On Stirner, Who Was No Anarchist

From Notes toward an International Libertarian Eco-Socialism by Javier Sethness

I was dismayed to learn recently that the nihilist anti-humanist Max Stirner (real name Johann Kaspar Schmidt, 1806–1856) is still influential among, and even considered acceptable by, some in the anarchist milieu. In this light, let us clarify matters.

After all, Stirner himself admits the following in The Ego and Its Own (also translated as The Unique and its Property, 1844):

“My intercourse with the world, what does it aim at? I want to enjoy it, this is why it must be my property, and this is why I want to win it. I don’t want the freedom, nor the equality of human beings; I want only my power over them, want to make them my property, i.e., make them enjoyable. And if I don’t succeed in that, well, then I also call the power over life and death, which the church and state reserved to themselves—mine.”

Stirner blatantly adds: “Since now my aim is not the overthrow of the established order but my rising up above it, so my intention and action are not a political or social intention and action, but, since they are directed solely toward me and my ownness, an egoistic intention and action.”

In his analysis in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, David Leopold writes that, for Stirner, “there are no moral constraints on how an individual might relate to […] persons and things.” In The Ego and Its Own, Stirner “variously declines to condemn the officer’s widow who strangles her child (281), the man who treats his sister ‘as wife also’ (45), and the murderer who no longer fears his act as a ‘wrong’ (169). In a world in which ‘we owe each other nothing’ (263), it seems that acts of infanticide, incest, and murder, might all turn out to be justified.”

Moreover, responding to Stirner’s proclamation of radical individualism in this polemic, Peter Kropotkin writes that

“it is obvious […] that this kind of individualism, by claiming ‘full development’—not for all members of society, but only for those that would be considered the most gifted, without thinking about the development of all—is merely a disguised return to the monopoly of education that exists today for the few ‘nobles’ and bourgeois, under the patronage of the State. It is a ‘right to full development’ for a privileged minority.”

In parallel, Murray Bookchin writes:

“The Stirnerite egoist, in effect, bids farewell to objective reality, to the facticity of the social [world], and thereby to fundamental social change and all ethical criteria and ideals beyond personal satisfaction amidst the hidden demons of the bourgeois marketplace […]. In its amoralism, this elitism easily lends itself to the unfreedom of the ‘masses’ by ultimately placing them in the custody of the ‘unique ones,’ a logic that may yield a leadership principle characteristic of fascist ideology.”

Likewise, Alexander Reid Ross traced the cross-over between Stirnerite post-leftists and the incipient neo-fascist movement in a 2017 article. In Against the Fascist Creep (2017), he describes Stirner’s white-supremacist views:

“In his well-known work, The Ego and Its Own, Max Stirner expresses a deeply held racist view of world history in which the white individual acts as the apotheosis of all human evolution. The evolutionary mission of the white man for Stirner must develop through ‘two Caucasian ages,’ requiring him to first ‘work out and work off our innate negroidity’ and then inner ‘Mongoloidity (Chineseness), which must likewise be terribly made an end of.’[55] The transcendence of the individual to the world spirit has only been realized through the evolution of the human history from Asia to Europe, Stirner insists.”

Given this constellation, it is no surprise that Stirner’s most influential acolytes in the U.S. in recent generations, Hakim Bey (Peter Lamborn Wilson) and “Dr. Bones,” are well-known pedophiles and rapists. Tellingly anticipating the Trump regime’s present-day crusade on diversity, inclusion, equity, and accessibility (DEIA) initiatives, as well, “Dr. Bones” would often refer to his detractors as the “Woke Left.”

To Leopold’s point, these abusive behaviors are entirely in keeping with Stirner’s dehumanizing prescriptions, which contradict anarchism at the most fundamental level. Hence, anarchists must totally reject Stirner.

 

Comments

anonymous (not verified) Sat, 04/26/2025 - 19:12

Holy smokes... I predict this comment section will be a lot of fun! Especially when the ARR gets thrown in as legit reference, lol

anonymous (not verified) Sat, 04/26/2025 - 20:28

What is there to comment? I disagree with this facile reading of Stirner, and so I subdue it and make it my own. It is nothing to me.

anonymous (not verified) Sat, 04/26/2025 - 21:16

OoooOooh yoU fooOOOOLs, the self-empowering self-relience sprEAds like a plAgue and radiates outwards in a pandemic of joy and dissolves the conventional forms of goverment in a tsunami of unique subjectivities all creating a liquid maelstrom of continuous revolutionary fun. It's soooOooo fUn being a poor down and out or a billionaire individualist with a rich and wealthy internal autonomous constitution.

EmmaAintDead Sat, 04/26/2025 - 22:04

Uninspired reading of Stirner aside, did I miss a new development in the Bones Saga? Since when is he a rapist? That's a big step away from the cheating on his wife with a Facebook friend he did nearly a decade ago. Did this get Leftist Telephone Gamed, or did he pop back up again recently and do something actually worth being mad about?

anonymous (not verified) Sun, 04/27/2025 - 08:32

In reply to by EmmaAintDead

There's no new development in the "Bones Saga" referenced here. The "source" is a Reddit thread that got removed.

I don't see how Bones is that important to this debate about Stirner and Leftist fakesters accusing him of being a fascist and pedo or something. That's a distraction.

anonymous (not verified) Mon, 04/28/2025 - 19:58

"Have yer set this DICK in ya mouth???"

anonymous (not verified) Mon, 04/28/2025 - 20:18

god forbid we take inspiration from a false prophet. long live the eternal science of pure anarchism as brilliantly synthesized and articulated by comrade sethness, shining star of our revolutionary movement, lest our glorious movement be tainted by the bourgeois revisionist cancerous pseudo-anarchism which utters a false word

humanispherian Tue, 04/29/2025 - 14:25

Can anything good be expected from a text that begins "I was dismayed to learn recently..."?

anonymous (not verified) Thu, 05/01/2025 - 15:51

Who the hell is Sethness? Why are they citing ARR and how are they writing this article in 2025? Where did he get completely made up things about Dr Bones? Why is he talking about Dr Bones?

Is this person AI?

Colby Boucher (not verified) Sun, 11/09/2025 - 14:34

What I find stupid is that people attribute The Unique & It's Property to ANY political philosophy, or try to suggest that it was advocating for any political ideology in the first place, anarchism included. Stirner was developing a philosophy of the _self_ and, as you point out, a critique against humanists of the time, or anyone who would appeal to something fundamentally unreal as if it were a fixed law of the universe.

You're absolutely right in your analysis in one sene– Stirner would absolutely (and did) laugh at a moralized "we must destroy hierarchy, because hierarchy is eeevil" sort of anarchism. He couldn't stand that shit. Yeah, in his rant about what people would call him an "evil egoist" for, he includes using his power over another human being.

But, like. That doesn't mean he couldn't have been an anarchist. That doesn't even mean "hierarchy is bad" couldn't be a reasonable conclusion to come to– he'd just want a damn good reason to believe that it would be in his self-interest to behave in that way.

Stirner only wanted more legitimately objective, unspooked deliberation. If everyone actually did do what they wished, what they really wished, would you end up with an anarchist society where any form of hierarchy is avoided entirely, or a "dictatorship of the proletariat" where the many tear down the few and steal their toilet paper? Part of most people's self-interest, in any case, would involve NOT doing whatever would get their shit kicked in. And if everyone really acted their own interests, you WOULD get your shit collectively kicked in for SOMETHING. Stirner might have had personal opinions on that question but they're a few leaps ahead of what his work was trying to establish.

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