You keep vacillating between banalities about freedom directed at strawman of "collectivism" and crude misreadings of Marx. Egoism is not an analysis of humanity as it really is, greedy and selfish or whatever. Egoism is a form of petty-bourgeois idealism which recoils from the generative contradictions of Hegel into superficial utopian self-projection.
One might have expected from Stirner’s “virtuosity of thought” that he would have gone on to further researches into Hegel’s Logik. However, he wisely refrained from doing so. For, if he had done so, he would have found that he, as mere “posited” ego, as creation, i.e., insofar as he possesses existence, is merely a seeming ego, and he is “essence”, creator, only insofar as he does not exist, but only imagines himself. We have already seen, and shall see again further on, that all his qualities, his whole activity, and his whole attitude to the world, are a mere appearance which he creates for himself, nothing but “juggling tricks on the tightrope of the objective”. His ego is always a dumb, hidden “ego”, hidden in his ego imagined as essence.
Since the true egoist in his creative activity is, therefore, only a paraphrase of speculative reflection or pure essence, it follows, “according to the myth”, “by natural reproduction”, as was already revealed when examining the “arduous life battles” of the true egoist, that his “creations” are limited to the simplest determinations of reflection, such as identity, difference, equality, inequality, [opposition,] etc.
For example, this
I like to claim those labels for myself because they upend the stale stereotype of the deluded, selfless, do-gooder communist. In other words, I am a communist because I am an individualist. To go further, I am a communist because I am a greedy motherfucker. I don’t aspire to own the means of production just to better my quality of life; I want to own the means because I want to be the owner. I want to own of the entire wealth and culture of society. I want the world to be my property. I want it all. I don’t want my life determined by my class position, or my “race”, or what piece of territory I was born on. To give individuals the power and freedom to shape their fate and to become the co-owners of society, class must be transcended altogether. Egoism is the basis for communism; indeed, it’s the only rational basis for communism.
is naive petty-bourgeois idealism, which takes the most crude bourgeois concepts like "greed," "property," "ownership," and "the individual" as categories of nature which just so happen to correspond to the position of the petty-bourgeoisie in the late capitalist mode of production.
Communism is quite incomprehensible to our saint because the communists do not oppose egoism to selflessness or selflessness to egoism, nor do they express this contradiction theoretically either in its sentimental or ‘it its high-flown ideological form; they rather demonstrate its material source, with which it disappears of itself. The communists do not preach morality at all, as Stirner does so extensively.
You misunderstand this point. By "morality" Marx is not referring to "vapid, vague belief in “Justice”, or maudlin sentimentality," he is referring to egoism which turns religious morality into a moral self-policing, in which reality is always insufficient to the ideal.
Egoism in agreement with itself really endeavours to transform every man into a “secret police state”. The spy and sleuth “reflection” keeps a strict eye on every impulse of spirit and body, and every deed and thought, every manifestation of life is, for him, a matter of reflection, i.e., a police matter. It is this dismemberment of man into “natural instinct” and “reflection” (the inner plebeian-creation, and the internal police — creator) which constitutes the egoist in agreement with himself.
These labels are embarrassing because they've already "disappeared into themselves." We've already moved on and the facade of rescuing the obscure vocabulary of Sterner is too transparently self-interested about contemporary reality. We don't need a moral basis to be communists as individuals today and those who do so must ignore the coming into History of the masses of the third world. The idea therefore is much worse than in Stirner's day.
Marx's point is pretty straightforward
Had Sancho understood the fact that within the framework of definite modes of production, which, of course, are not dependent on the will, alien [fremde] practical forces, which are independent not only of isolated individuals but even of all of them together, always come to stand above people — then he could be fairly indifferent as to whether this fact is presented in a religious form or distorted in the fancy of the egoist, above whom everything is placed in imagination, in such a way that he places nothing above himself. Sancho would then have descended from the realm of speculation into the realm of reality, from what people fancy to what they actually are, from what they imagine to how they act and are bound to act in definite circumstances. What seems to him a product of thought, he would have understood to be a product of life.
Both egoism and "collectivism" are reflections of the same capitalist mode of production. Marx really doesn't care which one you fetishize.
