NON SERVIAM EDITORIAL BY SVEIN OLAV NYBERG (1993) ************************************************* CONTENT: Non Serviam Non Serviam Non Serviam

Non Serviam Non Serviam inued) Non Serviam inued) Non Serviam inued) Non Serviam Non Serviam Non Serviam Non Serviam Non Serviam inued) Non Serviam Non Serviam Non Serviam Non Serviam #00: #01: #02: #03: #04: Introduction from the Editor Egoism (January 22, 1993) The Self A Critique of Communism and the Individualist Alternative A Critique of Communism and the Individualist Alternative (Cont

#05: A Critique of Communism and the Individualist Alternative (Cont #06: A Critique of Communism and The Individualist Alternative (Cont #07: #08: #09: #10: #11: #12: #13: #14: #15: Archists, Anarchists and Egoists Egoism: The Alternative of Freedom Capitalism: Freedom perverted The Egoism of Max Stirner A Critique of Communism and the Individualist Alternative (Cont On Revisiting Saint Max S.E. Parker: Preface William Flygare: To My Sweetheart Dora Marsden: Thinking and Thought

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non serviam #0 (Introduction from the Editor) ************** WELCOME Contents: Welcoming letter from the editor Advertisement On the next issue

*********************************************************************** Welcome to "non serviam". You have probably read the advertisement, which, in any case, is appended below. At the present time, the newsletter is handled solely through my personal mail-address solan@math.uio.no, so all letters and request should be sent to that address. People subscribing to this list range from self-taught amateurs to professors of philosophy, and so the interest ranges from academic interest in ideas to the more practical and applied. Nothing more will come out from this newsletter than is put into it.

The only synergistic effect we can hope for, is that of inspiration through an environment of people discussing the same ideas. Because this newsletter tries to address both professional and amateur alike, I would appreciate it if submitted entries took this into consideration. In practice, this means that claims should be supported by reasoned arguments, so that the opposite part has something to hold on to. References are fine, as long as they do not substitute argument. The newsletter is not primarily aimed at confrontation, though this surely is not barred, but at exchange of information. That means that if anyone finds something [s]he thinks will be of interest to the readers of the newsletter, [s]he should feel free to post it. Examples of what is relevant are articles on how Nietzsche, Rand, Hegel and Feuerbach relate to the primary subject matter of this newsletter. Likewise articles on the relation to the basis of anarchism, and on the relation to sciences - in particular psychology. As examples of what is non-relevant, we have: Election issues, flames, issues in philosophy not even touching the main subject, academic small-talk, and nuisance mail. I would also appreciate minimization of quoting from other posters. Current and back issues of Non Serviam, together with some material relevant to Stirner, are available via anonymous ftp from red.css.itd.umich.edu and ftp.css.itd.umich.edu. The files are stored in /poli/Non.Serviam on both sites. If you have problems retrieving the files, send email to pauls@umich.edu. Sincerely, Svein Olav Nyberg (editor) (solan@math.uio.no) ____________________________________________________________________ Advertisement: "Non serviam!" - "I will not serve", is known from literature as Satan's declaration of his rebellion against God. We wish to follow up on this tradition of insurrection. In modern times, the philosophy of the individual's assertion of himself against gods, ideals and human oppressors has been most eloquently expressed by Max Stirner in his book "Der Einzige und Sein Eigentum"[1]. Stirner, whose real name was Johann Kaspar Schmidt [1806-56], lived in a time dominated by German Idealism, with Hegel as its prominent figure. It is against this background of fixation of ideas that Stirner makes his rebellion. Stirner takes down these ideas from their fixed points in the starry sky of Spirit, and declares all ideas to be the ideas of an Ego[2], and the realm of spirits and ideas to be the mind of the thinker himself. His heaven-storming is total. Even the idealist tool - dialectic, and the supreme ghost of Idealism, [Absolute] Spirit - are stripped of their status of intrinsic existence, and are taken back into the Ego himself. This is most clearly seen in Stirner's main triad: Materialist Idealist - Egoist. And the triad stops at its last link. Any further progress cannot negate Egoism, for - progress has been taken back into the individual, as his - property. For Stirner, the solution to the "alienation", or "self-alienation" of Idealism, is in self-expression, or ownership. What cannot be one's own cause, the cause that is not one's own, is not worth pursuing. As Stirner says "Away then, with every cause that is not altogether my cause!"

Now, this is the philosophical starting point of this newsletter. For the more formal part, though the letter is centered on philosophy and ideas, articles on topics relevant to true egoists will also be admitted. The prime requirement is that the articles are not on-line ranting, but serious attempts to convey something of interest and relevance. Articles on literature through the ages will be very fine, stories will be welcomed if I see them fit, and I even think I might fall for an article on french cuisine made easy ... However: If in doubt whether the article will be accepted, contact me by personal mail first. A waste of time is a waste of time. I hope to be able to make each of the issues of the newsletter thematic, that is we have one main theme in each issue. The main theme is not meant to be the sole content, however, but more an inspiration for writing. Editor & List owner: solan@math.uio.no [1] English title: "The Ego and Its Own". [2] Einziger - single individual. ____________________________________________________________________ Next issue: By asserting oneself - by insurrection - one is an egoist, one who puts himself first. For the next issue of "non serviam", #1, I would therefore appreciate articles about "what egoism means" in general. Both questions of the type "is hedonism the real egoism", and articles pondering the status of egoism in ethics are appreciated. Psychological angles of attack are also appreciated. ____________________________________________________________________ *********************************************************************** * "Whoever is a complete person does not need - to be an authority!" * * From +The False Principle of Our Education+ * *********************************************************************** >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> From: pauls@css.itd.umich.edu (Paul Southworth) Subject: Non Serviam, Issue #1 Message-ID: <1jp5mfINNbnd@stimpy.css.itd.umich.edu> Date: 22 Jan 1993 16:00:15 GMT Organization: University of Michigan ITD Consulting and Support Services Lines: 499 At last, the first issue of "non serviam". For issue #0, and for a copy of Max Stirner's book "Der Einzige und sein Eigentum" (an English translation available in Macintosh MS-Word format, compressed and BinHexed) visit the ftp site "red.css.itd.umich.edu" (141.211.182.91) and look in /poli/Non.Serviam. I am not associated with the Non Serviam project. Please direct your queries to solan@math.uio.no.

Paul Southworth Archivist red.css.itd.umich.edu ------------------------------------------------------------------------non serviam #1 ************** Egoism (January 22, 1993) Contents: Editor's Word John Beverley Robinson: "Egoism" Ken Knudson: A Critique of Communism and The Individualist Alternative (serial)

*********************************************************************** Editor's Word _____________ This is the first "real" issue of non serviam, and the present theme, as will also be the theme of the next issue, #2, is as presented in #0: By asserting oneself - by insurrection - one is an egoist, one who puts himself first. For the next issue of "non serviam", #1, I would therefore appreciate articles about "what egoism means" in general. Both questions of the type "is hedonism the real egoism", and articles pondering the status of egoism in ethics are appreciated. Psychological angles of attack are also appreciated. Dissenting from this theme, I have a long and well-written article from Ken Knudson which I intend to publish in full. Given the length of it, it will be sent as a serial. It will also be available on the ftp site in not too long a time. I have, on the version here, left the page numberings for easier access to footnotes. I asked about "what egoism means". I should perhaps also have asked what egoism does not mean. For there are a lot of misconceptions about what egoism is. Religious literature incessantly warns us not to think about our own best interest, but the interest of the heavenly, of Man, and of just about everything else. But seldom is there found any advise to follow exactly this own interest. Why then these warnings against self interest, on and on, again and again? Surely not to counter any opposing system of ideas. For there have been close to none. What then is left to counter but - the individual himself! But to counter the individual is not a position that looks very good, so it has to be disguised, disguised as an attack on some "Deep Evil" lurking in self interest - in egoism. So the common view of egoism is far from formed by observation of actual egoists, but by propaganda in its disfavor. I will now list what I consider the types most typically mistaken for egoists, both by critics of egoism and by "egoists": THE PSYCHOPATH: The psychopath is characterized by a tendency of always being in the right and of manipulating others. He typically takes little heed of the interests of people he confronts. The reasoning displayed by those who identify psychopaths with egoists are usually of the type "He does not care for others - THUS he must care only for himself ...", which sets up a dichotomy without any basis in reality. Identifying an individual pursuing his own interests with a psychopath is a powerful

means of keeping individuals "in line". THE EGO-BOOSTER: Somewhat related to the psychopath, in that he tries to make himself "big" in the eyes of others often at the expense of some third person. But the Ego-Booster cares a lot about the judgement of others. In fact - he depends on it. Getting approval from other people dominates his way of life. His focus is not on himself, but on something else - his self IMAGE. THE MATERIALIST: The glutton, the carelessly promiscuous and the one who spends all his time gathering possessions is often seen as the egoist by people who have seen through the traps above. A friend of mine wrote in his thesis on Stirner that these were "vulgar egoists". They sure enough care for their own interests. But they only care for PART of their own interest, giving in to some urge to dominate them. They either care only for the taste in their mouths right-here-right-now, or for the feelings in other parts. They do not satisfy the whole chap, as Stirner wrote. THE IDEALIST: Not too typical, but still - important. Can range from the proponent of Fichte+s Absolute or Transcendental Ego, to the person who has as his sole goal in this life to spread his own ideas. The first of these is not a proper egoist in that the "I" he is talking about is not the personal, individual "I" but - an abstraction, the mere IDEA of an ego. The latter is just the materialist mentality let loose in the realm of ideas. THE FORMAL EGOIST: The formal egoist is perhaps the most elusively like to the proper egoist. For the formal egoist knows that an egoist looks to the satisfaction of the whole chap. Actually the formal egoist can know more about egoism than the egoist himself. For the formal egoist really wants to be an egoist - and he follows the recipe he has found to the last little detail, and sets out to find even new nuances. There is only one thing missing, and that is his realization that there is no recipe. So though a behaviorist would just the Formal Egoist to be equal to a proper egoist, he is truly far off, in that his real drive is Duty. Egoism is not a religious or ideological system to be followed by duty, but simply the being and awareness of oneself. It is important to see that the different conceptions of egoism depend strongly on what is put into the concept of an "ego". Which ego is then "the true one"? Is it the Bodily Ego, the Empirical Ego, the Self Image, the Creative Ego, the Teleological Ego, the Will ... ? I will return to this in the next issue of non serviam, #2. Svein Olav ____________________________________________________________________ Egoism by John Beverley Robinson _________________________ There is no word more generally misinterpreted than the word egoism, in its modern sense. In the first place, it is supposed to mean devotion to self interest, without regard to the interest of others. It is thus opposed to altruism - devotion to others and sacrifice of self. This interpretation is due to

the use of the word thus antithetically by Herbert Spencer. Again, it is identified with hedonism or eudaimonism, or epicureanism, philosophies that teach that the attainment of pleasure or happiness or advantage, whichever you may choose to phrase it, is the rule of life. Modern egoism, as propounded by Stirner and Nietzsche, and expounded by Ibsen, Shaw and others, is all these; but it is more. It is the realization by the individual that he is an individual; that, as far as he is concerned, he is the only individual. For each one of us stands alone in the midst of a universe. He is surrounded by sights and sounds which he interprets as exterior to himself, although all he knows of them are the impressions on his retina and ear drums and other organs of sense. The universe for him is measured by these sensations; they are, for him, the universe. Some of them he interprets as denoting other individuals, whom he conceives as more or less like himself. But none of these is himself. He stands apart. His consciousness, and the desires and gratifications that enter into it, is a thing unique; no other can enter into it. However near and dear to you may be your wife, children, friends, they are not you; they are outside of you. You are forever alone. Your thoughts and emotions are yours alone. There is no other who experiences your thoughts or your feelings. No doubt it gives you pleasure when others think as you do, and Inform you of it through language; or when others enjoy the same things that you do. Moreover, quite apart from their enjoying the same things that you enjoy, it gives you pleasure to see them enjoy themselves in any way. Such gratification to the individual is the pleasure of sympathy, one of the most acute pleasures possible for most people. According to your sympathy, you will take pleasure in your own happiness or in the happiness of other people; but it is always your own happiness you seek. The most profound egoist may be the most complete altruist; but he knows that his altruism is, at the bottom, nothing but self-indulgence. But egoism is more than this. It is the realization by the individual that he is above all institutions and all formulas; that they exist only so far as he chooses to make them his own by accepting them. When you see clearly that you are the measure of the universe, that everything that exists exists for you only so far as it is reflected in your own consciousness, you become a new man; you see everything by a new light: you stand on a height and feel the fresh air blowing on your face; and find new strength and glory in it. Whatever gods you worship, you realize that they are your gods, the product of your own mind, terrible or amiable, as you may choose to depict them. You hold them in your hand, and play with them, as a child with its paper dolls; for you have

learned not to fear them, that they are but the "imaginations of your heart." All the ideals which men generally think are realities, you have learned to see through; you have learned that they are your ideals. Whether you have originated them, which is unlikely, or have accepted somebody else's ideals, makes no difference. They are your ideals just so far as you accept them. The priest is reverend only so far as you reverence him. If you cease to reverence him, he is no longer reverend for you. You have power to make and unmake priests as easily as you can make and unmake gods. You are the one of whom the poet tells, who stands unmoved, though the universe fall in fragments about you. And all the other ideals by which men are moved, to which men are enslaved, for which men afflict themselves, have no power over you; you are no longer afraid of them, for you know them to be your own ideals, made in your own mind, for your own pleasure, to be changed or ignored, just as you choose to change or ignore them. They are your own little pets, to be played with, not to be feared. "The State" or "The Government" is idealized by the many as a thing above them, to be reverenced and feared. They call it "My Country," and if you utter the magic words, they will rush to kill their friends, whom they would not injure by so much as a pin scratch, if they were not intoxicated and blinded by their ideal. Most men are deprived of their reason under the influence of their ideals. Moved by the ideal of "religion" or "patriotism" or "morality," they fly at each others' throats they, who are otherwise often the gentlest of men! But their ideals are for them like the "fixed ideas" of lunatics. They become irrational and irresponsible under the influence of their ideals. They will not only destroy others, but they will quite sink their own interests, and rush madly to destroy themselves as a sacrifice to the all-devouring ideal. Curious, is it not, to one who looks on with a philosophical mind? But the egoist has no ideals, for the knowledge that his ideals are only his ideals, frees him from their domination. He acts for his own interest, not for the interest of ideals. He will neither hang a man nor whip a child in the interest of "morality," if it is disagreeable to him to do so. He has no reverence for "The State." He knows that "The Government" is but a set of men, mostly as big fools as he is himself, many of them bigger. 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. He is a man without a country. "The Flag," that most men adore, as men always adore symbols, worshipping the symbol more than the principle it is supposed to set forth, is for the egoist but a rather inharmonious piece of patch-work; and anybody may walk on it or spit on it if they will, without exciting his emotion any more than if it were a tarpaulin that they walked upon or .spat upon. The principles that it symbolizes, he will maintain as far as it seems to his

advantage to maintain them; but if the principles require him to kill people or be killed himself, you will have to demonstrate to him just what benefit he will gain by killing or being killed, before you can persuade him to uphold them. When the judge enters court in his toggery, (judges and ministers and professors know the value of toggery in impressing the populace) the egoist is unterrified. He has not even any respect for "The Law." 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. It is to him the clumsy creation of them who still "sit in darkness." Nor does he bow the knee to Morality - Sacred Morality! Some of its precepts he may accept, if he chooses to do so; but you cannot scare him off by telling him it is not "right." He usually prefers not to kill or steal; but if he must kill or steal to save himself, he will do it with a good heart, and without any qualms of "conscience." And "morality" will never persuade him to injure others when it is of no advantage to himself. He will not be found among a band of "white caps," flogging and burning poor devils, because their actions do not conform to the dictates of "morality," though they have injured none by such actions; nor will he have any hand in persecuting helpless girls, and throwing them out into the street, when he has received no ill at their hands. To his friends - to those who deserve the truth from him, - he will tell the truth; but you cannot force the truth from him because he is "afraid to tell a lie." He has no fear, not even of perjury, for he knows that oaths are but devices to enslave the mind by an appeal to supernatural fears. And for all the other small, tenuous ideals, with which we have fettered our minds and to which we have shrunk our petty lives; they are for the egoist as though they were not. "Filial love and respect" he will give to his parents if they have earned it by deserving it. If they have beaten him in infancy, and scorned him in childhood, and domineered over him in maturity, he may possibly love them in spite of maltreatment; but if they have alienated his affection, they will not reawaken it by an appeal to "duty." In brief, egoism in its modern interpretation, is the antithesis, not of altruism, but of idealism. The ordinary man - the idealist - subordinates his interests to the interests of his ideals, and usually suffers for it. The egoist is fooled by no ideals: he discards them or uses them, as may suit his own interest. If he likes to be altruistic, he will sacrifice himself for others; but only because he likes to do so; he demands no gratitude nor glory in return. ____________________________________________________________________ Ken Knudson: A Critique of Communism and

The Individualist Alternative

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A NOTE TO READERS I address myself in these pages primarily to those readers of "Anarchy" who call themselves "communistanarchists." It is my purpose in this article to show that this label is a contradiction in terms and that anyone accepting it must do so by a lack of clear understanding of what the words "anarchist" and "communist" really mean. It is my hope that in driving a wedge between these two words, the communist side will suffer at the expense of the anarchist. I make no claims to originality in these pages. Most of what I have to say has been said before and much better. The economics is taken primarily from the writings of PierreJoseph Proudhon, William B. Greene, and Benjamin R. Tucker. The philosophy from Max Stirner, Tucker again, and, to a lesser extent, James L. Walker. I hope you won't be put off by my clumsy prose. I'm a scientist by trade, not a professional writer. I implore you, therefore, not to mistake style for content. If you want both the content and good style may I suggest Tucker's "Instead of a Book". Unfortunately, this volume has been out of print since 1897, but the better libraries - especially those in the United States - should have it. If you can read French, I recommend the economic writings of Proudhon. "General Idea of the Revolution in the Nineteenth Century" is particularly good and has been translated into English by the American individualist, John Beverley Robinson. (Freedom Press, 1923). Also in English is Tucker's translation of one of Proudhon's earliest works, the well-known "What is Property?". This book is not as good as the "General Idea" book, but it has the advantage of being currently available in paperback in both languages. A word of warning: unless you are thoroughly familiar with Proudhon, I would not recommend the popular Macmillan "Papermac" edition of "Selected Writings of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon"; they seem to have been selected with irrelevance as their only criterion. Like so many other great writers, Proudhon suffers tremendously when quoted out of context and this particular edition gives, on average, less than a page per selection. Better to read his worst book completely than to be misled by disconnected excerpts like these. Finally the individualist philosophy, egoism, is best found in Max Stirner's "The Ego and His Own". This book suffers somewhat from a very difficult style (which wasn't aided by Stirner's wariness of the Prussian censor), but if you can get through his obscure references and biblical quotes, I think you will find the task worth the effort.

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H. L. Mencken once observed that just because a rose smells better than a cabbage doesn't mean to say it makes a better soup. I feel the same way about individualist anarchism. At first whiff, the altruist rose may smell better than the individualist cabbage, but the former sure makes a lousy soup. In the following pages I hope to show that the latter makes a better one. Ken Knudson Geneva, Switzerland March, 1971

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COMMUNISM: FOR THE COMMON GOOD "Communism is a 9 letter word used by inferior magicians with the wrong alchemical formula for transforming earth into gold." - Allen Ginsberg "Wichita Vortex Sutra" By way of prelude to the individualist critique of communism, I should like to look briefly at the communistanarchists' critique of their Marxist brothers. Anarchists and Marxists have traditionally been at odds with one another: Bakunin and Marx split the First International over their differences a century ago; Emma Goldman virtually made her living in the 1920's from writing books and magazine articles about her "disillusionment in Russia"; in May, 1937, the communists and anarchists took time off from their war against Franco to butcher each other in the streets of Barcelona; and the May days of '68 saw French anarchists

directing more abuse against the communist CGT than against the Gaullist government. What is the nature of these differences? Perhaps the most concise answer to this question came in 1906 from a veritable expert on the subject: Joseph Stalin. He wrote in "Anarchism or Socialism?" that there were essentially three main accusations which (communist) anarchists leveled against Marxism: 1) that the Marxists aren't really communists because they would "preserve the two institutions which constitute the foundation of [the capitalist] system: representative government and wage labour"; [1] 2) that the Marxists "are not revolutionaries", "repudiate violent revolution", and "want to establish Socialism only by means of ballot papers"; [2] 3) that the Marxists "actually want to establish not the dictatorship of the proletariat, but their own dictatorship over the proletariat." [3] Stalin goes on to quote Marx and Engels to "prove" that "everything the anarchists say on this subject is either the result of stupidity, or despicable slander." [4] Today the anarchists have the advantage of history on their side to show just who was slandering whom. I won't insult the reader's intelligence by pointing out how all three objections to Marxism were sustained by Uncle Joe himself a few decades later. But let us look at these three accusations from another point of view. Aren't the communist-anarchists simply saying in their holier-than-thou attitude, "I'm more communist than you, I'm more revolutionary than you, I'm more consistent

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than you?" What's wrong with Marxism, they say, is NOT that it is for communism, violent revolution and dictatorship, but that it goes about attaining its goals by half-measures, compromises, and pussyfooting around. Individualistanarchists have a different criticism. We reject communism per se, violent revolution per se, and dictatorship per se. My purpose here is to try to explain why. * * * * * ____________________________________________________________________ *********************************************************************** * "Whoever is a complete person does not need - to be an authority!" * * From +The False Principle of Our Education+ * ***********************************************************************

Svein Olav >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> non serviam #2 ************** (The self) Contents: Editor's Word Svein Olav Nyberg: The Self Ken Knudson: A Critique of Communism and The Individualist Alternative (serial: 2)

*********************************************************************** Editor's Word _____________ A friend of mine was half a year ago confronted with the claim that the Self "really did not exist", and that this was scientifically proven. At the time, I only laughed, and considered the proponent of the idea to be a little weird. I still consider it weird, but having heard the claim over again, I do not laugh. In the last issue, I went over the basic types of [mistaken] selfishness, and promised to follow up with a discussion of what was the true Self/ego. In conjunction with the above concern, this is the starting point for my article The Self. Ken Knudson's eminent article continues. The chapter one makes up almost half the article, so I have chosen to issue the rest of the chapter as separate issues, so that discussion may begin. I hope the somewhat arbitrary sectioning of the article into the different issues is forgiven. The next chapter will be "REVOLUTION: THE ROAD TO FREEDOM?". Svein Olav ____________________________________________________________________ Svein Olav Nyberg: The Self

