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

SOUTHPORT ELECTION SEQUEL

POLICE COURT PROCEEDINGS
The Southport Police Court was crowded today when John Aspinall, Peter James Halsall and James Sumner were charged with assault by Miss Mary Gawthorpe, Miss Dora Marsden and Miss Mabel Capper, suffragists, and there was a further summons brought by Miss Dora Marsden and others against Councillor Dr Arthur W. Lemont for damage to a flag.

Mr. Greaves Lord, barrister, prosecuted and Mr. Overend Evans defended.

Sir George Pollard, MP, presided over a full bench of magistrates.

The summonses for assault were taken first Mr. Greaves Lord said the assault was committed on Southport election day.

Miss Gawthorpe, Miss Marsden and Miss Capper along with other ladies attended the polling booths in Southport for the purpose of furthering the principles which they were known to support. Between four and five o’clock they arrived at St. Simon’s and St Jude’s Schools one of the polling booths. Limont took a flag from the car. It was through this that the whole bother commenced. Limont tore the flag off, waved it In the ladies’ faces and threw it into the crowd. One of the ladies got out of the car at the polling station and was roughly treated by the crowd. Two others got out to assist her and some further bother ensued.

It was arranged that Miss Marsden should board a tram car and go down to see the Chief Constable for help while Miss Gawthorpe and Miss Capper remained at the school. Miss Marsden failed to board the tram car and was hustled back by the defendants. Miss Gawthorpe was pushed violently against the car and Miss Capper was next taken up by the defendants and lifted right over the head of Miss Gawthorpe and thrown into the car head first with her legs in the air.

A number of witnesses were called in support of Mr Greaves Lord’s statement.

CASE FOR THE DEFENCE
Mr Overend Evans for the defence said that with regard to Dr. Limont it was monstrous to bring a gentleman of his position into court on such a paltry charge as damage to a flag. The proper place for the action was the County Court.

Joseph Robson, an ex-county constable and who acted on the day of the election as a special constable, said he asked the ladies to move on when they drove up in the motor car because they were obstructing. Everything was quiet until they came. He did not see any violence.

Mr Greaves Lord promptly reminded the witness that he had previously signed a statement to the Chief Constable that violence had been used and he then admitted that one of the ladies was pushed into the car head over heels.

William Johnston, election worker, said he carried one of the suffragists to the car and he did not consider it unnecessary violence. A lady named Higham an election worker said she herself early in the morning put one of the suffragists out of the yard because she was telling people “to keep the Baron out.” The witness admitted that she wanted to “get the Baron in.”

MAGISTRATES’ DECISION
The charge of assault was dismissed and the other charge was withdrawn. Sir George Pollard announced that there were eight for dismissal and one against.

Councilor Austin, another magistrate, protested against this announcement and said that there ought simply to have been a declaration made by the chairman of case dismissed. As a matter of fact, to be quite correct, there were five for dismissal and four against.

Mr. Jones another magistrate also said there were four against dismissal.

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

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

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

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

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

Kevin I. Slaughter

Trevor Blake

But we do know that there have been individuals who identified with egoism that have made an impact on the larger culture he existed in, and often fought against.

Dora Marsden can certainly be counted as an egoist who was forgotten by her death, after having spent her last 30 years in a mental institution. But before that, her journals had an oversized impact as part of the Modernist movement. In the graphic biography James Joyce: Portrait of a Dubliner, we see the author Alfonso Zapico create a scene:

In 1911, Dora founded The Freewoman (1911 – 1912), a periodical described by one forgotten nobody as “a disgusting publication… indecent, immoral and filthy.” Financial troubles led to a re-launch as The New Freewoman (1914). And an ever more keen search for liberty led to a re-launch as The Egoist (1914 – 1919).

It was in The Egoist: An Individualist Review that the work of a number of notable writers was published, in-part under the guidance of Ezra Pound. Included are T. S. Eliot, Wyndham Lewis, Charlotte Mew, William Carlos Williams, and, as depicted above, James Joyce’s first novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.

Joyce’s story appeared in The Egoist in twenty-five installments from 2 February 1914 to 1 September 1915. There was difficulty finding a British publisher for the finished novel, so Pound arranged for its publication by an American publishing house, B. W. Huebsch, which issued it on 29 December 1916. The Egoist Press republished it in the United Kingdom on 12 February 1917 and Jonathan Cape took over its publication in 1924. Of interest is that Jonathan Cape was also the publisher of The Ego and His Own in Britain at the time.

James Joyce: Portrait of a Dubliner? A Graphic Biography is available from Amazon.com .

Barnhill was editor of The Eagle and The Serpent (1898) and also author of The Martyrdom of Percy Whitcomb. George Schumm was a long-time compatriot of Benjamin Tucker. He assisted in the translation of The Ego and His Own and published his own weekly journal in the 1880’s titled “Radical Review” (Chicago). As an aside, this is the same name as Benjamin R. Tucker’s pre-Liberty journal in 1870’s, and also the name of a Socialist journal that was published in 1917. Schumm also translated The Anarchists : A Picture of Civilization at the Close of the Nineteenth Century by John Henry Mackay.

“Henry is totally blind” Barnhill jots in a letter typed up in an abbreviated manner redolent of today’s text messages. There is a very long letter from Henry Replogle in Egoism: The First Two Volumes, 1890-1892 that discusses his blindness and how he copes with it.

SidParker.com is a fledgeling tribute to seemigly the first person to pick Egoism back up after World War II, at a time when public involvement in Anarchism, and other fringe political movements seemed to be at an all time low.

With never before published material, from his angsty teenage poetry, to documenting his journals and publishing never before seen photos and commentary, SidParker.com will become a tribute to an intrepid outsider. That site will have information that is outside of the scope of UnionOfEgoists.com, but we will slowly be working to expand the material in both places.

When I began the Union of Egoists project I wasn’t aware of what had happened to Sid, and the more people I reached out to, the more I became puzzled that nobody else did either. In my research I finally discovered, after contacting his son, that he had indeed died around Christmas of 2012. So in addition to an archive of his work, we’ve initiated a series called Ubi Sunt and request anyone who knew or were influenced by him to write a short reminiscence. More info can be found in a blog post on the website here.

-Kevin I. Slaughter

*Besides UnionOfEgoists.com, we launched LibtertarianMicrofiche.com earlier this year.

Please consider supporting the Union of Egoists drive to obtain a full set of Libertarian Microfiche Project, find out more here.

http://amzn.to/22WbzrE