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

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.

MORE INDIVIDUALISM

EDITOR: —I would like to respond to the criticism of my letter in the March issue leveled by R. Yves Breton in the May issue.

First, I did NOT state, nor even imply, that under ALL circumstances “…ownership of what one uses and produces can only be realized by collective ownership of the factory by THE WORKER OF THAT FACTORY, no more nor less.” I prefaced that remark with: (which R. Yves did NOT quote) “…it seems that, for the worker (note the context) the individualist goal of personal property can only be realized by some sort of active struggle with the system. Given that industrial production is necessarily a collective venture….” (again, note the context, R. Yves). How, in a factory geared to a minute division of labor, assembly lines, and massive machines, a worker can INDIVIDUALLY own his or her own tools, as E. Armand suggested, is beyond my comprehension (do the workers dismantle the machines in the evening and take the pieces with them to their separate homes?). Of course there is much individualistic argument in favor of dismantling, permanently, the stupefying factory system, and restoring (perhaps with more sophisticated individual tools) craft production. Given an Anarchistic society this would be possible, but at present we are prisoners of production systems we do not own nor control. Either we control the workshops or abandon them and recreate an entire productive system outside the present one. Certainly for most workers who cannot afford to quit their jobs, the first is the only alternative at this time. Should workers succeed in such a take-over, I would still not maintain that a free society is necessarily reached. Significantly, R. Yves Breton did not go on to quote my conclusion: “But no one should be forced to participate in the collective, nor be banned from individual enterprise.”

I may be guilty of identifying workers’ control of the workplace with syndicalism, as the latter term implies FEDERATION of industries as well as factory autonomy. Still there have been individualists who saw in syndicalism “A valid form of regaining one’s property”—not the ONLY valid form, as R. Yves seems to imply as my meaning.

In this context, I would mention Malfew Seklew: “…I am an iconoclastic, atheistic, anarchistic, hedonistic individualist, with the social instinct well developed, and with syndicalistic solutions for the problem of poverty.” (“Minus One” #34). Oscar Wilde and Guy Aldred advocated forms of collective ownership in order to lift the burden of material concerns from the stifled individualities of the working and exploiting classes. An ideal, perhaps, but an individualism that cannot include social cooperation is an undeveloped individualism in my opinion. Even the most extreme individualist, Max Stirner, advocated collective take-overs of The means of production, even communistic arrangements within the context of voluntary associations to better satisfy our HUMAN needs and give us time to realize our UNIQUE desires. In America, Emma Goldman and John Beverly Robinson, both influenced by Stirner, were able to believe that, economically, the interests of working people were similar enough to justify voluntary, collective, and federated running of all industries. Besides, even the skills and tools needed to survive alone, outside of society, were given to us by society itself. The benefits of human association and cooperation appeal to my interests as an individual. There is much egoistic reason to favor collective arrangements to satisfy common needs, rather than reliance upon often wasteful or exploitive competition.

“Finally, as regards competition once more, it has a continued existence by this very means, that all do not attend to their affair and come to an understanding with each other about it. Bread is a need of all the inhabitants of a city; therefore they might easily agree on setting up a public bakery. Instead of this, they leave the furnishing of the needful to the competitive. Just so meat to the butchers, wine to the wine-dealers, etc.”

Peter Kropotkin? No, Max Stirner! Individualism IS the basis of true cooperation; as this primal Anarchist par excellence goes on to say:

“If I do not trouble myself about MY affair, I must be CONTENT with what it pleases others to vouchsafe me.” (The Ego and His Own, page 275).

—MARK SULLIVAN. (NEW YORK)

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

Robert E. Sagehorn was a libertarian publisher behind Western World Review, Western World Press and associated projects. At the time of this posting, we have only started gaining any real insight into his life and work. Musician and poets Robert N. Taylor provided UoE with materials and anecdotes relating to Sagehorn.

This essay by Sagehorn was published in Sidney E. Parker‘s journal Minus One, No. 37, 1976. It is part of exchange largely between Francis Ellingham and Sidney E. Parker that spanned several issues.

NOTES ON PARKER AND ELLINGHAM AND STIRNER
by Robert E. Sagehorn

First, I refuse to believe that either religion or government were invented or initiated by exploiters and oppressors to further their own ends. I do not state this in defence of either, but rather because I see no evidence of the exploiters having any capacity for originality, and such complex designs are simply beyond their competence.

