Anarcho-Egoism

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Egoism, or Egoist Anarchism, is an off-the-compass libertarian and anarchist unity ideology, that emphasizes the individual over any other kind of guiding principle; that is, the individual should do as they please, not bound by any government or moral code. He calls what he believes are social constructs and, well, everything he doesn't like a spook. In fact, web pages dedicated to the ideology are a spook, as is the author and the time and effort he spent on it... unless he enjoyed himself, in which case... well, still probably something spooky about it.

History

An illustration of Max Stirner drawn by Friedrich Engels. No known actual photographs of Stirner exist.

Egoism is a philosophy and political ideology developed by Max Stirner in 1844. Outlined in his book "Der Einzige und Sein Eigentum" (Translated as "Ego and It's Own" or more accurately as "The Unique and It's Property") Stirner critiques institutions within society such as Christianity, Nationalism, Morality, Humanism, Socialism, Liberalism, and even society itself through a heavily individualist lens. He comes to call these ideas phantasms, or as they are more commonly known, spooks. This name comes from Stirner to describe the actions of these institutions as similar to that of ghosts. They are immaterial, but can still have an affect on, or even possess the individual.

Hegel was a large influence for Stirner as he was a member of the Young Hegelians, a group of thinkers who followed and analyzed Hegel's teachings. Stirner would grow to resent many members of this group, and even antagonize or satirize them in his book. Stirner built off of the Hegelian Dialectic to form these criticisms, and even to criticize the idea of the Hegelian Dialectic. He sought to bring to the individual's attention that many institutions and ideas are of our own creation and entirely dependent on our perception of them. Stirner likens these institutions to the property of the individual, in that the individual is the one who has the real power over them. The ideas of the State, Religion, Family, etc. are all the property of the individual, and as such the individual may do as they please with these institutions. He argues the individual should strive to use their control over these institutions in order to demolish them in the pursuit of becoming truly unique. (hence Der Enzige "The Unique" in the title.)

Stirner's work was criticized with a sort of begrudging respect by many of the Young Hegelians. Including but not limited to: Marx, Engels, and Feuerbach. While each took their own issues with the idea of Egoism, they would still acknowledge the impact and profound nature of Stirner's work. Stirner would respond to these criticisms, often under pseudonyms so he could pretend he wasn't the one responding.

Beliefs and Philosophy

Self

Within Der Einzige und Sein Eigentum, Max Stirner outlines how You the individual are a fully self-contained being that is beyond full comprehension. Arguing that the "creative-nothing" being both the creator and creation of your existence is the "end point of language"

"Stirner speaks of the Unique and says immediately: Names name you not. He articulates the word, so long as he calls it the Unique, but adds nonetheless that the Unique is only a name. He thus means something different from what he says, as perhaps someone who calls you Ludwig does not mean a Ludwig in general, but means You."

Egoism

Stirner argues that the individual should follow all their desires without regard to morality, laws, rules, 'fixed ideas' or i.e. spooks. However, how this self-interest is defined is necessarily subjective, allowing both selfish and altruistic normative claims to be included.

Stirner argued that everyone is 'selfish' and aims for their own goals, even the community only aims to benefit the community without regard to individuals. While those that have trapped themselves into following a 'fixed idea' or 'spook' are involuntary egoists only following a doctrine because they believe it is the right thing to do or something which is supposed to make them happy or fulfilled.

The difference between an unconscious and a conscious egoist is that the former will be 'possessed' by an empty idea and believe that they are fulfilling a higher cause, but usually being unaware that they are only fulfilling their own desires to be happy or secure; and the latter, in contrast, will be a person that is able to freely choose its actions, fully aware that they are only fulfilling individual desires: "Sacred things exist only for the egoist who does not acknowledge himself, the involuntary egoist [...] Because he would like to cease to be an egoist, he looks about in heaven and earth for higher beings to serve and sacrifice himself to; but, however much he shakes and disciplines himself, in the end he does all for his own sake [...]. On this account I call him the involuntary egoist."

Anarchism

Stirner proposes that most commonly accepted social institutions—including the notion of state, property as a right, natural rights in general and the very notion of society—are mere illusions - spooks, or ghosts in the mind, saying of society that "the individuals are its reality". Stirner wants to "abolish not only the state but also society as an institution responsible for its members". Stirner opposed to both communism and capitalism stating that:

"All attempts to enact rational laws about property have put out from the bay of love into a desolate sea of regulations. Even Socialism and Communism cannot be excepted from this. Everyone one is to be provided with adequate means, for which it is little to the point whether one socialistically finds them still in a personal property, or communistically draws them from a community of goods. The individual's mind in this remains the same; it remains a mind of dependence. The distributing board of equity lets me have only what the sense of equity, its loving care for all, prescribes. For me, the individual, there lies no less of a check in collective wealth than in that of individual others; neither that is mine, nor this: whether the wealth belongs to the collectivity, which confers part of it on me, or to individual possessors, is for me the same constraint, as I cannot decide about either of the two. One the Contrary, Communism, by the abolition of all personal property, only presses me back still more into dependence on another, viz., on the generality or collectivity; and, loudly as it always attacks the "State," what it intends is itself again a State, a status, a condition hindering my free movement, a sovereign power over me. Communism rightly revolts against the pressure I experience from individual proprietors; but still more horrible is the might that it puts in the hands of the collectivity. Egoism takes another way to root out the non-possessing rabble. It does not say: Wait for what the board of equity will—bestow on you in the name of the collectivity (for such bestowal took place in "States" from the most ancient times, each receiving "according to his desert," and therefore according to the measure in which each was able to deserve it, to acquire it by service), but: Take hold, and take what you require! With this the war of all against all is declared. I alone decide what I will have."

