Prelude.

Revolio Clockberg, Jr.: “I’m sorry, Rick. The reward on your head is too high. And like you always say, you got to look out for number one.”

Rick: “Number one is me, asshole! You’re supposed to be my friend!” Rick and Morty, S2E2

Considering getting really into Max Stirner and becoming insufferable — Big Structural Motte and Bailey (@Devon_OnEarth) April 17, 2020

Something that’s sad about the fact that video recording didn’t exist for the vast majority of human history is the fact that we can only determine how coocoo someone is by how they write and primary accounts of their behavior. Imagine, for instance, how much more rational Slavoj Žižek would be considered by armchair philosophers if he had existed, say, in the earlier half of the 19th century (which would, obviously, preclude the existence of videos of him disheveled and sniffling while talking about Kung Fu Panda). I think Max Stirner is a sad case of this inability to reach into the past, in that it’s not clear how much of a acute narcissist he actually was. This is also due to the fact that so little is known about him that the kookier corners of the internet maintain that he was merely a pseudonym of Friedrich Engels, which he used to try to push Marx towards egoism. Because of the ill-defined concepts of his work, Max has been thought to be a inspiration of everything from Nietzsche’s philosophy to anarcho-communism.

Max Stirner’s philosophy can be summed up as a glorification of the self, but the actual meaning behind this is up for debate. I think the most general characterization of his work could be the idea that humans are implicit egotists, who behave according to (rational?) self interest but claim they adhere to a certain moral compass and are empaths, due to “fixed ideas” (such as religion and police), which obscures their self-serving interest. These people, according to Stirner, ought to shred all the minutiae of society and its confines in order to pursue a dogmatically self-serving approach to life. Reception of his work ranges from viewing his ideas as transcendentally enlightening to seeing him as a promoter of all sorts of stupid and evil activities. Here, I just want to talk about what I see as the 7 most common interpretations of Max Stirner’s work on the web, and the evidence behind each one. By the end of this, you should have many witty and pretentious retorts to anyone spouting rhetoric after posting one of those crudely drawn doodles of Max.

The 7 different interpretations that I’ll talk about are:

1. Max the Anarcho-Capitalist

2. Max the Communist

3. Max the Anti-Communist

4. Max the Psychoanalyst

5. Max the Proto-Fascist

6. Max the Christian

7. Max the Nobody?

I. Max the Anarcho-Capitalist

“There is one word that is forbidden in this valley: the word ‘give.'” Atlas Shrugged

Critics of extreme anarcho-capitalist philosophies, such as those of Ayn Rand’s Objectivist cadre, often point out that the movement seems to prioritize the individual’s ego. Despite this, for some reason, people on certain egoist corners of the web seem to think that anarcho-capitalism and egoism are incompatible, because private property is a “spook,” and therefore espousing a worldview revolving around it is foolish. This is textually supported by Stirner’s own proto-fashy quips on property — “Whoever knows how to take, to defend, the thing, to him belongs property. […] What I have in my power, that is my own. So long as I assert myself as holder, I am the proprietor of the thing.” However, I think it’s rash to immediately press the “Delete” button on egoist-capitalism, because Stirner did not explicitly state that any particular part of his dogma was absolute (and it would be quite unlike Max to do so).

A counterpoint to the Max quote, therefore, would be the fact that Max’s idea of a Verein von Egoisten is in many ways an anarcho-capitalist idea. Similar to how an anarcho-capitalist community in Cascadia could arbitrarily state that they were going to start accepting Puka shells as a form of fiat currency (but this choice being something that was a voluntary submission), the union of egoists also lives by a sort of non-mandatory connection. The disconnection between the state and this discretionary sort of union was stated by Max as the following way:

“A State exists even without my co-operation: I am born in it, brought up in it, under obligations to it, and must “do it homage.” [huldigen] It takes me up into its “favor,” [Huld] and I live by its “grace.” […] Now the Nationals are exerting themselves to set up the abstract, lifeless unity of beehood; but the self-owned are going to fight for the unity willed by their own will, for union. […] In this combination I see nothing whatever but a multiplication of my force, and I retain it only so long as it is my multiplied force. But thus it is a — union. Neither a natural ligature nor a spiritual one holds the union together, and it is not a natural, not a spiritual league” The Ego and Its Own

I think a steel-manned position on the relation between anarcho-capitalism and egoism would reveal that even though there are parts of anarcho-capitalism that are at some level incompatible with the tenets of egoism, mainly the idea of a “non-aggression pact,” anarcho-capitalism is, in a lot of ways, the closest realistic interpretation of what an implementation of Stirner’s philosophy would look like in real life. As a closing note, I think that the following Murray Rothbard quote firmly establishes the dogma behind anarcho-capitalism in relation to egoism, and provides a keen non-narcissistic (!) context to the significance of the ego.