As seen in the last issue, what "selfish" means depends strongly upon what you mean by "self". I will not here try to correct all the wrong ideas of what the Self is, but rather give an indication of what I think the right view is. There are, as you well are aware, many different conceptions of what "self" means. A general line of division between these conceptions I have found very well illustrated in Wilber, Engler and Brown's book on the psychology of meditation [1]: To different stages of cognitive development belongs different self -structures and, not the least, -images. The highest stage, called the Ultimate stage, is described as "the reality, condition, or suchness of all levels." If you draw the stage diagram on a paper, the Ultimate Self is in relation to the other "selves" as the paper in relation to the elements of the

diagram drawn on it. Improper selfishness, then, might be viewed as the mistaking of the image for the real thing. So, there is a very important division between the underlying Self, and the various self-images. This division is found more or less explicitly in a variety of sources. Pirsig, in his famous best-seller, denounces the ego, but embraces the Self in his praise of arete as "duty towards Self." [2] The philosopher Nietzsche writes that "The Self is always listening and seeking: it compares, subdues, conquers, destroys. It rules and is also the Ego's ruler. Behind your thoughts and feelings, my brother, stands a mighty commander, an unknown sage - he is called Self.", and also, a little above this, "[the Self] does not say 'I' but performs 'I'." [3]. In [1] it is concluded that though all who experience the Ultimate stage do essentially the same, the experience and understanding of it depends on the prior interpretation. The Buddhist experience an egoless state, while the theistic meditators experience [being one with] their god. Who is having this unifying experience? The same guy, essentially, who has everyday experience. Fichte [4] asks of his audience, "Gentlemen, think of the wall," and proceeds "Gentlemen, think of him who thought the wall." In this way he gets an infinite chain, as "whenever we try to objectify ourselves, make ourselves into objects of consciousness, there always remains an _I_ or ego which transcends objectification and is itself the condition of the unity of consciousness," as Copleston describes. Now, whether we shall side with the meditators who claim to experience this _I_, or with Fichte who says we cannot, is of little importance here. What is important, is that the _I_, this ground and condition indeed exists, and that it is the ground of the empirical ego or egos. I want to take a closer look at this _I_ - the Self. So far, the Self may be seen on as something just lying in the background, a kind of ultimate observer. But Fichte's question can also be asked of action, "Who is lifting your arm when you lift your arm?" Like it was clear in the first case that it was not the image of the Self - the ego - that was aware, but the Self itself, it is equally obvious that it is not the image of the Will that lifts the arm - but the Will itself. To understand this better, try to will the coke bottle in front of you to lift. Won't do. Now, "will" your arm up in the same way that you willed the coke bottle. Won't do either. Still, lifting the arm is easy. (See also [3]) Proceeding like above, we can find a well of parts of the underlying Self. But they are all one. The Self that sees the stick is the same Self that throws a rock at it. How else would it hit? I have found it useful to single out three of them, which I will call the Experiencing Self, the Creative Self and the Teleological Self. Stirner [5] speaks of "the vanishing point of the ego", and of the "creative nothing". He has "built his case on nothing". This latter is the one that reveals what he intends. For surely, he has built his cause on - himself. But in the way of Fichte, the Self is not a thing, but the basis for speaking of things. To be a thing is to be an object for some subject and, as Fichte showed, the subject cannot properly be an object. So, Stirner's "creative nothing" is him Self. In contrast to Fichte, however, Stirner emphasizes the finite here-and-

now individual Self, not the abstract Ego: "Fichte's ego too is the same essence outside me, for every one is ego; and, if only this ego has rights, then it is "the ego", it is not I. But I am not an ego along with other egos, but the sole ego: I am unique. Hence my wants too are unique, and my deeds; in short everthing about me is unique." So we see Stirner rejects the positivistic idea of viewing himself from a 3rd person vantage point. He is not "ego", the image of himself. For one can have an image of anyone. But ones own Self is experienced from the 1st person point of view, and one is oneself the only one who can experience oneself from there. Again quoting Stirner: "They say of God: 'Names name thee not.' That holds good of me: No -concept- expresses me; they are only names." The history of philosophy can be simplified as follows: We have gone from a focus on experienced reality, to experienced self, and from that on to that which contains both - the Experiencing Self. Stirner, as a student of Hegel, must have seen this, and, as he states, this history is also _my_ history. The dialectic process is taken back into its owner. I am not any longer viewing myself as a moment in the dialectical self-unfolding of the Absolute, but as he who learns and thinks these thoughts, and - take the advantage of them. The philosophical process did not stop at the Experiencing Self, with which an empiricist would be content. A reaction came, asking what elements of experience were constituted by the subject himself. The observer was no longer seen as a passive observer, but as an active participant contributing his own elements into experience. Thus we can say that the awareness of the creative role of the intellect was properly emerging. We had the Creative Self. This was idea was taken very far by Stirners teachers - into German idealism. Stirners main thesis is that of the individual as the ground not only of observation and creation, but of evaluation. This thesis is given a short presentation as a 0th chapter in The Ego and His Own: "All things are Nothing to Me." No outer force is to determine ones cause, ones evaluation. With a convincing rhetoric, Stirner makes room for the case that he himself is the evaluator, the one whose cause is to be acted for. Stirners main dialectical triad is then this, that we go from mere experience to action [thought], and as a solution to the strain between these go to valuation and interest, self-interest. This is a recurring theme in his book, and the structure of the argument is presented in the first chapter, very appropriately named "A human Life". The triad, as I have understood and interpreted it, is this: The Experiencing Self: This is, so to say, the beacon that enlightens the empirical world, which makes it possible qua empirical world. With knowledge of oneself only as experiencing, one is stuck with things, and all ones activity is centered around things, as Stirner says. One is a Materialist. In history, both the personal and the philosophical one, the Empirical Self is seen as a passive observer on whom the world is imprinted, all until we come to the antithesis of this view: The Creative Self: We discover our own more active role in experience, our own contribution of elements/form to our experience, as shown by the [Kantian inspired] experiments of the early Gestalt psychologists. With this knowledge, attention goes to thought itself, and, we become

intellectual and spiritual young men. Our quest goes for that in which we can pry Spirit, and we become - Idealists. The Teleological Self: There is a [dialectical] strain between the two views and aspects of the Self above, a conflict that can only, as Stirner says, be resolved by a third party, which is the synthesis. We begin to ask: Why do I focus on this, and not on that, in experience? Why do I create this and not that? For whom am I doing my creation, my thinking? I find the answer to the above questions in what I will call the Teleological Self. The Teleological Self is he [or rather - I] for whom all things done by me are done, the commander who is the measure of all activity. Any value, any selection, and thereby any focus and any creation, owes its existence to the Teleological Self. In the Teleological Self we find the grounding of our "why?". The dilemma between Materialism and Idealism is resolved in Selfishness. Not do I go for the material for its sake, nor do I let the cause of any ideal invade me and make its cause mine. I take both, but as tools and things to be disposed of at - my pleasure. In this fashion the dialectics is buried. For it is only alive in the world of ideas, which I have taken back into myself. --This was an attempt to convey some thoughts on the Self. If anyone feels tempted to pick up this thread, expand on it or negate it, you are welcome. It will be a pleasure. [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] Wilber, Engler, Brown: "Transformations of Consciousness" Robert Pirsig: "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" Friedrich Nietzsche: "Zarathustra", on the Despisers of the Body. Copleston, Vol VII, p. 40 Max Stirner: "The Ego & His Own"

____________________________________________________________________ Ken Knudson: A Critique of Communism and The Individualist Alternative (continued) Before one can get into an intelligent criticism of anything, one must begin by defining one's terms. "Anarchism", according to the Encyclopaedia Britannica dictionary, is "the theory that all forms of government are incompatible with individual and social liberty and should be abolished." It further says that it comes from the Greek roots "an" (without) and "archos" (leader).* As for "communism", it is "any social theory that calls for the abolition of private property and control by the community over economic affairs." To elaborate on that definition, communists of all varieties hold that all wealth should be produced and distributed according to the formula "from each according to his** ability, to each according to his needs" and that the administrative mechanism to control such production and distribution should be democratically

organised by the workers themselves (i.e. "workers' control"). They further insist that there should be no private ownership of the means of production and no trading of goods except through the official channels agreed upon by the majority. With rare exceptions, communists of all varieties propose to realise this ideal through violent revolution and the expropriation of all private property. That no one should accuse me of building up straw men in order to knock them down, allow me to quote Kropotkin*** -------------------* Historically, it was Proudhon who first used the word to mean something other than disorder and chaos: "Although a firm friend of order, I am (in the full force of the term) an anarchist." [5] ** Here Marx uses the masculine pronoun to denote the generic "one". In deference to easy flowing English grammar, I'll stick to his precedent and hope that Women's Lib people will forgive me when I, too, write "his" instead of "one's". *** I have chosen Kropotkin as a "typical" communistanarchist here and elsewhere in this article for a number of reasons. First, he was a particularly prolific writer, doing much of his original work in English. Secondly, he is generally regarded as "probably the greatest anarchist thinker and writer" by many communist- anarchists, including at least one editor of "Freedom". [6] Finally, he was the founder of Freedom Press, the publisher of the magazine you are now reading.

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to show that communist-anarchism fits in well with the above definition of communism: "We have to put an end to the iniquities, the vices, the crimes which result from the idle existence of some and the economic, intellectual, and moral servitude of others.... We are no longer obliged to grope in the dark for the solution.... It is Expropriation.... If all accumulated treasure...does not immediately go back to the collectivity - since ALL have contributed to produce it; if the insurgent people do not take possession of all the goods and provisions amassed in the great cities and do not organise to put them within the reach of all who need them...the insurrection will not be a revolution, and everything will have to be begun over again....Expropriation, - that then, is the watchword which is imposed upon the next revolution, under penalty of failing in its historic mission. The complete expropriation of all who have the means of exploiting human beings. The return to common ownership by the nation of all that can serve in the hands of any one for the exploitation of others." [7]

Now let us take our definitions of communism and anarchism and see where they lead us. The first part of the definition of communism calls for the abolition of private property. "Abolition" is itself a rather authoritarian concept - unless, of course, you're talking about abolishing something which is inherently authoritarian and invasive itself (like slavery or government, for example). So the question boils down to "Is private property authoritarian and invasive?" The communists answer "yes"; the individualists disagree. Who is right? Which is the more "anarchistic" answer? The communists argue that "private property has become a hindrance to the evolution of mankind towards happiness" [8], that "private property offends against justice" [9] and that it "has developed parasitically amidst the free institutions of our earliest ancestors." [10] The individualists, far from denying these assertions, reaffirm them. After all wasn't it Proudhon who first declared property "theft"?* But when the communist -------------------*By property Proudhon means property as it exists under government privilege, i.e. property gained not through labour or the exchange of the products of labour (which he favours), but through the legal privileges bestowed by government on idle capital.

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says, "Be done, then, with this vile institution; abolish private property once and for all; expropriate and collectivise all property for the common good," the individualist must part company with him. What's wrong with private property today is that it rests primarily in the hands of a legally privileged elite. The resolution of this injustice is not to perpetrate an even greater one, but rather to devise a social and economic system which will distribute property in such a manner that everyone is guaranteed the product of his labour by natural economic laws. I propose to demonstrate just such a system at the end of this article. If this can be done, it will have been shown that private property is not intrinsically invasive after all, and that the communists in expropriating it would be committing a most UNanarchistic act. It is, therefore, incumbent upon all communists who call themselves anarchists to read carefully that section and either find a flaw in its reasoning or admit that they are not anarchists after all. The second part of the definition of communism says that economic affairs should be controlled by the community. Individualists say they should be controlled by the market place and that the only law should be the natural law of supply and demand. Which of these two propositions is the more consistent with anarchism? Herbert Spencer wrote in

1884, "The great political superstition of the past was the divine right of kings. The great political superstition of the present is the divine right of parliaments." [11] The communists seem to have carried Spencer's observation one step further: the great political superstition of the future shall be the divine right of workers' majorities. "Workers' control" is their ideology; "Power to the People" their battle cry. What communist-anarchists apparently forget is that workers' control means CONTROL. Marxists, let it be said to their credit, at least are honest about this point. They openly and unashamedly demand the dictatorship of the proletariat. Communist-anarchists seem to be afraid of that phrase, perhaps subconsciously realising the inherent contradiction in their position. But communism, by its very nature, IS dictatorial. The communist-anarchists may christen their governing bodies "workers' councils" or "soviets", but they remain GOVERNMENTS just the same. Abraham Lincoln was supposed to have asked, "If you call a tail a leg, how many legs has a dog? Five? No! Calling a tail a leg don't MAKE it a leg." The same is true about governments and laws. Calling a law a "social habit" [12] or an "unwritten custom" [13] as Kropotkin does, doesn't change its nature. To paraphrase Shakespeare, that which we call a law by any other name would smell as foul. ---REFERENCES 1. Joseph Stalin, "Anarchism or Socialism" (Moscow; Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1950), p. 85. Written in 1906 but never finished. 2. Ibid., pp. 90-1. 3. Ibid., p.95. 4. Ibid., p. 87. 5. Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, "What is Property: An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government," trans. Benjamin R. Tucker (London: William Reeves), p. 260. Originally published in French in 1840. 6. Bill Dwyer, "This World", "Freedom," March 27, 1971. 7. Pierre Kropotkine, "Paroles d'un Revolte" (Paris: Ernest Flammarion, 1885), pp. 318-9. 8. Paul Eltzbacher, "Anarchism: Exponents of the Anarchist Philosophy," trans. Steven T. Byington, ed. James J. Martin (London: Freedom Press, 1960), p. 108. "Der Anarchismus" was originally published in Berlin in 1900. 9. Ibid., p. 109. 10. Ibid., p. 110. 11. Herbert Spencer, "The Man Versus The State," ed. Donald

MacRae (London: Penguin Books, 1969), p. 151. Originally published in 1884. 12. Prince Peter Kropotkin, "The Conquest of Bread" (London: Chapman & Hall, Ltd., 1906), p. 41. 13. Eltzbacher, op. cit., p. 101. ____________________________________________________________________ *********************************************************************** * "Better to reign in hell, than serve in heaven" * * -- Milton, Paradise Lost * *********************************************************************** >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> non serviam #3 ************** (A Critique of Communism and the Individualist Alternative ) Contents: Ken Knudson: A Critique of Communism and The Individualist Alternative (serial: 3)

*********************************************************************** Ken Knudson: A Critique of Communism and The Individualist Alternative (continued) Let us take a closer look at the type of society the communists would have us live under and see if we can get at the essence of these laws. Kropotkin says that "nine-tenths of those called lazy...are people gone astray." [14] He then suggests that given a job which "answers" their "temperament" and "capacities" (today we would hear words like "relate", "alienation" and "relevancy"), these people would be productive workers for the community. What about that other ten percent which couldn't adjust? Kropotkin doesn't elaborate, but he does say, "if not one, of the thousands of groups of our federation, will receive you, whatever be their motive; if you are absolutely incapable of producing anything useful, or if you refuse to do it, then live like an isolated man....That is what could be done in a communal society in order to turn away sluggards if they become too numerous." [15] This is a pretty harsh sentence considering that ALL the means of production have been confiscated in the name of the revolution. So we see that communism's law, put bluntly, becomes "work or starve."* This happens to be an individualist law too. But there is a difference between the two: the communist law is a man-made law, subject to man's emotions, rationalisations, and inconsistencies; the individualist law is nature's law - the law of gastric juices, if you will - a law which, like it or

not, is beyond repeal. Although both laws use the same language, the difference in meaning is the difference between a commandment and a scientific observation. Individualist-anarchists don't care when, where, or how a man earns a living, as long as he is not invasive about it. He may work 18 hours a day and buy a mansion to live in the other six hours if he so chooses. Or he may feel like Thoreau did that "that man is richest whose pleasures are the cheapest" [16] and work but a few hours a week to ensure his livelihood. I wonder what would happen to Thoreau under communism? Kropotkin would undoubtedly look upon him as "a ghost of bourgeois society." [17] And what would Thoreau say to Kropotkin's proposed "contract"?: "We undertake to give you the use of our houses, stores, streets, means of transport, schools, museums, etc., on condition that, from twenty to forty-five or fifty years of age, you consecrate four or five hours a day to some work recognised [by whom?] as necessary to existence....Twelve or fifteen hundred hours -------------------*Article 12 of the 1936 constitution of the USSR reads: "In the USSR work is the duty of every able-bodied citizen according to the principle: `He who does not work, neither shall he eat.' In the USSR the principle of socialism is realised: `From each according to his ability, to each according to his work.'"

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of work a year...is all we ask of you." [18] I don't think it would be pulling the nose of reason to argue that Thoreau would object to these terms. But some communist-anarchists would reject Kropotkin's idea of not giving to the unproductive worker according to his needs, even if he doesn't contribute according to his abilities. They might simply say that Kropotkin wasn't being a good communist when he wrote those lines (just as he wasn't being a good anarchist when he supported the Allies during World War I). But this idea, it seems to me would be patently unjust to the poor workers who would have to support such parasites. How do these communists reconcile such an injustice? As best I can gather from the writings of the classical communist-anarchists, they meet this problem in one of two ways: (1) they ignore it, or (2) they deny it. Malatesta takes the first approach. When asked, "How will production and distribution be organised?" he replies that anarchists are not prophets and that they have no blueprints for the future. Indeed, he likens this important question to asking when a man "should go to bed and on what days he should cut his nails." [19] Alexander Berkman takes the other approach (a notion apparently borrowed from the Marxists*): he denies that unproductive men will exist after

the revolution. "In an anarchist society it will be the most useful and difficult toil that one will seek rather than the lighter job." [20] Berkman's view of labour makes the protestant work ethic sound positively mild by comparison. For example: "Can you doubt that even the hardest toil would become a pleasure...in an atmosphere of brotherhood and respect for labour?" [21] Yes, I can doubt it. Or again: "We can visualise the time when labour will have become a pleasant exercise, a joyous application of physical effort to the needs of the world." [22] And again, in apparent anticipation of Goebbles' famous dictum about the powers of repetition, "Work will become a pleasure... laziness will be unknown." [23] It is hard to argue with such "reasoning". It would be like a debate between Bertrand Russell and Billy Graham about the existence of heaven. How can you argue with faith? I won't even try. I'll just ask the reader, next time he is at work, to look around - at himself and at his mates - and ask himself this question: "After the revolution will -------------------* At least Berkman is consistent in this matter. Marx, paradoxically, wanted to both "abolish labour itself" ("The German Ideology"), AND make it "life's prime want" ("Critique of the Gotha Programme").

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we really prefer this place to staying at home in bed or going off to the seashore?" If there are enough people who can answer "yes" to this question perhaps communism will work after all. But in the meantime, before building the barricades and shooting people for a cause of dubious certainty, I would suggest pondering these two items from the bourgeois and communist press respectively: "In Detroit's auto plants, weekend absenteeism has reached such proportions that a current bit of folk wisdom advises car buyers to steer clear of vehicles made on a Monday or Friday. Inexperienced substitute workers, so the caution goes, have a way of building bugs into a car. But in Italy lately the warning might well include Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. At Fiat, the country's largest maker, absenteeism has jumped this year from the normal 4 or 5 percent to 12.5 percent, with as many as 18,000 workers failing to clock in for daily shifts at the company's Turin works. Alfa Romeo's rate has hit 15 percent as hundreds of workers call in each day with `malattia di comodo' - a convenient illness.... Italian auto workers seem to be doing no more than taking advantage of a very good deal. A new labour contract guarantees workers in state-controlled industries 180 days of sick leave a year, at full pay, while workers in private firms (such as Fiat) get the same number

of days at 75 percent of full pay." [24] When doctors, employed by the state, made an inspection visit in Turin we are told that they found "that only 20 percent of the `indisposed' workers they had visited were even mildly sick." For those who think that this is just a bourgeois aberration, let us see what revolutionary Cuba, after 12 years of communism, has to say about such "parasites". I translate from the official organ of the Central Committee of the Cuban Communist Party: "Worker's discussion groups are being set up in all work centres to discuss the proposed law against laziness. These groups have already proven to be a valuable forum for the working class. During these assemblies, which for the moment are limited to pilot projects in the Havana area, workers have made original suggestions and posed timely questions which lead one to believe that massive discussion of this type would make a notable contribution to the solution of this serious problem. An assembly of boiler repairmen in the Luyano district was representative of the general feeling of the workers. They demanded that action be taken against those parasitic students who have stopped going to classes regularly or who, although attending classes, do just enough to get by. The workers were equally adamant about co-workers who, after a sickness or accident, refuse to go back to their jobs but go on receiving their

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salaries for months without working. Questions were often accompanied by concrete proposals. For example, should criminals receive the same salaries on coming back to work from prison as when they left their jobs? The workers thought not, but they did think it all right that the revolutionary state accord a pension to the prisoner's family during his stay in the re-education [sic] centre. At the Papelera Cubana factory the workers made a suggestion which proved their contempt of these loafers; habitual offenders should be punished in geometric proportion to the number of their crimes. They also proposed that workers who quit their jobs or were absent too often be condemned to a minimum, not of 6 months, but of one year's imprisonment and that the worker who refuses three times work proposed by the Ministry of Labour be considered automatically as a criminal and subject to punishment as such. The workers also expressed doubts about the scholastic `deserters', ages 15 and 16, who aren't yet considered physically and mentally able to work but who don't study either. They also cited the case of the self employed man who works only for his own selfish interests. The dockworkers of Havana port, zone 1, also had their meeting. They envisioned the possibility of making this law retroactive for those who have a bad work attitude, stating forcefully that it wasn't a question of

precedents, because otherwise the law could only be applied in those cases which occurred after its enactment. The harbour workers also proposed imprisonment for the `sanctioned' workers and that, in their opinion, the punishment of these parasites shouldn't be lifted until they could demonstrate a change of attitude. The steadfastness of the workers was clearly demonstrated when they demanded that punishments not be decided by the workers themselves in order to avoid possible leniency due to reasons of sympathy, sentimentality, etc. The workers also indicated that these parasites should not have the right to the social benefits accorded to other workers. Some workers considered imprisonment as a measure much too kind. As you can see, the workers have made many good proposals, which leads us to believe that with massive discussion, this new law will be considerably enriched. This is perhaps the path to social legislation by the masses."* [25] These two extracts clearly demonstrate that human nature remains pretty constant, independent of the social system the individual workman is subjected to. So it seems to me that unless human nature can somehow be miraculously transformed by the revolution - and that WOULD be a revolution - some form of compulsion would be necessary in order to obtain "from each according to his abilities." While on this point, I would like to ask my communist-

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anarchist comrades just who is supposed to determine another person's abilities? We've seen from the above article that in Cuba the Ministry of Labour makes this decision. How would it differ in an anarchist commune? If these anarchists are at all consistent with their professed desire for individual freedom, the only answer to this question is that the individual himself would be the sole judge of his abilities and, hence, his profession. But this is ridiculous. Who, I wonder, is going to decide of his own free will that his real ability lies in collecting other people's garbage? And what about the man who thinks that he is the greatest artist since Leonardo da Vinci and decides to devote his life to painting mediocre landscapes while the community literally feeds his delusions with food from the communal warehouse? Few people, I dare say, would opt to do the necessary "dirty work" if they could choose with impunity ANY job, knowing that whatever they did - good or bad, hard or easy - they would still receive according to their needs.** The individualist's answer to this perennial question of "who will do the dirty work" is very simple: "I -------------------*The Associated Press has since reported the passage of

this law: "Cuba's Communist regime announced yesterday a tough new labour law that Premier Fidel Castro said is aimed at 400,000 loafers, bums and `parasites' who have upset the country's new social order. The law, which goes into effect April 1, provides for penalties ranging from six months to two years of forced labour in `rehabilitation centres' for those convicted of vagrancy, malingering or habitual absenteeism from work or school. The law decrees that all males between 17 and 60 have a `social duty' to work on a daily systematic basis unless they are attending an approved school. Those who do not are considered `parasites of the revolution' and subject to prosecution by the courts or special labourers' councils. The anti-loafing law - seen as a tough new weapon to be used mainly against dissatisfied young people - was prompted by Mr. Castro's disclosure last September that as many as 400,000 workers were creating serious economic problems by shirking their duties." [26] ** Anyone who has ever gone to an anarchist summer camp knows what I mean. Here we have "la creme de la creme", so to speak, just dying to get on with the revolution; yet who cleans out the latrines? More often than not, no one. Or, when it really gets bad, some poor sap will sacrifice himself for the cause. You don't have solidarity; you have martyrdom. And no one feels good about it: you have resentment on the part of the guy who does it and guilt from those who don't.

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will if I'm paid well enough." I suspect even Mr. Heath would go down into the London sewers if he were paid 5 million pounds per hour for doing it. Somewhere between this sum and what a sewer worker now gets is a just wage, which, given a truly free society, would be readily determined by competition. This brings us to the second half of the communist ideal: the distribution of goods according to need. The obvious question again arises, "Who is to decide what another man needs?" Anarchists once more must leave that decision up to the individual involved. To do otherwise would be to invite tyranny, for who can better determine a person's needs than the person himself?* But if the individual is to decide for himself what he needs, what is to prevent him from "needing" a yacht and his own private airplane? If you think we've got a consumer society now, what would it be like if everything was free for the needing? You may object that luxuries aren't needs. But that is just begging the question: what is a luxury, after all? To millions of people in the world today food is a luxury. To the English central heating is a luxury, while to the Americans it's a necessity. The Nazi concentration camps painfully demonstrated just how little man actually NEEDS. But is that the criterion communists would use for determining need? I should hope (and think) not. So it seems

to me that this posses a definite dilemma for the communistanarchist: what do you do about unreasonable, irrational, or extravagant "needs"? What about the man who "needs" a new pair of shoes every month? "Nonsense," you may say, "no one needs new shoes that often." Well, how often then? Once a year? Every five years perhaps? And who will decide? Then what about me? I live in Switzerland and I'm crazy about grape jam - but unfortunately the Swiss aren't. I feel that a jam sandwich isn't a jam sandwich unless it's made with GRAPE jam. But tell that to the Swiss! If Switzerland were a communist federation, there wouldn't be a single communal warehouse which would stock grape jam. If I were to go up to the commissar-in-charge-of-jams and ask him to put in a -------------------* I'm reminded here of the tale of the man who decided his mule didn't NEED any food. He set out to demonstrate his theory and almost proved his point when, unfortunately, the beast died. Authoritarian communism runs a similar risk when it attempts to determine the needs of others.

