David Leopold - A Left-hegelian Anarchism

It is a commonplace to observe that the left-Hegelian Max Stirner (1806–56) is a little-known figure in the history of political and philosophical thought. However, that obscurity should not be exaggerated. The author of Der Einzige und sein Eigentum (a work known in English as The Ego and Its Own) is not only familiar to certain rather specialised and largely academic circles—those with an interest in Hegelianism, for example, or in the early intellectual development of Karl Marx (1818–83)—he is also, and more widely, known as a member of, and influence upon, the anarchist tradition. Stirner’s best-known work is often excerpted in anthologies of anarchist writings, and his name is regularly included as part of the modern pantheon in historically orientated surveys of anarchist thought.[1]

This characterisation of Stirner as an anarchist forms the subject of the present paper. I am interested in its plausibility, in what kind of an anarchist Stirner might be, and in the nature and worth of his ideas both about the state and what might replace it.

The anarchist tradition is a diverse one, and any account of the core beliefs that its members share is likely to be contentious. The account which I utilise here is both minimal and negative. Namely, that anarchists share a disapproval of the state, and, more precisely, maintain that the state is an illegitimate institution. This brief statement of anarchist beliefs has a number of advantages: it is supported in the literature; it has an etymological rationale; and (unlike some more expansive definitions) it stands a chance of including the considerable variety of anarchist positions.[2]

Stirner’s account of the state would appear to fit this definition of anarchism with little straining. In The Ego and Its Own, he portrays the state as a repressive and illegitimate institution, whose “sole purpose” is “to limit, tame, subordinate the individual.”[3] This basic picture is reiterated in a bewildering variety of images. The state is variously described as: a collection of “snares and nets” set for the individual to run into;[4] a “machine” directing the “clockwork” of individual minds “none of which follow their own impulse”;[5] the “devil” demanding that the individual pledge his very soul to it;[6] a stern father (“Papa State”) keen to discipline his “children”;[7] the “king of beasts” waiting to turn against the individual “with all the force of its ‘lion-paws’ and ‘eagle-claws’ ”;[8] and “God,” who, requiring faith and prescribing behaviour, would dominate and “drive away” the individual’s own spirit.[9]

This fundamental antipathy between state and individual is, on Stirner’s account, resistant to mediation. He maintains not only that “we two, the state and I, are enemies,” but also that these two protagonists are irreconcilable.[10] There are only two possible outcomes in the conflict between us: the defeat of “it or I.”[11]

Stirner identifies the state as illegitimate. He condemns all states as “despots” which seek to make a “slave” of the individual, and insists that such slavery is never justified.[12] “No one,” he remarks, “has any business to command my actions, to say what course I shall pursue and set up a code to govern it.”[13]

Note that although Stirner condemns all states as despotisms, he does not fail to discriminate between state forms. He acknowledges that there are differences in the degree of despotism that different states exercise over the individual. Interestingly, it is the modern state which is said to be more despotic than its predecessors. Stirner replaces the familiar portrait of the French Revolution as embodying a transition from absolute to limited government, with an account of the Revolution as having “effected the transformation of limited monarchy into absolute monarchy.”[14] The moderns may be “zealots” for reason rather than faith, but their enthusiasm for playing the “guardian” over the individual, he suggests, is at least as great as that of “the most absolute rulers” of feudalism. Moreover, the means at the disposal of the moderns in the pursuit of that paternalism are much greater.[15] Under feudalism the individual was separated from the state by a series of intermediaries (corporations, nobility, cities, and so on) which acted as countervailing powers limiting the monarch. In removing the privileges of these intermediaries, the Revolution freed the state from the constraints of “a thousand little lords.”[16] In this way, Stirner suggests that it was the bourgeoisie who had finally realised the dream of absolutists throughout the centuries, namely “to find that absolute lord beside whom no other lords and lordlings any longer exist to clip his power.”[17]

Stirner may endorse the minimal and negative anarchist consensus that the state is illegitimate, but there are important areas of dispute amongst anarchists about the proper interpretation of that claim. Following the account of A. John Simmons, two central areas of disagreement can be identified.[18]

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