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Title: Review: Individualism versus Egoism
Author: Anarcho
Date: January 17, 2015
Language: en
Topics: individualism, egoism, book review, E. Armand, Max Stirner
Source: Retrieved on 24th April 2021 from https://anarchism.pageabode.com/?p=836

Anarcho

Review: Individualism versus Egoism

Individualist anarchism has always been very much a minority within the

anarchist movement and given some of its advocates, you can understand

why. However, it is always good to see material from the past made

available to modern day radicals simply in order to allow people to

judge for themselves.

So the publication of both Individualist Anarchism Revolutionary

Sexualism: Writings by Émile Armand (Pallaksch Press, Austin, Texas,

2012) and Stirner’s Critics (LBC Books and CAL Press, Berkeley/Oakland,

2012) is to be welcomed. Both books, like both writers, are very

different. The Armand book is tiny both in size and writings, with 13

short articles collected for the first time and split roughly evenly

into anarchism and sexuality. Stirner’s Critics, in contrast, is more

substantial and as well as complete new translations by Wolfi

Landstreicher of two important texts by Stirner, also has a lengthy and

important introduction (“Clarifying the Unique and Its Self-Creation”)

by Jason McQuinn. Making these works available fills a big hole in our

understanding of Stirner which previous partial translations (Daniel

Guérin’s No Gods, No Masters) have only indicated.

Émile Armand (1872–1963) was one of the leading French Individualist

Anarchists of the early-to-mid 20^(th) century. He wrote for and edited

the anarchist publications L’Ère nouvelle (1901–1911), L’EnDehors

(1922–1939) and L’Unique (1945–1953). As such, editor A. de Acosta

should be congratulated in making his writings more accessible even if

it is, I am afraid, a case of learning from pervious mistakes in order

to avoid certain dead-ends.

First, I need to be clear because individualist anarchism is not a

unified theory of works (as would be expected it reflects the individual

perspectives of each author). The American forms of it (most associated

with Benjamin Tucker) are somewhat different to the European kind,

although as I note in section G of An Anarchist FAQ other American

individualists are closer to the European individualists (and so the

anarchist mainstream) than others. This is best seen by their opposition

to wage-labour as such rather than embrace Tucker’s hope for a

non-exploitative form it and so they are consistent anarchists and

follow through their ideas to recognise that wage-labour violates both

their opposition to rule (archy) and views on property (limited to

possession).

This is shown when Armand writes that the “anarchist wishes to live

without gods or masters; without bosses or directors” (11) and is

“against the exploitation of the individual” (9). They oppose

“exploitation” (to “make [others] labour on his account and for his

profit”) and “monopolisation” (“possessing more than is necessary for

its normal upkeep”) (14) and are against communism because “the

individual would be as subordinate as he is presently” but “instead of

being under the thumb of the small capitalist minority… he would be

dominated by the whole of the economy. Nothing would properly belong to

him.” (13)

So Armand, rightly, lists wage-labour – having bosses – as a form of

oppression and exploitation which individualist anarchism is against.

Yet this highlights a key problem with the theory because modern

economies are based on workplaces which, in the main, have to be run by

a group of workers. However, property is considered by Armand to be a

key feature of individualist anarchism – a source of independence and

autonomy for the individual. So we have a contradiction – if the means

of production are owned by individuals then how are these to be managed?

If it is by the owner and it needs a group to operate then we have

wage-labour – and so exploitation and oppression. If it is by the

workers jointly then we have socialisation – and so no private property.

