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Title: Max Stirner, Individualist Anarchy, and A Critical Look at Egoist Communism Author: Renzo Connors Date: 9/9/2020 Language: en Topics: Max Stirner, Egoism, Individualist Anarchy, Individualist, Anti-Civilization, Anti-Work, Warzone Distro Source: https://warzonedistro.noblogs.org/post/2017/09/07/max-stirner-individualist-anarchy-and-a-critical-look-at-egoist-communism/
Communism
“Every time we take a step we're surrounded by the ideological birds of
prey who feed on our possibilities, fill themselves with concepts of our
desires and re-enslave us with beautiful combinations of words which
seem to depict the world we failed to realize." - Fredy Perlman
"Communism ...... even if it is not authoritarian andMarxist, but
libertarian and Kropotkinist, would be a society in which the
legislative and executive power would be exercised either by acephalous
mass assemblies (Populism) or by delegates elected by the
masses(democracy). Both would mean that the individual would always be
governed by the many. And this would be agovernment worse than any
other, whether by one or afew, because the mass is stupid, ferocious,
tyrannical, andworse than the lowest individual." - Enzo Martucci
The texts and quotes that I selected to use for this critique share
similarities that run through various other egoist communist texts. For
me these themes are egoist communism's main shortcomings. I agree with
egoist communists on various points, but overall I find the critiques,
which l outline in the following piece, outweigh the more agreeable
aspects of their ideas, which ultimately is an attempt by red prophets
to re-brand and turn Stirner into a system similar to Marx.
For me, egoist communism is a contradiction. By implying
"egoist-communism" is implying a system, a spook, something sacred to
chase after.
Egoism is a philosophy for individuation. A weapon for self-liberation.
Communism, on the other hand, is a herd philosophy which consumes the
individual as an autonomous being, domesticating her for the role of
worker, producer, and consumer not that different from capitalism.
Although communism may offer some better privileges for her
subordination to the system, ultimately the individual will still bea
captive prisoner to the collective system
D.Z. Rowan, in their writing "A Brief Description of EgoistCommunism",
explains:
"Even the idea of a set system itself is opposed by egoism,because a set
system requires a set identity for those enacting the system, the
individuals, only through conforming to the constructs of the system can
they still call it that system."
The author recognises and describes egoism as being anti-systematic.They
then go on to contradict themself in the same paragraph:
“We practice egoist communism not out of the idea that itis the right
system, it is not even that, it is the system that benefits us, the
system that we want to practice in order to improve our lives and
destroy that which attempts to oppress us."
And there it is, the egoist communist system. Rowan continues on:
“Egoist communism is not some sort of ideal for society to achieve, it
is a practice" and doesn’t "seek to draw out the blueprint for an ideal
society".
Egoism is not and cannot be a system or a society. Rowan recognises this
themself in their writing but continues contradicting themself
advocating and explaining how this "egoist communist" system will work.
Rowan explains:
".....abolish private property in favour of common ownership, only
through common ownership can I have power and autonomy in every product
I want or need. If everything is owned by everyone, and I am a part of
that everyone, I own and have access to everything held in that common.
"...the main distinguishment from other forms of communism is that
though all resources are owned by everyone, they are not distributed by
everyone. To avoid an authority alien to the individual; goods are not
distributed by a single organization, goods are distributed by voluntary
groups on the basis of use and labour.Imagine an economy of gangs, all
who join a gang join it out of self-interest; though they may agree to
work to get and maintain the good or service, they nevertheless join
because they know they will get something out of it. "
"...This does not rule out the existence of a central distributor, but
that distributor must be voluntary; nothing should force you to rely on
and work for that distributor or any."
Rowan explains that on a micro-level in the egoist communist
society,production and distribution will be done completely voluntarily
using the form of union of egoists as the organizational method to
achieve this. For such an impressive project and array of production and
distribution to exist on a macro-level, would require a centralized
system.
Rowan unwittingly advocates for just that, but the name is changed to
communes or "communes of egoists".
For when a union of egoists is not adequate to cover the masses needs
and wants "... a commune deals with a wider range of demands."
These communes would be the managers of the
egoist-communist"collectively owned economy".
A commune in this sense would have to be a formal and permanent
organisation which would need specialist roles and positions. It could
not be otherwise. It would be a state in all sense of the word. The
individual becomes the property of the commune (i.e. the majority).An
individual would be at the mercy of the majority and would have to go
along with whatever the majority agreed even if the individual did not
agree. If the individual struck up too much of a fuss they could be
scorned and ostracized from the commune and likewise from the“egoist (or
anarcho) communist" society. This is the essence of the contradiction of
egoist communism.
