The previous post, “What is certain is that property is to be regenerated among us,” has spurred some further research on the relation of The Theory of Property to Proudhon’s works of the early 1860s. Check the comment thread for a number of of interesting items from Proudhon’s correspondence, and the Libertarian Library blog for the “Notice to the Reader” from The Principle of Art, the first of the Posthumous Works.
Contr'un
1838: Property is theft (Jules Leroux)
EPISODES in another history of anarchism: In volume 4 of the Encyclopédie nouvelle, which appeared in 1838, Jules Leroux contributed a lengthy entry on Political Economy. There is a lot there that is of interest, but perhaps nothing that touches this passage for topical interest here in the mutualist blogosphere: Et la propriété se trouve être nécessairement définie en ces termes: La possession et l’usage d’un objet propre à satisfaire un besoin. Supprimez le mot possession, et la propriété disparaît. Supprimez le mot usage, et la propriété devient une chose immorale, anti-humaine : c’est l’accaparement, c’est le vol. That is: […]
Blazing Star Library
William B. Greene, “Equality—No. 6. Cain and Abel” (1850)
Like several of the other articles that he contributed to The Worcester Palladium, this early article by William Batchelder Greene contains some of his most direct expressions of anarchistic and socialistic ideas, but weaves them together with his rather esoteric readings of scripture. The result is both striking and perplexing. Equally perplexing is the question of just which essays we should consider to be the fourth and fifth entries in the “Equality” series. While the two installments of “Capital and Labor” were included in the book Equality, the themes here seem to be a continuation of the material covered in […]
Anarchism
A funny thing happened on the way… (1)
Nobody who knows me or my work will be surprised if I admit to working primarily on a large — and sometimes over-large — scale. There are obvious disadvantages to the approach: I have certainly not published as much as I might have, in any of the various fields where I’ve gained some expertise, and much of the writing I have done has been in the form of theoretical “feelers” and thought experiments scattered in a wide variety of forums. The more definitive statements that I have started have been slow to develop. The logistics of serious interdisciplinary study are […]