Government grew out of mutual assistance compacts, for trade and defence and general co-operation, and the motto ‘death to tyrants’ is an ancient one. And this code did not apply simply to tyrants at the higher levels, but at every social level down to the lowest — death to tyrants and exploiters of every sort. I will defer for another time the question of whether we are more humane or more evolved today because we no longer do this, but instead suffer the tyranny and exploitation.

Religion began with an attempt to understand the full range of the human condition in an environment that could only be partially controlled or understood. Both religion and government have been taken over by the exploiters, and it is not always clear in any historical instance what began whore, but clearly this has been the pattern, and I know of no evidence of an original fabrication of either religion or government by resident or invading or any other exploiters.

Mention. is made in this exchange of the duality of microcosm and macrocosm as known by modern science, such as man and microbe, or man and molecule. There is another and equally important that even the ‘primitives’ arc aware of: the relation of finite microcosmic mortals of this earth to the macrocosm of the (to us) infinite universe. And at their best philosophy and theology and metaphysics only attempt to order these relationships, to give them proper relevance and meaning, for the man and the moment, for both thinking and acting in our existential immanence of daily living. Within this double tension of micro and macro, man contra atomic or sub-atomic particles of matter/ energy, then again as man contra the cosmos, the individual is both everything and nothing. Each mortal is a un unit of matter possessing self-awareness and volition, each has its hour in the sun so to speak, each is unique, and few approach their full potential, or are even aware of that potential.

Both Stirner and Nietzsche have represented this both rationally and symbolically, and inspired others to realize at least a bit more of their uniqueness and capacity. Which is to the good, and not at all at odds with some of the simpler aboriginal religions or philosophies (call it folk wisdom if you prefer), or the essential perspective of more cultured and sophisticated peoples with their more complex (and often more obscure) philosophy and theology. And as Parker notes ‘mystagoguery’ is not reserved exclusively to the formal religions or the other spirit-believers — the camp-followers of science often display a pitiful true-believing religiosity.

Now as for the question in dispute. What did Stirner mean by calling himself the sole ego, how are we to take that? I don’t really know, or much care. Stirner advanced, or perhaps in this post-medieval epoch, restored would be more accurate, the concept of the ego and its innate individual worth. And as so often happens with genuine individuals his life came to nothing, but his work could not be ignored and despite the labours of Marx end others to refute it, the effect continues, though he is still denied the academies and official recognition. It has been done before and it can be done again, and that is the real end singular worth of the individual. To me the rest is pointless disputation.

MEN AGAINST THE STATE: THE EXPOSITORS OF INDIVIDUALIST ANARCHISM IN AMERICA 1827-1908 by James J. Martin
Ralph Myles Publisher, Inc., P.O. Box 1533, Colorado Springs, Colorodo 80901 1970, 315 pp., S2.50
Reviewed by S.E. Parker, editor of MINUS ONE
Reprinted from FREEDOM — 10-10-70, 84 Whitechapel High Street, London E1, England

Just as no two blades of grass are exactly alike; just as no grain of sand is identical with another; so are human beings diverse. And their diversity is much more profound and complex than that of blades of grass or grains of sand. They differ in their physique, physiognomy, reactions, abilities and aspirations. It is for this reason that government is the enemy of the individual, for all governments try to force the individual into pre-established patterns of behaviour and to combine his interests with the interests of others, thus robbing him of his individuality and freedom. For life to be worth living the soverignty of the individual must take the place of the sovereignty of government:

Everyone must Peel that he is the supreme arbiter of his own, that no power on earth shall rise over him, that he is and always shall be sovereign of himself and ail relating to his individuality. Then only shall all men realise security of person and property.

It was in this way that Josiah Warren, “the first American anarchist”, set the theme for a talented, articulate, sometimes brilliant, group of libertarian writers and publicists who flourished in the USA between 1827 and 1908. It is to these that Dr. Martin devotes his MEN AGAINST THE STATE.

When I reviewed the first edition of this work in 1953, I wrote that it was “one of the most objective books on anarchists ever written.” Seventeen years later I still think the same. Dr. Martin’s book remains an outstanding model for the historical treatment of men and their ideas. Other recent writings on anarchism (Woodcock, Joll, Jacker, et al.) compare badly with h. And it is much superior to Rudolph Rocker’s Pioneers of American Freedom which covers almost the same ground. So definitive was the first edition that Dr.Martin has only had to make slight revisions (mainly additional biographical data concerning Warren and Tucker) for the second.

Dr. Martin begins his book with Josiah Warren, the first of the group in point of time. Warren was pre-eminently an inventor and experimenter who found writing difficult. Nonetheless, he managed to expound his ideas in a straightforward and often eloquent manner. Taking his stand on “the sovereignty of the individual” and the labour note principle he called “cost the limit of price”, he experimented with “time stores” to prove the practicability of his economic ideas, and founded three “equity villages” as examples of living in freedom.

