Egoist anarchism

Egoist anarchism is a school of anarchist thought that originated in the philosophy of Max Stirner, a nineteenth century Hegelian philosopher whose "name appears with familiar regularity in historically-orientated surveys of anarchist thought as one of the earliest and best-known exponents of individualist anarchism."

Classical egoism holds that whatever a man has the might to do, he has the right to do.

Overview

Stirner's The Ego and Its Own (Der Einzige und sein Eigentum which may literally be translated as The Unique Individual and His Property) was published in 1844. The book is considered by scholar David Leopold to be "a founding text in the tradition of individualist anarchism." In it, Stirner outlined his view that the only limitation on the individual is his power to obtain what he desires. He proposes that most commonly accepted social institutions—including the notion of State, property as a right, natural rights in general, and the very notion of society—were mere spooks in the mind. In the words of Ulrike Heider, Stirner wanted to "abolish not only the state but also society as an institution responsible for its members."

Egoist anarchists argue that there are no rational grounds for any person to recognise any authority above their own reason or to place any goal before their own happiness. Hence they reject morality, concluding that no one has any reason to accept any principles of conduct, except insofar as accepting those principles is strategically effective in promoting one’s own interests. The consistent anarchist, they argue, should accept no unchosen constraints, moral or political, on their own sovereign will. Even murder is permissible "if it is right for me."

Stirner argued that property simply came about through might:

Whoever knows how to take, to defend, the thing, to him belongs property." And, "What I have in my power, that is my own. So long as I assert myself as holder, I am the proprietor of the thing." He says, "I do not step shyly back from your property, but look upon it always as my property, in which I respect nothing. Pray do the like with what you call my property!".

— The Ego and Its Own, p. 248, in Stirner, Max

This position on property is much different from the American natural law form of individualist anarchism, which defends the inviolability of the private property that has been earned through labor and trade. In 1886, American individualist anarchist Benjamin Tucker rejected the natural rights philosophy and, along with others, adopted egoism. This split the American individualists into fierce debate, as Wendy McElroy notes; "with the natural rights proponents accusing the egoists of destroying libertarianism itself." Other egoist anarchists of the time included James L. Walker, Sidney Parker, and Dora Marsden.

Union of Egoists

Max Stirner was the first inspiration of the egoist individualist anarchists. Portrait by Friedrich Engels.

Stirner's idea of the "Union of Egoists" (Template:Lang-de), first expounded in The Ego and Its Own, is central to egoist anarchism. The Union is understood as a non-systematic association, which Stirner proposed in contradistinction to the state. The Union is understood as a relation between egoists which is continually renewed by all parties' support through an act of will. The Union requires that all parties participate out of a conscious egoism. If one party silently finds themselves to be suffering, but puts up and keeps the appearance, the union has degenerated into something else.

This union is not seen as an authority above a person's own will. Scholar Andrew Carlson argues that in this union people would be held together by mutual advantage, through common "use" of one another. In joining the union an individual increases his own individual power—each person would through his own might control what they could. It does not imply though that there would be a region of universal rapacity and perpetual slaughter, nor does it mean the wielding of power over others. Each person would defend his own uniqueness. Carlson holds that once a person has attained self-realization of true egoism they would not want to rule over others or hold more possessions than they need because this would destroy their independence.

The Union of Egoists is not communistic but individualistic. It is essentially a non-formal group, that participants voluntarily engage in for personal gain. Since no one person is obligated to the group, they may leave if it ceases to serve their interests, making the benefit mutual to all members. Whereas in communism, individuals are obligated to one another in society, in Egoism, individuals are obligated only to themselves. Stirner saw this as the opposite of a state, government or society, which could use the individual for its own gain, without benefiting the individual or truly being in his interest.

The Ego and Its Own by Max Stirner

There would be neither masters nor servants, only egoists. Everyone would withdraw into his own uniqueness which would prevent conflict because no one will be trying to prove themselves "in the right" before a third party; each individual would be "above" the Union. It is claimed by egoist anarchists that egoism will foster genuine and spontaneous union between individuals. Stirner held that only this form of organisation would not intrude on the individual's power, exerting neither moral influence nor legal constraint.

