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Archists, Anarchists and Egoists
by Sidney Parker
"I am an anarchist! Wherefore I will not rule
And also ruled I will not be."
-- John Henry Mackay
"What I get by force I get by force, and what
I do not get by force I have no right to."
-- Max Stirner
In his book MAX STIRNER'S EGOISM John P. Clark claims that Stirner
is an anarchist, but that his anarchism is "greatly inadequate". This
is because "he opposes domination of the ego by the State, but he
advises people to seek to dominate others in any other way they can
manage...Stirner, for all his opposition to the State...still exalts
the will to dominate."
Clark's criticism springs from his definition of anarchism as
opposition to "domination" in all its forms "not only domination of
subjects by political rulers, but domination of races by other races,
of females by males, of the young by the old, of the weak by the
strong, and not least of all, the domination of nature by humans."
In view of the comprehensiveness of his definition it is odd that
Clark still sees Stirner's philosophy as a type of anarchism - albeit
a "greatly inadequate" one. He is quite correct in stating that the
_leitmotif_ of _theoretical_ anarchism is opposition to domination
and that, despite his anti-Statist sentiments, Stirner has no
_principled_ objection to domination. Indeed, he writes "I know that
my freedom is diminished even by my not being able to carry out my
will on another object, be this something without will, like a
government, an individual etc."
Is conscious egoism, therefore, compatible with anarchism? There is
no doubt that it is possible to formulate a concept of anarchism that
is ostensibly egoistic. For many years I tried to do this and I know
of several individuals who still claim to be anarchists because they
are egoists. The problem, however, is that anarchism as a _theory_ of
non-domination demands that individuals refrain from dominating
others _even_if_they_could_gain_greater_satisfaction_from_dominating_
_than_from_not_dominating_. To allow domination would be to deny
anarchism. In other words, the "freedom" of the anarchist is yet
another yoke placed around the neck of the individual in the name of
yet another conceptual imperative.
The question was answered at some length by Dora Marsden in two
essays that appeared in her review for THE EGOIST September 12, 1914
and February 1, 1915. The first was entitled THE ILLUSION OF
ANARCHISM; the second SOME CRITICS ANSWERED.
Some months before the appearance of her first essay on anarchism
Marsden had been engaged in a controversy with the redoubtable
Benjamin Tucker in which she had defended what she called "egoist
anarchism" against what she saw as the "clerico-libertarianism" of
Tucker. At the premature end of the controversy Tucker denounced her
as an "egoist and archist," to which she rep+lied that she was quite
willing to "not - according to Mr Tucker - be called 'Anarchist'" but
responded readily to "Egoist".
In the interval between the end of the controversy and the
publication of her first essay she had evidently given considerable
thought to the relation of egoism to anarchism and had decided that
the latter was something in which she could no longer believe. The
gist of her new position was as follows:
Every form of life is archistic. "An archist is one who seeks to
establish, maintain, and protect by the strongest weapons at his
disposal, the law of his own interest." All growing life-forms are
aggressive: "aggressive is what growing means. Each fights for its
own place, and to enlarge it, and enlarging it is a growth. And
because life-forms are gregarious there are myriads of claims to lay
exclusive hold on any place. The claimants are myriad: bird, beast,
plant, insect, vermin - each will assert its sole claim to any place
as long as it is permitted: as witness the pugnacity of gnat, weed,
and flea, the scant ceremony of the housewife's broom, the axe which
makes a clearing, the scythe, the fisherman's net, the slaughter-
house bludgeon: all assertions of aggressive interest promptly
countered by more powerful interests! The world falls to him who can
take it, if instinctive action can tell us anything."
It is this aggressive 'territoriality' that motivates domination.
"The living unit is an organism of embodied wants; and a want is a
term which indicates an apprehension of the existence of barriers -
conditions easy or hard - which lie between the 'setting onwards' and
the 'arrival', i.e. the satisfaction. Thus every want has two sides,
obverse and reverse, of which the one would read the 'not yet
dominated', and the other 'progressive domination'. The two sides
grow at the expense of each other. The co-existence of the
consciousness of a lacking satisfaction, with the corresponding and
inevitable 'instinct to dominate', that which prolongs the lack, are
features which characterize 'life'. Bridging the interval between the
want and its satisfaction is the exercising of the 'instinct to
dominate' - obstructing conditions. The distinction between the
lifeless and the living is comprised under an inability to be other
than a victim to conditions. That of which the latter can be said,
possesses life; that of which the former, is inanimate. It is to this
doministic instinct to which we have applied the label archistic."
Of course, this exercising of the doministic instinct does not
result in every life-form becoming dominant. Power being naturally
unequal the struggle for predominance usually settles down into a
condition in which the less powerful end up being dominated by the
more powerful. Indeed, many of the less powerful satisfy the instinct
to dominate by identifying themselves with those who actually do
dominate: "the great lord can always count on having doorkeepers in
abundance."
