DOMINANCE AND SUBMISSION VERSUS EGOISM

The motive for the rebellion of young people against parental and institutional authority is well-known: young people are sick and tired of surviving by kissing ass’. Infants come into the world completely at the mercy of their parents. To the infant it appears that his survival and well-being rests on his ability to elicit love from his parents. He soon discovers that the way to elicit “love” is to submit to his parents urge to dominate. The child thus learns to respond to his parents values. He learns that it is “cute” and therefore a means of survival to ape the subservient role.

The subservient role is nearly universal among toddlers, but soon the resentment and hatred that submission breeds creates a desire for the opposite, that is, dominance. Perhaps temper tantrums are the method by which the child first attempts to assume the dominant role.

Existing society can be described as a complex pecking order, designed to perpetuate the vicious circle of submission, resentment, and then, compulsion to dominate others which infects more people with the psychology of submission.

Society is divided into three major divisions: men, women, and children. Men dominate women and women dominate children. There is, of course, also a system of dominance and submission within these broad categories that is far too complex to describe at this time. Careful observation will reveal that the great bulk of people spend most of their time jockeying for position in various pecking orders. Politics, whether on the job, in the sphere of public office, or voluntary groups, is the euphemism people use to describe the quest for dominance and power.

Survival by dominance and submission systems is really a primitive Social system of trade that man shares with animals. Practically all animals that live in groups such as chickens, wolves, monkeys, and cattle have elaborate pecking orders that provide the group solidarity necessary for survival.

The submissive partner in any relation trades his self-respect, individuality, and self-assertiveness for protection and safety. The submitter says, “I am weak and therefore, no threat to you. I will satisfy your cravings and follow your orders. I’ll kiss your ass as long as you let me live.”

The dominant partner, on the other hand, trades the physical courage necessary for the defense of the weak for the pleasure and material advantage of being the master of slaves. The dominator says “As long as you are no threat I will keep you alive for my benefit.”

This view of human society is grim indeed. No doubt it is this view of social reality that leads various submitting groups such as women, blacks, workers, and youth to rebel. Rebellion is an attempt to regain the self lost in the degradation of submissive behavior. Unfortunately, rebellious movements too often merely attempt to turn the tables by assuming the dominant role or make subservience to the collective universal as in socialism rather than attempt to banish dominance and submission from the social scene.

Fortunately, there is an ethical orientation that does not involve the mutual degradation of dominance and submission. That ethical Outlook is egoism. The egoist does not live for others or ask others to live for him. He worships nothing above the self. He does not himself or expect others to trade away their self-respect for survival. The egoist must temporarily make terms with superior force, but never in his heart surrenders his life to another in honest submission. Egoism is the rejection of the “slave morality” which posits submission and meekness as a virtue as well as a rejection of the “master morality” that makes virtues out of exploitation, aggression, and brute strength. What would a society of egoists be like? It would be a society where autonomous individuals trade value for value, where forthright selfish trade in services and goods replaced the degrading transactions of dominance and submission, where the harmony of rational self-interest replaces the chaos of force and bureaucracy, where people do not set their calendars to satisfy so-called “social obligations,” where there are no power lusters who juggle pacifying the masses against getting their own way, where there are no resentful, downtrodden masses who must trade in their self-esteem in order to live, where productive effort replaces the whining demand that self-sacrifice be rewarded, where people are equal in spiritual egoism, but unequal to the degree of their effort, ability, and luck, where supply and demand rather than government edict directs productive enterprise, and where individual rights are defended and aggression prohibited. This is egoist anarchy!

The table of contents for this issue is as follows:

Some of the other people associated with/published in Invictus:
George H Smith (co-editor – author of Atheism: The case Against God)
Harry Elmer Barnes
Jeff Riggenbach (Listen to episode three of our podcast!)
Wendy McElroy (Index of Liberty, egoist feminism, and much more)
Michael Hoy (Loompanics Unlimited!)
Lysander Spooner
Murray N. Rothbard
John Zube
Pete McAlpine
Kerry Thornley

We are still raising funds to purchase an entire set of Libertarian Microfiche, to ensure that things like this don’t get lost forever.

Part of the problem with Zube’s LMP project is the sheer volume of material. He’s put over 500,000 pages onto microfiche, and I have to rely on archived version of his indexes, and not everything was indexed digitally… and then, really, you have to know you’d be interested in something to search for it. And even then, and index is only so complete.

So, while I was scanning pages from egoist journals The Storm (1976) and Minus One (1963), I stumbled across INVICTU$. Subtitled “A Journal of Objectivist and Libertarian Opinion” and “Published by the CSCLA Students of Objectivism”.

“We’ll that’s neat” I thought, and I scanned the first page. I was there for other stuff, but I scanned it to remind myself that it existed and I should go back to it.

And then today, while looknig at my scans, I decided I might post this anomaly, even though I’d only scanned one page. AND THEN I SAW IT: LOIS ROLLINS

Of course, beginning on PAGE TWO, is an aticle titled “F.C.C.: FASCIST CENSORSHIP COMMISSION by Louis Rollins.” And the name made a light bulb go off, and it was a few keystrokes over to The Hoover Hog blog, run by my comrade Chip Smith to reread his eulogy for L.A. Rollins.

