Ego and His Own – Union Of Egoists

Der Geist Issue 4 / Union of Egoists 5th Anniversary

Httpswwwunionofegoistscom — Thu, 01 Apr 2021 05:27:00 +0000

The Union of Egoists website went live early 2016 but officially announced April 1st of that year. The entire chat of February 2nd, 2016 between Trevor Blake and myself that crystalized the idea was printed at the end of Der Geist Issue 1, and titled “A Unique Conversation”, published in the following year.

Der Geist issue 4 is now available! That creates a total of 724 pages of egoism from 1845 to 1945, with “lost” works reprinted, new translations every issue, rare photos and images, and new research and writing.

Available from: Underworld Amusements | Amazon.com | Amazon.UK | Barnes & Noble | Bookshop.org

In this issue, a previously undiscovered speech by Ragnar Redbeard; original translations of Max Stirner and Malfew Seklew; rare reproductions from Dora Marsden and Friedrich Nietzsche; individualists and eccentrics versus the KKK; and more.

DER GEIST, The Journal of Egoism from 1845 – 1945
ISSUE 4
Spring 2021
Paperback, 172 pages, fifteen dollars
ISBN 978-1944651-21-3
ISSN 2639-5339

The Ego And His Own | 1907 Review | The New Age

Httpswwwunionofegoistscom — Fri, 30 Mar 2018 09:09:06 +0000

Review from The New Age, Orage, A. R. (editor) London: The New Age Press, 1907 / 1922

Dan Stone, in his essay “An ‘Entirely Tactless Nietzschean Jew’: Oscar Levy’s Critique of Western Civilization”, gives some interesting perspective on the editor Orage and his journal:

“Orage was wide-ranging, and published writers of all political views. He had himself also advocated an aristocratic understanding of Nietzsche’s ‘Ubermensch’. After reading Levy’s book, he contacted the author and asked him for 25 copies to sell through the pages of The New Age. Since this was a supposedly socialist paper, Levy’s Nietzschean colleagues Anthony M. Ludovici and G.T. Wrench objected, but he persuaded them otherwise, and soon both were themselves regular contributors. During 1913-14 Ludovici, in fact, made his name as an art critic in Orage’s journal, with his bi-weekly column. Later on, Levy had this to say about The New Age:

It was, on the whole, not a Socialist but a reactionary paper (which is the same). So reactionary, that most of its contributors were Medievalists – or of that Christian Secularisti, such as Shaw…. They lived in the past, to which they were frightened back by threatening chaos. They wished to put the clock back, as Chesterton once said, but they had not the Chesterton courage to confess it.”

—Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 36, No. 2 (Apr., 2001), pp. 271-292

Reviews.

The Unique Individual. The Ego and His Own.

Max Stirner. Trans. by S T. Byington. (A. C. Fifeld. 6s. 6d. net.)

In the absence of a complete English translation of the work of Nietzsche (for which, by the way, somebody or other deserves to be shot), we may be grateful for this translation of Nietzsche’s John the Baptist. Max Stirner wrote sixty years ago his “Der Einzige und sein Eigentum,” in which he certainly anticipated the main ideas of Nietzsche and the most modern revolutionary school. That Nietzsche may have owed a good deal to Stirner we can certainly believe; but not for a moment can we tolerate the suggestion that Nietzsche owed everything to his forerunner. All such comparisons and valuations are utterly worthless, and make it appear that a doctrine should only be true if no more than a single person should hit on it. That two or three or a dozen people should say the same thing because it happens to be true seldom strikes the writer of introductions as even probable.

Stirner wrote his book during the seething revolutionary period of 1848, when both in Germany and in France a good deal of frothy talk was being raised on subjects such as Liberty and the Rights of Man. In some ways, such words and phrases are characteristic of most revolutionary movements. After all, if you have not cannon, what else is there to do but talk? Stirner grew more and more indignant as he recognised not only that the phrases and words meant little, but that in the mouths of most of the young Germans they meant nothing at all. He, therefore, began the enormously difficult task of endeavouring to hammer into the minds of his contemporaries the differences, and sometimes the radical antagonisms between words and realities. In this he was simply following Epictetus, with whom in other respects he seems to have had much in common. A liberal education, Epictetus said, gives a man no more than the faculty of discriminating words.