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requisition for a few cases, he would think I was nuts. "Grapes are for wine," he'd tell me with infallible logic, "and more people drink wine than eat grape jam." "But I'm a vegetarian," I plead, "and just think of all the money (?) I'm saving the commune by not eating any of that expensive meat." After which he would lecture me on the economics of jam making, tell me that a grape is more valuable in its liquid form, and chastise me for being a throwback to bourgeois decadence. And what about you, dear reader? Have you no individual idiosyncrasies? Perhaps you've got a thing about marshmallows. What if the workers in the marshmallow factories decide (under workers' control, of course) that marshmallows are bad for your health, too difficult to make, or just simply a capitalist plot? Are you to be denied the culinary delights that only marshmallows can offer, simply because some distant workers get it into their heads that a marshmallowless world would be a better world? But, not only would distribution according to need hurt the consumer, it would be grossly unfair to the productive worker who actually makes the goods or performs the necessary services. Suppose, for example, that hardworking farmer Brown goes to the communal warehouse with a load of freshly dug potatoes. While there Brown decides he needs a new pair of boots. Unfortunately there are only a few pairs in stock since Jones the shoemaker quit his job - preferring to spend his days living off Brown's potatoes and writing sonnets about the good life. So boots are rationed. The boot commissar agrees that Brown's boots are pretty shabby but, he points out, Smith the astrologer is in even greater need.

Could Brown come back in a month or so when BOTH soles have worn through? Brown walks away in disgust, resolved never again to sweat over his potato patch. Even today people are beginning to complain about the injustices of the (relatively mild) welfare state. Theodore Roszak writes that in British schools there has been a "strong trend away from the sciences over the past four years" and that people are showing "annoyed concern" and "loudly observing that the country is not spending its money to produce poets and Egyptologists - and then demanding a sharp cut in university grants and stipends."[27] If people are upset NOW at the number of poets and Egyptologists that they are supporting, what would it be like if EVERYONE could simply take up his favourite hobby as his chosen profession? I suspect it wouldn't be long before our professional chess players and mountain climbers found the warehouse stocks dwindling to nothing. Social unrest would surely increase in direct proportion to the height of the trash

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piling up on the doorsteps and the subsequent yearning for the "good old days" would bring about the inevitable counter-revolution. Such would be the fate of the anarchist-communist utopia. * * * * *

____________________________________________________________________ *********************************************************************** * If the whole is not defined as the sum of its parts, there is * * no reason to expect the whole to be just the sum of its parts. * *********************************************************************** >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> non serviam #4 ************** (A Critique of Communism and the Individualist Alternative (Continued)) Contents: Ken Knudson: A Critique of Communism and The Individualist Alternative (serial: 4)

*********************************************************************** Ken Knudson: A Critique of Communism and The Individualist Alternative (continued)

Peter Kropotkin opens his chapter on "Consumption and Production" in "The Conquest of Bread" with the following words: "If you open the works of any economist you will find that he begins with PRODUCTION, the analysis of means employed nowadays for the creation of wealth; division of labour, manufacture, machinery, accumulation of capital. From Adam Smith to Marx, all have proceeded along these lines. Only in the latter parts of their books do they treat of CONSUMPTION, that is to say, of the means necessary to satisfy the needs of individuals....Perhaps you will say this is logical. Before satisfying needs you must create the wherewithal to satisfy them. But before producing anything, must you not feel the need of it? Is it not necessity that first drove man to hunt, to raise cattle, to cultivate land, to make implements, and later on to invent machinery? Is it not the study of needs that should govern production?"[28] When I first came upon these words, I must admit I was rather surprised. "What have we here," I thought, "is the prince of anarchist-communism actually going to come out in favour of the consumer?" It didn't take long to find out that he wasn't. Most communists try very hard to ignore the fact that the sole purpose of production is consumption. But not Kropotkin; he first recognises the fact - and THEN he ignores it. It's only a matter of three pages before he gets his head back into the sand and talks of "how to reorganise PRODUCTION so as to really satisfy all needs." [My emphasis] Under communism it is not the consumer that counts; it is the producer. The consumer is looked upon with scorn - a loathsome, if necessary, evil. The worker, on the other hand, is depicted as all that is good and heroic. It is not by accident that the hammer and sickle find themselves as the symbols of the Russian "workers' paradise." Can you honestly imagine a communist society raising the banner of bread and butter and declaring the advent of the "consumers' paradise"? If you can, your imagination is much more vivid than mine. But that's exactly what individualist-anarchists would do. Instead of the communist's "workers' control" (i.e. a producers' democracy), we advocate a consumers' democracy. Both democracies - like all democracies - would in fact be

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dictatorships. The question for anarchists is which dictatorship is the least oppressive? The answer should be obvious. But, judging from the ratio of communists to individualists in the anarchist movement, apparently it's not. So perhaps I'd better explain.

The workers in some given industry decide that item A should no longer be produced and decide instead to manufacture item B. Now consumer X, who never liked item A anyway, couldn't care less; but poor Y feels his life will never be the same without A. What can Y do? He's just a lone consumer and consumers have no rights in this society. But maybe other Y's agree with him. A survey is taken and it is shown that only 3% of all consumers regret the passing of A. But can't some compromise be arrived at? How about letting just one tiny factory make A's? Perhaps the workers agree to this accommodation. Perhaps not. In any case the workers' decision is final. There is no appeal. The Y's are totally at the mercy of the workers and if the decision is adverse, they'll just have to swallow hard and hope that next week item C isn't taken away as well. So much for the producers' dictatorship. Let's now take a look at the consumers' dictatorship. Consumers are finicky people - they want the best possible product at the lowest possible price. To achieve this end they will use ruthless means. The fact that producer X asks more for his product than Y asks for his similar product is all that the consumer needs to know. He will mercilessly buy Y's over X's. The extenuating circumstances matter little to him. X may have ten children and a mother-in-law to feed. The consumer still buys from Y. Such is the nature of the consumers' dictatorship over the producer. Now there is a fundamental difference between these two dictatorships. In the one the worker says to the consumer, "I will produce what I want and if you don't like it you can lump it." In the other the consumer says to the worker, "You will produce what I want and if you don't I will take my business elsewhere." It doesn't take the sensitive antennae of an anarchist to see which of these two statements is the more authoritarian. The first leaves no room for argument; there are no exceptions, no loopholes for the dissident consumer to crawl through. The second, on the other hand, leaves a loophole so big that it is limited only by the worker's imagination and abilities. If a producer is not doing as well as his competitor, there's a reason for it. He may not be suited for that particular work, in which case he will change jobs. He may be charging too much for his goods or services, in which case he will have to lower his costs, profits, and/or overhead to meet the competition. But one

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thing should be made clear: each worker is also a consumer and what the individual looses in his role as producer by having to cut his costs down to the competitive market level, he makes up in his role as consumer by being able to buy at the lowest possible prices.*

Let us turn our attention now to the various philosophies used by communists to justify their social system. The exponents of any social change invariably claim that people will be "happier" under their system than they now are under the status quo. The big metaphysical question then becomes, "What is happiness?" Up until recently the communists - materialists par excellence - used to say it was material well-being. The main gripe they had against capitalism was that the workers were NECESSARILY in a state of increasing poverty. Bakunin, echoing Marx, said that "the situation of the proletariat...by virtue of inevitable economic law, must and will become worse every year." [29] But since World War II this pillar of communist thought has become increasingly shaky - particularly in the United States where "hard hats" are now pulling in salaries upwards of four quid an hour. This fact has created such acute embarrassment among the faithful that many communists are now seeking a new definition of happiness which has nothing to do with material comfort. Very often what they do in discarding the Marxist happiness albatross is to saddle themselves with a Freudian one.** The new definition of happiness our neo-Freudian communists arrive at is usually derived from what Otto Fenichel called the "Nirvana -------------------* The usual objection raised to a "consumers' democracy" is that capitalists have used similar catch phrases in order to justify capitalism and keep the workers in a subjugated position. Individualists sustain this objection but point out that capitalists are being inconsistent by not practicing what they preach. If they did, they would no longer be in a position of privilege, living off the labour of others. This point is made clear in the section on capitalism later in this article. ** Wilhelm Reich and R. D. Laing are among the latest gurus of the libertarian left. And it's not uncommon in anarchist circles to hear a few sympathetic words about Herbert Marcuse's "Eros and Civilisation," despite the author's totalitarian tendencies.

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principle." The essence of this theory is that both lifeenhancing behaviour (e.g. sexual intercourse, eating) and life-inhibiting behaviour (e.g. war, suicide) are alternative ways of escaping from tension. Thus Freud's life instinct and death instinct find their common ground in Nirvana where happiness means a secure and carefree

existence. This sounds to me very much like the Christian conception of heaven. But with communism, unlike heaven, you don't have to give up your life to get in - just your humanity. Homer Lane used to have a little anecdote which illustrates the point I'm trying to make about the communist idea of happiness: "A dog and a rabbit are running down a field. Both apparently are doing the same thing, running and using their capacity to the full. Really there is a great difference between them. Their motives are different. One is happy, the other unhappy. The dog is happy because he is trying to do something with the hope of achieving it. The rabbit is unhappy because he is afraid. A few minutes later the position is reversed; the rabbit has reached his burrow and is inside panting, whilst the dog is sitting outside panting. The rabbit is now happy because it is safe, and therefore no longer afraid. The dog is unhappy because his hope has not been realised. Here we have the two kinds of happiness of which each one of us is capable - happiness based on the escape from danger, and happiness based on the fulfillment of a hope, which is the only true happiness." [30] I leave it to the reader as an exercise in triviality to decide which of these two types of happiness is emphasised by communism. While on the subject of analogies, I'd like to indulge in one of my own. Generally speaking there are two kinds of cats: the "lap cat" and the "mouser." The former leads a peaceful existence, leaving granny's lap only long enough to make a discreet trip to its sandbox and to lap up a saucer of milk. The latter lives by catching mice in the farmer's barn and never goes near the inside of the farm house. The former is normally fat and lazy; the latter skinny and alert. Despite the lap cat's easier life, the mouser wouldn't exchange places with him if he could, while the lap cat COULDN'T exchange places if he would. Here we have two cats - perhaps even from the same litter - with two completely different attitudes toward life. The one expects a clean sandbox and food twice a day - and he is rarely disappointed. The other has to work for a living, but generally finds the reward worth while. "Now what has this got to do with the subject at hand?" I hear you cry. Just

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this: the communists would make "lap cats" of us all. "But what's so bad about that?" you may ask. To which I would have to reply (passing over the stinky problem of WHO will change the sandbox), "Have you ever tried to `domesticate' a mouser?"

Communism, in its quest for a tranquil, tensionless world, inevitably harks back to the Middle Ages. Scratch a communist and chances are pretty good you'll find a mediaevalist underneath. Paul Goodman, for example, derives his ideal "community of scholars" from Bologna and Paris models based in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. [31] Erich Fromm writes longingly of "the sense of security which was characteristic of man in the Middle Ages....In having a distinct, unchangeable, and unquestionable place in the social world from the moment of birth, man was rooted in a structuralised whole, and thus life had a meaning which left no place, and no need, for doubt. A person was identical with his role in society; he was a peasant, an artisan, a knight, and not AN INDIVIDUAL who HAPPENED to have this or that occupation. The social order was conceived as a natural order, and being a definite part of it gave man a feeling of security and of belonging. There was comparatively little competition. One was born into a certain economic position which guaranteed a livelihood determined by tradition. [32] Kropotkin goes even further than Fromm. I'd like to examine his position in some detail because I think it is very instructive of how the communist mentality works. In perhaps his best-known book, "Mutual Aid," Kropotkin devotes two of its eight chapters to glorifying the Middle Ages, which he boldly claim were one of "the two greatest periods of [mankind's] history." [33] (The other one being ancient Greece. He doesn't say how he reconciles this with the fact that Greece was based firmly on a foundation of slavery). "No period of history could better illustrate the constructive powers of the popular masses than the tenth and eleventh centuries...but, unhappily, this is a period about which historical information is especially scarce." [34] I wonder why? Could it be that everyone was having such a good time that no one found time to record it? Kropotkin writes of the mediaeval cities as "centres of liberty and enlightenment." [35] The mediaeval guilds, he says, answered "a deeply inrooted want of human nature," [36] calling them "organisations for maintaining justice." [37] Let's see what Kropotkin means here by "justice": "If a brother's house is burned, or he has lost his ship, or has suffered on a pilgrim's voyage, all the brethren MUST come to his aid. If a brother falls dangerously ill, two brethren MUST keep watch by his bed till he is out of danger, and if he dies, the brethren must bury him - a great

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affair in those times of pestilences [Kropotkin must have been dozing to admit this in his Utopia] - and follow him to the church and the grave. After his death they MUST provide for his children....If a brother was involved in a quarrel with a stranger to the guild, they agreed to support him for bad and for good; that is, whether he was unjustly accused

of aggression, OR REALLY WAS THE AGGRESSOR, they HAD to support him....They went to court to support by oath the truthfulness of his statements, and if he was found guilty they did not let him go to full ruin and become a slave through not paying the due compensation; they all paid it....Such were the leading ideas of those brotherhoods which gradually covered the whole of mediaeval life." [38] (My emphasis) And such is Kropotkin's conception of "justice," which could better be described as a warped sense of solidarity. He goes on to say, "It is evident that an institution so well suited to serve the need of union, without depriving the individual of his initiative, could but spread, grow, and fortify." [39] "We see not only merchants, craftsmen, hunters, and peasants united in guilds; we also see guilds of priests, painters, teachers of primary schools and universities, guilds for performing the passion play, for building a church, for developing the `mystery' of a given school of art or craft, or for a special recreation - even guilds among beggars, executioners, and lost women, all organised on the same double principle of self-jurisdiction and mutual support." [40] It was such "unity of thought" which Kropotkin thinks "can but excite our admiration." [41] ----REFERENCES

14. Kropotkin, op. cit., p. 209. 15. Ibid., p. 206. 16. Henry David Thoreau, "Journal," March 11, 1856. 17. Kropotkin, op. cit., p. 206. 18. Ibid., p. 205. 19. Errico Malatesta, "Anarchy" (London: Freedom Press, 1949), p. 33. Originally published in 1907. 20. Alexander Berkman, "A.B.C. of Anarchism" (London: Freedom Press, 1964), p. 27. This is the abbreviated version of the Vanguard Press "ABC of Communist Anarchism" which appeared in 1929. 21. Ibid., p. 28. 22. Ibid., p. 29. 23. Ibid., p. 25. 24. "Italy: An Illness of Convenience," "Newsweek," January 4, 1971, p. 44. 25. "Un Forum Legislatif de la Classe Ouvriere?", "Granma" (French edition), January 31, 1971, p. 3.

26. "Cuba Announces Labor Penalties For Loafers," "The International Herald Tribune," March 19, 1971, p. 4. 27. Theodore Roszak, "The Making of a Counter Culture" (Garden City, New York: Anchor Books, 1969), p. 29. 28. Kropotkin, op. cit., pp. 236-7. 29. Mikhail Bakunin, "The Political Philosophy of Bakunin: Scientific Anarchism," ed. G. P. Maximoff (New York: The Free Press, 1953), p. 285. 30. Homer Lane, "Talks to Parents and Teachers" (London: George Allen & Unwin, Ltd., 1928), p. 121. 31. Paul Goodman, "Compulsory Mis-education" and "The Community of Scholars" (New York: Vintage Books, 1962, 1964), p. 174. 32. Erich Fromm, "Fear of Freedom" (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, Ltd., 1960), p. 34. First published in the United States in 1942 under the title "Escape from Freedom." 33. Petr Kropotkin, "Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution" (Boston: Extending Horizons Books, 1955), p. 297. This book first appeared in London in 1902. 34. Ibid., p. 166. 35. Ibid., p. 169. 36. Ibid., p. 176. 37. Ibid., p. 176. 38. Ibid., pp. 172-3. 39. Ibid., p. 176. 40. Ibid., p. 174. 41. Ibid., p. 177. ____________________________________________________________________ *********************************************************************** * "I am I" * * - Schelling * *********************************************************************** >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> non serviam #5 ************** (A Critique of Communism and the Individualist Alternative (Continued)) Contents: Ken Knudson: A Critique of Communism and

The Individualist Alternative (serial: 5) *********************************************************************** Ken Knudson: A Critique of Communism and The Individualist Alternative (continued)

But where did the common labourer fit into all this? Kropotkin makes the remarkable generalisation that "at no time has labour enjoyed such conditions of prosperity and such respect." [42] As proof he cites the "glorious donations" [43] the workers gave to the cathedrals. These, he says, "bear testimony of their relative well-being." [44] (Just as the Taj Mahal bears testimony of the relative well-being of the people of India, no doubt). "Many aspirations of our modern radicals were already realised in the Middle Ages [and] much of what is described now as Utopian was accepted then as a matter of fact." [45] As for the material achievements of the Middle Ages, Kropotkin can't find a superlative super enough to describe them - but he tries: "The very face of Europe had been changed. The land was dotted with rich cities, surrounded by immense thick walls [I wonder why?] which were embellished by towers and gates, each of them a work of art in itself. The cathedrals,

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conceived in a grand style and profusely decorated, lifted their bell-towers to the skies, displaying a purity of form and a boldness of imagination which we now vainly strive to attain....[He displays a bit of `boldness of imagination' himself (to be quite charitable) when he goes on to say:] Over large tracts of land well-being had taken the place of misery; learning had grown and spread. The methods of science had been elaborated; the basis of natural philosophy had been laid down; and the way had been paved for all the mechanical inventions of which our own times are so proud. Such were the magic [sic] changes accomplished in Europe in less than four hundred years." [46] Just what were these "magic changes" of which Kropotkin is so proud? He lists about a dozen. [47] Among them are: printing (neglecting to inform us that the Gutenberg press was invented in the middle of the 15th century, sometime after the mediaeval cities "degenerated into centralised

states"); steelmaking (neglecting to inform us that steelmaking had been mentioned in the works of Homer and was used continuously since that time); glassmaking (neglecting to inform us that the Encyclopaedia Britannica - to which he contributed numerous articles - devotes to the Middle Ages all of two sentences of a 27 page article on the history of glassmaking); the telescope (neglecting to inform us that it wasn't even invented until 1608); gunpowder and the compass (neglecting to inform us that the Chinese lay earlier claims to both of these inventions); algebra (neglecting to inform us that algebra was in common use in ancient Babylonia and that, although being introduced to mediaeval Europe by the Arabs, no important contributions were made by Europeans until the Renaissance); the decimal system (neglecting to inform us that the Hindus invented the system about a thousand years before it gained any ground in Europe in the 17th century); calendar reform (neglecting to inform us that although Roger Bacon suggested such reform to the Pope in the 13th century, no action was taken until 300 years later under the reign of Pope Gregory XIII in 1582); chemistry (neglecting to inform us of an earlier work of his where he said chemistry was "entirely a product of our [19th] century." [48]) Indeed the only things he mentions as products of the Middle Ages which stand up under scrutiny are counterpoint and, paradoxically, the mechanical clock. To top it all off, he then has the gall to cite Galileo and Copernicus as being "direct descendents" of mediaeval science [49] - somehow managing to ignore the fact that Galileo spent the last eight years of his life under house arrest for supporting the Copernican theory, thanks to that grand mediaeval institution, the Inquisition. You may be wondering why the people of the Middle Ages

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let such a Utopia slip through their fingers. Kropotkin cites foreign invasions - notably those of the Mongols, Turks, and Moors [50] - but makes it quite clear that the "greatest and most fatal error of most cities was to bass their wealth upon commerce and industry." [51] So here we have it laid bare for all to see: Kropotkin's ideal community would not only return us to the dark ages, but would take away the one thing that could bring us back commerce and industry. Rudolf Rocker, the darling of the anarcho-syndicalists, similarly eulogises the Middle Ages. He, too, felt that mediaeval man led a "rich life" [52] which gave "wings to his spirit and prevent[ed] his mental stagnation." [53] But unlike Kropotkin - who chalked up mediaeval solidarity to man's innate "nature" - Rocker (correctly) explains these "fraternal associations" by means of a most unanarchistic concept - Christianity:

"Mediaeval man felt himself to be bound up with a single, uniform culture, a member of a great community extending over all countries, in whose bosom all people found their place. It was the community of Christendom which included all the scattered units of the Christian world and spiritually unified them....The deeper the concept of Christianity took root in men, the easier they overcame all barriers between themselves and others, and the stronger lived in them the consciousness that all belonged to one great community and strove toward a common goal." [54] So we see that the glue that held these idyllic mediaeval communities together was not Kropotkin's "mutual aid," but rather Christian mysticism. Rocker was perceptive enough to see this; Kropotkin apparently was not. But what both of these men failed to see was that mysticism is the necessary glue of ANY communist society. The mystical Garden of Eden is the ultimate goal of every church of the communist religion. Unfortunately, as every good Christian will tell you, the only way you can stay in the Garden of Eden is to abstain from the "tree of knowledge." Communists are apparently willing to pay this price. Individualists are not. It is communism's intention to carry religion to its ultimate absurdity: it would sacrifice man on the cross of altruism for the sake of - Man. * * * * *

I'd like to end my diatribe against communism by quoting another one. This is what one prophetic Frenchman, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, had to say about communism eight years before the "Communist Manifesto" appeared like a

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spectre to haunt Europe - and like a good French wine, his words seem to have improved with age: "Communism - or association in a simple form - is the necessary object and original aspiration of the social nature, the spontaneous movement by which it manifests and establishes itself. It is the first phase of human civilisation. In this state of society, - which the jurists have called `negative communism', - man draws near to man, and shares with him the fruits of the field and the milk and flesh of animals. Little by little this communism - negative as long as man does not produce - tends to become positive and organic through the development of labour and industry. But it is then that the sovereignty of thought, and the terrible faculty of reasoning logically or illogically, teach man that, if equality is the sine qua non of society, communism is the first species of slavery....The disadvantages of communism are so obvious that its critics never have needed to employ much eloquence to thoroughly

disgust men with it. The irreparability of the injustice which it causes, the violence which it does to attractions and repulsions, the yoke of iron which it fastens upon the will, the moral torture to which it subjects the conscience, the debilitating effect which it has upon society; and, to sum it all up, the pious and stupid uniformity which it enforces upon the free, active, reasoning, unsubmissive personality of man, have shocked common sense, and condemned communism by an irrevocable decree. The authorities and examples cited in its favour disprove it. The communistic republic of Plato involved slavery; that of Lycurgus employed Helots, whose duty it was to produce for their masters, thus enabling the latter to devote themselves exclusively to athletic sports and to war, Even J. J. Rousseau - confounding communism and equality - has said somewhere that, without slavery, he did not think equality of conditions possible. The communities of the early Church did not last the first century out, and soon degenerated into monasteries....The greatest danger to which society is exposed today is that of another shipwreck on this rock. Singularly enough, systematic communism - the deliberate negation of property - is conceived under the direct influence of the proprietary prejudice; and property is the basis of all communistic theories. The members of a community, it is true, have no private property; but the community is proprietor, and proprietor not only of the goods, but of the persons and wills. In consequence of this principle of absolute property, labour, which should be only a condition imposed upon man by Nature, becomes in all communities a human commandment, and therefore odious. Passive obedience, irreconcilable with a reflecting will, is strictly enforced. Fidelity to regulations, which are always

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defective, however wise they may be thought, allows of no complaint. Life, talent, and all the human faculties are the property of the State, which has the right to use them as it pleases for the common good. Private associations are sternly prohibited, in spite of the likes and dislikes of different natures, because to tolerate them would be to introduce small communities within the large one, and consequently private property; the strong work for the weak, although this ought to be left to benevolence, and not enforced, advised, or enjoined; the industrious work for the lazy though this is unjust; the clever work for the foolish, although this is absurd; and, finally, man - casting aside his personality, his spontaneity, his genius, and his affections - humbly annihilates himself at the feet of the majestic and inflexible Commune! Communism is inequality, but not as property is. Property is the exploitation of the weak by the strong.* Communism is the exploitation of the strong by the weak. In property, inequality of conditions is the result of force, under whatever name it be disguised: physical and mental force; force of events, chance, FORTUNE; force of accumulated property, etc. In communism, inequality

springs from placing mediocrity on a level with excellence. This damaging equation is repellent to the conscience, and causes merit to complain; for although it may be the duty of the strong to aid the weak, they prefer to do it out of generosity, - they never will endure a comparison. Give them equal opportunities of labour, and equal wages, but never allow their jealousy to be awakened by mutual suspicion of unfaithfulness in the performance of the common task. Communism is oppression and slavery. Man is very willing to obey the law of duty, serve his country, and oblige his friends; but he wishes to labour when he pleases, where he pleases, and as much as he pleases. He wishes to dispose of his own time, to be governed only by necessity, to choose his friendships, his recreation, and his discipline; to act from judgement, not by command; to sacrifice himself through selfishness, not through servile obligation. Communism is essentially opposed to the free exercise of our faculties, to our noblest desires, to our deepest feelings. Any plan which could be devised for reconciling it with the demands of the individual reason and will would end only in changing the thing while preserving the name. Now, if we are honest truth-seekers, we shall avoid disputes about words. Thus, communism violates the sovereignty of the conscience and equality: the first, by restricting spontaneity of mind and heart, and freedom of thought and action; the second, by placing labour and laziness, skill and stupidity, and even vice and virtue on an equality in point of comfort." [55] -------------------* See footnote on page 5. ----REFERENCES

42. Ibid., p. 194. 43. Ibid., p. 194. 44. Ibid,, p. 194. 45. Ibid., pp. 194-5. 46. Ibid., pp. 209-10. 47. Ibid., p. 214. 48. Kropotkine, "Paroles," p. 333. 49. Kropotkin, "Mutual Aid," p. 215. 50. Ibid., p. 217. 51. Ibid., p. 219. 52. Rudolf Rocker, "Nationalism and Culture," trans. Ray E. Chase (Los Angeles: Rocker Publications Committee, 1937), p.

