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

Parents: What Are They Good For?

We are in the midst of a revolution of women. It is almost an accomplished fact. But in the great movements, economic and sexual, which are going on all over the world, there is one more revolution to be accomplished.

It is the revolt of the children against their parents. And that will be the most tremendous, the sublimest revolution of all.

It is time the truth was uttered about parents and their attitude toward those they bring into the world by an act of passion. It is time the mask of sentimental lies surrounding the sacredness of parents was slit into a thousand pieces and tossed back into the wardrobe-room of race-fakes.

Parents: What are they good for?

Let every man and woman look into the last recesses of his heart and answer that question fully.

Parents: What are they good for?

Let the squeezed, mutilated, shabby, humdrum, aching days of millions of youths and girls stand up and answer unashamedly.

Parents: What are they good for?

And billions of strangled, mutilated Minds and Passions and millions of shabby Days rise out of their tombs and answer: They should have been hanged before we grew into our sixth year.

Parents: Or the Mania for Mutilation. Millions of human beings might write a thesis with that for a title— a thesis that would make the horrors of a Dostoievsky seem merely a charivari.

Veiled beneath that vaunted sacred love of father and mother there lies a mania for mutilation which for pure diabolism is nowhere matched in nature.

Under the guise of a perpetual act of self-sacrifice the mother becomes the most incurable selfish being that nature has yet created. Motherhood is nature’s supreme diabolistic paradox.

It is always herself she fights for, and never for that child. It is always herself she dies for, and never for the sake of the child. Her love is the very frenzy and insanity of possession.

The father is greater than the mother, because his love-greed in regard to the offspring is not so cruel. Some father will even concede the right of a child to have opinions, ideas and sensations of its own. Motherhood can never ascend to that. It remains forever in the sties of self-worship.

Most children are born into a home. And by home I mean a death-cell. At the moment of birth the murderous machinations of the parents begin. Variation from the parent-type is the one thing to be [feared]. Hence the home. Hence the squirt-guns of [predictability], feigned godliness and prudery which begin their work on the sense and brain of the child just born. And when he first begins to smell it is the rotten stench of sanctity that greets his nostrils.

I accuse all parents of being liars every second in every hour in every day of their lives in the presence of their children.

I accuse every parent of a pantomime of hypocritical mummery from the day a child is born unto them.

I accuse every parent of conspiring against the unique vision and temperament that is born unto them.

I accuse every parent of spiritual, mental, physical murder in seeking to gag the soul of the new-born and to mould it in the image of one or both of them.

I accuse every parent of cowardice before the wide-open look of the child. They fake their personality from the very moment the child looks at them.

(No child ever knew its parents. No parent ever knew his or her child.)

I accuse parents of every physical and mental anguish that boys and girls suffer between the ages of thirteen and twenty.

(If parents only knew of the hate that enforced virgins feel for their parents, whose licentious and unrestrained practices in the marriage bond have obliterated their own early hatreds for their own parents.)

The home, the parent, must be protected at all costs!

Does a girl “go wrong” (that is, does she dare assert the rights of her womanhood and seek sanity away from the insane asylum for perverts called the respectable home?) The first thought in the minds of father and mother is the disgrace that will fall on THEM. A girl— a thing of flesh and blood— is being sacrificed to the Moloch of Respectability for the sake of the parents, those unrestrained and licentious parents, safe in the bosom of the marriage license!

The girl “went wrong”? No. The girl went right. Better one year of full surrender to love and passion and then death in the river than a life of respectable virginity and its inferno of agonies.

Does a boy “go wrong”? He gambles, he drinks, he seduces, he steals. Again the shriek through the cracking walls and falling roof of the House of Lies. “Our reputation! Our reputation! My God! Our reputation!”—that is the cry that mounts to the ironic tomcat squat on the tottering chimney.

No parent ever showed sufficient respect for the child. Love—yes. Respect—never. That is because the love of the parent is the veil of selfishness and egotism, and respect involves self-sacrifice, an abasement in their own eyes of their supreme importance, a division of power.

Love is easier than respect and reaps a richer harvest of lies. To love a child involves no effort. To respect a child one must have ascended high in the scale of emotional and intellectual development.

The parent has no rights which the child is bound to respect. It is in the world without its own consent, bringing with it all the ills that flesh and mind are heir to.

Ancestors, environment, parents stand at the cradle like a menace of death. The social and economic systems under which a child is born have no rights which the child is bound to respect.

A mere flesh and blood asset of the parent and the blood sucking social and religious [society] which the child is shot— what should the [child re]spect? 

ITS OWN SOUL ONLY!

The revolution of the child! The new Children’s Crusade! This time they will march to rescue their own souls from the Unholy Sepulchre of their infidel parents.

Youths and maidens and children, you must soon write your Marseillaise, Stifled ones, strangled ones, mutilated ones, dutiful ones, suckled in the House of Fear and raised in the House of Craven Respectability or Leprous Poverty, the time approaches when each and every one must ask the heart:

My parents: What are they good for?

And your hearts will answer: Good for nothing until they are taught to respect, honor and obey us!

