Individualist anarchism in Europe
Encyclopedia
Individualist anarchism
refers to several traditions of thought within the anarchist movement that emphasize the individual
and his or her will
over external determinants such as groups, society, traditions, and ideological systems.European individualist anarchism (IA) proceeded from the roots laid by William Godwin
, Pierre Joseph Proudhon and Max Stirner
. Proudhon was an early pioneer of anarchism
as well as of the important individualist anarchist current of mutualism
. Stirner became a central figure of individualist anarchism
through the publication of his seminal work The Ego and Its Own
which is considered to be "a founding text in the tradition of individualist anarchism." Another early figure was Anselme Bellegarrigue
. IA expanded and diversified through Europe, incorporating influences from North American individualist anarchism
.
European individualist anarchists include Albert Libertad
, Bellegarrigue, Oscar Wilde
, Émile Armand
, Lev Chernyi
, John Henry Mackay
, Han Ryner
, Adolf Brand
, Miguel Gimenez Igualada
, Renzo Novatore
and the contemporary philosopher Michel Onfray
. Important currents within it include free love
, anarcho-naturism
,, illegalism
and freethought
.
, derived from the philosophy of Max Stirner
, supports the individual doing exactly what he pleases – taking no notice of God, state, or moral rules. To Stirner, rights were spooks
in the mind, and he held that society does not exist but "the individuals are its reality"– he supported property by force of might rather than moral right. Stirner advocated self-assertion and foresaw "Union of egoists
" drawn together by respect for each other's ruthlessness.
European individualist anarchism also was influenced by early American individualist anarchists such as Henry David Thoreau
, Josiah Warren
and Benjamin Tucker
. From Thoreau the simple living
and ecological vision and the idea of civil disobedience
were influential in European individualist anarchists. From Warren the practical intentional communal
experiences in which he was involved in were influential mainly in french individualist anarchists.
An important tendency within European individualist anarchist currents emphasizes individual subjective exploration and defiance of social conventions. Individualist anarchist philosophy attracted "amongst artists, intellectuals and the well-read, urban middle classes in general." As such Murray Bookchin
describes a lot of individualist anarchism as people who "expressed their opposition in uniquely personal forms, especially in fiery tracts, outrageous behavior, and aberrant lifestyles in the cultural ghettos of fin de siecle New York, Paris, and London. As a credo, individualist anarchism remained largely a bohemian
lifestyle, most conspicuous in its demands for sexual freedom ('free love') and enamored of innovations in art, behavior, and clothing.". In this way free love
currents and other radical lifestyles such as naturism
had popularity among individualist anarchists.
On the other hand a specific social context helped the rise of European individualist illegalism
and as such "The illegalists were proletarians who had nothing to sell but their labour power, and nothing to discard but their dignity; if they disdained waged-work, it was because of its compulsive nature. If they turned to illegality it was due to the fact that honest toil only benefited the employers and often entailed a complete loss of dignity, while any complaints resulted in the sack; to avoid starvation through lack of work it was necessary to beg or steal, and to avoid conscription into the army many of them had to go on the run." And so a European tendency of individualist anarchism advocated violent individual acts of individual reclamation
, propaganda by the deed and criticism of organization. Such individualist anarchist tendencies include French illegalism and Italian anti-organizational insurrectionarism. Bookchin reports that at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th "it was in times of severe social repression and deadening social quiescence that individualist anarchists came to the foreground of libertarian activity -- and then primarily as terrorists. In France, Spain, and the United States, individualistic anarchists committed acts of terrorism that gave anarchism its reputation as a violently sinister conspiracy.".
For Catalan historian Xavier Diez Spanish individualist anarchism "under its iconoclastic, antiintellectual, antitheist run, which goes against all sacralized ideas or values it entailed, a philosophy of life which could be considered a reaction against the sacred gods of capitalist society. Against the idea of nation, it opposed its internationalism
. Against the exaltation of authority embodied in the military institution, it opposed its antimilitarism
. Against the concept of industrial civilization, it opposed its naturist vision".
William Godwin was an individualist anarchist and philosophical anarchist who was influenced by the ideas of the Age of Enlightenment
, and developed what many consider the first expression of modern anarchist thought
. Godwin was, according to Peter Kropotkin
, "the first to formulate the political and economical conceptions of anarchism, even though he did not give that name to the ideas developed in his work." Godwin advocated extreme individualism, proposing that all cooperation in labor be eliminated. Godwin, a utilitarian, believed that not all individuals are of equal value, with some of us "of more worth and importance' than others depending on our utility in bringing about social good. Godwin believed that the person whose life was the most conducive to the general good should be favored, eschewing equal rights. Godwin opposed government because it infringes on the individual's right to "private judgement" to determine which actions most maximize utility, but also objected to all authority over the individual's judgement. This aspect of Godwin's philosophy, minus the utilitarianism, was developed into a more extreme form later by Stirner.
Godwin even opposed individuals performing together in orchestras, writing in Political Justice
that "everything understood by the term co-operation is in some sense an evil." The only apparent exception to this opposition to cooperation is the spontaneous association that may arise when a society is threatened by violent force. One reason he opposed cooperation is he believed it to interfere with an individual's ability to be benevolent for the greater good. Godwin opposes the idea of government, but wrote that a minimal state
is a present "necessary evil" that would become increasingly irrelevant and powerless by the gradual spread of knowledge. He expressly opposed democracy
, fearing oppression of the individual by the majority (though he preferred democracy to dictatorship
).
Godwin supported individual ownership of property, defining it as "the empire to which every man is entitled over the produce of his own industry." But he also suggested that individuals give each other their surplus property when the other needed it, without involving trade (e.g. gift economy
). Thus, while people have the right to private property
, they should give it away as enlightened altruists. Godwin explained this approach stating, "[e]very 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." Yet to Godwin, benevolence was not to be enforced but instead a matter of free individual "private judgement." He did 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 the later development of anarchist communism
.
Godwin's political views were diverse and do not perfectly agree with any of the ideologies that claim his influence; writers of the Socialist Standard
, organ of the Socialist Party of Great Britain
, consider Godwin both an individualist and a communist; anarcho-capitalist Murray Rothbard
did not regard Godwin as an individualist, referring to him as the "founder of communist anarchism"; and historian Albert Weisbord
considers him an individualist anarchist without reservation. 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. Many of Godwin's views changed over time, as noted by Peter Kropotkin
.
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (1809–1865) was the first philosopher to label himself an "anarchist." Some consider Proudhon to be an individualist anarchist, while others regard him to be a social anarchist
. Some commentators reject this, noting his preference for association in large industries, rather than individual control. Nevertheless, he was influential among American individualists; in the 1840s and 1850s, Charles A. Dana, and William B. Greene introduced Proudhon's works to the United States
. Greene adapted Proudhon's mutualism to American conditions and introduced it to Benjamin R. Tucker.
Proudhon opposed government privilege that protects capitalist, banking and land interests, and the accumulation or acquisition of property (and any form of coercion
that led to it) which he believed hampers competition and concentrates wealth. Proudhon favored the right of individuals to retain the product of their labor as their own property, but believed that all other property 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 was required for labor and the latter when it resulted in/from exploitation (profit, interest, rent, tax). He generally termed the former "possession" and the latter "property." For large-scale industry, he supported workers associations to replace wage labor and opposed land ownership.
Proudhon maintained that workers should retain the entirety of what they produce, and that monopolies
on credit and land are the forces that prohibit this. He advocated an economic system he called mutualism
that included possession and exchange of private property but without profit. Joseph Dejacque
explicitly rejected Proudhon's philosophy, instead preferring anarchist-communism, 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." An individualist rather than anarchist communist, Proudhon said that "communism...is the very denial of society in its foundation..." and famously declared that "property is theft!" in reference to his rejection of ownership rights to land being granted to a person who is not using that land.
After Dejacque and others split from Proudhon, the relationship between individualists, and anarcho-communists was characterized by various degrees of antagonism and harmony. For example, individualists like Tucker at once translated and reprinted the works of collectivists
like Mikhail Bakunin
while rejecting the economic aspects of collectivism and communism as incompatible with anarchist ideals.
, either individually or collectively, with trade representing equivalent amounts of labor in the free market
. Integral to the scheme was the establishment of a mutual-credit bank which would lend to producers at an interest rate only high enough to cover the costs of administration. Mutualism is based on a labor theory of value
which holds that when labor or its product is sold, in exchange, it ought to receive goods or services embodying "the amount of labor necessary to produce an article of exactly similar and equal utility". Some mutualists believe that if the state did not intervene, as a result of increased competition in the marketplace, individuals would receive no more income than that in proportion to the amount of labor they exert. Mutualists oppose the idea of individuals receiving income through loan
s, investment
s, and rent
, as they believe these individuals are not laboring. Some of them argue that if state intervention ceased, these types of incomes would disappear due to increased competition in capital. Though Proudhon opposed this type of income, he expressed: "... I never meant to ... forbid or suppress, by sovereign decree, ground rent and interest on capital. I believe that all these forms of human activity should remain free and optional for all."
Insofar as they ensure workers' rights to the full product of their labor, mutualists support market
s and private property
. However, they argue for conditional title to land, whose private ownership is legitimate only so long as it remains in use or occupation (which Proudhon called "possession.") Proudhon's Mutualism supports labor-owned cooperative firms
and associations for "we need not hesitate, for we have no choice. . . it is necessary to form an ASSOCIATION among workers . . . because without that, they would remain related as subordinates and superiors, and there would ensue two . . . castes of masters and wage-workers, which is repugnant to a free and democratic society" and so "it becomes necessary for the workers to form themselves into democratic societies, with equal conditions for all members, on pain of a relapse into feudalism." Mutualist opinions differs on whether capital goods (man-made, non-land, "means of production
)" should be commonly managed public assets or private property.
Mutualists originally considered themselves to be libertarian socialists. However, "some mutualists have abandoned the labor theory of value, and prefer to avoid the term "socialist." But they still retain some cultural attitudes, for the most part, that set them off from the libertarian right
." Mutualists have distinguished themselves from state socialism
, and don't advocate social control over the means of production. Benjamin Tucker said of Proudhon, that "though opposed to socializing the ownership of capital, [Proudhon] aimed nevertheless to socialize its effects by making its use beneficial to all instead of a means of impoverishing the many to enrich the few...by subjecting capital to the natural law of competition, thus bringing the price of its own use down to cost."
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, in German
'Stirn'), was a German philosopher, who ranks as one of the literary fathers of nihilism
, existentialism
, post-modernism and anarchism
, especially of individualist anarchism. Stirner's main work is The Ego and Its Own
, also known as The Ego and His Own (Der Einzige und sein Eigentum in German, which translates literally as The Only One and his Property). This work was first published in 1844 in Leipzig
, and has since appeared in numerous editions and translations.
Authors, philosophers and artists have cited, quoted or otherwise referred to Max Stirner. They include Albert Camus
in The Rebel (the section on Stirner is omitted from the majority of English editions including Penguin
's), Benjamin Tucker
, Dora Marsden
, Emma Goldman
, Georg Brandes
, Rudolf Steiner
, John Cowper Powys
, Émile Armand
, Han Ryner
, Renzo Novatore
, Karl Marx
, Robert Anton Wilson
, Italian
individualist anarchist Frank Brand
, Russian-American
philosopher Ayn Rand
, Bob Black
, antiartist
Marcel Duchamp
, several writers of the Situationist International, and Max Ernst
, who titled a 1925 painting L'unique et sa propriété.
The Ego and Its Own has seen periodic revivals of popular, political and academic interest, based around widely divergent translations and interpretations—emphasizing psychological or political views. Today, many ideas associated with post-left anarchy
's criticism of ideology and uncompromising individualism
are clearly related to Stirner's. Individualist feminism
claims him as a pioneer, since his objection to any absolute concept also counts gender role
s as "spooks". His ideas were also adopted by post-anarchism
, with Saul Newman
largely agreeing with many of Stirner's criticisms of classical anarchism, including his rejection of revolution and essentialism
.
philosopher whose "name appears with familiar regularity in historically-orientated surveys of anarchist thought as one of the earliest and best-known exponents of IA." Stirner does not recommend that the individual try to eliminate the state but simply exploit it to further the individual's interests. He says that the egoist rejects pursuit of devotion to "a great idea, a good cause, a doctrine, a system, a lofty calling," saying that the egoist has no political calling but rather "lives themselves out" without regard to "how well or ill humanity may fare thereby." Stirner held that the only limitation on the rights of the individual is his power to obtain what he desires. He proposes that most commonly accepted social institutions—including the notion of State, property as a right, natural rights in general, and the very notion of society—were mere spooks in the mind. Stirner wanted to "abolish not only the state but also society as an institution responsible for its members." He advocated self-assertion and foresaw "associations of egoists" where respect for ruthlessness drew people together. Even murder is permissible "if it is right for me."
Stirner claimed that property comes about through might: "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." "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!". His concept of "egoistic property" not only rejects moral restraint on how one obtains and uses things, but includes other people as well. His embrace of egoism
is in stark contrast to Godwin's altruism
. Stirner was opposed to communism, seeing it as a form of authority over the individual.
In Russia, IA inspired by Stirner combined with an appreciation for Friedrich Nietzsche
to attract a small following of bohemian
artists and intellectuals such as Lev Chernyi
, as well as a few lone wolves who found self-expression in crime and violence. They rejected organizing, believing that only unorganized individuals were safe from coercion and domination. They claimed this belief to be fundamental to anarchism. This type of IA inspired anarcho-feminist Emma Goldman
Though Stirner's philosophy is individualist, it has influenced some libertarian communists
and anarcho-communists. "For Ourselves Council for Generalized Self-Management" discusses Stirner and speaks of a "communist egoism," which is said to be a "synthesis of individualism and collectivism," and says that "greed in its fullest sense is the only possible basis of communist society." Forms of libertarian communism such as situationism are influenced by Stirner. Anarcho-communist Emma Goldman
was influenced by both Stirner and Peter Kropotkin
and blended their philosophies together in her own.
Proudhon and Stirner stimulated a strong response in France. An early important example was Anselme Bellegarrigue
. He participated in the French Revolution of 1848, was author and editor of Anarchie, Journal de l'Ordre and Au fait ! Au fait ! Interprétation de l'idée démocratique and wrote the important early Anarchist Manifesto
in 1850. Catalan historian of individualist anarchism Xavier Diez reports that during his travels in the United States "he at least contacted (Henry David) Thoreau
and, probably (Josiah) Warren
."Jean-Baptiste Louiche, Charles Schæffer and Georges Deherme edited the individualist anarchist publication Autonomie Individuelle that ran from 1887 to 1888.
Intellectuals such as Albert Libertad
, André Lorulot, Emile Armand
, Victor Serge
, Zo d'Axa
and Rirette Maitrejean
extended the theory in France's main individualist anarchist journal, L’Anarchie
in 1905 and later in EnDehors
. Outside this journal, Han Ryner
wrote Petit Manuel individualiste (1903).
French individualist anarchists espoused diverse positions. For example Emile Armand rejected violence
and embraced mutualism while advocating free love
. Albert Libertad and Zo d'Axa championed violent propaganda by the deed while adhering to communitarianism
or anarcho-communism and rejecting work
. Han Ryner on the other side conciled anarchism with stoicism
. Nevertheless French individualist circles displayed a strong sense of personal libertarianism and experimentation. Anarchist naturism and free love
concepts influenced individualist anarchists circles in France and Spain and expanded to the rest of anarchism.
Henri Zisly
, Emile Gravelle
and Georges Butaud promoted anarchist naturism. Butaud was an individualist "partisan of the milieux libres, publishing "Flambeau" ("an enemy of authority") in 1901 in Vienna
. He focused on creating and participating in anarchist colonies.
"In this sense, the theoretical positions and the vital experiences of french individualism are deeply iconoclastic and scandalous, even within libertarian circles. The call of nudist naturism
, the strong defense of birth control
methods, the idea of "unions of egoists
" with the sole justification of sexual practices, that will try to put in practice, not without difficulties, will establish a way of thought and action, and will result in symphathy within some, and a strong rejection within others."
, Belgium
, and Switzerland
during the early 1900s as an outgrowth of Stirner's IA. Illegalists typically did not seek moral basis for their actions, recognizing only the reality of "might" rather than "right". They advocated illegal acts to satisfy personal desires, not a larger ideal, although some committed crimes as a form of direct action
or propaganda of the deed
.
Influenced by Stirner's egoism
as well as Proudhon's "property is theft", Clément Duval
and Marius Jacob
proposed the theory of la individual reclamation
.
Illegalism first rose to prominence among a generation of Europeans inspired by the unrest of the 1890s. Ravachol
, Émile Henry, Auguste Vaillant
, and Caserio committed daring crimes in anarchism's name. France's Bonnot Gang
was the most famous group to embrace illegalism.
who edited the influential anarchist publication L’Anarchie
. During the Dreyfus affair
, he founded the Anti-Militarist League (1902) "and, along with Paraf-Javal, founded the “Causeries populaires”, public discussions that met with great interest throughout the country, contributing to the opening of a bookstore and various clubs in different quarters of Paris". On the occasion of the July 14 anniversary, L’Anarchie
"printed and distributed the manifesto “The Bastille of Authority” in one hundred thousand copies. Along with feverish activity against the social order, Libertad was usually also organizing feasts, dances and country excursions, in consequence of his vision of anarchism as the “joy of living” and not as militant sacrifice and death instinct, seeking to reconcile the requirements of the individual (in his need for autonomy) with the need to destroy authoritarian society. In fact, Libertad overcame the false dichotomy between individual revolt and social revolution, stressing that the first is simply a moment of the second, certainly not its negation. Revolt can only be born from the specific tension of the individual, which, in expanding itself, can only lead to a project of social liberation. For Libertad, anarchism doesn't consist in living separated from any social context in some cold ivory tower or on some happy communitarian isle, nor in living in submission to social roles, putting off the moment when one puts one's ideas into practice to the bitter end, but in living as anarchists here and now, without any concessions, in the only way possible: by rebelling. And this is why, in this perspective, individual revolt and social revolution no longer exclude each other, but rather complement each other."
Emile Armand was an influential French individualist anarchist, free love
/polyamory
and pacifist/antimilitarist propagandist and activist. He wrote for such anarchist magazines as L’Anarchie
and EnDehors
. His thought was mainly influenced by such thinkers as Stirner, Benjamin Tucker
, and American Transcendentalism
. Outside France he was an important influence in Spanish anarchist movements, above all in the individualist publications Iniciales
, Al Margen and Nosotros. He defended the ido
constructed language
over esperanto
with the help of José Elizalde.
