Blog - Page 213 of 286 - The Libertarian Labyrinth

A low place to haunt, should you be so inclined…

November 8, 2011 Shawn P. Wilbur

Rand, McNally & Co.’s Handy Guide to Chicago and World’s Columbian Exposition (1893) contains the following entry among its sightseeing options: Socialists and Anarchists.—These gentry, who received such a salutary lesson in the execution of their leaders, may be found in some of the beer halls of the West Side—beer, anarchy, and socialism being seemingly inseparable companions. Longhaired, of alien birth, entirely innocent of honest work or any kind of bathing, they “haunt low places and herd with the ignorant, possessing just enough knowledge to be mischievous.” They met their Waterloo in the Haymarket Square on that memorable 4th of […]

Property and the Essence of Mutualism

November 5, 2011 Shawn P. Wilbur

[ezcol_2third] “My principle, which will appear astonishing to you, citizens, my principle is yours; it is property itself.”—P.-J. Proudhon In my writings on mutualist property theory, I have been attempting to supplement a somewhat strange lacuna in Proudhon’s theory, his failure—in at least one important sense—to ever really directly answer the question posed in his first major work, What is Property? In order to do that, I’ve been drawing on the work of Max Stirner, which, despite Stirner’s sense that he was opposing Proudhon’s position, seems to primarily address “property” in precisely the senses that Proudhon didn’t even make much […]

Was Josiah Warren a spiritualist?

November 2, 2011 Shawn P. Wilbur

We know that there were plenty of spiritualists in Josiah Warren’s circle—including his wife, Stephen Pearl Andrews and his wife Esther, Ezra and Angela Heywood, and Mary and Thomas Nichols—we have the claim of Clarence L. Swartz that “not only in his later life, but almost from the beginning of modern Spiritualism, Warren was a believer in it.” But there’s been a real lack of testimony from Warren himself on the subject, at least in the sources I’ve been able to dig up. But I may have finally found an article by Warren addressing the question of “spiritual rappings” and […]

Archive upgrades, V

November 1, 2011 Shawn P. Wilbur

There’s no escaping the fact that some of what is necessary in this process of turning my online filing cabinet into a working archive is pretty slow going, and pretty dull stuff. That’s undoubtedly apparent to readers who see dump after dump of bibliographic listings without necessarily seeing much change in the Libertarian Labyrinth itself. But there’s a kind of geometric progression involved in the transformation of data into information, and more and more often now I’m finding that when I consult my various sources for something simple, like a volume or page number, I’m coming back with completely new […]

Another side of Eliphalet Kimball

November 1, 2011 Shawn P. Wilbur

It looks to me like Eliphalet Kimball remained as obscure a figure to most of his peers as he is to us today—right up until the end of his life. And then, curiously, he developed a sort of notoriety, but one entirely unconnected to his writings on anarchy. Kimball seems to have spend most of his adult life in New Hampshire. It appears that he was born in 1799 or 1800 in Orford, NH, and the published works I’ve found all originate from west-central New Hampshire, or over the border in Vermont—except for one which seems to mark a short […]

Eliphalet Kimball in 1873

October 31, 2011 Shawn P. Wilbur

Here’s a bit of follow-up on the Eliphalet Kimball story I recently posted. More searching has not turned up any more direct account of Kimball’s 1852 presidential platform, but while filling some holes in my bibliography I found an 1873 article in the Boston Investigator which I had not see previously. In many ways, this newly unearthed article repeats the concerns and attitudes of Kimballs contributions in the 1860s, but it also seems to echo very strongly the ideas reported in 1852. My developing sense is that Kimball may have adopted his peculiar variety of anarchism quite early and stayed […]

The return of “From the Libertarian Library”

October 30, 2011 Shawn P. Wilbur

As a lot of my day-to-day focus shifts back to the digital archiving projects, it makes sense to put some old tools back into use. By the beginning of the new year, I should have Travelling in Liberty, or a reboot thereof, back in action, and today I’m relaunching From the Libertarian Library as a spot to highlight the archival projects, display long texts, etc., freeing this blog up as a more focused space for writing about mutualism. Between now and the end of December, I’ll be gradually making the shift back to using multiple blogs for various tasks. The […]

Steven T. Byington, “On Interference with the Environment”

October 30, 2011 Shawn P. Wilbur

ON INTERFERENCE WITH THE ENVIRONMENT. By STEVEN T. BYINGTON. I.—THE PRESUPPOSITIONS I START FROM. I WANT to start a discussion which may be of some length, especially if I get replies from those who disagree with me, as I hope I may, and I think it will pay if first I lay down, like Euclid, a few of the axioms and postulates with which I begin. I observe that men universally hold that certain types of action are to be approved and certain others are to be disapproved. They differ as to what actions should be put in either class: […]

Eliphalet Kimball for President! in 1852

October 30, 2011 Shawn P. Wilbur

Eliphalet Kimball remains one of my favorite figures in the American anarchist tradition, in part because he remains so unknown, popping up here and there in the 19th century radical press to make the most amazing pronouncements and demands, but somehow managing to go almost completely unremarked in the scholarly literature. I first discovered Kimball’s anarchist writings in the Boston Investigator and Woodhull and Claflin’s Weekly more than four years ago, and posted three of his essays: “Law, Commerce, and Religion,” “Civilization—Anarchy” and “Suggestions.” Recently, I was able to pick up an original copy of his one book, Thoughts on […]

Archive upgrades, IV

October 29, 2011 Shawn P. Wilbur

The week was full of the right kinds of interruptions: A couple of research requests I had out bore fruit, and gave me plenty of productive distractions from the ongoing archive clean-up. Barry Pateman, of Kate Sharpley Library, hooked me up with a file of old card catalog data for Mother Earth, which I’ve started to transcribe and integrate into the archive. I got a chance to talk through some difficult points of the “Essence of Mutualism” article that I’ve been working on with a knowledgeable drinking buddy. And a couple more Benjamin Tucker-related sources turned out to be a […]