After the Underworld Amusements edition of The Unique and Its Property was attacked and the translator and publisher receiving death threats and much lighter threats from that same anarchist milieu, the book was taken out of circulation, with copies fetching high-dollars on the secondary market. The book was later released in a new, and much pinker, edition by Little Black Cart. While LBC does most of their printing and binding in-house, they went big with a proper professional print run and have been selling it down since its 2018 release.

Leading up to and past the public announcement, Underworld Amusements, a long time supporter of LBC, arranged to make one last big order of books, including nearly EVERY REMAINING COPY of The Unique and Its Property, about a thousand total. After many many months we have just now taken possession of many dozens of boxes of books and pamphlets, and will be inventorying them and adding them to the website.

Further, Underworld Amusements and the Union of Egoists project will be working on NEW EDITIONS of OUR favorite LBC/ARDENT PRESS titles, to be released as we sell out of the on-hand LBC editions.

We’ve got a LOT of books and a LOT of WORK ahead. Restocked books will be on the website over the coming days and we will send out a newsletter focusing on restocked and some new titles. Please BUY BOOKS!

The idea for this site and much else was crystalized in a chat of February 2nd, 2016 between Trevor Blake and Kevin I. Slaughter. This chat was printed in our journal of record Der Geist Issue 1 as “A Unique Conversation,” published in 2017. We have published six issues Der Geist.  It constitutes nearly one thousand two hundred pages of egoism from 1845 to 1945, with lost works reprinted, new or lost translations in every issue, rare photos and images, and new research, essays and reviews.

The Union of Egoists has released over seventy issues of the mixed format journal Stand Alone. Those released have comprised everything from books of original research to t-shirts and audio recordings. In the series, twenty-five books have been published. A library of egoist material has been generated.

Our work has been cited by scholars in the academic press and by editors of Wikipedia. We have provided new information on the holdings of libraries and historical societies.

We have made over three hundred blog posts and generated hundreds of pages of material. We have launched several special projects that have generated hundreds of pages of content.

We are very appreciative of those supporting our work on Patreon.

Discover rare photographic glimpses of pioneering egoists such as Dora Marsden and Benjamin R. Tucker, and delve into the visionary project to produce a Braille edition of Max Stirner’s magnum opus for the indomitable Helen Keller. Unearth a plethora of fascinating artifacts pertaining to Malfew Seklew, and be riveted by the astonishing revelation of Ragnar Redbeard’s brief yet impactful foray as a Canadian Socialist Provocateur.

This sixth issue of Der Geist is sure to delight and offend, but most of all, serve as an essential philosophical reference work for centuries to come.

DER GEIST: The Journal of Egoism from 1845 – 1945 | ISSUE 6 | Winter 2023
Paperback, 212 pages, $15
ISBN 978-1-944651-29-9, ISSN 2639-5339

Der Geist, (Trevor Blake, editor; Kevin I. Slaughter, co-editor) is an English-language journal for an international audience, publishing original scholarship on the philosophy of egoism. The journal is descriptive of the first century of egoism in print (from the 1845 publication of Der Einzige und sein Eigentum by Max Stirner to the end of 1945), not prescriptive in advocacy of egoism.

CONTENTS

Introduction by the Editor  2

1. Max Stirner   7

Max Stirner’s Anarchist Gospel | A Dutch Review of Stirner’s Work | Anarchist Black Dragon | Max Stirner vs. Wahrheit-Sucher | “Celine Adele Marillier” | Pity and the Future | Max Stirner and the Grisette | Steven T. Byington’s Triple Score

2. Malfew Seklew  29

On “Bérnard’s Tour” | Minister Mocks Malfew  | Stern Critique of Christian Socialist  | Seklew Asks: Nietzsche to Blame?  | Social Aristocrat Socialist Secretary | A Freak Among Reformers  | No Guide for Anybody | Proletarians in Purgatory | No Justice for Malfew Seklew  | “We’re All More or Less Nutty” | Not Seeking Work  | Seklew Scolds Simpoleons, Supplies Sample Shilling Sericine Silk Set | No Detail Too Small!