92. 53. Ibid., p. 91. 54. Ibid., p. 92. 55. Proudhon, op. cit., pp. 248-51. ____________________________________________________________________ *********************************************************************** * "Nothing is more to me than myself." * * -- Max Stirner * *********************************************************************** >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> non serviam #6 ************** (A Critique of Communism and The Individualist Alternative (Continued)) Contents: Editor's Word Ken Knudson: A Critique of Communism and The Individualist Alternative (serial: 6)

*********************************************************************** Editor's Word _____________ 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 -conceptexpresses 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 viewpoint, the me-outlook, as opposed to the third-person and general viewpoint. 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]

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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 plumbliner 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

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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]

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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] ----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.

____________________________________________________________________ *********************************************************************** * "Whoever is a complete person does not need - to be an authority!" * * From +The False Principle of Our Education+ * *********************************************************************** >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> non serviam #7 ************** (Archists, Anarchists and Egoists ) Contents: Editor's Word Sidney Parker: "Archists, Anarchists and Egoists" Ken Knudson: A Critique of Communism and The Individualist Alternative (serial: 7)

*********************************************************************** Editor's Word _____________ Sidney Parker is the editor of the Stirnerite magazine "Ego", and is the author of the below article on "Archists, Anarchists and Egoists". This article will be the first in a series of articles sent to me by Sidney Parker that I will reprint here. They have previously appeared in the (out of print) magazine "Ego"/"The Egoist".

Svein Olav ____________________________________________________________________ Sidney Parker: Archists, Anarchists and Egoists --------------------------------

"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 slaughterhouse 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 government. 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. ____________________________________________________________________ Ken Knudson: A Critique of Communism and The Individualist Alternative (continued)

Why is it that Utopian dreams have a habit of turning into nightmares in practice? Very simply because people don't act the way the would-be architects of society would

have them act. The mythical man never measures up to the real man. This point was brought home forcefully in a recent letter to "Freedom" by S. E. Parker who observed that our modern visionaries are bound for disappointment because they are "trying to deduce an `is' from an `ought'." [70] Paper constitutions might work all right in a society of paper dolls, but they can only bring smiles to those who have observed their results in the real world. The same is true of paper revolutions which invariably have to go back to the drawing board once the reign of terror sets in. And if communist-anarchists think that their paper social systems are exempt from this, how do they explain the presence of anarchist "leaders" in high government positions during the Spanish Civil War? Hasn't everyone been surprised at sometime or other with the behaviour of people they thought they knew well? Perhaps a relative or a good friend does something "totally out of character." We can never completely know even those people closest to us, let alone total strangers. How are we, then, to comprehend and predict the behaviour of complex groups of people? To make assumptions about how people must and will act under a hypothetical social system is idle conjecture. We know from daily experience that men don't act as they "ought" to act or think as they "ought" to think. Why should things be any different after the revolution? Yet we still find an abundance of revolutionaries willing to kill and be killed for a cause which more likely than not, if realised, would bear no recognizable resemblance to what they were fighting for. This reason alone should be sufficient to give these people second thoughts about their methods. But apparently they are too carried away by the violence of their own rhetoric to be bothered with where it will lead them.* There is but one effective way to rid ourselves of the oppressive power of the state. It is not to shoot it to death; it is not to vote it to death; it is not even to persuade it to death. It is rather to starve it to death. -------------------* I am reminded here of a Herblock cartoon which came out during the Johnson-Goldwater presidential campaign of 1964. It pictures Goldwater standing in the rubble of a nuclear war and proclaiming, "But that's not what I meant!" I wonder if the Utopia which our idealists intend to usher in by violent revolution will be what they really "meant"?

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Power feeds on its spoils, and dies when its victims refuse to be despoiled. There is much truth in the well- known pacifist slogan, "Wars will cease when people refuse to

fight." This slogan can be generalised to say that "government will cease when people refuse to be governed." As Tucker put it, "There is not a tyrant in the civilised world today who would not do anything in his power to precipitate a bloody revolution rather than see himself confronted by any large fraction of his subjects determined not to obey. An insurrection is easily quelled; but no army is willing or able to train its guns on inoffensive people who do not even gather in the streets but stay at home and stand back on their rights." [71] A particularly effective weapon could be massive tax refusal. If (say) one-fifth of the population of the United States refused to pay their taxes, the government would be impaled on the horns of a dilemma. Should they ignore the problem, it would only get worse - for who is going to willingly contribute to the government's coffers when his neighbours are getting away scotfree? Or should they opt to prosecute, the burden just to feed and guard so many "parasites" - not to mention the lose of revenue - would be so great that the other four-fifths of the population would soon rebel. But in order to succeed, this type of action would require massive numbers. Isolated tax refusal - like isolated draft refusal - is a useless waste of resources. It is like trying to purify the salty ocean by dumping a cup of distilled water into it. The individualist-anarchist would no more advocate such sacrificial offerings than the violent revolutionary would advocate walking into his neighbourhood police station and "offing the pig." As he would tell you, "It is not wise warfare to throw your ammunition to the enemy unless you throw it from the cannon's mouth." Tucker agrees. Replying to a critic who felt otherwise he said, "Placed in a situation where, from the choice of one or the other horn of a dilemma, it must follow either that fools will think a man a coward or that wise men will think him a fool, I can conceive of no possible ground for hesitancy in the selection." [72] There is a tendency among anarchists these days particularly in the United States - to talk about "alternatives" and "parallel institutions". This is a healthy sign which individualists very much encourage. The best argument one can possibly present against "the system" is to DEMONSTRATE a better one. Some communist-anarchists (let it be said to their credit) are now trying to do just that. Communal farms, schools, etc. have been sprouting up all over the States. Individualists, of course, welcome these experiments - especially where they fulfill the needs

- 31 of those involved and contribute to their happiness. But we can't help questioning the over-all futility of such social landscape gardening. The vast majority of these experiments collapse in dismal failure within the first year or two,

proving nothing but the difficulty of communal living. And should an isolated community manage to survive, their success could not be judged as conclusive since it would be said that their principles were applicable only to people well-nigh perfect. They might well be considered as the exceptions which proved the rule. If anarchy is to succeed to any appreciable extent, it has to be brought within the reach of everyone. I'm afraid that tepees in New Mexico don't satisfy that criterion. The parallel institution I would like to see tried would be something called a "mutual bank."* The beauty of this proposal is that it can be carried out under the very nose of the man-in-the-street. I would hope that in this way people could see for themselves the practical advantages it has to offer them, and ultimately accept the plan as their own. I'm well aware that this scheme, like any other, is subject to the law of metamorphosis referred to earlier. But should this plan fail, unlike those plans which require bloody revolutions for their implementation, the only thing hurt would be the pride of a few hair-brained individualists. -------------------* The reader can judge for himself the merits of this plan when I examine it in some detail later on in this article. ----REFERENCES

70. S. E. Parker, "Letters", "Freedom," February 27, 1971. 71. Tucker, "Instead of a Book," p. 413. Reprinted from "Liberty," October 4, 1884. 72. Tucker, "Instead of a Book," p. 422. Reprinted from "Liberty," June 23, 1888. ____________________________________________________________________ ************************************************************************* * * * "Human rights and wrongs are not determined by Justice, but by Might" * * -- Ragnar Redbeard * * * * "Everyone who would be free must show his power" -- Ibid * * * ************************************************************************* >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> non serviam #8

************** (Egoism: The Alternative of Freedom) Contents: Editor's Word Ken Knudson: A Critique of Communism and The Individualist Alternative (serial: 8)

*********************************************************************** Editor's Word _____________ In this issue, Ken's article comes on its own. Todays chapter is an exposition of his ideas on egoism, viewed from a political point of view. Nothing more needs to be said. Enjoy! Svein Olav ____________________________________________________________________ Ken Knudson: A Critique of Communism and The Individualist Alternative (continued)

EGOISM: THE PHILOSOPHY OF FREEDOM "Many a year I've used my nose To smell the onion and the rose; Is there any proof which shows That I've a right to that same nose?" - Johann Christoph Friedrich Schiller The philosophy of individualist-anarchism is "egoism." It is not my purpose here to give a detailed account of this philosophy, but I would like to explode a few of the more common myths about egoism and present to the reader enough of its essence so that he may understand more clearly the section on individualist economics. I am tempted here to quote long extracts from "The Ego and His Own," for it was this book which first presented the egoist philosophy in a systematic way. Unfortunately, I find that Stirner's "unique" style does not readily lend itself to quotation. So what I have done in the following pages is to dress up Stirner's ideas in a language largely my own. Voltaire once said, "If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him." Bakunin wisely retorted, "If God DID exist, it would be necessary to abolish him." Unfortunately, Bakunin would only abolish God. It is the egoist's intention to abolish GODS. It is clear from Bakunin's writings that what he meant by God was what Voltaire meant - namely the religious God. The egoist sees many more gods than that - in fact, as many as there are

fixed ideas. Bakunin's gods, for example, include the god of humanity, the god of brotherhood, the god of mankind all variants on the god of altruism. The egoist, in striking down ALL gods, looks only to his WILL. He recognises no legitimate power over himself.* The world is there for him to consume - if he CAN. And he can if he has the power. For the egoist, the only right is the right of might. He accepts no "inalienable rights," for such rights by virtue of the fact that they're inalienable - must come from a higher power, some god. The American Declaration of -------------------* He does not, of course, claim to be omnipotent. There ARE external powers over him. The difference between the egoist and non-egoist in this regard is therefore one mainly of attitude: the egoist recognises external power as an enemy and consciously fights against it, while the nonegoist humbles himself before it and often accepts it as a friend.

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Independence, for example, in proclaiming these rights found it necessary to invoke the "Laws of Nature and of Nature's God." The same was true of the French Revolutionary "Declaration des droits de l'homme et du citoyen." The egoist recognises no right - or what amounts to the same thing - claims ALL rights for himself. What he can get by force he has a right to; and what he can't, he has no right. He demands no rights, nor does he recognise them in others. "Right - is a wheel in the head, put there by a spook," [73] says Stirner. Right is also the spook which has kept men servile throughout the ages. The believer in rights has always been his own jailer. What sovereign could last the day out without a general belief in the "divine right of kings"? And where would Messrs. Nixon, Heath, et. al. be today without the "right" of the majority? Men make their tyrants as they make their gods. The tyrant is a man like any other. His power comes from the abdicated power of his subjects. If people believe a man to have superhuman powers, they automatically GIVE him those powers by default. Had Hitler's pants fallen down during one of his ranting speeches, the whole course of history might have been different. For who can respect a naked Fuehrer? And who knows? The beginning of the end of Lyndon Johnson's political career might well have been when he showed his operation scar on coast-to-coast television for the whole wide world to see that he really was a man after all. This sentiment was expressed by Stirner when he said, "Idols exist through me; I need only refrain from creating them anew, then they exist no longer: `higher powers' exist only

through my exalting them and abasing myself. Consequently my relation to the world is this: I no longer do anything for it `for God's sake,' I do nothing `for man's sake,' but what I do I do `for my sake'." [74] The one thing that makes a man different from any other living creature is his power to reason. It is by this power that man can (and does) dominate over the world. Without reason man would be a pathetic non-entity - evolution having taken care of him long before the dinosaur. Now some people say that man is by nature a social animal, something like an ant or a bee. Egoists don't deny the sociability of man, but what we do say is that man is sociable to the extent that it serves his own self-interest. Basically man is (by nature, if you will)

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a selfish being. The evidence for this is overwhelming.* Let us look at a hive of bees to see what would happen if "reason" were suddenly introduced into their lives: "In the first place, the bees would not fail to try some new industrial process; for instance, that of making their cells round or square. All sorts of systems and inventions would be tried, until long experience, aided by geometry, should show them that the hexagonal shape is the best. Then insurrections would occur. The drones would be told to provide for themselves, and the queens to labour; jealousy would spread among the labourers; discords would burst forth; soon each one would want to produce on his own account; and finally the hive would be abandoned, and the bees would perish. Evil would be introduced into the honeyproducing republic by the power of reflection, - the very faculty which ought to constitute its glory." [75] So it would appear to me that reason would militate against blind, selfless cooperation. But by the same token, reason leads to cooperation which is mutually beneficial to all parties concerned. Such cooperation is what Stirner called a "union of egoists." [76] This binding together is not done through any innate social instinct, but rather as a matter of individual convenience. These unions would probably take the form of contracting individuals. The object of these contracts not being to enable all to benefit equally from their union (although this isn't ruled out, the egoist thinks it highly unlikely), but rather to protect one another from invasion and to secure to each contracting individual what is mutually agreed upon to be "his." By referring to a man's selfishness, you know where you stand. Nothing is done "for free." Equity demands reciprocity. Goods and services are exchanged for goods and services or (what is equivalent) bought. This may sound "heartless" - but what is the alternative? If one depends on kindness, pity or love the services and goods one gets

become "charity." The receiver is put in the position of a beggar, offering nothing in return for each "present." If you've ever been on the dole, or know anyone who has, you will know that the receiver of such gifts is anything but gracious. He is stripped of his manhood and he resents it. Now the egoist isn't (usually) so cold and cruel as this -------------------* Many people cite trade unions as a "proof" of man's solidarity and sociability. Just the opposite is true. Why else do people strike if not for their own "selfish" ends, e.g. higher wages, better working conditions, shorter hours?

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description makes him out to be. As often as not he is as charitable and kind as his altruist neighbour. But he CHOOSES the objects of his kindness; he objects to COMPULSORY "love." What an absurdity! If love were universal, it would have no meaning. If I should tell my wife that I love her because I love humanity, I would be insulting her. I love her not because she happens to be a member of the human race, but rather for what she is to me. For me she is something special: she possesses certain qualities which I admire and which make me happy. If she is unhappy, I suffer, and therefore I try to comfort her and cheer her up - for MY sake. Such love is a selfish love. But it is the only REAL love. Anything else is an infatuation with an image, a ghost. As Stirner said of his loved ones, "I love them with the consciousness of egoism; I love them because love makes ME happy, I love because loving is natural to me, because it pleases me. I know no `commandment of love'." [77] The lover of "humanity" is bewitched by a superstition. He has dethroned God, only to accept the reign of the holy trinity: Morality, Conscience and Duty. He becomes a "true believer" - a religious man. No longer believing in himself, he becomes a slave to Man. Then, like all religious men, he is overcome with feelings of "right" and "virtue." He becomes a soldier in the service of humanity whose intolerance of heretics rivals that of the most righteous religious fanatic. Most of the misery in the world today (as in the past) is directly attributable to men acting "for the common good." The individual is nothing; the mass all. The egoist would reverse this situation. Instead of everyone looking after the welfare of everyone else, each would look after his own welfare. This would, in one fell swoop, do away with the incredibly complicated, wasteful and tyrannical machinery (alluded to previously) necessary to see to it that not only everyone got his fair share of the communal pie, but that everyone contributed fairly to its

production. In its stead we egoists raise the banner of free competition: "the war of all against all" as the communists put it. But wouldn't that lead to (dare I say it) ANARCHY? Of course it would. What anarchist would deny the logical consequences of the principles he advocates? But let's see what this "anarchy" would be like. The egoist believes that the relationships who are alive to their own individual interests more just and equitable than they are now. property question for example. Today there disparity of income. Americans make up about world's population, but they control over between men would be far Take the is a great 7% of the half of its

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wealth. And among the Americans, nearly one quarter of the wealth is owned by 5% of the people.* [78] Such unequal distribution of wealth is due primarily to the LEGAL institution of property. Without the state to back up legal privilege and without the people's acquiescence to the privileged minority's legal right to that property, these disparities would soon disappear. For what makes the rich man rich and the poor man poor if not the latter GIVING the former the product of his labour? Stirner is commonly thought to have concerned himself little with the economic consequences of his philosophy. It is true that he avoided elaborating on the exact nature of his "union of egoists," saying that the only way of knowing what a slave will do when he breaks his chains is to wait and see. But to say that Stirner was oblivious to economics is just not so. On the contrary. It was he, after all, who translated into German both Adam Smith's classic "An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations" and Jean Baptiste Say's pioneering work on the free market economy, "Traite d'Economie Politique." The few pages he devotes to economics in "The Ego and His Own" are among his best: "If we assume that, as ORDER belongs to the essence of the State, so SUBORDINATION too is founded in its nature, then we see that the subordinates, or those who have received preferment, disproportionately OVERCHARGE and OVERREACH those who are put in the lower ranks....By what then is your property secure, you creatures of preferment?...By our refraining from interference! And so by OUR protection! And what do you give us for it? Kicks and disdain you give to the `common people'; police supervision, and a catechism with the chief sentence `Respect what is NOT YOURS, what belongs to OTHERS! respect others, and especially your superiors!' But we reply, `If you want our respect, BUY it for a price agreeable to us. We will leave you your property, if you give a due equivalent for this

leaving.'...What equivalent do you give for our chewing potatoes and looking calmly on while you swallow oysters? Only buy the oysters of us as dear as we have to buy the potatoes of you, then you may go on eating them. Or do you suppose the oysters do not belong to us as much as to you?...Let us consider our nearer property, labour...We distress ourselves twelve hours in the sweat of our face, -------------------* Contrary to popular belief, this gulf is getting larger. Since 1966, despite a constantly mushrooming GNP, the American factory workers' REAL wages (as opposed to his apparent, inflationary wages) have actually declined. [79]

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and you offer us a few pennies for it. Then take the like for your labour too. Are you not willing? You fancy that our labour is richly repaid with that wage, while yours on the other hand is worth a wage of many thousands. But, if you did not rate yours so high, and gave us a better chance to realise value from ours, then we might well, if the case demanded it, bring to pass still more important things than you do for the many thousand pounds; and, if you got only such wages as we, you would soon grow more industrious in order to receive more. But, if you render any service that seems to us worth ten and a hundred times more than our own labour, why, then you shall get a hundred times more for it too; we, on the other hand, think also to produce for you things for which you will requite us more highly than with the ordinary day's wages. We shall be willing to get along with each other all right, if only we have first agreed on this - that neither any longer needs to - PRESENT anything to the other....We want nothing presented by you, but neither will we present you with anything. For centuries we have handed alms to you from good-hearted - stupidity, have doled out the mite of the poor and given to the masters the things that are - not the masters'; now just open your wallet, for henceforth our ware rises in price quite enormously. We do not want to take from you anything, anything at all, only you are to pay better for what you want to have. What then have you? `I have an estate of a thousand acres.' And I am your plowman, and will henceforth attend to your fields only for a full day's wages. `Then I'll take another.' You won't find any, for we plowmen are no longer doing otherwise, and, if one puts in an appearance who takes less, then let him beware of us. There is the housemaid, she too is now demanding as much, and you will no longer find one below this price. `Why, then it is all over with me.' Not so fast! You will doubtless take in as much as we; and, if it should not be so, we will take off so much that you shall have wherewith to live like us. `But I am accustomed to live better.' We have nothing against that,

but it is not our lookout; if you can clear more, go ahead. Are we to hire out under rates, that you may have a good living? The rich man always puts off the poor with the words, `What does your want concern me? See to it how you make your way through the world; that is YOUR AFFAIR, not mine.' Well, let us let it be our affair, then, and let us not let the means that we have to realise value from ourselves be pilfered from us by the rich. `But you uncultured people really do not need so much.' Well, we are taking somewhat more in order that for it we may procure the culture that we perhaps need....`O ill-starred equality!' No, my good old sir, nothing of equality. We only want to

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count for what we are worth, and, if you are worth more, you shall count for more right along. We only want to be WORTH OUR PRICE, and think to show ourselves worth the price that you will pay." [80] Fifty years later Benjamin Tucker took over where Stirner left off: "The minute you remove privilege, the class that now enjoy it will be forced to sell their labour, and then, when there will be nothing but labour with which to buy labour, the distinction between wage-payers and wage-receivers will be wiped out, and every man will be a labourer exchanging with fellow-labourers. Not to abolish wages, but to make EVERY man dependent upon wages and secure to every man his WHOLE wages is the aim of Anarchistic Socialism. What Anarchistic Socialism aims to abolish is usury. It does not want to deprive labour of its reward; it wants to deprive capital of its reward. It does not hold that labour should not be sold; it holds that capital should not be hired at usury." [81] Franklin D. Roosevelt said in his second inaugural address that "We have always known that heedless selfinterest was bad morals; we know now that it is bad economics." I've tried to show in this section that selfinterest is "good morals." I now intend to show that it is also good economics. ----REFERENCES

73. Stirner, op. cit., p. 210. 74. Ibid., p. 319.

75. Proudhon, op. cit., pp. 243-4. 76. Stirner, op. cit., p. 179. 77. Ibid., p. 291. 78. "At the Summit of the Affluent U.S. Society," "The International Herald Tribune." March 19, 1971, p. 1. 79. "Newsweek," February 1, 1971 , p. 44. 80. Stirner, op. cit., pp. 270-2. 81. Tucker, "Instead of a Book," p. 404. Reprinted from "Liberty," April 28, 1888. ____________________________________________________________________ *********************************************************************** * EGOTIST, n.: * * A person of low taste, more interested in himself than in me. * * * * From "The Devil's Dictionary" by Ambrose Bierce * *********************************************************************** >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> non serviam #9 ************** (Capitalism: Freedom perverted) Contents: Editor's Word Ken Knudson: A Critique of Communism and The Individualist Alternative (serial: 9)

*********************************************************************** Editor's Word _____________ The saga continues ... The chapter Ken Knudson's article today, "Capitalism: Freedom Perverted" is probably the most challenging chapter to the readers of Non Serviam, and I have no doubt that many will wish to comment. Such comments do, unless they are themselves articles, belong on the list, nonserv. As Ken Knudson is presently on vacation, it might take some time beforehe replies. Happy reading, and I look forward to a good discussion. Svein Olav ____________________________________________________________________ Ken Knudson: A Critique of Communism and

