"Le Représentant du Peuple" launched in February 1848, a few days after the revolution. Proudhon began to actively collaborate with the paper in April. A prospectus and two specimen issues appeared in 1847, in the months leading up to the revolution. www.libertarian-labyrinth.org/proudhon-lib...

I've been thinking about our various current crises through the lens of my first scholarly career as a formula/genre lit-crit guy. And I'm wondering if, in retrospect, teaching people to tell one kind of story from another might have been as useful as anything else I've done as an educator.

I've uploaded another batch of translations of articles by Proudhon from "Le Peuple," from April 14-May 7, 1849. This includes a revision of the article "God is Evil." www.libertarian-labyrinth.org/wp-content/u...

Here's an unsigned series of articles, "Socialists and Malthusians," which ran in Le Voix du Peuple, Oct. 1849 - April 1850. It's a nice introduction to the thought of those who were Proudhon's allies and collaborators at the time of his imprisonment... www.libertarian-labyrinth.org/wp-content/u...

Today, I'm finishing up the translation of the unsigned series "Socialists and Malthusiens," from the Voix du Peuple and will probably try to steal an hour or so to get a solid French text together of Chojecki's "Studies on Credit," from the same source. Then it's back to work on the Mélanges.

I'll get a chance to clarify things later this summer, as I am working on the journalism from late 1849 and 1850, but it looks like perhaps the more anarchist sense of "anarchy" saw a brief heyday around the time of the big debate on the State.

The best evidence against the division of Proudhon's career into anarchist and federalist periods is the real absence of the kind of "anarchist period" critics seem to assume exists... somewhere... That is not to say that Proudhon was not an anarchist, but we need a better account of how he was one.

If we really wanted a useful conversation about potential elections f*ckery, maybe we could start with the fact that actually counting all of the ballots — not a small job, as close local races always show — appears to us as a sign of potential fraud...

If you scroll down to "Articles from 'Le Peuple," you'll find 20 pages of (mostly) new translations, linked as "Articles from March-April 1849." www.libertarian-labyrinth.org/proudhon-lib...

Since the Mutualist Society placed the Green Bay Packers at the top of their list of "Mutualists you might know," I've been trying to work more Vince Lombardi quotes into my work. I'm afraid I've been largely unsuccessful so far.

"Le Peuple de 1850" is a lot more interesting than the "Mélanges" would suggest, because much of the most interesting material comes from writers other than Proudhon.

This caught my eye while working through Proudhon's newspapers. It's from "Le Peuple," May 1949. Cœurderoy's "Hurrah !!! ou la Révolution par les Cosaques" was published in 1854.

I've been working my way through the second volume of Proudhon's "Mélanges." There are some more censored passages to restore and some comparisons to be made with the newspaper appearances. Among other things, I can finally get the formatting of "God is Evil" and "Man is Free" straightened out.

"General Idea of the Revolution in the 19th Century" isn't a bad book, but folks have real problems not reading all of those "business" terms as if Proudhon's proposal was to "run government like a business," rather than to account for collective force and seek justice. Tucker's crowd didn't help.

There's more material to track down, but the expanded edition of the mutual credit collection "Solution of the Social Problem" will certainly top the 200,000-word mark.

You'll find a complete draft translation of "Bank of Exchange," the fourth of five pamphlets included in the mutual credit collection "Solution of the Social Problem," linked on that project page. www.libertarian-labyrinth.org/working-tran...

New translation: "The True Revolutionary Politics" (May 16, 1848) — pdf linked. www.libertarian-labyrinth.org/new-proudhon...

The chapter on "Mutualist Accounting" in "Bank of Exchange" is written in a way that may make the operation of the institution clearer than the material that has been available so far. I'll wrap it up shortly — and then probably post a pdf of the pamphlet, lacking only some "Objections and Replies."

I've posted a question over yonder about the arrangement of texts in the journalism and mutual credit volumes, and would love feedback. www.reddit.com/r/mutualism/...

A question about Pierre Leroux's influence on mutualism got me thinking again about the still-unfinished series of reflections that started with "Two-Gun Mutualism and the Golden Rule." www.libertarian-labyrinth.org/contrun/two-...

PREORDER the first English-language collection of Johann Most’s writing from 1882 to 1906 from AK Press!! www.akpress.org/to-the-impat... Interested in Most's life? Check out my new biography: www.press.uillinois.edu/books/?id=c0...

I have linked a pdf with translations of the articles documenting Proudhon's "liquidation" of the Bank of the People, providing a bridge between "Solution of the Social Problem" and the proposal for the Mutuality of Laborers (which is also linked.) www.libertarian-labyrinth.org/working-tran...

3 of the 5 pamphlets in "Solution of the Social Problem" are translated. I'm now roughly midway through "Summary of the Social Problem: Bank of Exchange," which is the longest of the bunch. After that, there is only the 13,000-word "Bank of the People" and some more previously uncollected material.

