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Individualist Anarchism

Individualist anarchism

Individualist anarchism is a philosophical tradition that opposes collectivism and has a particularly strong emphasis on the supremacy and autonomy of the individual. The tradition appears most often in the United States, most notably in regard to its advocacy of private property. Individualist anarchism's roots includes Europeans such as William Godwin, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Emile Armand, Oscar Wilde, Han Ryner and Max Stirner (who is also connected to the existentialist philosophy), though the individualist anarchist tradition draws heavily on American independent thinkers, including Josiah Warren, Benjamin Tucker, Lysander Spooner, Ezra Heywood, Stephen Pearl Andrews, and Henry David Thoreau. The writer and poet John Henry Mackay is also considered an individualist anarchist. Contemporary individualist anarchists title include Robert Anton Wilson, Joe Peacott, Daniel Burton, Kevin Carson, and Keith Preston. Individualist anarchism is sometimes seen as an evolution of classical liberalism, and hence, has been called "liberal anarchism" [http://www.weisbord.org/conquest8.htm].

Origins

classical liberalism and utilitarian. There is a lack of consensus as to whether he was an individualist, a communist, or neither.]] There is significant variance between the philosophies of different individualist anarchists. Almost all, following Proudhon, support individual ownership of the particular form of private property he refered to as "possession". Stirner supports private property but rejects the notion of a right to property. Godwin is an altruist, Stirner an egoist. Warren espouses natural law as a basis for individual liberty, while Tuckers premises it upon egoism. Tucker opposes intellectual property while Spooner advocates it. However, what these philosophers all have in common is a rejection of both capitalist economics and collectivist notions of society and a pronounced focus on individuality. William Godwin, of England, wrote essays advocating a society without government that are considered some of the first, if not the first, anarchist treatises. As such, some consider the liberal British writer to be the "father of philosophical anarchism." There is a lack of consensus as to whether Godwin was an individualist or a communist. He is regarded by some as one of the first individualist anarchists, although his philosophy has some communist-like characteristics. He advocates an extreme form of individualism, proposing that all sorts of cooperation in labor should be eliminated; he says: "everything understood by the term co-operation is in some sense an evil." Godwin's individualism is to such a radical degree that he even opposes individuals performing together in orchestras. The only apparent exception to this opposition to cooperation is the spontaneous assocation that may arise when a society is threatened by violent force. One reason he opposes cooperation is he believes it to interfere with an individual's ability to be benevolent for the greater good. Godwin opposes the existence of government and expressly opposes democracy, fearing oppression of the individual by the majority (though he believes democracy to be preferable to dictatorship). Godwin supports individual ownership of property, defining it as as "the empire to which every man is entitled over the produce of his own industry." However, he does advocate that individuals give to each other their surplus property on the occasion that others have a need for it, without involving trade (see gift economy). This was to be based on utilitarian principles; he says: "Every man has a right to that, the exclusive possession of which being awarded to him, a greater sum of benefit or pleasure will result than could have arisen from its being otherwise appropriated." However, benevolence was not to be enforced but a matter of free individual "private judgement." He does not advocate a community of goods or assert collective ownership as is embraced in communism, but his belief that individuals ought to share with those in need was influential on anarchist communism later. Some consider Godwin both an individualist and a communist rather than than a strict individualist for this reason. [http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache:iCK-K7dEYK4J:www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/overview/shelley.pdf] Some, such as Murray Rothbard, do not regard Godwin as being in the individualist camp at all [http://www.b.150m.com/writers/rothbard/burke.html] (Some restrict "individualist anarchism" to the market anarchists). Others consider him an individualist anarchist without reservation. [http://www.weisbord.org/conquest8.htm] Some writers see a conflict between Godwin's advocacy of "private judgement" and utilitarianism, as he says that ethics requires that individuals give their surplus property to each other resulting in an egalitarian society, but, at the same time, he insists that all things be left to individual choice. [http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/godwin/] Communist-anarchist Peter Kropotkin says in the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica that Godwin "entirely rewrote later on his chapter on property and mitigated his communist views in the second edition of Political Justice." Godwin's basis in utilitarianism and ethical altruism contrasts with later individualists, such as Max Stirner and Benjamin Tucker, who ground their philosophy on egoism or self-interest (though not all are egoists). Also, Godwin's aversion to cooperation and a market economy is not typical among the individualists. self-interest individualist anarchists. Portrait by Friedrich Engels.]] While individualists typically assert property as a right, Germany's Max Stirner that a "right" to property is an illusion, or "ghost"; property is only a matter of control --it is not based in any moral right but solely in the right of might: "Whoever knows how to take, to defend, the thing, to him belongs property.". Stirner considers the world and everything in it, including other persons, available to one's taking or use without moral constraint --that rights do not exist in regard to objects at all. He sees no rationality in taking the interests of others into account unless doing so furthers one's self-interest, which he believes is the only legitimate reason for acting. His embrace of egoism is in stark contrast to Godwin's altruism. He denies society as being an actual entity, calling society a "spook" and that "the individuals are its reality" (The Ego and Its Own). Whether individualist anarchism is properly justified by self-interest (egoism) or natural law has been a subject of debate among the individualists. For example, Lysander Spooner holds that there are natural property rights, but egoists such as Benjamin Tucker agree with Stirner that there are no natural property rights but hold that property can come only about by contract between individuals. France's Pierre-Joseph Proudhon was the first philosopher to label himself an "anarchist." He was particularly influential among the American individualists, mainly by way of Benjamin Tucker who had translated and studied his works. Proudhon opposes government privilege that protects banking and land interests, and any form of coercion that led to the accumulation or acquisition of property, which he believes hampers competition and keeps wealth in the hands of the few. Proudhon favors a right of individuals to retain the product of their labor as their own property, but believed that any property beyond that which an individual produced and could possess was illegitimate. Thus, he saw private property as both essential to liberty and a road to tyranny, the former when it resulted from labor and the later when it resulted from extortion (interest, tax, etc). He says: "Where shall we find a power capable of counter-balancing the... State? There is none other than property... The absolute right of the State is in conflict with the absolute right of the property owner. Property is the greatest revolutionary force which exists." Proudhon maintains that those who labor should retain the entirety of what they produce, and that monopolies on credit and land are the forces that prohibiting such. He advocated an economic system that included private property as possession and exchange market but without profit, which he called mutualism. It is Proudhon's philosophy that was explictly amended by Joseph Dejacque in the inception of anarchist-communism, with the latter asserting directly to Proudhon in a letter that "it is not the product of his or her labor that the worker has a right to, but to the satisfaction of his or her needs, whatever may be their nature." Proudhon said that "communism...is the very denial of society in its foundation..." (Philosophy of Poverty) and was famous for declaring that "property is theft" in referance to the capitalist practices of his time. After Dejacque and others split from Proudhon due to the latter's support of individual property and an exchange economy, the relationship between the individualists, who continued in relative alignment with the philosophy of Proudhon, and the anarcho-communists was characterised by various degrees of antagonism and harmony. For example, individualists like Tucker on the one hand translating and reprinted the works of collectivists like Mikhail Bakunin, while on the other hand rejecting the economic aspects of collectivism and communism as incompatible with anarchist ideals. While individualist anarchism is often seen as including William Godwin and Max Stirner, it is most often associated with the market anarchism found in the native American tradition, which advocates individual ownership of the produce of labor and a market economy where this property may be bought and sold. However, this form of individualist anarchism is not exclusive to the Americans. It is also found in the philosophy of other radical individalists, such as those in England and France though almost all were influenced by the early American individualists. Individualist anarchism of this type is in contrast to "social anarchism" (e.g. communist anarchism) which holds that productive property should be in the control of the society at large in various forms of worker collectives and that the produce of labor should be collectivized.

The American tradition

Individualist anarchism in American is noted for its strong advocacy of the type of private property championed by Proudhon, and a competitive free market economy. Josiah Warren, who is the first individualist anarchist in the American tradition, had participated in a failed collectivist experiment headed by Robert Owen called "New Harmony" and came to the conclusion that such a system is inferior to one where individualism and private property is respected. In Practical Details, where he discusses his conclusions in regard to the experiment. In a much cited quote from that text, he makes a vehement assertion of individual negative liberty: "Society must be so converted as to preserve the SOVEREIGNTY OF EVERY INDIVIDUAL inviolate. That it must avoid all combinations and connections of persons and interests, and all other arrangements which will not leave every individual at all times at liberty to dispose of his or her person, and time, and property in any manner in which his or her feelings or judgment may dictate WITHOUT INVOLVING THE PERSONS OR INTERESTS OF OTHERS" (Warren's capitalization). Though Warren and Proudhon did not associate with each other, working on separate continents they both came to like conclusions in regard to labor theory of value and property. However, according to Benjamin Tucker, that profiting by violating the labor theory of value is exploitative "was Proudhon's position before it was Marx's, and Josiah Warren's before it was Proudhon's" (Liberty or Authority). While Warren based his philosophy on natural law, Benjamin Tucker eventually switched his allegiance to egoism as a result of his reading of Max Stirner. Many individualists followed in his footsteps in this respect. Tucker maintained that there were two rights, "the right of might" and "the right of contract" and that moral rights do not exist until they are devised by contract initiated out of the self-interest of the contracting parties. The individualists' economic theory (mutualism) is based on the labor theory of value. Accepting that the value of a good is the amount of labor undertaking in producing it, they conclude that it is unethical to charge a higher price for a commodity than the cost of producing or acquiring and bringing it to market (Cost the limit of price). To ensure that labor receives its "full produce" they advocate that a commodity should be purchased with an amount of labor that is equivalent to the amount of labor undertaken in producing that commodity. As a result, equal amounts of labor would receive equal pay; those that did not labor would not be paid. In the area of employment, this would obviate the possibility of an employer profiting from the labor of an employee, which they opposed as being exploitative, since the employee must receive the "full produce" of his labor. With the exception of Warren, this led to their position that private ownership of land should be supported only if the possessor of that land is using it, otherwise, the possessor would be able to charge rent to others without laboring to produce anything (Warren does not oppose ownership of land but does advocate that it be sold at cost). Profiting from lending money for interest is generally seen as usurious as an income is seen as being derived without labor. To the individualists, profit from interest, profit from wages, and rental of land is only made possible by government-backed "monopoly" and "privilege" that restricts competition in the marketplace and concentrates wealth in the hands of a few.