Stirner does not develop in any detail the form of social organisation that the Union of Egoists might take, with some, such as Carlson, arguing that organization itself is anathema to Stirner's Union. Within the Union the individual will be able to develop himself. The Union exists for the individual. The Union of Egoists is not to be confused with society which Stirner opposes. Society lays claim to a person which is considered to be sacred, but which consumes an individual. The Union is made up of individuals who consume the Union for their own good.

Property

Cover of the 1920 Japanese edition of Stirner's The Ego and Its Own as translated by Jun Tsuji

The concept of "egoistic property," refers to the absence of moral restrictions on how the individual uses everything in the world including other people. For Stirner, property came about through might: "Whoever knows how to take, to defend, the thing, to him belongs property." "What I have in my power, that is my own. So long as I assert myself as holder, I am the proprietor of the thing." He says, "I do not step shyly back from your property, but look upon it always as my property, in which I respect nothing. Pray do the like with what you call my property!". This position on property is much different from the preceding native American, natural law, form of individualist anarchism, which defends the inviolability of the private property that has been earned through labour. However, American individualist anarchist Benjamin Tucker rejected the natural rights philosophy and adopted Stirner's egoism in 1886, with several others joining with him.

It should also be noted that Stirner, although commonly seen as an individualist anarchist, never mentions markets and he did not believe it is a matter of moral right, but simply a matter of control. "I do not step shyly back from your property, but look upon it always as my property, in which I respect nothing. Pray do the like with what you call my property!" Stirner never referred to markets and his philosophy on property causes problems for a market system, because according to proponents of markets property is not considered to be legitimate if taken by force. Stirner was opposed to communism, seeing it as a form of authority over the individual. He said in The Ego and Its Own:

All attempts to enact rational laws about property have put out from the bay of love into a desolate sea of regulations. Even Socialism and Communism cannot be excepted from this. Everyone one is to be provided with adequate means, for which it is little to the point whether one socialistically finds them still in a personal property, or communistically draws them from a community of goods. The individual's mind in this remains the same; it remains a mind of dependence. The distributing board of equity lets me have only what the sense of equity, its loving care for all, prescribes. For me, the individual, there lies no less of a check in collective wealth than in that of individual others; neither that is mind, nor this: whether the wealth belongs to the collectivity, which confers part of it on me, or to individual possessors, is for me the same constraint, as I cannot decide about either of the two. On the Contrary, Communism, by the abolition of all personal property, only presses me back still more into dependence on another, viz., on the generality or collectivity; and, loudly as it always attacks the "State," what it intends is itself again a State, a status, a condition hindering my free movement, a sovereign power over me. Communism rightly revolts against the pressure I experience from individual proprietors; but still more horrible is the might that it puts in the hands of the collectivity. Egoism takes another way to root out the non-possessing rabble. It does not say: Wait for what the board of equity will - bestow on you in the name of the collectivity (for such bestowal took place in "States" from the most ancient times, each receiving "according to his desert," and therefore according to the measure in which each was able to deserve it, to acquire it by service), but: Take hold, and take what you require! With this the war of all against all is declared. I alone decide what I will have.

Egoist anarchists generally reject notions of natural rights expounded by liberal economics, but reject traditional communist ideas about property and resources belonging to all of society also, presenting a view of property that is neither communist nor individualist. Stirner firmly stated that in his opinion, might meant right, and that it was the ability to physically control something which gave you the right to dispose of it how you willed. This did not mean that he was hostile to socialist desires for a greater share of the wealth labourers produce, but only that if they wanted it, they should unite and take the wealth that they felt they were owed. Stirner saw the employer-labourer relationship as exploitative, he simply refused to draw any moral conclusions from this fact. Thus, an egoist anarchist believes that nobody has a moral claim to wealth produced, and that in uniting with their fellow workers to take a greater share, they are acting rightly, in their self interest.

