448 lines
22 KiB
Plaintext
448 lines
22 KiB
Plaintext
|
|
|
|
|
|
non serviam #2
|
|
**************
|
|
|
|
|
|
Contents: Editor's Word
|
|
Svein Olav Nyberg: The Self
|
|
Ken Knudson: A Critique of Communism and
|
|
The Individualist Alternative (serial: 2)
|
|
|
|
***********************************************************************
|
|
|
|
Editor's Word
|
|
_____________
|
|
|
|
A friend of mine was half a year ago confronted with the claim that the
|
|
Self "really did not exist", and that this was scientifically proven.
|
|
At the time, I only laughed, and considered the proponent of the idea
|
|
to be a little weird. I still consider it weird, but having heard the
|
|
claim over again, I do not laugh.
|
|
|
|
In the last issue, I went over the basic types of [mistaken] selfish-
|
|
ness, and promised to follow up with a discussion of what was the true
|
|
Self/ego. In conjunction with the above concern, this is the starting
|
|
point for my article The Self.
|
|
|
|
Ken Knudson's eminent article continues. The chapter one makes up
|
|
almost half the article, so I have chosen to issue the rest of the
|
|
chapter as separate issues, so that discussion may begin. I hope the
|
|
somewhat arbitrary sectioning of the article into the different issues
|
|
is forgiven.
|
|
|
|
The next chapter will be "REVOLUTION: THE ROAD TO FREEDOM?".
|
|
|
|
|
|
Svein Olav
|
|
____________________________________________________________________
|
|
|
|
Svein Olav Nyberg:
|
|
The Self
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
As seen in the last issue, what "selfish" means depends strongly upon
|
|
what you mean by "self". I will not here try to correct all the wrong
|
|
ideas of what the Self is, but rather give an indication of what I think
|
|
the right view is. There are, as you well are aware, many different
|
|
conceptions of what "self" means. A general line of division between
|
|
these conceptions I have found very well illustrated in Wilber, Engler
|
|
and Brown's book on the psychology of meditation [1]: To different
|
|
stages of cognitive development belongs different self -structures and,
|
|
not the least, -images. The highest stage, called the Ultimate stage, is
|
|
described as "the reality, condition, or suchness of all levels." If you
|
|
draw the stage diagram on a paper, the Ultimate Self is in relation to
|
|
the other "selves" as the paper in relation to the elements of the
|
|
diagram drawn on it. Improper selfishness, then, might be viewed as the
|
|
mistaking of the image for the real thing.
|
|
|
|
So, there is a very important division between the underlying Self, and
|
|
the various self-images. This division is found more or less explicitly
|
|
in a variety of sources. Pirsig, in his famous best-seller, denounces
|
|
the ego, but embraces the Self in his praise of arete as "duty towards
|
|
Self." [2] The philosopher Nietzsche writes that "The Self is always
|
|
listening and seeking: it compares, subdues, conquers, destroys. It
|
|
rules and is also the Ego's ruler. Behind your thoughts and feelings,
|
|
my brother, stands a mighty commander, an unknown sage - he is called
|
|
Self.", and also, a little above this, "[the Self] does not say 'I' but
|
|
performs 'I'." [3].
|
|
|
|
In [1] it is concluded that though all who experience the Ultimate
|
|
stage do essentially the same, the experience and understanding of it
|
|
depends on the prior interpretation. The Buddhist experience an egoless
|
|
state, while the theistic meditators experience [being one with] their
|
|
god. Who is having this unifying experience? The same guy, essentially,
|
|
who has everyday experience. Fichte [4] asks of his audience, "Gentle-
|
|
men, think of the wall," and proceeds "Gentlemen, think of him who
|
|
thought the wall." In this way he gets an infinite chain, as "whenever
|
|
we try to objectify ourselves, make ourselves into objects of
|
|
consciousness, there always remains an _I_ or ego which transcends
|
|
objectification and is itself the condition of the unity of conscious-
|
|
ness," as Copleston describes.
|
|
|
|
Now, whether we shall side with the meditators who claim to experience
|
|
this _I_, or with Fichte who says we cannot, is of little importance
|
|
here. What is important, is that the _I_, this ground and condition
|
|
indeed exists, and that it is the ground of the empirical ego or egos.
|
|
|
|
I want to take a closer look at this _I_ - the Self.
|
|
|
|
So far, the Self may be seen on as something just lying in the back-
|
|
ground, a kind of ultimate observer. But Fichte's question can also be
|
|
asked of action, "Who is lifting your arm when you lift your arm?"
