Year: 2020

art-liberty

Calvin Blanchard, “Religion Made Intelligible” (1866)

March 5, 2020 Shawn P. Wilbur

Mr. Editor:—I was once, as you know, a mere sceptic, or unbeliever. But for many years past I have been a Positivist, certainly foreknowing, or claiming to foreknow, that, by means of Nature, including her cunning method, Art, the world will be populated from pole to pole by human beings, all of whom will be as far better developed than any that now exist, as the best of the present ones are superior to the ourang outang. Here is my Creed, if that which is positively known can properly be called a mere creed:— […]

equitable commerce

Josiah Warren, “On Education and Re-Education” (1865)

March 4, 2020 Shawn P. Wilbur

The grand secret of Education is to make the learner feel an interest in the thing to be learned. The founders of the prevailing systems not knowing any other way of interesting children in their studies, have sought to create an interest by the hope of factitious rewards and the fear of punishments; the one intending to stimulate a blind self-conceit, and the other destroying all self-respect, both of which may be equally fatal in after life. […]

Contr'un

On the Anarchist Culture Wars

February 17, 2020 Shawn P. Wilbur

When it comes right down to it, the only people I have much faith in when it comes to a lasting commitment to anarchist thought and practice are those who are both serious about ideas (although I recognize a lot of ways this seriousness might manifest itself) — and specifically serious about anarchist ideas and anarchistic ways of thinking — and ready to acknowledge that the particular ideas that separate anarchism from the rest of the political or social philosophies out there, anarchy chief among them, are not “safe.” […]

Featured articles

Proudhon’s Barbaric Yawp (1840)

February 5, 2020 Shawn P. Wilbur

Every story has to start somewhere. And when the story is that of anarchist history, it seems hard to find a more likely place to begin than Proudhon’s 1840 declaration—je suis anarchiste—which we generally treat as the first instance of at least one kind of anarchist position-taking. […]

Featured articles

Archy vs. Anarchy

January 28, 2020 Shawn P. Wilbur

These short contrasting entries constitute an attempt to sketch out some basic principles of existing archic society and some anarchic alternatives. Those alternatives are drawn largely from what we have been calling the “neo-Proudhonian” project. […]