“The basic axiom of libertarian political theory holds that every man is a self owner, having absolute jurisdiction over his own body.” Murray Rothbard

II. Max the Communist

“[f]ully as heartily the Communists concur with Stirner when he puts the word take in place of demand—that leads to the dissolution of property, to expropriation. Individualism and Communism go hand in hand” Max Baginski

I’m not going to lie — I’m somewhat biased against this interpretation of Max Stirner’s work, because what it entails is in a salient way entirely opposed to the core of his philosophy. However, the arguments that feed that bias are more eloquently presented by Marx in the next section of this essay, so for now I’ll focus on positive interpretations of Stirner’s work in relation to communism. The central bond between the two philosophies is a similar position on the exact nature of property, best exemplified by the Stirner quote “I do not step shyly back from your property, but look upon it always as my property, in which I respect nothing. Pray do the like with what you call my property!” This is a difficult passage to process, because it’s not exactly clear what Stirner is advocating through this. One interpretation would be that might-makes-right, and ergo Stirner expects others to be just as ego-driven as him. Howbeit, there is a communist-friendly interpretation, where property is externalized, rather than internalized, and consequently can be appropriated because it is separate from the essence of the person. This is a trivialization of property rather than a larceny of it.

I think any synthesis of communism and Stirner necessarily needs to be some sort of Kropotkin-inflected anarcho-communism, because certain Marxist ideas like the “dictatorship of the proletariat,” directly butt heads not only with egoism, but also with Stirner’s own words:

Communism, by the abolition of all personal property, only presses me back still more into dependence on another, viz., on the generality or collectivity; and, loudly as it always attacks the “State,” what it intends is itself again a State, a status, a condition hindering my free movement, a sovereign power over me. Communism rightly revolts against the pressure I experience from individual proprietors; but still more horrible is the might that it puts in the hands of the collectivity.

The Ego and Its Own

An important work in regards to egoist-communism is the 1974 book The Right To Be Greedy: Theses On The Practical Necessity Of Demanding Everything. The book makes a distinction between capitalistic greed, which is termed “narrow greed,” and the more total, egoist greed of a communist society. The authors point out that the desires of the rich capitalist — the yacht, the Ferrari, and the mansion, are ideals imposed by the capitalistic society in order to keep the entire system running:

“Narrow greed is a holdover from times of natural scarcity. Its desires are represented to itself in the form of commodities, power, sex(-objects), and even more abstractly, as money and as images. We are told in a thousand ways that only these few things are worth having – by rulers who work to insure that these are the only things available (to be bought).” The Right to Be Greedy

The deduction that is happened upon in the book is that humans are sort of eusocial beings, where sharing wealth with others is considered consistent with the ideology of egoism because others are simply an extension of the self:

“[I]n the society of realized wealth, your strength is my strength, the inner wealth of your being is my wealth, my property, and every one of your human powers is a multiplication of my own. Thus, the contradiction between my consumption and yours, between my appropriation, my property, and yours; the conflict between my well-being and yours becomes its opposite: synthesis; identity; inter-reinforcement; interamplification; resonance…Ultimately, wealth is nothing but society itself.” The Right to Be Greedy

Go figure.

