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non serviam #6
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Contents: Editor's Word
Ken Knudson: A Critique of Communism and
The Individualist Alternative (serial: 6)
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Editor's Word
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There are three main proponents of egoism known today, Max Stirner,
Friedrich Nietzsche and Ayn Rand. Each of them has a very distinct
approach to egoism. While Rand has a very conceptual approach, asking
"who is the right beneficiary of a man's action" [1], Stirner takes
an almost opposite path, rejecting any "justification" outside himself,
in that the root of his egoism is to find in the einzige - the unique,
individual person. Nietzsche speaks about a "will to power" of a
thousand little emotional sub-selves that make out the total self,
while for Rand the self is the mind - the intellect - alone. Stirner
is close to the existentialist camp in his focus on the unique choice,
by his focus on the "creative nothing" which creates itself, while
Nietzsche, who believed himself to descend from Polish nobility,
emphasizes "fate" [amor fati] and belonging to the blood one is born
into.
So, we see there are more than enough choices of ones "egoism". Instead
of embracing one alternative and denouncing the other two as the false
- and possibly even evil - egoisms, I will try to explain in general (*)
outlines why I have chosen to emphasize one of them - namely Stirner+s.
Stirner is often described as a nominalist, one to whom concepts and/or
universals have no meaning outside groupings made by observers. I have
an opposite opinion on that: For Stirner, the road to egoism is seen as
going through Idealism, not outside. He recognizes ideals and thoughts,
only does not - surrender to them. Stirners "anti-conceptualism" is to
be found late in his book: "The conceptual question 'what is man?' -
has then changed into the personal question 'who is man?' With 'what'
the concept was sought for, in order to realize it; with 'who' it is no
longer any question at all, but the answer is personally on hand at
once in the asker: the question ansers itself." "... no -concept-
expresses me, nothing that is designated as my essence exhausts me;
they are only names." This is his insistence on his uniqueness as an
individual. An insistence not found equally strong by Nietzsche or by
Rand. Where the latter focusses strongly on abstract "Man" (**), whose
moral characteristics follow from the possession of reason, the former
at times (***) goes as far as negating the individual in his quest for
the "Ubermensch", the super-man, which is supposed to fulfill some
longing to go beyond oneself and beyond the transitory stage of Man: [2]
Man is but a rope over the abyss between the animal and the Ubermensch.
So, Stirner is unique in his emphasis on uniqueness. This is the central
element in Stirner+s thought - the first-person and particular view-
point, the me-outlook, as opposed to the third-person and general view-
point. The third-person, gemeral view-point is for him justified only
insofar as it is grounded in the me-outlook. "Away, then, with every
cause that is not altogether _my_ cause!"
Among the three, Stirner is the only one who makes no claim for anyone
as to how they should live, or what is suitable for their "kind", but
leaves it totally to individual choice. This is why I prefer Stirner.
Svein Olav
[1] The Ayn Rand Lexicon
[2] Nietzsche, "Thus Spoke Zarathustra".
(*) {The field is now open: Anyone wanting to express their unique path
to egoism and why it has taken the form it has is invited to write
such an article. If you want, make it an autobiography. Myself, I
plan a more comprehensive article later. This was a start.}
(**){There is an open question of whether, and if so to which degree,
Stirner's criticism of Feuerbach's "Man" is applicable to Rand's
concept of "Man" as in "qua man". Perhaps subject for a later
article.}
(***){Nietzsche is no systematic philosopher, and so one can find
support both for and against egoism in his writing.}
____________________________________________________________________
Ken Knudson:
A Critique of Communism
and
The Individualist Alternative
(continued)
REVOLUTION: THE ROAD TO FREEDOM?
"It's true that non-violence has been a dismal failure.
The only bigger failure has been violence."
