Revolutionary Practice Archives - The Libertarian Labyrinth

Note on Revolutionary Practice (March, 1851)

January 19, 2016 Shawn P. Wilbur

[These notes appear to refer to Ms. 2857 in the Besançon archives, “De la Pratique des révolutions,” a draft for a work abandoned in favor of The General Idea of the Revolution in the 19th Century. This is, of course, just one of the places where Proudhon uses “Destruam et ædificabo” as a kind of motto, but it is interesting to find it here, close to the “watershed” between Proudhon’s “critical” and “constructive” projects.] P.-J. Proudhon, Carnets, Vol. 4 (Carnet no. 9, 27-28; March 1851): 215. Revolutionary practice. — Book I, chapter I. — If I start with cannibalism, it […]

Note on Revolutionary Practice (March, 1851)

January 19, 2016 Shawn P. Wilbur

[These notes appear to refer to Ms. 2857 in the Besançon archives, “De la Pratique des révolutions,” a draft for a work abandoned in favor of The General Idea of the Revolution in the 19th Century. This is, of course, just one of the places where Proudhon uses “Destruam et ædificabo” as a kind of motto, but it is interesting to find it here, close to the “watershed” between Proudhon’s “critical” and “constructive” projects.] P.-J. Proudhon, Carnets, Vol. 4 (Carnet no. 9, 27-28; March 1851): 215. Revolutionary practice. — Book I, chapter I. — If I start with cannibalism, it […]

Note on Revolutionary Practice (March, 1851)

January 19, 2016 Shawn P. Wilbur

[These notes appear to refer to Ms. 2857 in the Besançon archives, “De la Pratique des révolutions,” a draft for a work abandoned in favor of The General Idea of the Revolution in the 19th Century. This is, of course, just one of the places where Proudhon uses “Destruam et ædificabo” as a kind of motto, but it is interesting to find it here, close to the “watershed” between Proudhon’s “critical” and “constructive” projects.] P.-J. Proudhon, Carnets, Vol. 4 (Carnet no. 9, 27-28; March 1851): 215. Revolutionary practice. — Book I, chapter I. — If I start with cannibalism, it […]

Note on Revolutionary Practice (March, 1851)

January 19, 2016 Shawn P. Wilbur

[These notes appear to refer to Ms. 2857 in the Besançon archives, “De la Pratique des révolutions,” a draft for a work abandoned in favor of The General Idea of the Revolution in the 19th Century. This is, of course, just one of the places where Proudhon uses “Destruam et ædificabo” as a kind of motto, but it is interesting to find it here, close to the “watershed” between Proudhon’s “critical” and “constructive” projects.] P.-J. Proudhon, Carnets, Vol. 4 (Carnet no. 9, 27-28; March 1851): 215. Revolutionary practice. — Book I, chapter I. — If I start with cannibalism, it […]

On Repression (and cannibalism) (1851)

January 11, 2016 Shawn P. Wilbur

P.-J. Proudhon, Carnets, Vol. 4 (Carnet No. 8, 311): 154 Revolutionary Practice. — Repression, [can] perhaps [be] employed with success against the whimsies of the sects, contagious mental illnesses. — Against a revolution, it can only transmit them, i.e. by making the explosion more terrible. — Anthropophagy was the first phase of progress, necessary to all the progress that followed. So it has been a relative good. It was necessary that man eat man before he could eat God. If anthropophagy had only existed in the case of famine, it would have ceased with famine. That was not the case. […]

Of the Ideal, and of Supernaturalism in Nature (1851)

January 11, 2016 Shawn P. Wilbur

P.-J. Proudhon, Carnets, Vol. 4 (Carnet No. 8, 311-312): 154-155. — The Marvelous [or the Supernatural] in Humanity, third cause of revolution. — Subordinate to the common sense, but distinct from it. — It is not a malady, a pathological state or transition, like teething or puberty in individuals: it is a faculty, a real function of the soul, [but one that is] little known, like the spleen or tonsils in animals. Everything provided by that faculty constantly vanishes before analysis, but it still exerts the greatest influence on the acts of the Species. Already we have seen that God […]

REVOLUTIONARY PRACTICE.—Propositions (1851)

January 8, 2016 Shawn P. Wilbur

Carnet 8, 322 REVOLUTIONARY PRACTICE.—Propositions: Every revolution is caused by the displacement of interests; the oscillation of ideas; the exhaustion of an ideal. These three causes do not form a triad: the first two are correlatives of one another; — the 3rd is an addition of the mind: (the first two are objective; the 3rd subjective). The Ideal is the infinite in thought. It demands a real and intelligible basis. It strays from it endlessly. There is a tendency of the mind to give the ideal an ontological value apart from its basis; to affirm as reality what had at […]

“Questions Eliminated…” and “Revolutionary Practice”

September 29, 2015 Shawn P. Wilbur

[I’ve been working through the texts in Ms. 2867, part of Economie, looking for material to include in the forthcoming edition of The Philosophy of Progress, and I’ve been finding all sorts of interesting things. The following section comes immediately after the “New Propositions Demonstrated in the Practice Of Revolutions,” so we should perhaps understand by “this organization” the program laid out at the end of that section: “To set aside the notion of substance and Cause, and move onto the terrain of Phenomena and Law, or of the Group.” While the translation here has a fair number of gaps […]