THE HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF THE ANARCHIST DOCTRINE
THE POINT OF VIEW OF ANARCHISM.
"I have often been reproached with being the father of Anarchism. This
is doing me too great an honour. The father of Anarchism is the immortal
Proudhon, who expounded it for the first time in 1848."
Thus spoke Peter Kropotkin in his defence before the Correctional
Tribunal of Lyons at his trial in January, 1883. As is frequently the
case with my amiable compatriot, Kropotkin has here made a statement
that is incorrect. For "the first time" Proudhon spoke of Anarchism was
in his celebrated book "_Qu'est-ce que le Propriété, ou Recherches sur
le principe du droit et du Gouvernement_," the first edition of which
had already appeared in 1840. It is true that he "expounds" very little
of it here; he only devotes a few pages to it.[7] And before he set
about expounding the Anarchist theory "in 1848," the job had already
been done by a German, Max Stirner (the pseudonym of Caspar Schmidt) in
1845, in his book "Der Einzige und sein Eigenthum."[8] Max Stirner has
therefore a well defined claim to be the father of Anarchism. "Immortal"
or not, it is by him that the theory was "expounded" _for the first
time_.
MAX STIRNER
The Anarchist theory of Max Stirner has been called a caricature of the
"philosophy of religion" of Ludwig Feuerbach. It is thus, _e.g._, that
Ueberweg in his "Grundzüge der Geschichte der Philosophie," (3rd. part,
"Philosophie der Neu Zeit") speaks of it. Some have even supposed that
the only object Stirner had in writing his book was to poke fun at this
philosophy. This supposition is absolutely gratuitous. Stirner in
expounding his theory was not joking. He is in deadly earnest about it,
though he now and again betrays a tendency, natural enough in the
restless times when he wrote, to outdo Feuerbach and the radical
character of his conclusions.
For Feuerbach, what men call Divinity, is only the product of their
phantasy, of a psychological aberration. It is not Divinity that has
created man, but man who creates Divinity in his own image. In God man
only adores his own being. God is only a fiction, but a very harmful
fiction. The Christian God is supposed to be all love, all pity for poor
suffering humanity. But in spite of this, or rather _because of it_,
every Christian really worthy the name, hates, and must hate, the
Atheists, who appear to him the living negation of all love and all
pity. Thus the god of love becomes the god of hate, the god of
persecution; the product of the phantasy of man becomes a real cause of
his suffering. So we must make an end of this phantasmagoria. Since in
Divinity man adores only his own being, we must once for all rend and
scatter to the winds the mystic veil beneath which this being has been
enveloped. The love of humanity must not extend beyond humanity. "Der
Mensch ist dem Menschen das höchste Wesen" (Man is the highest being for
man).
Thus Feuerbach. Max Stirner is quite at one with him, but wishes to
deduce what he believes to be the final, the most radical consequences
of his theory. He reasons in this fashion. God is only the product of
phantasy, is only a _spook_. Agreed. But what is this humanity the love
of which you prescribe to me? Is not this also a spook, an abstract
thing, a creature of the imagination? Where is this humanity of yours?
Where does it exist but in the minds of men, in the minds of
individuals? The only reality, therefore, is the _individual_, with his
wants, his tendencies, his will. But since this is so, how can the
_individual_, the reality, sacrifice himself for the happiness of man,
an abstract being? It is all very well for you to revolt against the old
God; you still retain the religious point of view, and the emancipation
you are trying to help us to is absolutely theological, _i.e._,
"God-inspired." "The highest Being is certainly that of man, but because
it is his _Being_ and is not he himself, it is quite indifferent if we
see this Being outside of him as God, or find it in him and call it the
'Being of Mankind' or 'Man.' _I_ am neither God nor Man, neither the
highest Being, nor my own Being, and therefore it is essentially a
matter of indifference if I imagine this Being in myself or outside
myself. And, indeed, we do always imagine the highest being in the two
future states, in the internal and external at once; for the 'Spirit of
God' is, according to the Christian conception, also 'our spirit' and
'dwells within us.' It dwells in heaven and dwells in us; but we poor
things are but its 'dwelling-place,' and if Feuerbach destroys its
heavenly dwelling-place and forces it to come down to us bag and
baggage, we, its earthly abode, will find ourselves very
over-crowded."[9]
To escape the inconveniences of such over-crowding, to avoid being
dominated by any spook, to at last place our foot upon actual ground,
there is but one way: to take as our starting-point the only real being,
our own Ego, "Away then with everything that is not wholly and solely my
own affair! You think my own concerns must at least be 'good ones?' A
fig for good and evil! I am I, and I am neither good nor evil. Neither
has any meaning for me. The godly is the affair of God, the human that
of humanity. My concern is neither the Godly nor the Human, is not the
True, the Good, the Right, the Free, etc., but simply my own self, and
