MAP Forum

Egoism as a tactic we can take! Especially when vanguardists (and their "Good Educations") and other such GROANups come along trying to browbeat you into subordinating your intuition/spontaneity into their limiting ideas of "Proper" activity leading allegedly to liberation.

Excerpts:
(...)
"Anarchists are opposed to authority both from below and from above. They do not demand power for the masses, but seek to destroy all power and to decompose these masses into individuals who are masters of their own lives… Anarchy is the aggregation of innumerable and varied forms of life lived in solitude or in free association… It is not by organizing into parties that one struggles for anarchy, nor by mass action which, as has been shown, overthrows one barracks only to create another. It is by the revolt of individuals alone or in small groups, who oppose society, impede its functioning and cause its disintegration.
(...)
"...his book is designed to provoke its readers, to bring our awareness to the egoist side of the anarchist family tree, an insistently forceful elbowing past the Leftist gatekeepers into the festivities.
(...)
"One of the purposes of compiling these outsider voices is to help relieve anti-authoritarians of the burden of carrying the impossible load of universal emancipation (this leftist ideal of herd-life that undermines our individual strength) and to help re-awaken the slumbering dragon of insurrectionary egoism. These are the voices of uncompromising individualists, to whom no topic is taboo or off-limits, voices that have stayed obscure until now, but for which the myriad complexities of our current era provide an excellent context for a re-appearance. What ultimately emerges from these writings is a vision of anarchy that is non-utopian, non-idealist, and decidedly non-leftist..."
(...)

Source:
Enemies of Society: book review on individualist and egoist thought

anarchist of love wrote: Sat Apr 11, 2026 3:40 am Egoism as a tactic we can take! Especially when vanguardists (and their "Good Educations") and other such GROANups come along trying to browbeat you into subordinating your intuition/spontaneity into their limiting ideas of "Proper" activity leading allegedly to liberation.

Excerpts:
(...)
"Anarchists are opposed to authority both from below and from above. They do not demand power for the masses, but seek to destroy all power and to decompose these masses into individuals who are masters of their own lives… Anarchy is the aggregation of innumerable and varied forms of life lived in solitude or in free association… It is not by organizing into parties that one struggles for anarchy, nor by mass action which, as has been shown, overthrows one barracks only to create another. It is by the revolt of individuals alone or in small groups, who oppose society, impede its functioning and cause its disintegration.
(...)
"...his book is designed to provoke its readers, to bring our awareness to the egoist side of the anarchist family tree, an insistently forceful elbowing past the Leftist gatekeepers into the festivities.
(...)
"One of the purposes of compiling these outsider voices is to help relieve anti-authoritarians of the burden of carrying the impossible load of universal emancipation (this leftist ideal of herd-life that undermines our individual strength) and to help re-awaken the slumbering dragon of insurrectionary egoism. These are the voices of uncompromising individualists, to whom no topic is taboo or off-limits, voices that have stayed obscure until now, but for which the myriad complexities of our current era provide an excellent context for a re-appearance. What ultimately emerges from these writings is a vision of anarchy that is non-utopian, non-idealist, and decidedly non-leftist..."
(...)

Source:
Enemies of Society: book review on individualist and egoist thought

Usually I struggle to understand your post but now I understand what are you saying, and I share similar and the importance of egoist thinking and how it contrast from collectivist anarchism as it rejects "from each according to his ability to each according to his need" Max Stiner's ideas are useful but they run into the problem of nihilism because they reject all fixed morality including our own moral concerns, so Stiner's ideology can't be used to justify any fixed conclusion. Also in Stiner's worldview the base is "Might Makes Right" and the only thing standing in the way is a union or egos with peaceful arrangements/contracts, but nothing prevents a union of dangerous egos from raping and pillaging that is the problem.


Overall though nuance exist I'd say there is a 1 to 5 spectrum of left to right political philosophies in the west. Five being the furthest Darwinian and 1 being the most collectivist.

1) From each according to his ability to each according to his need - same as 4 above accept everyone is expected to participate comunally
2) Human rights, life, liberty, property and right to safety, education, housing, food
3) Natural rights, life liberty property provided by a state
4) AnCap Version of natural rights, where you have the right to life, liberty and property but you need to figure out how to get them yourself
5) Egoism, no rights but what you can defend

Most of Europe is 2 and America is 2.7. And of course exceptions exist like authoritarian right wing regimes making things worse and distorted, as in example you don't have the right to legally look at child porn.

Overall good post. Stiner is a cool historic figure we can learn from. His philosophy is based, inspired others I admire, but it is a tragedy his milk co-op failed.

I am interested in post left anarchism as well. But unlike you I believe global warming is real and covid vaccines are of value to most people.