For a time Warren had a valuable ally in the person of the erudite philosopher and polymath, Stephen Pearl Andrews, who wrote The Science of Society, in which Warren’s ideas received their most polished expression. Despite his later partial defection from Warrenite individualism, Andrews still continued to contribute to the contemporary anarchist press.

Independently of Warren and Andrews, the lawyer and legal theorist, Lysander Spooner, developed his fiery attacks on the banking monopoly and his mercilessly logical critiques of the American Constitution. The latter, he held, had no authority whatsoever over anyone who had not given his formal and open consent to its provisions (No Treason, his main work on this subject, was reprinted as late as 1966, thanks to the efforts of Dr. Martin, and received an unexpected accolade from Playboy magazine!) In defiance of conventional theories of maturation, Spooner became more radical as he grew older and eventually became a contributor to Benjamin Tucker’s Liberty after following a lone path for many years.

As well as the work of Warren, Andrews and Spooner, Dr, Martin details that of J.K. Ingalls, whose main concern was the elimination of land monopolies; W.B. Greene, whose theories of mutual banking had a great influence on Tucker; and Ezra Heywood, the most militant pamphleteer and flamboyant character of them all, who was the only one of the group to suffer serious persecution for hie activities, being imprisoned for several years for his outspoken advocacy of sexual freedom.

The last and best known of this group was Benjamin Tucker. Dr. Martin corrects the impression fostered by Eltzbacher that Tucker was an original thinker. Tucker’s thinking was, in fact, a synthesis of the ideas of Warren, Greene, Proudhon and (later) Stirner, together with material taken from such writers as Spooner and Ingalls. An accomplished translator, he was also a skilled joumalist, a cultural catalyst, and a stimulating commentator on current events. A logical and lucid polemicist, he delighted in debate. When his lnstead of a Book was published in 1893, he included his opponents’ criticisms in full — a rare, if not unique, thing for an author to do.

Tucker’s main achievement, however, was the publishing and editing of the journal Liberty from 1881 to 1908. In the first issue he declared:

It may be well to state at the outset that this journal will be edited to suit its editor, not its readers. He hopes that what suits him will suit them; but if not, it will make no difference. No subscriber, or body of subscribers, will be allowed to govern his course, dictate his policy, or prescribe his methods. Liberty is published for the vert’ definate purpose of spreading certain ideas, and no claim will be admitted on any pretext of freedom of speech, to waste its limited space in hindering the attainment of that object.

The result of this admirably selfish declaration was a publication of a polish and competence unusual among radical journals. Tucker and his collaborators ranged over economics, politics, history, philosophy, ethics and the arts, and one notable issue was written by George Bernard Shaw as a reply to Max Nordau’s Degeneration — a lengthy and vitriolic attack on the avant-garde of the period.

It was in the columns of Liberty that the shift began amongst individualists from the “natural rights” doctrines of Warren and the earlier writers to the conscious egoism of Max Stirner. Led by James L. Walker, who had reached similiar conclusions independently of Stirner, the egoists split the Tucker associates in two and carried Tucker with them. Walker, whose posthumous Philosophy of Egoism deserves reprinting, later contributed the introduction to the English translation of Stirners The Ego and His Own, published by Tucker in 1907.

In 1908 Tucker went to live in France after his uninsured bookshop and publishing business were destroyed by fire. There he lived in retirement until bis death in 1939, becoming increasingly pessimistic about the social realization of his ideas. Writing to Clarence Lee Swartz in 1930 he commented:

” . . . the insurmountable obstacle to the realization of Anarchy is no longer the power of the trusts, but the indisputable fact that our civilization is in its death throes. We may last a couple of decades yet; on the other hand, a decade may precipitate our finish. . . . The dark ages sure enough. The Monster, Mechanism, is devouring Mankind.”

He was still unrelenting in his opposition to communism: ‘The term Communist Anarchist has no sense’, he wrote to Eugene Baskette in 1933, echoing his debates of over forty years before with Kropotkin and Johann Most.

To chose whose perspectives were shaped by the hope that anarchism can be universalized, the story told by Dr. Martin may well proue depressing. Here was a movement, born at a time of social ferment and optimism, in a country where the State apparatus was comparatively weak and land plentiful. It was supported not only by capable theoreticians and publiciste, but also by practical exponents of ‘community living’ whose work, with varying degrees of success, extended over thirty years. Yet after eighty years of vigorous activity it petered out — despite the efforts of the few and scattered survivors of Tucker’s departure.

