Sources: The Era of Proudhon

Our Lost Continent and the Journey Back:
I. — Sources (1837–1865)

Project Page:

• Our Lost Continent: Episodes from an Alternate History of the Anarchist Idea, 1837–1936

RELATED:

• P.-J. Proudhon, “Determination of the Third Social Form” (What is Property? 1840)
• “Our Lost Continent” (April 4, 2015)
• “The ‘Benthamite’ anarchism and the origins of anarchist history” (April 5, 1015)
• “New Uncertainties and Opportunities” (April 6, 2015)
• “Looking Forward—Mapping Our Lost Continent” (April, 2018)
• “What Mutualism Was: Coming to Terms with Our Anarchist Past” (January 4, 2019)
• “Our Lost Continent” [tag stream]
• “Extrications” [tag stream] — notes on synthesis, anarchist development, etc.

MAPPINGS: Notes for an Introduction

• Extrications: History, Tradition, Theory
• Anarchism as a Fundamentally Unfinished Project
• Anarchist History: A Mutualist’s-Eye-View
• Anarchist History: The Metaphor of the Main Stream
• Anarchist History: Maps and Overland Guides
• Anarchist History: Streamside Reflections and Preparations for the Journey
• Anarchist History: No End of Beginnings
• The Uses of a Lost Continent
• Positive Anarchy, Profusion, Uncertainty and the Uses of History

SOURCES: The First Leg of the Journey

• Sources: Before the Beginning
• Sources: Seeking the Source
• Sources: Over the Roofs of the World
• Sources: The Era of Proudhon
• Sources: The End of an Era
• Sources: Note on Critics and Collaborators

DISTRIBUTARIES: The Second Leg

• Distributaries: The Problem of Proudhon
• Distributaries: Proudhonism and the International
• Distributaries: Anti-Authoritarian Collectivism
• Distributaries: Atercracy
• Distributaries: The Reform Leagues and Anarchist Individualism
• Distributaries: “Modern Anarchism”

A BRAIDED STREAM: The Third Leg

CONFLUENCES: The Final Leg of the Journey

So far, we have been focused on beginnings and endings, on looking forward and looking backward along trails already traveled or retraveled. But, of course, the bulk of this exploration will involve a matters much more close at hand—if I can put it that way—as we work our way, year by year, toward the present.

Having divided our journey into long segments, corresponding to the various volumes, and having identified a few key figures whose careers it will be useful to explore in more depth, it becomes a question of the more painstaking task of exploring, in each of the years we will traverse, various incidents in the development of “the anarchist idea.” In each leg of the journey, we will consult the appropriate chapters of various histories—starting with the work of Max Nettlau—and select some texts that seem to illuminate the moment. And we will engage in one or more close studies of texts published or events that occurred in that span.

In the first volume, P.-J. Proudhon will occupy center stage and we will attempt to tease out the outlines of the “Proudhonian anarchism” that might have emerged from his thought, had subsequent chapters of anarchist history played out a bit differently. Joseph Déjacque will feature as his anarchistic adversary—and as the first figure explicitly associated with an “anarchism.” Various other figures will be the subject of those close examinations, with the goal of demonstrating just how rich this early period was in a variety of anarchistic ideas.

Each long leg of our journey will require certain reassessments and perhaps the most pleasant of those will involve this earliest era, which is so often marked on our maps with “Here be Precursors,” but is rather astonishingly well stocked with a wide range of anarchistic theories. And those theories, like the theorists behind them, tend to have a delightful larger-than-life air about them. They are entertaining and provocative, but also sufficiently distinct from the more familiar staples of anarchist theory to force us to wrestle with them a bit before they give up all of their secrets.

This earliest era is really the wild heart of “Our Lost Continent.” And it is here that the fantastical framing of this historical exploration seems most obviously useful.

So we will undoubtedly make the most of that frame in this first volume, in the first place purely for the fun of it, but secondarily because there is a skill to be practiced, a way of seeing “the anarchist tradition” as still wild and unexplored, that it will be necessary to apply in less obvious contexts, later in our journey, if we are to really complete the task we’ve set ourselves.

Among the figures to be examined in this portion of the project are:

Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, L’Humanitaire, Sylvain Maréchal, Pierre Leroux, William B. Greene, Charles Fourier, Etienne de la Boetie, Anselme Bellegarrigue, Ernest Cœurderoy, Joseph Déjacque, Eliphalet Kimball, Henriette (artiste), Jenny P. d’Héricourt, Calvin Blanchard, Henry Edger, Le Proletaire, Stephen Pearl Andrews, Josiah Warren, Mikhail Bakunin, Adin Ballou, Félix Pignal, César de Paepe, Flora Tristan, Jeanne Deroin, Ganneau (The Mapah), Walt Whitman

The episodes already treated here—to one degree or another—that might become the subjects of more extensive studies include:

• 1838: Property is theft (Jules Leroux)
• Adin Ballou, “Non-Resistance in Relation to Human Governments” (1839)
• Property? It’s just a phase… (Proudhon to the Academy of Besançon, 1840)
• Josiah Warren, “Manifesto” (1841)
• The Emancipation of Woman, or, The Testament of the Pariah (1846)
• Gabriel-Desire Laverdant, “Of Property” (1846)
• Bakunin, “I believe neither in constitutions, nor in laws” (1848)
• Bakunin, Letter to Proudhon (1848)
• Etienne Cabet, “Down with the Communists!” (by a communist) (1848/49)
• Jeanne Deroin to Proudhon, January 1849
• Henriette, artiste, “Letter to Proudhon” (1849)
• C.-F. Chevé, “Fundamental Principles of Socialism” (1849)
• Anselme Bellegarrigue, “Anarchy is Order” (1850)
• The Feuding Brothers (1850)
• Elisée Reclus, “The Development of Liberty in the World” (c. 1850)
• Pauline Roland, “Have Women the Right to Labor?” (1851)
• Jeanne Deroin, “Letter to the Associations on the Organization of Credit” (1851)
• The trial of Joseph Déjacque, October 23, 1851
• Notes on “Le Commanditaire” (Anselme Bellegarrigue, 1852)
• Coeurderoy and Vauthier, “The Barrier of the Combat” (1852)
• Félix Pignal, “The Philosophy of Defiance” (1854)
• Suzanne Voilquin, “Suicide of Claire Démar and Perret Desessarts” (1855)
• Carlo Pisacane, “Testamento politico” (1857)
• Joseph Déjacque, “The Humanisphere” (1858)
• Proudhon on “libertarians” (1858)
• Proudhon, Comment les affaires vont en France, et pourquoi nous aurons la guerre, si nous l’avons : à propos des nouveaux projets de traités entre les compagnies de chemin de fer et l’Etat (1859)
• Constitutions and Organic Bases of the Pantarchy and New Catholic Church (1860)
• Paul Emile De Puydt, Panarchy (1860)
• Hector Morel, “Nationalities Considered from the Point of View of Liberty” (1862)
• “The Working Man” of London greets Bakunin (1862)
• A Counsellor (Josiah Warren), “Modern Government and its True Mission” (1862)
• Eliphalet Kimball, “Law, Commerce and Religion” (1862)
• César de Paepe, “Anarchy” (1863)
• Manifesto of the Sixty Workers of the Seine (1864)
• Proudhon, “My Testament, or Society of Avengers“

But, of course, a year-by-year exploration of these particularly under-explored years is likely to turn up all sorts of new material as well—and to suggest new ways of thinking about elements first examined “on the trip out” and often through lenses that it has been necessary to refine or discard along the way.