Question on Stirner

[Fawkes]

In The Ego and His Own, what exactly is Stirner referring to when he talks of "association"? I believe the version I have is abridged and seems to have cut out a pretty crucial segment.

[JazzRemington]

By "association" he meant the free association of people (or egos, as he said sometimes). Stirner favored associations because they were (theoretically) freely initiated by people for the purpose of using each other for some kind of gain. This was different from a party or other kinds of grouping, because Stirner believed that one gives everything to the organization and receives little to nothing in return, at the expense of individuality (which I think was important for Stirner).

[Amphictyonis]

In The Ego and His Own, what exactly is Stirner referring to when he talks of "association"? I believe the version I have is abridged and seems to have cut out a pretty crucial segment.

A 'union of equals'.

Sartre struggled with the same concepts of freedom as you can see in the first few seconds of each of these clips-


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Stirner was a sort of anarchist though not really. He was more of an extreme individualist but didn't support private property, wage slavery, rent or interest. During the debates he had with Marx and Engels he would routinely call Marx authoritarian. Indeed Bakunin drew much of his views from Stirner. If you read Ego And Its Own through to the end it almost sounds as if he's not advocating abject egoism. The original question - I think he was advocating a 'union of equals' where cooperation would be voluntary between individuals rather than institutionally imposed.

[renzo_novatore]

Stirner's idea of association, as was said before, would be a free association of people, of self realized egoists who would use each other for their own benefit. You know, the act of falling in love is romanticized as being completely selfless, but this is wrong - it is incredibly selfish and it is this type of selfishness that would bring about a union of egoists. Stirner didn't say what this union would look like. He, obviously, was not fond of idealizing and establishing fixed dogmas. But, he did indeed think that the working class should rise and take over the means of production so that production could take place for their own benefit, rather than selflessly spending their days living for the sake of capitalists.


Indeed Bakunin drew much of his views from Stirner.

Holy crap! Really? Bakunin drew much of his views from Stirner??? I've read a lot of Bakunin, I've never heard him mention Stirner at all. Could you provide some evidence? I always have felt that they're ideas were completely compatible. That would be so cool if this is true!


If you read Ego And Its Own through to the end it almost sounds as if he's not advocating abject egoism.

I 100% agree with this. Max Stirner is not Ragnar Redbeard. He never at all advocated a war of all against all. If you've read Kropotkin's Mutual Aid, and also just about every anthropologist studying early man, man is a social, altruistic animal who tries to help out his fellow man instead of trying to rule over everyone else. Stirner was saying that we should be who we naturally are and so if we're naturally altruistic caring animals as Kropotkin said, then trying to compete with others and live at their expense would simply be a "spook."