The Individualist Alternative (continued)

CAPITALISM: FREEDOM PERVERTED "Permit me to issue and control the money of a nation and I care not who makes its laws." - Meyer A. Rothchild Roosevelt, in blaming the depression of the 'thirties on "heedless self-interest," played a cheap political trick for which the world has been suffering ever since. The great crash of 1929, far from being created by "free enterprise," was created by government interference in the free market. The Federal Reserve Board had been artificially controlling interest rates since 1913. The tax structure of the country was set up in such a way as to encourage ridiculously risky speculation in the stock market. "Protective tariffs" destroyed anything that vaguely resembled a free market. Immigration barriers prevented the free flow of the labour market. Anti-trust laws threatened prosecution for charging less than the competition ("intent to monopolise") and for charging the same as the competition ("price fixing"), but graciously permitted charging more than the competition (commonly called "going out of business.") With all these legislative restraints and controls, Roosevelt still had the gall to blame the depression on the "free" market economy. But what was his answer to the "ruthlessness" of freedom? This is what he had to say on taking office in 1933: "If we are to go forward, we must move as a trained and loyal army willing to sacrifice to the good of a common discipline, because without such discipline no progress is made, no leadership becomes effective. We are, I know, ready and willing to submit our lives and property to such discipline because it makes possible a leadership which aims at a larger good." [82] We've been on that Keynesian road ever since. The "larger good" has become larger and larger until today the only cure the politicians come up with for the economy's ills is more of the same poison which made it sick in the first place. The rationale for such a policy was expressed by G. D. H. Cole in 1933: "If once a departure is made from the classical method of letting all the factors [of the economy] alone - and we have seen enough of that method [have we?] to be thoroughly dissatisfied with it - it becomes necessary to control ALL the factors...for interference with one, while the others are left unregulated, is certain to result in a fatal lack of balance in the working of the economic system.." [83] (My emphasis)

- 40 Many people, on hearing the individualist critique of governmental control of the economy, jump to the erroneous conclusion that we believe in capitalism. I'm sorry to say that some anarchists - who should know better - share this common fallacy. In a letter to "Freedom" a few months ago I tried to clear up this myth. Replying to an article by one of its editors, I had this to say: "First let me look at the term `anarcho-capitalist.' This, it seems to me, is just an attempt to slander the individualist-anarchists by using a supercharged word like `capitalist' in much the same way as the word `anarchy' is popularly used to mean chaos and disorder. No one to my knowledge accepts the anarcho-capitalist label*, just as no one up to the time of Proudhon's memoir on property in 1840 accepted the anarchist label. But, unlike Proudhon who could call himself an anarchist by stripping the word of its derogatory connotation and looking at its real MEANING, no one can logically call himself an anarcho-capitalist for the simple reason that it's a contradiction in terms: anarchists seek the abolition of the state while capitalism is inherently dependent upon the state. Without the state, capitalism would inevitably fall, for capitalism rests on the pillars of government privilege. Because of government a privileged minority can monopolise land, limit credit, restrict exchange, give idle capital the power to increase, and, through interest, rent, profit, and taxes, rob industrious labour of its products." [84] Now most anarchists when they attack capitalism strike it where it is strongest: in its advocacy of freedom. And how paradoxical that is. Here we have the anarchists, champions of freedom PAR EXCELLENCE, complaining about freedom! How ridiculous, it seems to me, to find anarchists attacking Mr. Heath for withdrawing government subsidies from museums and children's milk programmes. When anarchists start screaming for free museums, free milk, free subways, free medical care, free education, etc., etc., they only show their ignorance of what freedom really is. All these "free" goodies which governments so graciously shower upon -------------------* I have since been informed that "the term `anarchocapitalist' is now in use in the USA - particularly amongst those who contribute to the Los Angeles publication `Libertarian Connection'." It seems to me that people accepting such a label must do so primarily for its shock value. Very few people like capitalists these days, and those who do certainly don't like anarchists. What better term could you find to offend everyone?

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their subjects ultimately come from the recipients themselves - in the form of taxes. Governments are very clever at concealing just how large this sum actually is. They speak of a billion pounds here and a few hundred million dollars there. But what does a figure like $229,232,000,000.00 (Nixon's proposed budget) actually mean to the taxpayer? Virtually nothing. It's just a long string of numbers preceded by a dollar sign. People have no conception of numbers that size. But let me try to shed some light on this figure by breaking it down into a number the individual taxpayer can't help but understand: the average annual cost per family. This is a number governments NEVER talk about - for if they did, there would be a revolt which would make the storming of the Bastille look like a Sunday school picnic. Here's how to calculate it: you take the government's annual budget and divide it by the population of the country; then you multiply the result by the average size of family (4.5 seems a reasonable number). Doing this for the American case cited, we come to $4,800 (i.e. 2000 pounds per family per year!*). And that is just the FEDERAL tax bite. State and local taxes (which primarily pay for America's "free" education and "free" public highways) have yet to be considered. I leave it as an exercise to the British reader to see why their "welfare state" also prefers to mask budgetary figures by using astronomical numbers. One thing should be clear from this example: nothing is for nothing. But the Santa Claus myth dies hard, even - or should I say especially? - among anarchists. The only encouraging sign to the contrary I have found in the anarchist press of late was when Ian Sutherland complained in the columns of "Freedom": "I object, strongly, to having a large section of my `product', my contribution to society, forcibly removed from me by a paternalistic state to dispense to a fool with 10 kids." [85] Unfortunately, I suspect that Mr Sutherland would only replace the "paternalistic state" by the "paternalistic commune" - and in so doing would still end up supporting those 10 kids. My suspicions were nourished by what he said in the very next paragraph about "laissez faire" anarchists: "perhaps they -------------------* I am usually quite conservative in my use of exclamation marks. When I used this example in a recent letter to "Freedom", the editors saw fit to insert one where I had not. In keeping with their precedent, I will do likewise.

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should join the Powellites." Perhaps Mr Sutherland should learn what laissez faire means. Laissez faire is a term coined by the French physiocrats during the eighteenth century. John Stuart Mill brought it into popular English usage with the publication in 1848 of his "Principles of Political Economy," where he examined the arguments for and against government intervention in the economy. The "con" side of the argument he called laissez faire. "The principle of `laissez faire' in economics calls for perfect freedom in production; distribution of the returns (or profit) to the factors of production according to the productivity of each; and finally, markets in which prices are determined by the free interplay of forces that satisfy buyers and sellers." [86] I find it difficult to see how any advocate of freedom could possibly object to a doctrine like this one. Unfortunately, what happened in the 19th century was that a handful of capitalists, who were anything but believers if freedom, picked up this nice sounding catch phrase and decided to "improve" upon it. These "improvements" left them with the freedom to exploit labour but took away labour's freedom to exploit capital. These capitalists, in perverting the original meaning of laissez faire, struck a blow against freedom from which it still suffers to this day. The capitalist who advocates laissez faire is a hypocrite. If he really believed in freedom, he could not possibly condone the greatest invader of freedom known to man: government. The capitalist necessarily relies on government to protect his privileged RIGHTS. Let us look at the foremost advocate of capitalism today, Ayn Rand. Her book "Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal" has two appendices. The first is on "Man's Rights" where she say, "INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS ARE THE MEANS OF SUBORDINATING SOCIETY TO MORAL LAW." [87] (Her emphasis) Once again we are back to "rights" and "morals" which Stirner so strongly warned us about. And where does this lead us? Directly to Appendix Two, "The Nature of Government," where she says that government is "necessary" because "men need an institution charged with the task of protecting [you guessed it] their rights." [88] Let's see what some of these precious rights are: I. Chapter 11 of Miss Rand's book is devoted to a defence of patent and copyright laws. In it she calls upon government to "certify the origination of an idea and protect its owner's exclusive right to use and disposal." [89] Realising the absurdity of PERPETUAL property in ideas ("consider what would happen if, in producing an automobile, we had to pay royalties to the descendants of all the inventors involved, starting with the inventor of the wheel

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and on up." [90]), she goes into considerable mental acrobatics to justify intellectual property for a LIMITED time. But by so doing, she only succeeds in arousing our suspicion of her motives, for it seems strange that a mere lapse of time should negate something so precious as a man's "right" to his property. Admitting that "a patented invention often tends to hamper or restrict further research and development in a given area of science [91], our champion of the unhampered economy nevertheless manages to justify governmental "protection" to secure the inventor's "rights." As for copyrights, our millionaire author thinks "the most rational" length of time for this governmental protection would be "for the lifetime of the author and fifty years thereafter." [92] How does she justify all this? The way she justifies most of her inane arguments - by quoting herself: "Why should Rearden be the only one permitted to manufacture Rearden Metal?" [93] Why indeed? II. Capitalists are fond of proclaiming the "rights" of private property. One of their favourite property rights is the right to own land without actually occupying it. The only way this can possibly be done is, once again, by government protection of legal pieces of paper called "titles" and "deeds." Without these scraps of paper, vast stretches of vacant land would be open to those who could use them and exorbitant rent could no longer be extracted from the non-owning user as tribute to the non-using owner. There is much talk these days of a "population explosion." It is claimed that land is becoming more and more scarce and that by the year such and such there will be 38.2 people per square inch of land. But just how scarce is land? If all the world's land were divided up equally, every individual would have more than ten acres apiece. Even "crowded" islands like Britain and Japan have more than an acre per person on average. [94] When you consider how few people actually own any of this land, these figures seem incredible. It's no wonder then that the absentee landlord is a strong believer in property rights. Without them his vulnerable land might actually be used to the advantage of the user. III. Capitalists have always been great believers in the sovereign "rights" of nations. Ayn Rand, for example, thinks it perfectly consistent with her brand of freedom that the United States government should tax the people within its borders to support an army which costs tens of billions of dollars each year. It is true that Miss Rand opposes the war in Vietnam. But why? Because "IT DOES NOT SERVE ANY NATIONAL INTEREST OF THE UNITED STATES." [95] (Her emphasis) So we see that our advocate of "limited

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government" wouldn't go so far as to limit its strongest arm: the military. Eighty billion dollars a year for national "defence" doesn't seem to phase her in the least in fact, she would like to add on a few billion more to make "an army career comparable to the standards of the civilian labour market." [96] As every anarchist knows, a frontier is nothing more than an imaginary line drawn by a group of men with vested interests on their side of the line. That "nations" should exist is an absurdity. That a highwayman (in the uniform of a customs official) should rob people as they cross these imaginary lines and turn back others who haven't the proper pieces of paper is an obscenity too indecent to relate here - there may be children reading. But if there are children reading, perhaps they can enlighten their elders about the obvious - as they did when the emperor went out in his "new" clothes. The nationalists of the world are strutting about without a stitch of reason on. Can only a child see this? IV. The cruelest "right" - and the one least understood today - is the exclusive right of governments to issue money. There was a time about a hundred years ago when nearly everyone was aware of the currency question. For several decades in the United States it was THE political issue. Whole political parties formed around it (e.g. the Greenback and Populist parties). William Jennings Bryan, the three-time Democratic candidate for the presidency, rose to fame with his "easy money" speeches; next to Lincoln's Gettysburg address, his "cross of gold" speech is probably the best-known public oration of 19th century America. Yet today virtually everyone accepts the currency question as settled. Governments issue the money people use and they never give it a second thought - it's just there, like the sun and the moon. The capitalist is vitally interested in the government's exclusive right to issue money. The capitalist is, by definition, the holder of capital; and the government, by making only a certain type of capital (namely gold) the legal basis of all money, gives to the capitalist a monopoly power to compel all holders of property other than the kind thus privileged, as well as all nonproprietors, to pay tribute to the capitalist for the use of a circulating medium and instrument of credit which is absolutely necessary to carry out commerce and reap the benefits of the division of labour. A crude example of how this system works is given by the Angolan "native tax." The Portuguese whites in Angola found it difficult to get black labour for their coffee plantations, so they struck upon a rather ingenious scheme: tax the natives and the natives,

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having to pay their tax in MONEY, would be forced to sell their labour to the only people who could give it to them the whiteman. [97] The same thing goes on today on a more sophisticated level in our more "civilised" societies. The worker needs money to carry out the business of everyday life. He needs food, he needs housing, he needs clothing. To get these things he needs MONEY. And to get money he has to sell the only thing he's got: his labour. Since he MUST sell his labour, he is put into a very bad bargaining position with the buyers of labour: the capitalists. This is how the capitalist grows rich. He buys labour in a cheap market and sells his products back to the worker in a dear one. This is what Marx called the "surplus value theory" of labour. His analysis (at least here) was right; his solution to the problem was wrong. The way Marx saw out of this trap was to abolish money. The worker would then get the equivalent of his labour by pooling his products with other workers and taking out what he needed. I've already exposed the weak points of this theory. What is the individualist alternative? ----REFERENCES

82. Quoted from Charles A. Reich's article in "The New Yorker" magazine, "The Greening of American," September 26, 1970. 83. G. D. H. Cole, "What Everybody Wants To Know About Money" (London: Victor Gollancz Ltd., 1933), pp. 526-7. 84. Ken Knudson, "Letters", "Freedom," November 14, 1970. 85. Ian S. Sutherland, "Doomsday & After," "Freedom," February 27, 1971. 86. "Laissez Faire," "Encyclopaedia Britannica," 1965, vol. XIII, p. 606. 87. Ayn Rand, "Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal" (New York: Signet Books, 1967), p 320. 88. Ibid., p. 331. 89. Ibid., p. 131. 90. Ibid., pp. 131-2. 91. Ibid., pp. 132-3. 92. Ibid., p, 132. 93. Ibid., p. 134.

94. "Geographical Summaries: Area and Population," Encyclopaedia Britannica Atlas," 1965, p. 199. 95. Rand, op. cit., p. 224. 96. Ibid., p. 229. 97. Douglas Marchant, "Angola," "Anarchy 112," June, 1970, p. 184. ____________________________________________________________________ *********************************************************************** * POSITIVISM, n: A philosophy that denies our knowledge of the Real * * and affirms our ignorance of the Apparent. Its * * longest exponent is Comte, its broadest Mill and * * its thickest Spencer. * * * * "The Devil's Dictionary", Ambrose Bierce * *********************************************************************** >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> non serviam #10 *************** (The Egoism of Max Stirner) Contents: Editor's Word Sidney Parker: The Egoism of Max Stirner Ken Knudson: A Critique of Communism and The Individualist Alternative (serial: 10)

*********************************************************************** Editor's Word: _____________ Stirner is a philosopher who is easy to misunderstand, as Sidney Parker shows in his article "The Egoism of Max Stirner" below. Ones first attention to Stirner very often comes from political or ideological motivations. And so, with the expectation of finding an author whose idea is a flaming insurrective rhetoric, one finds - just that. And if one is a critic, like Camus mentioned by Parker, or even a contemporary like Moses Hess [1], one is easily led to believe that Stirner is just advocating a new _idea_ for which to live and breathe, a new Object which is supposed to be the new centre of ones attention, a new idea which is to be universalized and put in the service of a political ideology - the Ego. But if we read what he has written, we find, like in "The False Principle of Our Education" that his main focus is the discovery of the self as truly Subject, and not just an Object. In the False Principle Stirner makes the distinction between learning as an Object into whom knowledge is stuffed from without, and learning as a Subject acquiring knowledge for itself. In "Art and Religion" we find him speaking of the conception of [future] self set up as an Ideal: "Here lie all the sufferings and struggles of the centuries, for it is fearful to be _outside_of_oneself_, having yourself as an

Object set over and against oneself able to annihilate itself and so oneself." Further clues can be given in that Stirner speaks of himself as No-thing [2], "In the Unique One the owner himself returns to his creative nothing, of which he is born." No thing, neither as some kind of thought, nor as a percept, am I. [3] So, we conclude that Stirner's unnameable Unique One is the Subject. Looking at the consequences of this, one sees that indeed we all are Subjects, actors who pursue this and that by our own creation. In this, we are egoists already. However, unless this is a condition of which we are conscious, it will do us little good, and we might as well follow this Ideal as that, in that we do not know ourselves from within, but only as "intimate objects". The famous formula from Gal. 2.29, "Not I live, but Christ lives in me" is quoted and paraphrased by Stirner as the basic teaching of the possessed: "Not I live, but X lives in me." This is where Stirner's philosophy is of interest. For while Luther may say "Here I stand, I can do naught else!", Stirner teaches the liberation from fixed ideas in creating oneself each day anew. As the quote at the end of this edition of the newsletter shows, this is also the way to finding a well of love that can be consumed with all ones selfish desire without ever going dry.

Svein Olav [1] Hess criticism of Stirner boils down to "Ego[ism] is empty." But as is evident, Hess' criticism is of Ego as object, and he has not grasped the subtlety in Stirner's description of the Subject as no-thing. Thus Hess simply shows his lack of understanding. [2] I am taking the liberty of utilizing the English language here. [3] Notice the affinity with some of Buddhism's teachings. In the teaching of Buddha you are told to seek through the phenomena to see if you find the Self there, a search that will ultimately end in failure. Stirner provides the positive side of this coin by providing the I as he who fails in this search. ____________________________________________________________________ Sidney Parker: The Egoism of Max Stirner ------------------------(The following extracts are taken from my booklet entitled THE EGOISM OF MAX STIRNER: SOME CRITICAL BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTES to be published by the Mackay Society of New York) Albert Camus Camus devotes a section of THE REBEL to Stirner. Despite a fairly accurate summarization of some of Stirner's ideas he nonetheless consigns him to dwelling in a desert of isolation and negation "drunk with destruction". Camus accuses Stirner of going "as far as

he can in blasphemy" as if in some strange way an atheist like Stirner can "blaspheme" against something he does not believe in. He proclaims that Stirner is "intoxicated" with the "perspective" of "justifying" crime without mentioning that Stirner carefully distinguishes between the ordinary criminal and the "criminal" as violator of the "sacred". He brands Stirner as the direct ancestor of "terrorist anarchy" when in fact Stirner regards political terrorists as acting under the possession of a "spook". He furthermore misquotes Stirner by asserting that he "specifies" in relation to other human beings "kill them, do not martyr them" when in fact he writes "I can kill them, not torture them" - and this in relation to the moralist who both kills and tortures to serve the "concept of the 'good'". Although throughout his book Camus is concerned to present "the rebel" as a preferred alternative to "the revolutionary" he nowhere acknowledges that this distinction is taken from the one that Stirner makes between "the revolutionary" and "the insurrectionist". That this should occur in a work whose purpose is a somewhat frantic attempt at rehabilitating "ethics" well illustrates Stirner's ironic statement that "the hard fist of morality treats the noble nature of egoism altogether without compassion." Eugene Fleischmann Academic treatment of Stirner is often obfuscating even when it is not downright hostile. A marked contrast is Fleischmann's essay STIRNER, MARX AND HEGEL which is included in the symposium HEGEL'S POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY. Clearly preferring Stirner to Marx, Fleischmann presents a straightforward account of his ideas unencumbered by "psychiatric" interpretations and _ad_hominem_ arguments. He correctly points out that the "human self" signifies for Stirner "the individual in all his indefinable, empirical concreteness. The word 'unique' [einzig] means for Stirner man as he is in his irreducible individuality, always different from his fellows, and always thrown back on himself in his dealings with them. Thus, when he talks of 'egoism' as the ultimate definition os the human 'essence' it is not at all a question of a moral category . . . . but of a simple existential fact." Fleischmann contends that "Marx and Engels' critique of Stirner is notoriously misleading. It is not just that ridicule of a man's person is not equivalent to refutation of his ideas, for the reader is also aware that the authors are not reacting at all to the problems raised by their adversary." Stirner is not simply "just another doctrinaire ideologue". His "reality is the world of his immediate experience" and he wants "to come into his own power now, not after some remote and hypothetical 'proletarian revolution'. Marx and Engels had nothing to offer the individual in the present: Stirner has." In his conclusion Fleischmann states that Stirner's view that the individual "must find his entire satisfaction in his own life" is a reversion "to the resigned attitude of a simple mortal". This is not a serious criticism. If I cannot find satisfaction in my own life, where can I find it? Even if it is _my_ satisfaction that I experience, any satisfaction that the other may have being something that he or she experiences - not _me_. If this constitutes being a "simple mortal" then so be it, but that it is a "resigned attitude"

is another matter. Benedict Lachmann and Herbert Stourzh Lachmann's and Stourzh's TWO ESSAYS ON EGOISM provide a stimulating and instructive introduction to Stirner's ideas. Although both authors give a good summary of his egoism they differ sufficiently in their approach to allow the reader to enjoy adjudicating between them. Lachmann's essay PROTAGORAS - NIETZSCHE - STIRNER traces the development of relativist thinking as exemplified in the three philosophers of its title. Protagoras is the originator of relativism with his dictum "Man (the individual) is the measure of all things". This in turn is taken up by Stirner and Nietzsche. Of the two, however, Stirner is by far the most consistent and for this reason Lachmann places him after Nietzsche in his account. For him Stirner surpasses Nietzsche by bringing Protagorean relativism to its logical conclusion in conscious egoism - the fulfilment of one's own will. In fact, he views Nietzsche as markedly inferior to Stirner both in respect to his style and the clarity of his thinking. "In contrast to Nietzsche's work," he writes, THE EGO AND ITS OWN "is written in a clear, precise form and language, though it avoids the pitfalls of a dry academic style. Its sharpness, clarity and passion make the book truly shattering and overwhelming." Unlike Nietzsche's, Stirner's philosophy does not lead to the replacement of one religious "spook" by another, the substitution of the "Superman" for the Christian "God". On the contrary, it makes "the individual's interests the centre of the world." Intelligent, lucid and well-conceived, Lachmann's essay throws new light on Stirner's ideas. Its companion essay, Stourzh's MAX STIRNER'S PHILOSOPHY OF THE EGO is evidently the work of a theist, but it is nonetheless sympathetic to Stirnerian egoism. Stourzh states that one of his aims in writing it "is beyond the categories of master and slave to foster an intellectual and spiritual stand-point different from the stand-point prescribed by the prophets of mass thinking, the dogmatists of socialism, who conceive of the individual only as an insignificant part of the whole, as a number or mere addenda of the group." Stourzh draws a valuable distinction between the "imperative" approach of the moralist and the "indicative" approach of Stirner towards human behaviour. He also gives an informative outline of the critical reaction to Stirner of such philosophers as Ludwig Feuerbach, Kuno Fischer and Eduard von Hartman. Stourzh mars his interpretation, however, by making the nonsensical claim that Stirner's egoism "need in no sense mean the destruction of the divine mystery itself." And in line with his desire to preserve the "sacredness" of this "divine mystery" he at times patently seeks to "sweeten" Stirner by avoiding certain of his most challenging remarks. References:

Camus, Albert: THE REBEL: AN ESSAY ON MAN IN REVOLT. Knopf, New York. 1961 Fleischmann, Eugene: THE ROLE OF THE INDIVIDUAL IN PRE-REVOLUTIONARY SOCIETY: STIRNER, MARX AND HEGEL in HEGEL'S POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY. Cambridge University Press, London. 1971 Lachmann, Benedict and Stourzh, Herbert: TWO ESSAYS ON EGOISM. To be published by The Mackay Society, New York. ____________________________________________________________________ Ken Knudson: A Critique of Communism and The Individualist Alternative (continued)

MUTUALISM: THE ECONOMICS OF FREEDOM "There is perhaps no business which yields a profit so certain and liberal as the business of banking and exchange, and it is proper that it should be open as far as practicable to the most free competition and its advantages shared by all classes of people." - Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, 1837

When it comes to economics, most anarchists reveal an ignorance verging on the indecent. For example, in the first piece of the first issue of the new "Anarchy" the California Libertarian Alliance talks in all seriousness of "Marx's `labour theory of value,' which causes communist governments to repress homosexuals." [98] Now, passing over the fact that Adam Smith developed the principles of this theory long before Marx was even born, I can't for the life of me see what the labour theory of value has to do with the repression of homosexuals - be they communist, capitalist, or mercantilist. Kropotkin was no better; in his "Conquest of Bread" he shows a total lack of any economic sense, as he amply demonstrates by his rejection of the very foundation of any rational economic system: the division of labour. "A society that will satisfy the needs of all, and which will know how to organise production, will also have to make a clean sweep of several prejudices concerning industry, and first of all of the theory often preached by economists The Division of Labour Theory - which we are going to discuss in the next chapter....It is this horrible principle, so noxious to society, so brutalising to the

individual, source of so much harm, that we propose to discuss in its divers manifestations." [99] He then fills the next two pages of perhaps the shortest chapter in history with a discussion of this theory "in its divers manifestations." In these few paragraphs he fancies himself as having overturned the economic thought of centuries and to have struck "a crushing blow at the theory of the division of labour which was supposed to be so sound." [100] Let's see just how sound it is. Primitive man discovered two great advantages to social life. The first was man's ability to gain knowledge, not only through personal experience, but also through the experience of others. By learning from others, man was able to acquire knowledge which he could never have gained alone.

