Nietzsche on Egoism.

[Translated from the German by George Schumm.]

A good author who really has his cause at heart longs for someone to come and replace him by presenting the same cause more clearly and by more completely answering the questions raised by it. The loving girl longs to prove the devoted fidelity of her love through the infidelity of her lover. The soldier longs to die on the battlefield for his victorious coun­try; for in the victory of his country his highest aspirations are also victorious. The mother gives to her child what she denies to herself,—sleep, the best food, if need be her health, her property. But are all these unegoistic conditions? Are these actions of morality miracles because, in Schopenhauer’s language, they are “impossible and yet real”? Is it not clear that in all these cases a man loves some part of himself, a thought, a desire, a product, more than some other part of himself; that he thus divides his nature, and sacrifices the one part to the other? Is there anything essentially different in the declaration of an obstinate man: “I will rather be shot down than go a step out of the way of this fellow ”? There is, in all of the above cases, an inclination toward something (wish, im­pulse, desire); to yield to it, with all the consequences, is certainly not “unegoistic.”—Menscliliches Allzumenschliches.

There is no help: we must mercilessly put on trial and cross-question the sentiments of devotion, of self-sacrifice, the whole morality of unselfishness, as well as the aesthetic of “disinterested contemplation,” un­der which the emasculation of art seeks alluringly enough to create for itself a good conscience to-day. There is too much of moonshine and sugar in those sentiments, in this “for others,” in this “not for my­self,” so that there should be no need here of being doubly suspicious and of asking: “ Are they perhaps the language of the—seducer?” That they please—him who has them, and him who enjoys their fruits, also the mere spectator,—this furnishes no argument for them, but invites prudence. Let us be prudent, then!—Jenseits von Gut und Bose.

In listening to the now so popular phrase of the “ disinterested,” one must consider, perhaps not without some danger, in what the people really take an in­terest, and what are, in general, the things about which the common man concerns himself thoroughly and profoundly,—including the educated, even the savants, and, unless all signs mislead, almost also the philosophers. Thereby the fact is brought out that most of what interests and fascinates every superior nature appears to the average man as entirely “uninteresting if he, nevertheless, observes a devotion to it, he calls it “désintéressé,” and wonders how it is possible to act “disinterestedly.” There have been philosophers who knew how to invest this popular wonderment with an alluring and mystically other­worldly aspect (perhaps because they did not know the superior nature from experience?), instead of setting forth the plain and naked truth that the disinterested action is a very interesting and interested action, pro­vided. . . . “And love?” What! even love you would make out to be “unegoistic”? Dunces!

“And the praise of the self-sacrificing?” But whoso has really made sacrifices knows that he wanted and got something for them—perhaps something from him­self—that he gave here in order to have more there, perhaps in order generally to be more, or at any rate to feel himself as “more.” But this is a realm of questions and answers in which a pampered spirit does not like to tarry: so necessary is it here already for truth, if she must answer, to suppress yawning. And she is a woman: one must not do violence to her.—Jenseits von Gut und Bose.

“Science” as Prejudice.—It follows from the laws of the order of rank (Rangordnung) that savants, in so far as they belong to the intellectual middle class, do not even see the truly great problems and question-marks: besides, their courage, and likewise their vision, do not reach so far,—above all, the need which makes of them investigators, their inner wish and anticipation that things might be ordered so and so, their fears and hopes, are too soon satisfied and set at rest. That, for instance, which makes the pedantical Englishman, Herbert Spencer, dream after his fashion, and causes him to draw a line of hope, a horizon-line of desirability, the final reconciliation of “egoism and altruism,” of which he fables, gives to persons of our kind almost a feeling of nausea; a humanity with such Spencerian perspectives as final perspectives would seem to us as worthy of contempt, of destruction! But already that something must be experienced by him as a highest hope which is, and rightly may be, to others, only a repulsive possibility, is a question-mark which Spencer could not have fore­seen. —Frohliche Wissenschaft.