- Joan Baez
There's an old story about a motorist who stopped a
policeman in downtown Manhattan and asked him how he could
get to the Brooklyn Bridge. The officer looked around,
thought a minute, scratched his head and finally replied,
"I'm sorry, but you can't get there from here. Some
anarchists are now wondering if you can get to the free
society from where we stand today. I must confess that I,
too, harbour some doubts. But if there is a way, it is
incumbent upon all who wish to find that way to carefully
examine the important end-means problem.
"The end justifies the means." Few people would argue
with this trite statement. Certainly all apologists of
government must ultimately fall back on such reasoning to
justify their large police forces and standing armies.
Revolutionary anarchists must also rely on this argument to
justify their authoritarian methods "just one more time",
the revolution being for them "the unfreedom to end
unfreedom." It seems that the only people who reject
outright this article of faith are a handful of (mostly
religious) pacifists. The question I'd like to consider
here is not whether the end JUSTIFIES the means (because I,
too, tend to feel that it does), but rather whether the end
is AFFECTED by the means and, if so, to what extent.
That the end is affected by the means should be
obvious. Whether I obtain your watch by swindling you,
buying it from you, stealing it from you, or soliciting it
as a gift from you makes the same watch "graft", "my
property", "booty", or "a donation." The same can be said
for social change. Even so strong an advocate of violent
revolution as Herbert Marcuse, in one of his rare lapses
into sanity, realised this fact:
"Unless the revolution itself progresses through freedom,
the need for domination and repression would be carried over
into the new society and the fateful separation between the
`immediate' and the `true' interest of the individuals would
be almost inevitable; the individuals would become the
objects of their own liberation, and freedom would be a
matter of administration and decree. Progress would be
progressive repression, and the `delay' in freedom would
threaten to become self-propelling and self-perpetuating."
[56]
- 25 -
But despite the truth of Marcuse's observation, we still
find many anarchists looking for a shortcut to freedom by
means of violent revolution. The idea that anarchism can be
inaugurated by violence is as fallacious as the idea that it
can be sustained by violence. The best that can be said for
violence is that it may, in rare circumstances, be used as
an expedient to save us from extinction. But the
individualist's rejection of violence (except in cases of
self-defence) is not due to any lofty pacifist principles;
it's a matter of pure pragmatism: we realise that violence
just simply does not work.
The task of anarchism, as the individualist sees it, is
not to destroy the state, but rather to destroy the MYTH of
the state. Once people realise that they no longer need the
state, it will - in the words of Frederick Engels -
inevitably "wither away" ("Anti-Duehring", 1877) and be
consigned to the "Museum of Antiquities, by the side of the
spinning wheel and the bronze axe" ("Origin of the Family,
Private Property and the State", 1884). But unless
anarchists can create a general and well-grounded disbelief
in the state as an INSTITUTION, the existing state might be
destroyed by violent revolution or it might fall through its
own rottenness, but another would inevitably rise in its
place. And why shouldn't it? As long as people believe the
state to be necessary (even a "necessary evil", as Thomas
Paine said), the state will always exist.
We have already seen how Kropotkin would usher in the
millennium by the complete expropriation of all property.
