Libertarian Labyrinth

Constructing Anarchisms: Halfway to Anarchism

Are we there yet?

from Libertarian Labyrinth

We’re halfway through the process of constructing our experimental anarchism and, with the hardest part of my work now done, I’ve been spending more time thinking about how we might continue things in 2022, with the work done this year serving as a foundation.

Constructing an Anarchism: Aubaine

from Libertarian Labyrinth

Aubaine is not, like anarchy, one of those notions that anarchists could hardly do without. It perhaps not even, like governmentalism, an old term that anarchists might consider reviving. Proudhon settled on the term in his early critique of property, but his usage was, I think, somewhat idiosyncratic and led Benjamin Tucker in some odds directions in his translation. Frédéric Tufferd made good, if perhaps equally idiosyncratic use of the term in “Unity in Socialism,” but the shift in anarchist language he discussed there would continue—and within a few decades it appears that the term was used in the anarchist press primarily in its more general sense of “windfall” or even “godsend.” So, rather than building this concept into the foundation of the anarchism under construction, it probably makes sense to use our encounter with it as an occasion to clarify a few points already on the table—and then let it go.

Constructing Anarchisms: The Anarchist and «Their Own»

from Libertarian Labyrinth

The level of difficulty in this works varies considerably from post to post—or from paragraph to paragraph—and from moment to moment. Thoroughly stuck in the middle of this post, for example, I turned to the material on collective force and worked through it in record time. Then I puttered at translation and went to bed. Or tried to go to bed. Got up and re-outlined the opening for this post. Went back to bed. Got up again and scribbled a bit more in a notebook. Made a bit of headway the next day. Ran errands. Took the afternoon ramble—and came back with the outline for a short, but potentially book on individualism and anarchist practice…

Constructing an Anarchism: Collective Force

from Libertarian Labyrinth

In general, I’ve had pretty good luck keeping up with the demands of the project, despite all of the distractions of multiple crises. This weekend I’m running a bit low on steam. So the post connecting the discussion of governmentalism with that of collective force will follow this post—which is perhaps not a bad thing—and should then be followed by a post discussing the polity-form, before I get to next week’s discussion of the question of the aubaines and exploitation.

Constructing an Anarchism: Governmentalism

from Libertarian Labyrinth

GovernmentalismArchy, particularly in the political realm; the organization of social relations according to the principle of authority or governmental principle, as well as the ideology that holds that form of social organization as superior or necessary. Governmentalism was the target of anarchist critique in the era before the emergence of statism as a primary concern.

Constructing an Anarchism: Synthesis

Constructing an Anarchism: Synthesis

From Libertarian Labyrinth

We have been presenting an understanding of anarchist practice centered around the repeated reconstruction of what it means to “be an anarchist” in each new context. Proudhon claimed that “humanity proceeds by approximations”—and perhaps that’s a useful way to think about anarchism as well, whether we are thinking about the development of shared ideologies and tendencies or about the more individual process of applying anarchistic ideas to the objects of daily practice.

Constructing an Anarchism: Tradition

from Libertarian Labyrinth

I’ve decided to skip “Notes” this week and devote the time to other projects. (So if, for example, you were interested in 175 installments of anarchist writing, fiction and memoir, on exile in New Caledonia, I’ve at least provided the bibliography.) The post on An-Anarchy has elicited some passionate responses, but they have mostly been of the “after the horse has bolted” gate-keeping variety. And while it is true that even those conflicts have their uses — C’est du choc des idées que jaillit la lumière and all that — some kinds of light are considerably less likely to provide much clarity for our particular purposes here.

Constructing an Anarchism: An-Archy

Constructing an Anarchism: An-Archy

From Libertarian Labyrinth by Shawn P. Wilbur

The first order of business is to again thank everyone who has followed along—and particularly those who have taken the opportunity to comment. A special shout-out to the folks on the Anews Podcast, who took some time again last week to talk about “Constructing Anarchisms.” The responses—sometimes even the trollish ones—have helped make clear the various little course-corrections that seem necessary. There is necessarily a lot of the work on this project happening just-in-time (or, like today, just-past-time) and the kind of active engagement required on my end is a lot easier to maintain when there are signs of life elsewhere.

Constructing Anarchisms—Philosophy

Constructing Anarchisms—Philosophy

From Libertarian Labyrinth by Shawn P. Wilbur

Constructing Anarchisms: What It Is & What It Is Not

Survey courses are peculiar things, particularly when they address subjects of more than just passing interest. The construction of a survey always seems to involve at least some claim regarding the exemplary nature of the materials chosen. And if we were more certain about the character and extent of the anarchist tradition, we would expect a historical survey to take us, rather neatly, from milepost to milepost along the path of growing ideological clarity. But it’s hard to spend any time discussing history and theory with other anarchists—and I spend hours nearly every day—without recognizing that anarchy, anarchism and the anarchist tradition are all things that we struggle with, constantly, without necessarily making much headway in the process.

Workshop: Constructing Anarchisms

from Libertarian Labybrinth

This online workshop combines elements of a traditionally structured survey course and a vehicle for self-study. In some ways, it will resemble a year’s worth of office hours as much as a yearlong seminar. The goal is to make the basic experience—an extended practical crash-course in thinking about anarchist theory and history—available to as many potential participants as possible. It has been constructed with busy people in mind and should be able to carry on despite some ebb and flow in participation

Rambles in the Fields of Anarchist Individualism — No. 6

from: The Libertarian Labyrinth

No. 6. — Songs of Solitary Selves

Just when it looked like summer had settled in for good, August delivered a bit of rain. And just when I thought I had pretty well wrapped up this set of Rambles, I found my casual browsing through the anarchist individualist literature yielding a remarkable number of writings focused on the notion of solitude....

Anarchy: Action in the Face of Uncertainty

From The Libertarian Labyrinth

By Shawn P. Wilbur

These preliminary, exploratory writings are always half pleasure, half drudgery for me. You can have the right elements in hand and still require a lot of experimenting before they are anything like an elegant ensemble. With this series on “Defining Anarchy,” I’m conscious, not for the first time, that between the simplest and most abstract sorts of definitions and those that we might really apply in practical terms there are a variety of clarifications regarding present contexts and future possibilities that need to be made.

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