It happens, of course, that reformers today are very much like the reformers of 1848, and the reformers of Epictetus days. In other words, Stirner’s message is quite as necessary now as it ever has been since the dangerous discovery of speech. At this moment we are all employing words without meaning, and talking of things that have no real existence. Our vocabulary plays such tricks with our intellects as cause the realistic angels to weep.

Stirner was mainly concerned with the two words, Liberty and Man. In essence they may be said to constitute the Alpha and Omega of liberalism in the broadest and narrowest senses. Both words are, strictly speaking, meaningless; or, at least, their meaning is so vague that their use in genuine discussion is extremely perilous. Regarding Man, for example, it is plain on a moment’s reflection that we know of no such entity. One man we know, another man we know; but where is this “ghost,” this “spook” (to use Stirner‘s words) who is not this man or that man, but Man? Yet we proceed in all our reformatory schemes on the assumption that somewhere or other there exists, or ought to exist. Man who is not any particular man, but a Being from whom all particularities have vanished by sublimation. In place of the two concepts of myriads of individuals as they are, and of myriads of individuals as they actually might be, we abstract from both, and make Man as he is, and Man as we think he ought to be. The result is that all our legislation is made to apply itself to two impossible and non-existent entities, to Man with a capital M, and to Humanity as it ought to be in a perfect state, etc. But this sacrifice of real individuals to the non-existent and impossible Perfect Man is exactly similar to sacrifices made to any other abstract Mumbo-Jumbo. The more atheistic, in fact, revolutionaries pride themselves on being, the more firmly have they made the secret substitution of a wholly imaginary ideal Man or Humanity for God.

Against this ingrained habit of men to sacrifice themselves to dragon-like ideals, Stirner inveighs with splendid zeal. He is a rare realist, and an iconoclast of the first order. He will have nothing to do with abstractions, even when they simulate the concrete form of generalisations. His single claim is that he is unique and incomparable. I am not, he says, Man, but a man. I ought not to become essential Man or to fade away into a colourless abstraction. On the contrary, my sole business is to become more and more myself. Legislation that assumes that I am like anybody else in all the world is misfit legislation; when it assumes that I am like everybody else it is simply ludicrous. No, my claim is to a special treatment of a special being; and your ideals of perfection and all the rest leave me cold because they are not my ideals.

This principle of uniqueness is really incompatible with a good deal of the modern talk of reform. The mere dangling of new communal ideals before masses of people is from Stirner’ s standpoint the dangling of new halters over our necks. If it comes to a choice it might even be easier to serve a theological than a humanitarian ideal. The service of the older gods at any rate, did not require individual deification; but the service of the new god, Humanity, apparently demands the humanisation of man. Stirner again points out that a man can no more become Man than man can become God; he can only become himself. A man, however, may very well try to become what he is not; and these efforts of his are the most lamentable and tragic feature of his history. Dissatisfied with himself as he is when once he has descended to the level of comparison, he seeks to add to himself all the belauded or envied qualities of other men. That such fruit cannot possibly grow upon his tree is his secret misery; yet he endeavours to simulate their appearance. And this pathetic abandonment by a man of his own task of bringing forth his own fruit in favour of the task which other men are only too willing to put upon him, of bringing forth their fruit, is responsible for all the moral misery and deformity of the world. Deceit, lying, evil conscience are the accompaniments of‘ this shirking of his own destiny for him; and the submission to punishment at the hands of others for his good. All punishment being, theoretically at least, intended for the good of man, theoretically assumes both a man’s consent, and a man’s desire to become Man. To refuse to bow the knee to Man is the reformer’s conception of blasphemy. But Stirncr has some equally strong things to say of Liberty. Ibsen once remarked of Norway that it was a land of political liberty peopled by slaves. The same remark may be made of all the western European countries. Political liberties arc doubtless worth fighting for, since the light for liberty alone is liberty. But it is probable that there are more genuinely free men to the square mile in Russia at this moment than in any other country in Europe. The curse of politics is that we confound political liberty with freedom. Freedom is the will to be responsible for oneself; political liberty is permission to choose one’s masters. Except for the change of régime is there any difference between serving a majority of one’s fellow citizens and serving a feudal baron? Unless it can be shown (as we hold it can) that the change of mastership is for the better, there would be nothing to say for democracy. On the other hand, unless democracy is regarded merely as a means, its modified tyranny is no less a tyranny than any other despotism. Stirner, as we have said, pours the vials of his wrath upon all these vague phrases and words. His one object is to become himself; the same object he supposes is at the root of every other individual. All institutions are to be valued according as they enable the greatest number of individuals to become more individual. The more similarity the more despotism. The greater variety of individuality the greater the freedom. Political liberties, democracy and Socialism for the sake of the individual and his uniqueness are one thing; but political and economic liberties for the sake of Man in general, for Man in the skies are the substitutions of a tyrannical superstition for a genuine fact.