His article “Immorality as a Philosophic Principle” is reprinted here in facsimile from the July 1899 issue of The Monist. In it, Carus introduces the reader to Nietzsche’s ideas and this “aristocratic individualism”. “It is a consistent anarchism, a courageous immoralism, and a proud aristocratism, the ruthless shout of triumph of the victor who hails the doctrine of the survival of the strongest and craftiest as a ‘joyful science.'”

Available from Underworld Amusements

In a section titled “Nietzsche’s Disciples”, Carus covers some of the work of egoists of the time, including the journal The Eagle and The Serpent in England and Der Eigene in Germany. Strangely enough, he refers to Max Stirner as being an “expounder of Niteche’s philosophy even though he predated him by decades. Further, Ragnar Redbeard and his book Might is Right are touched upon, as well as Clarence L. Swartz and Elbert Hubbard. Readers of Der Geist and the Stand Alone series will be well familiar with all the names mentioned in this section.

The newest issue of Der Geist, the journal of historical Egoism, is here. Rare and unpublished works from the first century of egoism-the philosophy of Max Stirner.

from: Underworld Amusements or from Amazon.com: US | MX | CA | UK | DE | FR | IT

This issue of Der Geist includes rare reprints of egoist history. These include blow-by-blow accounts of Dora Marsden in her street-fighting phase, lost transcriptions of J. William Lloyd saved from the darkness by individualist feminist Wendy McElroy, the philosophical and physical wanderings of the laughing philosopher Malfew Seklew, and more. This issue of Der Geist also includes original inquiries into egoist history. These include a history of the Radical Book Shop of Chicago, and the heretofore undocumented bands of iron that link the Industrial Workers of the World (the “Wobblys”) and Ragnar Redbeard’s book Might is Right.

Sections:

1. Dora Marsden
2. J. William Lloyd
3. Malfew Seklew
4. Laurance Labadie
5. Max Stirner
6. Free Spirits
7. Ragnar Redbeard

Notwithstanding some very excellent arguments in your two articles on Nature’s decrees concerning industry and militarism, I hardly think question is finally settled. It is not us to put on our seven-league boots and go on a tour of inspection among European nations during the past 2000 years. If we wished to determine the course human evolution with some degree of accuracy, we would have to traverse a period at least one hundred times greater.

It will be enough for our purpose to go back to the time when Egypt became part of the Roman empire. What would the philosophical Roman soldier have thought about the course of human evolution after having examined the pyramids and the wonderful temples and tombs of long past ages? With the military exploits of Rome vividly impressed on his memory, he might probably have thought Nature has decreed that militarism was destined to replace the apparently peaceful industry that had left such wonderful monuments on the bank of the Nile. His opinion, however, would have been just as erroneous as the opposite opinion.

The fact is that militarism and industrialism are not necessarily antithetic, in the predominance of the one or the other is no certain indication by which we can always distinguish advancedness or the backwardness of the people in the scale of civilization. Neither the one nor the other is the true end of humanity; and the Czar and his Ministers are equally in error when they say that “the maintenance of universal peace and a possible reduction of the excessive armaments… represents the ideal aims towards which the efforts of all governments should be directed.

In so far as the human race can be said to have a goal at all, it is the highest excellence of society, and neither militarism or industrialism, neither peace nor war can be judged independently, but must be tested by their effects in furthering or retarding the attainment of man’s true end. It is doubtful what may take place with regard to national armaments. It is quite possible that they may be reduced in the near future, not from a decrease in aggressiveness, but owing to the increasing lack of solidarity among the individuals comprising a nation.

There is little doubt, however, that as regard the police organization (which is practically a military organization) it will be more and more strengthened for a long time to come. The disorganization of social arrangements which has resulted from the vast increase in trade and commerce during the present century has produced a state of latent anarchism, which is only prevented from bursting forth in lawlessness by the great increase of the police force in all our industrial centers.

I would most emphatically deny the probability of the dream of a millennium of happiness and comfort for all individuals ever being realized. Instead of the struggle for existence ceasing in the future, it is likely to become more violent. Under Christian influences this struggle has been reduced to a minimum for the lower classes of the population, and has resulted in the deterioration of the European races.

Now, however, when the theologians themselves have torn up their creed and the Christian records and in their triumph have painted the shreds in all the colors of the rainbow (see the Polychrome Bible), Christian morality, with the secular salvation which it has assuredly provided for sinners, must necessarily perish in spite of all the efforts of the ethical societies to foster it. The natural result is likely to be a recrudescence of pagan morality.

The struggle for existence will probably once more be waged fiercely, as in ancient Greece and Rome, and as a final result of a long and bitter struggle a united Western Europe may once more be realized. The fierce struggle of classes and of individuals will, in all probability, continue its natural course until it results once more, as in ancient India, in welding society into a system of castes – a ruling caste, a soldier caste, an a laboring caste, each with its various gradations. It is likely that industrialism and militarism will always continue to co-exist; in future, however, there will be a regulated system of manufactures, trade, and commerce according to the national requirements – not the anarchical huckster system that is carried on at present.