Anarcho-capitalism

If it is consider anarchism like a the voluntary asociation of autonomous individuals, anarcho-capitalism is not a form of anarchism but a faction of Libertarianism Unlike the early and most of the present American individualist anarchists, anarcho-capitalists do not regard value as being matter of labor exerted but a matter of individual subjective judgements (see subjective theory of value) and therefore have no opposition to profit, capitalists authority and wage labour. While anarcho-capitalism is an individualist philosophy, there is much controversy in the claim that anarcho-capitalism is a form of individualist anarchism. The relationship between individualist anarchism and anarcho-capitalism is explored further in that article.

External links

- [http://www.spaz.org/~dan/individualist-anarchist/resources.html Individualist Anarchist Resources]
- [http://oll.libertyfund.org/Texts/LFBooks/Burke0061/Vindication/0339_Bk.html A Vindication of Natural Society: or, a View of the Miseries and Evils arising to Mankind from every Species of Artifical Society] by Edmund Burke - some regard this liberal essay to be the first to advocate anarchy
- [http://socserv2.socsci.mcmaster.ca/~econ/ugcm/3ll3/godwin/pj.html Enquiry Concerning Political Justice] by William Godwin
- [http://www.blancmange.net/tmh/teaho/theego0.html The Ego and his Own] by Max Stirner, translated by Christian individualist anarchist Steven T. Byington
- [http://raforum.apinc.org/article.php3?id_article=169 Manifesto by Josiah Warren]
- [http://www.blancmange.net/tmh/pdf/jwarren.pdf Equitable Commerce by Josiah Warren]
- [http://flag.blackened.net/daver/anarchism/tucker/tucker2.html State Socialism and Anarchism: How far they agree, and wherein they differ.] by Benjamin Tucker (1886)
- [http://melior.univ-montp3.fr/ra_forum/en/people/armand_e/individualism.html Anarchist Individualism as Life and Activity] by E. Armand (1907)
- [http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/1931/secGcon.html Anarchist FAQ: Section on Individualist Anarchism] (Mirrored at: [http://www.infoshop.org/faq/secGcon.html] and [http://www.spunk.org/library/intro/faq/sp001547/secGcon.html]) :
- [http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/1931/secG1.html Anarchist FAQ: Are individualist anarchists anti-capitalist?] (Mirrored at: [http://www.infoshop.org/faq/secG1.html] and [http://www.spunk.org/library/intro/faq/sp001547/secG1.html]) :
- [http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/1931/secG4.html Anarchist FAQ: Why do social anarchists reject individualist anarchism?] (Mirrored at: [http://www.infoshop.org/faq/secG4.html] and [http://www.spunk.org/library/intro/faq/sp001547/secG4.html])
- [http://www.weisbord.org/conquest8.htm I. Liberal-Anarchism VIII. Libertarianism] from The Conquest of Power, by Albert Weisbord[http://www.weisbord.org/] discusses individualism of Godwin and Stirner
- [http://www.weisbord.org/conquest10.htm American Liberal-Anarchism] from The Conquest of Power, by Albert Weisbord[http://www.weisbord.org/]
- [http://www.independent.org/issues/article.asp?id=10 American Anarchism by Wendy McElroy] 19th Century Individualist Anarchism in America
- [http://world.std.com/~bbrigade/ Bad Press] Contemporary Individualist Anarchist Publications
- [http://www.spaz.org/~dan/individualist-anarchist/ Individualist-Anarchist.Net]
- [http://www.zetetics.com/mac/articles/jlsorg.html The Schism Between Individualist and Communist Anarchism]
- [http://flag.blackened.net/liberty/proudanar.html Proudhon and Anarchism] by Larry Gambone Category:Political theories Category:Anarchism

Collectivism

: For the descriptive terminology as used in anthropology and psychology, see Collectivist and individualist cultures. For the magazine, see Collectivism (magazine). Collectivism, in general, is a term used to describe a theoretical or practical emphasis on the group, as opposed to (and seen by many of its opponents to be at the expense of) the individual. Some psychologists define collectivism as a syndrome of attitudes and behaviors based on the belief that the basic unit of survival lies within a group, not the individual. Collectivists typically hold that that the "greater good" of the group, is more important than the good of any particular individual who is one part of that larger organism. Some collectivists argue that the individual incidentally serves his own interests by working for the benefit of the group. Detractors from this latter position argue that it is difficult, if not impossible, to imagine that what is beneficial for a group is always beneficial for every individual that comprises it. Collectivism may also be associated with altruism since what is good for the group may conceivably require the sacrifice of at least one individual's self-interest. However, this presumes that altruism is not also equally compatible with individual self-interest. Collectivism is considered diametrically opposed to individualism. However, both collectivism and individualism may be interpreted differently by different people. In some cases, the same people may characterize themselves as both individualists and collectivists, depending on the situation. This article discusses collectivism as a common theme that spans a broad category of non-individualistic philosophies, many of which significantly differ from each other in other ways.

Politics

Some political collectivists hold that different groups have competing interests, and that the individual's interests and characteristics are in fact tied up with the interests and characteristics of his or her group. In this line of thought, differences between groups are considered more significant than differences between individuals within groups. Other political collectivists emphasize the notions of equality and solidarity, and see all human beings as part of the same group, with similar interests. They maintain that competition and rivalry between individuals or smaller groups is overall counter-productive or detrimental, and should therefore be replaced with some form of cooperation. There are also collectivists who combine the two views presented above, arguing, for example, that the present-day situation is the one presented in the first view (there are several competing groups), but that we should strive to reach the situation presented in the second view (one large cooperating group). Jean-Jacques Rousseaus social contract is an early collectivist idea which holds that an individual should relegate his will to the "general will" of the community.

Economics

Collectivism is a broad category, however, generally speaking, collectivism in the field of economics holds that things should be owned by the group (and presumably used for the benefit of all) rather than being owned by individuals (private property). Central to this view is the concept of the commons, as opposed to private property. Some apply this only to capital good and land, while other collectivists argue that all valued commodities should be regarded as public goods, and are difficult to, or should not be privatized, such as environmental goods, national defense, law enforcement and information goods. Communists believe that not only the means of production, but the produce of labor should be collectivized and wages abolished. The Florence Conference of the Federation of the International, in laying out the principles of anarchist-communism states: "Italian Federation of the International considers the collective property of the products of labour as the necessary complement to the collectivist programme..."

Collectivist societies

There are many examples of societies around the world which have characterized themselves or have been characterized by outsiders as "collectivist". On the one hand, there are the communist states, which have often collectivized most economic sectors (and agriculture in particular). On the other hand, there are Israeli kibbutzim (voluntary communes where people live and farm together without private ownership), and communities such as the Freetown Christiania in Denmark (a small autonomous political experiment centered around an abandoned military installation in Copenhagen; Christiania has laws abolishing private property).

Anti-collectivism

As noted in the opening paragraphs of this article, the term "collectivism" itself is more often used by anti-collectivists than by anyone else. Some, such as Ayn Rand and many influenced by her, supporters of an ideology called objectivism, claim that collectivism is fallacious in theory and immoral in practice. They further argue that many (perhaps most) political ideologies (other than objectivism itself) are forms of collectivism or at least contain significant collectivist elements. Objectivism has been criticized by some for its emphasis on emulating Rand rather than being a true individual with one's own thoughts and feelings. Other anti-collectivists make specific objections to specific issues that they see as part of collectivism. Many anti-collectivists argue that collectivist emphasis on the group suppresses individual rights (while many collectivists argue that their policy is aimed at maximizing the rights and benefits of all - or most - individuals within a group). Democracy can be seen as a form of collectivism when the majority group is able to diminish the liberty of individuals in the minority, simple because they constitute a majority. Hence, opponents of collectivism argue that only individuals can legitimately have rights, not groups, and advocate constitutional protections of individal rights from majority rule. Even more radical anti-collectivist movement, anarcho-capitalism, rejects any form of involuntary association, advocating abolition of the state, and argues that protection of individual rights from the state by constitutional means is insufficient as long as the state is empowered to interpret and change its constitution, citing the historical record of diminishing constitutional protections in the United States and elsewhere. In The Strange Death of Capitalist Individualism, J. A. Banks argues that "liberal capitalism" has been succeeded by a system of "private collectivism", based upon large, hierarchical, and often transnational corporations. These corporations regard their employees and even their high-paid executives as dispensable, interchangeable commodities, ignoring their individuality and only purchasing labour that requires a minimum set of skills. Oligarchic directors with vastly inflated salaries lead from the top of steep corporate hierarchies and are often unaccountable even to shareholders. Private collectivism contrasts with the traditional capitalist mode of production, in which individual capitalists employed workers, invested in capital and collected profits directly, rather than a collective organization (the joint stock corporation). Anti-capitalists generally see such developments as the inevitable result of capitalism, and argue that the idealized version of capitalism that is supported by Banks and others is something that never truly existed, cannot exist, or cannot be sustained over time. Free-market advocates argue that the corporate capitalism is a result of pervasive collectivist government intervention, and is impossible in the free market.