As I see it, one of the reasons for this was the attempt to reconcile anarchist individualism with “social engineering.”

Because of their desire to establish a future society on the basis of their ideas, Warren and Tucker were forced to squeeze their anarchism into a societal context. Their championship of the individual was thereby deformed. Dr. Martin rightly questions whether anarchism is translatable into a social reality. That it is capable of being made an individual reality, and even partially viable as a small milieu, Warren’s experiments showed. But between the conscious choice of a few, select individuals and universal application to a mass there is a wide and apparently unbridgeable gulf. Neither Warren nor Tucker seem to have had any awareness of that fundamental aspect of the organizational problem that Robert Michels called “the iron law of oligarchy”; the invariable development of oligarchs in all organizations of any scale or permanence. Nor were they aware that any extended, organised social application of anarchism might at most lead to an “anarchism of groups” — to use Estey’s terminology — but would necessarily deny the “anarchism of individuals.”

For these reasons the later anarchist individualist perspective of continual conflict between the individual and the collective makes far more sense. Warren’s “equity villages” functioned as they did not because of the essence of the societary principle, but because of one of its accidents: the conjunction of pioneering conditions in the USA with an unusually wide plurality of differing and conflicting interests among reformers and rebels. The threatening future blend of 1984 with Brave New World, or the equally ominous alternative of rule by the acephalous mob, makes the possibility of even the small scale and limited efflorescence of individual autonomy possible in Warren’s experiments an increasingly remote prospect.

However, Warren’s concept of the individualization of interests, instead of their combination, was one of the most fruitful approaches to anarchism ever made. Its eclipse by the attempt to link anarchism with collectivism led to disastrous consequences. Now that there is a revival of interest in Warrenite anarchism in the USA — which even shows signs of spreading to Britain –perhaps its value will be recognised once more and, shorn of social utopianism, it can be developed into an effective weapon in the unending struggle for the individual. The sovereignty of the individual may never replace the sovereignty of government, but it certainly can be opposed to it.

In Praise of Chaos

Enzo Martucci

Libertarian communism is also known, particularly in Latin countries, by the name of “anarchist communism.” It is not. On the contrary, the two words are a contradiction in terms.

Communism signifies a social condition in which the means of production and all material goods belong to the mass of the people who identify themselves with the totality or majority of society. Everyone has their goods disposed of according to the way decided by those who govern and whose law all must obey.

Anarchy signifies the absence of government: that is to say, a state of things in which the individual is not held in obedience to anyone, lives as he pleases, and is limited only by the extent of his power. He uses moral and material goods in the particular manner he prefers without having to get the approval of his fellows.

One hypothesis has it that the universal realization of anarchy would return man to nature. It would create an equilibrium- however unstable – between individuals who- urged on by the free life, the need to survive, and strengthened by struggle – would be able to contain each other and live without government.

Communism, on the other hand, even if it is not authoritarian and Marxist, but libertarian and Kropotkinist, would be a society in which the legislative and executive power would be exercised either by acephalous mass assemblies (Populism) or by delegates elected by the masses (democracy). Both would mean that the individual would always be governed by the many. And this would be a government worse than any other, whether by one or a few, because the mass is stupid, ferocious, tyrannical, and worse than the lowest individual.

How could libertarian communism be brought about?

It could be by means of absolute conformism to the industrial-machinist society that man has already achieved. This would reduce all to a mechanical equality, feeling, thinking, and acting identically – in this way making control and repression by the State unnecessary. Then there would be a standardized anarchy.

Or it could be by means of a new organization: individuals united by categories into federations, the federations into communes, the communes into regions, the regions into nations, the nations into the International. At the head of each a directive council invested with the authority and power to make itself respected by any individual dissenting from the decision of the majority. Hence, a State that would not call itself a State, but would be one nonetheless complete with a hierarchy, laws, and police.

And also with prisons. Malatesta wrote in his essay “Anarchy” that prison-hospitals would exist in which delinquents, considered as insane, would be “confined and cured”.

I remember that in a polemic I had with him in Umanita Nova in 1922, he wrote: “Martucci, in the name of the sacred rights of the individual, does not want that there remains the possibility of harming a ferocious assassin or a ravisher of children.”

I replied that the assassin and the ravisher could be left free in a remote district or on an uninhabited island, but not made to suffer imprisonment which would be un-anarchist. In my book The Banner of the Anti-Christ, I wrote:

The pretense of curing, rectifying, or correcting is extremely odious because it compels an individual who wants to remain as he is to become what he is not and does not want to be.