The whole philosophy of the subject is set forth at great length in Nietzsche’s works, which, instead of taking a pessimistic view of the world like Schopenhauerism, are joyfully optimistic. As Nietzsche has succeeded best in explaining the past, he may also be taken as the best guide with regard to the future; and notwithstanding that Professor Andrew Seth has misrepresented and even vilified the new philosophy in “Blackwood” and the “Contemporary,” Nietzsche has an ever-increasing number of enthusiastic disciples and able defenders. We may mention among the number Mr. Havelock Ellis and the late Professor Wallace of Oxford. Perhaps the best book on the subject is La Philosopie de Nietzsche, by Professor Lichtenberger.

Available from Underworld Amusements

Nearly 40 years ago panarchy advocate John Zube put every of copy of Benjamin R. Tucker’s Liberty journal on microfiche as part of his Peace Plans project, and made them available for very little money. You can find out more about his project at LibertarianMicrofiche.com.

In preparation of the microfiche he created a Table of Content for each issue to assist with readers of his Peace Plans,something I’m not aware of existing elsewhere. The tables, noting author, title and pages number for each issue of Liberty and the German-language Libertas, run seventy-seven pages. Unfortunately, his amazingly interesting and useful work has only been seen by a small number of people who bought his microfiched collected edition of Liberty.

For personal reference, I scanned and prepared this print edition, but am printing a small run of ten total, to make available to others who may be interested. It is flawed. Some of the text is marred, but he majority of it is legible and the issue numbers listed allows you to quickly access the information you want. At some point Union Of Egoists would like to transcribe this and make it available online and in print in a better presentation, but personal need moved me to produce a “good enough for now” version.
I have preserved Zube’s two page “Editorial Notes” he included at the end of his contents, written in December of 1980.

—Kevin I. Slaughter
April 1st, 2018

Available from Amazon.com or Underworld Amusements.

DER GEIST, The Journal of Egoism from 1845 – 1945
VOLUME 2 NUMBER 1, ISSUE 2
WINTER 2018 (Published 25 October 2018)
Paperback, 188 pages, fifteen dollars
isbn 978-1-944651-11-4
issn 2639-5339

Contents of this issue:

Introduction by Trevor Blake
1. Benjamin DeCasseres
Detroit Jewish Chronicle | Hate Everlasting | How I Interviewed Bacchus | The Fatal Smile
2. Max Stirner
The Worker and the Government | James Walker – What is Good? What is Evil? | Good Reading to Sharpen Mental Teeth | William Flygare – Vanitas | Max Stirner Bibliography Addendum | L’Unique et sa propriété | The Unique Individual | Malcolm Green – I’ve Based My Affairs on Nothing
3. Anthony Ludovici
Kevin I. Slaughter – Anthony M. Ludovici’s Egoism | The Choice of a Mate
4. Dora Marsden
Trevor Blake – Dora Marsden’s England | Casandra and the War | Trevor Blake – To the Great Name | Egoist Advertisement in The Little Review | Anent the Decalogue | N.C. Chritcher – …the Power of Thought
5. Malfew Seklew
The Rejection of Christianity | Mr. F. Wilkesbarre, Coster | Trevor Blake – Surfessor of Egoism, Introduction | MS – Surfessor of Egoism | A New Way to Earn a Living | … from the Labor Annual | Perfumed Pigs | Stars in the Talking Marathon | Trevor Blake – Victor Grayson M.P. – Introduction | Victor Grayson M.P. / A Rhapsody
6. Henry and Georgia Replogle & Egoism (1890)
Egoism’s Purpose and Whyfore | Minus the Communism | The “Selfish” Bauble
7. J. Wm. Lloyd
Personally Acquainted | Anarchist Socialism
8. Dill Pickle Club
John Nichols Beffel – Up an Alley to a Wild Place | Patricia Bronte – Dill Pickle Club | Trevor Blake – Angels of the Dill Pickle Club| Andrea Proudfoot – The Optimist’s Ego
9. The Eagle and The Serpent (1898)
C. L. Swartz – A Volcano Has Burst Forth in England | Tak Kak – A Difference of Words Only | Volcano – A Dream of Beyond | Volcano – A Unanimous Conviction | Advertisement from the Labor Annual | Marginalia
10. Friedrich Nietzsche
William Gordak – Nietzsche | Nietzsche In T.P.’s Weekly
11. Free Spirits
Kevin I. Slaughter – The Sidney E. Parker Archives | Émile Armand – Three Poems | Herbert Roseman – Laurance Labadie and His Critics | The Altruist Corner | Kevin I. Slaughter – From the Library | Photo of George Schumm | Patreon Thanks | Errata | About the Editors

I recently transcribed several essays of J. Wm Lloyd, a frequent contributor to Benjamin Tucker’s individualist anarchist periodical Liberty (1881) through most of its lifespan. Lloyd was the author of several works, mostly of poetry, that were heavily promoted by Liberty; they included The Anarchists’ March, The Dwellers in Vale Sunrise, and The Red Heart in a White World. To the extent there is a poet laureate of individualist anarchism, it is surely John William Lloyd. I consider this to be a companion piece to Lloyd’s classical essay on Anarchist Socialism. –Wendy McElroy, http://www.wendymcelroy.com

Anarchist-Mutualism

My old-time comrade and dear friend, C.L. Swartz, has sent me a copy of his new book, “What is Mutualism”, for review. I have unlimited respect for C.L. Swartz, his ripe scholarship and sincere idealism, and if I am compelled by an equal sincerity to differ with him, I hope our valued friendship will not be affected.

