Blog

Featured articles

P.-J. Proudhon, Proposal for a Society of the Perpetual Exhibition (1855)

April 18, 2024 Shawn P. Wilbur

The newest draft translation added to the New Proudhon Library project is the proposal for a Society of the Perpetual Exhibition, in answer to a call by Emperor Napoleon III for uses for the Palais de l’Industrie built in Paris for the 1855 World Fair. The project resembles Proudhon’s mutual credit proposals, as well as the various schemes for association proposed by Bellegarrigue in the 1850s. […]

Featured articles

Emile Gautier, “Social Darwinism” (1877 / 1880)

April 14, 2024 Shawn P. Wilbur

Emile Gautier’s 1880 pamphlet, Le Darwinisme sociale, is often cited as the first French use of the term “social Darwinism,” three years after the term was first used in English. Gautier was an anarchist, the a political prisoner, and finally a popular science writer and novelist. He was tried alongside Kropotkin in the “Trial of the 66,” collaborated with Louise Michel, and provided the preface for Sébastien Faure’s La douleur universelle. Drawn into a debate about the application of Darwin’s theories to the solution of social problems, he championed a pro-socialist interpretation of the science, anticipating Kropotkin’s Mutual Aid in some ways. A translation of the pamphlet can be found in the pdf linked in the sidebar, but the research for that task also turned up an earlier essay, with the same name and much the same argument, in a periodical, Le Mot d’Ordre, in which Gautier was one of the principal contributors. That essay (also included in the pdf) is presented below. […]

Black and Red Feminism

Jenny d’Héricourt, “Illinois” (FR) (1866)

February 15, 2024 Shawn P. Wilbur

If, through constant communications, through many stories, we know in France the morals and customs of that part of the United States that borders the Atlantic and which, as the first seat of colonization, mixes with the habits of democracy those of civilization European, this is not the case with the Western countries. There everything is new and follows not from the inspirations of tradition, but from the force of things and the demands of necessity. There, the genius of labor accomplished wonders, but with a strange and naive rustic quality. Large cities are improvised, ports are built, companies are founded and all the agitation of the large commercial centers gives way to the melancholic poetry of Indian solitude. […]

Black and Red Feminism

Jenny P. d’Héricourt in the Messager Franco-Americain (1865-1869)

February 14, 2024 Shawn P. Wilbur

Now, what makes war possible and produces the disastrous results I am pointing out? A lack of equilibrium in social forces. Woman is one of these forces, and she has neither her place nor her liberty of action. If, as I believe, the government of women alone should be bad, it does not seem surprising to me that the government of men alone has produced what we see. It takes the equal influence of both sexes to produce balance, because they are equal by “difference” as much as by philosophically defined law. […]

Black and Red Feminism

Jeanne Marie, “What the Socialists Want” (1848)

February 8, 2024 Shawn P. Wilbur

It is to this celestial banquet that, for a long time, the socialists have been inviting you! It is therefore no longer a question of fighting them, but of aiding them. The great human family is marching toward the goal to which God leads it. Forward then, you who aspire to the honor of leading it. Support our efforts, but do not hinder them: you will be crushed! […]