"We must see clearly in private property what it really is,
a conscious or unconscious robbery of the substance of all,
and seize it joyfully for the common benefit." [57] He
cheerfully goes on to say, "The instinct of destruction, so
natural and so just...will find ample room for
satisfaction." [58] Kropotkin's modern-day heirs are no
different. Noam Chomsky, writing in the "New York Review of
Books" and reprinted in a recent issue of "Anarchy",
applauds the heroism of the Paris Commune of 1871,
mentioning only in passing that "the Commune, of course [!],
was drowned in blood." [59] Later in the same article he
writes, "What is far more important is that these ideas
[direct workers' control] have been realised in spontaneous
revolutionary action, for example in Germany and Italy after
World War I and in Spain (specifically, industrial
Barcelona) in 1936." [60] What Chomsky apparently finds
relatively UNimportant are the million-odd corpses which
were the direct result of these "spontaneous revolutionary
actions." He also somehow manages to ignore the fact that
the three countries he mentions - Germany, Italy and Spain -
were without exception victims of fascism within a few years
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of these glorious revolutions. One doesn't need a great deal
of insight to be able to draw a parallel between these
"spontaneous" actions with their reactionary aftermaths and
the spontaneous "trashings" which are currently in fashion
in the United States. But it seems the Weathermen really DO
"need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows." [61]
The question of how to attain the anarchist society has
divided anarchists nearly as much as the question of what
the anarchist society actually is. While Bakunin insisted on
the necessity of "bloody revolutions" [62], Proudhon
believed that violence was unnecessary - saying instead that
"reason will serve us better." [63] The same discord was
echoed on the other side of the Atlantic some decades later
when, in the wake of the infamous Haymarket bombing, the
issue of violence came to a head. Benjamin Tucker, writing
in the columns of "Liberty", had this to say about
accusations leveled against him by Johann Most, the
communist-anarchist editor of "Freiheit":
"It makes very little difference to Herr Most what a man
believes in economics. The test of fellowship with him lies
in acceptance of dynamite as a cure-all. Though I should
prove that my economic views, if realised, would turn our
social system inside out, he would not therefore regard me
as a revolutionist. He declares outright that I am no
revolutionist, because the thought of the coming revolution
(by dynamite, he means) makes my flesh creep. Well, I
frankly confess that I take no pleasure in the thought of
bloodshed and mutilation and death. At these things my
feelings revolt. And if delight in them is a requisite of a
revolutionist, then indeed I am no revolutionist. When
revolutionist and cannibal become synonyms, count me out, if
you please. But, though my feelings revolt, I am not
mastered by them or made a coward by them. More than from
dynamite and blood do I shrink from the thought of a
permanent system of society involving the slow starvation of
the most industrious and deserving of its members. If I
should ever become convinced that the policy of bloodshed is
necessary to end our social system, the loudest of today's
shriekers for blood would not surpass me in the stoicism
with which I would face the inevitable. Indeed, a plumb-
liner to the last, I am confident that under such
circumstances many who now think me chicken-hearted would
condemn the stony-heartedness with which I should favour the
utter sacrifice of every feeling of pity to the necessities
of the terroristic policy. Neither fear nor sentimentalism,
then, dictates my opposition to forcible methods. Such being
the case, how stupid, how unfair, in Herr Most, to picture
me as crossing myself at the mention of the word revolution
simply because I steadfastly act on my well-known belief
- 27 -
that force cannot substitute truth for a lie in political
economy!" [64]
It is this issue of economics which generally sorts
anarchists into the violent and non-violent wings of
anarchism. Individualists, by and large, are pacifists in
practice (if not in theory), whereas the communists tend
toward violent revolution.* Why is this so? One reason I
think is that individualists are more concerned with
changing the conditions which directly affect their lives
than they are with reforming the whole world "for the good
of all." The communists, on the other hand, have a more
evangelical spirit. Like all good missionaries, they are out
to convert the unbeliever - whether he likes it or not. And
inevitably this leads to violence. Another reason communists
are more prone to violence than individualists can be found,
I think, in looking at the nature of the force each is
willing to use to secure and sustain his respective system.
Individualists believe that the only justifiable force is
force used in preventing invasion (i.e. defensive force).
Communists, however, would compel the worker to pool his
products with the products of others and forbid him to sell
his labour or the products of his labour. To "compel" and
"forbid" requires the use of offensive force. It is no
wonder, then, that most communists advocate violence to
achieve their objectives.