I make this review with pleasure, because it will incidentally afford me an opportunity to explain myself to my old comrades, who, I know, regard me as a sad renegade. In 1884, or thereabout, I became a disciple of the school of Proudhon and Tucker. Tho never very orthodox, I passed for a pretty straight Individualist-Anarchist for some 20 years. Tucker was a gentleman and a scholar, and his personal charm held me as well as intellectual and moral conviction. But at last my critical faculties were turned on the cult itself and I had to come out. I am no longer an Anarchist, but perhaps on many points I might fairly be called a Near-Anarchist still. I no longer label myself an Anarchist, or a Socialist (except in the large use of that term), but a Humanist, and the one principle I subscribe to is the greatest benefit to the greatest number. But I want all the personal liberty it is possible to have, for myself and others, so far as it is consistent with social benefit. I say all this because this new cult of Mutualism is simply the old cult of Tuckerism, of Individualist-Anarchism, under a new name and very wisely supplemented by the constructive principle of cooperation. As such it is far more attractive to me, as Co-operation is the most saving word in the language.

The Anarchists of half a century ago knew nothing of the psychology of modern business. With a new idea to put over, and in private life, courteous, cordial and refined, on paper they were a lot of swaggering, critical, swashbucklers, arrogant, browbeating and insulting, and all who differed were knaves or fools, and frankly so informed. The dictionary was reversed, and the astonished world was told that Anarchy was Order and Government was Invasion. Worse salesmanship for a new propaganda could hardly have been conceived. But conceit did not stop here, for men were also told that the Declaration of Independence must also be reversed. There were no “natural rights”, or any rights except those of might, unless created by contract between associates, and that children were the chattels of their parents, who (after all, as it was contradictorily discovered) had a natural right to do what they pleased with them as a labor product. It was a thousand pities, for those men really had some very valuable ideas that the world needed and which a sane and considerate propaganda might have enabled them to spread far. The tone of “What is Mutualism” is very different. It is courteous, persuasive, respectful and sweetly reasonable, and the old, antagonism-creating name has been wisely dropped, but under this gentle exterior one is saddened to see most of the old ideas reappear still.

As I see it: —

Liberty is to do as you please;
Law is that which limits liberty;
Government is that which applies law.

There is not now, and never has been, any complete liberty in our natural world or among men.

The universe is constructed of opposites, which always operate co-existently, at least to some extent; therefore liberty and authority always co-exist and operate together,

Anarchists plead only for equal-liberty, which is limited liberty, and therefore admit at the start that there is something in Nature and her necessities which limits liberty; therefore admit natural law and natural government — that there is a natural basis and origin for government. It is a dangerous admission for their cult. But they go further and claim that even equal-liberty has no rights against invasive might and its right must be created by an artificial contract between associates who pool their mights to defend it. They don’t stress the corollary, but if cornered admit it, that those outside the contract have no rights whatever and may be invaded without guilt by whosoever has the might. It is remindful of the morality of our Amerindians who are angels in tribal relations and fiends on the war-path to outsiders. They thus create a justification for invasion that the moral sense of the rest of men denies — and so still further cease to be the champions of liberty.

It is a tremendous strategic mistake that the Mutualists thus make to fly in the face of and array against them the moral intuitions of mankind. And quite unnecessary also. Even if they believe this, it is needless to mention it. Nobody suspects for a moment that Comrade Swartz and his immediate associates are seeking excuses for rape and murder on non-associates, or that they would treat their children any more like puppies or stove wood than other humans. Why then metaphysically outrage the moral code of those they are trying to persuade? What they are trying to put over is that good men, if they wish to have satisfactory liberty, must associate to realize and defend it. Why not emphasize that and chuck offensive hair-splitting out of the window? Why take a position that would theoretically permit one of their associates to prey as a burglar on non-associates, or a woman to sell her pretty little daughter into white slavery? And if it actually happened, if the man and the woman were loyal and inoffensive within the clan, and willing that the other members had equal liberty to burglarize and sell, how, without violating their principles, could they act to stop it? It was precisely at this point where Tucker, mad with his logic, asserted that the child was the labor-product of the mother, therefore absolutely her property and that the mother had the right to throw her baby into the fire, like an old newspaper, if she chose, that I broke with him first, and my Anarchism first began to crack. What insanity has moved modern Mutualists to re-assert these positions against which the heart of humanity and the intuitions of its moral conscience will always rebel? Especially as it is quite certain that none of those writing this book (for I am informed it is a mutualist creation) intend to make any practical application of such anti-social dogmas; nor has the practical application of the theory of the social-contract any need of such logic.

Nothing seems easier to demonstrate than natural rights. When Nature created us she endowed us all with an innate and indestructible conviction that we have: —

1. A right to live;
2. A right to promote and defend that life;
3. A right to do anything that really benefits us.

These are our natural rights, and everybody is convinced of them, spite of all doctrinaires. It is safe to say that Comrade Swartz is as convinced of his natural right to these rights as I am and would fight as hard to maintain them. And there are other natural rights with a wider social application. If advanced thinkers base their contentions on natural rights, and claim these for all human beings by the very fact of their humanity, they can go ahead with confidence and appeal with results to the human heart.