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This knowledge was handed down from generation to generation - growing with each passing year, until today every individual has at his fingertips a wealth of information which took thousands of years to acquire. The second great advantage of social life was man's discovery of trade. By being able to exchange goods, man discovered that he was able to concentrate his efforts on a particular task at which he was especially good and/or which he especially liked. He could then trade the products of his labour for the products of the labour of others who specialised in other fields. This was found to be mutually beneficial to all concerned. That the division of labour is beneficial when A produces one thing better than B and when B produces another thing better than A was obvious even to the caveman. Each produces that which he does best and trades with the other to their mutual advantage. But what happens when A produces BOTH things better than B? David Ricardo answered this question when he expounded his law of association over 150 years ago. This law is best illustrated by a concrete example. Let us say that Jones can produce one pair of shoes in 3 hours compared to Smith's 5 hours. Also let us say that Jones can produce one bushel of wheat in 2 hours compared to Smith's 4 hours (cf. Table I). If each man is to work 120 hours, what is the most advantageous way of dividing up the work? Table II shows three cases: the two extremes where one man does only one job while the other man does the other, and the middle road where each man divides his time equally between jobs. It is clear from Table III that it is to the advantage of BOTH men that the most productive man should devote ALL of his energies to the job which he does best (relative to the other) while the least productive man concentrates his energies on the other job (case 3). It is interesting to note that in the reverse situation (case 1) - which is also the least productive case

- the drop in productivity is only 6% for Jones (the best worker), while for Smith it's a whopping 11%. So the division of labour, while helping both men, tends to help the least productive worker more than his more efficient workmate - a fact which opponents of this idea should note well. These figures show something which is pretty obvious intuitively. A skilled surgeon, after many years invested in schooling, internship, practice, etc., may find his time more productively spent in actually performing operations than in washing his surgical instruments in preparation for these operations. It would seem natural, then, for him to hire a medical student (say for 1 pound per hour) to do the washing up job while he does the operating (for say 3 pounds

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PRODUCTIVITY RATES -----------------Time Necessary to Produce Time Necessary to Produce One Pair of Shoes (Hours) One Bushel of Wheat (Hours) -----------------------------------------------------------Jones: 3 2 Smith: 5 4 -----------------------------------------------------------TABLE I * * * * * *

PRODUCTIVITY UNDER DIVISION OF LABOUR ------------------------------------Hours of Hours of Shoes Bushels Shoemaking Farming Produced of Wheat -------------------------------------------------------------Jones 120 0 40 0 Case 1 Smith 0 120 0 30 Total 120 120 40 30 -------------------------------------------------------------Jones 60 60 20 30 Case 2 Smith 60 60 12 15 Total 120 120 32 45 -------------------------------------------------------------Jones 0 120 0 60 Case 3 Smith 120 0 24 0 Total 120 120 24 60 -------------------------------------------------------------TABLE II

TIME NECESSARY TO PRODUCE THE SAME AMOUNT OF GOODS WHILE WORKING ALONE (HOURS) ----------------------------------------Jones Smith -------------------------------------------------------------Case 1: 120 + 60 = 180 200 + 120 = 320 Case 2: 96 + 90 = 186 160 + 180 = 340 Case 3: 72 + 120 = 192 120 + 240 = 360 -------------------------------------------------------------TABLE III

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per hour). Even if the surgeon could wash his own instruments twice as fast as the student, this division of labour would be profitable for all concerned. If the earth were a homogeneous sphere, equally endowed with natural resources at each and every point of its surface, and if each man were equally capable of performing every task as well as his neighbour, then the division of labour would have no ECONOMIC meaning. There would be no material advantage to letting someone else do for you what you could do equally well yourself. But the division of labour would have arisen just the same because of the variety of human tastes. It is a fact of human nature that not all people like doing the same things. Kropotkin may think this unfortunate, but I'm afraid that's the way human beings are built. And as long as this is the case, people are going to WANT to specialise their labour and trade their products with one another. * * * * * *

----REFERENCES

98. "Libertarian Message to Gay Liberation," "Anarchy," February, 1971, p. 2. 99. Kropotkin, "Conquest of Bread," pp. 245 & 248.

100. Ibid., p. 250. p. 184. ____________________________________________________________________ ********************************************************************* * * * "A marriage is only assured of a steady love * * when the couple discover themselves anew each * * day, and when each recognizes in the other an * * inexhaustible spring of life, that is, a mystery, * * unfathomed and incomprehensible. If they find * * nothing new in one another, so love dissolves * * inexorably into boredom and indifference." * * * * -- Max Stirner, "Art and Religion" * * * ********************************************************************* >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> non serviam #11 *************** (A Critique of Communism and the Individualist Alternative (Continued)) Contents: Editor's Word Ken Knudson: A Critique of Communism and The Individualist Alternative (serial: 11)

*********************************************************************** Editor's Word _____________ Ken Knudson's article is coming to and end. This is the second part of the chapter on Mutualism. The next and last chapter is his "afterword to communist-anarchist readers." And so, his article is complete. For those who wish, the full article is available by ftp from uglymouse.css.itd.umich.edu together with the current and back issues of non serviam and some other material relevant to Stirner. The files are stored in /pub/Politics/Non.Serviam. Paul Southworth (pauls@umich.edu) is responsible for the ftp site. If you have trouble retrieving files, he is the man to write to. Svein Olav ____________________________________________________________________ Ken Knudson: A Critique of Communism and

The Individualist Alternative (continued)

Given the advantages of the division of labour, what is to be the method by which man exchanges his products? Primitive man devised the barter system for this purpose. But it wasn't long before the limitations of this system became apparent: "Let Peter own a horse; let James own a cow and a pig; let James's cow and pig, taken together, be worth precisely as much as Peter's horse; let Peter and James desire to make an exchange; now, what shall prevent them from making the exchange by direct barter? Again, let Peter own the horse; let James own the cow; and let John own the pig. Peter cannot exchange his horse for the cow, because he would lose by the transaction; neither - and for the same reason - can he exchange it for the pig. The division of the horse would result in the destruction of its value. The hide, it is true, possesses an intrinsic value; and a dead horse makes excellent manure for a grapevine; nevertheless, the division of a horse results in the destruction of its value as a living animal. But if Peter barters his horse with Paul for an equivalent in wheat, what shall prevent him from so dividing his wheat as to qualify himself to offer to James an equivalent for his cow and to John an equivalent for his pig? If Peter trades thus with James and John the transaction is still barter, though the wheat serves as currency and obviates the difficulty in making change." [101] Thus currency (i.e, money) was born. Many things have served as money throughout the ages: slaves, gunpowder, and

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even human skulls, to name but a few. The New Hebrides used feathers for their money and in Ethiopia salt circulated as the currency for centuries. But by far the most popular medium of exchange became the precious metals, gold and silver. There were several reasons for this: (1) Unlike feathers or skulls, they have intrinsic value as metals. (2) They are sufficiently rare as to impose difficulty in producing them and sufficiently common as to make it not impossible to do so. (3) Their value fluctuates relatively little with the passing of time. Even large strikes - such as those in California and Alaska - failed to devalue gold to any appreciable extent. (4) They are particularly sturdy commodities, loosing relatively little due to the wear and

tear of circulation. (5) They are easily divisible into fractional parts to facilitate small purchases. For these and other reasons, gold and silver became universally recognised as standards of value. Certain quantities of these metals became the units by which man measured the worth of an object. For example, the pound sterling, lira, and ruble were originally terms for metallic weight while the drachma means literally a handful. As long as these metals served purely as just another commodity to be bartered - albeit a very useful commodity there was no inherent advantage in possessing these metals as such. It was not until governments declared them the sole LEGAL medium of exchange that gold and silver became intrinsically oppressive. Governments, by monetising gold and silver automatically demonetised every other item of capital.* It is this monopoly which has been the chief obstacle in preventing men from obtaining the product of their labour and which permitted the few men who controlled the money supply to roll up such large fortunes at the expense of labour. As long as the monetary structure was directly tied to gold and silver, the volume of money was limited by the amount of gold and silver available for coinage. It is for this reason that paper money - backed by "hard money" - came into being. The paper money was simply a promise "to pay the bearer on demand" its equivalent in specie (i.e. gold or -------------------* A natural question arises here: "That may have been true up until 40 years ago, but haven't governments since abandoned the gold standard?" The answer is no. As long as the United States government promises to buy and sell gold at $35 an ounce and as long as the International Monetary Fund (which stabilises the exchange rates) is based on gold and U.S. dollars, the world remains on the gold standard.

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silver). Hence the words "note" and "bill," which imply debt. Governments were at first reluctant to issue paper money. But the scarcity of money in an increasingly commercial world soon forced them to recant. The men of wealth, well aware of the threat that "easy money" posed to their "hard money," insisted that such money be based solely on the wealth they already possessed. Governments readily fell into line. In the United States, from 1866, anyone issuing circulating notes was slapped with a tax of 10% until it was completely outlawed in 1936. The British government was even more severe; it gave the Bank of England monopoly rights to issue "bank notes" as early as 1844. [102] When a man is forced to barter his products for money,

in order to have money to barter for such other products that he might want, he is put at a disadvantage which the capitalist is all too ready to exploit. William B. Greene was one of the first to observe this fact: "Society established gold and silver as a circulating medium, in order that exchanges of commodities might be FACILITATED; but society made a mistake in so doing; for by this very act it gave to a certain class of men the power of saying what exchanges shall, and what exchanges shall not, be FACILITATED by means of this very circulating medium. The monopolisers of the precious metals have an undue power over the community; they can say whether money shall, or shall not, be permitted to exercise its legitimate functions. These men have a VETO on the action of money, and therefore on exchanges of commodity; and they will not take off their VETO until they have received usury, or, as it is more politely termed, interest on their money. Here is the great objection to the present currency. Behold the manner in which the absurdity inherent in a specie currency - or, what is still worse, in a currency of paper based upon specie manifests itself in actual operation! The mediating value which society hoped would facilitate exchanges becomes an absolute marketable commodity, itself transcending all reach of mediation. The great natural difficulty which originally stood in the way of exchanges is now the private property of a class, and this class cultivates this difficulty, and make money out of it, even as a farmer cultivates his farm and makes money by his labour. But there is a difference between the farmer and the usurer; for the farmer benefits the community as well as himself, while every dollar made by the usurer is a dollar taken from the pocket of some other individual, since the usurer cultivates nothing but an actual obstruction." [103]

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The legitimate purpose of money is to facilitate exchange. As Greene shows, specie - or money based on specie - accomplishes this purpose, but only at a terrible price to the user. The solution to the problem is to devise a money which has no value as a COMMODITY, only as a circulating medium. This money should also be available in such quantity as not to hamper any exchanges which may be desired. The organ for creating such a currency Greene called a "mutual bank."* Before considering the operations of a mutual bank, I'd like to look at how an ordinary bank functions. Let us say that Mr Brown, who owns a farm worth a few thousand pounds, needs 500 pounds to buy seed and equipment for the coming year. Not having that kind of money on hand, he goes to the bank to borrow it. The bank readily agrees - on the condition that at the end of the year Brown not only pays

back the 500 pounds borrowed, but also 50 pounds which they call "interest." Farmer Brown has no choice; he needs MONEY because that is all the seed dealer will accept as "legal tender." So he agrees to the conditions set down by the bank. After a year of hard work, and with a bit of luck from the weather, he harvests his crops and exchanges (i.e. "sells") his produce - for money. He takes 550 pounds to the bank and cancels his debt. The net result of all this is that some banker is 50 pounds richer for doing a minimal amount of work (perhaps a few hours of bookkeeping) at no risk to himself (the farm was collateral), while Mr Brown is 50 pounds out of pocket. Now let's see where Greene's idea leads us. A group of people get together and decide to set up a mutual bank. The bank will issue notes which all members of the bank agree to accept as "money." Taking the above example, Mr Brown could get five hundred of these notes by mortgaging his farm and discounting with the bank a mortgage note for that sum. With the notes, he buys his seed from Smith and some tools from Jones. Smith and Jones in turn exchange some of these newly acquired notes for some things they need. And so on until the end of the year when Brown exchanges his farm produce and receives for them - mutual bank notes. Does all this sound familiar? It should, for up until now, from all outward appearances, there has been no difference between our mutual bank and an ordinary specie bank. But it's here, -------------------* Proudhon's bank, "la banque du peuple," is essentially the same. For a detailed account of the workings of each bank see Greene's "Mutual Banking" and Proudhon's "Solution of the Social Problem" and "Revolution in the Nineteenth Century."

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however, that the change comes in. Mr Brown goes to the mutual bank with his notes and gives the bank 500 of them plus ONE OR TWO extra to help pay for the operating expenses of the bank over the past year. The bank cancels his mortgage and Mr Brown walks away thinking how nice it is to be a member of such a wonderful bank. Now notice that it was never mentioned that Smith and Jones were members of the bank. They may have been, but it wasn't necessary. Smith, the seed dealer, might not belong to the bank and yet be willing to accept its notes. He's in business, after all, and if the only money Brown has is mutual money, that's all right with him - as long as he can get rid of it when HE wants to buy something. And of course he can because he knows there are other members of the bank pledged to receiving these notes. Besides, Brown will need at least 500 of them eventually to pay off his mortgage. So Smith accepts the money, and he too profits from this novel

scheme. In fact, the only one who seems to be any the worse is the poor usurous banker. But I'm afraid he will just have to find himself an honest job and work for his living like everyone else. John Stuart Mill defined capital as "wealth appropriated to reproductive employment." In our example above, farmer Brown's 500 pounds is capital since he intends to use it for creating new wealth. But Mr Brown can use his capital in any number of ways: he may decide to use it to buy seeds for planting corn; or he may decide that his ground is better suited for growing wheat, or he may decide to invest in a new tractor. This 500 pounds, then, is liquid capital or, as Greene called it, disengaged capital. When Mr Brown buys his seeds and tools, these things are still designed for "reproductive employment," and are therefore still capital. But what kind of capital? Evidently, frozen or engaged capital. He then plants his seeds and harvests his crops with the aid of his new tractor. The produce he grows is no longer capital because it is no longer capable of being "appropriated to reproductive employment." What is it, then? Evidently, it is product. Mr Brown then takes his goods to town and sells them at market value for somewhat more than the 500 pounds he originally started out with. This "profit" is entirely due to his labour as a farmer (and perhaps to some extent his skill as a salesman). The money he receives for his goods become, once again, liquid capital. So we have came full circle: liquid capital becomes frozen capital; frozen capital becomes product; product becomes liquid capital. And the cycle starts all over again. A society is prosperous when money flows freely - that

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is when each man is able to easily convert his product into liquid capital. A society is unprosperous when money is tight - that is, when exchange is difficult to effect. Mutual banking makes as much money available as is necessary. When a man needs money he simply goes to his friendly mutual bank, mortgages some property, and receives the notes of the bank in return. What this system does is to allow a man to circulate his CREDIT. Whoever goes to a mutual bank and mortgages some of his property will always receive money, for a mutual bank can issue money to any extent. This money will always be good because it is all based on actual property which, if necessary, could be sold to pay off bad debts. The mutual bank, of course, would never give PERSONAL credit, for to do so would give the notes an element of risk and render them unstable. But what about the man with no property to pledge? Greene answered this question as follows:

"If we knew of a plan whereby, through an act of the legislature, every member of the community might be made rich, we would destroy this petition and draw up another embodying that plan. Meanwhile, we affirm that no system was ever devised so beneficial to the poor as the system of mutual banking; for if a man having nothing to offer in pledge, has a friend who is a property holder and that friend is willing to furnish security for him, he can borrow money at the mutual bank at a rate of 1% interest a year; whereas, if he should borrow at the existing banks, he would be obliged to pay 6%. Again as mutual banking will make money exceedingly plenty, it will cause a rise in the rate of wages, thus benefiting the man who has no property but his bodily strength; and it will not cause a proportionate increase in the price of the necessaries of life: for the price of provisions, etc., depends on supply and demand; and mutual banking operates, not directly on supply and demand, but to the diminution of the rate of interest on the medium of exchange. But certain mechanics and farmers say, `We borrow no money, and therefore pay no interest. How, then does this thing concern us?' Harken, my friends! let us reason together. I have an impression on my mind that it is precisely the class who have no dealings with the banks, and derive no advantages from them, that ultimately pay all the interest money that is paid. When a manufacturer borrows money to carry on his business, he counts the interest he pays as a part of his expenses, and therefore adds the amount of interest to the price of his goods. The consumer who buys the goods pays the interest when he pays for the goods; and who is the consumer, if not the mechanic and the farmer? If a manufacturer could borrow money at 1%, he could afford to undersell all his competitors, to the manifest advantage of the farmer and mechanic. The manufacturer would

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neither gain nor lose; the farmer and mechanic, who have no dealings with the bank, would gain the whole difference; and the bank - which, were it not for the competition of the mutual bank, would have loaned the money at 6% interest would lose the whole difference. It is the indirect relation of the bank to the farmer and mechanic, and not its direct relation to the manufacturer and merchant, that enables it to make money." [104] Mutual banking, by broadening the currency base, makes money plentiful. The resulting stimulus to business would create an unprecedented demand for labour - a demand which would always be in excess of the supply. Then, as Benjamin Tucker observed: "When two labourers are after one employer, wages fall, but when two employers are after one labourer, wages rise. Labour will then be in a position to dictate its wages, and

will thus secure its natural wage, its entire product. Thus the same blow that strikes interest down will send wages up. But this is not all. Down will go profits also. For merchants, instead of buying at high prices on credit, will borrow money of the banks at less than one percent, buy at low prices for cash, and correspondingly reduce the prices of their goods to their customers. And with the rest will go house-rent. For no one who can borrow capital at one percent with which to build a house of his own will consent to pay rent to a landlord at a higher rate than that." [105] Unlike the "boom and bust" cycles we now experience under the present system, mutualism would know nothing but "boom." For the present "busts" come when the economy is "overheated" and when there is so-called "overproduction." As long as most of humanity lead lives of abject poverty, we can never speak realistically of "over-production." And as long as each hungry belly comes with a pair of hands, mutualism will be there to give those hands work to fill that belly. ----REFERENCES

101. William B. Greene, "Mutual Banking," from Proudhon's "Solution of the Social Problem," ed. Henry Cohen (New York: Vanguard Press, 1927), p. 177. 102. "Money," "Encyclopaedia Britannica," 1965, vol. XV, p. 703. 103. Greene, op. cit., p. 180. 104. Ibid., pp. 196-7. 105. Tucker, "Instead of a Book" p. 12, Reprinted from "Liberty," March 10, 1888. ____________________________________________________________________ *********************************************************************** * * * "It is a vulgar mistake to think that * * most people in Eastern Europe are miserable." * * * * -- Paul Samuelson in 1987, * * Nobel Laureate in Economics * * * *********************************************************************** >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> From solan@math.uio.no Fri Jan 14 11:05:29 1994 Date: Wed, 21 Jul 1993 08:56:27 +0100

From: "Svein O.G. Nyberg" <solan@math.uio.no> To: solan@math.uio.no Subject: non serviam #12

non serviam #12 *************** (On Revisiting Saint Max) Contents: Editor's Word Ken Knudson: A Critique of Communism and The Individualist Alternative (last: 12) S.E. Parker: On Revisiting "Saint Max"

*********************************************************************** Editor's Word _____________ And so the curse is broken. This issue contains the last part of Ken Knudson's eminent article "A Critique of Communism and The Individualist Alternative" which has been carriying the weight of the newsletter since its conception. As Ken stated to me when we agreed to publish it in Non Serviam, it had a curse on it in that any magazine which had tried to publish it in its entirety was discontinued before they managed that. Not only has the article not brought about the discontinuation of Non Serviam, but it has also been well received. So I say thank you to Ken for a job well done. Svein Olav ____________________________________________________________________ Ken Knudson: A Critique of Communism and The Individualist Alternative (last chapter)

AN AFTERWORD TO COMMUNIST-ANARCHIST READERS What generally distinguishes you from your communist brother in some authoritarian sect is your basic lack of dogmatism. The state socialist is always towing some party line. When it comes to creative thinking his brain is in a mental straitjacket, with no more give and take in his mind than you will find in the mind of a dog watching a rabbit hole. You, on the contrary, pride yourself on being "your own man." Having no leaders, prophets, Messiahs, or Popes to refer to for divine guidance, you can afford to use YOUR mind to analyse the facts as YOU see them and come up with

YOUR conclusions. You are, in your fundamental metaphysics, an agnostic. You are broad minded to a fault...how else could you have read this far? But when it comes to economics, your mind suddenly becomes rigid. You forget your sound anarchist principles and surrender without a struggle the one thing that makes you an anarchist: your freedom. You suddenly develop an enormous capacity for believing and especially for believing what is palpably not true. By invoking a set of second hand dogmas (Marxist hand-me-downs) which condemn outright the free market economy, you smuggle in through the back door authoritarian ideas which you had barred from the main entrance. In commendably searching for remedies against poverty, inequality and injustice, you forsake the doctrine of freedom for the doctrine of authority and in so doing come step by step to endorse all the fallacies of Marxist economics. A few years ago S. E. Parker wrote an open letter to the editors of "Freedom" in which he said: "The trouble is that what you call `anarchism' is at best merely a hodge-podge, halfway position precariously suspended between socialism and anarchism. You yearn for the ego-sovereignty, the liberating individualism, that is the essence of anarchism, but remain captives of the democratic-proletarian-collectivist myths of socialism. Until you can cut the umbilical cord that still connects you to the socialist womb you will never be able to come to your full power as self-owning individuals. You will still be lured along the path to the lemonade springs and cigarette trees of the Big Rock Candy Mountains." [106] This article was written for you in hopes of relieving you of your schizophrenic condition. The fact that you call yourself an anarchist shows that you have an instinctual "feeling" for freedom. I hope that this article will encourage you to seek to put that feeling on a sound foundation. I am confident that when you do, you will reject your communist half.

----REFERENCES

106. S..E. Parker, "Enemies of Society: An Open Letter to the Editors of Freedom," "Minus One," October-December, 1967, p. 4. ____________________________________________________________________ S.E. Parker: On Revisiting "Saint Max" -------------------------

Increasing academic attention to the philosophy of Max Stirner has not meant any greater accuracy in interpretation. A case in point is an essay by Kathy E. Ferguson which appeared in a recent issue of the philosophical review IDEALISTIC STUDIES [1] entitled "Saint Max revisited". Ms Ferguson makes some perceptive remarks. She writes of Stirner's view of the self as being "not a substantive thing .... but rather a process" which cannot be confined within any net of concepts or categorical imperatives. It is "an unbroken unity of temporal experience that is ontologically prior to any essence later attributed to [it] .... or any role, function or belief that [it] .... might embrace." Stirner, she says, calls "the irreducible, temporal, concrete individual self .... the Unique One; the Unique One is both nothing, in the sense of having no predicate affixed to it as a defining essence, and everything, in that it is the source of the creative power which endows the whole of reality with meaning." More's the pity then that these suggestive insights are followed by a whole series of misinterpretations of Stirner's ideas. Some of these have their origin in that horry old spook "the human community as a whole", others in what appears to be a sheer inability to grasp what Stirner's egoism is about. Here are a few examples. Ferguson considers that Stirner was an anarchist. As evidence for this belief she cites John Carroll's "Break Out From The Crystal Palace" and John P. Clark's "Max Stirner's Egoism". Carroll's conception of an anarchist, however, embraces not only Stirner but also Nietzsche (who called anarchists "decadents" and blood-suckers) and Dostoyevsky, although he admits that the latter's anarchism is "equivocal". As for Clark, he certainly regards Stirner as an anarchist and claims that Stirner's "ideal society is the union of egoists, in which peaceful egoistic competition would replace the state and society" (a piece of doubtful extrapolation). However, he does not appear to be very convinced by his own claim for he comments that "Stirner's position is a form of anarchism; yet a greatly inadequate form" because "he opposes domination of the ego by the state, but advises people to seek to dominate others in any other way they can manage. Ultimately, might makes right." Since Clark defines anarchism as being opposed to _all_ domination of man by man (not to mention the domination of "nature" by human beings) it is clear that Stirner's "anarchism" is not "greatly inadequate" but, given his own definition, _not_anarchism_at_all_. It can be seen, therefore, that Ferguson's effort to include Stirner in the anarchist tradition is not very plausible. Stirner did not claim to be an anarchist. Indeed, the one anarchist theoretician with whose writings he was familiar, Proudhon, is one of his favourite critical targets. Undoubtedly, there are some parallels between certain of Stirner's views and those of the anarchists, but, as I discovered after many years of trying to make the two fit, in the last analysis they do not and cannot. Anarchism is basically a theory of _renunciation_ like Christianity: domination is _evil_ and for "true" relations between individuals to prevail such a _sin_ must not be committed. Stirner's philosophy has nothing against domination of another if that is within my power and in my interest. There are no "sacred principles" in conscious egoism - not even anarchist ones ....