Take a type like Octave Mirbeau’s Clara (see his Garden of Torture), tell her that she must undergo a cure to destroy her perverse and abnormal tendencies which are a danger to herself and to others. Clara would reply that she does not want to be cured, that she intends to stay as she is, risking every danger, because the satisfaction of her erotic desires, excited by the smell of blood and the sight of cruelty, gives her a satisfaction so acute, and emotion so strong, which would be impossible if she was changed into a normal woman and restricted to the usual insipid lusts.

A man who killed women in order to rape them so that he could obtain the spasm of his pleasure with the spasm of their deaths, confessed that ‘In those moments I felt like God and creator of the world’.

If one had proposed to this man a cure to make him normal, he would have refused it, knowing intuitively that normality would not give him a sensation so intense as that offered by his abnormality.

Nor are normal individuals basically good, as libertarian communists like to believe. Man by nature is a skinful of diverse instincts and opposing tendencies, both good and bad, and such he will remain in any kind of environment or society.

Libertarian communism is no more than a system of federalism and like all social systems would oppress the individual with moral and judicial restraints. Only the superficiality of a Proudhon could give such a system the name of “anarchy” which, on the contrary, means the negation of all government by ideas or by men.

Anarchists are opposed to authority both from below and from above. They do not demand power for the masses, but seek to destroy all power and to decompose tgese nasses into individuals who are masters of their own lives. Therefore anarchists are the most decisive enemies of all types of communism and those who profess to be communists or socialist cannot possibly be anarchists.

Anarchy is the aggregation of innumerable and varied forms of life lived in solitude or in free association . It is the totality of experiences of individual anarchists trying to find new ways of non-gregarious living. It is the contemporary and polychromatic presence of every diverse mode of realization used by free individuals capable of defending their own. It is the spontaneous development of natural beings.

In it one will find that everything is equivalence and equilibrium: conflict and agreement, the brute and the genius, the solitary and the promiscuous – all will have the same value. One can designate opposites with the same word: “altus” can be top or bottom, height or depth.

In substance anarchy would mean the victory of polymorphism, which is opposed to the monism of all social systems, including libertarian communism.

Some maintain that in the absence of government or law we would have to complete triumph of bellum omnium contra omnos: the war of each against all. They are mistaken.

In a free world there would always be struggle, which is indestructible becasue it is natural. But it would be a struggle between the approximately equal forces of men strengthened by naturalism.

During a long polemic he had with me between 1948 and 1950, Mario Mariani tried to demonstrate that in a condition of anarchy war among man would increase: “If today a man has no fear of attacking his fellow and the policeman who stands behind him, he will certainly have no fear if I eliminate the policeman. Algebraically speaking, if A has no fear of B despite C, he will have even less fear if B is alone.”

My reply was: Today A has no fear of B despite C because he knows that both lack decision and force. B relinquishes them because he relies on C to defend him. And C protects him not because he has any lively feeling or strong interest, but only because it is his trade. Therefore he does not inspire much fear. Hundreds of police in Paris failed to capture Jules Bonnot, the illegalist, alive and had to launch an attack on his house in order to kill him. It is true that behind this protection there is the apparatus of social repression with formidable means at its disposal, but today’s delinquent underrates the collective’s organization and always hopes to escape it or avoid detection.

Again, if A finds B as resolute as he, then their forces will be equivalent. The case is clear and does not allow illusion. At that moment, the dispute between them will be resolved.

Anarchy, then, is neither continual warfare which would weary everyone, nor social harmony which would weaken everyone if it were possible (which it is not, due to the diversity of individual types and their conflicting needs and aspirations).

If history is not an infinite process, as I firmly believe, than when it exhausts its cycle it will disappear opening the way to anarchy.

If, on the other hand, history endures, then anarchism will remain – that is, eternal revolt of the individual against a stifling society. Thus proving the immortality of that “tendency to chaos” that the lawyer d’Anto finds so deplorable, but which is to me worthy of every praise.

Between association and organization there is the same difference as between a free union and marriage. The first I can dissolve when I wish, the second I cannot dissolve or dissolve only under conditions and with certain permissions.

It is not by organizing into parties and syndicates that one struggles for anarchy, nor by mass action which, as has been shown, overthrows one barracks only to create another. It is by the revolt of individuals alone or in small groups, who oppose society, impede its functioning and cause its disintegration.

