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

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

The New Age
No. 671 New Series. Vol.1. No.12
Thursday, July 18, 1907, P.188

MARGINALIA.
Now that Nietzsche has entered the sphere of general discussion it is natural that publishers should find a growing demand for works dealing with the philosophy of Egoism, and Mr. Fifield is doing a service by issuing a translation of Max Stirner’s “The Ego and His Own.” This is the first translation of Stirner to be published in England. Will the next move on these lines be the issue of some of the works of Ragnar Redbeard?
*
Max Stirner is of course pre-Nietzschean, the above-mentioned work having first appeared in his native country, Germany, about sixty years ago. English readers, however, have had an opportunity in recent years of making acquaintance with his views by means of translations issued in America, where there always seems to be a public for ideas which are just off the beaten track.
*
It is not generally known’ that there is quite a literature Egoism in the States. True, it is not always of the best order, but it is quite good at its best and genuinely amusing at its worst. Some of the periodicals devoted to its study are fearfully and wonderfully made; one of these was called “I,” but whether it still asserts itself, or whether it has gone the way of many inferior sheets I do not know.
*
England has had but one consciously and deliberately egoistic journal. ”The Eagle and the Serpent,” and it led a chequered and fitful career in the later eighteen-nineties and the early nineteen-hundreds. Its sixteen octavo pages sometimes appeared in the conventional typographical form, ” justified” at each side, at others the right-hand side of the page tailed off like type-writing, giving the print the appearance of blank verse. It was in these pages, however, that many English people first learned of Nietzsche, for, besides freely quoting and discussing this philosopher, one number contained Thomas Common’s translation of the “Prefatory Discourse” of Zarathustra.
*
“The Eagle and the Serpent” was always fortunate in its correspondence. It had eminent readers and a valuable trick of beguiling them into its controversies. In this way, it managed to print letters from many of the leading modern thinkers, among whom may be mentioned Alfred Russel Wallace, Bernard Shaw, W. H. Mallock, Ernest Newman, E. H. Crosby, Benjamin Kidd, and Morrison Davidson. These letters were dealt with under the heading “Benedictions and Maledictions,” and with the numerous and excellent quotations from Nietzsche, Stirner, Rochefoucauld, Montaigne, Thoreau, and others, which formed a liberal part of the paper, “The Eagle and the Serpent ” was well worth the threepence asked for it.
*

Revue franco-allemande / Deutsch-franzosische Rundschau by M. Henry / F. A. Lattmann (Berlin).

Number 53 (May 1901)
Number 54 (June 1901)
Number 56 (August 1901)
Number 57 (September 1901)

Now by Henry Harrison Brown (San Francisco).

Volume II Number 1 (March 1901)

Freedom by Helen Wilmans (Sea Breeze).

Volume VIII Number 44 (April 17 1901)
Volume VIII Number 45 (April 24 1901)
Volume VIII Number 48 (May 1901)

One source gives the following of the journals Prospectus:

“Humanity First is trying, in the spirit of John Ruskin, to remove the fundamental injustices which breed class hatred. We hold that unless Privilege is curbed, red ruin will inevitably overrun the world. We stand for the abolition of interest and all the privileges, of which it is the direful spring, and it seems to us that thus and thus only can society evolve, in a peaceful and orderly manner, to its next stage. Privilege and Humanity cannot co-exist.”

The letterhead itself reads:

“ABOVE ALL NATIONS IS HUMANITY.”
Humanity First
John Basil Barnhill, Editor
Humanity says to Privilege “Thou or I, Privilege: –one of us must die.”
OUR MISSION: THE ABOLITION OF INTEREST
“Usury has always ruined the states where it was tolerated.” –Rollin
“No nation that tolerates even a per cent interest can possibly endure.” –C.A. Dana of the N.Y. Sun.
ONE DOLLAR A YEAR–English stamps and postal notes accepted.

Riverdale, Maryland, U.S.A.
(Suburb of Washington, D.C.)

I am slowly gathering biographical information about Barnhill, but visiting the University of Michigan and going through his papers is probably the most important step. I’m hoping to do that in 2019.

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

Some individualist groups don’t quite make the cut. The Bonnot Gang was certainly individualists, but the public events they held were not voluntary associations. Some contenders are not mentioned here because they are so well documented elsewhere, such as Burning Man, the Church of Satan, the Abbey of Thelema and the many groups that orbit Nietzsche and Rand. Some candidates are not mentioned here because they are exceptionally under-documented, such as the Festival of the Swamps and QNA. Should the reader know of a relevant group I have omitted in ignorance, I am keen to add them. I present them in reverse chronological order as a countdown to the first one to put the One first.