Armand resolves this contradiction by getting rid of any form of

workplace which needs more than a few people to operate:

“property in the means of production and the free disposition of

products [are] essential guarantees of the person. It is understood that

this property is limited by the possibility of putting to work

(individually, by couples, by familial groups) the expanse of soil or

the engines of production required to meet the necessities of the social

unit; with the condition that the possessor not rent it to anyone or

turn to someone in his service to put it into use.” (14)

This is no solution at all but it does go to the heart of the problems

with individualist anarchism. Yet it is hardly a new problem as it was

highlighted by Proudhon in the 1840s and his solution is the basis for

all forms of social anarchism – socialisation of the means of production

based on workers’ associations. Thus, to quote Proudhon, the

“organisation of labour, which involves the negation of political

economy and the end of property he who participates in [a workplace]

must do so… as an active factor… [and] have a deliberative voice in the

council… regulated in accordance with equality” for “all accumulated

capital being social property, no one can be its exclusive proprietor.”

This federated and self-managed economy was the basis on which

disagreements within social anarchism – over, for example, tactics

(reform or revolution) or goals (distribution of goods by deed or by

need) – were played out.

So if Armand’s vision of a free economy is problematic to say the least,

what of his tactics?

He writes of “struggle in all places for complete expression of thought…

for absolute liberty of association… and secession. We are for the

intangible freedom of exposition, publicity, experiment, and

realisation.” (9) The individualist anarchist is “always asocial,

insubordinate, an outsider, marginal, an exception, a misfit” (11) and

are “enemies of the State and all its institutions… There is no

possibility of conciliation between the anarchist and any form whatever

of society resting on authority”. (11–2) This means “an abyss separates

anarchism from all forms of socialism, including syndicalism.” (13)

Yet the promise of individualist anarchism – a conscious rebellion

against every form of tyranny – becomes, in practice, quietism of epic

proportions. This can be seen from Armand’s texts – what is the most

revolutionary act the individual can do? Is it to down-tools in a strike

against your economic tyrant, the capitalist? No. Is it to rise-up in

revolt against your political tyrant, the state? No. It is to take off

your clothes: “revolutionary nudism” for the “rulers know” that little

“would be left of their prestige, of the authority delegated to them” if

everyone was naked. (126–7) Indeed, nudism is ultra-revolutionary,

revolutionary multiple times more than mere strikes, revolts or

insurrections: “in a triple sense: affirmation, protest, liberation.”

(125) Action which would actually challenge the state or capital – mass

revolt – is dismissed:

“as before the war, we remain the resolute adversaries of revolutionary

or insurrectionary attempts… [This is] no chance of success; it would

result in a [bloody] repression… it would give the authorities an

occasion to silence permanently those rare spirits who have known how to

resist the general disorder” (29–30)

Which leaves criticism: “The individualist anarchist critiques to free

themselves and others.” (37) With enemies like this, neither the state

nor capital needs friends.

While Victor Serge traded in (elitist) individualism anarchism for

(elitist) Bolshevism – one of those “misled by the dialectics of the

fossils of the International” (32) – and is not the most reliable of

memoirists, he was right to summarise his individualist phase in Memoirs

of a Revolutionary as having “adopted what was (at that moment) the

extremist variety [of anarchism], which by vigorous dialectic had

succeeded, through the logic of its revolutionism, in discarding the

necessity for revolution.”

There is, however, an element of truth in Armand’s works – we do need to

transform how we live our lives now. Every anarchist is – or needs to be

– a “lifestylist” anarchist. An anarchist who does not apply their ideas

in practice is not much of an anarchist (for example, some male

anarchists combine a theoretical commitment to gender equality with

sexist attitudes and practices). Yet we must never forget that this

lifestyle transformation, while necessary, is not sufficient.

So Armand was right to argue that there “are only masters because there

are slaves” (13) and rail against hypocrisy, the “race for appearances”

(21), which lead radicals to say one thing while doing the opposite, but

his politics rejected the means by which people can change themselves

while changing society – the class struggle, the encouraging of the

revolt and self-organisation of the masses against their oppressors.

Instead he proclaims “[w]e have not criticised vehemently enough the

enrolment in leagues, unions, syndicates, and other bodies where

individual autonomy and initiative are sacrificed to the common weal.”

(30) In reality, we express our individuality best when we unite with

our equals to defend our common interests and, in so doing, be in a

position to replace hierarchical organisations with self-managed ones.