Gregory Hill (21 May 1941 – 20 July 2000), better known by the pen name Malaclypse the Younger, was one of the two writers of the Principia Discordia, along with Kerry Wendell Thornley (aka Lord Omar Khayyam Ravenhurst). He was also adapted as a character in The Illuminatus! Trilogy. During the early years of circulation of the Principia Discordia, rumors claimed that the author of the book was Richard Nixon, Timothy Leary, or Robert Anton Wilson; or that the book and Malaclypse the Younger were both fictional inventions of Robert Anton Wilson, as with Abdul Alhazred’s Necronomicon.

DEFINITIONS

by Malaclypse the Younger, K.S.C.

Egotists are a pain in the ass, yet some self—centred individuals are resolutely not. How come this anomaly? Language…..capital L Language. And in as much as it is my Language, I herewith offer up for grabs a few distinctions that I find useful:

EGO is my “me”.

EGOCENTRICITY is that I relate my experience to myself, resulting in the psychologically inescapable fact that it is I who am doing the experiencing.

EGOISM is when I tell others that being consciously aware of one’s selfhood is a gas.

BENEVOLENCE is when you like other people too.

EGOTISM is that bastard who tries to impose his self on mine.

ALTRUISM is when somebody tries to pretend to be everybody else.

SELFISHNESS is when somebody forgets that he is not alone.

The EGOTISTIC ALTRUIST says: “I am the centre of the Universe, and hence know better than you about your welfare, and you had damn well better thank me for it.”

The BENEVOLENT EGOIST says: “I am the centre of my universe, and if you’re not the centre of yours then you’re missing the point.”

Something of note is that this was first collected in the following format on a website called “The Memory Hole”, which is archived as far back as 1999. The slogan of the website is “All is not necessarily lost.” The website still exists thanks to the work of archive.org. It was later published on egoistarchive.com.

Morality vs. Egoism

ONE – Robert LeFevre

I have noticed the letter from Dr. Murray Rothbard which appears in your publication, “Minus One,” for July of 1967. By this means I discovered for the first time that some of my views have been the target of discussion in an earlier publication apparently under the title: “Slings and Arrows.” That earlier publication escaped my notice, so I wish to use this means to thank Dr. Rothbard for coming to my defence in the absence of my knowledge that I had been attacked.
I have often been puzzled by the emotional intensity of those Dr. Rothbard classifies as “Stirnerites,” but your own observations following his letter have helped me to understand. If I grasp your point correctly, you object to moral instruction on the ground that this merely replaces the State and/or God and the idea of external punishment of prison or hell with the idea of internal punishment and guilt.
In other words, the Stirnerite must insulate himself against any concept of error at all. Whatever a Stirnerite wishes to do is “right” by definition, since there is no real “right” or “wrong” and the will of the individual is triumphant and always justified even against self-correction.
But how does the Stirnerite become a Stirnerite? He can only move to this position by correcting prior conclusions he may have reached. Thus, the Stirnerite must use the process of self-correction UNTIL he becomes a Stirnerite, after which further correction becomes impossible.
This is to say that the Stirnerite, in order to maintain his position, must do so with a closed mind. Any possibility of acceptance of any other thought than Stirner’s would lead the Stirnerite into an unacceptable position of admitting the possibility of error (guilt?) and this must be rejected as an inviolable absolute. Thus, the Stirnerite is guilty of the very worst of crimes which he lays at the door of the mystic. For he has created a god and he worships at the shrine without the willingness or even the capacity to consider that his god may be a false god.
Worse than this, this god of the Stirnerites is his own ego, which is always right. And like most mystical structures, a prophet of this mystique has been provided in the person of Stirner who, like the ego, can never be wrong.
With this before me, I can understand the religious intensity of the Stirnerite who is so fearful of being shown in error that it is a part of his theology that guilt (recognition of error) is impossible. I am now wondering if the real problem here may not lie in the too sweeping rejection of guilt as a necessary result of the recognition of error. It seems to me that moral instruction does not necessarily lead to the acceptance of guilt, although I grant that this is always a possibility. What the Stirnerite seems to imply is that moral instruction is, of necessity, unnatural and therefore contrary to nature. And why should anyone have a sense of guilt simply because of his nature? Obviously, to feel guilt because of the function of a man’s nature would be a kind of folly IF that were all that was involved. But this is to see man as having a one-dimensional nature, not as he is, but as Stirnerites think he is. And that is the prime folly of the Stirnerite faith for it rests upon a one-dimensional philosophy which is hopelessly contrary to the nature of man.
Man is a creature in contradiction. He is an organism that is motivated by a complexity of drives which serve to check and countercheck. He is capable of nobility and virtue, in his behavior. He is equally capable of ignominious and ignoble conduct. And all of these drives stem from his ego. He is paradoxical, quixotic, and ambivalent. But the high priesthood of the Stirnerite cult rejects all ambivalence by the happy hurdle method known to all fictions writers. He re-defines man as a creature who cannot be right or wrong, who has no complexities and no inward struggle at all AFTER he has attained to the faith.
It is marvelously simplistic and beautiful. It also denies reality. By his fear of finding himself guilty of ignobility the Stirnerite defines ignobility as equivalent to nobility, pretending to see no differences in behavioral patterns.
May I respectfully suggest that the publisher of MINUS ONE is guilty of non-Stirnerite behavior in his efforts as a publisher? For, referring to other portions of his comments to the Rothbard letter it appears that it is none of the publisher’s business what Mr. A or MR. B does or thinks, since his concern is purely with himself. But since his concern is purely with himself, he can have no interest or concern with the thoughts and behavior of others. And having no interest or concern with the thoughts or behavior of others, why does he publish articles which may or may not stimulate others to particular courses of thought or action? Apparently, he has some kind of non-Stirnerite motivation for he pretends to find some of my thoughts and actions in error. But they cannot be in error, for there is no error, by definition. It is moral judgement, utterly unworthy of a true Stirnerite.
Might I suggest that “guilt” when it is no more than a recognition of prior error, is the principal method by which we all learn? We learn by “trial and error,” not by the process of self-justification. I wonder if Stirnerites wish to be known as people who are incapable of learning? If so, their minds are locked in concrete and there is no point at all in communicating with them.
So, in one sense, it might be reasoned that Stirnerites are cowed by an enormous spook–the fear that they might even think for a moment that they had done or thought something incorrectly. This fear is so gigantic that they cannot even admit it into their consciousness.