Les Amis de Jules Bonnot (March 1966?)
S. E. Parker. The “Friends of Jules Bonnot” held a public discussion in a coffee shop called Satan’s Cavern in Belford, England. Jean-Pierre Schweitzer, Sidney E. Parker and his wife Pat, the Australian David Miller and his brother formed the founding group in the Process Church owned shop. J.P. Schweitzer would hold further meetings in his apartment, and after moving back to France issued at least one pamphlet under the group name. A photo of the inaugural meeting is available at SidParker.com. And before Les Amis de Jules Bonnot…

The Freewoman Discussion Circles (1912 – 1913)
Dora Marsden. The Freewoman Volume 1 Number 13 (February 1912) page 244 includes the following statement from editor Dora Marsden:

It has been pointed out to us by friendly critics that The Freewoman contains each week matter so highly debatable, and of such serious human import, that it is difficult to digest all that it contains, and to find one’s bearings, in view of the many articles which express opposing points of view. It has been suggested, therefore, that FREEWOMAN clubs, or informal gatherings of men and women, should be started for discussions, of which the weekly FREEWOMAN would form the basis. Of this suggestion, coming from several readers, we highly approve, and pass it on to other readers for their consideration.

The first meeting of what came to be called the Freewoman Discussion Circle occurred in London on April 25, 1912. A dozen people were expected, one hundred attended. The Freewoman Discussion Circle of London decided to meet fortnightly, and regional Freewoman Discussion Circles would be established based on regional interest. Membership was 5 shillings annually, was open to men and to women, and meetings would consist of a lecture then discussion. There were at least ten meetings of the Freewoman Discussion Circle. It is unclear if the group formally folded, if it faded away, if the members continued to meet under another name, or in what fashion it ended. And before the Freewoman Discussion Circles…

Society of Social Aristoctrats and Conscious Egoists (1909 – 1927)
Malfew Seklew. In Demi-Gods Demi-Damned / or Halo’s Hoodoo’d (J. W. Gott: Bradford 1909) as well as Victor Grayson, M. P. / A Rhapsody on a Reality (information pending) appears an advertisement:

Society of Social Aristocrats and Conscious Egoists.
President – MALFEW SEKLEW
Tresurer – WILSON CARNOCHAN
Secretary – SPENSELLA MALJEAN
This society meets every Wednesday at 8pm and every Sunday at 7pm at 167 Saltmarket, Glasgow. Everybody welcome. No collection.

No further information on Wilson Carnochan has been found. The Day Book for February 26 1916 includes a letter from “T. T.” of Winnipeg, Canada:

I noticed by The Day Book that the latest imposition from England is causing quite a sensation. I refer to the well-known President of the Society of Superites, Sirfessor Wilkesbarre. The Society that he is so well representative of has produced many great thinkers. To mention just a few: The famous Lawrence Smith, who is called the Sage of Harpurhey; Toole, the Cherub of Denton; Paley, the Street Car Saint; “Tom Winter,” the ex-Roman Catholic Bishop; Mrs. Winter, whose reputation is revered in India, where she is considered as high as any of the religious Mahatmas. Finally, the greatest of all women of Scottish birth, Spencella Maljean.

With some variations in the name, Malfew Seklew mentioned his Society as late as 1927 in his Gospel. And before the Society of Social Aristocrats and Conscious Egoists…

The People’s University
John Erwin McCall. The Eagle and and the Serpent Number 2 (April 15, 1898) suggests the creation of individualist groups.

We believe that the cause will be most effectually promoted by the organization of Egoist Coteries or Libraries wherever two or three are gathered together in its name. It is our great desire to promote the formation of these groups throughout England, America and Australia. Our first step is to call for volunteers. We ask all who are willing to co-operate with others for the purpose of forming an Egoist Library or Society to send us their name and address. […] When this address appears the adherents in each city could get together and organise. […] What shall be the name of this Library or Society? Each society could determine that for itself. We suggest a few variations and ask for opinion on these, also for other suggested names: Myself Society; Egoist University or Circle; Emerson, Thoreau, Self-Culture, New Ideal, Finding Myself Out, or The Exploited One’s, Society; Self-Exploration, Minerva, or Anti-Exploitation, Society.

By Number 3 (June 15, 1898) Ragnar Redbeard had offered support for “any such Clubs or Libraries” in the form of free copies of Might is Right to any group that ordered fifty copies of The Eagle and the Serpent. A number of people had sent in their name and address.