3. Ragnar Redbeard   51

Redbeard in Canada | Desmond Selling George  | Give the New Hand a Show! | A.D. in the O.E.D.  | A Bogus Book | Australian Socialist Drinking Club | Redbeard’s Rough Stuff |“We Understand the Redbeard Philosophy” | Voima On Oikeus | Etc.

4. Dora Marsden  95

Dora Marsden for the Prosecution | The Freewomen of New York | Dora Marsden, unser aller Mutter  | Dora Marsden Ephemera | Rare Portraits

5. Benjamin DeCasseres   107

Emmeline Pankhurst | Pyrrhonism and Acatalepsy | Balzac | The Borrowed Mirror

6. Friedrich Nietzsche   117

Nietzsche and a Braille Stirner for Hellen Keller | “Will Nietzsche Come Into Vogue…” | The Works of Friedrich Nietzsche | Alexander Tille Reads Egoism

7. Enzo Martucci   135

A Sketch of Martucci | An Excerpt from The Red Sect | Martucci on Stirner

8. Free Spirits  159

Peter Lamborn Wilson Has Passed  | Hakim Bey: Real and Unreal | Vox Populi Vox Dei | Thompson at Rudolf Steiner Hall | Speakers’ Corner Anthology | Among the Anarchists | The True Comarade | Is This What You Call “Living?” | The Thirteenth Paragraph | Greeves Fisher, A Sketch | Dominance vs. Egoism | More Individualism | Individualism and Property | Why I am a Right-Wing Anarchist | Opening and Closing the Dil Pickle | Christmas a Joke! | “I” a poem  | “I GO” a poem| A Letter to the Editors of Freedom | Enrico Arrigoni Bibliography | Photo of Benjamin R. Tucker | About the Editors

See The Women of Dumfries: Art, Suffrage, Temperance and War at Dumfries Museum, United Kingdom.

This is a republication (with a new, additional Foreword) of an anthology first published in 1977. It is a collection of excerpts and other written material connected to Hyde Park’s Speakers’ Corner and there are several references to the SPGB scattered throughout. Jim Huggon is an anarchist who spoke regularly there from 1965 to 1983. […] There are excerpts too from famous Speakers’ Corner regular Bonar Thompson’s book, Hyde Park Orator, which has also recently been republished with added illustrations. […] This anthology helps capture the spirit of an earlier age.

Please read the entire review here. The Socialist Party of Great Britain is the oldest extant political party of any kind in the United Kingdom. They were founded in in 1904, preceding the Russian Revolution by a good decade. They know their socialism, and are not adverse to praising those who know their egoism.

Available from Underworld Amusements , and Nine-Banded Books.

Stand Alone is a mixed medium and format journal produced at irregular intervals. The focus is Egoism and the individuals associated with it. Produced by the Union Of Egoists with individual issues published by different sources.

WHO WANTS TO BE “FREE”?

by James J. Martin

I am indicting a society which has no more concept of freedom and responsibility than it has of a twelve-legged dog. Is it ‘free enterprise’ which is to occupy the trial seat before socialism and communism?

Is there anyone engaged in making profits by the present system who is willing to face the consequences of complete free enterprise– the reduction of all price through the most rigorous competition? Why no, he merely wishes the free-enterprise system to operate in his favor, and is as willing as the collectivist to employ the fantastic superstructure of law and police in prohibiting any freedom of action which endangers his privileged position.

Who wants ‘free enterprise’ in the steel and other heavy industries? Who wants ‘free competition’ with the producers of the rest of the world? What banker is willing to tolerate any concept but that of the ‘national’ system? Would he willingly face the competition of free banking?

The free enterprise of which special interest groups bray is that of the right to open a banana stand or shoe shine parlor, and function within the rigid rules of the atrophied system about them… Witness the struggle of a Tucker in penetrating the automobile manufacturing priesthood. Where can one turn to escape the hurdles of merely obtaining credit in order to enter the economy on a level higher than thread-peddling? Advocates of free enterprise are hypocrites until a breach is made in the above mentioned closed circles.

The farmer is always cited as an example of unregenerate free enterprise, but where is there any campaign against the state crutch of subsidies, shouldering of the mortgage structure, protection with law and police of land monopoly for the perpetuation of tenantry, and other serious deviations from the principle of freedom!