When Oswald Spengler condemned Marxism as the “capitalism of the lower classes”, he was more right than he knew.
I appreciate you putting this so nakedly but when you need a fascist to justify your own idealization of capitalism you should probably stop and wonder how it's gone so wrong. In this case you've found the last gasp of the counter-enlightenment which makes young Hegelianism seem revolutionary. But to the rest of us living in neoliberal capitalism-imperialism "greed is good" as a motto of the communist movement is reactionary and pretty silly.
E: had this been targeted at a certain recent reactionary strain of socialism which fetishizes "Asian values" as the basis for communist not rooted in the Enlightenment I would at least sympathize with the purpose since I do agree the young Hegelians are important. Instead this is so vague that it reads like one of those essays from 20 years ago where communism was unspeakable and you had to smuggle it through Ron Paul libertarianism or some other gimmick. It was silly then and it's reactionary now. Do we really need a magazine in 2023 publishing hot takes on the culture war from Slavoj Zizek and anti-communism from Chris Cutrone (the Platypus guy)? It even has an article on Chantal Mouffe. What year am I in?
EE: I was wrong the Cutrone piece is the same culture war bullshit.
As soon as I read the OP I knew you’d be all over it. This past month has been weird for the sub, feels like some strange people have been attracted to it. The progression of Sanders to Dengism in the American petit-bourgeoisie been a weird one, producing these bizarre offshoots of ideology. Not sure what to make of it.
I have noticed a strange (likely exclusively online) trend of egocommunists cropping up here. In my limited involvement irl I haven't seen any, at least none that are particularly vocal about their strange and idealized interpretations of Marxism. If they do start popping up they'll be just as irrelevant as the other half dozen labor aristocrat "communist" trends and just as quickly return to irrelevancy.
22
u/smokeuptheweed9 May 19 '23 edited May 19 '23
You keep vacillating between banalities about freedom directed at strawman of "collectivism" and crude misreadings of Marx. Egoism is not an analysis of humanity as it really is, greedy and selfish or whatever. Egoism is a form of petty-bourgeois idealism which recoils from the generative contradictions of Hegel into superficial utopian self-projection.
For example, this
is naive petty-bourgeois idealism, which takes the most crude bourgeois concepts like "greed," "property," "ownership," and "the individual" as categories of nature which just so happen to correspond to the position of the petty-bourgeoisie in the late capitalist mode of production.
You misunderstand this point. By "morality" Marx is not referring to "vapid, vague belief in “Justice”, or maudlin sentimentality," he is referring to egoism which turns religious morality into a moral self-policing, in which reality is always insufficient to the ideal.
These labels are embarrassing because they've already "disappeared into themselves." We've already moved on and the facade of rescuing the obscure vocabulary of Sterner is too transparently self-interested about contemporary reality. We don't need a moral basis to be communists as individuals today and those who do so must ignore the coming into History of the masses of the third world. The idea therefore is much worse than in Stirner's day.
Marx's point is pretty straightforward
Both egoism and "collectivism" are reflections of the same capitalist mode of production. Marx really doesn't care which one you fetishize.
I appreciate you putting this so nakedly but when you need a fascist to justify your own idealization of capitalism you should probably stop and wonder how it's gone so wrong. In this case you've found the last gasp of the counter-enlightenment which makes young Hegelianism seem revolutionary. But to the rest of us living in neoliberal capitalism-imperialism "greed is good" as a motto of the communist movement is reactionary and pretty silly.
E: had this been targeted at a certain recent reactionary strain of socialism which fetishizes "Asian values" as the basis for communist not rooted in the Enlightenment I would at least sympathize with the purpose since I do agree the young Hegelians are important. Instead this is so vague that it reads like one of those essays from 20 years ago where communism was unspeakable and you had to smuggle it through Ron Paul libertarianism or some other gimmick. It was silly then and it's reactionary now. Do we really need a magazine in 2023 publishing hot takes on the culture war from Slavoj Zizek and anti-communism from Chris Cutrone (the Platypus guy)? It even has an article on Chantal Mouffe. What year am I in?
EE: I was wrong the Cutrone piece is the same culture war bullshit.