Possessed of a Certain Mutuality

In the Mutualism group on Facebook, a user posted the following Proudhon quotation:

‎”Every possessor of lands, houses, furniture, machinery, tools, money, &c., who lends a thing for a price exceeding the cost of repairs (the repairs being charged to the lender, and representing products which he exchanges for other products), is guilty of swindling and extortion.” – Proudhon

The quotation was accompanied by a skeptical set of examples (following Proudhon’s list) meant to appeal to the reader’s intuition and, I presume, lead them to conclude that Proudhon was full of it and that there is nothing wrong with charging for the use of something you own. The upshot is that today’s mutualists, if they agree with Proudhon, are full of it too.

Fox in the Henhouse

Radio host, former Republican mayoral candidate of Lewisville, TX and old high school peer of mine, Winston Edmondson, has invited me on his radio show today to discuss anarchism from 3-4pm CST (Dallas, TX). If you don’t live in Dallas, you can listen to a live online stream or, if you miss it, the online archive.

And how fitting it is that this show is taking place on the birthday of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon!

If you are here because you heard about the blog on the show, welcome! Please have a look around and let me recommend the “Essentials” link on the sidebar for more reading.

The Unfinished Business of Liberty

Please check out the first issues of LeftLiberty and the New Proudhon Library, edited by Shawn Wilbur. Take Shawn’s advice and do “a little tree-killing, and probably a coffee- or whiskey-stain or three”.

Paper Bags

The following is my “blog intro” submission to LeftLiberty #1:

Others offer you the spectacle of genius wresting Nature’s secrets from her, and unfolding before you her sublime messages; you will find here only a series of experiments upon justice and right a sort of verification of the weights and measures of your conscience. The operations shall be conducted under your very eyes; and you shall weigh the result.

– P.J. Proudhon, What is Property?

Instead of a blog, being much too busy to write one, I am trying to wrestle out of the paper bag of, as Shawn Wilbur put it, “defending a poorly defined territory against equally ill-defined invaders”. If I succeed in breaking out, it will be through systematic thinking about the topics that interest me: property and contracts, labor-management, non-state forms of oppression, autonomy-respecting assistance and development, the foundations of ethics, law, reciprocity and immanent justice. If we succeed in breaking out as an alliance, it will be because we have chosen the harsh, critical light over the safe darkness of our canards and herrings; we will have found our conatus.

Anarcho-Obamicons

Pierre-Joseph Proudhon