Those who would reason clearly on the question of rights should always make a distinction between rights and privileges. The so-called “right of might” is in the nature of a privilege. It is not a right, nor is it right unless it serves a right. Our rights always relate to benefits and connote satisfaction. That is right which benefits. In Nature might has no justification for action unless it secures benefit — therefore is subordinate to right. Might must serve right before it is justified and right must have the service of might before it can practically act, tho it existed just as certainly before. Swartz has a right to his Mutual Bank, tho he has no might to compel the government to withdraw its impediments. If might does not serve right, Nature condemns it in the final results — they are not beneficial. By endorsing the right of might Anarchists throw away their whole case, for they thereby endorse and justify all successful invasions, and particularly the invasions of government, which has the most might.

Instead of all rights being derived from might, all rights are derived from benefit and imply that, otherwise cannot qualify.

Government has its origin in Nature below man. Animal parents control their young, animal packs follow and obey a leader. We see the same among primitive men. Nature has instituted an instinct for government and its purpose has been benefit and preservation. The mother governs her child for the benefit of the family; and the tribe, the larger family, huddles for protection under the strength, courage and wisdom of the chief. The natural roots of government are in the mother and the chief, and in that self-government by which a man conserves his health and safety by controlling his dangerous appetites and impulses. Government of this kind is instinctively sought by human beings, and benefits of this sort are instinctively expected of government; and where benefits of this sort are derived from government, there need be no fear of rebellion. To “establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty”, states the essentials pretty well.

Government of the invasive kind began when tribesmen adopted these very principles that Tucker and Swartz would have us accept — they felt an implied contract bound them together in loyalty within the tribe, but outside there was no right but might, no one outside the tract had any rights they were required to respect. The result was invasions, war, conquest of weaker tribes, property in loot, the ownership of stolen lands, the making of slaves. The chief made himself king over these conquered ones, subjects. By a separate contract with his strongest warriors he divided stolen lands among them, and made them feudal lords with serfs, and bound them to him and away from the loyalty to the weaker ones of the tribe. Special privileges in stolen property — that has been the quality of invasive government ever since. But the people have never forgotten that government purely for social benefit is perfectly possible, and the reason they do not forget it is because they still have mothers, and still at time, strong friends and champions arise to use their might to protect them.

Another instance where an implied contract was used for invasion was when men usurped all rights in the name of might, declared women had no rights, subjugated them, and instituted that form of marriage in which, in its pure form, the woman was forced to be monogamous, was purely her husband’s property, without human rights, and her children also property and also his.

Pure liberty — the untrammeled doing as one pleases — nowhere exists. Law and government, in some form or degree, open or concealed, always accompany liberty and modify it. When Anarchists ask only for equal-liberty they themselves acknowledge this and institute a degree of law and government by limiting liberty by equality, governing liberty by equality. Once you admit that, in practice, liberty must be limited, law and government are admitted, and it only becomes a question how much or hoe little liberty is best for the greatest benefit. If Mutualists bind themselves by a contract, the moment any one of them finds he has made a mistake and no longer agrees to the contract, he finds that the Contract has become a Government, and its several parts are laws, which is associates will enforce upon him. He can leave of course but if his home and investments are there that will not be so easy, and if obliged to go to another group, under another contract, he only changes governments, as an American who goes to Canada or Mexico. If a child has the misfortune to be born under one of these contract-mutualisms he finds he has no rights whatever, and is only property of his parent’s might. Not even equal-liberty for him until big enough to put his head into one of those contract nooses. If he chooses to live as a pure inoffensive individualist, outside of any contract, he will find that for his mutualist neighbors he has no rights whatever, unless they choose to endow him with some. If not, they are free to exercise their might upon him.

If a contract exactly expresses the will of a member it, of course, does not govern him. But it is a rigid form, for all that, and, sooner or later is bound to pinch somewhere, for he is growing and changing. When it pinches it governs, and if he enforces it on his dissenting desires he aids it to govern, but it governs none the less. If he does not enforce it on himself, but breaks it, and others enforce it on him, he is sure it governs. If enforced only by forfeiture of bonds, loss of privileges, etc., it governs still. A contract enforced limits liberty, tho not necessarily equal-liberty, and a contract not enforced, or not intended for enforcement, is weak, and weak precisely at points of greatest strain. And it is safe to say that, with any contract involving social life, there will be moments of emergency and crucial necessity when imperious wills will enforce the contract or violate it spite of any scruples about equal-liberty.