L.A. Rollins received his B.A. degree in philosophy from California State College at Los Angeles in 1970, which happens to be the year I was born. Throughout the glorious decade that followed he edited and published a sporadic fringe-libertarian newsletter called Invictus: A Journal of Individualist Thought (Good luck finding a copy).

Well, no luck needed at all, just a second generation German anarchist in Australia who obsessed over putting out 1,770+ microfiche with amazing material on them for many decades.

And every time this happens, and it happens every time I look at the microfiche, I cringe thinking about Zube dying and only having a partial collection of his fiche to reference. And I’ve considered holding a fundraiser to obtain the full set (Kickstarter? Patreon? Does anyone care about those?). In a recent e-mail with Zube I asked him about it:

You could have the total series of 1779 issues for the equivalent of US $ 1779, less the issues you already have, or those, you do not really want.

So that’s where I’m at. And I’m skeptical that there are enough people out there who would contribute to the Union of Egoists obtaining a full set of microfiche. Is it possible to find 90 people to pitch in $20 without spending a month of my time running a fund-raiser, and therefore basically negating a month of my time in actually doing research and archiving and website building?!?! It’s a sticky-wicket if there ever was one…

In an online subject index, Zube discusses some compilations of “Freedom Quotes” including his own project, and L.A. Rollins’ “Lucifer’s Lexicon”:

QUOTATIONS ON LIBERTY, see e.g. LACONICS OF LIBERTY, compiled by Sprading, PP 220/21, L.E. Read, An ABC of Freedom, Slogans for Liberty, Spencer, Sumner. See FREE MAN’S ALMANACH, The Forgotten Man’s Almanac (1093). Firstly, I would like a complete list of all such handbooks. Secondly, I would like all of them to be made available on microfilm. Thirdly, I would like these compilations scanned and integrated into a single collection, to be made available on fiche and disks. Then I would like a scanning and search of the ca. 15000 different books of quotations, for truthful ones on liberty and related subjects, to be finally added to the encyclopedia of Slogans for Liberty. Only then would we have all this proverbial wisdom sufficiently mobilized. To this ought to be added encyclopedias of definitions and of the best refutations so far found or myths, errors and prejudices that remain obstacles to progress. (Towards the latter, I do also collect A – Z handbooks.) I collected towards the quotations project e.g.: Peter’s Quotations, Seldes, The Great Quotations, Mencken’s book of quotations, Timko’s Libertarian Cartoons & Assorted Quotations, vol. I, Bachman’s Book of Freedom Quotations, Bierce, The Enlarged Devil’s Dictionary, Berman’s Quotations from the Anarchists, Bufe’s The Heretic’s Handbook of Quotations, Rollins’ Lucifer’s Lexicon, intend to buy from LFB at least: Scasz: The Untamed Tongue – A dissenting dictionary & Winokur, The Portable Curmudgeon. I possess among others: Dagobert D. Runes: a) Dictionary of Thought, b) Handbook of Reason, c) Treasury of Thought, d) A Book of Contemplation. I filmed my own ABC Against Nuclear War (in pp 16-18), Read’s ABC of Freedom, Percy Greaves’ Mises Made Easier, and am always on the lookout for more such handbooks. Anyone ready to swap for some of my fiche? My own compilation, Slogans for Liberty, may come to ca. 20 fiche. So far only vol. I – IV are out, covering A to part of D, with a total of 840 pp. The rest – when I get around to do the keyboarding. – I wish libertarians would at last apply division of labour to such projects. See: SLOGANS FOR LIBERTY. – J.Z.

One of the heartbreaking aspects of Zube’s LMP project is in all the material he is pleading with others to join the cause of microfiche supremacy:

This was after the meticulous index created by Zube for a microfiche containing ALL 455 pages of this obscure anarchist journal that comprise issues 1-10. Amazing.

And, well, by trying to research the project itself (something that in itself should have someone dedicated to do), it seems like any year now it could become entirely forgotten, much less how obscure it seemed to be as it was operational.

Every LMP microfiche has an index page, sometimes simple, sometimes very elaborate. I look at just the range of material from this one from 1981:

And I’m in awe. Did anyone else save a copy of a Chummy Fleming Bookshop flyer for the ages in an archival format other than paper? Did anyone save a paper version? Does anyone care? I don’t know.

Will I turn into the 21st century John Zube, constantly making appeals to others to assist me in producing the greatest egoist resource ever produced? Christ I hope not, but is there another way to obtain an acquisitions budget as an individual unaffiliated with an academic or other non-profit entity? Do I really just funnel the meager profits from Underworld Amusements into a free resource for others? No, that can’t happen either.

Circling back to INVICTU$, I’ve taken about 10-12 hours of personal time to sit in a room with microfiche scanning equipment to digitize an amazing amount of work that will eventually see the light of day in digital or print form, emanating from the UoE project. I’ve invested hundreds of dollars into research and archival materials.

So I’m thinking I definitely need an acquisitions budget. That’s not going to be sufficiently generated from profits of selling books or other items. I’m pretty sure it needs to come from you, the person interested enough to read this far. If you have thoughts on the subject, please contact us.

If you’d like to do something very concrete to support the project, kick over some bucks. All money sent through this paypal button will be used exclusively for UoE acquisitions and project needs: