,” The Present 1 no. 3 (November 15, 1843): 105-110. Pierre Leroux, “Charity, As the Remedy of Evil,” The Present 1 no. 5-6 (December 15, 1843): 203-205. From Equality Pierre Leroux, “Equality,” The Spirit of the Age 1 no. 10 (September 8, 1849): 156. Pierre Leroux, “Humanity,” The Spirit of the Age 1 no. 17 (October 27, 1849): 261-262. Pierre Leroux, “Necessity of Evil,” The Spirit of the Age […]

William B. Greene, “Equality—No. 6. Cain and Abel” (1850)

January 6, 2018 Shawn P. Wilbur

Like several of the other articles that he contributed to The Worcester Palladium, this early article by William Batchelder Greene contains some of his most direct expressions of anarchistic and socialistic ideas, but weaves them together with his rather esoteric readings of scripture. The result is both striking and perplexing. Equally perplexing is the question of just which essays we should consider to be the fourth and fifth entries in the “Equality” series. While the two installments of “Capital and Labor” were included in the book Equality, the themes here seem to be a continuation of the material covered in […]

William B. Greene, “The Red Republic” (1849)

January 6, 2018 Shawn P. Wilbur

[one_third padding=”0 10px 0 10px”] This early article by William Batchelder Greene is one of three written for The Worcester Palladium on the topic of plutocracy. It consists of a translation of most of the eighth chapter of Pierre Leroux’s De la ploutocratie, with commentary by Greene. Wm. B. Greene in “The Worcester Palladium” [/one_third][two_third_last padding=”0 0px 0 10px”] For the Palladium. The Red Republic. The French national flag is composes, as every one knows, of three colors, read, white, and blue. These three colors represent the three estates of the former French realm: the white denotes the nobility, with […]

Joseph Déjacque, “The Universal Circulus” (revised translation)(1858)

May 9, 2012 Shawn P. Wilbur

[This remarkable bit of libertarian philosophy by Joseph Déjacque poses all sorts of difficulties for the modern reader, not the least of which is it borrowings from, and reworkings of, the works of Charles Fourier and Pierre Leroux. And there are places where it ha been necessary to translate things rather literally, since terms are used suggestively, according to the established uses of none of the writers or schools that they were drawn from. There are also a couple of times when Déjacque’s enthusiasm clearly ran away with the syntax: where catalogs of conditionals come to abrupt stops, without ever […]

The Feuding Brothers (1850)

February 22, 2012 Shawn P. Wilbur

I ran across this one-act parody of French socialism in the January 5, 1850 issue of La Mode, a popular magazine, and was nearly finished with this (rough) translation before I realized that most of the dialogue was lifted straight from the debates between Proudhon, Blanc and Leroux. Indeed, most of the details may have come from a single source, a pamphlet, Actes de la Révolution: Résistance, which reprinted Proudhon’s essays “What is Government? What is God?” and “Resistance to the Revolution.” The second installment of the latter essay is, of course, the source of two partial translations, by William […]

Pierre Leroux on Joseph Déjacque

February 12, 2012 Shawn P. Wilbur

“… one day Déjacque harangued the crowd in the Faubourg Saint-Honore, where he lived, claiming to be a new reincarnation of Christ…” — from an account of Déjacque last days, before he died “mad from poverty.” The biographical details on Joseph Déjacque are scattered, though slowly but surely they’re coming together. And they have surfaced in some interesting places. One of the most interesting, especially for me, is Pierre Leroux’s The Beach at Samarez: A Philosophical Poem, a two-volume work combining a philosophical poem with reminiscences of life among the French exiles in the colony on the isle of Jersey. […]

The Posthumous Works of Proudhon

January 4, 2012 Shawn P. Wilbur

The previous post, “What is certain is that property is to be regenerated among us,” has spurred some further research on the relation of The Theory of Property to Proudhon’s works of the early 1860s. Check the comment thread for a number of of interesting items from Proudhon’s correspondence, and the Libertarian Library blog for the “Notice to the Reader” from The Principle of Art, the first of the Posthumous Works.