The Dilemma of Leninists: Research or Regurgitation?

From Anarchist Writers
June 17, 2024

A review of a book by a leading Trotskyist which shows his ignorance of anarchism. It shows the flaws within his account of Bakunin and Kropotkin plus discusses the roots of a mentality which allows someone to write about a subject (anarchism) which they clearly known next to nothing about.

All things are nothing to me, on Immediatism Podcast

The entire book, All Things Are Nothing to Me: The Unique Philosophy of Max Stirner, by Jacob Blumenfeld, is read across these fifteen episodes from Immediatism podcast. Start with either the Introduction or Reading Max Stirner. The episodes are labeled so as to serve as a topical resource. Each is 30 or fewer minutes long and starts with a brief intro recapping the previous episode. For a shorter sample of Jacob Blumenfeld's analysis, enjoy just the final two episodes, which stand on their own as one essay on Stirner, Marx, and Communism.

Anti-Engels (or Anti-Anti-Duhring Aktion)

from Center for a Stateless Society

by William Gillis

Recent years have seen a resurrection of a Great Man Of History Marxist scholasticism that fixates on some (easily accessible) Original Core Texts of supposed genius and discards all the complicated stuff afterwards, certainly everything in recent decades. This impulse is the product of a mass flocking to radical leftism wherein new recruits have little interest in assimilating to existing discourses. A “return to the masters” thus serves as a run-around of various gatekeepers and a shrinking of required reading lists. It also enables people to use online historical archives on their own, without much social immersion. Onboarding to the tacit knowledge, prefigurative experience, and diffuse zine-based discourses of anarchism has always been a many-years long process. The onboarding process to academic Marxism — while more hierarchically structured — is likewise similarly involved.

Enemies Of The Logic Of Totalitarianism

from Eco Revolt

I generally describe my anarchist-philosophy as ontological and one of my reasons for this is due to my lack of belief in authority, with my basic position being that all-is-(actually-)anarchy – the attempt at assuming authority I encounter as an admission of being-powerless. As I do not encounter authority as any-Thing with any meaningful existence, my rebellion is directed towards non-conformity towards totalitarianism (and I consider Daniel Quinn’s definition of civilisation as totalitarian-agriculture to be, basically, right)

Three Stirner Pieces, on Immediatism podcast

Listener feedback has shaped what is being read on Immediatism, lately. These two pamphlets and a book chapter each add something original to discussions around Stirner's ideas and works. "Mutual Utilization: Relationship and Revolt in Max Stirner," by Massimo Passamani, is focused on interpersonal relationships as theorized in Stirner, and the connection to a revolutionary stance.

The Cost of Power and Hierarchy

from The Commoner

On April 5th, 1887, Lord John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton proclaimed, ‘Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.’ Obviously, we could poke fun at the evident contradiction of the prestigious position Lord Acton held and the intent and meaning of the quote, and if we were to get into Lord Acton’s politics, it would be incredibly difficult to take his word seriously when speaking on the subject of power. However, this isn’t about Lord Acton, this is about the truism that power corrupts. Yet in contemporary discourse, not everyone sees it as a truism. It is still a highly contested claim in many circles, and I’d like to attempt to settle the issue if I can. I’d like to examine some of the early conceptualisations of consciousness and psychology in the field of philosophy and relate that to current discoveries in modern science. I’d then like to loop back around to show how this is all relevant when considering the claims that have been consistently made by anarchists for as long as the political philosophy has existed.

Price on Blumenfeld

From H-Socialisms by Wayne Price

'All Things Are Nothing to Me: The Unique Philosophy of Max Stirner'

Max Stirner was the pen name of Johann Kasper Schmidt (1806-56). He was part of a milieu of young philosophers who sought to develop further the philosophy of the great German thinker Georg W. F. Hegel, who had died in 1831. This milieu has been referred to as the Young Hegelians or Left Hegelians. While Hegel’s system had solidified into a reactionary form, they mainly tried to rework it in more humanistic, naturalistic, and democratic directions. The most well-known of these young men today (there were women in the grouping, but their names have dropped out of history) are Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. (Engels had been a personal friend of Stirner’s for a time.) Michael Bakunin—later a founder of revolutionary socialist-anarchism—also studied Hegel and was in contact with this milieu.

Subscribe to Marx