TWO – S.E. Parker

“Moral people skimmed off the best fat from religion, ate it themselves, and are now having a tough job to get rid of the resulting scrofula.”

Max Stirner

Mr. LeFevre’s whole wondrous case against “Stirnerites” rests on his fallacious identification of “guilt” with “recognition of error.” In his view any action which is liable to go “wrong” (and this means every action) is by virtue of this a moral or an immoral action. But I find a mistake in a mathematical calculation is my correction of this “error” a moral action? Mr. LeFevre seems to believe that it would be. But this is to completely confuse the issue even from a moralist standpoint. “Moral conduct,” wrote Lan Freed “is conduct motivated by the aim of acting self-sacrificingly, is obedience to the ‘voice’ whose first command is ‘act not as you desire to act, nor as you consider it expedient to act, but as you feel that you ought, morally speaking, to act.'” (Social Pragmatism ) A moral action is therefore an “ought” action purely and simply. To argue otherwise is to apply moral value judgements to areas in which, morally speaking, they do not apply.
The “Stirnerite,” egoist standpoint is that a “right” action is simply one appropriate to the end desired, and a “wrong” action one inappropriate to the end desired. In other words, there are expedient and inexpedient actions for an egoist–nothing more. There is no question of moral “guilt” involved if an egoist makes a mistake and recognizes that he has done so. He merely corrects it if he can, and if he cannot he takes more care next time. How, from a logical angle, it follows that if there is no real “right” or “wrong” then a “Stirnerite” is “by definition” always “right” I fail to see. Perhaps Mr. LeFevre follows a different logic than mine.
I do not know any member of the “high priesthood of the Stirnerite cult” who rejects “all ambivalence.” They can’t belong to my church and certainly haven’t read their Stirner properly! However, I promise Mr. LeFevre I will raise this grave matter at the next Bayreuth College of Cardinals Conference when the spirit of Saint Max will be amongst us to assist us in our debates. Seriously, an egoist is only concerned to “define” himself, contradictory or otherwise, not “Man.”
Because I wrote that what Mr. A does to Mr. B “only concerns me if my interests are threatened” it by no means follows that I cannot concern myself with other individuals or their ideas. If Mr. B is a friend of mine I have an interest in him and will concern myself with his defence if I can because my interest is being threatened by Mr. A.
Again, I am interested in certain ideas and concern myself with publicizing and discussing them. One of my means for doing this is MINUS ONE. But I only do so because it pleases me to, not out of any moral obligation to preach a gospel, save the world, or even point out the errors in other people’s thinking. If these ideas did not interest me, I would not bother about them, anymore than I do about an argument between two orthinologists as to the best way to catch butterflies.
“Stirnerites,” therefore are not cowed by any spooks. I doubt if they lose much sleep over any guilty fear that “they had done or thought something incorrectly.” I leave the spook of morality to haunt the devisers of systems of moral instruction who, by “definition,” have a vested psychological interest in guilt or fear.
No one who has read and understood “The Ego and His Own” would ever regard Stirner’s ideas as sacred or unquestionable. It is up to the reader to make what use he can of the ideas it expresses. “The Ego and His Own” is neither a revelation from above nor from below. It is a consistent exposition of individualist anarchism; it can inspire or enrage, according to one’s taste; but it is nothing more than a book written by an individual. To try, even in sarcasm, to label it as a holy gospel simply puts the labeller out on a limb. He has only himself to blame if someone saws off the limb behind him.

