Max Stirner, Ferdinand Tönnies and Notions of Community

WRITING in his 1844 work, The Ego and Its Own, anarcho-individualist philosopher Max Stirner (1806-1856) declared that

“we two, the state and I, are enemies. I, the egoist, have not at heart the welfare of this 'human society'. I sacrifice nothing to it, I only utilize it; but to be able to utilize it completely I transform it rather into my property and my creature; that is, I annihilate it, and form in its place the Union of Egoists.”

Using the example of people who give their allegiance to a religion of one form or another, Stirner went on to say that

“every one is an egoist and of paramount importance to himself. The Jewish is not the purely egoistic, because the Jew still devotes himself to Jehovah; the Christian is not, because the Christian lives on the grace of God and subjects himself to him. As Jew and as Christian alike a man satisfies only certain of his wants, only a certain need, not himself: a half-egoism, because the egoism of a half-man, who is half he, half Jew, or half his own proprietor, half a slave. Therefore, too, Jew and Christian always half-way exclude each other; as men they recognize each other, as slaves they exclude each other, because they are servants of two different masters. If they could be complete egoists, they would exclude each other wholly and hold together so much the more firmly.”

A liberal might argue that both Christian and Jew must set aside their religious differences and embrace a common 'humanity,' but what Stirner proposes is far more radical: unity in diversity. Indeed, rather than simply exchange one 'spook' for another, egoism is achieved by recognising the power of one's own capabilities. Whilst there are those who, like myself, favour a more holistic interpretation of Anarchism and others who prefer the kind of individualist egoism advocated by Stirner, it is nonetheless the case that National-Anarchism appears to have the answer to this seemingly intractable problem.

Appreciating that it is possible for an individual to feel part of an organic whole and yet nonetheless retain his or her individuality, ties in very nicely with Stirner's 'union of egoists'. Due to our role as an umbrella grouping comprised of people from a variety of different political backgrounds who have set aside their differences to work for radical decentralisation and real alternatives to statism and globalisation, the supporters and fellow travellers within the National-Anarchist milieu include Post-Leftists, anti-capitalists, Christian anarchists, racial separatists, anarcho-primitivists, former nationalists, anti-fascists, ex-fascists, post-Strasserites and even anarcho-individualists in the traditional Stirner mould. Indeed, whilst it has been smeared by the Left as a form of clandestine 'fascism', this dogma-rejecting phenomenon represents what is possibly the most open-minded, non-coercive and free-spirited variant of Anarchism in the modern age. In that respect, therefore, National-Anarchism has the potential to act as a vehicle for both communalists and egoists alike. This is only possible if we make a crucial distinction between two words that are very often confused.

The German sociologist, Ferdinand Tönnies (1855-1936), produced an 1887 work called Community and Society in which he argued that nineteenth-century Europe was degenerating into a mass-mind and that the word 'community' (Gemeinschaft) therefore has far more validity than that of 'society' (Gesellschaft). The former, he explained, is more of a living organism than the latter and, rather than represent little more than what Tönnies described as a “mechanical aggregate and artifact” that is purely “transitory and artificial,” a community has more longevity than a society and is thus far more beneficial.

Societies, unlike intentional neighbourhoods or close-knit communities, are based not on shared values but laws, repression and other forms of coercion. In fact within a community people are “united despite all division,” whilst in a mass society they are “divided despite all unity”. So whilst an individualist of the Stirnerian type may not wish to become part of a wider community, he can nonetheless become united with the community in its opposition to both the state and mass society.