Stirner argued that self-welfare should be the guiding principle to follow rather than law. Stirner relates that you can get "further with a handful of might than with a bagful of right." Law is argued to exist not because men recognize it as being favorable to their interests, but because men hold it to be sacred. Anyone who breaks the law is violating what is sacred. Therefore there are no criminals except against something sacred. If you do away with the sacrosanctity of the law then crime will disappear, because in reality a crime is nothing more than an act desecrating that which was hallowed by the state. There are, according to Stirner, no rights, because might makes right and an individual is entitled to everything he has the power to possess and hold. The way to gain freedom, it is then argued, is through might because he who has might stands above the law. A person only becomes completely free when what he holds, he holds because of his might. Then he is a self-owner and not a mere freeman. Stirner does not believe that a person is good or bad, nor does he believe in what is true, good, right, and so on. These are vague concepts which have no meaning outside a God-centered or man-centered world. It is argued that an individual should center his interest on self and concentrate on his own business.

Later development and influence

Avant garde writer Jun Tsuji (who introduced Dadaism to Japan), author, poet, essayist, musician, and bohemian, translated Max Stirner's The Ego and Its Own into Japanese.

19th Century

Benjamin Tucker

Main article: Benjamin Tucker

Benjamin Tucker.

Benjamin Tucker was a leading proponent of American individualist anarchism in the 19th century. In 1886 he abandoned natural rights doctrine and came to hold the position that no rights exist until they are created by contract. This led him to controversial positions such as claiming that infants had no rights and were the property of their parents, because they did not have the ability to contract. He said that a person who physically tries to stop a mother from throwing her "baby into the fire" should be punished for violating her property rights. He said that children would shed their status as property when they became old enough to contract "to buy or sell a house" for example, noting that the precocity varies by age and would be determined by a jury in the case of a complaint.

He also came to believe that aggressing against other was justifiable if doing so led to a greater decrease in "aggregate pain" than refraining from doing so. He said:

the ultimate end of human endeavor is the minimum of pain. We aim to decrease invasion only because, as a rule, invasion increases the total of pain (meaning, of course, pain suffered by the ego, whether directly or through sympathy with others). But it is precisely my contention that this rule, despite the immense importance which I place upon it, is not absolute; that, on the contrary, there are exceptional cases where invasion—that is, coercion of the non-invasive—lessens the aggregate pain. Therefore coercion of the non-invasive, when justifiable at all, is to be justified on the ground that it secures, not a minimum of invasion, but a minimum of pain ... [T]o me [it is] axiomatic—that the ultimate end is the minimum of pain

Tucker said that there were only two rights, "the right of might" and "the right of contract." He also said that ownership in land is legitimately transferred through force unless contracted otherwise. In 1892, he said "In times past ... it was my habit to talk glibly of the right of man to land. It was a bad habit, and I long ago sloughed it off. Man's only right to land is his might over it. If his neighbor is mightier than he and takes the land from him, then the land is his neighbor's, until the latter is dispossessed by one mightier still." However, he said he believed that individuals would come to the realization that "equal liberty" and "occupancy and use" doctrines were "generally trustworthy guiding principle of action," and, as a result, they would likely find it in their interests to contract with each other to refrain from infringing upon equal liberty and from protecting land that was not in use. Though he believed that non-invasion, and "occupancy and use as the title to land" were general rules that people would find in their own interests to create through contract, he said that these rules "must be sometimes trodden underfoot."

Illegalism

Main article: Illegalism

Illegalism is a form of egoist anarchism that developed primarily in France, Italy, Belgium, and Switzerland during the early 1900s. The illegalists openly embraced criminality as a lifestyle. Illegalists usually did not seek moral basis for their actions, recognizing only the reality of "might" rather than "right"; for the most part, illegal acts were done simply to satisfy personal desires, not for some greater ideal, although some committed crimes as a form of propaganda of the deed.

Illegalism first rose to prominence among a generation of Europeans inspired by the unrest of the 1890s, during which Ravachol, Émile Henry, Auguste Vaillant, and Caserio committed daring crimes in the name of anarchism, in what is known as propaganda of the deed. The French Bonnot Gang were the most famous group to embrace illegalism.