it is not general, it is individual, as I myself am individual. For me
there is nothing above myself."[10]
Religion, conscience, morality, right, law, family, state, are but so
many fetters forced upon me in the name of an abstraction, but so many
despotic lords whom "I," the individual conscious of my own "concerns,"
combat by every means in my power. Your "_morality_," not merely the
morality of the bourgeois philistines, but the most elevated, the most
humanitarian morality is only religion which has changed its supreme
beings. Your "_right_," that you believe born with man, is but a ghost,
and if you respect it, you are no farther advanced than the heroes of
Homer who were afraid when they beheld a god fighting in the ranks of
their enemies. Right is might. "Whoever has might, he has right; if you
have not the former you have not the latter. Is this wisdom so difficult
of attainment?"[11] You would persuade me to sacrifice my interests to
those of the State. I, on the contrary, declare war to the knife to all
States, even the most democratic. "Every State is a despotism, whether
it is the despotism of one or many, or whether, as one might suppose
would be the case in a Republic, all are masters, _i.e._, one tyrannises
over the rest. For this is the case whenever a given law, the expressed
will perhaps of some assemblage of the people, is immediately to become
a law to the individual, which he must obey, and which it is his _duty_
to obey. Even if one were to suppose a case in which every individual
among the people had expressed the same will, and thus a perfect "will
of all" had easily been arrived at, the thing would still be the same.
Should I not to-day and in the future be bound by my will of yesterday?
In this event my will would be paralyzed. Fatal stagnation! My creation,
_i.e._, a certain expression of will would have become my master. But I,
in my will should be constrained, I, the creator should be constrained
in my development, my working out. Because I was a fool yesterday, I
must remain one all my life. So that in my life in relation to the State
I am at best--I might as well say at worst--a slave to my own self.
Because yesterday I had a will, I am to-day without one; yesterday free,
to-day bound."[12]
Here a partisan of the "People's State" might observe to Stirner, that
his "I" goes a little too far in his desire to reduce democratic liberty
to absurdity; further, that a bad law may be abrogated as soon as a
majority of citizens desire it, and that one is not forced to submit to
it "all one's life." But this is only an insignificant detail, to which,
moreover, Stirner would reply that the very necessity for appealing to a
majority proves that "I" am no longer the master of my own conduct. The
conclusions of our author are irrefutable, for the simple reason that
to say, I recognize nothing above myself, is to say, I feel oppressed by
every institution that imposes any duty upon me. It is simply tautology.
It is evident that no "Ego" can exist quite alone. Stirner knows this
perfectly, and this is why he advocates "Leagues of Egoists," that is to
say, free associations into which every "Ego" enters, and in which he
remains when and so long as it suits his interests.
Here let us pause. We are now face to face with an "egoist" system _par
excellence_. It is, perhaps, the only one that the history of human
thought has to chronicle. The French Materialists of the last century
have been accused of preaching egoism. The accusation was quite wrong.
The French Materialists always preached "Virtue," and preached it with
such unlimited zeal that Grimm could, not without reason, make fun of
their _capucinades_ on the subject. The question of egoism presented to
them a double problem. (1) Man is all sensation (this was the basis of
all their speculations upon man); by his very nature he is forced to
shun suffering and to seek pleasure; how comes it then that we find men
capable of enduring the greatest sufferings for the sake of some idea,
that is to say, in its final analysis, in order to provide agreeable
sensations for their fellow-men. (2) Since man is all sensation he will
harm his fellow-man if he is placed in a social environment where the
interests of an individual conflict with those of others. What form of
legislation therefore can harmonise public good and that of
individuals? Here, in this double problem, lies the whole significance
of what is called the materialist ethics of the 18th century. Max
Stirner pursues an end entirely opposed to this. He laughs at "Virtue,"
and, far from desiring its triumph, he sees reasonable men only in
egoists, for whom there is nothing above their own "Ego." Once again, he
is the theorist _par excellence_ of egoism.
The good bourgeois whose ears are as chaste and virtuous as their hearts
are hard; they who, "drinking wine, publicly preach water," were
scandalised to the last degree by the "immorality" of Stirner. "It is
the complete ruin of the moral world," they cried. But as usual the
virtue of the philistines showed itself very weak in argument. "The real
merit of Stirner is that he has spoken the last word of the young
atheist school" (_i.e._, the left wing of the Hegelian school), wrote
the Frenchman, St. Réné Taillandier. The philistines of other lands
shared this view of the "merits" of the daring publicist. From the point
of view of modern Socialism this "merit" appears in a very different
light.