If freedom is really what we anarchists crack it up to
be, it shouldn't be necessary to force it down the throat of
anyone. What an absurdity! Even so superficial a writer as
Agatha Christie recognised that "if it is not possible to go
back [from freedom], or to choose to go back, then it is not
freedom." [66] A. J. Muste used to say that "there is no way
to peace - peace IS the way." The same thing is true about
freedom: the only way to freedom is BY freedom. This
statement is so nearly tautological that it should not need
saying. The only way to realise anarchy is for a sufficient
number of people to be convinced that their own interests
demand it. Human society does not run on idealism - it runs
on pragmatism. And unless people can be made to realise that
anarchy actually works for THEIR benefit, it will remain
--------------------
* There are exceptions of course. It is hard to imagine
a more dedicated pacifist than Tolstoy, for example. On the
other side of the coin is Stirner, who quotes with near
relish the French Revolutionary slogan "the world will have
no rest till the last king is hanged with the guts of the
last priest." [65]
- 28 -
what it is today: an idle pipe dream; "a nice theory, but
unrealistic." It is the anarchist's job to convince people
otherwise.
Herbert Spencer - the great evolutionist of whom Darwin
said, "He is about a dozen times my superior" - observed the
following fact of nature:
"Metamorphosis is the universal law, exemplified throughout
the Heavens and on the Earth: especially throughout the
organic world; and above all in the animal division of it.
No creature, save the simplest and most minute, commences
its existence in a form like that which it eventually
assumes; and in most cases the unlikeness is great - so
great that kinship between the first and the last forms
would be incredible were it not daily demonstrated in every
poultry-yard and every garden. More than this is true. The
changes of form are often several: each of them being an
apparently complete transformation - egg, larva, pupa,
imago, for example ... No one of them ends as it begins; and
the difference between its original structure and its
ultimate structure is such that, at the outset change of the
one into the other would have seemed incredible." [67]
This universal law of metamorphosis holds not only for
biology, but for society as well. Modern-day Christianity
resembles the early Christian church about as much as a
butterfly resembles a caterpillar. Thomas Jefferson would
have been horrified if he could have foreseen the
"government by the consent of the governed" which today is
the hereditary heir of his Declaration of Independence.
French revolutionaries took turns beheading one another
until that great believer in "les droits de l'homme",
Napoleon Bonaparte, came upon the scene to secure "liberte,
egalite, fraternite" for all. And wasn't it comrade Stalin
who in 1906 so confidently forecast the nature of the coming
revolution?: "The dictatorship of the proletariat will be a
dictatorship of the entire proletariat as a class over the
bourgeoisie and not the domination of a few individuals over
the proletariat." [68] The examples of these ugly duckling
stories in reverse are endless. For as Robert Burns wrote
nearly two centuries ago:
"The best laid schemes o' mice and men
Gang aft a-gley;
An' lea'e us nought but grief and pain
For promis'd joy." [69]
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REFERENCES
56. Herbert Marcuse, "Reason and Revolution: Hegel and the
Rise of Social Theory" (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul,
Ltd., 1967), p. 435. This quotation was taken from the
supplementary chapter written in 1954. The original book was
first published by Oxford University Press in 1941.
57. Kropotkine, Paroles, p. 341.
58. Ibid., p. 342.
59. Noam Chomsky, "Notes on Anarchism," "Anarchy 116,"
October, 1970, p. 316.
60. Ibid., p. 318.
61. Bob Dylan, "Subterranean Homesick Blues," 1965.
62. Eltzbacher, op. cit., p. 89.
63. Ibid., p. 57.
64. Benjamin R. Tucker, "Instead of a Book (By a Man Too
Busy to Write One)" (New York: Benj. R. Tucker, 1897), p.
401. Reprinted from "Liberty," May 12, 1888.
65. Max Stirner (Johann Kaspar Schmidt), "The Ego and His
Own: The Case of the Individual Against Authority," trans.
Steven T. Byington (New York: Libertarian Book Club, 1963),
p. 298. "Der Einzige und sein Eigentum" was written in 1844
and translated into English in 1907, when it was published
in New York by Benj. Tucker.
66. Agatha Christie, "Destination Unknown" (London: Fontana
Books), p. 98.
67. Spencer, op, cit., pp. 323-4.
68. Stalin, op. cit., p. 97.
69. Robert Burns, "To a Mouse," 1785, stanza 7.
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- "Whoever is a complete person does not need - to be an authority!" *
- From +The False Principle of Our Education+ *
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