The great majority of people accept the current game and its rules without query, though there is a strong case to show the legal origin of the inequity in the system. With most people the complaint is the way the score is being compiled. This they want their politicians to bring into balance. Thus the politician has rapidly been acquiring a non-propertied power-holding stock in the ‘system’.

The great dodge of our time is “society”, a sociological dream-concept, in whose name we dump our responsibility as individuals. “Society”, we say, is to blame. for any evils which beset people, yet an investigation would reveal a number of real humans with much guilt attached. Our spirit-sickness also calls on the government as the Hebrews called upon Jehovah in the desert, and denies the fact of individual life, liberty of action and its consequence, responsibility.

Perhaps a few will embrace decentralism, but the vast majority will, when the time comes, quietly crawl under a warm blanket of collectivism in their delusion that this is the way to security. Yet ‘salvation’ is even an individual matter, and those to whom freedom and responsibility still mean something can even now construct for themselves a passably satisfying existence in this indifferent environment.

Paperback | 5.5 x 8.5”, 128 pages | Price: $16.95 | ISBN: 978-1-943687-28-2
Hardback | 5.75 x 8.75”, 128 pages | Price: $66 | ISBN: 978-1-943687-29-9

Buy the Paperback: Amazon.com or Underworld Amusements

Buy the Hardback: Underworld Amusements

Step into the history of The Radical Book Shop of Chicago, a forgotten hub of anarchist, unionist, socialist, and communist literature. From its humble beginnings in 1914, this bookstore inspired revolutionaries and welcomed poets, novelists, roughnecks, and even would-be assassins around its iron stove. Despite police and political harassment, for over a decade the Radical Book Shop remained a beloved destination for rebels and intellectuals alike.

Howard and Lillian H. Udell founded this “shoebox-sized” bookstore out of desperation using their personal library. The curious and precocious Udell daughters helped them run the tiny outlet, where they grew up with habitués such as union tough guy Big Bill Haywood and his Wobblies; literary luminaries Kenneth Rexroth, Sherwood Anderson, Ralph Chaplin, and Carl Sandburg; the wild hobohemians of the Dil Pickle Club and Bughouse Square; artist Stanisław Szukalski;  and notorious outsiders like Arthur “Ragnar Redbeard” Desmond (author of Might is Right) and Nestor “Jean Crones” Dondoglio (mastermind behind the infamous 1916 “soup-poison plot”).

The Radical Book Shop of Chicago by Kevin I. Slaughter is a thoroughly researched and prolifically illustrated history of this incredible hub of political and artistic dynamite. With an appendix of all known writings by Lillian H. Udell, including a biographical sketch of Voltairine De Cleyre, and reviews of several books published by Charles H. Kerr. Whether you’re interested in the hidden history of radical politics and literature, or simply curious about the influential figures who frequented the store, this book is a must-read.

More information available at the website TheRadicalBookShop.com

Peace News once organised an activist training in which the participants had to stand on a stepladder in Tavistock Square and deliver a speech to the passers-by.

It is a skill that people with a political opinion should have. But these days, few do.

Many quail at the simple political tool of door-knocking.

The Speakers’ Corner Anthology is a collection of writings about the famous Tyburn corner of London’s Hyde Park, by Marble Arch. There, since the mid-nineteenth century, speech-making has been tolerated by the park authorities (as long as no racing tips are shared). The park regulations are included in the book so one can see all the other categories of forbidden utterances.

The editor, Jim Huggon, was a speaker on the anarchist platform at Speakers’ Corner for 18 years, after being invited up to ‘have a go’ by my father, John Rety.

Reading this book, I came to understand how standing on a ladder develops a speaker’s quick wit and fearlessness, a closeness and connection with people, and a tolerance of diversity of opinion.

What an art! The writers in this anthology – the socialists, Christians, anarchists and communists – reveal that putting forward your ideas in public is not just about ‘the gift of the gab’, it is a studied and developed skill.

The anthology includes a fantastic piece of reportage by Karl Marx describing the energy and feistiness of the 1855 Sunday Trading Bill demonstrations, where participants harangued the toffs in Rotten Row for three hours (‘Only English lungs are capable of such a feat’). Marx also analyses police strategy towards public demonstrations.