Laurance Labadie and His Critics
By Herbert C. Roseman

Laurance Labadie, the last of the individualist anarchists, heir of Warren, Spooner and Tucker has in recent months been dismissed as a veritable fossil by a young Wobbly (who also feels that individualist anarchism is hopelessly bourgeois), characterized by a disciple of Ludwig VonMises as being “incapable of reasoned thought,” denounced as a “cretin” by another young disciple of “Austrian” economics, and attacked for allegedly being “doctrinaire” by a Gandhi disciple.

That these attacks have all been devious on the one hand and namby-pamby and incredibly naive on the other is a measure of the general decay of native American libertarian-radicalism in the last twenty or thirty years. Mr. Labadie is the first to admit that he is a “cantankerous old man” but he would dearly love to see his vilifiers come out with some of that good old “reasoned thought!” It seems it is terribly old-fashioned to declare for a just and equitable program for land and money nowadays. The socialist (& Gandhian) critics of Labadie would like to do away with the awful (money) altogether—the VonMisians and Objectivists want to hold on to all that “time preference” interest. Does our present economic system cause war? Heaven forbid!

That Mr. Labadie’s work will survive his critics this writer has no doubt. Tucked away in obscure journals, large reams of stuff virtually unread and unpublished are the making of a mountain of a book demolishing all comers be they socialists, communists, phony free enterprisers and all the other fakirs who claim to speak for “humanity.”

For over forty years Labadie has done battle with socialists, communist anarchists, single taxers, equitists, Gesellites, Social Creditors and invariably come out the victor. However be it noted that he has rarely received thanks for his efforts. He has in fact usually been spat upon and dismissed as a killjoy and crank.

Although he envisages a world of economic freedom Laurance Labadie is no system-maker. He believes that real freedom of competition will show soon enough what’s what. He is no Utopian either seeing genuine freedom as a goal rather than a place.

Son of Jo Labadie of the famed Labadie Collection, Laurance Labadie has far outdistanced his father as a thinker and polemicist. Laurence Labadie has had the good luck to have been in contact most of his life with all the best that has been written by the libertarian-radical tradition, a tradition that has become extinct as the dodo, a tradition that is now being plagiarized by spokesmen of the status quo who claim to be libertarians—but whose concept of liberty is actually liberty-by-permission which enables them to hold on to their ill-gotten gains.

Labadie is a prophet though no Messiah and the prognosis for prophets in any time or place has not been very good. However if we ever survive this Orwellian world I think the ideas of the “cranks” will bear fruit.

17th issue of the egoist journal “Stand Alone”.
What is Man’s Destiny?
by Laurance Labadie
introduction by Mark A. Sullivan
5.5″ x 8.5″, Saddle-stitched
Limited to 66 copies.

Order:  Underworld Amusements

“All through history invasion, conquest, subjugation, enslavement and exploitation has been the name of the game, and is the most salient factor in human relations even up to the present day.”

Laurance Labadie begins with the thesis that the State was born under conditions of scarcity, and survived at the expense of other states and its own subjects. Labadie applied egoist Benjamin R. Tucker’s critique of monopoly to a world Tucker declared doomed. Going beyond the “plumb line” of his mentor, Labadie’s portrayal of “civilization” before close of the Twentieth Century is a rival to any nightmare of Orwell.
Laurance was the son of anarchist labor advocate and publisher Joseph A. Labadie, and the last true connection to Benjamin Tucker and the group of individualists known as the “Boston Anarchists.”
“What Is Man’s Destiny?” was first published in the fourth quarter, 1970 issue of The Journal of Human Relations. The current form is a facsimile of Mark A. Sullivan’s pamphlet edition released in 1975, which included his typed and mimeographed introduction stapled to actual offset prints of the original essay.
At the end of the essay is an excerpt from economist Hugo Bilgram’s book The Cause of Business Depressions, and then an editorial statement on that excerpt to place it within the context of Labadie’s essay. The latter was probably written by Don Werkheiser, who was editor of the journal from 1968 to 1971.