If this system is not ruled by the tyranny of the majority it will be
ruled by the tyranny of specialists, the managers, the experts, the
politicians, the most knowledgeable, the bureaucrats, the best workers
who contribute and put in the most work. These will form a new ruling
class of the egoist communist system.
The egoist communists want to destroy all of capitalism’s institutions
and replace them with communist ones. It will be thesecommunes where the
big decisions of society will be made, whether you agree with them or
not. This is where the tyranny of the majority or the specialists will
come into effect. This is where you will be alienated by the spook of
your own creation. These communes will be the making of a new state
apparatus. These will be the instruments used to decide what's what,
what's good for me, what's good for my interests.
But the egoist communists shriek that their society will be
completely"voluntary". But it will be of voluntary obedience. Obedience
to the commune, obedience to the majority, to the specialists and
managers.If there is no obedience there could always be a purge. I'm
sure there would be an egoist communist police force to deal with the
threat of non-obedient counter revolutionaries.
A communist society (even one as egoist or anarchist at the start)would
be no better than any of the other attempts at creating such in history,
a totalitarian nightmare. Think about leftist spaces, the call-outs, the
group-think, the witch hunts, show trials, the purges, and hierarchies.
The future egoist communist society, if such a thing was ever to happen,
would resemble one because they (the leftists) wouldbe the managers of
this society.
No societies are voluntary. All have always been based on the
domestication and enslavement of the individual. And for that I am atwar
with society (whether capitalist or communist) because all
itsinstitutions and systems of domination and domestication are at
warwith me as a unique individual, wanting to control and force me
intosocially constructed roles, such as wage slavery and to be a good
andobedient citizen.
"Today it seems to do everyone good when they hear that society is on
the way to adapting the individual to general requirements, and that the
happiness and at the same time the sacrifice of the individual lies in
feeling himself to be a useful member and instrument of the whole:
except that one is at present very uncertain as to where this whole isto
be sought, whether in an existing state or one still to be created, or
in the nation, or in a brotherhood of peoples,or in new little economic
communalities." - Friedrich Nietzsche
In the text "The Relevance of Max Stirner to Anarcho-Communists"by Matty
Thomas, the author states:
"Anarchists who wish to demolish the authority of the state and of
capital but want to leave the authority of fixed ideas like morality,
humanity, rights, or altruism intact only go halfway. For the egoist,
these spooks can be even more vicious than the more visible forms of
authority.Altruism, living to serve others, is one of the most
pernicious superstitions extant in our civilization today.Workers engage
in a terrible altruistic action every day when they labor to enrich the
capitalist, who receives much simply by virtue of the fact that he has
so much already. Women are victims of altruism when they wasteaway
"living to serve" a man who is nothing but a tiny tyrant over the home.
The other crimes that come from altruism are endless, and it's clear to
conscious egoists that altruistic socialism is a farce, capable only of
transforming authority but not abolishing it. Egoism encourages
individuals to no longer die slowly giving presents to those who give
nothing in return, and from this idea flows the egoist communist desire
for insurrection and expropriation."
I totally agree with this quote. The author of this piece doesn't say if
they identify as an egoist but the title suggests the author is
ananarcho-communist.Within the context of the overall piece the quote is
a contradiction because the author is advocating for an
anarcho-communist society.Communism is a fixed idea the same as rights,
humanity, and altruism described and mentioned in the above quote.
Communism and leftism are the supreme altruistic philosophies, which
turns self-sacrifice into a morality to be emulated and carried out for
"humanity", "the people", "the community", or for "the greater good",
which in turn builds levels of hierarchy and authority in the process.
"Real revolutionaries serve the people" is one well known
communistslogan. Its meaning is for the individual to totally
self-sacrifice for the spook of "the people", which is really in the
hope of winning followers and building their collectivist vision by
winning over "the people" to their ideas.
Self-sacrifice is a virtue in leftist spaces. Individuals can be judged
on their merits on how much self-sacrifice (activism) they put
themselves through. The hierarchy is of who has self-sacrifice and
"served the people" the most. There is a type of celebrity like culture
built around it. The winners win the admiration and respect of the rest
of the circles and cliques.
In this sense the communist isn't all that different from the Catholic
true believer in that they believe in an altruistic self-sacrificing
morality which they hope will eventually bring them to salvation.
Of course there is nothing wrong with an individual being altruistic for
a loved one or even for a random stranger she has just met if she wants
to and feels she gets something from it. But for me it's a different
matter when it turns into a never ending merry go round of
self-sacrifice for a system that will never happen, unless brought in by
the barrel of the gun (to paraphrase the red prophet Mao), along with
the continued subjugation of the individual.
For me, the relevance of Max Stirner to anarcho-commumism was to drop
the communism part.