Armand contrasted his IA with social anarchist currents, rejecting revolution
. He argued that waiting for revolution meant delaying the enjoyment of liberty until the masses gained awareness and will. Instead he advocated living under one's own conditions in the present time, revolting against social conditioning in daily life and living with those with an affinity to oneself in accord to the values and desire they share
. He says the individualist is a "presentist" and "he could not, without bad reasoning and illogic, think of sacrificing his being, or his having, to the coming of a state of things he will not immediately enjoy". He applies this rule to friendship, love, sexual encounters and economic transactions. He adheres to an ethics of reciprocity
and advocated propagandizing one's values to enable association with others to improve the chances of self realization.
Armand advocated free love
, naturism
and polyamory
in what he termed la camaraderie amoureuse. He wrote many propagandist articles on this subject advocating not only a vague free love but also multiple partners, which he called "plural love." "'The camaraderie amoureuse thesis,' he explained, 'entails a free contract of association (that may be annulled without notice, following prior agreement) reached between anarchist individualists of different genders, adhering to the necessary standards of sexual hygiene, with a view toward protecting the other parties to the contract from certain risks of the amorous experience, such as rejection, rupture, exclusivism, possessiveness, unicity, coquetry, whims, indifference, flirtatiousness, disregard for others, and prostitution.'".
Han Ryner was a French individualist anarchist philosopher and activist and a novelist. He wrote for publications such as L'Art social, L'Humanité nouvelle, L'Ennemi du Peuple , L'Idée Libre de Lorulot; and L'En dehors and L'Unique. His thought is mainly influenced by stoicism
and epicureanism
.
He defines individualism as "the moral doctrine which, relying on no dogma, no tradition, no external determination, appeals only to the individual conscience.". He distinguishes "conquering and aggressive egoists who proclaim themselves to be individualists" from what he called "harmonic individualists" who respected others. He admired Epicurus
' temperance and that "he showed that very little was needed to satisfy hunger and thirst, to defend oneself against heat and the cold. And he liberated himself from all other needs, that is, almost all the desires and all the fears that enslave men.". He celebrated how Jesus "lived free and a wanderer, foreign to any social ties. He was the enemy of priests, external cults and, in general, all organizations."
, published L'Unique after World War II
. L'Unique went from 1945 to 1956 with a total of 110 numbers. Within the synthesist
anarchist organization, the Fédération Anarchiste, there existed an individualist anarchist tendency alongside anarcho-communist and anarchosyndicalist currents. Individualist anarchists participating inside the Fédération Anarchiste included Charles-Auguste Bontemps
, Georges Vincey and André Arru.. The new base principles of the francophone Anarchist Federation were written by Charles-Auguste Bontemps and the anarcho-communist Maurice Joyeux which established an organization with a plurality of tendencies and autonomy of federated groups organized around synthesist principles. Charles-Auguste Bontemps was a prolific author mainly in the anarchist, freethinking, pacifist and naturist
press of the time. His view on anarchism was based around his concept of "Social Individualism" on which he wrote extensively. He defended an anarchist perspective which consisted on "a collectivism of things and an individualism of persons."
In 2002, an anarchist, Libertad organized a new version of the L'EnDehors, collaborating with Green Anarchy
and including contributors such as Lawrence Jarach
, Patrick Mignard, Thierry Lodé
, Ron Sakolsky
, and Thomas Slut. Articles about capitalism, human rights, free love
and social fights were published. The EnDehors continues now as a website, EnDehors.org.
The prolific contemporary french philosopher Michel Onfray
has been writing from an individualist anarchist perspective influenced by Nietzsche, french post-structuralists thinkers such as Michel Foucault
and Gilles Deleuze
; and greek classical schools of philosophy such as the Cynics and Cyrenaics
. Among the books which best expose Onfray´s individualist anarchist perspective include La sculpture de soi : la morale esthétique (The sculpture of oneself: aesthetic morality), La philosophie féroce : exercices anarchistes, La puissance d'exister and Physiologie de Georges Palante, portrait d'un nietzchéen de gauche which focuses on french individualist philosopher Georges Palante
.
, Luigi Luccheni, and Gaetano Bresci
who murdered king Umberto I. Caserio lived in France and later assassinated French president Sadi Carnot
. The theoretical seeds of current Insurrectionary anarchism
were laid out at the end of 19th century Italy combining IA criticism of permanent groups and organization with a socialist class struggle worldview. This thought also motivated Gino Lucetti
, Michele Schirru and Angelo Sbardellotto in attempting the assassination of Benito Mussolini
. Pietro Bruzzi published the journal L'Individualista in the 1920s alongside Ugo Fedeli and Francesco Ghezzi but who fell to fascist forces later. Pietro Bruzzi also collaborated with the Italian American
individualist anarchist publication Eresia of New York City
edited by Enrico Arrigoni
.
Renzo Novatore was influenced by Stirner
, Friedrich Nietzsche
, Georges Palante
, Oscar Wilde
, Henrik Ibsen
, Arthur Schopenhauer
and Charles Baudelaire
. He collaborated in numerous anarchist journals and participated in futurism
avant-garde currents.
He proclaimed "revolution is the fire of our will and a need of our solitary minds; it is an obligation of the libertarian aristocracy. To create new ethical values. To create new aesthetic values. To communalize material wealth. To individualize spiritual wealth. Because we violent celebralists and passional sentimentalists at the same time-understand and know that revolution is a necessity of the silent sorrow that suffers at the bottom and a need of the free spirits who suffer in the heights." He summarizes the three options in life as "The stream of slavery, the stream of tyranny, the stream of freedom! With revolution, the last of these streams needs to burst upon the other two and overwhelm them. It needs to create spiritual beauty, teach the poor the shame of their poverty, and the rich the shame of their wealth." These views justified his practice of illegalism and later active resistance to fascism
.
Novatore collaborated in the individualist anarchist journal Iconoclasta! alongside the young Stirnerist illegalist Bruno Filippi
Also, a poet, Novatore belonged to the leftist section of the avant-garde
movement of futurism, alongside others individualist anarchists such as Dante Carnesecchi
, Leda Rafanelli, Auro d'Arcola, and Giovanni Governato.
a splinter group created the Gruppi di Iniziativa Anarchica. In the seventies it was mostly composed of "veteran individualist anarchists with an orientation of pacifism
, naturism
, etc,...".
Egoism had a strong influence on insurrectionary anarchism
, as can be seen in the work of Alfredo Bonanno and Michele Fabiani. Bonanno has written on Stirner in works such as Max Stirner and "Max Stirner und der Anarchismus".
In the famous Italian insurrectionary anarchist anonymous essay, "At Daggers Drawn with the Existent, its Defenders and its False Critics" is "The workers who, during a wildcat strike, carried a banner saying, 'We are not asking for anything' understood that the defeat is in the claim itself ('the claim against the enemy is eternal'). There is no alternative but to take everything. As Stirner said: 'No matter how much you give them, they will always ask for more, because what they want is no less than the end of every concession'."
individualist anarchists was influenced by American individualist anarchism but mainly it was connected to the French currents. At the turn of the century people such as Dorado Montero, Ricardo Mella
, Federico Urales, Mariano Gallardo and J. Elizalde translated French and American individualists. Important in this respect were also magazines such as La Idea Libre, La Revista Blanca
, Etica, Iniciales
, Al margen, Estudios and Nosotros. The most influential thinkers there were Stirner
, Emile Armand
and Han Ryner
. Just as in France, Esperanto
, anationalism
, anarcho-naturism and free love
were present. Later Armand and Ryner started publishing in the Spanish invidualist press. Armand's concept of amorous camaraderie had an important role in motivating polyamory
as realization of the individual.
Recently historian Xavier Diez wrote on the subject in El anarquismo individualista en España: 1923-1938 y Utopia sexual a la premsa anarquista de Catalunya. La revista Ética-Iniciales(1927–1937) deals with free love thought in Iniciales
. Diez reports that the spanish individualist anarchist press was widely read by members of anarcho-communist groups and by members of the anarcho-syndicalist trade union CNT
. There were also the cases of prominent individualist anarchists such as Federico Urales and Miguel Gimenez Igualada
who were members of the CNT
and J. Elizalde who was a founding member and first secretary of the Iberian Anarchist Federation.
Federico Urales was an important catalan
individualist anarchist who edited La Revista Blanca
. The individualist anarchism of Urales was influenced by Auguste Comte
and Charles Darwin
. He saw science and reason as a defense against blind servitude to authority. He was critical of influential individualist thinkers such as Nietzsche and Stirner
for promoting an asocial egoist individualism and instead promoted an individualism with solidarity as a way to guarantee social equality and harmony. In the subject of organization he was highly critical of anarcho-syndicalism
as he saw it plagued by too much bureaucracy and thought that it tended towards reformism. Instead he favored small groups based on ideological alignement. He supported the establishmente of the Iberian Anarchist Federation (FAI)
in 1927 and participated in it.
In 2000 in Spain Ateneo Libertario Ricardo Mella, Ateneo libertario Al Margen, Ateneu Enciclopèdic Popular, Ateneo Libertario de Sant Boi, Ateneu Llibertari Poble Sec y Fundació D'Estudis Llibertaris i Anarcosindicalistes republished Emile Armand´s writings on Free Love and IA in a compilation titled Individualist anarchism and Amorous camaraderie.
who wrote the lengthy theory book called Anarchism espousing his individualist anarchism. Between October, 1937 and February , 1938 he starts as editor of the individualist anarchist magazine Nosotros, in which many works of Han Ryner
and Émile Armand
appear and will also participate in the publishing of another individualist anarchist maganize Al Margen: Publicación quincenal individualista. In his youth he engaged in illegalist activities. His thought was deeply influenced by Max Stirner
, of which he was the main popularizer in Spain through his writings. He publishes and writes the preface to the fourth edition in Spanish of The Ego and Its Own
from 1900. He will propose the creation of a union of egoists
, which will be a Federation of Individualist Anarchists in Spain, but did not succeed. In 1956 publishes an extensive treatise on Stirner which he dedicates to fellow individualist anarchist Emile Armand
Afterwards he will travel and live in Argentina, Uruguay and Mexico.
In his major work Anarchism Igualada states that "humanism
or anarchism,...for me are the same thing". He sees the anarchist as one who "does not accept the imposition of a thought on us and who does not allows one´s own thought to be imposed over another brain, oppressing it...since anarchy is not for me a mere negation, but a twofold activity of conciousness; in the first instance a conciousness of the individual on its meaning within the human world, defending his personality against every external imposition; on a second instance, and here is present the whole great beauty of its ethic, it defends, stimulates and enhances the other´s personality.... Igualada exposes a radical pacifist view when he thinks that "When I say that through war humanity will never find peace, I sustain my affirmation in the fact that those who are more peaceful are the least believers, and so...one can affirm that the day of happiness in which war (religiosity is bellicosity) is extirpated from conciousness, peace will exists in the home of men, and since from conciousness these beliefs will not be extracted but only through an act of trascendental education, our labor is not of killing, but of education having it well present that to educate is not in any case domestication
.
and others. In the Spanish individualist anarchist magazine Ética and Iniciales
"there is a strong interest in publishing scientific news, usually linked to a certain atheist and anti-theist obsession, philosophy which will also work for pointing out the incompatibility between science and religion, faith and reason. In this way there will be a lot of talk on Darwin´s theories or on the negation of the existence of the soul.".
. Naturism promoted an ecological worldview, small ecovillage
s, and most prominently nudism as a way to avoid the artificiality of the industrial mass society
of modernity. Naturist individualist anarchists saw the individual in his biological, physical and psychological aspects and avoided, and tried to eliminate, social determinations."EL NATURISMO LIBERTARIO EN LA PENÍNSULA IBÉRICA (1890-1939)" by Josep Maria Rosell An early influence in this vein was Henry David Thoreau
and his famous book Walden
Important promoters of this were Henri Zisly
and Emile Gravelle
who collaborated in La Nouvelle Humanité followed by Le Naturien, Le Sauvage, L'Ordre Naturel, & La Vie Naturelle.
This relationship between anarchism and naturism was quite important at the end of the 1920s in Spain. "The linking role played by the ‘Sol y Vida’ group was very important. The goal of this group was to take trips and enjoy the open air. The Naturist athenaeum, ‘Ecléctico’, in Barcelona, was the base from which the activities of the group were launched. First Etica and then Iniciales
, which began in 1929, were the publications of the group, which lasted until the Spanish Civil War
. We must be aware that the naturist ideas expressed in them matched the desires that the libertarian youth had of breaking up with the conventions of the bourgeoisie of the time. That is what a young worker explained in a letter to ‘Iniciales’ He writes it under the odd pseudonym of ‘silvestre del campo’, (wild man in the country). “I find great pleasure in being naked in the woods, bathed in light and air, two natural elements we cannot do without. By shunning the humble garment of an exploited person, (garments which, in my opinion, are the result of all the laws devised to make our lives bitter), we feel there no others left but just the natural laws. Clothes mean slavery for some and tyranny for others. Only the naked man who rebels against all norms, stands for anarchism, devoid of the prejudices of outfit imposed by our money-oriented society.”". "The relation between Anarchism and Naturism gives way to the Naturist Federation, in July 1928, and to the lV Spanish Naturist Congress, in September 1929, both supported by the Libertarian Movement. However, in the short term, the Naturist and Libertarian movements grew apart in their conceptions of everyday life. The Naturist movement felt closer to the Libertarian individualism of some French theoreticians such as Henri Ner than to the revolutionary goals proposed by some Anarchist organisations such as the FAI, (Federación Anarquista Ibérica
)". .
has been influential in individualist anarchism specifically in thinkers such as the french Emile Armand
, the italian Renzo Novatore
, the russian Lev Chernyi
, the colombian
Biofilo Panclasta
, and also "translations of Nietzsche's writings in the United States very likely appeared first in Liberty, the anarchist journal edited by Benjamin Tucker
."
the Scottish-born German John Henry Mackay became the most important individualist anarchist propagandist. He fused Stirnerist egoism with the positions of Benjamin Tucker and translated Tucker into German. Two semi-fictional writings of his own Die Anarchisten
and Der Freiheitsucher contributed to individualist theory, updating egoist themes with respect to the anarchist movement. His writing were translated into English as well. Mackay is also an important European early activist for LGBT
rights.
writer
, Stirnerist anarchist
and pioneering campaigner for the acceptance of male bisexuality
and homosexuality
. Brand published the world's first ongoing homosexual publication, Der Eigene
in 1896. The name was taken from Stirner, who had greatly influenced the young Brand, and refers to Stirner's concept of "self-ownership
" of the individual. Der Eigene
concentrated on cultural and scholarly material, and may have averaged around 1500 subscribers per issue during its lifetime. Contributors included Erich Mühsam
, Kurt Hiller
, John Henry Mackay
(under the pseudonym Sagitta) and artists Wilhelm von Gloeden
, Fidus
and Sascha Schneider
. Brand contributed many poems and articles himself. Benjamin Tucker
followed this journal from the United States.
) by Max Stirner
. Another influence was the thought of German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche
. The publication was connected to the local expressionist
artistic current and the transition from it towards dada
.
, along with the more prominent anarchist communism
and anarcho-syndicalism
. The ranks of the Russian individualist anarchists were predominantly drawn from the intelligentsia
and the working class
. For anarchist historian Paul Avrich
"The two leading exponents of individualist anarchism, both based in Moscow
, were Aleksei Alekseevich Borovoi
and Lev Chernyi
(Pavel Dmitrievich Turchaninov). From Nietzsche, they inherited the desire for a complete overturn of all values accepted by bourgeois societypolitical, moral, and cultural. Furthermore, strongly influenced by Max Stirner
and Benjamin Tucker
, the German and American theorists of individualist anarchism, they demanded the total liberation of the human personality from the fetters of organized society."
Some russian individualists anarchists "found the ultimate expression of their social alienation in violence and crime
, others attached themselves to avant-garde literary and artistic circles, but the majority remained "philosophical" anarchists
who conducted animated parlor discussions and elaborated their individualist theories in ponderous journals and books."
Lev Chernyi
was an important individualist anarchist involved in resistance against the rise to power of the Bolchevik Party. He adhered mainly to Stirner and the ideas of Benjamin Tucker
. In 1907, he published a book entitled Associational Anarchism, in which he advocated the "free association of independent individuals.". On his return from Siberia in 1917 he enjoyed great popularity among Moscow workers as a lecturer. Chernyi was also Secretary of the Moscow Federation of Anarchist Groups, which was formed in March 1917. He was an advocate "for the seizure of private homes", which was an activity seen by the anarchists after the october revolution as direct expropriation on the bourgoise. He died after being accused of participation in an episode in which this group bombed the headquarters of the Moscow Committee of the Communist Party. Although most likely not being really involved in the bombing, he might have died of torture.
Chernyi advocated a Nietzschean overthrow of the values
of bourgeois Russian society, and rejected the voluntary communes of anarcho-communist Peter Kropotkin
as a threat to the freedom of the individual. Scholars including Avrich and Allan Antliff have interpreted this vision of society to have been greatly influenced by the individualist anarchists Max Stirner
, and Benjamin Tucker
. Subsequent to the book's publication, Chernyi was imprisoned in Siberia
under the Russian Czarist regime for his revolutionary activities.
(1876?-1936)., was a professor of philosophy at Moscow University, "a gifted orator and the author of numerous books, pamphlets, and articles which attempted to reconcile individualist anarchism with the doctrines of syndicallism". He wrote among other theoretical works, Anarkhizm in 1918 just after the october revolution and Anarchism and Law. For him "the chief importance is given not to Anarchism as the aim but to Anarchy
as the continuous quest for the aim". He manifests there that "No social ideal, from the point of view of anarchism, could be referred to as absolute in a sense that supposes it’s the crown of human wisdom, the end of social and ethical quest of man."
enlightenment
political theorist William Godwin was an important influence early influence as mentioned before.
In the late 19th century individualist anarchists such as Wordsworth Donisthorpe
, Joseph Hiam Levy, Joseph Greevz Fisher, John Badcock, Jr., Albert Tarn, and Henry Seymour were close to Tucker´s magazine Liberty. In the mid 1880's Seymour published a journal called The Anarchist. and also later took a special interest in free love
as he participated in the journal The Adult: A Journal for the Advancement of Freedom in Sexual Relationships. "The Serpent, issued from London...the most prominent English-language egoist journal, was published from 1898 to 1900 with the subtitle 'A Journal of Egoistic Philosophy and Sociology'".