Ferguson also falls victim to a common mistake made by commentators on Stirner: that of confusing the account he gives of ideas he is opposing with his own views. She writes that Stirner "speaks with great disdain of .... commodity relations" and gives as an example a passage in THE EGO AND HIS OWN containing the words "the poor man _needs_the_rich_, the rich the poor .... So no one needs another as a person, but needs him as a giver." What she ignores is that this passage occurs in a chapter in which Stirner is _describing_ the _socialist_ case before subjecting it to his piercing criticism. It is not possible, therefore, to deduce from this passage that it reflects his "disdain" for "commodity relations", any more than it is possible to deduce from his poetic description of the argument from design that he believes in a god. Ferguson claims that Stirner does not recognize the "sociality" of human being and that "anthropologically and psychologically, it must be acknowledged that human being are born into groups." But Stirner quite clearly _does_ acknowledge this fact. "Not isolation", he writes, "or being alone, but society is man's original state .... Society is our state of nature." To become one's own it is necessary to dissolve this original state of society, as the child does when it prefers the company of its playmates to its former "intimate conjunction" with its mother. It is not, as Ferguson contends, "our connection with others" that "provides us with our initial self-definition", but our awareness of _contrast_ to them, our consciousness of being _separate_ individuals. In other words, "self-definition" is a product of _individuation_, not _socialization_. Nor is Stirner an advocate of "the solitary" as she implies. Both in THE EGO AND HIS OWN and his REPLY TO CRITICS he rejects such an interpretation of his ideas. Nor is he a moralist - he is an amoralist. Presenting as evidence for his belief in "moral choice" an erroneous statement by John Carroll will not do. Nor does he reject "all socially (sic) acquired knowledge" if by that is meant "culture" (acquired by individuals, not by "society"). On the contrary, he states "_I_ receive with thanks what the centuries of culture have acquired for me." Ferguson questions why the conscious egoist should not "wish to be free" from ownness. Why not "take a leap of faith into something like Christianity as did St Augustine or Kierkegaard?" Precisely because ownness is the _condition_ for what she calls "the ontology of the self as process" - that is, ownness is _me_ possessing _me_. Were I to abandon it by committing myself to the nonsense of Christianity, this would not be _my_ self, but a "redeemed self" shaped according to an image prescribed by others. In her concluding remark Ferguson backs away from the challenge of Stirner's egoism. "Ownness is not a sufficient base for human life," she claims, because "authentic individual life requires that we have ties to others." She admits that such ties can become stifling and that Stirner sees this danger, but contends that "he does not see the necessity or possibility of a liberating sociality." She thus ends up indulging in that half-this and half-that waffle that Stirner so unerringly dissected 140 years ago. Once one begins to think in terms of "authentic individual life" then that "authenticity" has to be distinguished from that "inauthentic". Once it is defined one is once again subjected to that "rule of concepts" that Stirner is so "startling acute" in rejecting. "Liberating

sociality" based upon "authenticity" is simply a verbalism disguising the intent on deciding our lives for us. It is a philosophical confidence trick for which no conscious egoist will fall. [1] Vol XII, No. 3, 1982 ____________________________________________________________________ *********************************************************************** * * * "You cannot enslave a free man; the most you can do is kill him!" * * -- Robert A. Heinlein * * * *********************************************************************** >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> non serviam #13 *************** (S.E. Parker: Preface) Contents: Editor's Word S.E. Parker: Preface John C. Smith: Last and First Words Frank Jordan: In Praise of Max Paul Rowlandson: Stirner, Youth and Tradition

*********************************************************************** Editor's Word _____________ This issue of Non Serviam is an end and a beginning. This issue (#13), and issue 14, do together contain the last issue of Sid Parker's "Ego", whose place in the world is now taken over by Non Serviam, and it is also a proper demarcation of the establishing of Stirner in Cyberspace. As you will see from Sid's preface below, this is the 150th year that Der Einzige und Sein Eigentum has existed. It is also one of the first years that the English version of the book is available electronically [FTP etext.archive.umich.edu, and change directory to /Pub/Politics/Non.Serviam]. The texts below are invited "appreciations" of Stirner's book, written for the commemorative issue of "Ego". If it appeals to you, you might be interested in knowing that Sid Parker will not lay off totally, but continue with some 1-2 A4 page "viewsletters", and will send these to interested persons writing to him at 19 St. Stephen's Gardens, London W2 5QU. Svein Olav ____________________________________________________________________ PREFACE S.E. Parker

Although the first edition of the Ego and His Own (Der Einzige und Sein Eigenthum) bore the date 1845, it in fact appeared towards the end of October 1844. This year is therefore the 150th anniversary of its publication. Otto Wigand, its Leipzig Publisher, was well aware that such a work might feel the weight of the disapproval of the Saxon Censorship Board and resorted to a ruse which he hoped would enable the book to be distributed even if the censors condemned it. As soon as the copy he was legally obliged to deposit at the Government Office was receipted Wigand set about delivering the remaining copies to booksellers so that any confiscators would find his warehouse empty. To a large degree he succeeded. Nonetheless, the censors still managed to seize 250 copies of the 1000 printed. After a few days, however, the confiscation order was withdrawn on the grounds that Stirner's book was "too absurd" to warrant censorship. In other words, the censors could not understand it! The Ego and His Own was also banned in Prussia, Kurkessen and Mecklenburg Schwerin, but although these bans were never lifted, this did not stop copies being obtained and read by anyone interested. Since then The Ego and His Own has been reprinted many times and has been translated into many languages. Throughout its existence it has provoked outrage and won admiration. All too often, however, both the outraged and the admiring have tried to fit Stirner's views into the conceptual imperatives of this or that ideology. He has been labelled many things, ranging from anarchist to fascist. No doubt passages can be found in his book that appear to lend support to each of these extremes, but the more one understands what it is that Stirner is _actually_ saying, the less these labels can be fixed. The contributors to this commemoration fortunately do not indulge in such a futile game. They are content to record their own reactions to The Ego and His Own and its value for them. Contributors ... WM. FLYGARE: "This 1/5.6 billionth: Swedish-American. Boston '17-'46. Chicago '46-'51. Kyoto '51-the end. BA & MA (philosophy and buddhism) plus attempts at music and theatre to learn my inabilities. Drafted into English teaching '51-'90. Some minor publications along the way. Highly independent ... and dependent, enjoy being alone without loneliness, my being remarried ('65), with two daughters (25 and 28), two cats, a love-bird, and a plum-tree. Eclectic: atheist in fact, animist in fancy, affinity for persons, allergic to people. Own house ('69 at last) with a window overlooking 'rooves' onto green hills and a variety of skies. Retired to studying, versing, digesting my haps, and being glad for my failures-n-good fortune." FRANK JORDAN: "A life-loving, aesthetically minded outsider, passing from a 'Nietzschean' into a fully conscious 'Stirnerite'." SVEIN OLAV NYBERG: "Born 1966; PhD student in mathematics; editor of Non Serviam; almost as selfish as the two cats that own him; has been interested in Stirner for the ten years he has known about him." S.E. PARKER: "Born 1929, Birmingham, England. Now retired after thirty three years with British Rail. Has worked his way through the Young Communist League (1944-1946), the British Federation of Young Co-operators (1946-1947), and virtually all the different varieties of anarchism (1947-1982), to emerge as his own man, the penny of conscious

egoism having finally dropped. Editor and publisher of Minus One/Ego/ The Egoist/Ego 1963-1994." PAUL ROWLANDSON: "Currently earns a living as a lecturer in a pseudoacademic subject at a University College on the North West Frontier of the United Kingdom." JOHN C. SMITH: "Needs no introduction." ____________________________________________________________________ LAST AND FIRST WORDS John C. Smith The Ego and His Own didn't exactly take the world by storm when it first appeared in 1844 and hasn't since. But its publication certainly caused a stir among the Young Hegelian circle in which the author moved. Karl Marx, for one, was so provoked by Stirner's book that he, together with Engels, devoted some two thirds of their book, The German Ideology, to vilifying Stirner, seeing him as a dangerous challenge to their creed of social salvation. In this country it is hardly ever mentioned in polite society. Any new edition is largely ignored by literary editors. Yet it is reprinted regularly and never lacks readers. Some, like the anarchist Herbert Read, for example, have to admit "One book in my youth I have never wholly forgotten. To say that it had great influence on me would not be correct, for influences are absorbed and become part of one's mind. This book refused to be digested - to use our vivid English metaphor: it stuck in the gizzard, and has been in that uncomfortable position ever since. I refer to Max Stirner's Der Einzige und Sein Eigentum, The Ego and His Own as it was called in the English translation, published in 1913." (The Contrary Experience) The main religio-political ideologies, Christianity and Marxism, have failed to provide an answer to the world's ills. The human selfishness they were meant to triumph over has triumphed over them. sin has are The and Christianity, which promised individual salvation (freedom from the of selfishness) and brotherhood, has lost out to commerce. Shopping replaced going to church. New temples, indoor shopping malls which _usually_ ugly and unnecessary, have sprung up all over Britain. early Christian churches at least served a useful communal purpose were beautiful to look at.

In the Soviet Union the very understandable desire for personal reward undermined and eventually overthrew the state socialist system. There have been the inevitable attempts to explain this away by Marxist purists asserting, as did G.K. Chesterton about Christianity, that Marxism has not failed because it has never been tried. But, of course, it _was_ tried, the theories that were espoused in Russia before the 1917 Revolution being more or less the same as what these apologists would call "real socialism." It need hardly be said that the lesser religions of anarchism and national socialism have also failed to deliver the goods. Anarchism,

offering individual autonomy and group solidarity, is also concerned with a perfect society free from the sin of selfishness. It is, ostensibly, a morally purer religion than either Marxism or national socialism since anarchists reject, in theory, involvement in existing political and social structures. They also complicate matters by insisting on self rule for the individual. This has ensured that anarchism has never enjoyed a mass following. Except for the fact that national socialism originated as a scheme for the salvation of white Europeans it is, as Roger Scruton has pointed out, very similar to Marxist socialism. Its famous promoter, Adolph Hitler, was more than a bit bonkers. This, along with a similar obsession with a selfishness-free society, ensured that it has suffered the same fate as that of Marxism. If the _collectivist_ panaceas have been tried and seriously found wanting, what about the 'individualist' answers? Of these, existentialism of the kind propounded by Jean-Paul Sartre in his earlier, non-political phase appears to have the most in common with Stirner's ideas. Sartre rejected the Christian God and the Hegelian Absolute, his central doctrine being that man is what he makes of himself and "an insistence on the actual _existence_ of the individual as the basic and important fact instead of a reliance on theories and abstractions." (Readers' Companion To World Literature) As Stirner himself was more concerned with the projectionist rather than what was projected he would not have found too much to disagree with in this, but a closer examination of Sartre's position reveals that he and Stirner are worlds apart. For instance, Stirner confidently abandoned God whereas Sartre found it "extremely embarrassing that God does not exist ... man is in consequence forlorn, for he cannot find anything to depend on either within or outside himself." (Existentialism and Humanism) Sartre later sought to overcome this "embarrassing" forlornness by committing himself to the collectivism of Marxism while still clinging to the shell of his individualist existentialism. He hovered uncertainly between the two for the rest of his life. Stirner never made this mistake. He stubbornly, famously and usefully refused to be anything other than himself. The fact is, as Stirner himself could have pointed out, all of the foregoing answers are based on a flawed analysis - the lack of understanding of the difference between "egoistic" and "egotistic". Recently, Brian Walden observed that the utopian mentality reveals a faulty perception of individuality. And more recently Matt Ridley commented that most utopians are hopelessly naive about human nature: "I believe that ... human beings are and always have been driven by three cardinal ambitions - for wealth, for reputation and for status and that you ignore such facts at your peril. Look no further than Russia for proof. Marxism fails precisely because it indulges a fantasy that human beings will abandon these three and replace them with the greatest good of the greatest number." Nevertheless, Ridley has left out something important. It is the perennial appetite for self-delusion - to be other than what you are that mostly fuel these power drives. Most people, as Nigella Lawson observes, "need to escape the resented meagreness of their own existence ... They want magic and mysticism. They want to have others other worlds, other beings - dictate what is, what they are and not to

have any responsibility for themselves." Given these facts it is not therefore surprising that Max Stirner's impassioned defence and celebration of _his_ individuality is unique. Based as it is on the revolutionary stance that self interest is the basis of _all_ human endeavour The Ego and His Own may not be that last word on the subject of human selfishness, but it contains some essential first words without which we would be even more in the dark than we are. ____________________________________________________________________ IN PRAISE OF MAX Frank Jordan What is arguably the most iconoclastic work of philosophy ever written was published in the year 1844. This work was entitled The Ego and His Own (In original German: Der Einzige und Sein Eigenthum). The author of this seminal work called himself Max Stirner, which was a pseudonym of Johann Caspar Schmidt. Stirner was a member of the Young Hegelians, but the ideas he put forward in Der Einzige, his one major work, easily outstripped and went far beyond anything that his friends and contemporaries had to say in their criticisms of the various idealistic trends in society, as they understood it. Whether the subject be God, Spirit, Family, Morality, The People, The State, and so on, all of these Stirner ruthlessly and logically breaks down and shows they are nothing more than idealistic 'spooks,' falsely created in substitution for the true needs of the ego, and usually interpreted in altruistic fashion. Only Nietzsche, in his many writings, approaches anywhere near the same 'dizzying' extremes and idol-smashing that is a constant theme in Stirner's book. The main difference between the two thinkers, I believe, is that Stirner's book is a complete statement, consistent within itself, whereas Nietzsche's insights have to be dug out from beneath his overall works, and they are usually aphoristic in style and content. The impact of Stirner's book provoked a most virulent attack against it by no less a thinker than Karl Marx, along with Engels. In their massive work, The German Ideology, they devoted two thirds of it to attacking line by line, and blow by blow, Stirner's book. They constantly refer to him as 'Saint Max', 'Don Quixote', and other rather absurd appellations, all to try to exorcise him and his book. But, in the end, they fail miserably, after having tried every intellectual trick they had in their mental store, hoping to promote Marxist socialism and discredit Stirner's pure egoism. Various theorists have proven, quite consistently, that Marxism as it eventually developed would not have been possible without Marx and Engels psychologically reacting against the egoistic philosophy of Stirner in the way that they did. As recent history shows, Marxism can now be seen as a failed attempt at trying to mould the individual psyche into a social-procrustrean bed of ideology. Beside the effect Stirner had on Marxism, various other thinkers and theorists have tried to adapt the views expressed in Der Einzige to bolster their own causes. For examples: anarchists, fascists (especially the case of Mussolini), the situationists of the swinging

Sixties, surrealistic and dadaistic artists like Max Ernst, psychologists like Erich Fromm. Even the very popular science fiction trilogy of Wilson and Shea called Illuminatus acknowledges a great debt to Stirner throughout the plot. And we must not forget the existentialist tag Stirner has been given! Ultimately, of course, despite the diverse thinkers who are attracted to, and 'turned on', by Stirner, the uniqueness of The Ego and His Own stands like a lone mountain which cannot be levelled down to fulfil some else's rather shallow and hollow-sounding ideals. As long as men can, and will, think and act for themselves there will always be a place for Max Stirner's uplifting and stirring book. His work speaks from the position of a _unique one_ to all other receptive _unique ones_. I thank you, Max Stirner. ____________________________________________________________________ STIRNER, YOUTH AND TRADITION Paul Rowlandson Young people are subject to the psychological malady of 'militant enthusiasm'. It strikes between the ages of 16 and 25, the time of life when we are most keen to sacrifice our all for a Cause, the particular cause being determined by the fashionable enthusiasms of the day. That is why young men are useful in armies - they are easily fired up to go over the top. They are useful too, in religious organizations, because they will go out and proselytize in the rain, or sign away their lives to religious orders. Stirner described this period, when the boy has become a youth: "One must obey God rather than man ... from this high stand-point everything 'earthly' recedes into contemptible remoteness; for the stand-point is the heavenly." As a youth in the late 60s and early 70s I was influenced by the passions of the time. As a child I was packed off to the fire and brimstone "washed in the blood of the Lamb" Congregational church in Oak Vale, Liverpool, by my parents, who themselves never went to a church except for weddings and funerals. I remember a visiting preacher throttling a live chicken in the pulpit to make a point I had long forgotten. It was a church parade day and I was a member of the church scout troop, which I hated. Some of the Church elders must have thought that the preacher had overdone it because I remember we were asked by some of them what we thought of the chicken-throttling. I can't remember being upset by it, which is surprising. It was shortly after this incident that I was sent off to the local Anglican church for some civilized religion. I wasted a lot of time during my school years by my involvement with CND, the Young Communist League, the Syndicalist Workers

Federation, and other radical organisations. I took part in various silly demonstrations, including the then obligatory Aldermaston marches and some sort of anti-Vietnam war demo from Hyde Park to Trafalgar Square. Most of my reading was of the radical sort - Marx, Alexander Berkman, Proudhon, Anarchy magazine, Direct Action, Solidarity, and such. I left school with two 'O' levels as a result. The young mind is bombarded by other people's thoughts. From childhood to adolescence we absorb ideas and viewpoints from other people, whether in person, through print, or through radio and television. The selection of what goes in is more or less random, within certain limits, varying according to time, culture and geography. Christianity was perhaps the major ingredient in my case, as it was (and still is, though less so) with most English youths. It is an easy thing for an uninformed mind to contrast the "idealism" of Christianity with the "injustices" of the world. I remember thinking how like Christianity Marxism was, and how hypocritical of Christian society to deny us the benefits of communism. However, there was a growing realisation of a divergence of interests, an awareness that I had reservations and doubts about the activities and enthusiasms with which I was then engaged. For example, as a teenager I was a pirate radio enthusiast, which I found hard to reconcile with my anarcho-communist beliefs. There were several other discrepancies. I was a strange sort of anarchist for I always had a high regard for the Police, and frequently found myself uncomfortable with my comrades' description of them as 'pigs'. I have always been an enthusiast for quirky or idiosyncratic publications. As a youth I favoured the iconoclastic. As an older man I now seek the reactionary, the traditional, the ultra conservative publications. Revolutions pleased me then, Tradition pleases me now. The most unusual journal I ever came across was Minus One (the precursor of Ego - Ed). I subscribed immediately. Here was something different. I very soon thereafter acquired from Minus One a copy of the Libertarian Book Club 1963 edition of The Ego and His Own. Even the physical attributes of the book are extraordinary. It is a substantial book, printed on high quality paper, bound in signatures, with a plain thick green cover, and a plain typeface. It looks and feels a _serious_ book. My reading of The Ego and His Own had a powerful and continuing influence. Here was a mind I connected with straight away. Its effect was that of a mental spring cleaning. The "wheels in the head", the ideas and opinions which I had accumulated, lost their power, although, as Stirner says, "Daily experience confirms the truth that the understanding may have renounced a thing many years before the heart has ceased to beat for it." Nevertheless, the effect was that I now possessed the wheels in the head rather than them possessing me. Stirner takes no hostages. The demolition is thorough: "the Good cause, God's cause, the cause of mankind, of truth, of freedom, of

humanity, of justice, my people, my prince, my fatherland, even the cause of Mind, and a thousand other causes." For a time I was cause-less, but eventually started restocking. I acquired some causes of my own, but this time they belonged to me. I could run with them or discard them as I wished. It is probably as difficult to go without causes as it is to do without interests. A cause is, after all, simply a compelling interest grown large. But one of the benefits derived from reading Stirner is the ability to prevent their possession of their owner. My final authority is myself. There are occasions in life we think of as watersheds. Nothing is ever quite the same again. My discovery of The Ego and His Own was such an event. It became impossible to think again in the way I thought before I read the book. There is no other book like it. Pope John Paul II once commented that the faithful have a right not to be disturbed by the speculations of the so-called radical theologians. Should the man or woman in the street be exposed to Max Stirner? I think not. People will go to almost any lengths to avoid thinking for themselves. The Ego and His Own would no doubt unhinge many of them, which might make life more difficult for the rest of us. Fortunately there appears to be a small elite which can absorb and benefit from Stirner without going off the rails - those who can see through not just the Emperor's new clothes but the old ones as well. >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> non serviam #14 *************** (William Flygare: To My Sweetheart) Contents: Wm. Flygare: "To My Sweetheart" Svein Olav Nyberg: The Choice of a New Generation

*********************************************************************** "TO MY SWEETHEART" - With an Addition to Bartlett Wm. Flygare On this 150th birthday of The Ego and His Own (1844, dated 1845), what intrigues me is the dedication. What was Mary's contribution to John-n-Mary's only issue - a book? Stirner (42.2; p358) speaks of using life up like a burning candle. In the John-n-Mary romance - a roman candle - their wedded life (1843-1846) ended in her long-life life-long rancour against a "sly" man whom she "neither loved nor respected." In affairs of the heart, as well as in practical affairs, both were losers, the woman more than the philosopher who had two worlds to live in.