III. Max the Anti-Communist

broke: max stirner was a fake foil created by engels to piss off marx



woke: marx was a fake foil created by engels so that he doesnt get as much attention because he's an introverted fuck — tadano👺♀♂🌿🇵🇭 (@tadano_egorl) April 18, 2020

“[Stirner is] pursued through five hundred pages of heavy-handed mockery and insult” Isaiah Berlin, description of Marx’s criticism of Max

A description of the position of Stirner as a anti-communist punching bag would be woefully incomplete without an account of the feud between Max and Marx. The story in a nutshell goes something like this: a schoolteacher named Max (or, allegedly, Engels himself) writes about egoism, another guy named Engels hears about this new philosophy and praises it to Marx, Marx reads Der Einzige und sein Eigentum, Marx intensely dislikes it, and proceeds to write his longest smear in history against the man, all the while calling him witty-but-inevitably-neckbeardy nicknames like “Saint Sancho.” I’d also like the point out that some of Marx’s insults seem to be extreme psychological projection, such as when he call Max “The German stay-at-home.” Tu quoque, Marx. Additionally, it should be noted that Marx is by far the most likely reason that Stirner’s works have survived the test of time. If it was not for his excessive condemnation in The German Ideology, it’s likely that Stirner would have been reduced to a historical footnote by now.

Marx’s criticisms go very in-depth in regards to Stirner’s particular shortcomings, especially his rebuttal of the importance of previous historical revolutions, so I’ll leave the reader to peruse these in greater details (link at the bottom). To paint with broad strokes, a lot of Marx’s criticism has to do with his down-to-earth analysis of revolutions having material goals — that is, goals of greater economic equality and egalitarian land tenure. This contrasts with Stirner’s less-grounded assertion that “the Revolution was not directed against reality, but against this reality, against this definite existence.” I think the most acidic, and perhaps most on-the-nose criticism that Marx provides of Stirner occurs when Marx deftly points out that Stirner’s illegalist apotheosis of the proletariat as “rogues, prostitutes, thieves, robbers and murderers, gamblers, propertyless people with no occupation and frivolous individuals,” matches exactly what the perception of the proletariat was in the minds of the bourgeoisie. Marx rolls his eyes and scoffs at Max’s apparent transcendent nature in regards to money, stating “That money is a necessary product of definite relations of production and intercourse and remains a truth’ so long as these relations exist — this, of course, is of no concern to a holy man like Saint Max, who raises his eyes towards heaven and turns his profane backside to the profane world.”

The divorce between communism on the one hand and egoism on the other hand is identified tersely by Marx — “From the state founded on love, which is Saint Max’s own fabrication, he here derives communism which then, of course, remains an exclusively Stirnerian communism. Saint Sancho knows only egoism on the one hand or the claim to the loving services, pity and aims of people on the other hand. Outside and above this dilemma nothing exists for him at all.” Marx identifies the same base inadequacy of egoism that many modern scholars identify — there is no way to both advocate for egoism on the one hand, while at the same time advocating for the “pity and aims of people.” This cognitive dissonance is I think key to the opposition of communism and egoism.

IV. Max the Psychoanalyst

Y'ALL why does doug funnie's original design look like engels' caricature of max stirner pic.twitter.com/OH2XNL5LOw — Skeksis Appreciator (@marxupial) April 15, 2020

I’m aware that much of what I’m saying in this section I directly contradict in the last section, in terms of the reader dilemma presented as a demonstration of Stirner’s impotence. However, I think it is worth exploring both possibilities (3 and 7), since both perspectives are present in modern discourse. I think the proposition of Max Stirner as ameliorating psychoanalyst is in fact the closest one can get to something resembling a panegyric of Max’s work. At the root of this idea is the protective effects that narcissism has against suicide (and sometimes depression, although this gets into the minutiae of the differences between “oblivious” NPD and “vulnerable” NPD, the former of which is more indicative of a true superiority complex, while the latter is better understood as a sort of mask of superiority covering an inferiority complex). This is something that by most is regarded as near-tautology, but it is also something with a basis in psychological literature. This is the point that I’m trying to make — maybe the main concepts of Stirner’s philosophy are per se protective against depression. Obviously this take is somewhat tenuous when it comes to the actual application in a clinical setting. However, it doesn’t hurt to imagine how interesting it would be if an implementation of egoism actually changed someone’s behavior for the better. In cases where depression is driven by a need to gain respect of others, or gain access to a particular echelon of society, then egoism patently positions itself entirely orthogonal to the wants and needs of the depressed patient. In other words, the oftentimes societal origins of depression (yes, I know I’m painting with broad brush strokes here, but this is Western philosophy we’re talkin’ ’bout) find in egoism their exact antipode — accordingly, unfulfilled desire to feel like less of a failure in the eyes of institutions is replaced by wholesale rejection of not only the basis of success within the framework of the institution, but also rejection of the institution itself. This, I think, could be liberating, and I’m interested if any non-armchair psychologists have examined Stirner’s works in a clinical setting.