Property

For Stirner property was not a case of natural rights or promised deeds of property, it only existed as an extension of the Individual: "Whoever knows how to take, to defend, the thing, to him belongs property. [...] What I have in my power, that is my own. So long as I assert myself as holder, I am the proprietor of the thing" and "I do not step shyly back from your property, but look upon it always as my property, in which I respect nothing. Pray do the like with what you call my property!"

Since he [Stirner] was a radical anarchist, he preferred a political-economic social condition that was anti-statist, anti-capitalist and anti-authoritarian completely void of authoritarian monopolies (whether they positioned themselves as property or sovereignty) which were the enemies of individual liberation. Stirner's egoist anarchism is all about freeing the individual from the domination of property monopolists such as monarchs, governments, or industrialists while at the same time it positions itself against the anti-individualist nature of the traditional political left.

“What every one requires, every one should also take a hand in procuring and producing.” This view on property has been taken by some to be very Communistic, thus sparking movements such as Ego-Communism and Post-Left Anarchism.

Union of Egoists

Stirner's idea of the "Union of egoists" was first expounded in Der Einzige und Sein Eigentum. The Union is understood as a non-systematic association, which Stirner proposed in contradistinction to the state. The Union is understood as a relation between egoists which is continually renewed by all parties' support through an act of will. The Union requires that all parties participate out of a conscious egoism. If one party silently finds themselves to be suffering, but puts up and keeps the appearance, the union has degenerated into something else. This Union is not seen as an authority above a person's own will.

Therefore we two, the State and I, are enemies. I, the egoist, have not at heart the welfare of this "human society," I sacrifice nothing to it, I only utilize it; but to be able to utilize it completely I transform it rather into my property and my creature; i. e., I annihilate it, and form in its place the Union of Egoists". On economics, Stirner sees the idea of Union of egoists apply as follows: "If men reach the point of losing respect for property, every one will have property, as all slaves become free men as soon as they no longer respect the master as master. Unions will then, in this matter too, multiply the individual's means and secure his assailed property"

Some Anarcho-Syndicalism movements have taken this Union of Egoists as a literal basis for syndicalist communes while other Queer Anarchism groups within Catalonia argued for Stirner's non-systematic approach.

Revolution

Stirner criticizes conventional notions of revolution, arguing that social movements aimed at overturning the state are tacitly statist because they are implicitly aimed at the establishment of a new state thereafter. "He harbors the most irreconcilable hostility toward heaven, and yet builds a new heaven daily: piling heaven upon heaven, he only crushes one with another" Stirner instead suggests insurrection not as a violent uprising such as Insurrectionary Anarchism but as a tool of personal liberation: "The revolution aimed at new arrangements; insurrection leads us no longer to let ourselves be arranged, but to arrange ourselves, and sets no glittering hopes on 'institutions'. It is not a fight against the established [...] it is only a working forth of me out of the established. [...] Now, as my object is not an overthrow of the established order but my elevation above it, my purpose and deed are not political or social but (as directed toward myself and my ownness alone) an egoistic purpose indeed"

Dogma

As with the classical skeptics before him, Stirner's method of self-liberation is opposed to faith or belief and he envisions a life free from "dogmatic presuppositions" or any "fixed standpoint". It is not merely Christian dogma that his thought repudiates, but also a wide variety of European atheist ideologies that are condemned as crypto-Christian for putting ideas in an equivalent role:

"Among many transformations, the Holy Spirit became in time the 'absolute idea' [in Hegelian philosophy], which again in manifold refractions split into the different ideas of philanthropy, reasonableness, civic virtue, and so on. [...] Antiquity, at its close, had gained its ownership of the world only when it had broken the world's overpoweringness and 'divinity', recognised the world's powerlessness and 'vanity'. [...] [The philosophers of our time say] Concepts are to decide everywhere, concepts to regulate life, concepts to rule. This is the religious world [of our time], to which Hegel gave a systematic expression, bringing method into the nonsense and completing the conceptual precepts into a rounded, firmly-based dogmatic. Everything is sung according to concepts and the real man, I, am compelled to live according to these conceptual laws. [...] Liberalism simply replaced Christian concepts with humanist ones; human instead of divine, political instead of ecclesiastical, 'scientific' instead of doctrinal etc."