There are also humorous pieces by Bonar Thompson who, like others, made his living as an entertaining speaker – until 1926, when the park authorities banned passing the hat round. So many of the speakers had to have wit to counter hecklers – and humour to keep their crowd from drifting off to hear rival orators.

There is a beautiful piece by Methodist minister Donald Soper who spoke at the other public speaking pitch on Tower Hill (site of the other gallows in London). Soper writes on the personalities, eccentricities and friendships.

In all these writings, it is apparent that discourse, debate, heckling and profound disagreement over politics and religion did not lead to hatred. Which is very interesting when you compare this to the emotions generated by social media.

George Orwell writes about sellers of Freedom and Peace News being arrested in 1945 at Hyde Park and how the belief that the press is free was an overrated one, even though you could say anything you liked at Speakers’ Corner.

On the other hand, Philip Sansom, an anarchist speaker from 1947 to 1960, is critical of the idea that free speech on this corner has any power at all. Rather, he argues, it is a form of kettling of expression into a safely-contained area.

Sansom points out that, during the postwar government, not a single Labour politician addressed the public at Speakers’ Corner. They removed themselves safely from popular debate.

Despite his critique, I finished this engaging book with the understanding that public speaking helps you to think and that we should all be taking that risk and standing on the ladder in Tavistock Square.

Individualism and Property

Dear Editors,

I welcome the attempt to distinguish between individualist and communist anarchism, but so far the discussions in your paper have been too general. They spend too much time on generalities—on whether an individualist anarchist lacks altruism and whether the communist anarchist needs more self-expression, etc., etc.

I’m wondering whether others would agree that a major need is to discover the differences these two schools of anarchism have—both in philosophy and practice—toward land, money and goods. How do individualist anarchists propose to handle these basic economic realities; what plan do communist anarchists have? And is either group anywhere in the world actually implementing some anarchist policy regarding land, money and goods?

My friend Laurance Labadie, strong American individualist anarchist, points out the confusion in thought and practice from loosely lumping land, goods and money under the term “property”. Most of us think of property as a thing, and we commonly say, “This house, this land, this car, is my property”. But property correctly expresses a relationship between persons or between persons and objects. Property expresses a social policy, the essential fact of which is exclusion. It is more clear to say, “I have property in this land, in this car or this house”. By which I mean I am protected in excluding others from this land, car or house.

Is it true that individualist anarchists stress this right of exclusion—that they do want to emphasize this right to their land, their houses and their cars? And that communist anarchists prefer to combine with others in the use of land, of goods and of an exchange media? (It goes without saying, of course, that both groups would want an equal access to these things. They would not want a monopolistic or privileged access to land, goods or money as exists in the capitalist world). But granted equal access, and freedom—is it a fact that communist anarchists prefer to hold property jointly and in combination? Is it true, as some individualist anarchists say, our sense of privacy, our individuality, our creativity and responsibility for our own actions is better obtained if we have individual use of land, property and money?

In either case, we all face the crucial questions: What gives us the right to exclude others from our house, land, car? How is land different from houses and cars?

Most people will agree that if an individual puts energy into producing a house or car, or in producing the medium (money) through which he gives value for it—that he thus earns the right to exclude others from them.

But how can you earn, in this fashion, the right to exclude others from land? Since land is a given, nothing you can do will produce it. Is it not in our laws that implement exclusion from land—more than we are actually using—that we find the first need for force? Is it not in granting privilege to persons to “enclose” more land than he actually needs that coercion is needed to exclude others who also “need” this basic source of life and sustenance?

American individualist anarchists have (and are) stressing a difference in the type of exclusion to produced goods from exclusion to land. In houses, cars and goods produced by human labour, this property or exclusion could be permanently at the discretion of the producer, or whoever had given acceptable value in exchange for it. In the case of non-man-made land, this exclusion would be contingent on the person’s occupancy and acceptable use of that land.

These concepts are examined and elaborated in two studies from the School of Living, Brookville, Ohio: a new 200-page book, Go Ahead and Live! ($4) has chapters on it by Werkheiser and Labadie; and Property and Trustery by Ralph Borsodi is $1.00.

Sincerely,

(Mrs.) Mildred J. Loomis
Editor, A Way Out, Brookville, O.