Quotes

- "From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs." - Karl Marx
- "For if the nineteenth century was a century of individualism it may be expected that this [the 20th century] will be the century of collectivism and hence the century of the State...." - Benito Mussolini
- "I do not believe in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance." - Thomas Carlyle
- "It is unnatural for a majority to rule, for a majority can seldom be organized and united for specific action, and a minority can." - Jean-Jacques Rousseau
- "These, then, will be some of the features of democracy... it will be, in all likelihood, an agreeable, lawless, parti-colored commonwealth, dealing with all alike on a footing of equality, whether they be really equal or not." - Plato

Individualism

Individualism is a moral, political, and social philosophy, which emphasizes individual liberty, belief in the primary importance of the individual, and in the "virtues of self-reliance" and "personal independence". "Individualism" embraces opposition to authority, and to all manner of controls over the individual, especially when exercised by the political state or "society". It is thus, directly-opposed to collectivism. It is often confused with "egoism".

Individualism in political philosophy

In political philosophy, the individualist theory of government holds that the state should take a merely defensive role by protecting the liberty of each individual to act as he wishes as long he does not infringe on the same liberty of another. This contrasts with collectivist political theories where, rather than leaving the individual to pursue his own ends, the state ensures that the individual serves the interests of society when taken as a whole. It also contrasts with fascism, where the individual is required to serve the interests of the state. The term has also been used to describe "individual initiative" and "freedom of the individual" in general, perhaps best described by the French term "laissez faire", a verb meaning "to let [the people] do" [for themselves what they know how to do]. In practice, individualism is chiefly concerned with protecting individual autonomy by opposing encroachment by the state. For example, individualists oppose democratic systems unless constitutional protections exist that preserve individual liberty of those in the minority from being diminished by the interests of the majority. These concerns encompass both civil and economic liberties. One typical concern is the concentration of commercial and industrial enterprise in the hands of the state, and the municipality. The principles upon which this opposition is based are mainly two: that popularly-elected representatives are not likely to have the qualifications, or the sense of responsibility, required for dealing with the multitudinous enterprises, and the large sums of public money involved in civic administration; and that the "health of the state" depends upon the exertions of individuals for their personal benefit (who, "like cells", are the containers of the life of the body). Individualism is, however, to be distinguished from egoism. "Egoists" promote their own advantage and hold that the justification of any benevolence to other people must be found in self-interest. An individualist may be a conscientious "altruist": he is by no means hostile to, or aloof from society (any more than the collectivist is necessarily hostile to the individual), but he is opposed to interference with individual liberty, wherever it comes from; and as far as it can be avoided. Many individuals seek to free every single person from collective control. However, there are also many individualists that have no such intentions. These individualists are more likely (though by no means is this universal) to believe in cultural relativism. The individualist sees society as "a large number of individuals working together" to improve their individual and collective welfare. The single person is not just a member of a greater unity. In fact, the single individual is seen as "the ultimate unity", and society is nothing more than a composition of these "individuals". The "state" is an organized form of society, which "ensures the individual's freedom" by law (under the protections of a republic). Thus, individualist policy tends to approve laws that protect, or otherwise enhance the liberties of the individual citizen, but rejects laws that subordinate the individual to the collective.

Individualism and society

Societies and groups can differ, in the extent to which they are based upon predominantly "self-regarding" (individualistic, and arguably self-interested) rather than "other-regarding" (group-oriented, and group, or society-minded) behaviour. There is also a distinction, relevant in this context, between "guilt" societies (e.g. medieval Europe), ("internal reference standard"), and "shame" societies (e.g. Japan, "bringing shame upon one's ancestors") with an "external reference standard", where people look to their peers for feedback, as to whether an action is "acceptable" or not (also known as "group-think"). The extent to which society, or groups are "individualistic" can vary from time to time, and from country to country. For example, Japanese society is more group-oriented (e.g. decisions tend to be taken by consensus among groups, rather than by individuals), and it has been argued that "personalities are less developed" (than is usual in the West). The USA is usually thought of as being at the individualistic (its detractors would say "atomistic") "end of the spectrum", whereas European societies are more inclined to believe in "public-spiritedness", state "socialistic" spending, and in "public" initiatives. John Kenneth Galbraith made a classic distinction between "private affluence and public squalor" in the USA, and private squalor and public affluence in, for example, Europe, and there is a correlation between individualism and degrees of public sector intervention and taxation. Individualism is often contrasted with either totalitarianism or collectivism, but in fact there is a spectrum of behaviours ranging at the societal level from highly individualistic societies (e.g. the USA) through mixed societies (a term the UK has used in the post-World War II period) to collectivist. Also, many collectivists (particularly supporters of anarchism or libertarian socialism) point to the enormous differences between liberty-minded collectivism and totalitarian practices. Individualism, sometimes closely associated with certain variants of individualist anarchism, libertarianism or classical liberalism, typically takes it for granted that individuals know best and that public authority or society has the right to interfere in the person's decision-making process only when a very compelling need to do so arises (and maybe not even in those circumstances). This type of argument is often observed in relation to policy debates regarding regulation of industries.

Individualism and US history

At the time of the formation of the United States, many of its citizens had fled from state or religious oppression in Europe and were influenced by the egalitarian and fraternal ideals that later found expression in the French revolution. Such ideas influenced the framers of the U.S. Constitution (the Jeffersonian Democratic-Republicans) who believed that the government should seek to protect individual rights in the constitution itself; this idea later led to the Bill of Rights.

Opposing views

Individualism has negative connotations in certain societies and environments where it is associated with selfishness. For example, individualism is highly frowned upon in Japan where self-interested behavior is traditionally regarded as a kind of betrayal of those to whom one has obligations (e.g. family and firm). The absence of universal health care in the United States, which traces back to a belief in individual (rather than societal) responsibility, is widely criticised in Europe and other countries where universal health care (usually funded through general taxation) is seen as protecting individuals from the vagaries of health problems; health care is seen in Europe as a classic case where insurance at a societal level is right and sensible. Proponents of such public initiatives and social responsibility argue that their policies are beneficial for the individual, and that excessive individualism may actually hurt the individuals themselves. Opponents hold that such public initiatives may have unintended consequences beyond the issues they are intended to address.

Economic individualism

The doctrine of economic individualism holds that each individual should be allowed autonomy in making his own economic decisions as opposed to those decisions being made by the state, or the community, for him. Morever, it supports the liberty of individuals to own property as opposed to state or collective arrangements. Such an economic system is often called laissez-faire or capitalism. Karl Marx argued that the structure of production (the structure of the economy) determined the structure of society, and there is little doubt that many evolving trends in the economy (often linked to the evolution of industry and trade) influence society and the way people interact. For example, the emergence of automobile and air transportation, together with the speed of economic change, has coincided with many important changes in interpersonal and family relationship patterns. Marx called this theory historical materialism. Critics of modern capitalism sometimes argue that capitalism is not based on individuals but largely on firms and institutions, and that individuals' roles are largely determined by these institutions. However, compared to various forms of political collectivism, capitalism is usually still considered as individualistic since participation in these institutions is voluntary and an individual choice. Yet, capitalism can also thrive in certain collectivism societies with individual choice. The only difference is what the choice is based on: individual need versus collective need.
References

- Adam Smith The Wealth of Nations
- Karl Popper The Open Society and Its Enemies
- Alan Waterman The Psychology of Individualism
- Lawrence Kohlberg Six Stages of Moral Development
See also

- individualist anarchism
- right libertarianism
- self purpose
- tragedy of the commons
- tragedy of the anticommons
External links

- [http://www.individual-i.com Individual-I]
- [http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=fr&u=http://kropot.free.fr/Palante-individu.htm&prev=/search%3Fq%3D%2522Georges%2BPalante%2522%26hl%3Den%26lr%3D%26c2coff%3D1%26safe%3Doff%26sa%3DG Individualistic sensitivity] by Georges Palente roughly translated into English
- [http://raforum.apinc.org/article.php3?id_article=169 Manifesto] by Josiah Warren Classic individualist treatise by the first American anarchist Category:Ethics ja:個人主義