V. Max the Proto-Fascist

I'm going back in time and preventing stirner from existing — Liersa (@2thirdsLesbian) April 17, 2020

“Do I write out of love to men? No, I write because I want to procure for my thoughts an existence in the world; and, even if I foresaw that these thoughts would deprive you of your rest and your peace, even if I saw the bloodiest wars and the fall of many generations springing up from this seed of thought — I would nevertheless scatter it. Do with it what you will and can, that is your affair and does not trouble me. You will perhaps have only trouble, combat, and death from it, very few will draw joy from it.” The Ego and Its Own

I think the case that can be made that Stirner paved the way for fascism is actually quite a strong one, and the people who claim that there is no connection between the way of thinking that he advocated for and fascism seem to be doing a bit of revisionism of his goals. While fascism may seem poles apart from egoism, there is evidence to the contrary:

“At first sight, Nazi totalitarianism may seem the opposite of Stirner’s radical individualism. But fascism was above all an attempt to dissolve the social ties created by history and replace them by artificial bonds among individuals who were expected to render explicit obedience to the state on grounds of absolute egoism. Fascist education combined the tenets of asocial egoism and unquestioning conformism, the latter being the means by which the individual secured his own niche in the system. Stirner’s philosophy has nothing to say against conformism, it only objects to the Ego being subordinated to any higher principle: the egoist is free to adjust to the world if it is clear he will better himself by doing so. His ‘rebellion’ may take the form of utter servility if it will further his interest; what he must not do is to be bound by ‘general’ values or myths of humanity. The totalitarian ideal of a barrack-like society from which all real, historical ties have been eliminated is perfectly consistent with Stirner’s principles: the egoist, by his very nature, must be prepared to fight under any flag that suits his convenience.” Main Currents of Marxism, 1976

The criticism that Max’s egoism is incompatible with the rise of fascism is flawed because of the precise thing it seeks to criticize. In order to accuse these fascist types of appropriating an ideology without following it, you first would have to presuppose that there is such a thing as following egoism, which defeats the whole purpose of the movement. If anything, the concept of ideological purity is something entirely orthogonal to Stirner’s philosophy. In other words, to perform the act of j’accuse against someone in the sphere of egoism is to adhere to a strict set of rules regarding egoism, ergo removing you from the very preconditions you seek to maintain in others.

In this way, maybe the resurgence of Stirner in connection to unsavory individuals will lead to him being demonified by people seeking an origin for hateful partisan movements, in the same way that Ayn Rand and Saul Alinsky have become political punching bags in recent American political history.

The overlap between egoism and simple narcissism is impossible to ignore, and I think there’s no reason to pretend that two are separate concepts, especially considering how many unabashed megalomaniacs like the Illegalists adored Stirner. Natheless, there’s a surprising lack of consensus among psychologists as to whether or not fascist dictators such as Adolf Hitler were narcissists or psychopaths. This is due to a few reasons:

Psychopathy exists on a spectrum, so it’s difficult to definitively know exactly how much capacity for empathy world leaders had Most psychologists are loath to diagnose anyone they have never met, especially people who existed in a different period of time The clinical definitions of psychopathy and narcissism comprise a subset of the behavior which society would deem “psycho” (which could more accurately be categorized as antisocial).

And obviously, avoiding these tenets is how you end up with sensationalist headlines like “Donald Trump outscores Hitler on psychopathic traits test, claims University of Oxford researcher.” First of all, armchair speculation is something that’s going to be inherently biased, but the main issue of this article is that presenting this “finding” in this format is an information hazard. The popular perception is going to be that since Donald Trump is more of a clinical narcissist than Hitler, he is therefore a worse person, which is contrary to the clinical basis of the test. There are plenty of ways to be a piece of sh*t that don’t involve being a narcissist. Donald Trump’s ego, such as refusal to admit mistakes and disregard for traditional institution, as well as pathological lying, is what causes him to have such a high score for narcissism, but the takeaway that you should have is that being ego-driven has an inherent disconnect from being an fascist. Someone like Mobutu Sese Seko or Donald Trump more closely fits the profile of narcissism, than, say, a fascist like Hitler or Mussolini, because in the case of someone like Mobutu, the end goal is not necessarily the betterment of the country, or even necessarily the destruction of anyone outside of your sphere of influence. Additionally, we associate incompetence more with leaders such as Trump or Mobutu than with Mussolini or Francisco Franco, and this incompetence is a result of not caring about other people’s opinions of you. Put simply, the profiles of grifters more closely match up with the philosophy of egoism than do the profiles of nationalist authoritarians. The goals of narcissists are to exploit the system for personal gain, which is why perhaps there is not a complete connection to be made from proto-fascism to egoism.