"I understand that since Individualism is neither a school nor a party,
it cannot be "unique", but it is truer still that Unique ones are
individualists. And I leap as a unique one onto the battlefield, draw my
sword and defend my personal ideas as an extreme individualist, as an
indisputable Unique one, since we can be as skeptical and indifferent,
ironic and sardonic as we desire and are able to be. But when we are
condemned to hear socialists moreor less theorizing in order to
impudently and ignorantly attempting to make a titanic poet of heroic
strength, a dominator of human, moral and divine phantoms, who quivers
and throbs, rejoices and expands himself beyond the good and evil of
Church and State, Peoples andHumanity, in the strange flickering of a
new blaze of unacknowledged love, like Zarathustra's lyrical
creator,pass as a poor and vulgar prophet of socialism, when we hear
someone try to make an invincible and unsurpassable iconoclast like Max
Stirner out to be sometool for the use of frantic proponents of
communism, then we may certainly have an ironic smirk on our lips. But
then it is necessary to resolutely rise up to defend ourselves and to
attack, since anyone who feels that he is truly individualist in
principle, means and ends cannot tolerate being at all confused with the
unconscious mobs of a morbid, bleating flock." - Renzo Novatore
To name 3 elements of my own egoism:
Anarchic - because I want unbridled freedom for a self-creating life
against all constraints and idols.
Insurrectionary - permanent active revolt against society and its
institution of domination and domestication and all the restraints
forced on my individual freedom.
Nihilistic - to be lived immediately with no hope and no waiting for a
future utopian revolution.
I see these as being inherent and inseparable from individualist anarchy
and what Stirner refers to as "conscious egoism"; consciously living the
life one wants to live and smashing any imposed spooks and idols that
infringe on my individual autonomy.
I have no need for the herd philosophy of the self-deceiving and
self-sacrificing fantasy of communization and its inner leftism. I am
opposed to its collectivist conformist cult of the worker, which
dissolves the individual into the permanent roles of producer and
consumer. When I work, I do so because I am forced and blackmailed to.
So I refuse the slave role of "worker". I want to see work abolished as
a concept. I want to see the means of production and distribution
reduced to ashes, blown up, turned down, destroyed and replaced with
vast food forests and lush colorful gardens grown on top of the rubble.
"Individualism, as I feel, understand and mean it, has neither
socialism, nor communism, nor humanity for an end. Individualism is its
own end." -Renzo Novatore"
If God, if humanity, as you affirm, have enough content in themselves to
be all in all to themselves, then I feel thatI would lack it even less,
and that I would have no complaint to make about my 'emptiness.' I am
not nothing in the sense of emptiness, but am the creative nothing, the
nothing out of which I myself create everything as creator."
"I am owner of my power, and I am so when I know myself as Unique. In
the Unique the owner himself returns into his creative nothing, from
which he is born. Every higheressence over me, be it God, be it the
human being,weakens the feeling of my uniqueness, and only pales before
the sun of this awareness. If I base my affair on myself, the Unique,
then it stands on the transient, the mortal creator, who consumes
himself, and I may say: I have based my affair on nothing." - Max
Stirner
Stirner's nihilistic "creative nothing" is a pipe bomb for the
existentialist used to blow apart all idols and spooks, to open space
for the conscious self-owning and self-creating individual to live how
she wants, free from any social constructs, conformity, political
dogmas,or religious moralities.
It is not holding on to hope of a sacred promised land or heaven. It is
not a religious or political belief. It is a praxis to be lived
immediately.The possibilities are endless.
I find the idea of "creative nothing" far more liberating than any
limited communist dogma.
The communist myth of the proletarian revolution is likely never to
happen. The working class holds seeds of authoritarianism as much as any
other class. The workers like their prisons and if they were ever to
take them over they'd likely keep them intact swapping new managers for
the old ones. It's time to pull off the veil and drop the last remnants
of leftism.But this doesn't mean just to give up. We may be in a
minority but the authoritarian institutions, culture, and social norms
of society are still here and affect us. Just because the majority are
happy with conforming to society doesn't mean we have to be. There are
still plenty of opportunities to create projects of self-enjoyment and
revolt.Onward to an unmitigated, chaotic, individual insurrection
against the captivity of civilization.
"We reject all the idealized principles that revolutionary theories
talking about the future liberation and social harmony promise. Life
offers no guarantees. The time is now and the place is here.
Let's be honest; we don't know how a liberated tomorrowwill be
"functional". That's exactly why it's liberated.Because it'll be full of
possibilities, questions and doubts.
Whoever seeks for certain answers and Marxistcertainties will soon seek
the guarantee of authority and priesthoods of red power." - Conspiracy
of Cells of Fire