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Bakunin Library

Bakunin — Article for “Il popolo d’Italia” (1865)

April 8, 2022 Shawn P. Wilbur

A letter from Paris, published in your newspaper on September 2, contains a serious attack against a little paper by the name of Candide, written by young Parisians, whose publication was immediately interrupted by order of the imperial censor. Your correspondent, who does not seem to be an enthusiastic admirer of the illustrious exterminator of thought and freedom who reigns over France today, takes his side this time to the point of almost congratulating him on having avenged religion and public morals by suppressing a newspaper written by young people “uneducated or unexperienced, who, impelled by base culpable vanity, have dared to calmly affirm things that will sow eternal doubt in the minds of all decent people.” […]

Contr'un

A Schematic Anarchism (draft)

March 6, 2022 Shawn P. Wilbur

Conscious of the difficulties faced by students of anarchist ideas, whether newcomers or old hands, it seems useful to propose some means of exploring the field with confidence. There is no question, particularly in a short piece such as this, of providing a map of that vast, complex territory, but we can certainly identify a few landmarks and propose some tools with which individuals might do their own mapping. […]

From the Archives

Dyer D. Lum, “The Science of Social Relations” (1890)

February 25, 2022 Shawn P. Wilbur

By the law of the Three Stages, so elaborately set forth by Auguste Comte, we are told that every science, each branch of knowledge, passes through three different theoretical conditions; the theological, or mythical; the metaphysical, or speculative; and the positive or scientific. “Hence,” said Comte, “arises three philosophies, or general systems of conceptions on the aggregate of phenomena, each of which excludes the other. The first is the necessary point of departure of the human understanding; and the third is its fixed, or definite, state; the second is merely a state of transition.” […]

fiction

“Recollections of Six Days’ Journey in the Moon,” by an Aerio-Nautical Man (1844)

January 29, 2022 Shawn P. Wilbur

Being a devoted lover of travelling, partly on account of the agreeable dissipation of mind it produces, but more especially the dignity and consequence derived from breathing the air of foreign lands, I have been seriously aggrieved at this lamentable exhaustion of novelty, and more than once, like Alexander, sat down and wept that there were no more worlds to explore. The planets and other heavenly bodies most especially attracted my attention, and of these the Moon, which is at the bottom of so many sublunary influences, and without whose aid the adepts of Natural Philosophy would be so often at a loss to account for various phenomena, appeared to me the most interesting. […]

encyclopedia entries

Anarchist Encyclopedia: Archies (Gérard de Lacaze-Duthiers)

January 20, 2022 Shawn P. Wilbur

This ending designates the different powers that exercise authority and command in society, powers that are harmful from every point of view, incapable of insuring true order, whether it is a question of monarchy (monos, one alone), power left to the arbitrary will of one individual, or of oligarchy (oligos, few in number), the power of a clique (an olig-archy of businessmen, politicians, soldiers, etc…, enslaving the world to its whims, — one hundred tyrants instead of one), or of all the archies past, present and future. […]