It would seem, then, that the inspiring young Mary deserves a gratitude that the older embittered one would be loath to accept, her wound a secret she would not tell. The Ego and Hos Own appears a vast commentary to the Goethe poem alluded to at the beginning and end. Its absence in publications of The Ego is unfortunate. In Stirner's time this poem was "a favourite with everyone" (Schopenhauer's Councels and Maxim #5) but it is little known now. Like Smith, Stirner is "in love," certainly with the "tyranny of words" (43.3; p.389). Unlike elsewhere in his work, there are poetic parallels and flights, external pattern, redundance, etymological word-play, elations, and hyperbole, his pen often shouting as if against the loud-voiced among "The Free Ones". These features have made the work most variously read and can detract. _Parler sans accent_. But as to the diagnostic content: Stance is circumscribed by circumstance. In their desperate drive for impossible certainty and acceptance, and hope to qualify, the driven drive the driven, mental straight-jackets nicely laced. In adolescence, the rarely curable brain-smudge received in childhood festers into visions and conversions that lead to "normal" madness and its "stealthy malice" (7.2; p.46). Now instead of talk _about_ the prophylaxis and solace offered by The Ego and His Own, Stirner himself: I have tried to ferret out his key observations in sober and concise form as "an addition to Bartlett" since Bartlett's "Familiar Quotations" is one of a number of well-known reference works which neglect this exorcist of "spooks", some of whose phrases deserve to be "familiar." Reference is to a yet unpublished paragraph-numbering system and to pages in Reclam 3957(6), the only currently stable publication: What have we gained, then, when for a variation we have transferred into ourselves the divine outside us? Are we that which is in us? As little as we are that which is outside us. I am as little my heart as I am my sweetheart, this "other self" of mine. (4.20; p.34) ... out of confidence in our grandmothers' honesty we believe in the existence of spirits. But had we no grandfathers then, and did they not shrug their shoulders every time our grandmothers told about their ghosts? (5.1&2; p.36) ... over each minute of your existence a fresh minute of the future beckons to you, and, developing yourself, you get away "from yourself," that is, from the self that was at that moment. (5.13; p.39) Man, your head is haunted ... You imagine ... a spirit-realm to which you suppose yourself to be called, an ideal that beckons to you. You have a fixed idea! (7.1; p.46) ... it is only through the "flesh" that I can break tyranny of mind; for it is only when a man hears his flesh along with the rest of him that he hears himself wholly, and it is only when he wholly hears himself that he is a hearing (vernehmend) or rational (vernunftig) being. (10.12; p.68) Because the revolutionary priests or schoolmasters served Man, they cut off the heads of men. (14.24; p.68) Many a man renounces morals, but with great difficulty the conception, "morality." (15.12; p.96)

... every effort arrives at reaction ... a _new master_ set in the old one's place, and the overturning is a - building up. (17.32&35; pp.120&121) ... if a "tie" clasps you, you are something only _with another_, and twelve of you make a dozen, thousands of you a people, millions of you humanity ... I answer, only when you are single can you have intercourse with each other as what you are. (21.34&36; p.148) I do not want to have or be anything especial above others, ... but - I do not measure myself by others either, ... The equal, the same, they can neither be nor have. (21.52; p.152) It is not thinking, but my thoughtlessness (lit., thought-rid-ness), or I the unthinkable, incomprehensible, that frees me from possession. (23.15; p.169) What the craving for freedom has always come to has been the desire for a _particular_ freedom ... The craving for a _particular_ freedom always includes the purpose of a new _dominion_. (24.13&14; p.176) But the habit of the religious way of thinking has biased our mind so grievously that we are - terrified at _ourselves_ in our nakedness and naturalness; it has degraded us so that we deem ourselves depraved by nature, born devils. (24.21; p.178) I am present. (24.22; p.180) Thousands of years of civilization have obscured to you what you are ... Shake that off! ... and let go your hypocritical endeavours, your foolish mania to be something else than you are. (24.30; p.181) You want to be "in the right" as against the rest. That you cannot; as against them you remain forever "in the wrong". (26.12; p.207) What is the ordinary criminal but one who has ... sought despicable _alien_ goods? ... You do not know that an ego who is his own cannot desist from being a criminal, that crime is his life. (28.6; p.221) Everything sacred is a tie, a fetter. (31.24; p.239) For only he who is alive is in the right. (31.24; p.239) I never believed in myself; I never believed in my present, I saw myself only in the future ... a proper I ... a "citizen," a "free or true man" ... an alien I ... An I that is neither an I nor a you, a _fancied_ I, a spook. (31.5; p.247) But I love ... because love makes _me_ happy ... because loving is natural to me, because it pleases me. I know no ''commandment of love." (39.15; p.324) I sing because - I am a singer. But I _use_ (gebrauche) you for it because I - need (gebrauche) ears. (39.37; p.331) That a society (such as the society of the State) diminishes my _liberty_ offends me little. Why, I have to let my liberty be limited by all sorts of powers and by every one who is stronger; nay, by every fellow-man; and, were I the autocrat of all the R..... , I yet should not enjoy absolute liberty. But _ownness_ I will not have taken from

me. And ownness is precisely what every society has designs on, precisely what is to succumb to its power. (41.7; p.342f) We are equal _only in thoughts_, only when "we" are _thought_, not as we really and bodily are. I am ego, and you are ego: but I am not this thought-of ego; this ego in which we are all equal is only my _thought_. I am man, and you are man: but "man" is only a thought, a generality; neither I nor you are speakable, we are _unutterable_, because only _thoughts_ are speakable and consist in speaking. (41.15; p.348) Henceforth, the question runs, not how one can acquire life .. but how one is to dissolve himself, to live himself out. (42.6; p.348) Possibility and reality always coincide. (42.3; p.368f) No sheep, no dog, exerts itself to become a "proper sheep, a proper dog". (42.47; p.372) I receive with thanks what the centuries of culture have acquired for me; I am not willing to throw away and give up anything of it ... But I want still more. (42.53; p.372) All truth by itself is dead, a corpse; it is alive only in the same way as my lungs are alive - to wit, in the measure of my own vitality. [...] The truth is a - creature. (43.64; p.398-399) No idea has existence, for none is capable of corporeity. [...] What, am I in the world to realize ideas? (45.5&13; pp.408&411) ____________________________________________________________________ THE EGO AND ITS OWN - The Choice of a New Generation Svein Olav Nyberg "Knowledge must die, and rise again as Will and create itself anew each day as a free Person." The False Principle of Our Education Those of us who have reached adulthood during the eighties have not avoided noticing all the literature and the ideas about selflove that has been around. Even the nursery-eyed girls with the concerned looks sometimes stutter that they think you should be allowed to love yourself as much as you love your neighbour. Most of this literature and most of these ideas come from psychology. Wayne Dwyer reasons that since loving your neighbour as yourself will not amount to much love of the neighbour unless you love yourself first, you should therefore love yourself. Psychologically, the link is claimed that other-love is impossible without self-love. So we should think we are at a magic time in history; the omni-present Society gives us permission to love ourselves. But there are those of us who are not such well-bred rats conditioned to do whatever we are told benefits our neighbour. We do

not love ourselves to please our abstract or concrete neighbours, but just love ourselves, plain and simple. Our kind of people see these trends as nothing other than the old hogwash in a new disguise. Not only shall you sacrifice yourself to the good of your neighbour, but you shall do so under the illusion that you do it for yourself. We penetrate deeper, we go into philosophy. Philosophically, also, it has been a decade of praising the self. Why, has not the notorious Ayn Rand sold more books and increased her organized following more than ever? Has not the libertarian community accepted selfishness as a rule? Again, ever more illusion! Randian self-love is the love of Man your Essence within you, and the hate of the Evil un-Man in you, lurking at the boundaries of the Omni-Good Rational Thought. Libertarian ideas, furthermore, are in this respect nothing more than the ghost of departed Objectivists. It is amidst all this confusion that a young man of today will find himself as he picks up his first copy of The Ego and Its Own. Usually, as in my case, he will have a background in libertarian thought, and smile at the thought that "Here we have the guy who is even more consistent than Rand. Wow, these ideas will be useful for my libertarianism!" As the reading of the book proceeds, the young libertarian will look at the pages in amazed horror; is not this Stirner guy just picking libertarianism logically apart before his very eyes? Oh horror! No, this must surely rest on a misunderstanding. Stirner never knew modern libertarianism, did he? So, he is really running loose on something else. Yes? But, no, realisation dawns that libertarianism - after all a very logical and aesthetic system which even works - given a faint "best of society" premise - is without the foundation our young libertarian wants. Rights are spooks, his head is haunted and his pride is hurt. There are now two possible lessons to learn; either to learn from Stirner to speak to others about selfishness - universalize that we are all (and implicitly _ought to be_) selfish, and to use this as a new basis for libertarian idealism, or - to delve into oneself to find one's _own_ cause. Now, what is not supposed to be my cause! From society we learn that selfishness consists in filling your wallet and emptying your balls as best as you can. From religion we learn that our _true_ interest lies in the contemplation of ideas and renunciation of the body. But these are both very one-sided goals, and do violence to _me_. They are both follies of one and the same type - formal egoism. Formal egoism is what arises when you conceive of yourself as an object, a sum of predicates, and not as beyond predicates - as an Einzige. Modern man hypostatizes - makes objects of - everything, including himself. For a modern man the choice is only _which_ object among the objects is to be chosen as the ultimate value. So why not the object he knows as "me"? But when you serve the interests of an object, you need a recipe, a guideline - some rules. These might be explicit, or they might be, as for most people, implicit. The formal egoist then serves the himself-object as best he can according to the predications of what selfishness means - and, mind you, he might even have so much success as to attain some predicated goals that he thinks a selfish man should attain - but he never gets to the bottom of _his_ interests. He is formally indistinguishable from the selfish man, but in reality never attains anything more than being a boyscout at satisfying the himself-object.

Stirner is a good teacher of lessons. In A Human Life he shows the dialectical development towards a full understanding of one's own cause. One starts out as a child who thinks that all that matters is - matter. Thereafter the procession goes to the realm of the Mind ideas - where all importance and values are to be found in the relation to the idea. Only thereafter does it dawn that there is something beyond all the material and spiritual objects, yet more immediate, namely _I_, myself. It is easy to come to the protest "Now _what_ is the I?" As Stirner answers, I am not a "what" but a "who". Grasping this distinction, and why Stirner emphasises it, is essential to understanding Stirner, and is why The Ego and Its Own is so different from any other book about selfishness. A question that seems to have puzzled both the older and the younger generation is "If Stirner was such a self-loving man, why did he bother to write a book that gave him so much trouble and so little reward?" I do not propose to answer this question in specifics, but instead look at how he has developed his theory of relations to other people. Stirner has been described as a man who has taken the full consequence of being-alone in the world, and sometimes even a solipsist. I take these descriptions as coming from people not fully knowledgeable about Stirner. Stirner does not advocate the life of the Sole Ego on the hill, out of contact with other people. Rather, he seems to derive much enjoyment from the company of his peers, and even babies with their competent smiles. But it is easy to be intoxicated by a book such as Stirner's, and fail to read what is written. What Stirner actually writes about, is that there are basically two (opposite) forms of interaction, namely that of standing as an _I_ against a _You_, versus meeting one another qua predicate-filled objects. The understanding of this demands that one understands the difference between the Einzige that one is, and the objects we are conditioned by culture to see ourselves as. The meeting of the I against the You actually comprises more than half of Stirner's book. This, I propose, is the key to why he wrote the book. All around him he saw, and met, people whose only mode of interaction was qua object-to-object. He met "good citizens", "Christians" and even "Humans", all playing out a social role according to the predicate of the day. But meeting one another with that veil of predicates removed was a scarcity, as it is today. Meeting Einzig to Einzig is scary. The you stand there all for and by yourself with no predicate to hide behind. That is why people continually choose to interact via predicates - object-to-object. But this is nothing different from the mad-man at the asylum who is unable to face the world as anyone but "Napoleon". We live, as Stirner put it, in a mad-house among mad-men. This is why Stirner wrote his book: It is a therapy for all of us who out of the fear of seeing ourselves as pure and nakedly ourselves. A therapy so that he might speak and otherwise interact with us as the Einzige we are, and not as a thousand "Napoleon"s. Do you dare accept the therapy offered by Stirner?

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> non serviam #15 *************** (Dora Marsden: Thinking and Thought) Contents: Editor's Word Dora Marsden: Thinking and Thought S.E. Parker: Comment to Ken Knudson

*********************************************************************** Editor's Word _____________ I am delighted to include an essay by a female champion of egoism in this issue of Non Serviam, made available electronically by another egoist woman, Sunniva Morstad. It first appeared in "The Freewoman", No. 5, Vol. 1, August 15th 1913. Like Stirner, she builds a case for egoism through a criticism of the absoluteness of language - a thought which should not be unfamiliar for the many on Non Serviam who have adopted Korzybski=B4s "General Semantics" as a guideline. I personally think this approach to egoism via a criticism of language deserves more attention, and would therefore be very happy to receive articles written from different points of view on this relation. Since Non Serviam is now also going to go on paper to the unprivileged without email access, I will include some longer good discussion posts which would otherwise have been most fitting for the discussion list Nonserv, in Non Serviam. The first such post is a comment by Sid Parker to Ken Knudson=B4s serial [2] here in Non Serviam. Svein Olav [1] Sidney Parker: "Archists, Anarchists and Egoists". Non Serviam #7 [2] Ken Knudson: "A Critique of Communism and The Individualist Alternative". Non Serviam #1-12 ____________________________________________________________________ Dora Marsden: Thinking and Thought -------------------It is strange to find searchers coming here seeking thoughts, followers after truth seeking new lamps for old, right ideas for wrong. It seems fruitless to affirm that our business is to annihilate thought, to shatter the new lamps no less than the old, to dissolve ideas, the "right" as well as the "wrong". "It is a new play of artistry , some new paradox," they reflect, not comprehending that artistry and paradox are left as the defences of power not yet strong enough to comprehend. If a man has the power that comprehends, what uses has he left for paradox? If he sees a thing as it is, why must he needs describe it in terms of that which is not? Paradox is the refuge of the adventurous guesser: the shield of the oracle whose answer is not ready. Searchers should not bring their thoughts to us: we have no scruple in destroying their choicest, and giving them none in return. They would be well able to repair the depredations elsewhere, however, for nowhere else, save here, are thoughts not held sacred and in honour. Everywhere, from all

sides, they press in thick upon men, suffocating life. All is thought and no thinking. _We_ do the thinking: the rest of the world spin thoughts. If from the operation of thinking one rises up only with thoughts, not only has the thinking-process gone wrong: it has not begun. To believe that it has is as though one should imagine the work of digesting food satisfactorily carried through when the mouth has been stuffed with sand. The process of thinking is meant to co-ordinate two things which are real: the person who thinks and the rest of the phenomenal world, the world of sense. Any part of the process which can be described in terms unrelated to these two - and only two - real parties in the process is redundant and pernicious, an unnecessary by-product which it would be highly expedient to eliminate. Thoughts, the entire world of ideas and concepts, are just these intruders and irrelevant excesses. Someone says, apropos of some change without a difference in the social sphere, "We are glad to note the triumph of progressive ideas." Another, "We rejoice in the fact that we are again returning to the ideas of honour and integrity of an earlier age." We say, leprosy or cholera for choice. Idea, idea, always the idea. As though the supremacy of the idea were not the subjection of men, slaves to the idea. Men need no ideas. They have no use for them ( Unless indeed they are of the literary breed - then they live upon them by their power to beguile the simple). What men need is power of being, strength in themselves: and intellect which in the thinking process goes out as a scout, comparing, collating, putting like by like, or nearly like, is but the good servant which the individual being sends afield that he may the better protect, maintain and augment himself. Thinking, invaluable as it is in the service of being, is, essentially a very intermittent process. It works only between whiles. In the nadir and zenith of men's experience it plays no part, when they are stupid and when they are passionate. Descartes' maxim "Cogito ergo sum," carried the weight it did and does merely because the longfelt influence of ideas had taken the virtue out of men's souls. Stronger men would have met it, not with an argument, but a laugh. It is philosophy turned turtle. The genesis of knowledge is not in thinking but in being. Thinking widens the limits of knowledge, but the base of the latter is in feeling. "I know" because "I am." The first follows the second and not contrariwise. The base and highest reaches - of knowledge lie not in spurious thoughts, fine-drawn, not yet in the humble and faithful collecting of correspondences which is thinking, but in experienced emotion. What men may be, their heights and depths, they can divine only in experienced emotion. The vitally true things are all personally revealed, and they are true primarily only for the one to whom they are revealed. For the rest the revelation is hearsay. Each man is his own prophet. A man's "god" ( a confusing term, since it has nothing to do with God, the Absolute - a mere thought) is the utmost emotional reach of himself: and is in common or rare use according to each individual nature. A neighbour's "god" is of little use to any man. It represents a wrong goal, a false direction. We are accused of "finesse-ing with terms." No accusation could be wider off the mark. We are analysing terms; we believe, indeed, that the next work for the lovers of men is just this analysis of naming. It will go completely against the grain of civilisation, cut straight across culture: that is why the pseudo-logicians loathe logic - indeed, it will be a matter for surprise that one should have the temerity to name the word. So great a fear have the cultured of the probing of their claims that they are counselling the abandonment of this necessary instrument. They would prefer to retain inaccurate thinking

which breeds thoughts, to accurate thinking which reveals facts and in its bright light annihilates the shadows bred of dimness, which are thoughts. Analysis of the process of naming: inquiry into the impudent word-trick which goes by the name of "abstraction of qualities": re-estimation of the form-value of the syllogism; challenging of the slipshod methods of both induction and deduction; the breaking down of closed systems of "classification" into what they should be - graded descriptions; _these_ things are more urgently needed than thinkable in the intellectual life of today. The settlement of the dispute of the nominalist and realist schoolmen of the Middle Ages in favour of the former rather than the latter would have been of infinitely greater value to the growth of men than the discoveries of Columbus, Galileo and Kepler. It would have enabled them to shunt off into nothingness the mountain of culture which in the world of the West they have been assiduously piling up since the time of the gentle father of lies and deceit, Plato. It is very easy, however, to understand why the conceptualists triumphed, and are still triumphing, despite the ravages they have worked on every hand. The concept begets the idea, and every idea installs its concrete authority. All who wield authority do it in the name of an idea: equality, justice, love, right, duty, humanity, God, the Church, the State. Small wonder, therefore, if those who sit in the seats of authority look askance at any tampering with names and ideas. It is a different matter from questioning the of _one_ idea. Those who, in the name of one idea do battle against the power of another, can rely upon some support. Indeed, changing new lamps for old is the favourite form of intellectual excitement inasmuch as while it is not too risky, is not a forlorn hope, it yet ranges combatants on opposing sides with all the zest of a fight. But to question _all_ ideas is to leave authoritarians without any foothold whatsoever. Even opposing authorities will sink differences and combine to crush an Ishmaelite who dares. Accordingly, after three quarters of a thousand years, the nominalist position is where it was: nowhere, and all men are in thrall to ideas - culture. They are still searching for the Good, the Beautiful and the True. They are no nearer the realisation that the Good in the actual never is a general term, but always a specific, i.e. that which is "good for me" (or you, or anyone) varying with time and person, in kind and substance; that the Beautiful is likewise "beautiful for me" (or you, or anyone) varying with time and person, in kind and substance, measured by a standard wholly subjective; that the True is just that which corresponds: in certainties, mere verified observation of fact; in doubt, opinion as to fact and no more, a mere "I think it so" in place of "I find it so." As specifics, they are real: as generalisations, they are thoughts, spurious entities, verbiage representing nothing, and as such are consequently in high repute. The work of purging language is likely to be a slow one even after the battle of argument in its favour shall have been won. It is observable that egoists, for instance, use "should," "ought," and "must" quite regularly in the sense which bears the implication of an existing underlying "Duty." Denying authority, they use the language of authority. If the greatest possible satisfaction of self ( which is a pleasure) is the motive in life, with whose voice does "Duty" speak? Who or what for instance lays it down that our actions must not be "invasive" of others? An effete god, presumably, whose power has deserted him, since most of us would be hard put to it to find action and attitudes which are not invasive. Seizing land - the avenue of life - is invasive: loving is invasive, and so is hating and most of the emotions. The emphasis accurately belongs on "defence" and not on "invasion" and defence is self-enjoined.

No, Duty, like the rest, is a thought, powerless in itself, efficient only when men give it recognition for what it is not and doff their own power in deference, to set at an advantage those who come armed with the authority of its name. And likewise with "Right." What is "right" is what I prefer and what you and the rest prefer. Where these "rights" overlap men fight is out; their _power_ becomes umpire, their might is their right. Why keep mere words sacred? Since right is ever swallowed up in might why speak of right? Why seek to acquire rights when each right has to be matched by the might which first secures and then retains it? When men acquire the ability to make and co-ordinate accurate descriptions, that is, when they learn to think, the empire of mere words, "thoughts", will be broken, the sacred pedestals shattered, and the seats of authority cast down. The contests and achievements of owners of "powers" will remain. ____________________________________________________________________ S.E. Parker: Comment to Ken Knudson ---------------------K.K. prefers a "consumer' dicatorship" to a "producers' dictatorship" on the grounds that "consumers are finicky people - they want the best possible product at the lowest price. To achieve this end they will use ruthless means." I do not know what consumers he is writing about, but they are certainly not the ones I know. A few, certainly, will use "ruthless means" to obtain the cheapest and best product. The majority, however, seem to be quite content not only to buy expensive trash, but even unwilling to look for shops where theycan get identical products at cheaper prices. For example, we have two supermarkets where I live. One, on average, charges higher prices than the other. They are about three minutes walking time apart. Yet the higher pried one continues to prosper because most of its customers are not prepared to go round the corner to what the cheaper priced one is like. Not only this, but a smaller shop in the neighbourhood, run by a company that are rip-off merchants of the first order, not only flourishes, but has extended opening times! So much for the "ruthless customer"! It is clear to me that K.K. has merely exchanged the idealized "producer" for the idealized "customer", he has replaced the myth of the socialist with the myth of the "free marketeer" - and is therefore just as utopian as the anarcho-communist he criticizes so well. "The only way to realize anarchy is for a sufficient number of people to be convinced that their own interests demand it." This statement does not show _why_ people will find anarchy in their interests, it only shows that Ken Knudson _thinks_ they should find it in their interests. (I am reminded of an observation about Ayn Rand made by an American conservative to the effect that "Miss Rand believes in people acting according to their self-interest so long as she can define what that interest is.") KK claims that people are pragmatists and that until they can be made to realize that "anarchy actually works for their benefit, it will

remain...anidle pipe-dream." As I understand it, pragmatism is concerned with what _works_. If anarchy is still a "pipe-dream" it is plainly _not_ working. So how does one show that it will work? By convincing people that it will! But, if people are pragmatists, and will only be convinced by something that "works", then one is in the invidious position of trying to convince them that what is not working now will work at some indefinite time in the future if only they will be convinced that it will, despite the fact that, as pragmatists, they are only to be convinced by seeing something that actually works! Methinks that here he has fallen right into the trap that Stirner pointed out; the belief that because something is conceivable it is therefore possible. KK looks to the founding of the mutual banks as a way to achieve his ideal society, but how many of these have been established and worked succesfully since Proudhon advocated them over a hundred years ago? If they were in the interest of a "sufficient number of people" who have grasped their value as a means to realize anarchy why hasn't that "sufficient number" been forthcoming? Could it be that most of those who have had them explained to them did _not_ find them in their interests? What basis does he have for assuming that even if a large number of people became consciously self-interested they will find their interests coincide with those of anarchism? His faith I do not doubt, but where is the evidense? The power of the tyrant, KK writes, "comes from the abdicated power of his subjects". The supposition that at some time or another these subjects decided to "abdicate" their power to a tyrant smacks suspiciously of the myth of the "social contract". In any case, he is assuming that if these subjects had the power to grant to a tyrant and that they were to repossess it they would then be as powerful as those whom they granted it. Again, an act of faith. It is plain to me that since individuals are genetically unequal, so their power - their competence as Stirner called it - is also unequal. Even were they tyrant - or democratic governments - thus rendered "powerless" this inequality of power would soon be expressed in a new hierarchy - of _function_ if not _formal_status_ - and the division between ruler and ruled re-established. The "dominant five-percent", like the poor, we always have with us. What Stirner wrote about idols is true. I know that, Ken Knudson knows that, and so do a few others, but why does he believe that everyone will cometo know that? This is the sort of belief called the "Everest fallacy" - i.e. because _some_ people have climbed Everest, _all_ people can climb it. "We egoists raise the banner of free competition." "We" egoists do nothing of the kind. If I benefit from "unfree" competition why should I renounce my egoistic satisfaction in that fact in favour of a system from which I benefit less? Implicit in this kind of assertion is the assumption that everyone's interest can be served by one way of going on. If one accepts the Stirnerian concept of "the unique one" this is manifest nonsense. KK rejects "frontiers" as absurd. No doubt from a global _anarchist_ perspective they are. But why suppose that an_egoist_ will reject frontiers out of hand? Making one's "fatherland", "motherland" or "homeland" _holy_ is, of course, so much spookery. Nonetheless, an egoist might find the existence of frontiers something of use to him. I, for example, live on an overcrowded island called Britain. Do I want this country swamped by hordes of immigrants as the result of doing

away with frontiers? I do not. And if my support, pragmatic support, of a barrier against such a horde steps on the intellectual/moral toes of some liberal, libertarian or anarchist dreamers, that is their lookout. It is _my_ egoism that concerns _me_, not some abstract "egoism" pressed in the service of some universalistic fantasy. There are more ways of viewing one's egoistic interests than are dreamed of by anarchists.... There is more I could write on these topics, but I think I have put the cat among enough pigeons for the moment. Sid Parker ____________________________________________________________________ *********************************************************************** * * * "What is laid down, ordered, factual, is never * * enough to embrace the whole truth: life always * * spills over the rim of every cup." * * * * -- Boris Pasternak * * * *********************************************************************** <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<< <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<< <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<