William Godwin

William Godwin (3 March 1756 – 7 April 1836) was an English political and miscellaneous writer, considered one of the important precursors of both utilitarian and liberal anarchist thought. He is also famous for the women in his life: he married the early feminist writer Mary Wollstonecraft in 1797 and together with her had one daughter, also named Mary, author of Frankenstein, whom he brought up on such strict principles of rational enlightenment that her only possible rebellion was to elope at sixteen with the Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. Born at Wisbech in Cambridgeshire, Godwin's family on both sides were middle-class people, and it was probably only as a joke that he, a stern political reformer and philosophical radical, attempted to trace his pedigree to a time before the Norman Conquest to the great earl, Godwine. Both parents (John and Anne Godwin) were strict Calvinists. His father, a Nonconformist minister, died young, and never inspired love or much regret in his son; but in spite of wide differences of opinion, tender affection always subsisted between William Godwin and his mother, until her death at an advanced age. William Godwin was educated for his father's profession at Hoxton Academy, where he studied under Andrew Kippis the biographer and Dr Abraham Rees of the Cyclopaedia. He was at first more Calvinistic than his teachers, becoming a Sandemanian, or follower of John Glas, whom he describes as a celebrated north-country apostle who, after Calvin had "damned ninety-nine in a hundred of mankind, has contrived a scheme for damning ninety-nine in a hundred of the followers of Calvin." He then acted as a minister at Ware, Stowmarket and Beaconsfield. At Stowmarket the teachings of the French philosophers were brought before him by a friend, Joseph Fawcet, who held strong republican opinions. He came to London in 1782, still nominally a minister, to regenerate society with his pen — a real enthusiast, who shrank theoretically from no conclusions from the premises which he laid down. He adopted the principles of the Encyclopaedists, and his own aim was the complete overthrow of all existing institutions, political, social and religious. He believed, however, that calm discussion was the only thing needful to carry every change, and from the beginning to the end of his career he deprecated every approach to violence. He was a philosophic radical in the strictest sense of the term. His first published work was an anonymous Life of Lord Chatham (1783). Under the inappropriate title Sketches of History (1784), he published under his own name six sermons on the characters of Aaron, Hazael and Jesus, in which, though writing in the character of an orthodox Calvinist, he enunciates the proposition "God Himself has no right to be a tyrant." Introduced by Andrew Kippis, he began to write in 1785 for the Annual Register and other periodicals, producing also three novels now forgotten. The Sketches of English History written for the Annual Register from 1785 onward still deserves study. He joined a club called the "Revolutionists," and associated much with Lord Stanhope, Horne Tooke and Holcroft. His clerical character was now completely dropped. In 1793, while the French Revolution was in full swing, Godwin published his great work on political science, The Inquiry concerning Political Justice, and its Influence on General Virtue and Happiness. Although this work is little known and less read now, it marks a phase in English thought. Godwin himself could never have been a worker on the active stage of life, but he was none the less a power behind the workers, and for its political effect, Political Justice takes its place with Milton's Areopagitica, with Locke's Essay on Education and with Rousseau's Emile. By the words "political justice" the author meant "the adoption of any principle of morality and truth into the practice of a community," and the work was therefore an inquiry into the principles of society, of government and of morals. For many years Godwin had been "satisfied that monarchy was a species of government unavoidably corrupt," and from desiring a government of the simplest construction, he gradually came to consider that "government by its very nature counteracts the improvement of original mind," confirming his beliefs as those that would later be widely recognized as anarchist. Believing in the perfectibility of the race, that there are no innate principles, and therefore no original propensity to evil, he considered that "our virtues and our vices may be traced to the incidents which make the history of our lives, and if these incidents could be divested of every improper tendency, vice would be extirpated from the world." All control of man by man was more or less intolerable, and the day would come when each man, doing what seems right in his own eyes, would also be doing what is in fact best for the community, because all will be guided by principles of pure reason. This extreme optimism combined with a belief in determinism to suggest that the evil actions of men were produced by the corrupting social conditions that they inherited and that changing those conditions could remove the evil in man. This is similar to the ideas of his wife, Mary Wollstonecraft, concerning the shortcomings of women being down to their discouraging upbringings. Godwin did not believe that all coercion and violence was immoral per se, as Bakunin and Tolstoy did, but rather recognised the need for government in the short term and hoped that the time would come when it would be unnecessary. Neither was he as extreme an egalitarian as most anarchists are, but he simply thought that discrimination on grounds other than ability was immoral; his moral case of saving the Archbishop of Canterbury before his mother from a burning house is seen as abhorrent by many egalitarians. In 1798 Malthus wrote his An Essay on the Principle of Population partly in response to Godwin's views. While his work was considered unacceptably radical at the time, it is surprising how many proposals from his anarchism are now commonly accepted across the West. Examples include:
- People should only be judged on their abilities.
- War should only be allowed to protect a country's liberties or the liberties of another country.
- Colonialism is immoral.
- Democracy is more efficient than other forms of government, as it allows everyone to voice their opinion, rather than centralising power in a fallible monarch. However, majority rule places individual liberty of those in the minority in jeopardy.
- Government close to the people is best.
- Individuals should give to others in need.
- Rehabilitation should be provided for criminals.
- One should have a sphere of private judgement over issues that do not threaten the security of other people, as opposed to the legislated Christianity of his time.
- Censorship prevents the truth from being recognised and should only be used when there is an immediate security risk. His critique of state education is something that has not been widely accepted, except by U.S. libertarians. All his radical reforms were to be done by discussion, and matured change resulting from discussion. Hence, while Godwin thoroughly approved of the philosophic schemes of the precursors of the Revolution, he was as far removed as Burke himself from agreeing with the way in which they were carried out. So logical and uncompromising a thinker as Godwin could not go far in the discussion of abstract questions without exciting the most lively opposition in matters of detailed opinion. An affectionate son, and always ready to give some of his hard-earned income to more than one poor brother, he maintained that natural relationship had no claim on man, nor was gratitude to parents or benefactors any part of justice or virtue. In a day when the penal code was still extremely severe, he argued gravely against all punishments1, not only that of death. Property was to belong to those who most wanted it. However, he still saw a need for some respect for other people's belongings, as this was seen as part of their "right to private judgement", which he valued highly. 1 Note: Godwin did not call for the immediate end to punishment. He opposed the idea that it was a moral imperative to punish someone, which was the common view of his day, and rejected the religious laws interfering with one's personal life. He spoke of three justifications for punishment: deterrence, rehabilitation and security for the rest of society. He hoped that the day would come when there would be no need to punish on these grounds. ---- Original text from 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica, needs style edit and update.

External links

- [http://utilitarian.net/godwin William Godwin]
- [http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/anarchist_archives/godwin/Godwinarchive.html Godwin archive];
- [http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/godwin/ Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: William Godwin]
- Godwin, William Godwin, William Godwin, William Godwin, William Godwin, William ja:ウィリアム・ゴドウィン

Emile Armand

ARMAND, E. (pseud. of Ernest-Lucien Juin). (1872-1962). French individualist anarchist. Wrote Poésies composées en prison, l'Initiation individualiste anarchiste (1923) & La révolution sexuelle et la camaraderie amoureuse (1934). A founder of "Ligue Antimilitariste" with George Mathias Paraf-Javal, another intransigent individualist.

External links

- The Daily Bleed Calendar [http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/02ref.htm reference page] for February 1962 provides background, in English & French, with useful links.
- Also see the Daily Bleed's [http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/gallery/galleryindex.htm#Armand Anarchist Encyclopedia] Armand, Emile

Max Stirner

Johann Kaspar Schmidt (October 25, 1806 – June 26, 1856), better known as Max Stirner (the nom de plume he adopted from a schoolyard nickname he had acquired as a child because of his high brow [Stirn]), German philosopher, who ranks as one of the literary grandfathers of nihilism, existentialism and anarchism, especially of individualist anarchism. Stirner himself explicitly denied to hold any absolute position in his philosophy, further stating that if he must be identified with some "-ism" let it be egoism — the antithesis of all ideologies and social causes, as he conceived of it. Stirner's main work is The Ego and Its Own, also known as The Ego and His Own (org. Der Einzige und sein Eigentum), which was first published in Leipzig, 1844, and has since appeared in numerous editions and translations.

Biography

Stirner was born in Bayreuth on October 25, 1806. What little is known of his life is mostly due to the Scottish born German writer John Henry Mackay, who wrote a biography of Stirner (Max Stirner - sein Leben und sein Werk), published in German in 1898. A 2005 English translation has now appeared. Stirner attended university in Berlin, where he attended the lectures of Hegel, who was to become a vital source of inspiration for his thinking, and on the structure of whose work Phenomenology of Spirit (org. Phänomenologie des Geistes), he modelled his own book. (Hegel's influence on Stirner's thinking is debatable, and is discussed in more detail below.) While in Berlin, Stirner joined in 1841 the so-called Young Hegelians, who clustered around Bruno Bauer. Eager subscribers to Hegel's dialectical method, the Young Hegelians applied a dialectical approach to Hegel's own conclusions, which led not only to new, politically more radical and disturbing conclusions than Hegel's own, but also to internal dispute and disruption. Frequently the debates would take place at Hippel's, a Weinstube (wine bar) in Friedrichstrasse, attended by, amongst others, the young Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. The only portrait we have of Stirner consists of a cartoon by Engels. Stirner worked as a schoolteacher employed in an academy for young girls when he wrote his major work The Ego and Its Own, which in large part is a polemic against both Hegel and the Young Hegelians (Bruno Bauer and Ludwig Feuerbach), but also against socialists and communists as Wilhelm Weitling and against the anarchist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon. He resigned his teaching position in anticipation of the controversy arising from his major work's publication in October 1844. Stirner married twice; his first wife was a household servant, with whom he fell in love at an early age. Soon after their marriage, she died due to complications with pregnancy in 1838. In 1843 he married Marie Dähnhardt, an intellectual associated with Die Freien. They divorced in 1846. The bitter ironic dedication of The Ego and Its Own - "to my sweetheart Marie Dähnhardt" - may hint to the reasons of the shortness of their liaison. Marie later converted to catholicism and died 1902 in London. In one of the most curious events in the history of 19th century philosophy, Stirner planned and financed (with his second wife's inheritance) a short-lived attempt by the Young Hegelians to own and operate a milk-shop on co-operative principles. This enterprise failed because the German dairy farmers harboured suspicions of these well-dressed intellectuals with their confusing talk about profit-sharing and other high-minded ideals. Meanwhile, the milk shop itself appeared so ostentatiously decorated that most of the customers felt too poorly dressed to buy their milk there. In 1856, Stirner died from an infected insect bite. After The Ego and Its Own he published German translations of Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations and Jean Baptiste's Traite d'Economie Politique. In 1847, he published part of History of Reaction (1852).

