500th Post

not going to make too much of a big deal about it...

A mate sent through a chain email full of pictures, and this was one of them...

Have been giving anarchism a bit of thought lately, and also just submitted an essay which discusses the advantages of anarchism. I thought I'd may as well share a bit of that...

The most prevalent form of anarchism today is social anarchism, an ideology which calls for the removal of the state and rejects the concept of private property. Social anarchists hold that “property is theft” (Proudhon, 1970, p.12) and that the only people entitled to own land are the workers who “create wealth” on that land. This is a poorly-thought-out principle though, as it fails to account for the land-owner who facilitates this creation of wealth and the fact that the workers themselves have voluntarily entered into a contract with the land-owner. Anarcho-syndicalism is one road down which social anarchists hope to travel in order to reach their utopia. It hopes to overthrow the bourgeoisie through a number of different actions taken by massive worker’s unions. Stirner discredits this position with his teaching that though people are equal, their possessions need not be. In ‘The Ego and Its Own’ which he wrote in 1845, Stirner states “But, even if the persons have become equal, yet their possessions have not” (Stirner, 1845, pp.152-163). Social anarchism is a corruption of anarchism in its purest sense as it attempts to lay out a social structure which individuals must fit into, thus undermining the concept of anarchism. Therefore this paper will focus instead on individualist anarchism...

The inevitable question arises: in an anarchical state, what eventuates when there is a clash due to the choices made by two parties? Stirner taught that all individuals are faced with two options in such a situation. “The combat of self-assertion is unavoidable… The victor becomes the lord, the vanquished one the subject: the former exercises supremacy and ‘rights of supremacy,’ the latter fulfils in awe and deference the "duties of a subject." (Stirner, 1845, pp.9-17). This understanding of individualist anarchism holds that no-one is answerable to anyone-else and at the end of the day it comes down to one’s ability to defend one’s self. Casting aside Mill’s harm principle, Stirner ignored anything or anyone outside of himself, claiming “If it is right for me, it is right.” He went on to explain, “my freedom is diminished even by my not being able to carry out my will on another” (Stirner, 1845, pp.203-225). Primitive as this may seem, it is not only the purest strain of anarchism; it is also the ultimate definition of freedom. By refusing to acknowledge the rights of others, or to accept a responsibility to value the rights of others, Stirner adopted a consistent and rational position, not only with himself at the center of the universe, but rather, as all that ever mattered. “Let me then likewise concern myself for myself, who am equally with God the nothing of all others, who am my all, who am the only one (Stirner, 1845, pp.3-7)...

Max Stirner... his book "The Ego and Its Own" is weird, otherworldy... I'm not sure that he was all there. Anyway, click here to read the rest of the essay if you like.