We append our list of Secretaries of the Egoist Universities in the order of their enrollment. Malfew Seklew, 11, Hounds Gate, Nottingham. W. Robinson, 135, Willoughby Street, New Lenton, Nottingham. Leonard Hall, 43, Alma Street, Eccles, near Manchester. H. M. Reade 27, Walter Street, Hightown, Manchester. J. N. Green, 40, Leyton Park Road, Essex. W. J. Robins, 19B, Polygon St., Pancras, London. C. Moorhouse, 11. Handley Street, Sheffield. Henry Bool, 69, E. State Street, Ithaca, N. Y., USA. J. Greevz Fischer, 78, Chapel Allerton, Leeds. Messrs. Jaggard’s Library, 39, Renshaw Street, Liverpool.

Number 4 (September 1, 1898) first names this group “The People’s Library.” This issue added T. Hunt (Stockport), Florence Coates (Leek), L. Coates (Manchester), W. Keiller (Belfast), W. Duff (Glasgow). Number 5 (November 1, 1898) did not include a People’s University listing, but did list “Our Agents” in England (W. Reeves, Jaggard’s Library, W. Duff, Thompson’s Bookshop and King’s Road Circulating Library) and America (A. Mueller, Paper Covered Book Store, Columbia Stationary Store and Brigham’s Restaurant). Number 6 (December 1, 1898) removed Thompson’s Bookshop from the People’s University, and added H. Withers (Barnes) and A. R. Brown (Birmingham). Number 6 also prints:

We are often asked, What does the P. U. propose to do? It proposes to study the problems of social reform and the subject of Egoism. [The Eagle and the Serpent] is specially the organ of the P. U. […] We advice P. U.’s to meet fortnightly or monthly for mutual discussion. As such meetings they should decide on the works they wish to get and the best means of getting them.

The People’s University never again appears in The Eagle and the Serpent. But it holds pride of place (if even as only a paper tiger) for being the first public ongoing public event devoted to egoism.

A Unanimous Conviction.

The other day I passed by a large and apparently flourishing rock pile whereon many of my brothers were working with shameless lack of enthusiasm. One of these I recognized as belonging to a highly respectable family. To him I said, “does not your uncle have a most successful establishment at the sign of the three golden balls—surely he would give you a lift?” He turned on me a gaze of inexpressible anguish and replied: “He is my brother, but he will not help me. He said to me that my life was a damned failure, and that I was only fit for the rock pile.”

“Then the banker millionaire around the corner, he also is your brother; surely he will help you.” “No” he replied, “he calls me a—damned failure.” “But your brother in Italy who has grown fabulously rich in selling pieces of the true cross he will help you.”

“No, he too calls me a damned failure. Perhaps you do not know that Solomon is only an assumed name.”

“Pray who are you then?”

“I am Jesus of Nazareth.”

“Then I am compelled to say that your life has been a damned failure.”

“Thou almost persuadest me to cease being a Christian” he said.

“Go,” were his last words to me, “go into all the world and preach the salvation of Egoism to the children of men. Say to them that you saw Jesus of Nazareth on the rock (pile) of Mount Calvary and that by the unanimous opinion of all Altruists and Egoists he was adjudged a damned failure; that he does not wish to deceive the children of men any longer, but admits in the face of all the world that the greatest blunder and crime hitherto committed on earth has been my teaching, live for others. Tell them that on the rock pile, of my martyrdom I now meditate with tears of joy on Zarathustra’s new teaching which saith: Your love for your neighbor is your bad love for yourselves…. Ye flee from yourselves unto your neighbor and would fain make a virtue thereof; but I see through your ‘unselfishness.’ The thou is older than the I; the thou hath been proclaimed holy but the I not yet. I counsel you not to love your neighbor but to love those who are the most remote…… One must learn how to love one’s self with a whole and healthy love, that one may find life with one’s self endurable and not go gadding about….. Such a gadding about baptizeth itself  ‘love unto one’s neighbor.’….. Verily it is no commandment for today and tomorrow to learn how to love one’s self. It is rather the finest, cunningest, last and most patient of arts….. The man of perception must not only be able to love his enemies but also to hate his friends….. Be sure to love your neighbor as your-selves,—but first of all be such as love themselves—as love themselves with great love, with great contempt….. My great love unto the most remote commandeth: ‘Spare not your neighbor.’ Man is a something that must be surpassed….. Your work is your neighbor. ‘This—is my way—where is yours?’……. In the end one experienceth nothing but one’s self….. I ask you to lose me and find yourselves…… Nobody telleth me new things so that I telleth mine own self unto myself….. He loveth his enemies but he taketh revenge for that on his friends.”