Finally, half the book is made up of Armand’s writings of “revolutionary

sexuality” and it is hard not to agree with the editor when he notes

that in these texts Armand “ended up simply narrating his own fantasies

and obsessions and presenting them, even if only by implication, as a

quasi-program”. (116–7) Ultimately, it is hard to take seriously someone

who proclaims birth “the most authoritarian gesture” as it is “throwing

a being that did not ask to be brought into the world into the hell of

archist and cratic society” (99) and Armand’s anarchist writings, sadly,

give you no real reason to do so.

So Armand’s individualism takes us nowhere, does Stirner’s egoism have

anything to say of interest to class struggle anarchists?

Max Stirner (1806–1856) is often considered – when not dismissed out of

hand – as the black sheep amongst anarchist thinkers. Stirner, as is

well known, did not call himself an anarchist and had no impact on the

development of anarchism until his discovery by the movement in the

1890s (any influence was indirect via Marx and Engels whom he did

influence, far more than Marxists like to admit). After his rediscovery,

his ideas mostly influenced American individual circles, provoking a

split within it between the egoists and natural rights advocates which

accelerated its marginalisation. Emma Goldman was the only notable

communist-anarchist to find him of interest. Should we join her?

For the working class syndicalists of my home city of Glasgow in the

1940s, the answer was a resounding yes – they combined Stirner with

Kropotkin and took the former’s “Union of Egoists” as “One Big Union”.

The logic is simple – we look after our own self-interest best by

uniting with our fellow workers to resist both state and capital (this,

it must be stressed, can be found in Stirner’s The Ego and Its Own

without difficulty). Max Baginski in Mother Earth (Vol. II, No. 3) also

saw his benefit:

“It is because the individual does not own himself, and is not permitted

to be his true self. He has become a mere market commodity, an

instrument for the accumulation of property – for others… Individuality

is stretched on the Procrustes bed of business… If our individuality

were to be made the price of breathing, what ado there would be about

the violence done to the personality! And yet our very right to food,

drink and shelter is only too often conditioned upon our loss of

individuality. These things are granted to the propertyless millions

(and how scantily!) only in exchange for their individuality – they

become the mere instruments of industry.”

Stirner’s The Ego and Its Own contains much to support a wider

appreciation and, at its best, effectively shows how capitalism

undermines rather than encourages individuality in multiple ways. As

such, his work must not be lumped in – as both Marxists and

propertarians wish – with defenders of capitalism. Egoism has had a bad

name due to it being associated with the likes of Ayn Rand and those who

parrot her narrow, self-defeating egotism like the Randoids they are.

The many are sacrificed to the few with the sacredness of property being

the means to fool the former into working for the latter. This is not

Stirner’s position.

As such, the publication of Stirner’s Critics is to be welcomed as it

challenges this narrow interpretation of his work. The book contains an

excellent introduction by Jason McQuinn, useful notes by the translator

as well as two works by Stirner: “Stirner’s Critics” and “The

Philosophical Reactionaries”. I will concentrate on the former as I

found it the more interesting.

As may be expected from its title, Stirner replies to his critics – by

pointing out the obvious. Egoism “is not opposed to love nor to thought;

it is no enemy of the sweet life of love, nor of devotion and sacrifice;

it is no enemy of intimate warmth, but it is also no enemy of critique,

nor of socialism, nor, in short, of any actual interest… It is directed

against only disinterestedness and the uninteresting; not against love,

but against sacred love… not against socialists, but against sacred

socialists, etc.” (81–2) The person “who loves a human being is richer,

thanks to this love, than another who doesn’t love anyone” (81) and so

the egoist aims not at “isolation, separation, loneliness” but rather

the “full participation in the interesting by – exclusion of the

uninteresting.” (82)

This is important – capitalist egotism reduces the many to commodities,

people (unique individuals) to “labour” and “human resources”. The

wage-worker does not participate fully in the workplace because we toil

under the orders of the few to enrich them. The nature of the capitalist

“association” is far from the participation which is Stirner’s goal and

while neo-classical economics and propertarians wish to turn every

interaction into a market exchange (and re-educate us into accepting

this degradation). His egoistic associations are far more – human.

