Proudhon Archives - The Libertarian Labyrinth

Proudhon Explained by Himself (Letter to Villaumé, 1856)

July 24, 2023 Shawn P. Wilbur

PROUDHON EXPLIQUÉ PAR LUI-MÊME LETTRES INÉDITES DE P.-J. PROUDHON A M. N. VILLIAUMÉ SUR L’ENSEMBLE DE SES PRINCIPES ET NOTAMMENT SUR SA PROPOSITION LA PROPRIÉTÉ, C’EST LE VOL 1866 AVERTISSEMENT DE L’ÉDITEUR Le 21 décembre 1855, M. Villiaumé, qui composait alors son Nouveau Traité d’économie politique, crut devoir interroger Proudhon touchant ses principes, qu’il avait à mentionner en traitant du communisme; car il craignait de se tromper sur le sens de ses livres, dont divers passages semblaient en contredire d’autres. Il lui écrivit à ce sujet. Proudhon répondit par la lettre suivante, qui est une exposition toute nouvelle de ses […]

Reading Proudhon Today

November 16, 2022 Shawn P. Wilbur

There is a lot of interesting material in Proudhon’s unpublished manuscripts, not all of which is vital to understanding his project, but there are two sets of texts in particular that any serious student should at least be aware of—if only to know what we don’t know.

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Proudhon, women, and the “organ of justice”

September 15, 2012 Shawn P. Wilbur

Back in March, 2010, at the end of the essay “Two-Gun Mutualism and the Golden Rule,” I promised to delve deeper into the question of Proudhon’s writing on women and the family—a promise I’m in the midst of fulfilling in a series of essays destined for the second issue of The Mutualist—and in July of this year I posted a working translation of Proudhon’s “Catechism of Marriage”—a provocative act which apparently provoked nobody, judging from the resounding near-silence. (One friend did say “worse than I expected.”) There’s no question that, in many ways, the “Catechism” is pretty awful, in […]

Proudhon’s 1848 “Toast to the Revolution”

July 18, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur

It is with more than a bit of fear and trepidation that I embark on a new phase of my mutualist researches, with a working translation of Proudhon’s “Toast to the Revolution.” I neglected my French studies for a good couple of decades, before returning a year or so back to tackle the untranslated portions of Proudhon and the writings of a few of his contemporaries. It has been an interesting year, bringing myself back up to speed, and learning to read at a level I had never really attempted as a student. There are undoubtedly some mistakes in the […]

Proudhon at Google Books

July 16, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur

As I mentioned in the last post, Google Books’ search engines do miraculous things sometimes, the sort of miraculous things that make finding anything an iffy proposition. I make no claims for the completeness of the list that follows. Finding what I did find was something of an adventure. However, I can happily announce that most of Proudhon’s major work is available, if not obviously so, on Google Books. Volumes undoubtedly lack pages, have text obscured by the fingers of workers, are blurred or bleed of the edge of the screen, but these are just the things we are learning […]

Mutualist Townships: Albert Brisbane and J. K. Ingalls (1849–1850)

March 26, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur

In early 1850, The Spirit of the Age featured two proposals for a “mutualist township.” One, by Joshua King Ingalls, was a practical follow-up to his “Method of Transition.” The other was by Albert Brisbane, the well-known popularizer of Charles Fourier. Brisbane was also an acquaintance of Proudhon, having visited him in prison in France. In this sense, Brisbane had the most direct connection to the French mutualist tradition of any of the American writers in 1850. Greene would eventually meet Proudhon, later in the 1850s. What follows is, in a sense, Brisbane’s mutualist resumé, including his account of his […]

Proudhon, The Coming Era of Mutualism

March 26, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur

This is a translation of one of Proudhon’s earliest discussions of mutualism—”une théorie de MUTUALITÉ,” in the original—from the System of Economic Contradictions [V. II, 527-9]. It appeared in The Spirit of the Age I no. 7 (August 18, 1849), 107-8. I have appended the original French text as well. THE COMING ERA OF MUTUALISM. From the “System of Contradictions in Political Economy,” BY P. J. PROUDHON. If I am not deceived, my readers must be convinced at least of one thing, that Social Truth is not to be looked for either in Utopia or in the Old Routine; that […]

Fragments of Proudhon on Property and Liberty

March 12, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur

Some Proudhonian fragments, recently translated:The phrase “la propriété, c’est la liberté” appears in the Memoirs of a Revolutionist (1867, Lacroix, p.128) and in the posthumous Théorie de la propriété, (1867, Lacroix, p. 183) where Proudhon writes as if he had said that in 1846, in the System of Economic Contradictions. What he says in the 1846 is actually this, as far as I can tell: “Property, with regard to facts and to rights, is essentially contradictory, and it is for this reason that it is anything at all. Indeed, Property is the right of occupation, and at the same time […]

Anarchist Church, Anarchist State. . . Anarchist Inquisition?

January 25, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur

Related links: The Pantarchy [main page] Constitutions and Organic Bases of the Pantarchy and New Catholic Church (1860) Stephen Pearl Andrews, “Andrusius,” The Pantarch — The history of radical reform in the United States is full of colorful characters and extravagant projects, but Andrews and his Pantarchy (complete with the philosophy of Universology, universal languages Alwato and Tīkīwā, and New Catholic Church) stands out, even in a crowd which includes Lewis Masquerier and his “compulsory homestead” scheme or Edgar Chambless’ Roadtown. In anarchist circles, Andrews is probably most respected and best remembered for his advocacy of Josiah Warren’s cost principle […]