-VOLCANO.

Available from Amazon.com or Underworld Amusements.

“Old Mad Max is back with a vengeance! The first issue Der Geist is a tight cluster of time bombs, many of which have been quietly ticking away in forgotten corners for more than a century, only to erupt now and blast away the fog that drapes a modern reader’s mind. The philosophy of Egoism—also known as Individualist Anarchism—was first kindled by the German firebrand Max Stirner in the mid nineteenth century. Stirner’s uncompromising ideas attracted a colorful band of fellow travelers in Europe and America before being edged out by the shabby collectivist ideologies that claim to represent liberation, but always end in moraline ghettoes of groupthink at best, or homicidal slave-states at worst. Der Geist unveils a secret history of self-sovereignty that is as incendiary as it is inspirational.”

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Purchase from Amazon.com: 
US | MX | CA | UK | DE | FR | IT

Library Edition, fifty dollars
(please inquire)

DER GEIST (Trevor Blake, editor) is an English-language journal for an international audience, publishing original scholarship on the philosophy of egoism. DER GEIST emphasizes the first century of egoism in print (from the 1845 publication of Der Einzige und sein Eigenthum by Max Stirner to the end of 1945).  The inaugural issue includes an exclusive biography of Dora Marsden, lost essays by and about Malfew Seklew, and a newly discovered first photograph of Ragnar Redbeard.

DER GEIST is the permanent record of UnionOfEgoists.com, founded on 1 April 2016 by Kevin I. Slaughter and Trevor Blake. UnionOfEgoists.com has published hundreds of pages of rare historic egoist texts and will be publishing thousands more.

DER GEIST is descriptive (about), not prescriptive (advocating), of egoism.   Scholarly interest in the egoism of Stirner, Marsden, Redbeard, Seklew and their peers (including Benjamin DeCasseres) has a new and unique home in DER GEIST.

DER GEIST, The Journal of Egoism from 1845 – 1945
VOLUME 1 NUMBER 1
WINTER 2017 (Published 25 October 2017)

Paperback, 160 pages, fifteen dollars
ISBN 978-1-944651-08-5

Contents of this issue:
Introduction | Trevor Blake
“I” | Clarence Lee Swartz
A Brief Travelogue of Der Einzige und sein Eigenthum | Kevin I. Slaughter
An Ego Englished: Anglicizing Der Einzige | Kevin I. Slaughter
I’ve Based My Cause ’Pon Nothing | Max Stirner & H. J. Schirmer
Preface to Den Eneste Og Hans Ejendom | Georg Brandes & Svein Olav Nyberg
Max Stirner Bibliography Addendum for 2017 | Trevor Blake
Dora Marsden: Her Time, Her Life, Her Thoughts | Trevor Blake
Dora Marsden and the Wrath of the Antis | Trevor Blake
Vanoc II: The Strange Watchmaker | Trevor Blake
Our Handbook: The Ego and Our Own | Vanoc II
Self Love | Maurice Cranston
Benjamin DeCasseres: A (Con)Founding Fortean | Joshua Blu Buhs
Kept | Benjamin DeCasseres
Max Stirner | Benjamin DeCasseres
The Ego | Malfew Seklew
Laughter | Malfew Seklew
Gems of Thought | Malfew Seklew
Unhatched Egos… | Malfew Seklew
Malfew Seklew, Street Fakir | Warren Van Valkenburgh
The Superites Admit They Are the Best Extant | Malfew Seklew
Malfew Seklew: Horse, Traps, Gigs, Landaus and Cabs | Trevor Blake
The Sleeping and Singing Sirfessor | Trevor Blake
The Dill Pickle Club: A Bright Spot In a Somber Town | Trevor Blake
Du-Dil-Duk | Trevor Blake
American Address: V. F. Gordon | Trevor Blake
Egoists in the News | Trevor Blake
“‘Individualism’ in the Mid-Nineteenth Century” | David Westling
Fight Club 1914 | Trevor Blake
Is Shakespeare Dead? | Mark Twain
The Altruist Corner | Trevor Blake
Egoists on Democracy | Trevor Blake
First Photograph of Ragnar Redbeard | Trevor Blake
A Unique Conversation | Kevin I. Slaughter & Trevor Blake