Philosophy

Stirner's main work is The Ego and Its Own (org. 'Der Einzige und sein Eigentum'), which appeared in Leipzig in 1844. One can chart the development of his philosophy through a series of articles that appeared shortly before this central work (the articles [http://www.nonserviam.com/stirner/bookshelf/false.html The False Principle of Our Education] and Art and Religion furnishing particular interest). In The Ego and Its Own Stirner launches a radical anti-authoritarian and individualist critique of contemporary Prussian society, and modernity and modern western society as such, and offers an approach to human existence which depicts the self as a creative non-entity, beyond language and reality, as generally conceived of in the western philosophical tradition. In short, the book proclaims that all religions and ideologies rest on empty concepts, that, once undermined by individual self-interest, break apart to reveal their emptiness. The same holds true for those of society's institutions, that uphold these concepts, be it the state, legislation, the church, the systems of education, or other institutions that claim authority over the individual. Stirner's argument explores and extends the limits of Hegelian criticism, aiming his critique especially at those of his contemporaries (particularly colleagues amongst the Young Hegelians, most importantly Ludwig Feuerbach), embracing popular 'ideologies', explicitly including nationalism, statism, liberalism, socialism, communism and humanism. In the time of spirits thoughts grew till they overtopped my head, whose offspring they yet were; they hovered about me and convulsed me like fever-phantasies -- an awful power. The thoughts had become corporeal on their own account, were ghosts, e. g. God, Emperor, Pope, Fatherland, etc. If I destroy their corporeity, then I take them back into mine, and say: "I alone am corporeal." And now I take the world as what it is to me, as mine, as my property; I refer all to myself.- The Ego and Its Own, p 15.

Egoism

Only when the false claims of authority by such concepts and institutions as the above, are revealed, can real individual action, power and identity take place. Individual self-realization rests on each individual's desire to fulfill his egoism, be it by instinct, unknowingly, unwillingly - or consciously, fully aware of his self-interest. The only difference between an unwilling and a willing egoist, is that the first will be 'possessed' by an empty idea, or a 'spook', in the hope that this idea will make him happy, and the last, in contrast, will be able to freely choose the ways of his egoism, and enjoy himself while doing it. Only when one realizes that law, right, morality, religion etc., are nothing other than artificial concepts, and not holy authorities to be obeyed, can one act freely. Stirner has been broadly understood as a proponent of both psychological egoism and ethical egoism, although the latter position can be disputed, maintaining that there is no sense in Stirner's writing, in which one 'ought to' pursue one's own interest, and further claiming any such category of 'ought' would be a new 'fixed idea'. The notion that one's own interest (or one's own nature) is a calling to which one is beholden (or "ought to follow" in any moral or imperative sense) is, strictly speaking, contrary to Stirner's tenets. However, he may be understood as a rational egoist in the sense that he apparently considered it irrational to not act in one's self interest. On the other hand, Stirner repeatedly refers to a fundamental state of existence, which he seems to view as ideal, 'like the bird, who sings because it is a singer'. He provokes his readers with references to their christian-adopted fear of their own nudity, encouraging them to throw away such fixed ideas, to see and become 'who they really are'. In such terms, Stirner's egoism may be seen as 'ethical' and perhaps even as idealistic.

Anarchism

The political ramifications of Stirner's work are generally described as a form of individualist anarchism. Stirner however does not identify himself as an anarchist, and includes anarchists among the parties subject to his criticism. In particular, Stirner's political doctrine repudiates revolution, and ridicules social movements aimed at overturning the state as tacitly statist (i.e., aimed at the establishment of a new state thereafter), putting forth instead a unique model of self-empowerment and social change through "union activism" --although the definition and explanation of the latter is unique to Stirner, and does not resemble a standard socialist doctrine of trade unionism.

'The creative nothing'

Stirner's demolition of 'fixed ideas' and absolute concepts (derided as 'spooks' of contemporary philosophy) lead him to a nameless void, without meaning and without existence; a so-called 'creative nothing' from which mind and creative will arise. The 'nothing' Stirner arrives at, in the process of tearing down every absolute concept (every absolute description) outside of himself, he later described as an 'end-point of language', meaning this is where all description comes to an end; it cannot be described. But this is also the place where all description begins, where the individual self can describe (and therefore create) the world in its own meaning. In order to understand this 'creative nothing', which Stirner strives so hard to argue for and explain, to the extent that his work invokes poetry and vivid imagery to give meaning to his words - but helplessly cannot describe by words alone, it is worth bearing his Hegelian origins in mind. The 'creative nothing' by its dialectical shortcomings creates the need for a description, for meaning. You need the word 'nothing' to describe nothing - therefore nothing is a paradox. You cannot say 'nothing' without someone saying it, at the very least. And you need the concept of self to describe who is describing it. The nothing gives way to individual meaning, existence and power. Stirner elaborated on his attempt on describing the undescribable in the essay "Stirner's Critics", written by Stirner in response to Feuerbach and others (in custom with the time, he refers to himself in the third person) : Stirner speaks of the Unique and says immediately: Names name you not. He articulates the word, so long as he calls it the Unique, but adds nonetheless that the Unique is only a name. He thus means something different from what he says, as perhaps someone who calls you Ludwig does not mean a Ludwig in general, but means You, for which he has no word. (...) It is the end point of our phrase world, of this world in whose "beginning was the Word." One might describe this place (if describable) as the place where we come into existence; where we are born (see reference to the modern theorist Julia Kristeva below).

Power

'Power' is of central importance for Stirner, and can best be described as a form of mental creativity, represented as the key to psychological and social possibility of radical change. In Stirner's sense power, also referred to as the acquisition of 'property', has a broad meaning, ranging from the smile of the child, that acquires its mothers' love, over the sensual and material pleasures and meanings of taking what one desires, to the wholesale attribution of meaning, value and existence in language and life. Power in this sense is synonymous with the dynamics of utter autonomy, and the ability of change, of existence, of life itself.

Stirner as Hegelian?

Stirner's critique of Hegel shows a profound awareness of Hegel's work, and, argued by scholars such as Karl Löwith and Lawrence Stepelevich, suggests a vital influence of Hegel's thinking, in Stirner's intellectual development and line of thinking -- even if Stirner's mature philosophy may comprise a thorough repudiation of Hegelianism, in form as well as content. Stirner employs some of the most important elements of Hegelian structure and many of Hegel's basic presuppositions to arrive at his conclusions. Stepelevich argues, that while The Ego and his own evidently has an "un-Hegelian structure and tone to the work as a whole", as well as being fundamentally hostile to Hegel's conclusions about the self and the world, this does not mean that Hegel and Stirner are not related on the most intimate level. The main juncture leading from Hegel to Stirner is found [in The Phenomenology of the Spirit] at the termination of a phenomenological passage to absolute knowledge. Stirner's work is most clearly understood when it is taken to be the answer to the question, 'what role will consciousness play after it has traversed the series of shapes known as 'untrue' knowledge and has attained to absolute knowledge? --Lawrence Stepelevich, "Max Stirner as Hegelian", Journal of the History of Ideas, v.15, pp. 597-614 (1985). In other words, to go beyond Hegel in true dialectical fashion is to continue Hegel's project, and Stepelevich argues persuasively that this effort of Stirner's is, in fact a completion of Hegel's project. Stepelevich concludes his argument referring to Jean Hyppolite, who in summing up the intention of the Phenomenology, stated : "The history of the world is finished; all that is needed is for the specific individual to rediscover it in himself." Stirner as an Einziger took himself directly to be that 'specific individual' and then went on as a Hegelian to propose the practical consequence which would ultimately follow upon that theoretical rediscovery, the free play of self-consciousness among the objects of its own determination: "The 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.... My intercourse with the world consists in my enjoying it, and so consuming it for my self-enjoyment" (Ego, 319) --Lawrence Stepelevich, "Max Stirner as Hegelian".
Influence