Also philosopher and writer Herbert Read
wrote on Godwin and, and works such as To Hell With Culture, The Paradox of Anarchism Philosophy of Anarchism, Anarchy & Order; Poetry & Anarchism and My Anarchism. Henry Meulen
was notable for his support of free banking
. Sidney Parker
is a British
egoist who wrote articles and edited anarchist journals from 1963 to 1993 such as Minus One, Egoist, and Ego.
In the hybrid of post-structuralism
and anarchism called post-anarchism
the British
Saul Newman
has written a lot on Stirner and his similarities to post-structuralism. He writes:
Newman has published several essays on Stirner. "War on the State: Stirner and Deleuze's Anarchism" and "Empiricism, pluralism, and politics in Deleuze and Stirner" discusses what he sees are similarities between Stirner's thought and that of Gilles Deleuze
. In "Spectres of Stirner: a Contemporary Critique of Ideology" he discusses the conception of ideology in Stirner. In "Stirner and Foucault: Toward a Post-Kantian Freedom" he identifies similarities between Stirner and Michel Foucault
. Also he wrote "Politics of the ego: Stirner's critique of liberalism".
writer of the Decadent movement
Oscar Wilde
influenced individualist anarchists such as Renzo Novatore
and gained the admiration of Benjamin Tucker
. In his important essay The Soul of Man under Socialism
from 1891 he defended socialism as the way to guarantee individualism and so he saw that "With the abolition of private property, then, we shall have true, beautiful, healthy Individualism. Nobody will waste his life in accumulating things, and the symbols for things. One will live. To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all." For anarchist historian George Woodcock
"Wilde's aim in The Soul of Man under Socialism is to seek the society most favorable to the artist...for Wilde art is the supreme end, containing within itself enlightenment and regeneration, to which all else in society must be subordinated...Wilde represents the anarchist as aesthete." Woodocock finds that "The most ambitious contribution to literary anarchism during the 1890's was undoubtedly Oscar Wilde The Soul of Man under Socialism" and finds that it is influenced mainly by the thought of William Godwin.
Individualist anarchism
Individualist anarchism refers to several traditions of thought within the anarchist movement that emphasize the individual and his or her will over external determinants such as groups, society, traditions, and ideological systems. Individualist anarchism is not a single philosophy but refers to a...
refers to several traditions of thought within the anarchist movement that emphasize the individual
Individual
An individual is a person or any specific object or thing in a collection. Individuality is the state or quality of being an individual; a person separate from other persons and possessing his or her own needs, goals, and desires. Being self expressive...
and his or her will
Will (philosophy)
Will, in philosophical discussions, consonant with a common English usage, refers to a property of the mind, and an attribute of acts intentionally performed. Actions made according to a person's will are called "willing" or "voluntary" and sometimes pejoratively "willful"...
over external determinants such as groups, society, traditions, and ideological systems.European individualist anarchism (IA) proceeded from the roots laid by William Godwin
William Godwin
William Godwin was an English journalist, political philosopher and novelist. He is considered one of the first exponents of utilitarianism, and the first modern proponent of anarchism...
, Pierre Joseph Proudhon and Max Stirner
Max Stirner
Johann Kaspar Schmidt , better known as Max Stirner , was a German philosopher, who ranks as one of the literary fathers of nihilism, existentialism, post-modernism and anarchism, especially of individualist anarchism...
. Proudhon was an early pioneer of anarchism
Anarchism
Anarchism is generally defined as the political philosophy which holds the state to be undesirable, unnecessary, and harmful, or alternatively as opposing authority in the conduct of human relations...
as well as of the important individualist anarchist current of mutualism
Mutualism (economic theory)
Mutualism is an anarchist school of thought that originates in the writings of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, who envisioned a society where each person might possess a means of production, either individually or collectively, with trade representing equivalent amounts of labor in the free market...
. Stirner became a central figure of individualist anarchism
Individualist anarchism
Individualist anarchism refers to several traditions of thought within the anarchist movement that emphasize the individual and his or her will over external determinants such as groups, society, traditions, and ideological systems. Individualist anarchism is not a single philosophy but refers to a...
through the publication of his seminal work The Ego and Its Own
The Ego and Its Own
The Ego and Its Own is a philosophical work by German philosopher Max Stirner . This work was first published in 1845, although with a stated publication date of "1844" to confuse the Prussian censors.-Content:...
which is considered to be "a founding text in the tradition of individualist anarchism." Another early figure was Anselme Bellegarrigue
Anselme Bellegarrigue
Anselme Bellegarrigue was a French individualist anarchist, born between 1820 and 1825 in Toulouse and presumed dead around the end of the 19th century in Central America...
. IA expanded and diversified through Europe, incorporating influences from North American individualist anarchism
Individualist anarchism in the United States
Individualist anarchism in the United States was strongly influenced by Josiah Warren, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Lysander Spooner, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Max Stirner, Herbert SpencerHenry David Thoreau...
.
European individualist anarchists include Albert Libertad
Albert Libertad
Joseph Albert was an individualist anarchist militant and writer from France who edited the influential anarchist publication L’Anarchie.- Life and work :...
, Bellegarrigue, Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde
Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was an Irish writer and poet. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s...
, Émile Armand
Emile Armand
Emile Armand was the most influential French individualist anarchist at the beginning of the 20th century and also a dedicated free love/polyamory, intentional community, and pacifist/antimilitarist writer, propagandist and activist...
, Lev Chernyi
Lev Chernyi
Pável Dimítrievich Turchanínov , known by the pseudonym Lev Chernyi , was a Russian anarchist theorist, activist and poet, and a leading figure of the Third Russian Revolution. His early thought was individualist, rejecting anarcho-communism as a threat to individual liberty...
, John Henry Mackay
John Henry Mackay
John Henry Mackay was an individualist anarchist, thinker and writer. Born in Scotland and raised in Germany, Mackay was the author of Die Anarchisten and Der Freiheitsucher . Mackay was published in the United States in his friend Benjamin Tucker's magazine, Liberty...
, Han Ryner
Han Ryner
Jacques Élie Henri Ambroise Ner , also known by the pseudonym Han Ryner, was a French individualist anarchist philosopher and activist and a novelist...
, Adolf Brand
Adolf Brand
Adolf Brand was a German writer, individualist anarchist and pioneering campaigner for the acceptance of male bisexuality and homosexuality.-Biography:...
, Miguel Gimenez Igualada
Miguel Giménez Igualada
Miguel Giménez Igualada, , was a Spanish individualist anarchist writer also known as Miguel Ramos Giménez and Juan de Iniesta.- Life :In his youth, Igualada engaged in illegalist activities...
, Renzo Novatore
Renzo Novatore
- Life :Abele Ricieri Ferrari was born in Arcola, Liguria, Italy on May 12, 1890 in a poor peasant family. He did not adjust to school discipline and quit in the first year never coming back after that. While he worked in his father's farm, he self educated himself with an emphasis in poetry and...
and the contemporary philosopher Michel Onfray
Michel Onfray
Michel Onfray is a contemporary French philosopher who adheres to hedonism, atheism and anarchism...
. Important currents within it include free love
Free love
The term free love has been used to describe a social movement that rejects marriage, which is seen as a form of social bondage. The Free Love movement’s initial goal was to separate the state from sexual matters such as marriage, birth control, and adultery...
, anarcho-naturism
Anarcho-naturism
Anarcho-naturism appeared in the late 19th century as the union of anarchist and naturist philosophies. Mainly it had importance within individualist anarchist circles in Spain, France, Portugal...
,, illegalism
Illegalism
Illegalism is an anarchist philosophy that developed primarily in France, Italy, Belgium, and Switzerland during the early 1900s as an outgrowth of individualist anarchism...
and freethought
Freethought
Freethought is a philosophical viewpoint that holds that opinions should be formed on the basis of science, logic, and reason, and should not be influenced by authority, tradition, or other dogmas...
.
Overview
The egoist form of individualist anarchismEgoist anarchism
Egoist anarchism is a school of anarchist thought that originated in the philosophy of Max Stirner, a nineteenth century Hegelian philosopher whose "name appears with familiar regularity in historically orientated surveys of anarchist thought as one of the earliest and best-known exponents of...
, derived from the philosophy of Max Stirner
Philosophy of Max Stirner
The philosophy of Max Stirner is credited as an influence on the development of nihilism, existentialism, post-modernism and anarchism, especially of individualist anarchism, postanarchism and post-left anarchy...
, supports the individual doing exactly what he pleases – taking no notice of God, state, or moral rules. To Stirner, rights were spooks
Reification (fallacy)
Reification is a fallacy of ambiguity, when an abstraction is treated as if it were a concrete, real event, or physical entity. In other words, it is the error of treating as a "real thing" something which is not a real thing, but merely an idea...
in the mind, and he held that society does not exist but "the individuals are its reality"– he supported property by force of might rather than moral right. Stirner advocated self-assertion and foresaw "Union of egoists
Union of egoists
Max Stirner's idea of the "Union of Egoists" , was first expounded in The Ego and Its Own. The Union is understood as a non-systematic association, which Stirner proposed in contradistinction to the state. The Union is understood as a relation between egoists which is continually renewed by all...
" drawn together by respect for each other's ruthlessness.
European individualist anarchism also was influenced by early American individualist anarchists such as Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau was an American author, poet, philosopher, abolitionist, naturalist, tax resister, development critic, surveyor, historian, and leading transcendentalist...
, Josiah Warren
Josiah Warren
Josiah Warren was an individualist anarchist, inventor, musician, and author in the United States. He is widely regarded as the first American anarchist, and the four-page weekly paper he edited during 1833, The Peaceful Revolutionist, was the first anarchist periodical published, an enterprise...
and Benjamin Tucker
Benjamin Tucker
Benjamin Ricketson Tucker was a proponent of American individualist anarchism in the 19th century, and editor and publisher of the individualist anarchist periodical Liberty.-Summary:Tucker says that he became an anarchist at the age of 18...
. From Thoreau the simple living
Simple living
Simple living encompasses a number of different voluntary practices to simplify one's lifestyle. These may include reducing one's possessions or increasing self-sufficiency, for example. Simple living may be characterized by individuals being satisfied with what they need rather than want...
and ecological vision and the idea of civil disobedience
Civil Disobedience (Thoreau)
Civil Disobedience is an essay by American transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau that was first published in 1849...
were influential in European individualist anarchists. From Warren the practical intentional communal
Intentional community
An intentional community is a planned residential community designed to have a much higher degree of teamwork than other communities. The members of an intentional community typically hold a common social, political, religious, or spiritual vision and often follow an alternative lifestyle. They...
experiences in which he was involved in were influential mainly in french individualist anarchists.
An important tendency within European individualist anarchist currents emphasizes individual subjective exploration and defiance of social conventions. Individualist anarchist philosophy attracted "amongst artists, intellectuals and the well-read, urban middle classes in general." As such Murray Bookchin
Murray Bookchin
Murray Bookchin was an American libertarian socialist author, orator, and philosopher. A pioneer in the ecology movement, Bookchin was the founder of the social ecology movement within anarchist, libertarian socialist and ecological thought. He was the author of two dozen books on politics,...
describes a lot of individualist anarchism as people who "expressed their opposition in uniquely personal forms, especially in fiery tracts, outrageous behavior, and aberrant lifestyles in the cultural ghettos of fin de siecle New York, Paris, and London. As a credo, individualist anarchism remained largely a bohemian
Bohemianism
Bohemianism is the practice of an unconventional lifestyle, often in the company of like-minded people, with few permanent ties, involving musical, artistic or literary pursuits...
lifestyle, most conspicuous in its demands for sexual freedom ('free love') and enamored of innovations in art, behavior, and clothing.". In this way free love
Free love
The term free love has been used to describe a social movement that rejects marriage, which is seen as a form of social bondage. The Free Love movement’s initial goal was to separate the state from sexual matters such as marriage, birth control, and adultery...
currents and other radical lifestyles such as naturism
Naturism
Naturism or nudism is a cultural and political movement practising, advocating and defending social nudity in private and in public. It may also refer to a lifestyle based on personal, family and/or social nudism....
had popularity among individualist anarchists.
On the other hand a specific social context helped the rise of European individualist illegalism
Illegalism
Illegalism is an anarchist philosophy that developed primarily in France, Italy, Belgium, and Switzerland during the early 1900s as an outgrowth of individualist anarchism...
and as such "The illegalists were proletarians who had nothing to sell but their labour power, and nothing to discard but their dignity; if they disdained waged-work, it was because of its compulsive nature. If they turned to illegality it was due to the fact that honest toil only benefited the employers and often entailed a complete loss of dignity, while any complaints resulted in the sack; to avoid starvation through lack of work it was necessary to beg or steal, and to avoid conscription into the army many of them had to go on the run." And so a European tendency of individualist anarchism advocated violent individual acts of individual reclamation
Individual reclamation
Individual reclamation is a form of direct action, characterized by the individual theft of resources from the rich by the poor...
, propaganda by the deed and criticism of organization. Such individualist anarchist tendencies include French illegalism and Italian anti-organizational insurrectionarism. Bookchin reports that at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th "it was in times of severe social repression and deadening social quiescence that individualist anarchists came to the foreground of libertarian activity -- and then primarily as terrorists. In France, Spain, and the United States, individualistic anarchists committed acts of terrorism that gave anarchism its reputation as a violently sinister conspiracy.".
For Catalan historian Xavier Diez Spanish individualist anarchism "under its iconoclastic, antiintellectual, antitheist run, which goes against all sacralized ideas or values it entailed, a philosophy of life which could be considered a reaction against the sacred gods of capitalist society. Against the idea of nation, it opposed its internationalism
Cosmopolitanism
Cosmopolitanism is the ideology that all human ethnic groups belong to a single community based on a shared morality. This is contrasted with communitarian and particularistic theories, especially the ideas of patriotism and nationalism...
. Against the exaltation of authority embodied in the military institution, it opposed its antimilitarism
Antimilitarism
Antimilitarism is a doctrine commonly found in the anarchist and, more globally, in the socialist movement, which may both be characterized as internationalist movements. It relies heavily on a critical theory of nationalism and imperialism, and was an explicit goal of the First and Second...
. Against the concept of industrial civilization, it opposed its naturist vision".
William Godwin
Age of Enlightenment
The Age of Enlightenment was an elite cultural movement of intellectuals in 18th century Europe that sought to mobilize the power of reason in order to reform society and advance knowledge. It promoted intellectual interchange and opposed intolerance and abuses in church and state...
, and developed what many consider the first expression of modern anarchist thought
Anarchist schools of thought
Anarchism is generally defined as the political philosophy which holds the state to be undesirable, unnecessary, and harmful, or alternatively as opposing authority in the conduct of human relations...
. Godwin was, according to Peter Kropotkin
Peter Kropotkin
Prince Pyotr Alexeyevich Kropotkin was a Russian zoologist, evolutionary theorist, philosopher, economist, geographer, author and one of the world's foremost anarcho-communists. Kropotkin advocated a communist society free from central government and based on voluntary associations between...
, "the first to formulate the political and economical conceptions of anarchism, even though he did not give that name to the ideas developed in his work." Godwin advocated extreme individualism, proposing that all cooperation in labor be eliminated. Godwin, a utilitarian, believed that not all individuals are of equal value, with some of us "of more worth and importance' than others depending on our utility in bringing about social good. Godwin believed that the person whose life was the most conducive to the general good should be favored, eschewing equal rights. Godwin opposed government because it infringes on the individual's right to "private judgement" to determine which actions most maximize utility, but also objected to all authority over the individual's judgement. This aspect of Godwin's philosophy, minus the utilitarianism, was developed into a more extreme form later by Stirner.
Godwin even opposed individuals performing together in orchestras, writing in Political Justice
Political Justice
Enquiry Concerning Political Justice and its Influence on Modern Morals and Manners outlines the political philosophy of the 18th-century philosopher William Godwin....
that "everything understood by the term co-operation is in some sense an evil." The only apparent exception to this opposition to cooperation is the spontaneous association that may arise when a society is threatened by violent force. One reason he opposed cooperation is he believed it to interfere with an individual's ability to be benevolent for the greater good. Godwin opposes the idea of government, but wrote that a minimal state
Limited government
Limited government is a government which anything more than minimal governmental intervention in personal liberties and the economy is generally disallowed by law, usually in a written constitution. It is written in the United States Constitution in Article 1, Section 8...
is a present "necessary evil" that would become increasingly irrelevant and powerless by the gradual spread of knowledge. He expressly opposed democracy
Democracy
Democracy is generally defined as a form of government in which all adult citizens have an equal say in the decisions that affect their lives. Ideally, this includes equal participation in the proposal, development and passage of legislation into law...
, fearing oppression of the individual by the majority (though he preferred democracy to dictatorship
Dictatorship
A dictatorship is defined as an autocratic form of government in which the government is ruled by an individual, the dictator. It has three possible meanings:...
).
Godwin supported individual ownership of property, defining it as "the empire to which every man is entitled over the produce of his own industry." But he also suggested that individuals give each other their surplus property when the other needed it, without involving trade (e.g. gift economy
Gift economy
In the social sciences, a gift economy is a society where valuable goods and services are regularly given without any explicit agreement for immediate or future rewards . Ideally, simultaneous or recurring giving serves to circulate and redistribute valuables within the community...
). Thus, while people have the right to private property
Private property
Private property is the right of persons and firms to obtain, own, control, employ, dispose of, and bequeath land, capital, and other forms of property. Private property is distinguishable from public property, which refers to assets owned by a state, community or government rather than by...
, they should give it away as enlightened altruists. Godwin explained this approach stating, "[e]very 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." Yet to Godwin, benevolence was not to be enforced but instead a matter of free individual "private judgement." He did not advocate a community of goods or assert collective ownership as is embraced in communism
Communism
Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...
, but his belief that individuals ought to share with those in need was influential on the later development of anarchist communism
Anarchist communism
Anarchist communism is a theory of anarchism which advocates the abolition of the state, markets, money, private property, and capitalism in favor of common ownership of the means of production, direct democracy and a horizontal network of voluntary associations and workers' councils with...
.
Godwin's political views were diverse and do not perfectly agree with any of the ideologies that claim his influence; writers of the Socialist Standard
Socialist Standard
The Socialist Standard is a monthly socialist magazine published without interruption since 1904 by the Socialist Party of Great Britain. The magazine is written in a simple, direct style and focuses mainly on socialist advocacy and Marxian analysis of current events, particularly those affecting...