The native plant surveys in the local woods have been full of little surprises. I've been pleased to see a real increase in trillium this year and to see one of the native buttercups also apparently spreading. But the march of the Stinky Bob, Shiny Geranium and other invasives is undeniable.

This is a new selection from the manuscript notebook where Proudhon's analysis of the problems of *definition* and *indefinition* is, I think, best developed. www.libertarian-labyrinth.org/wp-content/u...

There's translation strategy document coming for the New Proudhon Library, summarizing and extending material that has appeared in various translations, but hasn't had the visibility that it should. It will get its practical test in a new introductory volume, built around "Philosophy of Progress."

Word-counts for each year for the published correspondence of Proudhon (Lacroix):

I've been so sick for a couple of weeks that I haven't been able to even walk the couple of blocks to the woods, but I got a chance today. It's a bounce-back year for trillium, which is lovely, but the unexpected finds were a little stand of Large-leafed avens and another of Disappointing buttercup.

I have been very sick for the past two weeks, but I'm starting to putter again at the usual tasks: www.libertarian-labyrinth.org/working-tran...

My favorite detail about Portland's "beloved" Thompson Elk Fountain, which is being reinstalled: "According to the city, the Exalted Order of Elks refused to dedicate it because they considered the statue "a monstrosity of art.""

Available very soon from @activedistribution.bsky.social, @gdavranche.bsky.social’s ‘Ten Questions on Anarchism’ - a small and very informative book covering all the basics. Lovingly translated from French by yours truly, Paul Bowman and Anthony Zurbrugg.

Work in progress:

The first native wildflower blooming this spring in the local woods is Nuttall's toothwort (Cardamine nuttallii), a little native bittercress that I was unaware of before today. oregonflora.org/taxa/index.p...

New Translation: Ramón de la Sagra, “On the Imprecision of Economic Principles and the Teaching of Political Economy in Colleges” (1847) — This is a nice intro, providing lots to think about when it comes to similarities to and differences from Proudhon. www.libertarian-labyrinth.org/wp-content/u...

An entertaining work, which seems to come around as a useful reference more often than one would like or expect: archive.org/details/Brou...

I have added a draft translation of Ramón de la Sagra's "Bank of the People" (1849) to my translations from his work. The book was published in support of Proudhon's free credit project. www.libertarian-labyrinth.org/featured-aut...

Ramón de la Sagra wrote "Bank of the People: Theory and Practice" as a general work, with particular attention to Proudhon's project in the first and last chapters. After the failure of the project, it appears he rewrote those chapters and republished it as "Economic Revolution: Causes and Means."

I am working on an expanded edition of "Solution of the Social Problem," which collected Proudhon's work on mutual credit. That project involves collecting writings by his collaborators—a significant selection of which are now linked at the page below: www.libertarian-labyrinth.org/working-tran...

The "Detailed Explanation of the Bank of the People" is sufficiently detailed that we learn how we might have attempted to purchase camels in Paris in 1848, using its circulation vouchers.

My break from the work on Proudhon's property theory was a quick translation of Ramón de la Sagra's "Social Aphorisms," the 1848 version of a work that he appears to have written and rewritten a number of times in the 1840s. www.libertarian-labyrinth.org/featured-aut...

I got curious about what — and how many different things — the "Encyclopédie Anarchiste" had to say about "organization." You'll find all of the entries for that term, plus a few related ones, quickly, but newly translated at the link below: www.libertarian-labyrinth.org/anarchist-en...

A minor update to the "Programs and Manifestos" listing, with a couple of new translations linked, including one in support of Ravachol et al. www.libertarian-labyrinth.org/anarchist-be...

We can probably safely say that the Edith Green-Wendell Wyatt Federal Building no longer functions as "a metaphor for sustainable and transparent government."

New translation: Daniel Saurin, "Order through Anarchy" (1893) — This was published by "La Révolte" and advertised by the major anarchist papers for years. It's an exploration of anarchist ethics from a what is essentially a natural law perspective. www.libertarian-labyrinth.org/working-tran...

"Even so, “Melania” had the best result for a wide-release documentary, excluding concert films, since 2012, when the nature film “Chimpanzee” arrived to $10.7 million, or about $15 million after adjusting for inflation, according to Comscore data." (NYT)

I'm working on a post for the Contr'un blog, "Property: The Sixth Formulation," which proposes a non-exhaustive list of seven characterizations of "property" in Proudhon's works and then sets up some of the apparatus for "The Anarchism of the Encounter." It's a bit of a tiger-by-the-tail affair.

A Schematic Anarchism: Anarchy and the Governmental Series — I've been sitting on this since April 2024, but someone actually asked the question it answers yesterday (and what's one more arcane horror loosed upon the world at this point?) www.libertarian-labyrinth.org/featured-art...