|
|
Like it was clear in the first case that it was not the image of the
|
|
Self - the ego - that was aware, but the Self itself, it is equally
|
|
obvious that it is not the image of the Will that lifts the arm - but
|
|
the Will itself. To understand this better, try to will the coke bottle
|
|
in front of you to lift. Won't do. Now, "will" your arm up in the same
|
|
way that you willed the coke bottle. Won't do either. Still, lifting
|
|
the arm is easy. (See also [3])
|
|
|
|
Proceeding like above, we can find a well of parts of the underlying
|
|
Self. But they are all one. The Self that sees the stick is the same
|
|
Self that throws a rock at it. How else would it hit? I have found it
|
|
useful to single out three of them, which I will call the Experiencing
|
|
Self, the Creative Self and the Teleological Self.
|
|
|
|
Stirner [5] speaks of "the vanishing point of the ego", and of the
|
|
"creative nothing". He has "built his case on nothing". This latter is
|
|
the one that reveals what he intends. For surely, he has built his
|
|
cause on - himself. But in the way of Fichte, the Self is not a thing,
|
|
but the basis for speaking of things. To be a thing is to be an object
|
|
for some subject and, as Fichte showed, the subject cannot properly be
|
|
an object. So, Stirner's "creative nothing" is him Self.
|
|
|
|
In contrast to Fichte, however, Stirner emphasizes the finite here-and-
|
|
now individual Self, not the abstract Ego: "Fichte's ego too is the
|
|
same essence outside me, for every one is ego; and, if only this ego
|
|
has rights, then it is "the ego", it is not I. But I am not an ego along
|
|
with other egos, but the sole ego: I am unique. Hence my wants too are
|
|
unique, and my deeds; in short everthing about me is unique."
|
|
|
|
So we see Stirner rejects the positivistic idea of viewing himself from
|
|
a 3rd person vantage point. He is not "ego", the image of himself. For
|
|
one can have an image of anyone. But ones own Self is experienced from
|
|
the 1st person point of view, and one is oneself the only one who can
|
|
experience oneself from there. Again quoting Stirner: "They say of God:
|
|
'Names name thee not.' That holds good of me: No -concept- expresses
|
|
me; they are only names."
|
|
|
|
The history of philosophy can be simplified as follows: We have gone
|
|
from a focus on experienced reality, to experienced self, and from that
|
|
on to that which contains both - the Experiencing Self. Stirner, as a
|
|
student of Hegel, must have seen this, and, as he states, this history
|
|
is also _my_ history. The dialectic process is taken back into its
|
|
owner. I am not any longer viewing myself as a moment in the dialectical
|
|
self-unfolding of the Absolute, but as he who learns and thinks these
|
|
thoughts, and - take the advantage of them.
|
|
|
|
The philosophical process did not stop at the Experiencing Self, with
|
|
which an empiricist would be content. A reaction came, asking what
|
|
elements of experience were constituted by the subject himself. The
|
|
observer was no longer seen as a passive observer, but as an active
|
|
participant contributing his own elements into experience. Thus we
|
|
can say that the awareness of the creative role of the intellect was
|
|
properly emerging. We had the Creative Self. This was idea was taken
|
|
very far by Stirners teachers - into German idealism.
|
|
|
|
Stirners main thesis is that of the individual as the ground not only
|
|
of observation and creation, but of evaluation. This thesis is given
|
|
a short presentation as a 0th chapter in The Ego and His Own: "All
|
|
things are Nothing to Me." No outer force is to determine ones cause,
|
|
ones evaluation. With a convincing rhetoric, Stirner makes room for
|
|
the case that he himself is the evaluator, the one whose cause is to
|
|
be acted for.
|
|
|
|
Stirners main dialectical triad is then this, that we go from mere
|
|
experience to action [thought], and as a solution to the strain between
|
|
these go to valuation and interest, self-interest. This is a recurring
|
|
theme in his book, and the structure of the argument is presented in
|
|
the first chapter, very appropriately named "A human Life".
|
|
|
|
The triad, as I have understood and interpreted it, is this:
|
|
|
|
The Experiencing Self: This is, so to say, the beacon that enlightens
|
|
the empirical world, which makes it possible qua empirical world. With
|
|
knowledge of oneself only as experiencing, one is stuck with things,
|
|
and all ones activity is centered around things, as Stirner says. One
|
|
is a Materialist. In history, both the personal and the philosophical
|
|
one, the Empirical Self is seen as a passive observer on whom the world
|
|
is imprinted, all until we come to the antithesis of this view:
|
|
|
|
The Creative Self: We discover our own more active role in experience,
|
|
our own contribution of elements/form to our experience, as shown by
|
|
the [Kantian inspired] experiments of the early Gestalt psychologists.
|
|
With this knowledge, attention goes to thought itself, and, we become
|
|
intellectual and spiritual young men. Our quest goes for that in which
|
|
we can pry Spirit, and we become - Idealists.
|
|
|
|
The Teleological Self: There is a [dialectical] strain between the two
|
|
views and aspects of the Self above, a conflict that can only, as Stirner
|
|
says, be resolved by a third party, which is the synthesis. We begin to
|
|
ask: Why do I focus on this, and not on that, in experience? Why do I
|
|
create this and not that? For whom am I doing my creation, my thinking?