Perhaps the contract will be enforced only by the boycott. Mutualists would fain [sic] persuade us that there is no possible invasion of equal liberty in a boycott. Comrade Swartz, instinctively sensing a weak spot in his levees here, throws all his strength to its support. “It is”, he says, “the only weapon that cannot be used invasively?The reason for this is that the boycott is not an act; it is merely the refusal to act.” Yet please note that he admits it is a “weapon”, and implies that it can be “used”, and on page 163 admits that a boycotted person “may correctly allege that he has been coerced”, and lower down speaks of a boycott exerting a “pressure.” On page 165, we see it recommended as a “punishment for crime”, and a “drastic penalty”, “more painful to many than to be incarcerated in a prison”, etc. Now how can the use of a weapon, to exert a pressure, to coerce, to inflict a drastic penalty or punishment, worse than incarceration in a prison, be described as no act, “merely a declination to act”? It is absurd. The confusion of the Anarchist here comes from his failing to understand that, in the paradoxicality of the universe, there are acts-negative as well as acts-positive, and that the boycott is one of the acts-negative. A failure, or refusal to act in a positive manner may still be an act-negative. Thus if a baby, at my feet, falls into a ditch, and I, quite able to retrieve it, allow it to drown, I am just as guilty of its murder as if I pushed it under; if I see a spark starting to ignite a house, and I, quite able, indifferently permit it to burn on, I am morally guilty of arson. When I boycott or ostracize a person to coerce him to do something which he is unwilling to do I am acting, and my act is an act of government.

For this is precisely what government is — in the relations of human beings, it is the action of one mind to control another mind to coerce it to perform an act, or cease to act, where it is reluctant or unwilling to comply — that is government, and is so understood by all mankind — or, more briefly — government is the imposition of a stronger will upon a weaker will that is here unwilling. It is always a limitation of liberty, even if intended to maintain whatever liberty may be possible.

Anarchists will find, whenever they try to apply their theories, that they cannot maintain an orderly, comfortable home, or run an orderly, harmonious school, or conduct an orderly public meeting, (Tucker averred that it was necessary that the moderator should be an autocrat), or run a safe railroad train, or sail a safe ship, without government. There must be discipline for order and efficiency — self-applied, or externally applied, and almost invariably the latter, for the self-applied is very unreliable in practice. Swartz praises the superior efficiency of private business concerns over government action in the same lines. He fails to note that the reason is that the discipline and government of the business enterprises is far more instant and severe than that of ordinary political government. In the army and navy, where government is still more strict and severe, efficiency is supreme. Efficiency is apt to be in inverse proportion to liberty. But of course government is a blind force and must be directed by intelligence; a fool must not be an engineer.

I cite all this merely to prove that Anarchism is a natural impossibility. Government is ubiquitous and pops up everywhere. There is no such thing as complete liberty, and equal-liberty, tho a beautiful moral standard, as an ideal, is, in real life invaded all the time, by stern natural necessity. There is no such thing as an “individual sovereign”, a “single, separate person” — he does not exist. Centrally there is a certain nucleus of individuality, yes, and very precious to us, but on all borders and contacts one merges with forces, things and persons, depends on them, and becomes all tangled up, coercing and being coerced, governing and being governed, in all sorts of conscious or unconscious, secret or overt way, by acts-negative or acts-positive. Society is not a mere word, but a living reality. As soon as any group forms there begins to develop a collective, composite spirit, or mind, invisible, but very real, that more or less telepathically unites and includes it — all its members. All contribute life to it — all are influenced, modified by it. This is Society — the composite spirit of the group — and it exercises an invisible, but very real government. The visible leaders must mainly express it or they do not last long. There is always a majority rule, tho a powerful individual mind may captivate the majority, at least for a time. Anarchists cannot escape the action of this government; moreover they will participate in it.

I first really faced the fallacy of Anarchism when I faced the problem of Conservation. When Anarchists forgot the assertion of the single right of might, they were full of rights to assert, and one was that the individual sovereign had an indisputable right to go to wild Nature for anything he could use and, provided he left the field open for others, no one had a right to prevent him. I agreed, till suddenly I realized that this meant that an Italian could live on slaughtered son birds, a market pot-hunter could kill all the year round, fish could be seined out of all waters, the lumber-hog could seep away the forests, and, as long as these men left equal-liberty for others to commit equal havoc, there was absolutely nothing in Anarchist principles that could consistently be applied to stop them. They were occupying and using, and not invading equal-liberty — and to stop them was “government”, that is, “invasion”. I dropt Anarchism right then and there. I began to see emerging the rights of society — of a wise collectivity, envisaging the rights o all and of posterity. Some social benefits required even the sacrifice of equal-liberty.

In presenting their propaganda, Anarchists seem to fight shy of putting out any definite program, or telling in unmistakable terms how their principles would work out in practice. Usually they prefer to only deliver fascinating generalities. One of these fascinating generalities is that of usufruct, which, they claim, would give a perfect title to land. But when you look into it, this doctrine of occupation and use is as full of potential trouble as any tropical jungle. Will occupancy alone give a full title to ownership, or will use alone do so, or must it be both occupancy and use. And what constitutes either occupancy or use? If I set my house in the middle of a quarter-section do I occupy all that land, or do I occupy only what my house actually covers? If I run a footpath over a farm and walk over it frequently, does that constitute use? If I fence in 10,000 acres of rich land, capable of feeding 40,000 people under intensive cultivation, and merely pasture 10,000 head of cattle on the tract, is that occupancy and use and must the other 39,999 leave me in possession? What constitutes failure to occupy? How long may I be absent, and under what circumstances, and still retain occupancy. And so on and so on, and so on? What has the right to decide such questions anyway, or to enforce decisions when made, especially when “the natural right of might” looms in the background? Is it not instantly clear that any and all decisions must be more or less arbitrary. And all occupancy and use of land is to a certain extent a monopoly and excludes some one from the equal right to occupy and use it — is, to a degree, a violation of equal freedom. I see endless possibilities of disputes, quarrels, litigation, fights, feuds, arising out of this utterly loose and indeterminate way of deciding land titles. Far better in every way, in my judgment, is to plan of the Single Taxer — all the people own the land in common and the government administers it; you pay your rent to a clearly defined piece of land, and so long as you pay, you occupy — when you stop payment, you have vacated your title. It is all as clear as dollars and cents, and settled instantly on business-like principles. And makes it far more difficult to hold valuable and socially-needed lands for selfish pleasure or inferior use. Under usufruct a stubborn occupant, holding a strategic position, refusing to sell out, could block a road, even a railroad, and cause expense and trouble, or exact his own price, or exact a toll. Nothing of that [is] possible under government ownership.