What Stirner proposes is not that concepts should rule people, but that people should rule concepts. The "nothingness" of all truth is rooted in the "nothingness" of the self because the ego is the criterion of (dogmatic) truth. Again, Stirner seems closely comparable to the skeptics in that his radical epistemology directs us to emphasise empirical experience (the "unmediated" relationship of mind as world and world as mind), but it leaves only a very limited validity to the category of "truth". When we regard the impressions of the senses with detachment, simply for what they are (e.g. neither good nor evil), we may still correctly assign truth to them. "Truths are material, like vegetables and weeds; as to whether vegetable or weed, the decision lies in me."

Stylistic Notes

  • Egoism usually wears Stirner's glasses, but this is not consistent nor mandatory. If you use the glasses, feel free to add reflections in the lenses.
  • Make certain that the color is distinct from other anarchists by using (#036a66). Colors are a spook though so it's really up to the ego.

How to Draw

Flag of Anarcho-Egoism

Drawing Egoism is very simple:

  1. Draw a ball.
  2. Draw a line in a lighter shade of black (#141414) diagonally through the ball.
  3. Fill the space below the line in black, and the space above the line in teal (#036A66).
  4. Add the tiny glasses, and you're done!
Color Name HEX RGB
Teal #036A66 3, 106, 102
Black #141414 20, 20, 20


Relations

The Unique

  • Queer Anarchism - Be gay, do crime. "True Femininity" and "True Masculinity" are spooks.
  • Illegalism - My praxis.
  • Insurrectionary Anarchism - Leads us no longer to let ourselves be arranged, but to arrange ourselves, and setting no glittering hope on "institutions”.
  • Anarchism - No gods, no masters.
  • Ego-Communism - If establishing communism pleases your ego, so be it.
  • Ego-Mutualism - "The right of might and the right of contract—are the only rights that ever have been or ever can be. So-called moral rights have no existence." - Benjamin R. Tucker
  • Post-Anarchism - You seem to like my idea of Ownness and my deconstruction of the Dialectic, but you're extremely confusing sometimes.

Mixed

  • Mutualism - "Property as bourgeois liberals understand it deserves the attack of... Proudhon" but not for the sake of the community, that's a spook.
  • Marxism - Fellow Young Hegelian. Him and Engels admired my work, until they called me a bourgeois liberal.
  • File:Soc.png Socialism - "I am not at all against socialism, but against consecrated socialism... not against socialists, but against sacred socialism."
  • Classical Liberalism - "The “individual freedom” over which bourgeois liberalism keeps a jealous watch, does not at all mean a completely free self-determination, through which actions become completely mine, but independence from persons"
  • Anarcho-Communism - "Communism rightly revolts against the pressure I experience from individual proprietors; but still more horrible is the might that it puts in the hands of the collectivity". Atleast you're somewhat Individualist.
  • Soulism - If it pleases your ego - share, but what is this fixed ideal of "abolishing laws of physics?"
  • Avaritionism - "Driven by the thirst for money, the greedy person denies all warnings of the conscience, all feelings of honor, all gentleness and all compassion: he puts every consideration out of sight: the desire carries him away".

Spooks

  • Antifa - You have some bats in the belfry, don't you? If fighting Fascists pleases me I shall do so, but it is not my sacred obligation.
  • Republicanism - "Every state is a despotism, whether the despot be one or many, or, as some like to imagine a republic, all be lords, i.e., play the despot over each other."
  • Ochlocracy - "They must be even more a mere mass, a humanly insignificant, indeed an inhuman, mass, or a mob of inhuman monsters."
  • File:Monkeyzz-Enlightenment.png Enlightenment - "Those Enlightenment philosophers! We’ll feel that! What would form the basis then for this warm belief in ghosts, if not the faith in “the existence of a spiritual essence in general,” and isn’t the latter itself disastrously shaken when one allows insolent rationalists to rattle the former?"
  • Totalitarianism - I read Hegel.
  • Stalinism - "He hopes from the state that it will bring about an equalization of property. Always the state! The great papa!"
  • Capitalism - "Under the regime of the bourgeoisie, the workers always fall into the hands of the possessors, i.e., of those who have any bit of state property at their disposal, especially money and land; therefore, into the hands of the capitalists"
  • Objectivism - People always confuse us. Individualism is not private property rights or being greedy.
  • Nationalism - "With the manure of these corpses, the nation becomes a “blossoming nation.” Individuals have died for the great cause of the nation."
  • Civil Libertarianism - "How often the sacredness of the inalienable rights of man has been helped up before their enemies, and some liberty or other proven and demonstrated to be a “sacred human right”! Those who do this deserve to be laughed at"
  • Christian Theocracy - Why is God's cause to be my cause?
  • Protestant Theocracy - "Protestantism has actually made the human being into a “secret police state.” The spy and lookout, “conscience,” monitors every movement of the mind, and every thought and action is a “matter of conscience,” i.e., a police matter."
  • Communalism - I'm not giving you my spectacles.
  • Ingsoc - Stop censoring my books!

Further Information

Literature

Wikipedia

Videos

Articles

Online Communities

Gallery

  • Egoism's unique expression

    Egoism's unique expression


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