, organ of the Socialist Party of Great Britain
Socialist Party of Great Britain
The Socialist Party of Great Britain , is a small Marxist political party within the impossibilist tradition. It is best known for its advocacy of using the ballot box for revolutionary purposes; opposition to reformism; and its early adoption of the theory of state capitalism to describe the...
, consider Godwin both an individualist and a communist; anarcho-capitalist Murray Rothbard
Murray Rothbard
Murray Newton Rothbard was an American author and economist of the Austrian School who helped define capitalist libertarianism and popularized a form of free-market anarchism he termed "anarcho-capitalism." Rothbard wrote over twenty books and is considered a centrally important figure in the...
did not regard Godwin as an individualist, referring to him as the "founder of communist anarchism"; and historian Albert Weisbord
Albert Weisbord
Albert Weisbord was an American political activist and union organizer. He is best remembered as one of the primary union organizers of the seminal 1926 Passaic Textile Strike and as the founder of a small Trotskyist political organization of the 1930s called the Communist League of...
considers him an individualist anarchist without reservation. 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. Many of Godwin's views changed over time, as noted by Peter Kropotkin
Peter Kropotkin
Prince Pyotr Alexeyevich Kropotkin was a Russian zoologist, evolutionary theorist, philosopher, economist, geographer, author and one of the world's foremost anarcho-communists. Kropotkin advocated a communist society free from central government and based on voluntary associations between...
.
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (1809–1865) was the first philosopher to label himself an "anarchist." Some consider Proudhon to be an individualist anarchist, while others regard him to be a social anarchist
Social anarchism
Social anarchism is a term originally used in 1971 by Giovanni Baldelli as the title of his book where he discusses the organization of an ethical society from an anarchist point of view...
. Some commentators reject this, noting his preference for association in large industries, rather than individual control. Nevertheless, he was influential among American individualists; in the 1840s and 1850s, Charles A. Dana, and William B. Greene introduced Proudhon's works to the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
. Greene adapted Proudhon's mutualism to American conditions and introduced it to Benjamin R. Tucker.
Proudhon opposed government privilege that protects capitalist, banking and land interests, and the accumulation or acquisition of property (and any form of coercion
Coercion
Coercion is the practice of forcing another party to behave in an involuntary manner by use of threats or intimidation or some other form of pressure or force. In law, coercion is codified as the duress crime. Such actions are used as leverage, to force the victim to act in the desired way...
that led to it) which he believed hampers competition and concentrates wealth. Proudhon favored the right of individuals to retain the product of their labor as their own property, but believed that all other property 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 was required for labor and the latter when it resulted in/from exploitation (profit, interest, rent, tax). He generally termed the former "possession" and the latter "property." For large-scale industry, he supported workers associations to replace wage labor and opposed land ownership.
Proudhon maintained that workers should retain the entirety of what they produce, and that monopolies
Monopoly
A monopoly exists when a specific person or enterprise is the only supplier of a particular commodity...
on credit and land are the forces that prohibit this. He advocated an economic system he called mutualism
Mutualism (economic theory)
Mutualism is an anarchist school of thought that originates in the writings of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, who envisioned a society where each person might possess a means of production, either individually or collectively, with trade representing equivalent amounts of labor in the free market...
that included possession and exchange of private property but without profit. Joseph Dejacque
Joseph Déjacque
Joseph Déjacque was a French anarcho-communist poet and writer. He sought to abolish "personal property, property in land, buildings, workshops, shops, property in anything that is an instrument of work, production or consumption."Déjacque was the first to employ the term libertarian in a...
explicitly rejected Proudhon's philosophy, instead preferring anarchist-communism, 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." An individualist rather than anarchist communist, Proudhon said that "communism...is the very denial of society in its foundation..." and famously declared that "property is theft!" in reference to his rejection of ownership rights to land being granted to a person who is not using that land.
After Dejacque and others split from Proudhon, the relationship between individualists, and anarcho-communists was characterized by various degrees of antagonism and harmony. For example, individualists like Tucker at once translated and reprinted the works of collectivists
Collectivist anarchism
Collectivist anarchism is a revolutionary doctrine that advocates the abolition of both the state and private ownership of the means of production...
like Mikhail Bakunin
Mikhail Bakunin
Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin was a well-known Russian revolutionary and theorist of collectivist anarchism. He has also often been called the father of anarchist theory in general. Bakunin grew up near Moscow, where he moved to study philosophy and began to read the French Encyclopedists,...
while rejecting the economic aspects of collectivism and communism as incompatible with anarchist ideals.
Mutualism
Proudhon originated mutualism, an anarchist school of thought, envisioning a society where each person might possess a means of productionMeans of production
Means of production refers to physical, non-human inputs used in production—the factories, machines, and tools used to produce wealth — along with both infrastructural capital and natural capital. This includes the classical factors of production minus financial capital and minus human capital...
, either individually or collectively, with trade representing equivalent amounts of labor in the free market
Free market
A free market is a competitive market where prices are determined by supply and demand. However, the term is also commonly used for markets in which economic intervention and regulation by the state is limited to tax collection, and enforcement of private ownership and contracts...
. Integral to the scheme was the establishment of a mutual-credit bank which would lend to producers at an interest rate only high enough to cover the costs of administration. Mutualism is based on a labor theory of value
Labor theory of value
The labor theories of value are heterodox economic theories of value which argue that the value of a commodity is related to the labor needed to produce or obtain that commodity. The concept is most often associated with Marxian economics...
which holds that when labor or its product is sold, in exchange, it ought to receive goods or services embodying "the amount of labor necessary to produce an article of exactly similar and equal utility". Some mutualists believe that if the state did not intervene, as a result of increased competition in the marketplace, individuals would receive no more income than that in proportion to the amount of labor they exert. Mutualists oppose the idea of individuals receiving income through loan
Loan
A loan is a type of debt. Like all debt instruments, a loan entails the redistribution of financial assets over time, between the lender and the borrower....
s, investment
Investment
Investment has different meanings in finance and economics. Finance investment is putting money into something with the expectation of gain, that upon thorough analysis, has a high degree of security for the principal amount, as well as security of return, within an expected period of time...
s, and rent
Renting
Renting is an agreement where a payment is made for the temporary use of a good, service or property owned by another. A gross lease is when the tenant pays a flat rental amount and the landlord pays for all property charges regularly incurred by the ownership from landowners...
, as they believe these individuals are not laboring. Some of them argue that if state intervention ceased, these types of incomes would disappear due to increased competition in capital. Though Proudhon opposed this type of income, he expressed: "... I never meant to ... forbid or suppress, by sovereign decree, ground rent and interest on capital. I believe that all these forms of human activity should remain free and optional for all."
Insofar as they ensure workers' rights to the full product of their labor, mutualists support market
Market
A market is one of many varieties of systems, institutions, procedures, social relations and infrastructures whereby parties engage in exchange. While parties may exchange goods and services by barter, most markets rely on sellers offering their goods or services in exchange for money from buyers...
s and private property
Private property
Private property is the right of persons and firms to obtain, own, control, employ, dispose of, and bequeath land, capital, and other forms of property. Private property is distinguishable from public property, which refers to assets owned by a state, community or government rather than by...
. However, they argue for conditional title to land, whose private ownership is legitimate only so long as it remains in use or occupation (which Proudhon called "possession.") Proudhon's Mutualism supports labor-owned cooperative firms
Worker cooperative
A worker cooperative is a cooperative owned and democratically managed by its worker-owners. This control may be exercised in a number of ways. A cooperative enterprise may mean a firm where every worker-owner participates in decision making in a democratic fashion, or it may refer to one in which...
and associations for "we need not hesitate, for we have no choice. . . it is necessary to form an ASSOCIATION among workers . . . because without that, they would remain related as subordinates and superiors, and there would ensue two . . . castes of masters and wage-workers, which is repugnant to a free and democratic society" and so "it becomes necessary for the workers to form themselves into democratic societies, with equal conditions for all members, on pain of a relapse into feudalism." Mutualist opinions differs on whether capital goods (man-made, non-land, "means of production
Means of production
Means of production refers to physical, non-human inputs used in production—the factories, machines, and tools used to produce wealth — along with both infrastructural capital and natural capital. This includes the classical factors of production minus financial capital and minus human capital...
)" should be commonly managed public assets or private property.
Mutualists originally considered themselves to be libertarian socialists. However, "some mutualists have abandoned the labor theory of value, and prefer to avoid the term "socialist." But they still retain some cultural attitudes, for the most part, that set them off from the libertarian right
Libertarian Right
Libertarian Right was a national-conservative political party in Italy.The party was launched in November 2008 as a split from The Right led by Luciano Buonocore, who did not agree with the party's decision not to run within The People of Freedom joint list...
." Mutualists have distinguished themselves from state socialism
State socialism
State socialism is an economic system with limited socialist characteristics, such as public ownership of major industries, remedial measures to benefit the working class, and a gradual process of developing socialism through government policy...
, and don't advocate social control over the means of production. Benjamin Tucker said of Proudhon, that "though opposed to socializing the ownership of capital, [Proudhon] aimed nevertheless to socialize its effects by making its use beneficial to all instead of a means of impoverishing the many to enrich the few...by subjecting capital to the natural law of competition, thus bringing the price of its own use down to cost."
Max Stirner
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
'Stirn'), was a German philosopher, who ranks as one of the literary fathers of nihilism
Nihilism
Nihilism is the philosophical doctrine suggesting the negation of one or more putatively meaningful aspects of life. Most commonly, nihilism is presented in the form of existential nihilism which argues that life is without objective meaning, purpose, or intrinsic value...
, existentialism
Existentialism
Existentialism is a term applied to a school of 19th- and 20th-century philosophers who, despite profound doctrinal differences, shared the belief that philosophical thinking begins with the human subject—not merely the thinking subject, but the acting, feeling, living human individual...
, post-modernism and anarchism
Anarchism
Anarchism is generally defined as the political philosophy which holds the state to be undesirable, unnecessary, and harmful, or alternatively as opposing authority in the conduct of human relations...
, especially of individualist anarchism. Stirner's main work is The Ego and Its Own
The Ego and Its Own
The Ego and Its Own is a philosophical work by German philosopher Max Stirner . This work was first published in 1845, although with a stated publication date of "1844" to confuse the Prussian censors.-Content:...
, also known as The Ego and His Own (Der Einzige und sein Eigentum in German, which translates literally as The Only One and his Property). This work was first published in 1844 in Leipzig
Leipzig
Leipzig Leipzig has always been a trade city, situated during the time of the Holy Roman Empire at the intersection of the Via Regia and Via Imperii, two important trade routes. At one time, Leipzig was one of the major European centres of learning and culture in fields such as music and publishing...
, and has since appeared in numerous editions and translations.
Authors, philosophers and artists have cited, quoted or otherwise referred to Max Stirner. They include Albert Camus
Albert Camus
Albert Camus was a French author, journalist, and key philosopher of the 20th century. In 1949, Camus founded the Group for International Liaisons within the Revolutionary Union Movement, which was opposed to some tendencies of the Surrealist movement of André Breton.Camus was awarded the 1957...
in The Rebel (the section on Stirner is omitted from the majority of English editions including Penguin
Penguin Books
Penguin Books is a publisher founded in 1935 by Sir Allen Lane and V.K. Krishna Menon. Penguin revolutionised publishing in the 1930s through its high quality, inexpensive paperbacks, sold through Woolworths and other high street stores for sixpence. Penguin's success demonstrated that large...
's), Benjamin Tucker
Benjamin Tucker
Benjamin Ricketson Tucker was a proponent of American individualist anarchism in the 19th century, and editor and publisher of the individualist anarchist periodical Liberty.-Summary:Tucker says that he became an anarchist at the age of 18...
, Dora Marsden
Dora Marsden
Dora Marsden was an English feminist editor of avant-garde literary journals, and an author of philosophical writings.-Early life:...
, Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman was an anarchist known for her political activism, writing and speeches. She played a pivotal role in the development of anarchist political philosophy in North America and Europe in the first half of the twentieth century....
, Georg Brandes
Georg Brandes
Georg Morris Cohen Brandes was a Danish critic and scholar who had great influence on Scandinavian and European literature from the 1870s through the turn of the 20th century. He is seen as the theorist behind the "Modern Breakthrough" of Scandinavian culture...
, Rudolf Steiner
Rudolf Steiner
Rudolf Joseph Lorenz Steiner was an Austrian philosopher, social reformer, architect, and esotericist. He gained initial recognition as a literary critic and cultural philosopher...
, John Cowper Powys
John Cowper Powys
-Biography:Powys was born in Shirley, Derbyshire, in 1872, the son of the Reverend Charles Francis Powys , who was vicar of Montacute, Somerset for thirty-two years, and Mary Cowper Johnson, a descendent of the poet William Cowper. He came from a family of eleven children, many of whom were also...
, Émile Armand
Emile Armand
Emile Armand was the most influential French individualist anarchist at the beginning of the 20th century and also a dedicated free love/polyamory, intentional community, and pacifist/antimilitarist writer, propagandist and activist...
, Han Ryner
Han Ryner
Jacques Élie Henri Ambroise Ner , also known by the pseudonym Han Ryner, was a French individualist anarchist philosopher and activist and a novelist...
, Renzo Novatore
Renzo Novatore
- Life :Abele Ricieri Ferrari was born in Arcola, Liguria, Italy on May 12, 1890 in a poor peasant family. He did not adjust to school discipline and quit in the first year never coming back after that. While he worked in his father's farm, he self educated himself with an emphasis in poetry and...
, Karl Marx
Karl Marx
Karl Heinrich Marx was a German philosopher, economist, sociologist, historian, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. His ideas played a significant role in the development of social science and the socialist political movement...
, Robert Anton Wilson
Robert Anton Wilson
Robert Anton Wilson , known to friends as "Bob", was an American author and polymath who became at various times a novelist, philosopher, psychologist, essayist, editor, playwright, poet, futurist, civil libertarian and self-described agnostic mystic...
, Italian
Italian people
The Italian people are an ethnic group that share a common Italian culture, ancestry and speak the Italian language as a mother tongue. Within Italy, Italians are defined by citizenship, regardless of ancestry or country of residence , and are distinguished from people...
individualist anarchist Frank Brand
Enrico Arrigoni
Enrico Arrigoni was an Italian American individualist anarchist Lathe operator, house painter, bricklayer, dramatist and political activist influenced by the work of Max Stirner.- Life and activism :He took the pseudonym "Brand" from a fictional character in one of...
, Russian-American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
philosopher Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand was a Russian-American novelist, philosopher, playwright, and screenwriter. She is known for her two best-selling novels The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged and for developing a philosophical system she called Objectivism....
, Bob Black
Bob Black
Bob Black is an American anarchist. He is the author of The Abolition of Work and Other Essays, Beneath the Underground, Friendly Fire, Anarchy After Leftism, and numerous political essays.-Writing:Some of his work from the early 1980s includes...
, antiartist
Anti-art
Anti-art is a loosely-used term applied to an array of concepts and attitudes that reject prior definitions of art and question art in general. Anti-art tends to conduct this questioning and rejection from the vantage point of art...
Marcel Duchamp
Marcel Duchamp
Marcel Duchamp was a French artist whose work is most often associated with the Dadaist and Surrealist movements. Considered by some to be one of the most important artists of the 20th century, Duchamp's output influenced the development of post-World War I Western art...
, several writers of the Situationist International, and Max Ernst
Max Ernst
Max Ernst was a German painter, sculptor, graphic artist, and poet. A prolific artist, Ernst was one of the primary pioneers of the Dada movement and Surrealism.-Early life:...
, who titled a 1925 painting L'unique et sa propriété.
The Ego and Its Own has seen periodic revivals of popular, political and academic interest, based around widely divergent translations and interpretations—emphasizing psychological or political views. Today, many ideas associated with post-left anarchy
Post-left anarchy
Post-left anarchy is a recent current in anarchist thought that promotes a critique of anarchism's relationship to traditional leftism. Some post-leftists seek to escape the confines of ideology in general also presenting a critique of organizations and morality...
's criticism of ideology and uncompromising individualism
Individualism
Individualism is the moral stance, political philosophy, ideology, or social outlook that stresses "the moral worth of the individual". Individualists promote the exercise of one's goals and desires and so value independence and self-reliance while opposing most external interference upon one's own...
are clearly related to Stirner's. Individualist feminism
Individualist feminism
Individualist feminism is a term for feminist ideas which seek to celebrate or protect the individual woman....
claims him as a pioneer, since his objection to any absolute concept also counts gender role
Gender role
Gender roles refer to the set of social and behavioral norms that are considered to be socially appropriate for individuals of a specific sex in the context of a specific culture, which differ widely between cultures and over time...
s as "spooks". His ideas were also adopted by post-anarchism
Post-anarchism
Post-anarchism or postanarchism is the term used to represent anarchist philosophies developed since the 1980s using post-structuralist and postmodernist approaches. Some prefer to use the term post-structuralist anarchism, so as not to suggest having moved "past" anarchism...
, with Saul Newman
Saul Newman
Saul Newman is a political theorist and central post-anarchist thinker.Newman coined the term "post-anarchism" as a general term for political philosophies filtering 19th century anarchism through a post-structuralist lens, and later popularized it through his 2001 book From Bakunin to Lacan...
largely agreeing with many of Stirner's criticisms of classical anarchism, including his rejection of revolution and essentialism
Essentialism
In philosophy, essentialism is the view that, for any specific kind of entity, there is a set of characteristics or properties all of which any entity of that kind must possess. Therefore all things can be precisely defined or described...
.
Egoism
Stirner's philosophy, sometimes called "egoism," is the most extreme form of IA. He was a HegelianYoung Hegelians
The Young Hegelians, or Left Hegelians, were a group of Prussian intellectuals who in the decade or so after the death of Hegel in 1831, wrote and responded to his ambiguous legacy...
philosopher whose "name appears with familiar regularity in historically-orientated surveys of anarchist thought as one of the earliest and best-known exponents of IA." Stirner does not recommend that the individual try to eliminate the state but simply exploit it to further the individual's interests. He says that the egoist rejects pursuit of devotion to "a great idea, a good cause, a doctrine, a system, a lofty calling," saying that the egoist has no political calling but rather "lives themselves out" without regard to "how well or ill humanity may fare thereby." Stirner held that the only limitation on the rights of the individual is his power to obtain what he desires. He proposes that most commonly accepted social institutions—including the notion of State, property as a right, natural rights in general, and the very notion of society—were mere spooks in the mind. Stirner wanted to "abolish not only the state but also society as an institution responsible for its members." He advocated self-assertion and foresaw "associations of egoists" where respect for ruthlessness drew people together. Even murder is permissible "if it is right for me."