Much more could be said, but I have not been asked to write a volume. And there is much in the book to praise. The criticism of Bolshevism is penetrative and deserved. I am not a financier but The Mutual Bank appeals to me as an excellent institution. For many years I have been convinced that the finances of the country should represent and be based upon the exchangable wealth of the country, not based on gold. The explanation of what The Mutual Bank is, and would do, seems to me to be more clearly given in this book than in anything else I have read. Some such method is painfully needed to deliver from the robbery of interest and insure general prosperity. [NOTE inserted in hand by Lloyd: Now (1934) I believe, with Bellamy, that the remedy is to abolish all banks and money.] The tone of the book is excellent, its literary merit of the highest. There is a complete absence of violent accusation and insult toward opponents, or those criticised. Its working methods, as recommended — education, passive resistance, to repeal obnoxious laws where possible and ignore where impossible — all these are admirable. But repeal would require voting — do Mutualists use the vote? Are they wise enough to be opportunists and to use the enemy’s weapons where available? The original Anarchists would die first.

For myself I am satisfied that education and evolution are all we can look to for effective help — the evolution of character. When the general character of society reaches a high enough development, only men of character can represent it in government or serve it in business, and the nature of all institutions will reflect that character, opportunities for the unscrupulous to use the might of force or cunning to domineer and exploit here will always be, under any system, rule or contract, and nothing but the refusal of the tempted to utilize these opportunities can save the day. And no matter how bad the social system, the good man will at once proceed to reform it into one of real social service. Even a dictator is harmless is his character is high enough, and the loudest professor of Anarchism will be a tyrant and a parasite if his character is low enough.

I quite agree with this book in its denunciation of monopoly and special business privilege. Government should never be permitted to create these. I am for free trade and free competition. Private parties should always be free to compete with the government in rendering public service — a competition between government and private companies should act as a corrective of the usual faults of each. I favor the abolition of patents and copyrights, still I think it would be to the public interest to offer inducements to investors. I would suggest a plan something like this: Suppose a board of experts nominated by the manufacturers of the county, to pass on the merits of inventions. Any inventor who chooses may submit his invention to these. If they approve, they appraise the labor cost of his invention, and of his model, and reimburse him for this. They also describe and illustrate his invention in one issue of a periodical they print, which goes to all manufacturers. Any and all are now free to make and sell the invention, but all who do so must pay the inventor a small royalty for his lifetime, or for the time they continue so to do. By this plan the inventor would get at least something for his invention, at least get back his expenses. But it would be the property of the people, and could not be bought up and shelved. All would have access to it on equal terms, and the more who were benefited, the more the inventor would get. And the more good, free inventions, the more the whole world gains.

I fully agree that juries should try he law as well s the evidence. In other words, all laws relating to crime should be flexible, and applied or modified according to the peculiar circumstances of each case. Only thus can justice be done. But to select ignorant and unwilling men, haphazard, for jurors, is a most clumsy and dangerous method. Jurymen should be professionals, men of selected character, especially educated in human psychology and the problems of impartial equity; in the employ of the whole people at a fixed salary, and always on the job, trying all cases as they came. Lawyers, too, should be only in the employ of the people, at fixed salaries; not mercenaries, fighting like soldiers of fortune for the highest bidder. The chief business of lawyers should be to settle quarrels, reconcile disputants, dissipate litigation and reform criminals. Also to constantly simplify, clarify and lessen law and save legal expense to the community. For a lawyer to aid a known criminal to escape conviction should be regarded as a worse crime than that of his client, because treasonable to his profession and not against an individual but the whole people.

I am convinced that private associations for defence against crime would swiftly lead to worse abuses than those we now suffer from in that line. Like mercenary lawyers, the temptation would always be to fight for their customers, right or wrong. And to get into conflicts between themselves that might easily embroil the whole community or lead to civil wars. Besides, there is nothing in true Anarchist principles that requires anyone to employ a defence-association. An individual sovereign has a right, according to his principles, to make his own laws about his own affairs, and avenge his own wrongs in his own way. Under Anarchism we could not fail to go back to the old ways of blood-vengeance and the vendetta, to lynch law and standing feuds.