The illegalists broke from anarchists like Clément Duval and Marius Jacob who justified theft with a theory of la reprise individuelle (Template:Lang-en). Instead, the illegalists argued that their actions required no moral basis; illegal acts were performed not in the name of a higher ideal, but in pursuit of one's own desires.

As a reaction to this, French anarchist communists attempted to distance themselves from illegalism and anarchist individualism as a whole. In August 1913, the Fédération Communiste-Anarchistes (FCA) condemned individualism as bourgeois and more in keeping with capitalism than communism. An article believed to have been written by Peter Kropotkin, in the British anarchist paper Freedom, argued that "Simple-minded young comrades were often led away by the illegalists' apparent anarchist logic; outsiders simply felt disgusted with anarchist ideas and definitely stopped their ears to any propaganda."

Early 20th century

Emma Goldman

In Russia, individualist anarchism inspired by Stirner combined with an appreciation for Friedrich Nietzsche attracted a small following of bohemian artists and intellectuals such as Lev Chernyi, as well as a few lone wolves who found self-expression in crime and violence. They rejected organizing, believing that only unorganized individuals were safe from coercion and domination, believing this kept them true to the ideals of anarchism.

Anarchist communist Emma Goldman was influenced by both Stirner and Peter Kropotkin as well as the Russian strain of individualist anarchism, and blended these philosophies together in her own, as shown in books of hers such as Anarchism And Other Essays. There she defends both Stirner and Friedrich Nietzsche when she says "The most disheartening tendency common among readers is to tear out one sentence from a work, as a criterion of the writer's ideas or personality ... It is the same narrow attitude which sees in Max Stirner naught but the apostle of the theory 'each for himself, the devil take the hind one.' That Stirner's individualism contains the greatest social possibilities is utterly ignored. Yet, it is nevertheless true that if society is ever to become free, it will be so through liberated individuals, whose free efforts make society." Usually egoism within anarchism is associated with individualist anarchism but it found admiration in the mainstream social anarchists such as anarcha-feminists Emma Goldman and Federica Montseny (both also admired Friedrich Nietzsche).

Renzo Novatore

As such in European individualist anarchism it influenced its main proponents after him such as Emile Armand, Han Ryner, Renzo Novatore, John Henry Mackay, Miguel Giménez Igualada and Lev Chernyi. "For Novatore—a reader of Stirner, but not for that a disciple of stirnerism—the affirmation of the individual, the continuous tension toward freedom, led inevitably to the struggle against the existent, to the violent battle against authority and against every type of 'wait—and see' attitude."

Emile Armand Stirnerist egoism (as well as his Nietzschetianism) can be appreciated when he writes in "Anarchist Individualism as Life and Activity (1907)" when he says anarchists "are pioneers attached to no party, non-conformists, standing outside herd morality and conventional 'good' and 'evil' 'a-social'. A 'species' apart, one might say. They go forward, stumbling, sometimes falling, sometimes triumphant, sometimes vanquished. But they do go forward, and by living for themselves, these 'egoists', they dig the furrow, they open the broach through which will pass those who deny archism, the unique ones who will succeed them." Spanish individualist anarchist Miguel Gimenez Igualada wrote a book on Stirner.

In American individualist anarchism it found adherence in Benjamin Tucker and his magazine Liberty while these abandoned natural rights positions for egoism. "Several periodicals were undoubtedly influenced by Liberty's presentation of egoism. They included: I published by C.L. Swartz, edited by W.E. Gordak and J.W. Lloyd (all associates of Liberty); The Ego and The Egoist, both of which were edited by Edward H. Fulton. Among the egoist papers that Tucker followed were the German Der Eigene, edited by Adolf Brand, and The Eagle and The Serpent, issued from London. The latter, the most prominent English-language egoist journal, was published from 1898 to 1900 with the subtitle 'A Journal of Egoistic Philosophy and Sociology'". Other American egoist anarchists around the early 20th century include James L. Walker, George Schumm and John Beverley Robinson, Steven T. Byington and E.H. Fulton. John Beverley Robinson wrote an essay called "Egoism" in which he states that "Modern egoism, as propounded by Stirner and Nietzsche, and expounded by Ibsen, Shaw and others, is all these; but it is more. It is the realization by the individual that they are an individual; that, as far as they are concerned, they are the only individual."