Contemporary reactions
Stirner's work did not go unnoticed among his colleagues among the Young Hegelians. Stirner's attacks on ideology, in particular Feuerbach's humanism, forced not only Feuerbach (who engaged in a subsequent debate with Stirner in a German periodical) into print. Marx wrote a histrionic indictment of Stirner spanning several hundred pages (in the original, unexpurgated text) of his book The German Ideology, co-authored with Engels and written in 1845 - 1846, but not published until 1932. Marx's lengthy, ferocious polemic against Stirner has since been considered an important turning point in Marx's intellectual development from "idealism" to "materialism".
The marginalization of Stirner
While The German Ideology so assured The Ego and Its Own a place of curious interest among Marxist readers, Marx's ridicule of Stirner has played a significant role in the subsequent marginalization of Stirner's work, in popular and academic discourse. Stirner took Hegelian criticism to what he claimed to be its logical conclusion, nihilism. This nihilism was an intellectual challenge to his colleagues in much the same way as cartesian criticism was in the other major branch of western philosophy Over the course of the last hundred and fifty years, Stirner's thinking has proved an intellectual challenge, showing that Hegelian criticism also could not avoid nihilism, reminiscent of the challenge cartesian criticism as a whole brought to western philosophy. His philosophy has been characterized as disturbing, sometimes even considered a direct threat to civilization; something that ought not even be mentioned in polite company, and that should be, if encountered by some unfortunate happenstance, examined as briefly as possible and then best forgotten. Stirner's relentlessness in the service of scuttling the most tenaciously held tenets of the Western mindset yields a terrain which bears testimony to the radical threat he posed; most writers who read and were influenced by Stirner failed to make any references to him or The Ego and Its Own at all in their writing. As the renowned art critic Herbert Read has observed, Stirner's book has remained 'stuck in the gizzard' of Western culture since it first appeared.
Stirner and Nietzsche
It has recently been established that Nietzsche did read Stirner's book. Nietzsche's thinking resembles Stirner's to such a degree that Nietzsche is sometimes referred to by readers of Stirner as 'the great copyist', yet even Nietzsche failed to make any mention of Stirner anywhere in his work.
Other influences
Several other authors, philosophers and artists have cited, quoted or otherwise referred to Max Stirner. They include Albert Camus (In The Rebel), Benjamin Tucker, Dora Marsden, Georg Brandes, Rudolf Steiner, Robert Anton Wilson, Italian individualist anarchist Frank Brand, the notorious antiartist Marcel Duchamp, several writers of the situationist movement, and Max Ernst, who titled a 1925 painting L'unique et sa propriété. The Italian dictator Benito Mussolini read and was inspired by Stirner, and made several references to him in his newspaper articles, prior to rising to power. His later writings would uphold a view opposed to Stirner, a trajectory mirrored by the composer Richard Wagner. Since its appearance in 1844, The Ego and Its Own has seen periodic revivals of popular, political and academic interest, based around widely divergent translations and interpretations -- some psychological, others political in their emphasis. Today, many ideas associated with post-left anarchy criticism of ideology and uncompromising individualism - are clearly related to Stirner's. He has also been regarded as pioneering individualist feminism, since his objection to any absolute concept also clearly counts gender roles as 'spooks'.
Postmodern influences?
Stirner's demolition of absolute concepts disturbs traditional concepts of attribution of meaning to language and human existence, and can be seen as pioneering a modern media theory which focuses on dynamic conceptions of language and reality, in contrast to reality as subject to any absolute definition. Jean Baudrillard's critique of Marxism and development of a dynamic theory of media, simulation and 'the real' employs some of the same elements Stirner used in his Hegelian critique without, however, making recourse to very much that lies at the heart of the plumb-line libertarian core of Stirner's philosophy. Though many in the poststructuralist camp have championed Stirner's thought, the core tenets of these two entities are wholly incompatible; Stirner would never agree, for example, with that fundamental poststructuralist idea, that as a product of systems, the self is undermined. For Stirner, the self cannot be a mere product of systems. There remains, in the Stirnerian schema, as described in the above, a place deep within the self which language and social systems cannot destroy. This idea finds expression, perhaps, in a concept put forward by the contemporary philosopher Julia Kristeva; the 'semiotic chora', as she calls it, represents a state of mind which predates the inculcation of the social apparatus in the mind of the young child.
Reference

Works by Stirner

- Stirner, Max : Der Einzige und sein Eigentum, Leipzig, 1844.
- Stirner, Max : "Stirner's Critics", translated by Frederick M. Gordon from "Recensenten Stirners", in Max Stirner's Kleinere Schriften und Entgegnungen, John Henry Mackay, ed, Berlin, 1914.
External links

- [http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/max-stirner/ Max Stirner in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy], an extensive and recommended introduction
- [http://www.nonserviam.com/stirner/ Svein Olav Nybergs website on Max Stirner], with extensive links to texts and references
- [http://www.lsr-projekt.de/msee.html The complete original text in German of "Der Einzige und sein Eigentum"]
- [http://www.blancmange.net/tmh/teaho/theego0.html The complete English edition of "The Ego and his Own"], in the translation of Steven T. Byington.
- [http://www.lsr-projekt.de/poly/enrec.html Recensenten Stirners / Stirner's Critics] bilingual: full text in German / abridged text in English (trans. Frederick M. Gordon)
- [http://www.nonserviam.com/ Non Serviam], Internet periodical dedicated to Stirner's ideas
- [http://www.lsr-projekt.de/poly/eninnuce.html Max Stirner, a durable dissident], 'How Marx and Nietzsche suppressed their colleague Max Stirner and why he has intellectually survived them'
- [http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/ch03d.htm#c.1.5 Stirner Delighted in His Construction] — "loves miracles, but can only perform a logical miracle," by Karl Marx
- [http://www.lsr-projekt.de/poly/ennietzsche.html Nietzsche's initial crisis] due to an encounter with Stirner's "The Ego" (of 2002)
- [http://tmh.floonet.net/articles/maxundhegel.shtml Max Stirner As Hegelian], By Lawrence S. Stepelevich Stirner, Max Stirner, Max Stirner, Max Stirner, Max Stirner, Max Stirner, Max Stirner, Max ja:マックス・シュティルナー

Josiah Warren

Josiah Warren (1798-1874) was an American individualist anarchist, inventor, musician, and author. He is widely regarded to be the first American anarchist, and some regard the periodical he edited in 1833, The Peaceful Revolutionist, to be the first anarchist periodical ever published. He is credited by Benjamin Tucker as being one of the originators of the socialist ("socialist" here is not used in the modern sense of opposition to private property) criticism of capitalism [http://praxeology.net/BT-SSA.htm], who, like Proudhon chose the path of anarchy and individualism over authoritarian socialism. Tucker dedicated his collection of essays, Instead of a Book, to the memory of Warren, "my friend and master...whose teachings were my first source of light". Warren's individualistic philosophy arose out of his rejection of Robert Owen's cooperative movement, of which he was an early participant. Warren is notable for expounding the idea of "sovereignty of the individual" (often called "self-ownership). In Practical Details, he says: "Society must be so converted as to preserve the SOVEREIGNTY OF EVERY INDIVIDUAL inviolate.... it must avoid all combinations and connections of persons and interests and all other arrangements which will not leave every individual at all times at liberty to dispose of his or her own person, and time, and property in any manner in which his or her feelings or judgment may dictate, WITHOUT INVOLVING THE PERSONS OR INTERESTS OF OTHERS" (Warren's emphasis). He says that "by dispensing with government we shake off the greatest invader of human rights." (Equitable Commerce) Warren termed the phrase "Cost the limit of price," as he believed that it was unethical to charge more for a commodity than the cost of producing of acquiring it. He put his theories to the test by establishing a experimental "labor for labor store" called the Cincinnati Time Store where trade was facilitated by notes backed by a promise to perform labor. The store proved successful and operated for three years after which it was closed so that Warren could pursue establishing colonies based on mutualism. These included "Utopia" and "Modern Times."

External references

- [http://faculty.evansville.edu/ck6/bstud/warren.html A biography of Warren by his son George W. Warren]
- [http://raforum.apinc.org/article.php3?id_article=169 Josiah Warren's "Manifesto"]
- [http://www.blancmange.net/tmh/pdf/jwarren.pdf Equitable Commerce by Josiah Warren]
- [http://www.crispinsartwell.com/warren.htm Plan of the Cincinnati Labor for Labor Store by Josiah Warren]
- [http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/anarchist_archives/bright/warren/truecivtoc.html True Civilization by Josiah Warren]
- [http://www.mises.org/journals/jls/4_4/4_4_8.pdf Josiah Warren and the Sovereignty of the Individual by Ann Caldwell Butler]
- [http://www.blackcrayon.com/people/warren/]
- [http://www.famousamericans.net/josiahwarren/]

Benjamin Tucker

Benjamin Tucker (April 17, 1854 – June 22, 1939) was the leading proponent of American individualist anarchism in the 19th century.