“The Ego and his Own” is well worth reading. The printers have done their best to make the book unique by printing the matter to give the appearance blank verse. The translation, however, is quite good; and, in any case, the book is far too important to be missed by anybody in search of ideas.

“Max Stirner’s Egoism” by John P. Clark | 1977 Review | Cienfuegos Press

Httpswwwunionofegoistscom — Wed, 02 Nov 2016 05:27:10 +0000

This review, credited to “Individualist,” appeared in Cinfuegos Press Anarchist Review Number 2 (1977). British spellings retained from original. – Trevor Blake

Anarchism is not a doctrine of love, nonviolence or even freedom. This is a description of the society at which we are aiming. It is not for revolutionaries to idealise aims but resist oppression, even if it is the resistance of one person alone. But the parcelling up of anarchism by academics into “schools of thought” has both hindered such resistance and confused anarchist aims. Amongst the early pioneers of anarchism have been both activists – like Bakunin, to whom participation in the struggle rarely allowed time to finish any of his voluminous works – and non-activists, such as Max Stirner, the reserved teacher and family nan who nevertheless gave one of the most important and most abused contributions to the development of libertarian ideas The Ego and His Own – and has suffered greatly at the hands of the academics.

As an early critic of state socialism he provoked the anger of authoritarian contemporaries like Marx and Engels, and in stating his position boldly and with determination drew either hostility or too uncritical acceptance from within the ranks of the anarchists. This polarised and over simplified for-or-against response has sadly persisted until today, resulting in Stirner being too little read and too much maligned on the one hand and too uncritically acclaimed and distorted on the other.

Stirner‘s real strength lies in probing the motivations behind human action, explaining why people act as they do. This is not to say that he believed people would always do things in the same way (as claimed for him by his critics), only that whichever way they act they do so for the same reason: self interest, that of promoting their own welfare.

If I seclude myself, I do so because I no longer find enjoyment in society, if I remain with people, I do so because they still have something to offer me. To remain is no less egoistic than to seclude myself. (p. 41).

He cautioned strongly against mistaking freedom as an abstract end in itself. For him freedom was only the means to an end; the real end being control over ones own actions within an atmosphere of personal autonomy. Not being physically punished for holding a particular opinion is mot real freedom, for by holding an opinion the individual may be enslaved by that opinion itself.

Freedom is only desirable if it is in one’s own interest to be free, but acting from self determination, self-awareness and free will (real freedom) best serves the individual’s interest (“egoism”). And to be so, those things which stand in the way of that must be removed (by a free choice, consciously); the greatest obstacle being (for Stirner) the State in aid its forms:

The State’s behaviour is violence, and it calls its violence law; that of the individual ‘crime.’ (p.75).

The fact of the State’s legalising its restriction of the individuals freedom through institutionalised violence does not make it acceptable, but only calls attention to our resistance against being just as valid and more necessary. Stirner believed the individual must overcome the power exerted by the State and should not hesitate to do so by force; to “overcome the State’s violence when he thinks that the State is not above him, but he is above the State.” (p. 75)

This viewpoint was abstracted from the context of class struggle, and was certainly not unsympathetic to the workers’ movement. Stirner advocated insurrection as the road to freedom and strikes as a necessary tactic for the workers within capitalism:

The labourers who ask for higher pay are treated as criminals as soon as they want to compel it. What are they to do? Without compulsion they don’t get it, and in compulsion the State sees a self-help, a determination of price by the ego, a genuine, free realisation of value from his property, which it cannot admit of. (p. 83)

In opposition to Statism (both capitalist and communist) as a means of social organisation, Stirner proposed the “Union of Egoists” – which is fundamental to anarchist federalism as a truly libertarian way of re-constituting society around individual freedom. The union, as John P. Clark describes it,