Children creating “a playful egoistic association”, lovers meeting

“together to delight (enjoy) each other” and friends meeting to go “to a

tavern for wine”. (100) He makes the obvious point which the egotists of

capitalism avoid:

“But is an association in which most of those involved are hoodwinked

about their most natural and obvious interests, an association of

egoists? Have ‘egoists’ come together where one is the slave or serf of

the other?” (99)

P.J. O’Rourke, for example, in On The Wealth of Nations quotes Adam

Smith against “socialism”: “Nothing can be more absurd, however, than to

imagine that men in general should work less when they work for

themselves, than when they work for other people.” Yet capitalism is

based on wage-labour, working for the property-owner having “sold their

arms and parted with their liberty” (to use Proudhon’s words). As Smith

was well aware:

“Masters of all sorts, therefore, frequently make better bargains with

their servants in dear than in cheap years, and find them more humble

and dependent in the former than in the latter… Nothing can be more

absurd, however, than to imagine that men in general should work less

when they work for themselves, than when they work for other people. A

poor independent workman will generally be more industrious than even a

journeyman who works by the piece. The one enjoys the whole produce of

his own industry; the other shares it with his master.”

Our propertarian thinks working for “man” (society) is untenable while

working for “the man�� (boss) is equivalent to working for yourself.

Unlike Smith, he forgets the grim reality of wage-labour and in the

process exposes an inability to comprehend his favoured writer in a way

beyond satire. Stirner would be impressed, though, by his unwillingness

to consider accuracy as a “spook” to be worshiped as a sacred thing but

not with how it is being used: Stirner refused to consider as

“associations of egoists” those “societies in which the needs of some

get satisfied at the expense of others… in which… some can satisfy their

need for rest only by making others work until they are exhausted… lead

comfortable lives by making others live miserably or even starve… live

the high life because others are so addle-brained as to live in want”.

(99)

Egoism is not against communism for surely workers will “give

[competition] up because it doesn’t satisfy their egoism?” (79) What is

best for us is determined by its utility and “what is most useful is

open to argument. And now, sure enough, it turns out… that in

competition, not everyone finds his profit, his desired ‘private

advantage,’ his value, his actual interest. But this comes out only

through egoistic or selfish calculations”. (79–80)

Socialism, then, has to be in our interests – which is hardly a

problematic position to take if your life is primarily surviving in a

system where you spend your time following the orders of the person who

you are enriching by your labour. Why bother with struggle and

revolution if it is not to make your life better? Better in quality – in

terms of both living standards (which is possible within capitalism to

some degree) and freedom (which is not).

Hence the need for the “union of egoists” to be taken literally – for in

union there is strength and that works far better than appeals to

“fairness” or the altruism of the few:

“Defend yourself, and no one will do anything to you! He who would break

your will has to do with you, and is your enemy. Deal with him as such.

If there stand behind you for your protection some millions more, then

you are an imposing power and will have an easy victory.” (The Ego and

Its Own, 197)

As “Stirner’s Critics” confirms, unlike in the hierarchy of wage-labour

the egoist association is self-managed: “Only in the union can you

assert yourself as unique, because the union does not possess you, but

you possess it or make it of use to you.” Property, then, “deserves the

attacks of the Communists and Proudhon: it is untenable, because the

civic proprietor is in truth nothing but a propertyless man, one who is

everywhere shut out. Instead of owning the world, as he might, he does

not own even the paltry point on which he turns around.” (The Ego and

Its Own, 312, 248–9) While, like Proudhon, noting that communism in the

authoritarian form it existed at the time could equally be oppressive to

the individual as property, he was hardly supportive of capitalism:

