Karl Marx was a friend to Max Stirner until he wasn’t.  Marx betrayed Stirner first by giving him the cold shoulder as Stirner sank deeper into poverty, and second by a book-length diatribe against his dead former friend eventually published as The German Ideology.

Marx married Jenny von Westphalen in 1843.  Their first child Jenny Caroline seems to have done well enough.  The Marx household economized by a third use for their second child of the same first name with Jenny Laura.  Jenny Laura committed suicide with her husband Paul Lafargue, author of the egoist-sympathetic book The Right to Be Lazy.  The next three children and their last seventh child died young. The father of economics was never able to provide for his children, instead being supported by his sugar-daddy Friedrich Engels and baby-mamma Jenny. Jenny the first sold her own possessions at the pawn shop and gave the money to Marx, starting a tradition that continues to this very day.

Child six, the fifth Jenny, Jenny Julia Eleanor, was partnered to Edward Aveling. Eleanor worked as a translator, including Anarchism and Socialism by George Plechanoff.  Plechanoff’s book rightly credits Max Stirner as the “father of anarchism.”  Eleanor and Edward were active in British socialist circles. Edward especially so, eloping with another and driving Eleanor to suicide.

But these were not the only children of Marx.  In 1851 while mother Jenny was out of the country, her mother (not a Jenny!) hired a maid for Marx named Helene Demuth.  Marx made his maid and the two produce a child.  Friedrich Engels played the perfect wing-man to Marx, allowing the bastard son to take his name and pretending it was his indiscretion, not empowered-boss-Marx sleeping with exploited-employee-Demuth.  Young Frederick Demuth was brought up by a working-class family in England, receiving not one penny of support from his father nor ever meeting Marx.  It was a deathbed confession of Engels that revealed the ruse; Freddy Demuth never knew.

And there you have it – Stirner fathered an idea and Marx fathered suicides and abandoned children.

But I’m not sure I like this thought experiment, wherein the iniquity of the father is visited on the children. I do prefer to consider individuals as individuals, moment by moment.  I’ll leave the group think to socialists.

THE LION AND THE LAMB

“Might shall make right the law of the world” – this was one of the beautiful phrases President Wilson concocted for the benefit of the unthinking. It is indeed a mouth-filling resonant sentence but it is nevertheless untrue.

“Might shall make right the law of the world” is untrue for might IS the law of the world. None but a fool or knave would contend otherwise. That Might is Right holds true in every walk of life, and no evidence can be brought to prove the contrary.

It has been true from the very beginning of time, and it requires but a scratch to disclose that beneath the thin veneer of civilization the brute still rules modern society. It is the universal law of life that the strong shall destroy the weak, that the fittest shall survive. One has to dabble but little in the realms of biology to discover that this law applies to all forms of life.

Man conquered other forms of animal life and crowned himself King of Beasts by his might. Although not endowed with natural offensive and defensive weapons, he has by cunning and mental ability succeeded in adding to his strength by the development of artificial weapons. As yet man has not succeeded in controlling the society in which he lives and has his being: its great contradictions are an unprobed mystery to the great mass of humanity.

Nor did this struggle cease with the subjection of the lower forms of life. As individuals men struggled with one another, and a society developed and groups formed, the groups struggled and always it was the strongest that survived. If a group be weak it was conquered and destroyed or enslaved by the victors. All down through the ages the sword has been the arbitrator and the cry has been: Woe to the Vanquished!

Nor has that law been altered in our time. Never in its struggle with the master class in this or any other country has the working class gained any advantage which was not due to their might. In the various labor battles throughout the country the barking voice of machine guns as they spit death and destruction gives the lie to the statement that ought but might makes right.

When out of their misery the workers arise and cast off the hateful yoke of the master class in their own country they find the ruling classes of the world, but lately at each other’s throats, allied against them. The question of Right does not enter into the decisions of the master class as to whom they shall support and whom they shall oppose. It is a question of which will best serve their economic interests and perpetuate their power. Veiling their deeds behind a screen of words, they strive with every means at their command to gain their ends. They prate of rights only to those whom they wish to use to further their aims. Mortal codes are bended and twisted to serve their needs. Mercy, pity, humanity – these mean nothing and are not considered in the hour of triumph.

True, it is not nice – but it is a fact. It is one of the bitter realities of life, and a lesson we must learn. Power is all that counts. If the workers are ever to emancipate themselves they must secure the power that comes only as the result of education and organization. The sword is still the arbiter.

When the lion and the lamb lie down together the lamb will be inside.

Lest this be considered an anomaly, here is an excerpt from “The Hireling Who Failed” in the August 30th, 1919 edition of The Communist, “official organ of the Communist Party of America”:

The only crime one can commit is to fail. Kolchak is not denounced because of the death train of Siberia, or the putting to death of men, women and children who are suspected of harboring Bolsheviki sympathies, but only because he failed. He failed because he could not marshal sufficient forces to crush the Bolsheviki. His weakness proved that he was wrong. Had he been victorious he would have been right, for the victor is always right, because back of him is the power that has made possible the victory.

“Might is Right!”

Might has been right throughout all previous history of the world; it is right today, and it will be right in all the aeons of ages that stretch before us in the unknown future. Whatever else history may hold in its bosom for mankind, we know there will be only one wrong, and that will be failure, and only one right, and that will be might.

The ruling class is beginning to recognize the fact that Bolshevism is right for Russia, because it is capable of defending itself, while it is wrong in all other countries, because it has not yet acquired sufficient power. When the workers of all countries, like those of Russia, have raised themselves to the position of the ruling class and proclaimed the Dictatorship of the Proletariat of the world, anything they do will be right, because they will have the might to enforce it.

THE SOCIALISTS.
A Characterization of Them by One Who Has No Propaganda to Offer.
To the Editor of The Sun—Sir: In Mr. Ghent’s admirable exposition of myself in a letter to The Sun I fail to perceive a single argument advanced for socialism, but I do perceive something of that irascibility: dogmatism and intolerance which I find in all propagandists. These are the psychological germs of the coming absolutism. At the bottom of Mr. Ghent’s personality, as at the bottom of every socialist, anarchist, communist and social ameliorist, there slumbers the pontiff of a “newer dispensation.” The skilled observer may perceive in this great socialistic movement the beginnings of an intolerant ecclesiasticism, in all enslaving hierarchy, such as Comte planned.
I find all socialists admirable logicians—which means nothing, for logic is merely the mathematical justification of our own prejudices and subconscious tendencies. Each brain, each person, being a premise, each is logical. Socialism, anarchism, communism, Mormonism, are all logical if I grant their several premises. Socialism and anarchism (though their programmes differ widely they agree in this, that they are both optimistic systems, that both believe that the human will is more powerful than cosmic law, that both are ignorant of the ironical principle that roles all human movements) are products of superficial minds—men and women whose hearts are in the right place but unfortunately overflow into their brains. They are incapable of dissociating their heart needs from inexorable, implacable reality.
When I said that mankind had alga been the dupe of phrases and words I did not except myself, being still in the flesh. Personally I prefer a beautiful phrase to a dry fact. Being pessimist, an epicurean, a nihilist, I have no programme to offer the world. I am content to be a fascinated spectater of this serio-comic spectacle. I urge Mr. Merit to drop for a few weeks his socialistic bibles and read Swinburne, Keats and Leconte de Lisle. I say unto him also: Better fifty years of Max Stirner than a cycle of Karl Marx.

Benjamin DeCasseres
New York. November 2.