THREE – Robert LeFevre

I was pleased to see my letter reproduced in MINUS ONE and was equally pleased to read your answer. When persons talk about different things or even about the same things at different levels, it is certain they will never agree. It is equally certain that agreement is not an essential, although it would be helpful if each disputant knew what the other was talking about so that disagreement would be meaningful rather than demonstrative of non-comprehension.
First, let me say that I am concerned with those actions or decisions which individuals take (including Stirnerites), which actions or decisions may further their ends, but which may constitute molestation of me or other persons. Now, this is a particular class of actions and not “any action,” as you erroneously contend.
I have no objection whatever to the Stirnerite or anyone else who does as he pleases with himself and his own property. Indeed, I support this concept and will defend this right. Here, as I see it, there is only right action, although there could be unwise action. If a Stirnerite decides to commit suicide or to burn down his house, this is his business and I could not rightfully interfere. It may be unwise, but the wisdom of the Stirnerite is not my concern. He may do as he pleases with himself and his property irrespective of anything else.
But when the Stirnerite decides that it is to his advantage to kill me or to burn down my house, he has moved into the area of inter-human relationships. At this point, you have suggested that Lan Freed has provided the definition of morality. I don’t subscribe to his definition. For the quotation you have used makes it appear that I must act self-sacrificingly at this point, or that if the Stirnerite refrains from burning my house or killing me he is sacrificing himself. And this is, it seems to me, limiting our behaviour by a definition of morality that is surely as savage as the barbaric notions it sought to eliminate.
If I follow this, what is being claimed is this: The Stirnerite (or any other) is compelled to sacrifice something. Either he will sacrifice me, whose property or life he covets, or he must sacrifice himself, since he may elect not to sacrifice me. And this is to say that all life and survival itself is a predatory matter and someone or something must be ravished. Either we will sacrifice others or we will sacrifice ourselves. And with this type of definition the Stirnerite says, I’ll sacrifice others, but never myself. No Hitler or Genghis Khan could have stated it better. My own concept of morality does not adhere to barbarism nor arise from it.
But, indeed, it is at this point that the Stirnerites does reject any ambivalence in his own behaviour, for here the Stirnerite can’t be wrong. Obviously, he cannot be wrong when it comes to the disposal of his own resources and assets. We would agree there. But when he proposes to dispose of his resources or assets (or proposes to dispose of mine) through processes of molestation, the Stirnerite cannot view this act as wrong either, for as he sees it there is no wrong for him. Whatever his ego tells him, is right by definition.
And now two Stirnerites confront each other, each coveting something the other has. Each is absolutely right and neither can suffer any qualms of indecision, remorse, or guilt. Following the Stirnerite code, which arises from a rejection of morality as defined by Freed, each Stirnerite must sacrifice the other or admit that he has sacrificed himself–unthinkable to an egoist.
Come to think of it, this might be a solution. If only we could arrange to pair off Stirnerites in some type of “life boat” situation, there probably would be few Stirnerites left around.

FOUR – S.E. Parker In Reply

I agree entirely with Robert LeFevre about “non-comprehension.” His reply to me is excellent example of what he is talking about. He completely ignores what I wrote about the egoist’s non-moral use of the terms “right” and “wrong” and insists on treating egoism as if it were a moral philosophy. Just as his first attack rested on the fallacious identification of “guilt” with “recognition of error,” so his second rests on the equally fallacious assumption that, because I accept Lan Freed’s definition of morality, therefore my behaviour as an egoist must be judged according to morality as so defined! For this reason all his contortions regarding who sacrifices whom for what are wasted. Egoists are amoralists so the question of what is morally “right” or “wrong” for them is completely irrelevant. To repeat: The egoist standpoint is that a “right” action is simply one appropriate to the end desired, and a “wrong” action is one inappropriate to the end desired. In other words, there are expedient or inexpedient actions for the egoist–nothing more.