The government we are under today has grown out of the composite spirit of the people and represents it. It is as good as the people deserve, speaking generally, however hard on advanced individuals. It will improve as the spirit of the people improves, and it can only improve that way. Bloody revolutions only deceptively change surfaces. Witness that in modern Russia the continuing spirit of czarist days comes out in despotisms, bureaucracy, massacres, executions without trial, espionage, censorship, corruption, inefficiency. Only those improvements have been made that the spirit of the people was ready for and would peacably have gradually effected anyway.

The greatest reform needed in government is flexibility and a recognition and promotion of growth. If governments were wise they would emasculate and “denature” rebellions by allowing safety-valves and vent-holes for radicals. They would encourage and solicit criticism and assist those who offered better ways to demonstrate their methods in practice, thus submitting them to the acid test. If a new theory could demonstrate actual improvement, then the referendum. No revolutions on that road, but steady evolution.

The trouble with Radicals is that they are practically all doctrinaires. They denounce compromise, not recognizing that compromise is the road of progress. In real life all principles must, at times, recognize and employ their opposites. There is everything in the universe and a time, place and use for each thing. Take the principle of Equal-Freedom and the case of the motorist. The motorist is not a criminal, nor intends to be — simply a busy man, rushing to his important destination, asking only liberty to do so at his own risk, and willing to give the same liberty to everyone, in cars or on foot. But at the crossing of the ways, there stands the traffic-officer, with his white gloves, imperiously stopping and starting him at his will. It is a clear invasion of equal-liberty and he would defy it if he dared, but there is Law behind the officer, and bullets behind the law. Yet there is public benefit in the traffic-officer and the people will never let him go, principle or no principle.

I have been sorry to criticize this book. Its spirit is fine — the spirit of individualist-anarchism usually is fine and co-operation is all to the good. I am for co-operation to the limit and for individual liberty as far as practicable. I agree with Jefferson that the least government that will do the work is the best and would reduce law to a minimum — but social action without some government and some law is naturally impossible and will always be found so. And liberty is the legal-tender of life and a piece of it is the price we pay for every motion and benefit.

June 17, 1927

Nietzsche et l’Amérique
Le «surhomme» de Fr. Nietzsche, par GOEBEL et ANTRIM. Biographie de Nietzsche. Sa doctrine: le christianisme fut le retournement radical des notions anciennes du bien et du mal, l’apologie de la faiblesse; il est continué par l’esprit démocratique, tout dévoué aux êtres inférieurs. Le surhomme, au contraire, est le fort, le conquérant, l’unique: Napoléon par exemple. – L’immoralité principe philosophique, par le Dr. Carus. Exposition et discussion détaillée du nominalisme de N., de son nihilisme métaphysique, de son apologie presque délirante de l’individu. Analyse du Zarathustra. Plaisante ressemblance de N., si passionné pour son originalité, avec George Moore, auteur des Confessions of a Young Man. Disciples américains de Nietzsche: Swartz, rédacteur du Moi (The I); J. W. Lloyd; Ragnar Redbeard, qui résume ainsi son livre Might is Right, the survival of the Fittest: «Ce livre est une négation raisonnée des dix commandements, de la règle d’or, du sermon sur la montagne, des principes républicains, etc. Il proclame, au nom de la science et de l’évolution (upon scientific evolutionary grounds), la valeur absolue et illimitée de la force.» Longue discussion et conclusion du Dr. Carus; 5 photographies de Nietzsche et un autographe.

(Rough translation, with one correction and two interpolations from the source text in The Monist… )

The American Nietzsches
Friedrich Nietzsche’s Uebermensch, by GOEBEL and ANTRIM. Biography of Nietzsche. The doctrine of radical reversal: the old notions of good in Christianity will harm you by making excuses for weakness; if you are still stuck in the democratic spirit, you’re going to get the least in life. The Uebermensch is against him; he is strong, conquering, unique: Napoléon for example. – Immorality as a Philosophic Principle by Dr. Carus. Exposition and detailed discussion of the nominalism of N[ietzsche], of the metaphysics of nihilism, of sound apologies for the near-madness of the individual. Analysis of Zarathustra . A pleasant resemblance to N[ietzsche], yet passionate in originality, with George Moore, author of Confessions of a Young Man. Ameican disciples of Nietzsche: Swartz [Clarance Lee Swartz], publisher of I; J. W. Lloyd; Ragnar Redbeard, who beats them all with Might is Right / the Survival of the Fittest: “This book is a reasoned negation of the Ten Commandments, the Golden Rule, the Sermon on the Mount, Republican Principles etc. [Christian Principles and “Principles” in general”]. It proclaims upon scientific evolutionary grounds, the unlimited absolutism of Might [and asserts that cut-and-dried moral codes are crude and immoral inventions, promotive of vice and vassalage.]” Long discussion regarding Dr. Carus; 5 photographs of Nietzsche and a reproduced signature.

Nietzsche.

I sneezed, —it was his name;
He is a great philosopher,
But then, —I am the same,
And deal much less in metaphor.

I am not overmuch
In love with overmen;
Who hanker after such
Are simple folk, but then—

If think they that he meant
Themselves the overclod,
That is quite different,
Much different, God Lord!

—William Walstein Gordak,
published in “I”, No.5, January 1899