To begin with, the incontestable merit of Stirner consists in his having
openly and energetically combated the sickly sentimentalism of the
bourgeois reformers and of many of the Utopian Socialists, according to
which the emancipation of the proletariat would be brought about by the
virtuous activity of "devoted" persons of all classes, and especially of
those of the possessing-class. Stirner knew perfectly what to expect
from the "devotion" of the exploiters. The "rich" are harsh,
hard-hearted, but the "poor" (the terminology is that of our author) are
wrong to complain of it, since it is not the rich who create the poverty
of the poor, but the poor who create the wealth of the rich. They ought
to blame themselves then if their condition is a hard one. In order to
change it they have only to revolt against the rich; as soon as they
seriously wish it, they will be the strongest and the reign of wealth
will be at an end. Salvation lies in struggle, and not in fruitless
appeals to the generosity of the oppressors. Stirner, therefore,
preaches the class war. It is true that he represents it in the abstract
form of the struggle of a certain number of egoist "Egos" against
another smaller number of "Egos" not less egoist. But here we come to
another merit of Stirner's.
According to Taillandier, he has spoken the last word of the young
atheist school of German philosophers. As a matter of fact he has only
spoken the last word of idealist speculation. But that word he has
incontestably the merit of having spoken.
In his criticism of religion Feuerbach is but half a Materialist. In
worshipping God, man only worships his own Being idealised. This is
true. But religions spring up and die out, like everything else upon
earth. Does this not prove that the human Being is not immutable, but
changes in the process of the historical evolution of societies?
Clearly, yes. But, then, what is the cause of the historical
transformation of the "human Being?" Feuerbach does not know. For him
the human Being is only an abstract notion, as human Nature was for the
French Materialists. This is the fundamental fault of his criticism of
religion. Stirner said that it had no very robust constitution. He
wished to strengthen it by making it breathe the fresh air of reality.
He turns his back upon all phantoms, upon all things of the imagination.
In reality, he said to himself, these are only individuals. Let us take
the individual for our starting-point. But _what_ individual does he
take for his starting-point? Tom, Dick, or Harry? Neither. He takes the
_individual in general_--he takes a new abstraction, the thinnest of
them all--he takes the "Ego."
Stirner naïvely imagined that he was finally solving an old
philosophical question, which had already divided the Nominalists and
the Realists of the Middle Ages. "No Idea has an existence," he says,
"for none is capable of becoming corporeal. The scholastic controversy
of Realism and Nominalism had the same content." Alas! The first
Nominalist he came across could have demonstrated to our author by the
completest evidence, that his "Ego" is as much an "Idea" as any other,
and that it is as little real as a mathematical unit.
Tom, Dick and Harry have relations with one another that do not depend
upon the will of their "Ego," but are imposed upon them by the structure
of the society in which they live. To criticise social institutions in
the name of the "Ego," is therefore to abandon the only profitable
point of view in the case, _i.e._, that of society, of the laws of its
existence and evolution, and to lose oneself in the mists of
abstraction. But it is just in these mists that the "Nominalist" Stirner
delights. I am I--that is his starting-point; not I is not I--that is
his result. I+I+I+etc.--is his social Utopia. It is subjective Idealism,
pure and simple applied to social and political criticism. It is the
suicide of idealist speculation.
But in the same year (1845) in which "Der Einzige" of Stirner appeared,
there appeared also, at Frankfort-on-Maine the work of Marx and Engels,
"Die heilige Familie, oder Kritik der Kritischen Kritik, gegen Bruno
Bauer und Consorten."[13] In it Idealist speculation was attacked and
beaten by Materialist dialectic, the theoretical basis of modern
Socialism. "Der Einzige" came too late.
We have just said that I+I+I+etc. represents the social Utopia of
Stirner. His League of Egoists is, in fact, nothing but a mass of
abstract quantities. What are, what can be the basis of their union?
Their interests, answers Stirner. But what will, what can be the true
basis of any given combination of their interests? Stirner says nothing
about it, and he can say nothing definite since from the abstract
heights on which he stands, one cannot see clearly economic reality, the
mother and nurse of all the "Egos," egoistic or altruistic. Nor is it
surprising that he is not able to explain clearly even this idea of the
class struggle, of which he nevertheless had a happy inkling. The "poor"
must combat the "rich." And after, when they have conquered these? Then
every one of the former "poor," like every one of the former "rich,"
will combat every one of the former poor, and against every one of the
former rich. There will be the war of all against all. (These are
Stirner's own words.) And the rules of the "Leagues of Egoists" will be
so many partial truces in this colossal and universal warfare. There is
plenty of fight in this idea, but of the "realism" Max Stirner dreamed
of, nothing.
