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Anarchist Writer for the Black International
: His career as a participant in the labor movement grew out of his reflections on the Pittsburgh riots during the 1877 railroad strike, but before Haymarket had swung over to the extreme left position of the anarchists and mutualists, impressed with the possibilities of cooperation in economics. (From: James Martin Bio.)
• "Let us beware the militant assumption that man exists for the State, and trust to theoretical brakes to check the momentum of a body moving with increasing velocity. The social aggregate is not something over and above the units which constitute it." (From: "The Economics of Anarchy: A Study Of The Industri....)
• "Force, however used, can teach no economic truth, yet events flowing from it often awaken consciousness of what equity demands." (From: "The Economics of Anarchy: A Study Of The Industri....)
• "The renaissance of mind from scholastic tyranny; the revolt of Luther and his followers against mental dictation; the temporary compromise in religious toleration; the insurrection against kingcraft leading in its triumph to the toleration of political opinions; -- have now logically led to an insurrection against economic subjection to the privileges usurped and hotly defended by capital in its alliance with labor..." (From: "The Economics of Anarchy: A Study Of The Industri....)
Notes
[1] I here gladly acknowledge my obligations to Victor Drury, {15} whose classification I adopt and follow.
{1} Actually Say may have gone farther.
{2} From Royal Commentaries of the Incas (1609) by El Inca Garcilaso de la Vega (c. 1539-1616; not to be confused with the earlier Spanish writer of the same name); Lum quotes from the 1871 translation by Clements Markham.
{3} Principles of Sociology I.ii.10
{4} Probably American historian John Lothrop Motley (1814-1877).
{5} Swiss historian and economist Jean Charles Léonard de Sismondi (1773-1842).
{6} Jack Cade, leader of 1450 peasant rebellion; John Wycliffe, 14th-century Catholic dissident; Jacob van Artevelde and Philip van Artevelde, father and son, 14th-century Flemish nationalist leaders; Étienne Marcel, bourgeois leader involved in the 1358 French peasant rebellion known as the Jacquerie; rising of the Swiss cantons: a 14th-century confederacy that threw off Habsburg rule; Cola di Rienzi, 14th-century Italian revolutionary leader; Hanseatic League, Renaissance mercantile alliance of northern Europe.
{7} A reference to Auguste Comte’s (1798-1857) division of history into theological, metaphysical, and positive/industrial phases, though in his description of the details Lum seems closer to Spencer than to Comte.
{8} Barebone’s Parliament, form taken by the British Parliament in 1653, between the dissolution of the Rump Parliament and the rise of Cromwell’s Protectorate, taking its name from the involvement of religious dissenting leader Praise-God Barebones or Barebone or Barbon (c. 1598-1679); Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès (1748-1836), French revolutionary leader who served in the national legislature known as the Convention.
{9} “Progress and Order” (or equally “Order and Progress”) was a popular slogan among followers of Comte; see the Brazilian flag.
{10} Pen name of American humorist Benjamin Drew (1812-1903).
{11} Bonds payable only upon the death of a third party, though here used metaphorically to mean payable only in the afterlife.
{12} “The voice of the people [is] the voice of God.”
{13} Scottish writer Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881), whose description of economics as “the dismal science” has often been thought (as probably here by Lum) to refer to its conservative aspects (e.g., Malthus’s alleged proof that improvements in the lot of the working class were unattainable), though in fact Carlyle meant to be condemning its liberal aspects (specifically its opposition to slavery).
{14} plural sic.
{15} Victor Drury (1825-1918), French-born American anarchist active in the Knights of Labor.
{16} William Godwin (1756-1836), English anarchist philosopher who advocated voluntary equality of property.
{17} American economist Henry George (1839-1897), who though generally a free-market advocate regarded society as the legitimate owner of all land, and consequently favored replacing all taxation with a single tax on land; American state-socialist writer Edward Bellamy (1850-1898); Lum’s line “looking backward to Sparta and Peru” is a sarcastic reference to Bellamy’s utopian 1888 novel Looking Backward.
{18} A reference to an example in Henry George’s 1881 book The Land Question.
{19} German economist Wilhelm Roscher (1817-1894), an important influence (perhaps surprisingly) on both the German Historical School and the French Liberal School. The passage quoted is from Joseph Lalor’s 1878 translation of Roscher’s 1854 Principles of Political Economy.
{20} A frequent misquotation from Shakespeare’s Tempest IV.1.151-57, eliding “the baseless fabric of this vision” with “we are such stuff as dreams are made on” a few lines later.