Summary

Benjamin Ricketson Tucker's contribution to American individualist anarchism was as much through his publishing as his own writing. In editing and publishing the anarchist periodical Liberty, Tucker both filtered and integrated the theories of such European thinkers as Herbert Spencer and Pierre-Joseph Proudhon with the thinking of American individualist activists, Lysander Spooner, William Greene and Josiah Warren, as well as the ideas of the free thought and free love movements in order to produce a rigorous system of philosophical- or individualist anarchism. Tucker shared with the advocates of free love and free thought a disdain for prohibitions on non-invasive behavior and religiously-based legislation, but he saw the poor condition of American workers as a result of four state-maintained monopolies: # the money monopoly, # the land monopoly, # tariffs, and # patents. His focus for several decades became the state's economic control of how trade could take place, and what currency counted as legitimate. He saw interest and profit as a form of exploitation. Though not directly examples of coercion (or "invasion" as Tucker preferred to say), they were nevertheless made possible by banking monopoly, which was in turn maintained through coercion and invasion, usually at the hands of the state. Any such interest and profit, Tucker called "usury" and he saw it as the basis for the oppression of the workers. He asserted that anarchism is meaningless "unless it includes the liberty of the individual to control his product or whatever his product has brought him through exchange in a free market—that is, private property." In this Tucker followed Proudhon in rejecting modern conceptions of private property, in which property beyond that generated by labor and use is considered legitimate entitlement. As Gary Elkin writes in Benjamin Tucker - Anarchist or capitalist?, "Tucker advocated
- possession
- but not private property, believing that empty land, houses, etc. should be squatted. He considered private property in land use (which he called the "land monopoly") as one of the four great evils of capitalism." He was the first to translate into English Proudhon's What is Property? and Max Stirner's The Ego and Its Own — which Tucker claimed was his proudest accomplishment. Liberty published the original work of Lysander Spooner, Auberon Herbert, Victor Yarros, and Lillian Harman, daughter of the free love anarchist, Moses Harman. Liberty also published such items as George Bernard Shaw's first original article to appear in the United States and the first American translated excerpts of Friedrich Nietzsche. Tucker's periodical also served as the main conduit of Stirnerite Egoism, of which Tucker became a proponent. This led to a split in American Individualism -- between the growing number of Egoists and the contemporary Spoonerian "Natural Lawyers". Both Egoists and Natural Law theorists rejected coercive authority, involuntary legislation, and the notion of a "social contract." However, they differed over the philosophical basis for their individualism: Natural Law theory derived it from a conception of a natural individual right to be free from coercion, whereas Egoism defended anarchism as a pragmatic compromise in a system where each individual sought only self-interest. As a result of Tucker's egoist foundation, he began to favor utilitarian outcomes over axiomatic absolutes. He believed that it was wrong to enforce contract on those faced with death and suffering. He says:

"the ultimate end of human endeavor is the minimum of pain. We aim to decrease invasion only because, as a rule, invasion increases the total of pain (meaning, of course, pain suffered by the ego, whether directly or through sympathy with others). But it is precisely my contention that this rule, despite the immense importance which I place upon it, is not absolute; that, on the contrary, there are exceptional cases where invasion -that is, coercion of the non-invasive lessens the aggre- gate pain. Therefore coercion of the non-invasive, when justifiable at all, is to be justified on the ground that it secures, not a minimum of ' invasion, but a minimum of pain. . . . [T]o me [it is] axiomatic -that the ultimate end is the minimum of pain."

Having rejected the moral philosophy of Lysander Spooner, Liberty also abandoned the remaining advocates of natural rights, now considering their moral philosophy to be old-fashioned and superstitious.

Dates, Places and Events

Born April 17, 1854 in South Dartmouth, Massachusetts. 1872 — While a student at M.I.T., Tucker attended a convention of the New England Labor Reform League in Boston, chaired by William Greene, author of Mutual Banking (1850). At the convention, Tucker purchased Mutual Banking, True Civilization, and a set of Ezra Heywood's pamphlets. Furthermore, Free-love anarchist, Ezra Heywood introduced Tucker to William Greene and Josiah Warren, author of True Civilization (1869). 1876 — Tucker's debut into radical circles: Heywood published Tucker's English translation of Proudhon's classic work What is Property?. 1877-1878 — Published his original journal, Radical Review, which lasted four issues. August 1881 to April 1908 — published the periodical, Liberty, "widely considered to be the finest individualist-anarchist periodical ever issued in the English language." 1892 — moved Liberty from Boston to New York 1906 — Opened Tucker's Unique Book Shop in New York City — promoting "Egoism in Philosophy, Anarchism in Politics, Iconoclasm in Art". 1908 — A fire destroyed Tucker's uninsured printing equipment and his 30-year stock of books and pamphlets. Tucker's lover, Pearl Johnson — 25 years his junior — was pregnant with their daughter, Oriole Tucker. Six weeks after Oriole's birth, Tucker closed both Liberty and the book shop and moved his family to France. 1913 — Tucker comes out of retirement for two years to contribute articles and letters to The New Freewoman which he called "the most important publication in existence" 1939 — Tucker died in Monaco, in the company of his lover Pearl Johnson and their daughter, Oriole, who reported, "Father's attitude towards communism never changed one whit, nor about religion.... In his last months he called in the French housekeeper. 'I want her,' he said, 'to be a witness that on my death bed I'm not recanting. I do not believe in God!" J. William Lloyd [http://www.mises.org/fullstory.aspx?control=697&fs=memories+of+benjamin+tucker wrote that] "There was nothing he hated more than communism, and the Communist-Anarchists used to call him "the Pope"."

External links

- [http://www.infoshop.org/faq/append11.html#app4] Tucker on Property, Communism and Socialism
- [http://www.BlackCrayon.com/people/tucker/ BlackCrayon.com: People: Benjamin Tucker]
- [http://flag.blackened.net/daver/anarchism/tucker/ flag.blackened.net: Benjamin Tucker: Individualist Anarchist]
- [http://flag.blackened.net/daver/anarchism/tucker/an_or_cap.html] Benjamin Tucker - Anarchist or Capitalist?
- [http://www.zetetics.com/mac/tir1.htm Benjamin Tucker, Liberty, and Individualist Anarchism by Wendy McElroy]
- [http://classicalliberalism.blogspot.com/2005_04_01_classicalliberalism_archive.html Benjamin Ricketson Tucker] from "CLASSicalLiberalism" archive
- [http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&ct=res&cd=1&url=http%3A//www.mises.org/journals/jls/1_4/1_4_4.pdf Benjamin Tucker and His Periodical, Liberty] by Carl Watner Tucker, Benjamin Tucker, Benjamin Tucker, Benjamin

Lysander Spooner

Lysander Spooner (January 19, 1808 – May 14, 1887) was an American classical liberal political philosopher, abolitionist, and legal theorist of the 19th century. He is best known for his role in the abolitionist movement to end slavery, competing with the U.S. Post Office, and for his contributions to American individualist anarchism. American individualist anarchism

Life Overview

Spooner was born on a farm in Athol, Massachusetts, on January 19, 1808, and died "at one o'clock in the afternoon of Saturday, May 14, 1887 in his little room at 109 Myrtle Street, surrounded by trunks and chests bursting with the books, manuscripts, and pamphlets which he had gathered about him in his active pamphleteer's warfare over half a century long." — from Our Nestor Taken From Us by Benjamin Tucker Later known as an early individualist anarchist, Spooner advocated what he called Natural Law — or the Science of Justice — wherein acts of actual coercion against individuals and their property were considered "illegal" but the so-called criminal acts that violated only man-made legislation were not. Spooner was a lifelong deist.

Early Years & the Postal Monopoly

His activism began with his career as a lawyer, which itself violated local Massachusetts law. Spooner had studied law under the prominent lawyers and politicians, John Davis and Charles Allen, but he had never attended college. According to the laws of the state, college graduates were required to study with an attorney for three years, while non-graduates were required to do so for five years. With the encouragement of his legal mentors, Spooner set up his practice in Worcester after only three years, openly defying the courts. He saw the two-year privilege for college graduates as a state-sponsored discrimination against the poor. He argued that such discrimination was "so monstrous a principle as that the rich ought to be protected by law from the competition of the poor." In 1836, the legislature abolished the restriction. After a disappointing legal career — for which his radical writing seemed to have kept away potential clients — and a failed career in real estate speculation in Ohio, Spooner returned to his father's farm in 1840. Postal rates were notoriously high in the 1840s, and in 1844, Spooner founded the American Letter Mail Company to contest the United States Postal Service's monopoly. As he had done when challenging the rules of the Massachusetts bar, he published a pamphlet entitled, "The Unconstitutionality of the Laws of Congress Prohibiting Private Mails". Although Spooner had finally found commercial success with his mail company, legal challenges by the government eventually exhausted his financial resources. He closed up shop without ever having had the opportunity to fully litigate his constitutional claims. The lasting legacy of Spooner's challenge to the postal service was the 3 cent stamp, adopted in response to the competition his company provided.[http://www.lysanderspooner.org/STAMP3.htm] The action earned him his nickname of the "Father of Affordable Postage."

Abolitionism

Spooner attained his greatest fame as a figure in the Abolitionist movement to abolish slavery. His most famous work, a book entitled The Unconstitutionality of Slavery, used a complex system of legal and natural law arguments to challenge the institution of slavery in the United States. The book was published in 1846 to great acclaim among many abolitionists but criticism from others. It helped to precipitate a split in the abolitionist movement over the issue of the Constitution surrounding whether the document was pro-freedom or pro-slavery. Spooner's pro-freedom argument was embraced by Gerrit Smith, Frederick Douglass, and the Liberty Party, which adopted it as an official text in its 1848 platform. Wendell Phillips and William Lloyd Garrison took the opposing view, which held that the Constitution was an immoral pact with slavery. From the publication of this book until 1861 Spooner actively campaigned against slavery. He published subsequent pamphlets on Jury Nullification and other legal defenses for escaped slaves and offered his legal services, often free of charge, to fugitives. In the late 1850's copies of his book were distributed to members of Congress sparking some debate over their contents. Even Senator Albert Gallatin Brown of Mississippi, a slavery proponent, praised the argument's intellectual rigor and conceded it was the most formidable legal challenge he had seen from the abolitionists to date. Spooner also participated in an aborted plot to free John Brown after his capture after the failed raid on Harper's Ferry, Virginia. In 1860 Spooner was actively courted by William Seward to support the fledgling Republican Party. An admitted sympathizer with the Jeffersonian ideology, Spooner adamantly refused the request and soon became an outspoken abolitionist critic of the party. To Spooner, the Republicans were hypocrites for purporting to oppose slavery's expansion but refusing to take a strong, consistent moral stance against slavery itself. He also opposed the coercive means by which the Republicans sought to prevent the south from seceding during the American Civil War. Spooner published several letters and pamphlets about the war, which he called evil and violent. He blamed the bloodshed on the Radical Republicans and particularly Senator Charles Sumner, who often spoke out against slavery but would not attack it on a constitutional basis and who pursued military policies seen as vengeful and abusive.[http://www.lewrockwell.com/dilorenzo/dilorenzo87.html] Though denouncing its embrace of slavery, Spooner sided with the Confederate States of America's right to secede on the basis that they were choosing to exercise government by consent - a fundamental constitutional and legal principle to Spooner's philosophy. The north, by contrast, was trying to deny the southerners their inherent right to be governed by their consent. He believed they were attempting to coerce the obedience of the southern states to a union that they did not wish to enter.