… arises out of truly voluntary action and from a genuine choice of those participating in it, it is not a group into which one is born or socialised, like society, but an association into which one enters out of one’s own power, Since society lacks this element of free commitment and creative action, it is in essence static and lifeless, while the union is always dynamic and living, depending for its existence on continuing renewal through individual decisions, it is an “incessant self-uniting,” while “society is crystallised;” “come to a standstill, degenerated into a fixity” – in short “dead.” (p.78-9)

There are still (in Glasgow) a few survivors from a generation of syndicalists which interpreted Stirner’s union of egoists literally as a workers’ union, a way of organising freely within industry. Nothing in Stirner exists to prove them wrong. He believed, whatever social context the union was put in, that people should enter into it only if “… they are of themselves led to the point that they care best for their welfare if they unite with others…” Their coming together would not constitute a state or a nation, simply the recognition (which is fundamental to all anarchist thought) that the individual co-operates freely with others because it is in his (and therefore the others) interest to do so. “I shall find enough… who unite with me without swearing allegiance to my flag.”

The Egoism of Max Stirner is a skillfully written appraisal of “egoism” managing somehow to both illuminate and annoy at the same time, that sadly lacks something in the telling. John P. Clark adds little to any constructive understanding of Stirner‘s ideas, and confuses much. In the absence of a better introduction it is worth reading. But better still is Stirner‘s own writing, which has stood the test of time well and certainly rewards the effort of reading.

Jeff Riggenbach’s Biographical Sketch of Max Stirner – UoE Podcast

Kevin I. Slaughter — Thu, 11 Aug 2016 17:53:45 +0000

This episode brings a 45 minute biography of Max Stirner recorded by none other than libertarian and individualist writer Jeff Riggenbach. In high school, Mr. Riggenbach took his “first steps” towards becoming a libertarian when he read books by Ayn Rand and Frederic Bastiat, and subscribed to The Freeman magazine. He didn’t know it at the time, but those chance philosophical encounters would lead to a multifaceted career in journalism, broadcasting, audio book narration, and editing that would span more than three decades.

If you’d paid attention to the site you’ll have noticed a great deal of material has been pulled from the Libertarian Microfiche Project that was run by John Zube from 1978 to around 2012. Over the course of time Mr. Zube committed about 500,000 pages of libertarian, anarchist, free market and other related material to microfiche in a series he called Peace Plans.

Between my co-founder Trevor Blake, our good friend Dustin and myself we are ready to match donations dollar for dollar to go toward purchasing an entire set of microfiche and archival sleeves and archival storage boxes.

We need a total of $2,000 to purchase the fiche and the archival supplies to properly store them. Beginning in August of 2016, all money donated to the UoE project will go just to the Libertarian Microfiche Publishing Peace Plans acquisition until it and the archival materials are all together in the Union of Egoists archive.

I have registered http://www.libertarianmicrofiche.com and resurrected the index to the Peace Plans from the grave of archive.org. To get an idea of the magnitude and importance of his work and the archive, spend a few minutes browsing the site.

Libertarian Book Club dead wiki entry…

Kevin I. Slaughter — Mon, 25 Apr 2016 11:55:25 +0000

For whatever reason the mob rulers at Wikipedia deleted the entry on the Libertarian Book Club. I’ve had an archive.org (peace be upon them) tab open in chrome with it for weeks, but didn’t know what to DO with the information. Why not blog it?!

And in case you wondered when and why:

19:39, 22 April 2011 Courcelles (talk | contribs) deleted page Libertarian Book Club (Expired PROD, concern was: no evidence of notability

I believe the LBC is entirely defunct at this point. The wiki entry did have a link to their site, also available from archive.org (peace be upon them).

The Libertarian Book Club is an independent publisher and political organization, founded in the late 1940s by a group that included Gregory Maximoff, Sam Dolgoff and Valerio Isca, using money from Laurance Labadie.

It has published original and translated texts written from various anarchist and syndicalist perspectives, and re-printed earlier texts that have influenced left-wing politics. It also organized lectures, panels, and forum events on libertarian socialism.

It is most noted for its 1963 publication of The Ego and His Own by Max Stirner. The book, a re-print of a 1907 translation by Steven T. Byington, edited by James J. Martin and with a cover by the son of Rudolf Rocker, revived interest in Stirner as an influence on anarchism and other far-left ideologies and brought Stirner to a wider audience in America.

The Libertarian Book Club still exists as a small press publisher based in Lafayette Street in New York City, and runs the New York Anarchist Forum.