Stirner claimed that property comes about through might: "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." "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!". His concept of "egoistic property" not only rejects moral restraint on how one obtains and uses things, but includes other people as well. His embrace of egoism
Ethical egoism
Ethical egoism is the normative ethical position that moral agents ought to do what is in their own self-interest. It differs from psychological egoism, which claims that people can only act in their self-interest. Ethical egoism also differs from rational egoism, which holds merely that it is...
is in stark contrast to Godwin's altruism
Altruism
Altruism is a concern for the welfare of others. It is a traditional virtue in many cultures, and a core aspect of various religious traditions, though the concept of 'others' toward whom concern should be directed can vary among cultures and religions. Altruism is the opposite of...
. Stirner was opposed to communism, seeing it as a form of authority over the individual.
In Russia, IA inspired by Stirner combined with an appreciation for Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was a 19th-century German philosopher, poet, composer and classical philologist...
to attract a small following of bohemian
Bohemian
A Bohemian is a resident of the former Kingdom of Bohemia, either in a narrow sense as the region of Bohemia proper or in a wider meaning as the whole country, now known as the Czech Republic. The word "Bohemian" was used to denote the Czech people as well as the Czech language before the word...
artists and intellectuals such as Lev Chernyi
Lev Chernyi
Pável Dimítrievich Turchanínov , known by the pseudonym Lev Chernyi , was a Russian anarchist theorist, activist and poet, and a leading figure of the Third Russian Revolution. His early thought was individualist, rejecting anarcho-communism as a threat to individual liberty...
, as well as a few lone wolves who found self-expression in crime and violence. They rejected organizing, believing that only unorganized individuals were safe from coercion and domination. They claimed this belief to be fundamental to anarchism. This type of IA inspired anarcho-feminist Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman was an anarchist known for her political activism, writing and speeches. She played a pivotal role in the development of anarchist political philosophy in North America and Europe in the first half of the twentieth century....
Though Stirner's philosophy is individualist, it has influenced some libertarian communists
Libertarian socialism
Libertarian socialism is a group of political philosophies that promote a non-hierarchical, non-bureaucratic, stateless society without private property in the means of production...
and anarcho-communists. "For Ourselves Council for Generalized Self-Management" discusses Stirner and speaks of a "communist egoism," which is said to be a "synthesis of individualism and collectivism," and says that "greed in its fullest sense is the only possible basis of communist society." Forms of libertarian communism such as situationism are influenced by Stirner. Anarcho-communist Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman was an anarchist known for her political activism, writing and speeches. She played a pivotal role in the development of anarchist political philosophy in North America and Europe in the first half of the twentieth century....
was influenced by both Stirner and Peter Kropotkin
Peter Kropotkin
Prince Pyotr Alexeyevich Kropotkin was a Russian zoologist, evolutionary theorist, philosopher, economist, geographer, author and one of the world's foremost anarcho-communists. Kropotkin advocated a communist society free from central government and based on voluntary associations between...
and blended their philosophies together in her own.
France
Anselme Bellegarrigue
Anselme Bellegarrigue was a French individualist anarchist, born between 1820 and 1825 in Toulouse and presumed dead around the end of the 19th century in Central America...
. He participated in the French Revolution of 1848, was author and editor of Anarchie, Journal de l'Ordre and Au fait ! Au fait ! Interprétation de l'idée démocratique and wrote the important early Anarchist Manifesto
Anarchist Manifesto
Anarchist Manifesto is a work by Anselme Bellegarrigue, notable for being the first manifesto of anarchism...
in 1850. Catalan historian of individualist anarchism Xavier Diez reports that during his travels in the United States "he at least contacted (Henry David) Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau was an American author, poet, philosopher, abolitionist, naturalist, tax resister, development critic, surveyor, historian, and leading transcendentalist...
and, probably (Josiah) Warren
Josiah Warren
Josiah Warren was an individualist anarchist, inventor, musician, and author in the United States. He is widely regarded as the first American anarchist, and the four-page weekly paper he edited during 1833, The Peaceful Revolutionist, was the first anarchist periodical published, an enterprise...
."Jean-Baptiste Louiche, Charles Schæffer and Georges Deherme edited the individualist anarchist publication Autonomie Individuelle that ran from 1887 to 1888.
Intellectuals such as Albert Libertad
Albert Libertad
Joseph Albert was an individualist anarchist militant and writer from France who edited the influential anarchist publication L’Anarchie.- Life and work :...
, André Lorulot, Emile Armand
Emile Armand
Emile Armand was the most influential French individualist anarchist at the beginning of the 20th century and also a dedicated free love/polyamory, intentional community, and pacifist/antimilitarist writer, propagandist and activist...
, Victor Serge
Victor Serge
Victor Serge , born Victor Lvovich Kibalchich , was a Russian revolutionary and writer. Originally an anarchist, he joined the Bolsheviks five months after arriving in Petrograd in January 1919 and later worked for the Comintern as a journalist, editor and translator...
, Zo d'Axa
Zo d'Axa
Alphonse Gallaud de la Pérouse, better known as Zo d'Axa , was an adventurer, anti-militarist, satirist, journalist, and founder of two of the most legendary French magazines, L'EnDehors and La Feuille...
and Rirette Maitrejean
Rirette Maitrejean
Rirette Maitrejean was the pseudonym of Anna Estorges. She was a French individualist anarchist born in 1887 in Tulle who collaborated in the French individualist anarchist magazine L´anarchie along with Emile Armand and Albert Libertad. She had romantic relationships with Maurice Vandamme and...
extended the theory in France's main individualist anarchist journal, L’Anarchie
L’Anarchie
L'Anarchie was a French individualist anarchist journal established in April of 1905 by Albert Libertad. Along with Libertad, contributors to the journal included Émile Armand, André Lorulot, Émilie Lamotte, Raymond Callemin, and Victor Serge)....
in 1905 and later in EnDehors
EnDehors
L'EnDehors is a French individualist anarchist newspaper, created by Zo d'Axa in 1891.Numerous activists contributed to the paper, including Jean Grave, Bernard Lazare, Albert Libertad, Octave Mirbeau, Saint-Pol-Roux, Tristan Bernard, Georges Darien, Lucien Descaves, Sébastien Faure, Félix Fénéon,...
. Outside this journal, Han Ryner
Han Ryner
Jacques Élie Henri Ambroise Ner , also known by the pseudonym Han Ryner, was a French individualist anarchist philosopher and activist and a novelist...
wrote Petit Manuel individualiste (1903).
French individualist anarchists espoused diverse positions. For example Emile Armand rejected violence
Violence
Violence is the use of physical force to apply a state to others contrary to their wishes. violence, while often a stand-alone issue, is often the culmination of other kinds of conflict, e.g...
and embraced mutualism while advocating free love
Free love
The term free love has been used to describe a social movement that rejects marriage, which is seen as a form of social bondage. The Free Love movement’s initial goal was to separate the state from sexual matters such as marriage, birth control, and adultery...
. Albert Libertad and Zo d'Axa championed violent propaganda by the deed while adhering to communitarianism
Communitarianism
Communitarianism is an ideology that emphasizes the connection between the individual and the community. That community may be the family unit, but it can also be understood in a far wider sense of personal interaction, of geographical location, or of shared history.-Terminology:Though the term...
or anarcho-communism and rejecting work
Refusal of work
Refusal of work is behavior which refuses to adapt to regular employment.As actual behavior, with or without a political or philosophical program, it has been practiced by various subcultures and individuals. Radical political positions have openly advocated refusal of work. From within marxism it...
. Han Ryner on the other side conciled anarchism with stoicism
Stoicism
Stoicism is a school of Hellenistic philosophy founded in Athens by Zeno of Citium in the early . The Stoics taught that destructive emotions resulted from errors in judgment, and that a sage, or person of "moral and intellectual perfection," would not suffer such emotions.Stoics were concerned...
. Nevertheless French individualist circles displayed a strong sense of personal libertarianism and experimentation. Anarchist naturism and free love
Free love
The term free love has been used to describe a social movement that rejects marriage, which is seen as a form of social bondage. The Free Love movement’s initial goal was to separate the state from sexual matters such as marriage, birth control, and adultery...
concepts influenced individualist anarchists circles in France and Spain and expanded to the rest of anarchism.
Henri Zisly
Henri Zisly
Henri Zisly was a french individualist anarchist and naturist. He participated alongside Henry Beylie and Emile Gravelle in many journals such as La nouvelle humanité and La Vie naturelle, which promoted anarchist-naturism.In 1902 he is one of the main initiators along Georges Butaud and Sophie...
, Emile Gravelle
Emile Gravelle
Emile Gravelle was a French individualist anarchist and naturist activist, writer and painter. He published the review "L'Etat Naturel." Collaborated with Henri Zisly & Henri Beylie on "La Nouvelle Humanité," followed by "Le Naturien," "Le Sauvage," "L'Ordre Naturel," & "La Vie Naturelle." His...
and Georges Butaud promoted anarchist naturism. Butaud was an individualist "partisan of the milieux libres, publishing "Flambeau" ("an enemy of authority") in 1901 in Vienna
Vienna
Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...
. He focused on creating and participating in anarchist colonies.
"In this sense, the theoretical positions and the vital experiences of french individualism are deeply iconoclastic and scandalous, even within libertarian circles. The call of nudist naturism
Naturism
Naturism or nudism is a cultural and political movement practising, advocating and defending social nudity in private and in public. It may also refer to a lifestyle based on personal, family and/or social nudism....
, the strong defense of birth control
Birth control
Birth control is an umbrella term for several techniques and methods used to prevent fertilization or to interrupt pregnancy at various stages. Birth control techniques and methods include contraception , contragestion and abortion...
methods, the idea of "unions of egoists
Union of egoists
Max Stirner's idea of the "Union of Egoists" , was first expounded in The Ego and Its Own. The Union is understood as a non-systematic association, which Stirner proposed in contradistinction to the state. The Union is understood as a relation between egoists which is continually renewed by all...
" with the sole justification of sexual practices, that will try to put in practice, not without difficulties, will establish a way of thought and action, and will result in symphathy within some, and a strong rejection within others."
Illegalism
Illegalism developed primarily in France, ItalyItaly
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
, Belgium
Belgium
Belgium , officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a federal state in Western Europe. It is a founding member of the European Union and hosts the EU's headquarters, and those of several other major international organisations such as NATO.Belgium is also a member of, or affiliated to, many...
, and Switzerland
Switzerland
Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....
during the early 1900s as an outgrowth of Stirner's IA. Illegalists typically did not seek moral basis for their actions, recognizing only the reality of "might" rather than "right". They advocated illegal acts to satisfy personal desires, not a larger ideal, although some committed crimes as a form of direct action
Direct action
Direct action is activity undertaken by individuals, groups, or governments to achieve political, economic, or social goals outside of normal social/political channels. This can include nonviolent and violent activities which target persons, groups, or property deemed offensive to the direct action...
or propaganda of the deed
Propaganda of the deed
Propaganda of the deed is a concept that refers to specific political actions meant to be exemplary to others...
.
Influenced by Stirner's egoism
Ethical egoism
Ethical egoism is the normative ethical position that moral agents ought to do what is in their own self-interest. It differs from psychological egoism, which claims that people can only act in their self-interest. Ethical egoism also differs from rational egoism, which holds merely that it is...
as well as Proudhon's "property is theft", Clément Duval
Clément Duval
Clément Duval was a famous French anarchist and criminal. His ideas concerning individual reclamation were greatly influential in later shaping illegalism....
and Marius Jacob
Marius Jacob
Alexandre Jacob , known as Marius Jacob, was a French anarchist illegalist. A clever burglar equipped with a sharp sense of humour, capable of great generosity towards his victims, he became one of the models for Maurice Leblanc's character Arsene Lupin.- A rough start :Jacob was born in 1879 in...
proposed the theory of la individual reclamation
Individual reclamation
Individual reclamation is a form of direct action, characterized by the individual theft of resources from the rich by the poor...
.
Illegalism first rose to prominence among a generation of Europeans inspired by the unrest of the 1890s. Ravachol
Ravachol
François Claudius Koenigstein, known as Ravachol, , was a French anarchist. He was born 14 October 1859 at Saint-Chamond and died guillotined 11 July 1892 at Montbrison.-Biography:...
, Émile Henry, Auguste Vaillant
Auguste Vaillant
Auguste Vaillant was a French anarchist, most famous for his bomb attack on the French Chamber of Deputies on 9 December 1893. The government's reaction to this attack was the passing of the infamous repressive Lois scélérates.He threw the home-made device from the public gallery and was...
, and Caserio committed daring crimes in anarchism's name. France's Bonnot Gang
Bonnot gang
The Bonnot Gang was a French criminal anarchist group that operated in France and Belgium during the Belle Époque, from 1911 to 1912...
was the most famous group to embrace illegalism.
Albert Libertad
Joseph Albert (known as Albert Libertad or Libertad) was an individualist anarchist militant and writer from FranceFrance
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
who edited the influential anarchist publication L’Anarchie
L’Anarchie
L'Anarchie was a French individualist anarchist journal established in April of 1905 by Albert Libertad. Along with Libertad, contributors to the journal included Émile Armand, André Lorulot, Émilie Lamotte, Raymond Callemin, and Victor Serge)....
. During the Dreyfus affair
Dreyfus Affair
The Dreyfus affair was a political scandal that divided France in the 1890s and the early 1900s. It involved the conviction for treason in November 1894 of Captain Alfred Dreyfus, a young French artillery officer of Alsatian Jewish descent...
, he founded the Anti-Militarist League (1902) "and, along with Paraf-Javal, founded the “Causeries populaires”, public discussions that met with great interest throughout the country, contributing to the opening of a bookstore and various clubs in different quarters of Paris". On the occasion of the July 14 anniversary, L’Anarchie
L’Anarchie
L'Anarchie was a French individualist anarchist journal established in April of 1905 by Albert Libertad. Along with Libertad, contributors to the journal included Émile Armand, André Lorulot, Émilie Lamotte, Raymond Callemin, and Victor Serge)....
"printed and distributed the manifesto “The Bastille of Authority” in one hundred thousand copies. Along with feverish activity against the social order, Libertad was usually also organizing feasts, dances and country excursions, in consequence of his vision of anarchism as the “joy of living” and not as militant sacrifice and death instinct, seeking to reconcile the requirements of the individual (in his need for autonomy) with the need to destroy authoritarian society. In fact, Libertad overcame the false dichotomy between individual revolt and social revolution, stressing that the first is simply a moment of the second, certainly not its negation. Revolt can only be born from the specific tension of the individual, which, in expanding itself, can only lead to a project of social liberation. For Libertad, anarchism doesn't consist in living separated from any social context in some cold ivory tower or on some happy communitarian isle, nor in living in submission to social roles, putting off the moment when one puts one's ideas into practice to the bitter end, but in living as anarchists here and now, without any concessions, in the only way possible: by rebelling. And this is why, in this perspective, individual revolt and social revolution no longer exclude each other, but rather complement each other."
Émile Armand
Free love
The term free love has been used to describe a social movement that rejects marriage, which is seen as a form of social bondage. The Free Love movement’s initial goal was to separate the state from sexual matters such as marriage, birth control, and adultery...
/polyamory
Polyamory
Polyamory is the practice, desire, or acceptance of having more than one intimate relationship at a time with the knowledge and consent of everyone involved....
and pacifist/antimilitarist propagandist and activist. He wrote for such anarchist magazines as L’Anarchie
L’Anarchie
L'Anarchie was a French individualist anarchist journal established in April of 1905 by Albert Libertad. Along with Libertad, contributors to the journal included Émile Armand, André Lorulot, Émilie Lamotte, Raymond Callemin, and Victor Serge)....
and EnDehors
EnDehors
L'EnDehors is a French individualist anarchist newspaper, created by Zo d'Axa in 1891.Numerous activists contributed to the paper, including Jean Grave, Bernard Lazare, Albert Libertad, Octave Mirbeau, Saint-Pol-Roux, Tristan Bernard, Georges Darien, Lucien Descaves, Sébastien Faure, Félix Fénéon,...
. His thought was mainly influenced by such thinkers as Stirner, Benjamin Tucker
Benjamin Tucker
Benjamin Ricketson Tucker was a proponent of American individualist anarchism in the 19th century, and editor and publisher of the individualist anarchist periodical Liberty.-Summary:Tucker says that he became an anarchist at the age of 18...
, and American Transcendentalism
Transcendentalism
Transcendentalism is a philosophical movement that developed in the 1830s and 1840s in the New England region of the United States as a protest against the general state of culture and society, and in particular, the state of intellectualism at Harvard University and the doctrine of the Unitarian...
. Outside France he was an important influence in Spanish anarchist movements, above all in the individualist publications Iniciales
Iniciales
Iniciales was a Spanish individualist anarchist and naturist eclectic magazine which ran between 1929 and 1937. The first number appeared in Barcelona in February, 1929. Its predecessor was Barcelona's Ética...
, Al Margen and Nosotros. He defended the ido
Ido
Ido is a constructed language created with the goal of becoming a universal second language for speakers of different linguistic backgrounds as a language easier to learn than ethnic languages...
constructed language
Constructed language
A planned or constructed language—known colloquially as a conlang—is a language whose phonology, grammar, and/or vocabulary has been consciously devised by an individual or group, instead of having evolved naturally...
over esperanto
Esperanto
is the most widely spoken constructed international auxiliary language. Its name derives from Doktoro Esperanto , the pseudonym under which L. L. Zamenhof published the first book detailing Esperanto, the Unua Libro, in 1887...
with the help of José Elizalde.
Armand contrasted his IA with social anarchist currents, rejecting revolution
Revolution
A revolution is a fundamental change in power or organizational structures that takes place in a relatively short period of time.Aristotle described two types of political revolution:...
. He argued that waiting for revolution meant delaying the enjoyment of liberty until the masses gained awareness and will. Instead he advocated living under one's own conditions in the present time, revolting against social conditioning in daily life and living with those with an affinity to oneself in accord to the values and desire they share
Affinity group
An Affinity group is usually a small group of activists who work together on direct action.Affinity groups are organized in a non-hierarchical manner, usually using consensus decision making, and are often made up of trusted friends...
. He says the individualist is a "presentist" and "he could not, without bad reasoning and illogic, think of sacrificing his being, or his having, to the coming of a state of things he will not immediately enjoy". He applies this rule to friendship, love, sexual encounters and economic transactions. He adheres to an ethics of reciprocity
Reciprocity (social and political philosophy)
The social norm of reciprocity is the expectation that people will respond to each other in similar ways—responding to gifts and kindnesses from others with similar benevolence of their own, and responding to harmful, hurtful acts from others with either indifference or some form of retaliation...
and advocated propagandizing one's values to enable association with others to improve the chances of self realization.