Reconstruction

Spooner harshly condemned the Civil War and the Reconstruction period that followed. Though he approved of the fact that Black slavery was abolished, he criticized the North for failing to make this the purpose of their cause. Instead of fighting to abolish slavery, they fought to "preserve the union" and, according to Spooner, to bolster business interests behind that union. Spooner believed a war of this type was hypocritical and dishonest, especially on the part of Radical Republicans like Sumner who were by then claiming to be abolitionist heroes for ending slavery. Spooner also argued that the war came at a great cost to liberty and proved that the rights expressed in the Declaration of Independence no longer held true - the people could not "dissolve the political bands" that tie them to a government that "becomes destructive" of the consent of the governed because if they did so, as Spooner believed the south had attempted to do, they would be met by the bayonet to enforce their obedience to the former government. Reacting to the war, Spooner published one of his most famous political tracts, [http://www.lysanderspooner.org/notreason.htm No Treason: The Constitution of No Authority]. In this lengthy essay, Spooner argued that the Constitution was a contract of government (see social contract theory) which had been irreparably violated during the war and was thus void. Furthermore, since the government now existing under the Constitution pursued coercive policies that were contrary to the Natural Law and to the consent of the governed, it had been demonstrated that document was unable to adequately stop many abuses against liberty or to prevent tyranny from taking hold. Spooner bolstered his argument by noting that the Federal government, as established by a legal contract, could not legally bind all persons living in the nation since none had ever signed their names or given their consent to it - that consent had always been assumed, which fails the most basic burdens of proof for a valid contract in the courtroom. Spooner widely circulated the No Treason pamphlets, which also contained a legal defense against the crime of treason itself intended for former Confederate soldiers (hence the name of the pamphlet, arguing that "no treason" had been committed in the war by the south). These excerpts were published in DeBow's Review and some other well known southern periodicals of the time.

Later Life

He wrote and published extensively, producing works such as "Natural Law or The Science of Justice" and "Trial By Jury." In "Trial By Jury" he defended the doctrine of "Jury Nullification," which holds that in a free society a trial jury not only has the authority to rule on the facts of the case, but also on the legitimacy of the law under which the case is tried, and which would allow juries to refuse to convict if they regard the law they are asked to convict under as illegitimate. Lysander Spooner died in 1887 at the age of 79. He had influenced a generation of abolitionists and anarchists, including Benjamin Tucker who published Spooner's obituary in the journal Liberty.

Influence

Spooner's influence extends to the wide range of topics he addressed during his lifetime. He is remembered today primarily for his abolitionist activities and for his challenge to the post office monopoly, which had a lasting influence of significantly reducing postal rates. Spooner's writings contributed to the development of libertarian political theory in the United States. His writings were also a major influence on Austrian School economist Murray Rothbard.

References and external links

- [http://www.theihs.org/libertyguide/people.php/75860.html Lysander Spooner article from Libertyguide.com]
- [http://www.lysanderspooner.org/notreason.htm No Treason: The Constitution of No Authority]
- [http://www.memoryhole.com/people/tucker/ontfu.html Our Nestor Taken From Us]
- [http://www.memoryhole.com/people/spooner/bibliography.html Lysander Spooner's Bibliography]
- [http://www.LysanderSpooner.com/ www.LysanderSpooner.com]
- [http://www.BlackCrayon.com/people/spooner/ BlackCrayon.com: People: Lysander Spooner]
- [http://www.fija.org/ The Fully Informed Jury Association]
- [http://www.mises.org/rothbardintros/spooner.asp Lysander Spooner: Libertarian Pietist] by Murray Rothbard

External links

-
- [http://www.gutenberg.net/browse/BIBREC/BR1201.HTM Essay On The Trial By Jury] Spooner, Lysander Spooner, Lysander Spooner, Lysander Spooner, Lysander Spooner, Lysander

Stephen Pearl Andrews

Stephen Pearl Andrews (March 22, 1812 - May 21, 1886) was an American individualist anarchist. Born in Templeton, Massachusetts, he went to Louisiana at age 18 and studied and practiced law there; appalled by slavery, he became an abolitionist. Having moved to Texas in 1839, he and his family were almost killed because of his abolitionist lectures and had to flee 1843. He went off to England where he failed at his scheme to raise funds to free slaves in America. He became interested in Pitman's new shorthand writing system and on his return to the USA he taught and wrote about this new passion while continuing his abolitionist lectures. He also became interested in phonetics and the study of foreign languages, eventually learning 30 languages. By the end of the 1840s he began to focus his energies on utopian communities. He and fellow individualist anarchist Josiah Warren (who was responsible for Andrew's conversion to radical individualism) established Modern Times in Brentwood, NY, (1851). Then, in (1857), he established Unity Home in New York City. By the 1860s he was propounding an ideal society called Pantarchy, and from this he moved on to a philosophy he called "universology", which stressed the unity of all knowledge and activities.

Quote

"Every variety of interpretation has been put upon my opinions, usually the least favorable which the imagination of the writer could devise, with a view, apparently, of cultivating still further the natural prejudice existing in the public mind against any one bold enough to agitate the delicate and difficult question of the true relations of the sexes, and the legitimate role which the Passions were intended to play in the economy of the Universe. In the absence of any readiness on the part of the public to know the truth on the subject, false, extravagant and ridiculous notions have flooded the country in its stead. I reject and repudiate the interference of the State, precisely as I do the interference of the Church. A grand social revolutions will occur. Tyranny of all kinds will disappear, freedom of all kinds will be revered, and none will be ashamed to confess that they believe in the Freedom of Love."

Bibliography

- Cost the Limit of Price (1851)
- The Constitution of Government in the Sovereignty of the Individual (1851)
- The Science of Society (1851)
- The Sovereignty of the Individual (1853)
- Principles of Nature, Original Physiocracy, the New Order of Government (1857)
- The Pantarchy (1871)
- The Basic Outline of Universology (1872)
- The Labor Dollar (1881)
- Elements of Universology (1881)
- The New Civilization (1885) Andrews, Stephen Pearl Andrews, Stephen Pearl

John Henry Mackay

John Henry Mackay (Greenock, Scotland, 1864 - Stahnsdorf 1933). He was raised in Germany. He was an individualist anarchist thinker and writer, friend of Benjamin Tucker and author of Die Anarchisten (The Anarchists) (1891) and Der Freiheitsucher (The Searcher for Freedom) (1921). Mackay was published in the United States in Tucker's magazine, Liberty. He also wrote using fictional forms, using the pseudonym 'Sagitta' such as the novel of the Berlin boy-bars, Der Puppenjunge (1926). The writings & theories of Mackay had a significant influence on Adolf Brand's organisation Gemeinschaft der Eigenen from 1906. Mackay had then lived in Berlin for a decade, and had become a friend of scientist and Gemeinschaft der Eigenen co-founder Benedict Friedlander. Mackay was a key populariser of the work of Max Stirner (1806-1856) outside Germany, writing a biography of the philosopher. This added greatly to the understanding of the work of Nietzsche among English-speakers. Richard Strauss set one of his poems to music, in the well-known song "Morgen". Mackay committed suicide ten days after the Nazi book burnings at the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft.

External links

- Mackay, John Henry Mackay, John Henry

Individualist anarchism

Origins

The American tradition

Anarcho-capitalism

See also

External links

Collectivism

Politics

Economics

Collectivist societies

Anti-collectivism

Quotes

See also

Individualism

Individualism in political philosophy

Individualism and society

Individualism and US history

Opposing views

Economic individualism

References

See also

External links

William Godwin

External links

Emile Armand

External links

Max Stirner

Biography

Philosophy

Egoism

Anarchism

'The creative nothing'

Power

Stirner as Hegelian?

Influence

Contemporary reactions

The marginalization of Stirner

Stirner and Nietzsche

Other influences

Postmodern influences?

Reference

Works by Stirner

External links

Josiah Warren

See also

External references

Benjamin Tucker

Summary

Dates, Places and Events

See also

External links

Lysander Spooner

Life Overview

Early Years & the Postal Monopoly

Abolitionism

Reconstruction

Later Life

Influence

References and external links

External links

Stephen Pearl Andrews

Quote

Bibliography

John Henry Mackay

Further reading

External links