Mark A. Sullivan published the egoist/gay/anarchist journal The Storm from 1976 to 1988. He was also heavily involved in the Mackay Society, which was dedicated to publish and distribute the work of German anarchist John Henry Mackay.
His introduction to “What is Man’s Destiny?,” dated November 1975, was completed only four months after Laurance died. Sullivan would later expand this introduction, with the help of Mildred J. Loomis of the School of Living, into the essay “Laurance Labadie: Keeper Of The Flame.” It was included in a 1986 collection of essays titled Benjamin R. Tucker and the Champions of Liberty. Sullivan co-edited the book with Mike Coughlin and Charles H. Hamilton. The original version of the biographical essay was published in Anarcho-Pessimism: The Collected Writings of Laurance Labadie (Ardent Press, 2014).

Order:
Underworld Amusements

A new 16 page typesetting of Benjamin Tucker’s booklet published in 1907, the same year as his edition of The Ego and His Own by Max Stirner.

It is only fair to the memory of Mr. Herbert Spencer that we should warn the reader of the following chapter from the original edition of Mr. Spencer’s Social Statics, written in 1850, that it was omitted by the author from the revised edition, published in 1892. We may legitimately infer that this omission indicates a change of view. But to repudiate is not to answer, and Mr. Spencer never answered his arguments for the right to ignore the State. It is the belief of the Anarchists that these arguments are unanswerable. -Benjamin R. Tucker

As an additional note, the Labadie Collection contains correspondence of Henry Bool:

Consists of 7 outgoing and 344 incoming letters, largely from 1896-1903. Chiefly concerns Bool’s financial support of anarchists and their publications, especially Benjamin R. Tucker and Liberty, and Moses Harman and Lucifer, the light-bearer, distribution of literature, particularly Bool’s pamphlet Liberty Luminants, the philosophy and activities of anarchist friends and acquaintances, notably John W. Lloyd, as well as personal and business affairs.

“EGOISTS SHOULD READ” judged the Egoist journal The Eagle and The Serpent (1898) in the promotion of For Love and Money by Leighton Pagan.  Underworld Amusements has now printed this rare tract for the second installment of the Stand Alone (2016) journal, in a limited edition with a new introduction by Trevor Blake and end notes! Unavailable anywhere online, and certainly the only new edition since it was originally published by Wilson and Macmillan of London in 1898.

Leighton Pagan was the pseudonym of John Badcock Jr., more widely known for his work Slaves to Duty and contributions to Benjamin Tucker’s Liberty (1881) journal. Pagan was a public speaker and author with an egoist perspective on sex and relations. The topics he addressed and the groups he spoke to show a singular dedication to the individual’s wants (and wantonness) as supreme over society.

For Love and Money is a pamphlet collecting two published speeches by this strident individualist.

A review in the contemporary British journal The Adult said:

“Any who draw their portraits of free lovers from Artemus Ward’s delightful absurdities will regard the distinction of a free lover with a sense of humour as sufficiently unique, but in adding to this gift of writing wittily and luminously on the currency question, Mr. Pagan attains to the miraculous.”

We see there a now wholly obscure reference to Abraham Lincoln’s favorite author (real name Charles F. Browne), who published a story Artemus Ward Among the Free Lovers in 1858.

The two sections of For Love and Money were advertised as follows:

1.— The Judgment of Paris—up to date, a lecture given before the Legitimation League, dealing in the most unconventional way with the vital questions of marriage and free love.
2.—The Money Famine, a reprint of an interesting article on the money question from the Free Review.

You can currently purchase Stand Alone Number 2 in the US through Underworld Amusements. Follow @DerGeistJournal for updates on this and more.

Also of interest is this contemporary advertisement for books offered for sale alongside For Love and Money. This advert was pulled from the June 1898 issue of “The University Magazine and Free Review”.