Armand advocated free love
Free love
The term free love has been used to describe a social movement that rejects marriage, which is seen as a form of social bondage. The Free Love movement’s initial goal was to separate the state from sexual matters such as marriage, birth control, and adultery...
, naturism
Naturism
Naturism or nudism is a cultural and political movement practising, advocating and defending social nudity in private and in public. It may also refer to a lifestyle based on personal, family and/or social nudism....
and polyamory
Polyamory
Polyamory is the practice, desire, or acceptance of having more than one intimate relationship at a time with the knowledge and consent of everyone involved....
in what he termed la camaraderie amoureuse. He wrote many propagandist articles on this subject advocating not only a vague free love but also multiple partners, which he called "plural love." "'The camaraderie amoureuse thesis,' he explained, 'entails a free contract of association (that may be annulled without notice, following prior agreement) reached between anarchist individualists of different genders, adhering to the necessary standards of sexual hygiene, with a view toward protecting the other parties to the contract from certain risks of the amorous experience, such as rejection, rupture, exclusivism, possessiveness, unicity, coquetry, whims, indifference, flirtatiousness, disregard for others, and prostitution.'".
Han Ryner
Stoicism
Stoicism is a school of Hellenistic philosophy founded in Athens by Zeno of Citium in the early . The Stoics taught that destructive emotions resulted from errors in judgment, and that a sage, or person of "moral and intellectual perfection," would not suffer such emotions.Stoics were concerned...
and epicureanism
Epicureanism
Epicureanism is a system of philosophy based upon the teachings of Epicurus, founded around 307 BC. Epicurus was an atomic materialist, following in the steps of Democritus. His materialism led him to a general attack on superstition and divine intervention. Following Aristippus—about whom...
.
He defines individualism as "the moral doctrine which, relying on no dogma, no tradition, no external determination, appeals only to the individual conscience.". He distinguishes "conquering and aggressive egoists who proclaim themselves to be individualists" from what he called "harmonic individualists" who respected others. He admired Epicurus
Epicurus
Epicurus was an ancient Greek philosopher and the founder of the school of philosophy called Epicureanism.Only a few fragments and letters remain of Epicurus's 300 written works...
' temperance and that "he showed that very little was needed to satisfy hunger and thirst, to defend oneself against heat and the cold. And he liberated himself from all other needs, that is, almost all the desires and all the fears that enslave men.". He celebrated how Jesus "lived free and a wanderer, foreign to any social ties. He was the enemy of priests, external cults and, in general, all organizations."
Post-War and contemporary times
French individualist anarchists grouped behind Emile ArmandEmile Armand
Emile Armand was the most influential French individualist anarchist at the beginning of the 20th century and also a dedicated free love/polyamory, intentional community, and pacifist/antimilitarist writer, propagandist and activist...
, published L'Unique after World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
. L'Unique went from 1945 to 1956 with a total of 110 numbers. Within the synthesist
Synthesis anarchism
Synthesis anarchism, synthesist anarchism, synthesism or synthesis federations is a form of anarchist organization which tries to join anarchists of different tendencies under the principles of anarchism without adjectives. In the 1920s this form found as its main proponents the anarcho-communists...
anarchist organization, the Fédération Anarchiste, there existed an individualist anarchist tendency alongside anarcho-communist and anarchosyndicalist currents. Individualist anarchists participating inside the Fédération Anarchiste included Charles-Auguste Bontemps
Charles-Auguste Bontemps
Charles-Auguste Bontemps was a French individualist anarchist, pacifist, freethinker and naturist activist and writer.- Life and works:...
, Georges Vincey and André Arru.. The new base principles of the francophone Anarchist Federation were written by Charles-Auguste Bontemps and the anarcho-communist Maurice Joyeux which established an organization with a plurality of tendencies and autonomy of federated groups organized around synthesist principles. Charles-Auguste Bontemps was a prolific author mainly in the anarchist, freethinking, pacifist and naturist
Anarcho-naturism
Anarcho-naturism appeared in the late 19th century as the union of anarchist and naturist philosophies. Mainly it had importance within individualist anarchist circles in Spain, France, Portugal...
press of the time. His view on anarchism was based around his concept of "Social Individualism" on which he wrote extensively. He defended an anarchist perspective which consisted on "a collectivism of things and an individualism of persons."
In 2002, an anarchist, Libertad organized a new version of the L'EnDehors, collaborating with Green Anarchy
Green Anarchy
Green Anarchy was a magazine published by a collective located in Eugene, Oregon. The magazine's focus was primitivism, post-left anarchy, radical environmentalism, African American struggles, anarchist resistance, indigenous resistance, earth and animal liberation, anti-capitalism and supporting...
and including contributors such as Lawrence Jarach
Lawrence Jarach
- External links :* official website.Publications*"" by Lawrence Jarach at the Berkeley Daily Planet...
, Patrick Mignard, Thierry Lodé
Thierry Lodé
Thierry Lodé is a French biologist and professor who teaches evolutionary ecology in the CNRS Units ETHOS...
, Ron Sakolsky
Ron Sakolsky
Ron Sakolsky is a scholar covering the intersection of music, revolution and radio. As of 2005, Sakolsky is Emeritus Professor of Public Policy at the University of Illinois at Springfield, previously known as Sangamon State University. For more than twenty years he taught at the university on...
, and Thomas Slut. Articles about capitalism, human rights, free love
Free love
The term free love has been used to describe a social movement that rejects marriage, which is seen as a form of social bondage. The Free Love movement’s initial goal was to separate the state from sexual matters such as marriage, birth control, and adultery...
and social fights were published. The EnDehors continues now as a website, EnDehors.org.
The prolific contemporary french philosopher Michel Onfray
Michel Onfray
Michel Onfray is a contemporary French philosopher who adheres to hedonism, atheism and anarchism...
has been writing from an individualist anarchist perspective influenced by Nietzsche, french post-structuralists thinkers such as Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault , born Paul-Michel Foucault , was a French philosopher, social theorist and historian of ideas...
and Gilles Deleuze
Gilles Deleuze
Gilles Deleuze , was a French philosopher who, from the early 1960s until his death, wrote influentially on philosophy, literature, film, and fine art. His most popular works were the two volumes of Capitalism and Schizophrenia: Anti-Oedipus and A Thousand Plateaus , both co-written with Félix...
; and greek classical schools of philosophy such as the Cynics and Cyrenaics
Cyrenaics
The Cyrenaics were an ultra-hedonist Greek school of philosophy founded in the 4th century BC, supposedly by Aristippus of Cyrene, although many of the principles of the school are believed to have been formalized by his grandson of the same name, Aristippus the Younger. The school was so called...
. Among the books which best expose Onfray´s individualist anarchist perspective include La sculpture de soi : la morale esthétique (The sculpture of oneself: aesthetic morality), La philosophie féroce : exercices anarchistes, La puissance d'exister and Physiologie de Georges Palante, portrait d'un nietzchéen de gauche which focuses on french individualist philosopher Georges Palante
Georges Palante
Georges Toussaint Léon Palante was a French philosopher and sociologist.He advocated aristocratic individualist ideas similar to Nietzsche and Schopenhauer. He was opposed to Émile Durkheim's holism, promoting methodological individualism instead.-Life:Palante was born in Blangy-les-Arras in the...
.
Italy
In Italy IA had a strong tendency towards illegalism and violent propaganda by the deed, perhaps more extreme than in France which emphazised criticism of organization be it anarchist or of other type. Acts included notorious magnicides carried out or attempted by individualists Giovanni Passannante, Sante Caserio, Michele AngiolilloMichele Angiolillo
Michele Angiolillo Lombardi was an Italian anarchist, born in Foggia, and murderer of Spanish Prime Minister Antonio Cánovas in 1897.-Barcelona bombing and Montjuïc repression:...
, Luigi Luccheni, and Gaetano Bresci
Gaetano Bresci
Gaetano Bresci was an Italian American anarchist who assassinated King Umberto I of Italy. Bresci was the first European regicide not to be executed, as capital punishment in Italy had been abolished since 1889.-Militancy:...
who murdered king Umberto I. Caserio lived in France and later assassinated French president Sadi Carnot
Marie François Sadi Carnot
Marie François Sadi Carnot was a French statesman and the fourth president of the Third French Republic. He served as the President of France from 1887 until his assassination in 1894.-Early life:...
. The theoretical seeds of current Insurrectionary anarchism
Insurrectionary anarchism
Insurrectionary anarchism is a revolutionary theory, practice and tendency within the anarchist movement which emphasizes the theme of insurrection within anarchist practice. It is critical of formal organizations such as labor unions and federations that are based on a political programme and...
were laid out at the end of 19th century Italy combining IA criticism of permanent groups and organization with a socialist class struggle worldview. This thought also motivated Gino Lucetti
Gino Lucetti
Gino Lucetti was an Italian anarchist and would-be assassin.Born in Carrara, Italy, he fought in the assault troops during World War I. Later he emigrated to France, from where he returned to attempt the assassination of Benito Mussolini, Italy's Fascist Duce...
, Michele Schirru and Angelo Sbardellotto in attempting the assassination of Benito Mussolini
Benito Mussolini
Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini was an Italian politician who led the National Fascist Party and is credited with being one of the key figures in the creation of Fascism....
. Pietro Bruzzi published the journal L'Individualista in the 1920s alongside Ugo Fedeli and Francesco Ghezzi but who fell to fascist forces later. Pietro Bruzzi also collaborated with the Italian American
Italian American
An Italian American , is an American of Italian ancestry. The designation may also refer to someone possessing Italian and American dual citizenship...
individualist anarchist publication Eresia of New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
edited by Enrico Arrigoni
Enrico Arrigoni
Enrico Arrigoni was an Italian American individualist anarchist Lathe operator, house painter, bricklayer, dramatist and political activist influenced by the work of Max Stirner.- Life and activism :He took the pseudonym "Brand" from a fictional character in one of...
.
Renzo Novatore
Stirner
Stirner:* Max Stirner, pseudonym for Johann Caspar Schmidt , German philosopher and journalist* Karl Stirner , painter, illustrator and poet...
, Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was a 19th-century German philosopher, poet, composer and classical philologist...
, Georges Palante
Georges Palante
Georges Toussaint Léon Palante was a French philosopher and sociologist.He advocated aristocratic individualist ideas similar to Nietzsche and Schopenhauer. He was opposed to Émile Durkheim's holism, promoting methodological individualism instead.-Life:Palante was born in Blangy-les-Arras in the...
, Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde
Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was an Irish writer and poet. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s...
, Henrik Ibsen
Henrik Ibsen
Henrik Ibsen was a major 19th-century Norwegian playwright, theatre director, and poet. He is often referred to as "the father of prose drama" and is one of the founders of Modernism in the theatre...
, Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer was a German philosopher known for his pessimism and philosophical clarity. At age 25, he published his doctoral dissertation, On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason, which examined the four separate manifestations of reason in the phenomenal...
and Charles Baudelaire
Charles Baudelaire
Charles Baudelaire was a French poet who produced notable work as an essayist, art critic, and pioneering translator of Edgar Allan Poe. His most famous work, Les Fleurs du mal expresses the changing nature of beauty in modern, industrializing Paris during the nineteenth century...
. He collaborated in numerous anarchist journals and participated in futurism
Futurism
Futurism was an artistic and social movement that originated in Italy in the early 20th century.Futurism or futurist may refer to:* Afrofuturism, an African-American and African diaspora subculture* Cubo-Futurism* Ego-Futurism...
avant-garde currents.
He proclaimed "revolution is the fire of our will and a need of our solitary minds; it is an obligation of the libertarian aristocracy. To create new ethical values. To create new aesthetic values. To communalize material wealth. To individualize spiritual wealth. Because we violent celebralists and passional sentimentalists at the same time-understand and know that revolution is a necessity of the silent sorrow that suffers at the bottom and a need of the free spirits who suffer in the heights." He summarizes the three options in life as "The stream of slavery, the stream of tyranny, the stream of freedom! With revolution, the last of these streams needs to burst upon the other two and overwhelm them. It needs to create spiritual beauty, teach the poor the shame of their poverty, and the rich the shame of their wealth." These views justified his practice of illegalism and later active resistance to fascism
Fascism
Fascism is a radical authoritarian nationalist political ideology. Fascists seek to rejuvenate their nation based on commitment to the national community as an organic entity, in which individuals are bound together in national identity by suprapersonal connections of ancestry, culture, and blood...
.
Novatore collaborated in the individualist anarchist journal Iconoclasta! alongside the young Stirnerist illegalist Bruno Filippi
Bruno Filippi
Bruno Filippi , was an Italian individualist anarchist writer and activist who collaborated in the Italian individualist anarchist magazine Iconoclasta! alongside Renzo Novatore....
Also, a poet, Novatore belonged to the leftist section of the avant-garde
Avant-garde
Avant-garde means "advance guard" or "vanguard". The adjective form is used in English to refer to people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics....
movement of futurism, alongside others individualist anarchists such as Dante Carnesecchi
Dante Carnesecchi
Dante Carnesecchi was an Italian individualist anarchist associated with left wing futurism alongside other individualist anarchists such as Renzo Novatore, Leda Rafanelli, Auro d'Arcola, and Giovanni Governato.-External links:** in Italian*]]...
, Leda Rafanelli, Auro d'Arcola, and Giovanni Governato.
Post-war and contemporary times
In Italy in 1945 during the Founding Congress of the Italian Anarchist Federation individualists anarchists were led by Cesare Zaccaria. During the 1965 IX Congress of the Italian Anarchist Federation in CarraraCarrara
Carrara is a city and comune in the province of Massa-Carrara , notable for the white or blue-grey marble quarried there. It is on the Carrione River, some west-northwest of Florence....
a splinter group created the Gruppi di Iniziativa Anarchica. In the seventies it was mostly composed of "veteran individualist anarchists with an orientation of pacifism
Anarcho-pacifism
Anarcho-pacifism is a tendency within the anarchist movement which rejects the use of violence in the struggle for social change. The main early influences were the thought of Henry David Thoreau and Leo Tolstoy while later the ideas of Mohandas Gandhi gained importance...
, naturism
Anarcho-naturism
Anarcho-naturism appeared in the late 19th century as the union of anarchist and naturist philosophies. Mainly it had importance within individualist anarchist circles in Spain, France, Portugal...
, etc,...".
Egoism had a strong influence on insurrectionary anarchism
Insurrectionary anarchism
Insurrectionary anarchism is a revolutionary theory, practice and tendency within the anarchist movement which emphasizes the theme of insurrection within anarchist practice. It is critical of formal organizations such as labor unions and federations that are based on a political programme and...
, as can be seen in the work of Alfredo Bonanno and Michele Fabiani. Bonanno has written on Stirner in works such as Max Stirner and "Max Stirner und der Anarchismus".
In the famous Italian insurrectionary anarchist anonymous essay, "At Daggers Drawn with the Existent, its Defenders and its False Critics" is "The workers who, during a wildcat strike, carried a banner saying, 'We are not asking for anything' understood that the defeat is in the claim itself ('the claim against the enemy is eternal'). There is no alternative but to take everything. As Stirner said: 'No matter how much you give them, they will always ask for more, because what they want is no less than the end of every concession'."
Spain
SpanishSpain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
individualist anarchists was influenced by American individualist anarchism but mainly it was connected to the French currents. At the turn of the century people such as Dorado Montero, Ricardo Mella
Ricardo Mella
Ricardo Mella Cea was one of the first writers, intellectuals and anarchist activists of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century in Spain. Was characterized as an erudite in various subjects and versed in languages, mastering French, English and Italian...
, Federico Urales, Mariano Gallardo and J. Elizalde translated French and American individualists. Important in this respect were also magazines such as La Idea Libre, La Revista Blanca
La Revista Blanca
La Revista Blanca was a Spanish individualist anarchist magazine of sociology and arts published in Madrid by Joan Montseny y Teresa Mañé from 1898 to 1905 and in Barcelona from June 1, 1923 till August 15, 1936....
, Etica, Iniciales
Iniciales
Iniciales was a Spanish individualist anarchist and naturist eclectic magazine which ran between 1929 and 1937. The first number appeared in Barcelona in February, 1929. Its predecessor was Barcelona's Ética...
, Al margen, Estudios and Nosotros. The most influential thinkers there were Stirner
Stirner
Stirner:* Max Stirner, pseudonym for Johann Caspar Schmidt , German philosopher and journalist* Karl Stirner , painter, illustrator and poet...
, Emile Armand
Emile Armand
Emile Armand was the most influential French individualist anarchist at the beginning of the 20th century and also a dedicated free love/polyamory, intentional community, and pacifist/antimilitarist writer, propagandist and activist...
and Han Ryner
Han Ryner
Jacques Élie Henri Ambroise Ner , also known by the pseudonym Han Ryner, was a French individualist anarchist philosopher and activist and a novelist...
. Just as in France, Esperanto
Esperanto
is the most widely spoken constructed international auxiliary language. Its name derives from Doktoro Esperanto , the pseudonym under which L. L. Zamenhof published the first book detailing Esperanto, the Unua Libro, in 1887...
, anationalism
Anationalism
Anationalism is a term originating from the community of Esperanto speakers. It denotes a range of cosmopolitan political concepts that combine some or all of the following tendencies and ideas:*radical antinationalism,...
, anarcho-naturism and free love
Free love
The term free love has been used to describe a social movement that rejects marriage, which is seen as a form of social bondage. The Free Love movement’s initial goal was to separate the state from sexual matters such as marriage, birth control, and adultery...
were present. Later Armand and Ryner started publishing in the Spanish invidualist press. Armand's concept of amorous camaraderie had an important role in motivating polyamory
Polyamory
Polyamory is the practice, desire, or acceptance of having more than one intimate relationship at a time with the knowledge and consent of everyone involved....
as realization of the individual.
Recently historian Xavier Diez wrote on the subject in El anarquismo individualista en España: 1923-1938 y Utopia sexual a la premsa anarquista de Catalunya. La revista Ética-Iniciales(1927–1937) deals with free love thought in Iniciales
Iniciales
Iniciales was a Spanish individualist anarchist and naturist eclectic magazine which ran between 1929 and 1937. The first number appeared in Barcelona in February, 1929. Its predecessor was Barcelona's Ética...
