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Egoism Explained:
By: Toivo Koivisto

Egoism is a radical leftist, anti-authoritarian, individualist ideology created by Max Stirner. Most of its principles are laid out in his book, “The Ego and Its Own.”

Firstly, it is clear that Stirner highly values the individual. The ego. The creative nothing. (To explain this term, Stirner suggests that we are by nature, nothing. We can reject or accept concepts. We can change, unlike fixed attributes and definitions, the norms of moral society. It is in this nothingness that we are able to become anything in a creative manner, hence the term, “creative nothing.”)
To elaborate on this idea of individualism, Stirner believed in the idea of “ownness” [Eigenheit], a type of autonomy. He values ‘ownness’ not as one good amongst many, nor as the most important of several goods, but rather, as the only good. He adopts an account of self-mastery which is incompatible with the existence of any legitimate obligations to others. Stirner recognizes that various things in life attempt to chain down the individual, so to speak. Most of these things are known as “spooks.” Spooks are things that are not exactly rooted in reality, but still control the individual in some way. This includes things such as religion. People who accept spooks are “possessed.” Religion can involve placing a being or essence over one and controlling them in some way. God and Man are examples of this. Stirner said the concern of a god was not his concern, and referred to Man as an abstraction in which all unique individuals are submerged and lost. “Liberalism is a religion because it separates my essence from me and sets it above me, because it exalts ‘Man’ to the same extent as any other religion does to God... it sets me beneath Man.” Stirner discusses how spooks influence one’s life, going on about the development of human beings.

Human history is reduced to successive epochs of realism, (the ancient/pre-Christian world,) idealism, (the modern, or Christian world,) and egoism (the future world.) He states that, as a child, people start out questioning authority, resisting things with their wits, courage, childlike determination, overall serving an egoistic cause, as things such as morality have not been quite forced upon them yet, as children tend to rebel. Later on in life, though, people are forced to sacrifice their individuality to spooks and the oppression of hierarchy. In contrast, in the stage of the egoistic future, they primarily serve an egoistic cause once again, as they don’t quite have to sacrifice their mind to things such as god and morality- thinking on their own is much easier. Though, the individual can only truly live individually- serve themselves- when all forms of oppression are abolished and an egoist society is established. Stirner describes the relationship between the individual and society as similar to that of the relationship between a mother and her child. As the individual develops a mature preference for a less suffocating environment, it must throw off the claims of society, which seeks to keep it in a subordinate position. It is said that, over all, everyone is an egoist, but only some recognize it, with those who don’t being unconscious egoists, and those who do being conscious egoists. Stirner repeatedly attacked the structure of society, which was often found to be upheld by spooks, such as the state. Stirner attacked such aspects of capitalism such as private property, the division of labor, the state, and religion. Stirner took notice of the fact that the division of labor resulting from private property had a deadening effect on the ego and the individuality of the worker. Though Stirner’s individualism could be mistaken as a part of a lean towards capitalism, this is false, as Stirner’s teachings can only truly be interpreted in a leftist sense, overall. “If labor becomes free, the state is lost.” Stirner especially focused upon the state, saying that the state clams to be sovereign over a given area, while the ego should be sovereign over itself and that which it uses. He had much contempt for those who supported the state and taxation.

To Stirner, the state and its hierarchy was unacceptable in all of its forms. “Hierarchy is domination of thoughts, domination of mind!” Stirner further rejects spooks such as morality to the point where he rejects promises. To be bound by “my will of yesterday,” he says, would be to turn his particular expression of will into his commander. It would be to freeze his will. He denies that, “because I was a fool yesterday, I must remain such.” Individuals, to Stirner, must be willing to break their word for his own sake. Stirner also further expands on his ideas of autonomy by discussing his concept of the “union of egoists,” which, although a tad vague, can be used to imagine how most of society would be organized. The egoistic future is said to consist not of isolated individuals, but rather, in relationships of “uniting,” that is, in impermanent connections between individuals who themselves remain independent and self-determining. It does not involve the subordination of the individual, but rather, it acts as a constantly shifting alliance which enables individuals to unite without loss of sovereignty. It is an association whose good is solely the advantage that the individuals concerned may derive for the pursuit of their individual goals. Stirner believed that as more and more people become egoists, conflict in society will decrease as each individual recognizes the uniqueness of others, thus ensuring a suitable environment within which they can co-operate. (Or find “truces” in the “war of all against all.”) The union of egoists would be based on free agreement, being spontaneous and voluntary associations drawn together out of the mutual interests of those involved, who would “care best for their welfare if they unite with others.” Stirner uses the idea of children at play as an example of how such a thing would work, playing together with someone else and leaving to somewhere else on the playground every now and then. Stirner lashes out against relationships that defy such concepts of consent and sacrificing one’s sovereignty, taking notice of how relationships can be good and strangely self-serving, and how other relationships can be bad and cause one to lose their independence as a person. One of these is love. He says that a good form of love is one in which it benefits both people without it harming one of the romantic individuals’ egos. Though an act such as love may be viewed as very altruistic, Stirner said that it could actually be motivated by self-interest. All nice acts can be, in theory, according to Stirner. For example, being nice to someone may be motivated by the fact that one wants to feel they are a good, kind person, thus pleasing their confidence, their ego. Stirner also describes the egoist’s connection to the wider world when thinking about certain forms of relationships. He goes on about the egoist’s relation of “ownership” to the wider world. This notion of “egoistic property” is not to be confused with concepts such as private property or collective ownership. Instead, it rests on notions of right, and involve claims to be exclusivity or constraints on use, which Stirner rejects. Egoistic property is instead constituted by the “unlimited dominion” of individuals over the world, by which Stirner appears to mean that there are no moral constraints on how an individual might relate to things and people. The egoist, he suggests, views others as mostly just “nothing but — my food, even as I am fed upon and turned to use by you.”