{21} English economist David Ricardo (1772-1823) had argued in his 1817 Principles of Political Economy and Taxation that there was a natural tendency for wages to approach the cost of production of labor, which he held to be the bare cost of keeping the laborer alive and able and willing to work; however, he also held a) that wages may be kept above this natural rate indefinitely in an improving economy, and that b) willingness to work depends in any case on cultural factors (including prevailing standards of comfort and decency). Dropping these qualifications, Ferdinand Lassalle (1825-1864) and other socialist thinkers developed Ricardo’s theory into an Iron Law of Wages according to which wages are doomed to stand forever at bare physical subsistence so long as the wage system survives.
{22} Classical liberal English statesman John Bright (1811-1889), free-trade and anti-imperialist activist; the quotation is from Bright’s Glasgow University installation speech in March 1883.
{23} Whatever source Lum is quoting (presumably by Henry George) is evidently to be found reprinted in the 1901 Sunset Club.
{24} In Greek mythology Cerberus was the three-headed dog who guarded the entrance to the underworld.
{25} A standard Spencerian concern, taking the line of progress to run toward greater differentiation. By “to greater differentiation” Lum presumably means “in preference to greater differentiation.”
{26} The quotation is from Spencer’s 1876 Principles of Sociology V.18 §570.
{27} This phrase often means “piecework,” but in the present context seems to mean labor done on one’s own without cooperation.
{28} The English phrase “to go without saying” derives from the French aller sans dire, although aller de soi, “to go of itself,” may be the more common French idiom.
{29} Lum had had an acrimonious falling-out with the Greenback Party ten years earlier.
{30} Change of antecedent sic.
{31} Presumably there should also be a hyphen between “from” and the first “day.”
{32} An agrarian association friendly to the urban labor movement, formed in Michigan in 1889; a similar movement of the same name was formed in Ontario the following year.
{33} The passage that follows is drawn from the article “‘Greatest Happiness’ Principle” (Westminster Review XI, no 21 (July 1829), which is apparently but not explicitly by Bentham; see Macaulay’s discussion.
{34} The quotation which follows is from Herbert’s “A Politican in Sight of Haven.”
{35} Principles of Sociology V.xviii.563.
{36} Probably a reference to the title of Henry George’s 1879 Progress and Poverty.
{37} Either American economist Amasa Walker (1799-1875) or his son Francis Amasa Walker (1840-1897).
{38} American anarchist and currency reformer William Batchelder Greene (1819-1878).
{39} Hebrews 11:1.
{40} This makes no sense, and is an error for “will not go bankrupt at the same tine” in the original.
{41} Should be “since it is subscribed.”
{42} From Proudhon’s Organization of Credit and Circulation (1848).
{43} Science of Wealth (1866), ch. 5.
{44} Another quotation from Roscher.
{45} “The great thinker is the secretary of his age”: from English philosopher George Henry Lewes (1817-1878), Problems of Life and Mind (1874).
{46} The Land Question (1881), ch. 16.
{47} Bavarian-American anarcho-communist Johann Most (1846-1906).
{48} French novelist Edmond François Valentin About (1828-1885).
{49} First quotation from Rights of Man (1792), II.1; next three from First Principles of Government (1795).
{50} Reference to a quotation from Malthus.
{51} Science of Wealth, XI.6.
{52} American abolitionist, businessman, liberal economist, and antiwar activist Edward Atkinson (1827-1905).
{53} German-American anarchist August Spies (1855-1877), one of the Haymarket martyrs.
{54} Isaiah 58:1.
{55} American abolitionist poet John Greenleaf Whittier (1807-1892), in “Stanzas for the Times.”
From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org
Anarchist Writer for the Black International
: His career as a participant in the labor movement grew out of his reflections on the Pittsburgh riots during the 1877 railroad strike, but before Haymarket had swung over to the extreme left position of the anarchists and mutualists, impressed with the possibilities of cooperation in economics. (From: James Martin Bio.)
• "Let us beware the militant assumption that man exists for the State, and trust to theoretical brakes to check the momentum of a body moving with increasing velocity. The social aggregate is not something over and above the units which constitute it." (From: "The Economics of Anarchy: A Study Of The Industri....)
• "Force, however used, can teach no economic truth, yet events flowing from it often awaken consciousness of what equity demands." (From: "The Economics of Anarchy: A Study Of The Industri....)
• "The renaissance of mind from scholastic tyranny; the revolt of Luther and his followers against mental dictation; the temporary compromise in religious toleration; the insurrection against kingcraft leading in its triumph to the toleration of political opinions; -- have now logically led to an insurrection against economic subjection to the privileges usurped and hotly defended by capital in its alliance with labor..." (From: "The Economics of Anarchy: A Study Of The Industri....)
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