The Spirit of the Age Archives - The Libertarian Labyrinth

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 […]

P.-J. Proudhon, “Confessions of a Revolutionist” (Spirit of the Age, 1850)

December 28, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur

[one_third padding=”0 10px 0 0px”] These “translations” are often more like summaries, but they show that readers in the United States were at least getting some exposure to Proudhon’s work by 1850. [/one_third][two_third_last padding=”0 0px 0 10px”] From the London Weekly Tribune. P. J. PROUDHON. Proudhon was born in 1809, of parents in humble circumstances, at Besançon, the birthplace, by the way of Fourier; and where Proudhon began life as a compositor in a printing-office. This printing-office he afterwards occupied on his own account; but some years since, he quited Besançon for an engagement in a mercantile house at Lyons. […]

Contr'un

Louis Blanc’s “Socialist’s Catechism”

February 28, 2011 Shawn P. Wilbur

[ezcol_2third] From The Spirit of the Age, another early translation from the French socialist movement, the “Socialist’s Catechism,” by Louis Blanc. Like the excerpts from Proudhon’s Confessions of a Revolutionist, this originally appeared in the London Weekly Tribune. This is unabashed state socialism, but it’s an important example of it, from one of the most active socialist spokespeople of the 1848 era. [/ezcol_2third] [ezcol_1third_end] [/ezcol_1third_end]

Instead of a Translation – Proudhon on the clubs

September 13, 2009 Shawn P. Wilbur

Some 19th century “translations” end up being little more than summaries, and some summaries end up being haphazard translations of bits and pieces. A number of the pieces that introduced Americans to Proudhon and Leroux fit one of these two categories. A series of summaries of chapters from Proudhon’s Confessions appeared in The Spirit of the Age in 1849-50. This is certainly a work that needs full translation, but the summaries are interesting, both for the information they contain and as an example of how many Americans first encountered Proudhon. THE CONFESSIONS OF A REVOLUTIONIST. BY P. J. PROUDHON. CHAPTER […]

Puzzle pieces: W. H. Channing’s “The Present”

September 15, 2008 Shawn P. Wilbur

I’ve emphasized before the importance of William Henry Channing’s The Spirit of the Age, as the closest thing we have to a mid-19th century American mutualist paper. Channing is equally important as part of the late-transcendentalist/radical Unitarian/free-religionist current with which American individualist anarchism was in constant dialogue. William B. Greene was himself a part of that current, as was Sidney H. Morse and, at least early on, Joshua King Ingalls. Tucker was influenced by it, and his Radical Review was full of contributors from it. And a great deal of attention was paid in the early issues of Liberty, to […]