VI. Max the Christian

Then Jesus said to them, “Give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s.” And they were amazed at him. Mark 12:17

Jesus is such a universally popular figure in Western society that even when a philosopher wants to criticize the institution of Christianity, they regardless handle Jesus himself with kid gloves. Stirner’s opinions reflect this, as he argues that Jesus was essentially mischaracterized as someone who wanted to start a revolution, but who really just wanted to live outside the boundaries of society in a meaningful way. Certainly, Stirner’s description of “crime” (not necessarily an illegal action, but merely an action which flies in the face of that which is known as the “sacred”) fits cleanly with Christ’s behavior in the Gospel of Mark, considering his disobedience in terms of observation of the Sabbath and ritualistic cleaning:

“In crime the egoist has hitherto asserted himself and mocked at the sacred; the break with the sacred, or rather of the sacred, may become general. A revolution never returns, but an immense, reckless, shameless, conscienceless, proud—crime, doesn’t it rumble in the distant thunder, and don’t you see how the sky grows ominously silent and gloomy?” Max Stirner, The Ego and Its Own

Of course, this is somewhat of a creative interpretation of Jesus, since fundamentally he was to be the Jewish Messiah, and therefore his disobedience was not necessarily a mocking of the “sacred” itself, but rather a mocking of those who adhered to the Mosaic Law in a compulsive way: the Kantians, who in the Gospel of Mark are the Pharisees.

Forbye, we can again look to Marx for a rebuttal of Stirner’s position, and I think this particular part of his philippic against Max in The German Ideology is very insightful:

“Apart from the fact that “Stirner” here actually thinks that in ancient times the prosaic world did not exist and the divine principle held sway in the world, he even falsifies the Christian concept, which continually bemoans its impotence in relation to the world, and itself depicts its victory over the world in its fantasy as merely an ideal one, by transferring t to the day of judgment. Only when a great secular power took possession of Christianity and exploited it, whereupon, of course, it ceased to be unworldly, could Christianity imagine itself to be the owner of the world. Saint Max ascribes to the Christian the same false relation to the ancient world as he ascribes to the youth with regard to the “world of the child”; he puts the egoist in the same relation to the world of the Christian as he puts the man to the world of the youth.” Karl Marx

In condensed form, Stirner has claimed to get at the “true core” of Christianity, but that which he claims as pure is yet another interpolation that occurred long after the death of Christ.

VII. Max the Nobody

N.B. I’m putting on my dogmatic hat and my armchair psychologist hat for this last passage, which I understand is quite controversial, but I think the conclusions I reached here are not too too farfetched.

Something that I took away from reading Max Stirner was that the life he prescribes people to lead seems, in reality, to be more a description that a prescription. Id est, the philosophy he advocates for so closely resembles the psychiatric symptoms for NPD, that it seems that his ideology will have no effect on anyone, no matter what their preconceived notion of the world is. In order to explain this, I’ll present an (oversimplified) dilemma with two different potential readers of Stirner:

1. The moral-absolutist empath who is not narcissistic, and likely believes in utilitarianism/consequentialism

2. The person afflicted with NPD, who already values rational self interest above all else, and does not particular care about other people’s utility functions

It is patent that in the second case, the person will not change at all by reading Max Stirner! They already are a megalomaniac — they need no guidance! In the first case, I don’t think it is too difficult to prove that there are very few people who believe in a classification of right and wrong and believe in utilitarianism who would be convinced by Max Stirner’s logic. Max presupposes that certain institutions and concepts, such as religion or altruism, don’t factor into people’s actions, but provides no good evidence why exactly they aren’t to be heeded. Q.E.D. Max’s philosophy is a big fat nobody.

Miscellany:

The Right To Be Greedy

Marx’s Criticism