Mid 20th century

In the 1960s Daniel Guerin in Anarchism: From Theory to Practice says that Stirner "rehabilitated the individual at a time when the philosophical field was dominated by Hegelian anti-individualism and most reformers in the social field had been led by the misdeeds of bourgeois egotism to stress its opposite" and pointed to "the boldness and scope of his thought."

Existentialism anarchism

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Herbert Read

In the United Kingdom Herbert Read was influenced highly by egoism as he later came close to existentialism. David Goodway in Herbert Read Reassessed writes that in Read's Education Through Art (1943) "Here we have the egoism of Max Stirner assimilated in the anarchist communism of Peter Kropotkin." He cites Read for this affirmation which shows egoism's influence:

Uniqueness has no practical value in isolation. One of the most certain lessons of modern psychology and of recent historical experiences, is that education must be a process, not only of individuation, but also of integration, which is the reconciliation of individual uniqueness with social unity ... the individual will be "good" in the degree that his individuality is realized within the organic wholeness of the community.

Albert Camus

Sidney Parker writes that

Albert Camus devotes a section of The Rebel to Stirner. Despite a fairly accurate summarization of some of Stirner's ideas he nonetheless consigns him to dwelling in a desert of isolation and negation "drunk with destruction". Camus accuses Stirner of going "as far as he can in blasphemy" as if in some strange way an atheist like Stirner can "blaspheme" against something he does not believe in. He proclaims that Stirner is "intoxicated" with the "perspective" of "justifying" crime without mentioning that Stirner carefully distinguishes between the ordinary criminal and the "criminal" as violator of the "sacred". He brands Stirner as the direct ancestor of "terrorist anarchy" when in fact Stirner regards political terrorists as acting under the possession of a "spook". He furthermore misquotes Stirner by asserting that he "specifies" in relation to other human beings "kill them, do not martyr them" when in fact he writes "I can kill them, not torture them"—and this in relation to the moralist who both kills and tortures to serve the "concept of the 'good'". Although throughout his book Camus is concerned to present "the rebel" as a preferred alternative to "the revolutionary" he nowhere acknowledges that this distinction is taken from the one that Stirner makes between "the revolutionary" and "the insurrectionist". That this should occur in a work whose purpose is a somewhat frantic attempt at rehabilitating "ethics" well illustrates Stirner's ironic statement that "the hard fist of morality treats the noble nature of egoism altogether without compassion."

Late 20th century and today

Sidney Parker is a British egoist individualist anarchist who wrote articles and edited anarchist journals from 1963 to 1993 such as Minus One, Egoist, and Ego. In "Ego and society" he writes "Against the mystique of the sociocrat, stands the conscious ego of the autocrat, whose being is pivoted within, and who regards 'society' simply as a means or instrument, not a source or sanction. The egoist refuses to be ensnared by the net of conceptual imperatives that surrounds the hypostatization of 'society' preferring the real to the unreal, the fact to the myth."

Situationists

In the seventies an American situationist collective called "For Ourselves: Council for Generalized Self-Management" published a book called The Right To Be Greedy: Theses On The Practical Necessity Of Demanding Everything in which they advocate a "communist egoism" basing themselves on Stirner. It authors say "The positive conception of egoism, the perspective of communist egoism, is the very heart and unity of our theoretical and practical coherence." The authors there write "The perspective of communist egoism is the perspective of that selfishness which desires nothing so much as other selves, of that egoism which wants nothing so much as other egos; of that greed which is greedy to love—love being the 'total appropriation' of man by man." "Communist egoism" names the synthesis of individualism and collectivism, just as communist society names the actual, material, sensuous solution to the historical contradiction of the "particular" and the "general" interest, a contradiction engendered especially in the cleavage of society against itself into classes.