. Diez reports that the spanish individualist anarchist press was widely read by members of anarcho-communist groups and by members of the anarcho-syndicalist trade union CNT
Confederación Nacional del Trabajo
The Confederación Nacional del Trabajo is a Spanish confederation of anarcho-syndicalist labor unions affiliated with the International Workers Association . When working with the latter group it is also known as CNT-AIT...
. There were also the cases of prominent individualist anarchists such as Federico Urales and Miguel Gimenez Igualada
Miguel Giménez Igualada
Miguel Giménez Igualada, , was a Spanish individualist anarchist writer also known as Miguel Ramos Giménez and Juan de Iniesta.- Life :In his youth, Igualada engaged in illegalist activities...
who were members of the CNT
Confederación Nacional del Trabajo
The Confederación Nacional del Trabajo is a Spanish confederation of anarcho-syndicalist labor unions affiliated with the International Workers Association . When working with the latter group it is also known as CNT-AIT...
and J. Elizalde who was a founding member and first secretary of the Iberian Anarchist Federation.
Federico Urales was an important catalan
Catalan people
The Catalans or Catalonians are the people from, or with origins in, Catalonia that form a historical nationality in Spain. The inhabitants of the adjacent portion of southern France are sometimes included in this definition...
individualist anarchist who edited La Revista Blanca
La Revista Blanca
La Revista Blanca was a Spanish individualist anarchist magazine of sociology and arts published in Madrid by Joan Montseny y Teresa Mañé from 1898 to 1905 and in Barcelona from June 1, 1923 till August 15, 1936....
. The individualist anarchism of Urales was influenced by Auguste Comte
Auguste Comte
Isidore Auguste Marie François Xavier Comte , better known as Auguste Comte , was a French philosopher, a founder of the discipline of sociology and of the doctrine of positivism...
and Charles Darwin
Charles Darwin
Charles Robert Darwin FRS was an English naturalist. He established that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestry, and proposed the scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process that he called natural selection.He published his theory...
. He saw science and reason as a defense against blind servitude to authority. He was critical of influential individualist thinkers such as Nietzsche and Stirner
Stirner
Stirner:* Max Stirner, pseudonym for Johann Caspar Schmidt , German philosopher and journalist* Karl Stirner , painter, illustrator and poet...
for promoting an asocial egoist individualism and instead promoted an individualism with solidarity as a way to guarantee social equality and harmony. In the subject of organization he was highly critical of anarcho-syndicalism
Anarcho-syndicalism
Anarcho-syndicalism is a branch of anarchism which focuses on the labour movement. The word syndicalism comes from the French word syndicat which means trade union , from the Latin word syndicus which in turn comes from the Greek word σύνδικος which means caretaker of an issue...
as he saw it plagued by too much bureaucracy and thought that it tended towards reformism. Instead he favored small groups based on ideological alignement. He supported the establishmente of the Iberian Anarchist Federation (FAI)
Federación Anarquista Ibérica
The Federación Anarquista Ibérica is a Spanish organization of anarchist militants active within affinity groups inside the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo trade union. It is often abbreviated as CNT-FAI because of the close relationship between the two organizations...
in 1927 and participated in it.
In 2000 in Spain Ateneo Libertario Ricardo Mella, Ateneo libertario Al Margen, Ateneu Enciclopèdic Popular, Ateneo Libertario de Sant Boi, Ateneu Llibertari Poble Sec y Fundació D'Estudis Llibertaris i Anarcosindicalistes republished Emile Armand´s writings on Free Love and IA in a compilation titled Individualist anarchism and Amorous camaraderie.
Miguel Giménez Igualada
An important Spanish individualist anarchist was Miguel Giménez IgualadaMiguel Giménez Igualada
Miguel Giménez Igualada, , was a Spanish individualist anarchist writer also known as Miguel Ramos Giménez and Juan de Iniesta.- Life :In his youth, Igualada engaged in illegalist activities...
who wrote the lengthy theory book called Anarchism espousing his individualist anarchism. Between October, 1937 and February , 1938 he starts as editor of the individualist anarchist magazine Nosotros, in which many works of Han Ryner
Han Ryner
Jacques Élie Henri Ambroise Ner , also known by the pseudonym Han Ryner, was a French individualist anarchist philosopher and activist and a novelist...
and Émile Armand
Emile Armand
Emile Armand was the most influential French individualist anarchist at the beginning of the 20th century and also a dedicated free love/polyamory, intentional community, and pacifist/antimilitarist writer, propagandist and activist...
appear and will also participate in the publishing of another individualist anarchist maganize Al Margen: Publicación quincenal individualista. In his youth he engaged in illegalist activities. His thought was deeply influenced by Max Stirner
Max Stirner
Johann Kaspar Schmidt , better known as Max Stirner , was a German philosopher, who ranks as one of the literary fathers of nihilism, existentialism, post-modernism and anarchism, especially of individualist anarchism...
, of which he was the main popularizer in Spain through his writings. He publishes and writes the preface to the fourth edition in Spanish of The Ego and Its Own
The Ego and Its Own
The Ego and Its Own is a philosophical work by German philosopher Max Stirner . This work was first published in 1845, although with a stated publication date of "1844" to confuse the Prussian censors.-Content:...
from 1900. He will propose the creation of a union of egoists
Union of egoists
Max Stirner's idea of the "Union of Egoists" , was first expounded in The Ego and Its Own. The Union is understood as a non-systematic association, which Stirner proposed in contradistinction to the state. The Union is understood as a relation between egoists which is continually renewed by all...
, which will be a Federation of Individualist Anarchists in Spain, but did not succeed. In 1956 publishes an extensive treatise on Stirner which he dedicates to fellow individualist anarchist Emile Armand
Emile Armand
Emile Armand was the most influential French individualist anarchist at the beginning of the 20th century and also a dedicated free love/polyamory, intentional community, and pacifist/antimilitarist writer, propagandist and activist...
Afterwards he will travel and live in Argentina, Uruguay and Mexico.
In his major work Anarchism Igualada states that "humanism
Humanism
Humanism is an approach in study, philosophy, world view or practice that focuses on human values and concerns. In philosophy and social science, humanism is a perspective which affirms some notion of human nature, and is contrasted with anti-humanism....
or anarchism,...for me are the same thing". He sees the anarchist as one who "does not accept the imposition of a thought on us and who does not allows one´s own thought to be imposed over another brain, oppressing it...since anarchy is not for me a mere negation, but a twofold activity of conciousness; in the first instance a conciousness of the individual on its meaning within the human world, defending his personality against every external imposition; on a second instance, and here is present the whole great beauty of its ethic, it defends, stimulates and enhances the other´s personality.... Igualada exposes a radical pacifist view when he thinks that "When I say that through war humanity will never find peace, I sustain my affirmation in the fact that those who are more peaceful are the least believers, and so...one can affirm that the day of happiness in which war (religiosity is bellicosity) is extirpated from conciousness, peace will exists in the home of men, and since from conciousness these beliefs will not be extracted but only through an act of trascendental education, our labor is not of killing, but of education having it well present that to educate is not in any case domestication
Domestication
Domestication or taming is the process whereby a population of animals or plants, through a process of selection, becomes accustomed to human provision and control. In the Convention on Biological Diversity a domesticated species is defined as a 'species in which the evolutionary process has been...
.
Freethought
Freethought as a philosophical position and as activism was important in european individualist anarchism. "Anticlericalism, just as in the rest of the libertarian movement, in another of the frequent elements which will gain relevance related to the measure in which the (French) Republic begins to have conflicts with the church...Anti-clerical discourse, frequently called for by the french individualist André Lorulot, will have its impacts in Estudios (an spanish individualist anarchist publication). There will be an attack on institutionalized religion for the responsibility that it had in the past on negative developments, for its irrationality which makes it a counterpoint of philosophical and scientific progress. There will be a criticism of proselitism and ideological manipulation which happens on both believers and agnostics." . This tendencies will continue in french individualist anarchism in the work and activism of Charles-Auguste BontempsCharles-Auguste Bontemps
Charles-Auguste Bontemps was a French individualist anarchist, pacifist, freethinker and naturist activist and writer.- Life and works:...
and others. In the Spanish individualist anarchist magazine Ética and Iniciales
Iniciales
Iniciales was a Spanish individualist anarchist and naturist eclectic magazine which ran between 1929 and 1937. The first number appeared in Barcelona in February, 1929. Its predecessor was Barcelona's Ética...
"there is a strong interest in publishing scientific news, usually linked to a certain atheist and anti-theist obsession, philosophy which will also work for pointing out the incompatibility between science and religion, faith and reason. In this way there will be a lot of talk on Darwin´s theories or on the negation of the existence of the soul.".
Anarcho-naturism
Another important current, especially within French and Spanish individualist anarchist groups was naturismNaturism
Naturism or nudism is a cultural and political movement practising, advocating and defending social nudity in private and in public. It may also refer to a lifestyle based on personal, family and/or social nudism....
. Naturism promoted an ecological worldview, small ecovillage
Ecovillage
Ecovillages are intentional communities with the goal of becoming more socially, economically and ecologically sustainable. Some aim for a population of 50–150 individuals. Larger ecovillages of up to 2,000 individuals exist as networks of smaller subcommunities to create an ecovillage model that...
s, and most prominently nudism as a way to avoid the artificiality of the industrial mass society
Mass society
Mass society is a description associated with society in the modern, industrial era. "Guided by the structural-functional approach and drawing on the ideas of Tönnies, Durkheim, and Weber, understands modernity as the emergence of a mass society...
of modernity. Naturist individualist anarchists saw the individual in his biological, physical and psychological aspects and avoided, and tried to eliminate, social determinations."EL NATURISMO LIBERTARIO EN LA PENÍNSULA IBÉRICA (1890-1939)" by Josep Maria Rosell An early influence in this vein was Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau was an American author, poet, philosopher, abolitionist, naturalist, tax resister, development critic, surveyor, historian, and leading transcendentalist...
and his famous book Walden
Walden
Walden is an American book written by noted Transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau...
Important promoters of this were Henri Zisly
Henri Zisly
Henri Zisly was a french individualist anarchist and naturist. He participated alongside Henry Beylie and Emile Gravelle in many journals such as La nouvelle humanité and La Vie naturelle, which promoted anarchist-naturism.In 1902 he is one of the main initiators along Georges Butaud and Sophie...
and Emile Gravelle
Emile Gravelle
Emile Gravelle was a French individualist anarchist and naturist activist, writer and painter. He published the review "L'Etat Naturel." Collaborated with Henri Zisly & Henri Beylie on "La Nouvelle Humanité," followed by "Le Naturien," "Le Sauvage," "L'Ordre Naturel," & "La Vie Naturelle." His...
who collaborated in La Nouvelle Humanité followed by Le Naturien, Le Sauvage, L'Ordre Naturel, & La Vie Naturelle.
This relationship between anarchism and naturism was quite important at the end of the 1920s in Spain. "The linking role played by the ‘Sol y Vida’ group was very important. The goal of this group was to take trips and enjoy the open air. The Naturist athenaeum, ‘Ecléctico’, in Barcelona, was the base from which the activities of the group were launched. First Etica and then Iniciales
Iniciales
Iniciales was a Spanish individualist anarchist and naturist eclectic magazine which ran between 1929 and 1937. The first number appeared in Barcelona in February, 1929. Its predecessor was Barcelona's Ética...
, which began in 1929, were the publications of the group, which lasted until the Spanish Civil War
Spanish Civil War
The Spanish Civil WarAlso known as The Crusade among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War among Carlists, and The Rebellion or Uprising among Republicans. was a major conflict fought in Spain from 17 July 1936 to 1 April 1939...
. We must be aware that the naturist ideas expressed in them matched the desires that the libertarian youth had of breaking up with the conventions of the bourgeoisie of the time. That is what a young worker explained in a letter to ‘Iniciales’ He writes it under the odd pseudonym of ‘silvestre del campo’, (wild man in the country). “I find great pleasure in being naked in the woods, bathed in light and air, two natural elements we cannot do without. By shunning the humble garment of an exploited person, (garments which, in my opinion, are the result of all the laws devised to make our lives bitter), we feel there no others left but just the natural laws. Clothes mean slavery for some and tyranny for others. Only the naked man who rebels against all norms, stands for anarchism, devoid of the prejudices of outfit imposed by our money-oriented society.”". "The relation between Anarchism and Naturism gives way to the Naturist Federation, in July 1928, and to the lV Spanish Naturist Congress, in September 1929, both supported by the Libertarian Movement. However, in the short term, the Naturist and Libertarian movements grew apart in their conceptions of everyday life. The Naturist movement felt closer to the Libertarian individualism of some French theoreticians such as Henri Ner than to the revolutionary goals proposed by some Anarchist organisations such as the FAI, (Federación Anarquista Ibérica
Federación Anarquista Ibérica
The Federación Anarquista Ibérica is a Spanish organization of anarchist militants active within affinity groups inside the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo trade union. It is often abbreviated as CNT-FAI because of the close relationship between the two organizations...
)". .
Individualist anarchism and Friedrich Nietzsche
The thought of german philosopher Friedrich NietzscheFriedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was a 19th-century German philosopher, poet, composer and classical philologist...
has been influential in individualist anarchism specifically in thinkers such as the french Emile Armand
Emile Armand
Emile Armand was the most influential French individualist anarchist at the beginning of the 20th century and also a dedicated free love/polyamory, intentional community, and pacifist/antimilitarist writer, propagandist and activist...
, the italian Renzo Novatore
Renzo Novatore
- Life :Abele Ricieri Ferrari was born in Arcola, Liguria, Italy on May 12, 1890 in a poor peasant family. He did not adjust to school discipline and quit in the first year never coming back after that. While he worked in his father's farm, he self educated himself with an emphasis in poetry and...
, the russian Lev Chernyi
Lev Chernyi
Pável Dimítrievich Turchanínov , known by the pseudonym Lev Chernyi , was a Russian anarchist theorist, activist and poet, and a leading figure of the Third Russian Revolution. His early thought was individualist, rejecting anarcho-communism as a threat to individual liberty...
, the colombian
Colombian people
Colombian people are from a multiethnic Spanish speaking nation in South America called Colombia. Colombians are predominantly Roman Catholic and are a mixture of Europeans, Africans, and Amerindians.-Demography:...
Biofilo Panclasta
Biofilo Panclasta
Vicente Rojas Lizcano , know by his pseudonym Biófilo Panclasta, was an individualist anarchist writer and activist. In 1904 he begins using the name Biofilo Panclasta. "Biofilo" in Spanish stands for "lover of life" and "Panclasta" for "enemy of all"...
, and also "translations of Nietzsche's writings in the United States very likely appeared first in Liberty, the anarchist journal edited by Benjamin Tucker
Benjamin Tucker
Benjamin Ricketson Tucker was a proponent of American individualist anarchism in the 19th century, and editor and publisher of the individualist anarchist periodical Liberty.-Summary:Tucker says that he became an anarchist at the age of 18...
."
John Henry Mackay
In GermanyGermany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
the Scottish-born German John Henry Mackay became the most important individualist anarchist propagandist. He fused Stirnerist egoism with the positions of Benjamin Tucker and translated Tucker into German. Two semi-fictional writings of his own Die Anarchisten
Die Anarchisten
Die Anarchisten: Kulturgemälde aus dem Ende des XIX Jahrhunderts is a book by anarchist writer John Henry Mackay published in German and English in 1891. It is the best known and most widely read of Mackay's works, and made him famous overnight...
and Der Freiheitsucher contributed to individualist theory, updating egoist themes with respect to the anarchist movement. His writing were translated into English as well. Mackay is also an important European early activist for LGBT
LGBT
LGBT is an initialism that collectively refers to "lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender" people. In use since the 1990s, the term "LGBT" is an adaptation of the initialism "LGB", which itself started replacing the phrase "gay community" beginning in the mid-to-late 1980s, which many within the...
rights.
Adolf Brand
Adolf Brand (1874–1945) was a GermanGermany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
writer
Writer
A writer is a person who produces literature, such as novels, short stories, plays, screenplays, poetry, or other literary art. Skilled writers are able to use language to portray ideas and images....
, Stirnerist anarchist
Anarchism
Anarchism is generally defined as the political philosophy which holds the state to be undesirable, unnecessary, and harmful, or alternatively as opposing authority in the conduct of human relations...
and pioneering campaigner for the acceptance of male bisexuality
Bisexuality
Bisexuality is sexual behavior or an orientation involving physical or romantic attraction to both males and females, especially with regard to men and women. It is one of the three main classifications of sexual orientation, along with a heterosexual and a homosexual orientation, all a part of the...
and homosexuality
Homosexuality
Homosexuality is romantic or sexual attraction or behavior between members of the same sex or gender. As a sexual orientation, homosexuality refers to "an enduring pattern of or disposition to experience sexual, affectional, or romantic attractions" primarily or exclusively to people of the same...
. Brand published the world's first ongoing homosexual publication, Der Eigene
Der Eigene
Der Eigene was the first gay journal in the world, published from 1896 to 1932 by Adolf Brand in Berlin. Brand contributed many poems and articles himself...
in 1896. The name was taken from Stirner, who had greatly influenced the young Brand, and refers to Stirner's concept of "self-ownership
Self-ownership
Self-ownership is the concept of property in one's own person, expressed as the moral or natural right of a person to be the exclusive controller of his own body and life. According to G...
" of the individual. Der Eigene
Der Eigene
Der Eigene was the first gay journal in the world, published from 1896 to 1932 by Adolf Brand in Berlin. Brand contributed many poems and articles himself...
concentrated on cultural and scholarly material, and may have averaged around 1500 subscribers per issue during its lifetime. Contributors included Erich Mühsam
Erich Mühsam
Erich Mühsam was a German-Jewish anarchist essayist, poet and playwright. He emerged at the end of World War I as one of the leading agitators for a federated Bavarian Soviet Republic....
, Kurt Hiller
Kurt Hiller
Kurt Hiller also known as Keith Lurr and Klirr was a German essayist of high stylistic originality and a political journalist from a Jewish family. A socialist, he was deeply influenced by Immanuel Kant and Arthur Schopenhauer, despising the philosophy of G. W. F...
, John Henry Mackay
John Henry Mackay
John Henry Mackay was an individualist anarchist, thinker and writer. Born in Scotland and raised in Germany, Mackay was the author of Die Anarchisten and Der Freiheitsucher . Mackay was published in the United States in his friend Benjamin Tucker's magazine, Liberty...