But enough of the "Leagues of Egoists." A Utopian may shut his eyes to
economic reality, but it forces itself upon him in spite of himself; it
pursues him everywhere with the brutality of a natural force not
controlled by force. The elevated regions of the abstract "I" do not
save Stirner from the attacks of economic reality. He does not speak to
us only of the "Individual"; his theme is "the Individual _and his
property_." Now, what sort of a figure does the property of the
"Individual" cut?
It goes without saying, that Stirner is little inclined to respect
property as an "acquired right." "Only that property will be legally and
lawfully another's which it suits _you_ should be his property. When it
ceases to suit you, it has lost its legality for you, and any absolute
right in it you will laugh at."[14] It is always the same tune: "For me
there is nothing above myself." But his scant respect for the property
of others does not prevent the "Ego" of Stirner from having the
tendencies of a property-owner. The strongest argument against
Communism, is, in his opinion, the consideration that Communism by
abolishing individual property transforms all members of society into
mere beggars. Stirner is indignant at such an iniquity.
"Communists think that the Commune should be the property-owner. On the
contrary, _I_ am a property-owner, and can only agree with others as to
my property. If the Commune does not do as I wish I rebel against it,
and defend my property, I am the owner of property, but property _is not
sacred_. Should I only be the holder of property (an allusion to
Proudhon)? No, hitherto one was only a holder of property, assured of
possession of a piece of land, because one left others also in
possession of a piece of land; but now _everything_ belongs to me, I am
the owner of _everything I need_, and can get hold of. If the Socialist
says, society gives me what I need, the Egoist says, I take what I want.
If the Communists behave like beggars, the Egoist behaves like an owner
of property."[15] The property of the egoist seems pretty shaky. An
"Egoist," retains his property only as long as the other "Egoists" do
not care to take it from him, thus transforming him into a "beggar." But
the devil is not so black as he is painted. Stirner pictures the mutual
relations of the "Egoist" proprietors rather as relations of exchange
than of pillage. And force, to which he constantly appeals, is rather
the economic force of a producer of commodities freed from the trammels
which the State and "Society" in general impose, or seem to impose, upon
him.
It is the soul of a producer of commodities that speaks through the
mouth of Stirner. If he falls foul of the State, it is because the State
does not seem to respect the "property" of the producers of commodities
sufficiently. He wants _his_ property, his _whole_ property. The State
makes him pay taxes; it ventures to expropriate him for the public good.
He wants a _jus utendi et abutendi_; the State says "agreed"--but adds
that there are abuses and abuses. Then Stirner cries "stop thief!" "I am
the enemy of the State," says he, "which is always fluctuating between
the alternative: He or I.... With the State there is no property,
_i.e._, no individual property, only State property. Only through the
State have I what I have, as it is only through the State that I am what
I am. My private property is only what the State leaves me of its own,
while it deprives other citizens of it: that is State property." So down
with the State and long live full and complete individual property!
Stirner translated into German J. B. Say's "Traité D'Economie Politique
Pratique" (Leipsic, 1845-46). And although he also translated Adam
Smith, he was never able to get beyond the narrow circle of the ordinary
bourgeois economic ideas. His "League of Egoists" is only the Utopia of
a petty bourgeois in revolt. In this sense one may say he has spoken the
last word of bourgeois individualism.
Stirner has also a third merit--that of the courage of his opinions, of
having carried through to the very end his individualist theories. He is
the most intrepid, the most consequent of the Anarchists. By his side
Proudhon, whom Kropotkin, like all the present day Anarchists, takes for
the father of Anarchism, is but a straight-laced Philistine.
FOOTNOTES:
[7] See pages 295-305 of the 1841 edition.
[8] "The Individual and his Property."
[9] "Der Einzige und sein Eigenthum." 2nd ed., Leipzig, 1882, pp. 35-36.
(American translation: "The Ego and his Own." New York: 1907.)
[10] Ibid. Pp. 7-8.
[11] Ibid. pp. 196-197.
[12] Ibid. p. 200.
[13] "The Holy Family, or Criticism of Critical Criticism, against Bruno
Bauer and Company."
[14] Der Einzige und sein Eigenthum.
[15] Ibid. p. 266.