Post-left anarchy

Main article: Post-left anarchy

In the eighties in the United States emerged the tendency of post-left anarchy which was influenced profoundly by egoism in aspects such as the critique of ideology. Jason McQuinn says that "when I (and other anti-ideological anarchists) criticize ideology, it is always from a specifically critical, anarchist perspective rooted in both the skeptical, individualist-anarchist philosophy of Max Stirner". Also Bob Black and Feral Faun/Wolfi Landstreicher strongly adhere to Stirnerist egoism. A reprinting of The Right to be Greedy' in the eighties was done with the involvement of Bob Black who also wrote the preface to it. Bob Black has also humorously suggested the idea of "Marxist Stirnerism" just as he wrote an essay on "groucho-marxism". He writes in the preface to [The Right to be Greedy: "If Marxism-Stirnerism is conceivable, every orthodoxy prating of freedom or liberation is called into question, anarchism included. The only reason to read this book, as its authors would be the first to agree, is for what you can get out of it."

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Hakim Bey

Hakim Bey while explaining his concept of immediatism says:

The penetration of everyday life by the marvelous—the creation of "situations"—belongs to the "material bodily principle", and to the imagination, and to the living fabric of the present... The individual who realizes this immediacy can widen the circle of pleasure to some extent simply by waking from the hypnosis of the "Spooks" (as Stirner called all abstractions); and yet more can be accomplished by "crime"; and still more by the doubling of the Self in sexuality. From Stirner's "Union of Self-Owning Ones" we proceed to Nietzsche's circle of "Free Spirits" and thence to Charles Fourier's "Passional Series", doubling and redoubling ourselves even as the Other multiplies itself in the eros of the group.

Post-anarchism

Main article: Post-anarchism

In the hybrid of post-structuralism and anarchism called post-anarchism the British Saul Newman has written a lot on Stirner and his similarities to post-structuralism. He writes:

Max Stirner's impact on contemporary political theory is often neglected. However in Stirner's political thinking there can be found a surprising convergence with poststructuralist theory, particularly with regard to the function of power. Andrew Koch, for instance, sees Stirner as a thinker who transcends the Hegelian tradition he is usually placed in, arguing that his work is a precursor poststructuralist ideas about the foundations of knowledge and truth.

Newman has published several essays on Stirner. "War on the State: Stirner and Deleuze's Anarchism" and "Empiricism, pluralism, and politics in Deleuze and Stirner" discusses what he sees are similarities between Stirner's thought and that of Gilles Deleuze. In "Spectres of Stirner: a Contemporary Critique of Ideology" he discusses the conception of ideology in Stirner. In "Stirner and Foucault: Toward a Post-Kantian Freedom" similarities between Stirner and Michel Foucault. Also he wrote "Politics of the ego: Stirner's critique of liberalism".

Insurrectionary anarchism

Main article: Insurrectionary anarchism

Egoism has had a strong influence on insurrectionary anarchism, as can be seen in the work of Wolfi Landstreicher and Alfredo Bonanno. Bonanno has written on Stirner in works such as Max Stirner and "Max Stirner und der Anarchismus".

Feral Faun wrote in 1995 that:

In the game of insurgence—a lived guerilla war game—it is strategically necessary to use identities and roles. Unfortunately, the context of social relationships gives these roles and identities the power to define the individual who attempts to use them. So I, Feral Faun, became ... an anarchist ... a writer ... a Stirner-influenced, post-situationist, anti-civilization theorist ... if not in my own eyes, at least in the eyes of most people who've read my writings.

In the famous Italian insurrectionary anarchist essay written by an anonymous writer "At Daggers Drawn with the Existent, its Defenders and its False Critics" there reads "The workers who, during a wildcat strike, carried a banner saying, 'We are not asking for anything' understood that the defeat is in the claim itself ('the claim against the enemy is eternal'). There is no alternative but to take everything. As Stirner said: 'No matter how much you give them, they will always ask for more, because what they want is no less than the end of every concession'."

See also

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• Philosophy of Max Stirner
• Ethical egoism
• European individualist anarchism

External links

• "Max Stirner and anarchism" by Conor Mc Loughlin
• Archive of egoist literature at the Anarchist library