(under the pseudonym Sagitta) and artists Wilhelm von Gloeden
Wilhelm von Gloeden
Baron Wilhelm von Gloeden was a German photographer who worked mainly in Italy. He is mostly known for his pastoral nude studies of Sicilian boys, which usually featured props such as wreaths or amphoras suggesting a setting in the Greece or Italy of antiquity...
, Fidus
Fidus
Fidus was the pseudonym used by German illustrator, painter and publisher Hugo Reinhold Karl Johann Höppener . He was a symbolist artist, whose work directly influenced the psychedelic style of graphic design of the late 1960s.Born the son of a confectioner in Lübeck, Höppener demonstrated...
and Sascha Schneider
Sascha Schneider
Rudolph Karl Alexander Schneider, commonly known as Sascha Schneider , was a German painter and sculptor.-Biography :...
. Brand contributed many poems and articles himself. Benjamin Tucker
Benjamin Tucker
Benjamin Ricketson Tucker was a proponent of American individualist anarchism in the 19th century, and editor and publisher of the individualist anarchist periodical Liberty.-Summary:Tucker says that he became an anarchist at the age of 18...
followed this journal from the United States.
Anselm Ruest (Ernst Samuel) and Mynona (Salomo Friedlaender)
Der Einzige was the title of a German individualist anarchist magazine. It appeared in 1919, as a weekly, then sporadically until 1925 and was edited by cousins Anselm Ruest (pseud. for Ernst Samuel) and Mynona (pseud. for Salomo Friedlaender). Its title was adopted from the book Der Einzige und sein Eigentum (engl. trans. The Ego and Its OwnThe Ego and Its Own
The Ego and Its Own is a philosophical work by German philosopher Max Stirner . This work was first published in 1845, although with a stated publication date of "1844" to confuse the Prussian censors.-Content:...
) by Max Stirner
Max Stirner
Johann Kaspar Schmidt , better known as Max Stirner , was a German philosopher, who ranks as one of the literary fathers of nihilism, existentialism, post-modernism and anarchism, especially of individualist anarchism...
. Another influence was the thought of German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was a 19th-century German philosopher, poet, composer and classical philologist...
. The publication was connected to the local expressionist
Expressionism
Expressionism was a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Germany at the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it radically for emotional effect in order to evoke moods or ideas...
artistic current and the transition from it towards dada
Dada
Dada or Dadaism is a cultural movement that began in Zurich, Switzerland, during World War I and peaked from 1916 to 1922. The movement primarily involved visual arts, literature—poetry, art manifestoes, art theory—theatre, and graphic design, and concentrated its anti-war politics through a...
.
Russia
Individualist anarchism was one of the three categories of anarchism in RussiaAnarchism in Russia
Russian anarchism is anarchism in Russia or among Russians. The three categories of Russian anarchism were anarchist communism, anarcho-syndicalism and anarchist individualism...
, along with the more prominent anarchist communism
Anarchist communism
Anarchist communism is a theory of anarchism which advocates the abolition of the state, markets, money, private property, and capitalism in favor of common ownership of the means of production, direct democracy and a horizontal network of voluntary associations and workers' councils with...
and anarcho-syndicalism
Anarcho-syndicalism
Anarcho-syndicalism is a branch of anarchism which focuses on the labour movement. The word syndicalism comes from the French word syndicat which means trade union , from the Latin word syndicus which in turn comes from the Greek word σύνδικος which means caretaker of an issue...
. The ranks of the Russian individualist anarchists were predominantly drawn from the intelligentsia
Intelligentsia
The intelligentsia is a social class of people engaged in complex, mental and creative labor directed to the development and dissemination of culture, encompassing intellectuals and social groups close to them...
and the working class
Working class
Working class is a term used in the social sciences and in ordinary conversation to describe those employed in lower tier jobs , often extending to those in unemployment or otherwise possessing below-average incomes...
. For anarchist historian Paul Avrich
Paul Avrich
Paul Avrich was a professor and historian. He taught at Queens College, City University of New York, for most of his life and was vital in preserving the history of the anarchist movement in Russia and the United States....
"The two leading exponents of individualist anarchism, both based in Moscow
Moscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
, were Aleksei Alekseevich Borovoi
Alexei Borovoi
Alexei Alexeyevich Borovoi was a Russian individualist anarchist writer, orator, teacher and propagandist.-Biography:Borovoi was born on October 30, 1875 in Moscow. Starting from 1906, Borovoi lectured on anarchism in different Russian cities....
and Lev Chernyi
Lev Chernyi
Pável Dimítrievich Turchanínov , known by the pseudonym Lev Chernyi , was a Russian anarchist theorist, activist and poet, and a leading figure of the Third Russian Revolution. His early thought was individualist, rejecting anarcho-communism as a threat to individual liberty...
(Pavel Dmitrievich Turchaninov). From Nietzsche, they inherited the desire for a complete overturn of all values accepted by bourgeois societypolitical, moral, and cultural. Furthermore, strongly influenced by Max Stirner
Max Stirner
Johann Kaspar Schmidt , better known as Max Stirner , was a German philosopher, who ranks as one of the literary fathers of nihilism, existentialism, post-modernism and anarchism, especially of individualist anarchism...
and Benjamin Tucker
Benjamin Tucker
Benjamin Ricketson Tucker was a proponent of American individualist anarchism in the 19th century, and editor and publisher of the individualist anarchist periodical Liberty.-Summary:Tucker says that he became an anarchist at the age of 18...
, the German and American theorists of individualist anarchism, they demanded the total liberation of the human personality from the fetters of organized society."
Some russian individualists anarchists "found the ultimate expression of their social alienation in violence and crime
Illegalism
Illegalism is an anarchist philosophy that developed primarily in France, Italy, Belgium, and Switzerland during the early 1900s as an outgrowth of individualist anarchism...
, others attached themselves to avant-garde literary and artistic circles, but the majority remained "philosophical" anarchists
Philosophical anarchism
Philosophical anarchism is an anarchist school of thought which contends that the state lacks moral legitimacy while not supporting violence to eliminate it...
who conducted animated parlor discussions and elaborated their individualist theories in ponderous journals and books."
Lev Chernyi
Lev Chernyi
Pável Dimítrievich Turchanínov , known by the pseudonym Lev Chernyi , was a Russian anarchist theorist, activist and poet, and a leading figure of the Third Russian Revolution. His early thought was individualist, rejecting anarcho-communism as a threat to individual liberty...
was an important individualist anarchist involved in resistance against the rise to power of the Bolchevik Party. He adhered mainly to Stirner and the ideas of Benjamin Tucker
Benjamin Tucker
Benjamin Ricketson Tucker was a proponent of American individualist anarchism in the 19th century, and editor and publisher of the individualist anarchist periodical Liberty.-Summary:Tucker says that he became an anarchist at the age of 18...
. In 1907, he published a book entitled Associational Anarchism, in which he advocated the "free association of independent individuals.". On his return from Siberia in 1917 he enjoyed great popularity among Moscow workers as a lecturer. Chernyi was also Secretary of the Moscow Federation of Anarchist Groups, which was formed in March 1917. He was an advocate "for the seizure of private homes", which was an activity seen by the anarchists after the october revolution as direct expropriation on the bourgoise. He died after being accused of participation in an episode in which this group bombed the headquarters of the Moscow Committee of the Communist Party. Although most likely not being really involved in the bombing, he might have died of torture.
Chernyi advocated a Nietzschean overthrow of the values
Transvaluation of values
The revaluation of all values or the transvaluation of all values is a concept from the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche.Elaborating the concept in The Antichrist, Nietzsche asserts that Christianity, not merely as a religion but also as the predominant moral system of the Western world, in fact...
of bourgeois Russian society, and rejected the voluntary communes of anarcho-communist Peter Kropotkin
Peter Kropotkin
Prince Pyotr Alexeyevich Kropotkin was a Russian zoologist, evolutionary theorist, philosopher, economist, geographer, author and one of the world's foremost anarcho-communists. Kropotkin advocated a communist society free from central government and based on voluntary associations between...
as a threat to the freedom of the individual. Scholars including Avrich and Allan Antliff have interpreted this vision of society to have been greatly influenced by the individualist anarchists Max Stirner
Max Stirner
Johann Kaspar Schmidt , better known as Max Stirner , was a German philosopher, who ranks as one of the literary fathers of nihilism, existentialism, post-modernism and anarchism, especially of individualist anarchism...
, and Benjamin Tucker
Benjamin Tucker
Benjamin Ricketson Tucker was a proponent of American individualist anarchism in the 19th century, and editor and publisher of the individualist anarchist periodical Liberty.-Summary:Tucker says that he became an anarchist at the age of 18...
. Subsequent to the book's publication, Chernyi was imprisoned in Siberia
Siberia
Siberia is an extensive region constituting almost all of Northern Asia. Comprising the central and eastern portion of the Russian Federation, it was part of the Soviet Union from its beginning, as its predecessor states, the Tsardom of Russia and the Russian Empire, conquered it during the 16th...
under the Russian Czarist regime for his revolutionary activities.
Alexei Borovoi
On the other hand Aleksei BorovoiAlexei Borovoi
Alexei Alexeyevich Borovoi was a Russian individualist anarchist writer, orator, teacher and propagandist.-Biography:Borovoi was born on October 30, 1875 in Moscow. Starting from 1906, Borovoi lectured on anarchism in different Russian cities....
(1876?-1936)., was a professor of philosophy at Moscow University, "a gifted orator and the author of numerous books, pamphlets, and articles which attempted to reconcile individualist anarchism with the doctrines of syndicallism". He wrote among other theoretical works, Anarkhizm in 1918 just after the october revolution and Anarchism and Law. For him "the chief importance is given not to Anarchism as the aim but to Anarchy
Anarchy
Anarchy , has more than one colloquial definition. In the United States, the term "anarchy" typically is meant to refer to a society which lacks publicly recognized government or violently enforced political authority...
as the continuous quest for the aim". He manifests there that "No social ideal, from the point of view of anarchism, could be referred to as absolute in a sense that supposes it’s the crown of human wisdom, the end of social and ethical quest of man."
Great Britain and Ireland
The EnglishEnglish people
The English are a nation and ethnic group native to England, who speak English. The English identity is of early mediaeval origin, when they were known in Old English as the Anglecynn. England is now a country of the United Kingdom, and the majority of English people in England are British Citizens...
enlightenment
Age of Enlightenment
The Age of Enlightenment was an elite cultural movement of intellectuals in 18th century Europe that sought to mobilize the power of reason in order to reform society and advance knowledge. It promoted intellectual interchange and opposed intolerance and abuses in church and state...
political theorist William Godwin was an important influence early influence as mentioned before.
Wordsworth Donisthorpe
Wordsworth Donisthorpe was an English individualist anarchist and inventor, pioneer of cinematography and chess enthusiast. His father was George E...
, Joseph Hiam Levy, Joseph Greevz Fisher, John Badcock, Jr., Albert Tarn, and Henry Seymour were close to Tucker´s magazine Liberty. In the mid 1880's Seymour published a journal called The Anarchist. and also later took a special interest in free love
Free love
The term free love has been used to describe a social movement that rejects marriage, which is seen as a form of social bondage. The Free Love movement’s initial goal was to separate the state from sexual matters such as marriage, birth control, and adultery...
as he participated in the journal The Adult: A Journal for the Advancement of Freedom in Sexual Relationships. "The Serpent, issued from London...the most prominent English-language egoist journal, was published from 1898 to 1900 with the subtitle 'A Journal of Egoistic Philosophy and Sociology'".
Also philosopher and writer Herbert Read
Herbert Read
Sir Herbert Edward Read, DSO, MC was an English anarchist, poet, and critic of literature and art. He was one of the earliest English writers to take notice of existentialism, and was strongly influenced by proto-existentialist thinker Max Stirner....
wrote on Godwin and, and works such as To Hell With Culture, The Paradox of Anarchism Philosophy of Anarchism, Anarchy & Order; Poetry & Anarchism and My Anarchism. Henry Meulen
Henry Meulen
Henry Meulen was a British individualist anarchist and economist. He was an editor of the periodical called The Individualist, published by the Personal Rights Association and actively promoted the philosophy of free banking...
was notable for his support of free banking
Free banking
Free banking refers to a monetary arrangement in which banks are subject to no special regulations beyond those applicable to most enterprises, and in which they also are free to issue their own paper currency...
. Sidney Parker
Sidney Parker (anarchist)
Sidney Parker, also known as S. E. Parker, is a British egoist individualist anarchist who wrote articles and edited anarchist journals from 1963-1993.- External links :...
is a British
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
egoist who wrote articles and edited anarchist journals from 1963 to 1993 such as Minus One, Egoist, and Ego.
In the hybrid of post-structuralism
Post-structuralism
Post-structuralism is a label formulated by American academics to denote the heterogeneous works of a series of French intellectuals who came to international prominence in the 1960s and '70s...
and anarchism called post-anarchism
Post-anarchism
Post-anarchism or postanarchism is the term used to represent anarchist philosophies developed since the 1980s using post-structuralist and postmodernist approaches. Some prefer to use the term post-structuralist anarchism, so as not to suggest having moved "past" anarchism...
the British
British people
The British are citizens of the United Kingdom, of the Isle of Man, any of the Channel Islands, or of any of the British overseas territories, and their descendants...
Saul Newman
Saul Newman
Saul Newman is a political theorist and central post-anarchist thinker.Newman coined the term "post-anarchism" as a general term for political philosophies filtering 19th century anarchism through a post-structuralist lens, and later popularized it through his 2001 book From Bakunin to Lacan...
has written a lot on Stirner and his similarities to post-structuralism. He writes:
Max Stirner's impact on contemporary political theory is often neglected. However in Stirner's political thinking there can be found a surprising convergence with poststructuralist theory, particularly with regard to the function of power. Andrew Koch, for instance, sees Stirner as a thinker who transcends the Hegelian tradition he is usually placed in, arguing that his work is a precursor poststructuralist ideas about the foundations of knowledge and truth.
Newman has published several essays on Stirner. "War on the State: Stirner and Deleuze's Anarchism" and "Empiricism, pluralism, and politics in Deleuze and Stirner" discusses what he sees are similarities between Stirner's thought and that of Gilles Deleuze
Gilles Deleuze
Gilles Deleuze , was a French philosopher who, from the early 1960s until his death, wrote influentially on philosophy, literature, film, and fine art. His most popular works were the two volumes of Capitalism and Schizophrenia: Anti-Oedipus and A Thousand Plateaus , both co-written with Félix...
. In "Spectres of Stirner: a Contemporary Critique of Ideology" he discusses the conception of ideology in Stirner. In "Stirner and Foucault: Toward a Post-Kantian Freedom" he identifies similarities between Stirner and Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault , born Paul-Michel Foucault , was a French philosopher, social theorist and historian of ideas...
. Also he wrote "Politics of the ego: Stirner's critique of liberalism".
Oscar Wilde
The Irish anarchistAnarchism
Anarchism is generally defined as the political philosophy which holds the state to be undesirable, unnecessary, and harmful, or alternatively as opposing authority in the conduct of human relations...
writer of the Decadent movement
Decadent movement
The Decadent movement was a late 19th century artistic and literary movement of Western Europe. It flourished in France, but also had devotees in England and throughout Europe, as well as in the United States.-Overview:...
Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde
Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was an Irish writer and poet. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s...
influenced individualist anarchists such as Renzo Novatore
Renzo Novatore
- Life :Abele Ricieri Ferrari was born in Arcola, Liguria, Italy on May 12, 1890 in a poor peasant family. He did not adjust to school discipline and quit in the first year never coming back after that. While he worked in his father's farm, he self educated himself with an emphasis in poetry and...
and gained the admiration of Benjamin Tucker
Benjamin Tucker
Benjamin Ricketson Tucker was a proponent of American individualist anarchism in the 19th century, and editor and publisher of the individualist anarchist periodical Liberty.-Summary:Tucker says that he became an anarchist at the age of 18...
. In his important essay The Soul of Man under Socialism
The Soul of Man under Socialism
"The Soul of Man under Socialism" is an 1891 essay by Oscar Wilde in which he expounds an anarchist worldview. The creation of "The Soul of Man" followed Wilde's conversion to anarchist philosophy, following his reading of the works of Peter Kropotkin....
from 1891 he defended socialism as the way to guarantee individualism and so he saw that "With the abolition of private property, then, we shall have true, beautiful, healthy Individualism. Nobody will waste his life in accumulating things, and the symbols for things. One will live. To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all." For anarchist historian George Woodcock
George Woodcock
George Woodcock was a Canadian writer of political biography and history, an anarchist thinker, an essayist and literary critic. He was also a poet, and published several volumes of travel writing. He founded in 1959 the journal Canadian Literature, the first academic journal specifically...
"Wilde's aim in The Soul of Man under Socialism is to seek the society most favorable to the artist...for Wilde art is the supreme end, containing within itself enlightenment and regeneration, to which all else in society must be subordinated...Wilde represents the anarchist as aesthete." Woodocock finds that "The most ambitious contribution to literary anarchism during the 1890's was undoubtedly Oscar Wilde The Soul of Man under Socialism" and finds that it is influenced mainly by the thought of William Godwin.
External links
- L'En Dehors current French individualist anarchist magazine and website which reclaims the inheritance of Zo d'AxaZo d'AxaAlphonse Gallaud de la Pérouse, better known as Zo d'Axa , was an adventurer, anti-militarist, satirist, journalist, and founder of two of the most legendary French magazines, L'EnDehors and La Feuille...
's and Emile ArmandEmile ArmandEmile Armand was the most influential French individualist anarchist at the beginning of the 20th century and also a dedicated free love/polyamory, intentional community, and pacifist/antimilitarist writer, propagandist and activist...
's EnDehorsEnDehorsL'EnDehors is a French individualist anarchist newspaper, created by Zo d'Axa in 1891.Numerous activists contributed to the paper, including Jean Grave, Bernard Lazare, Albert Libertad, Octave Mirbeau, Saint-Pol-Roux, Tristan Bernard, Georges Darien, Lucien Descaves, Sébastien Faure, Félix Fénéon,... - Han Ryner blog
- Han Ryner archive
- NovAtore.it Sito dedicato alla memoria di Renzo Novatore mostly in Italian with a small section in English and includes many of Novatore's works translated into English
- Emile Armand archive
- "E. Armand and "la camaraderie amoureuse" Revolutionary sexualism and the struggle against jealousy" by Francis Ronsin
- The Anarchism of Emile Armand biography and some articles by Armand
- Zo d'Axa archive
- Albert Libertad archive
- Andre Lorulot Reference Archive
- The rebel's dark laughter: the writings of Bruno Filippi