I am enclosing the first issue of a boot-leg publication called the Clarion. L. J. Shapiro is a contractor, sympathizer but not an anarchist. He made available sufficient funds for the first three issues. Archie Turner was formerly with Havel on [illegible] Gordin, you know. Amedy Chappeau is a French comrade, an individualist and always considered a dependable comrade. I understand he has merely lent his name to give the Clarion some reason to be. Malfew Seklew is a street fakir with a flair for alliterative sentences. He claims to have been a follower of Kropotkin’s for more than 30 years until he found out how much more he knew than Peter and what damn fools and underdeveloped organisms the anarchists are when he decided that nothing matters but the ego and that the greatest social system man has ever devised is the capitalist system which provides bread and luxuries for hordes too dumb to provide it for themselves. Therefore if 30 capitalists would quit business tomorrow, the whole working class would starve within the next week. He is something over seventy and draws an old age pension from the State of NY, which may have something to do with his defense of capitalism! Anyhow no one takes him seriously except A. Gordin and A. Turner. But he is one of the sponsors of the Clarion. As to its contents, they speak for themselves.

Union of Egoist Note: the letter immediately following this one is Emma Goldman’s statement of earnings from Living My Life, published by Alfred A. Knopf.

Reproduced below is one of the known Seklew pieces.

THE EGO
By MALFEW SEKLEW
as published in The Clarion | Vol. II – No. 2. (14) | February-March 1934

An Ego is an Individual, an entity with an identity. He may be either a cipher or a character; a nonentity or a personality; an unconscious Ego, or a Conscious Egoist.

What is this thing called Myself?

What is an Ego? It is the essence of energy, the quintessence of all the vitalities registering themselves in the sensorium; a rendezvous for all the realities of Life; a depot of desire; a storeroom of sensation and an emporium of Enlightened Egoism.

The Conscious Ego, the I is the eye of evolution looking down the corridors of consciousness into the future, at the same time, seeking new sensations which may lead to new wisdom.

Ego Consciousness is the rule of reason measuring the motives of man.

You are the most important Ego in the word to yourself. You are somebody; yourself is sacred; every thing you do is done the best way you know how.

Every Conscious Ego can say:
I am, I am myself, I am I.

I am conscious of my present state with ability to differentiate, and separate the past from the present, and with power to mould the future in some degree.

I am conscious of continuity of existence. I am capable of testing the pulse of personality, and of recording the added consciousness of the Ego.

Increase your consciousness and you will increase the circumferences of your happiness.

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