The Anarchism of Approximations Archives - The Libertarian Labyrinth

Reconstructing the “Anarchism of Approximations”

January 9, 2018 Shawn P. Wilbur

The Anarchism of Approximations (2007) Part I Part II There have been a lot of opportunities recently to think about the last decade or two of mutualist history. Part of what I will have to do, if I follow the plan laid out for What Mutualism Was, is to treat the whole period of mutualist resurgence with a certain amount of critical distance, applying the lessons of mutualism’s long history to a period during which we knew little about the mutualist past and muddled along as best we could. It’s an interesting project, not least because I’m still not quite […]

Contr'un

A note on Bastiat and “double inequality”

January 14, 2011 Shawn P. Wilbur

Sheldon Richman recently posted an interesting piece on “The Importance of Subjectivism in Economics: The double inequality of value,” over at The Freeman. In it, while praising Bastiat, he wants to supplement Bastiat’s account of the benefits of a market economy with “the subjectivist Austrian insight that individuals gain from trade per se.” For an exchange to take place, the two parties must assess the items traded differently, with each party valuing what he is to receive more than what he is to give up. If that condition did not hold, no exchange would occur. There must be what Murray […]

Trajectories: Proudhon and Property

August 17, 2010 Shawn P. Wilbur

I’ve been working on bookbinding and papermaking as much as property theory lately, trying to put together the first two issues of “The Wing: A Journal of Attractive Industry” (a very nuts-and-bolts, often how-to zine on environmentally responsible, craft-based micro-enterprise.) But I’ve also been working on the revision of Tucker’s What is Property? translation, and grappling with some issues raised by that and the research for the “Property is Impossible” posts, and that’s sent me back through the last two years’ worth of work on the property question, which really all grew out of the first Proudhon seminar. I compiled […]

Inheriting Proudhon

February 15, 2010 Shawn P. Wilbur

2010 is likely to be a good year for mutualism. Last I heard, Crispin Sartwell’s Josiah Warren collection was on its way to the publisher. Kevin Carson’s third book, The Homebrew Industrial Revolution: A Low Overhead Manifesto, is available in rough form. It looks like I’ll get to do the traveling necessary to put together a first edition of my own Descriptive Bibliography of Equitable Commerce (though several months later than originally planned), and, barring any catastrophic changes in my currently precarious economic situation, the first issue of The Mutualist (successor to LeftLiberty) ought to be available in time for […]

Mutualism is Approximate (from LeftLiberty 2)

September 11, 2009 Shawn P. Wilbur

Mutualism: The Anarchism of Approximations[continued from Part II]__________ Mutualism is approximate. Mutualism values justice, in the form of reciprocity. Mutualism is dialectical. (Or “trialectical.” Or serial.) Mutualism is individualism and socialism—or it is neither. Mutualism recognizes positive power. Mutualism is progressive and conservative. Mutualism is market anarchism. __________ Philosophical Observations (continued) Mutualism is approximate. It rejects absolutism, fundamentalism, and the promotion of supposedly foolproof blueprints for society. What it seeks to approximate, however, is the fullest sort of human freedom. In The Theory of Property, Proudhon claimed that “humanity proceeds by approximation,” and proceeded to list seven “approximations” that he […]

1848 origins of “agro-industrial federation”

December 5, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur

[one_third padding=”0 10px 0 0px”] Contr’un Revisited: The work doesn’t always move from triumph to triumph. Sometimes there are missteps or bits that were a little less than fully thought through. [/one_third][two_third_last padding=”0 0px 0 10px”] We can’t say he didn’t warn us, but Proudhon, despite his explicit embrace of a certain kind of productive contradiction, challenges readers to keep his antinomies in play, and to follow along as he reasons from the most individualistic of starting positions—complete and absolute insolidarité, the denial of common interests—to something like agro-industrial federation, which involves at least some sort of intense “centralization.” In […]

Mutualism: the Anarchism of Approximations — II

November 29, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur

Contr’un Revisited: Sometimes it’s the little things in these old posts that reminds me just how far I’ve traveled, even if I’ve ended up somewhere relatively close to where I started. For example, I had a vague memory that “The Lesson of the Pear-Growers’ Series” had not originally appeared on this blog, but had completely forgotten about On ALLiance, the short-lived blog dedicated specifically to exploring theory suitable for the multi-tendency Alliance of the Libertarian Left. In hindsight, I guess that the handful of posts that appeared there were an early attempt at what I’ve been calling a “shareable narrative” […]

Responses to some objections

November 19, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur

[ezcol_1third] Contr’un Revisited: Honestly, some of this post has a real Twilight Zone feel to it for me. Consider it evidence of my brief Carsonian period. For me, it also marks an important tension in my own work. Obviously, there was a time when I was content speaking a political language that was very Tuckerite. I get a lot of guff these days for slighting poor old Benjamin R. Tucker, usually from people who have no idea how many hours I spent putting together the first online pdf set of Liberty. And I’ll grant that the various, seemingly endless struggles […]

Mutualism, the Anarchism of Approximations, I

November 14, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur

What is Mutualism? It is a question that even self-proclaimed mutualists may hesitate to answer. Since 1826, when the term mutualist first appeared in print, there have, in fact, been only a handful of attempts to present mutualism in systematic form. The most important of these, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon’s De la capacité politique des classes ouvrières (1865), has yet to be translated into English. The most accessible, Clarence L. Swartz’ What Is Mutualism? (1927), dates from a period when mutualism had, by most accounts, waned almost to insignificance as a political force.

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