Stirner could be described as a libertarian leftist of sorts, with his ideas mostly being interpreted in an Anarchist form. He urged the individual to think for themselves and seek their own paths, with many Stirnerite egoists diverging from Stirner in various ways, refusing to stick to traditional political identifications, as to express their creativity and self-mastery over concepts such as sticking to moral traditions of sorts. "I am happy to be called a Stirnerite anarchist, provided 'Stirnerite' means one who agrees with Stirner's general drift, not one who agrees with Stirner's every word. Please judge my arguments on their merits, not on the merits of Stirner's arguments, and not by the test of whether I conform to Stirner.” [“Anarchism and Selfishness”, pp. 251-9, The Raven, no. 3, p 259fn] All individuals are unique and should reject any attempts to restrict or deny their uniqueness. The state defies this, and thus, Stirner urges revolt against such a form of authority. In the end, it becomes clear that, though at first glance, Stirner seems like a libertarian in the capitalist-leaning sense due to his thoughts on individualism, he was, indeed, a leftist, believing in self-management, mutual aid, or, rather, self-interest and solidarity, and coming to agreements based upon mutual respect and social equality, thus ensuring non-hierarchical relationships. By removing hierarchy, the ego is free to experience and utilize the full potential of others. He rejected capitalism, clearly, and the tyranny that naturally comes with it, believing that the seemingly endless indulgence in material goods that we see in capitalist society has the potential to empower an external object and disempower the ego, thus rejecting the control of others by the fixed ideas that attempt to rule over them, and advocating that individuals not be ruled by their own desires and egoistical appetites. Even such ideas as reason and rationality and human constructs such as language, to Stirner, could be used against the interests of the individual, warning that they can be fixed ideas that can strictly dictate human action.

Freedom, to Stirner, was not a state of mind, but rather, freedom is inseparable from the physical. Freedom is generally defined as breaking away from something, liberation- whilst ownership is generally defined as taking something by force. Stirner recognized materialism as an individualist philosophy that takes notice of man, his mind, as well as “humanity.” Stirner took notice of commodification, mystification, and abstraction, however, he focused more on man and his mind, the idea that man has become commodified is likely an area where Marx and Stirner would have agreed, though, the cause of this commodification is where their thinking would have differed. In the eyes of Stirner, thoughts were simply products of the brain, a physical thing, therefore, man and his mind were physical things. Mind is necessarily individual. “The state, society, humanity, the church,” and so on all connote the concept that groups rather than individuals possess a singular physicality. Stirner boldly rejects these institutions as spooks of the mind, immaterial, and abstract concepts that deserve to be done away with. Instead, one should state, “I alone am corporeal.” In this rejection of such material groups, Stirner alleges that man alone, the individual, is corporeal, material and tangible, unlike the abstract non-physical concepts such as society that man has agreed to build up in his mind, and are more often than not temporary concepts. From this, it’s fair to state that Stirner found Marxist materialism to be unacceptable, as labor and its product and such relations were not material to begin with, therefore, they could not be abstracted away- they were already abstractions to begin with. Stirner’s ideas could be considered a much more extreme rejection of Platonism, (the theory that numbers or other abstract objects are objective, timeless entities, independent of the physical world and of the symbols used to represent them.) It could be called “social nominalism.” The idea that mankind has a duty to pursue a more perfect humanity has enslaved man, done the abstractions, the fetishizing, the commodification of man. Man is commodified in his chase after the idea of a god-like perfection of humanity, which is held over and against him like keys to an infant by the abstract, intangible, immaterial, and truly incorporeal politics of the church, state, and society. Thus, humanity has become an abstraction, no longer grounded in reality, but instead a mere utopian, unachievable concept. In that subtraction, our humanity has been stolen from us, and has in fact become instead a mere utopian, unachievable concept. Our humanity has become our enemy. What was so certain to man is now an abstract, fetishized example, and is not only held over and above him, but it can be used to punish him for not meeting its perfect standards. Stirner recommended that man take back what was taken him by the immaterial, the intangible, the incorporeal, the state, the church, society, the corporate world, and all that stands in the way of the individual. These falsely corporeal institutions have stolen our very ownership. They have stolen that which can only belong to the individual, that which has the quality of being our own, the material, the bodily, the tangible, and the corporeal.

“The question runs not how one can acquire life, but how one can squander it, enjoy it; or, not how one is to produce the true self in himself, but how one is to dissolve himself, to live himself out.”

Sources:
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/max-stirner-the-ego-and-his-own https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/max-stirner/#Bib http://www.infoshop.org/AnarchistFAQSectionG6