Marsden argues that anarchists are among those who, like
Christians, seek to muzzle the doministic tendency by urging us to
renounce our desires to dominate. Their purpose "is to make men
willing to assert that though they are born and inclined archists
they _ought_ to be anarchists." Faced with "this colossal encounter
of interest, i.e. of lives...the anarchist breaks in with his 'Thus
far and no further'" and "introduces his 'law' of 'the inviolability
of individual liberty'." The anarchist is thus a _principled_
_embargoist_ who sees in domination the evil of evils. "'It is the
first article of my faith that archistic encroachments upon the
'free' activity of Men are not compatible with the respect due to the
dignity of Man as Man. The ideal of Humanity forbids the domination
of one man by his fellows'....This humanitarian embargo is an
Absolute: a procedure of which the observance is Good-in-itself. The
government of Man by Man is wrong: the respect of an embargo
constitutes Right."
The irony is, that in the process of seeking to establish this
condition of non-domination called anarchy, the anarchist would be
compelled to turn to a sanction that is but another form of
domination. In the _theoretical_ society of the anarchist they would
have to resort to the intra-individual domination of _conscience_ in
order to prevent the inter-individual domination that characterizes
political government. In the end, therefore, anarchism boils down to
a species of "clerico-libertarianism" and is the gloss covering the
wishes of "a unit possessed of the instinct to dominate - even his
fellow-men."
Not only this, but faced with the _practical_ problems of achieving
the "Free Society", the anarchist fantasy would melt away before the
realities of power. "'The State is fallen, long live the State' - the
furthest going revolutionary anarchist cannot get away from this. On
the morrow of his successful revolution he would need to set about
finding means to protect his 'anarchistic' notions: and would find
himself protecting his own interests with all the powers he could
command, like an archist: formulating his laws and maintaining his
State, until some franker archist arrived to displace and supersede
him."
Nonetheless, having abandoned anarchism Marsden has no intention of
returning to an acceptance of the _authority_ of the State and its
laws for this would be to confuse "an attitude which refused to hold
laws and interests sacred (i.e. whole unquestioned, untouched) and
that which refuses to respect the existence of forces, of which Laws
are merely the outward visible index. It is a very general error, but
the anarchist is especially the victim of it: the greater
intelligence of the archist will understand that though laws
considered as sacred are foolishness, respect for any and every law
is due for just the amount of retaliatory force there may be involved
in it, if it be flouted. Respect for 'sanctity' and respect for
'power' stand at opposite poles, the respecter of the one is the
verbalist, of the other - the archist: the egoist."
I agree with Dora Marsden. Anarchism is a redemptionist secular
religion concerned to purge the world of the sin of political govern-
ment. Its adherents envisage a "free society" in which all archistic
acts are forbidden. Cleansed of the evil of domination "mankind" will
live, so they say, in freedom and harmony and our present
"oppressions" will be confined to the pages of history books. When,
therefore, Marsden writes that "anarchists are not separated in any
way from kinship with the devout. They belong to the Christian Church
and should be recognized as Christianity's picked children" she is
not being merely frivolous. Anarchism is a _theory_ of an ideal
society - whether communist, mutualist, or individualist, matters
little in this respect - of necessity must demand _renunciation_ of
domination both in means and ends. That in _practice_ it would
necessitate another form of domination for its operation is a
contradiction not unknown in other religions - which in no way alter
their essence.
The conscious egoist, in contrast, is not bound by any demand for
renunciation of domination and if it is within his competence he will
dominate others _if_this_is_in_his_interest_. That anarchism and
egoism are not equivalent is admitted, albeit unwillingly, by the
well-known American anarchist John Beverley Robinson - who depicted
an anarchist society in the most lachrymous terms in his REBUILDING
THE WORLD - in his succinct essay EGOISM. Throwing anarchist
principles overboard he writes of the egoist that "if the State does
things that benefit him, he will support it; if it attacks him and
encroaches on his liberty, he will evade it by any means in his
power, if he is not strong enough to withstand it." Again, "if the
law happens to be to his advantage, he will avail himself of it; if
it invades his liberty he will transgress it as far as he thinks it
wise to do so. But he has no regard for it as a thing supernal."
Robinson thus denies the validity of the anarchist principle of
non-domination, since the existence of the State and its laws
necessitates the existence of a permanent apparatus of repression.
If I make use of them for my advantage, then I invoke their
repressive power against anyone who stands opposed to what I want. In
other words, I make use of an _archistic_ action to gain my end.
Egoism, _conscious_ egoism, seen for what it is instead of being
pressed into the service of a utopian ideology, has nothing to do
with what Marsden well-called "clerico-libertarianism". It means, as
she put it in her controversy with Tucker, "....a tub for Diogenes; a
continent for Napoleon; control of a Trust for Rockefeller; all that
I desire for me: _if_we_can_get_them_." It is not based upon any
fantasy for its champions are well aware of the vital difference
between "if I want something I ought to get it" and "being competent
to achieve what I want". The egoist lives among the realities of
power in the world of archists, not among the myths of the renouncers
in the dream world of anarchists.