“Restless acquisition does not let us take breath, take a calm

enjoyment. We do not get the comfort of our possessions… Hence it is at

any rate helpful that we come to an agreement about human labours that

they may not, as under competition, claim all our time and toil.” (The

Ego and Its Own, 268)

Competition “has a continued existence” because “all do not attend to

their affair and come to an understanding with each other about it…

Abolishing competition is not equivalent to favouring the guild. The

difference is this: In the guild baking, etc., is the affair of the

guild-brothers; in competition, the affair of chance competitors; in the

union, of those who require baked goods, and therefore my affair, yours,

the affair of neither guildic nor the concessionary baker, but the

affair of the united.” (The Ego and Its Own, 275) He repeats this in

“Stirner’s Critics” as it is clear some of his readers failed to

understand his point.

And the point is that if we want socialism then it should be because it

would achieve the task of producing (without bosses!) a standard of

living to allow us the time and resources to express ourselves fully

(Kropotkin makes the same point in “Anarchism: Its Philosophy and Its

Ideal”). The “organisation of labour”, Stirner argues, “touches only

such labours as others can do for us… the rest remain egoistic, because

no one can in your stead elaborate your musical compositions, carry out

your projects of painting, etc.; nobody can replace Raphael’s labours.

The latter are labours of a unique person, which only he is competent to

achieve.” So “for whom is time to be gained [by association]? For what

does man require more time than is necessary to refresh his wearied

powers of labour? Here Communism is silent.” He then answers his own

question: “To take comfort in himself as unique, after he has done his

part as man!” (The Ego and Its Own, 268–9)

Yet if the authoritarian communists of his time were “silent”, as

Kropotkin stressed in The Conquest of Bread, we libertarian communists

“recognise that man has other needs besides food, and as the strength of

Anarchy lies precisely in that it understands all human faculties and

all passions, and ignores none, we shall… contrive to satisfy all his

intellectual and artistic needs… the man who will have done the four or

five hours of… work [a day] that are necessary for his existence, will

have before him five or six hours which his will seek to employ

according to tastes… to satisfy his artistic or scientific needs, or his

hobbies.”

Egoism finds itself best defended under (libertarian) communism. After

all, how do the Randroid egotists envision socialism other than the

generalisation of wage-labour – us all being faceless parts of a big

machine. Sadly, that vision can be found in Lenin’s State and Revolution

with its call for the “whole of society” to become “a single office and

a single factory”: “organise the whole economy on the lines of the

postal service” for it is “an example of the socialist economic system”.

While unaware of the expression “going postal” he was aware of Engels’

“On Authority” and, without thinking through to the very obvious

implications, quotes it approvingly. This is unsurprising as he – like

Engels and O’Rourke – won’t be the ones to “Leave, ye that enter in, all

autonomy behind!”

State capitalism has been confused with socialism for far too long and

Stirner helps us to remember what the point of our activism is –

self-liberation, not changing masters (even if that master is proclaimed

to be “society” or some-such abstraction to which real people will be

sacrificed just as surely as we are now to the alter of the profit and

power of the few).

Given that I have quoted The Ego and Its Own, I must note that the

translator indicates (48) that he is working on a new English

translation of it under the more accurate title of The Unique and Its

Property. This is something to look forward to.

To conclude: while Armand’s individualism does not get us very far,

Stirner’s points to why we are (libertarian) communists. We reject the

narrow individualism of capitalism to create a world where we can

develop and express our individuality to the full. Stirner reminds us

that slaving away following orders to enriching the few is hardly in our

interests. He reminds us that freedom is for real, concrete individuals

rather than abstractions like “society”, “the proletariat”, etc. He

reminds us that self-sacrifice as the basis of socialism is neither

appealing nor viable, that pleasure has to be its basis: we exist when

we should be living.

Life is short. Let us unite and make our fleeting time on this planet

something to enjoy rather than survive.