|
|
I find the answer to the above questions in what I will call the
|
|
Teleological Self. The Teleological Self is he [or rather - I] for whom
|
|
all things done by me are done, the commander who is the measure of all
|
|
activity. Any value, any selection, and thereby any focus and any
|
|
creation, owes its existence to the Teleological Self. In the Teleological
|
|
Self we find the grounding of our "why?".
|
|
|
|
The dilemma between Materialism and Idealism is resolved in Selfishness.
|
|
Not do I go for the material for its sake, nor do I let the cause of any
|
|
ideal invade me and make its cause mine. I take both, but as tools and
|
|
things to be disposed of at - my pleasure. In this fashion the dialectics
|
|
is buried. For it is only alive in the world of ideas, which I have taken
|
|
back into myself.
|
|
|
|
---
|
|
|
|
This was an attempt to convey some thoughts on the Self. If anyone feels
|
|
tempted to pick up this thread, expand on it or negate it, you are
|
|
welcome. It will be a pleasure.
|
|
|
|
|
|
[1] Wilber, Engler, Brown: "Transformations of Consciousness"
|
|
[2] Robert Pirsig: "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance"
|
|
[3] Friedrich Nietzsche: "Zarathustra", on the Despisers of the Body.
|
|
[4] Copleston, Vol VII, p. 40
|
|
[5] Max Stirner: "The Ego & His Own"
|
|
|
|
____________________________________________________________________
|
|
|
|
Ken Knudson:
|
|
|
|
A Critique of Communism
|
|
and
|
|
The Individualist Alternative
|
|
(continued)
|
|
|
|
|
|
Before one can get into an intelligent criticism of
|
|
anything, one must begin by defining one's terms.
|
|
"Anarchism", according to the Encyclopaedia Britannica
|
|
dictionary, is "the theory that all forms of government are
|
|
incompatible with individual and social liberty and should
|
|
be abolished." It further says that it comes from the Greek
|
|
roots "an" (without) and "archos" (leader).* As for
|
|
"communism", it is "any social theory that calls for the
|
|
abolition of private property and control by the community
|
|
over economic affairs." To elaborate on that definition,
|
|
communists of all varieties hold that all wealth should be
|
|
produced and distributed according to the formula "from each
|
|
according to his** ability, to each according to his needs"
|
|
and that the administrative mechanism to control such
|
|
production and distribution should be democratically
|
|
organised by the workers themselves (i.e. "workers'
|
|
control"). They further insist that there should be no
|
|
private ownership of the means of production and no trading
|
|
of goods except through the official channels agreed upon by
|
|
the majority. With rare exceptions, communists of all
|
|
varieties propose to realise this ideal through violent
|
|
revolution and the expropriation of all private property.
|
|
|
|
That no one should accuse me of building up straw men
|
|
in order to knock them down, allow me to quote Kropotkin***
|
|
|
|
--------------------
|
|
|
|
* Historically, it was Proudhon who first used the word
|
|
to mean something other than disorder and chaos: "Although a
|
|
firm friend of order, I am (in the full force of the term)
|
|
an anarchist." [5]
|
|
** Here Marx uses the masculine pronoun to denote the
|
|
generic "one". In deference to easy flowing English grammar,
|
|
I'll stick to his precedent and hope that Women's Lib people
|
|
will forgive me when I, too, write "his" instead of "one's".
|
|
*** I have chosen Kropotkin as a "typical" communist-
|
|
anarchist here and elsewhere in this article for a number of
|
|
reasons. First, he was a particularly prolific writer, doing
|
|
much of his original work in English. Secondly, he is
|
|
generally regarded as "probably the greatest anarchist
|
|
thinker and writer" by many communist- anarchists, including
|
|
at least one editor of "Freedom". [6] Finally, he was the
|
|
founder of Freedom Press, the publisher of the magazine you
|
|
are now reading.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
- 5 -
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
to show that communist-anarchism fits in well with the above
|
|
definition of communism:
|
|
|
|
|
|
"We have to put an end to the iniquities, the vices, the
|
|
crimes which result from the idle existence of some and the
|
|
economic, intellectual, and moral servitude of others.... We
|
|
are no longer obliged to grope in the dark for the
|
|
solution.... It is Expropriation.... If all accumulated
|
|
treasure...does not immediately go back to the collectivity
|
|
- since ALL have contributed to produce it; if the insurgent
|
|
people do not take possession of all the goods and
|
|
provisions amassed in the great cities and do not organise
|
|
to put them within the reach of all who need them...the
|
|
insurrection will not be a revolution, and everything will
|
|
have to be begun over again....Expropriation, - that then,
|
|
is the watchword which is imposed upon the next revolution,
|
|
under penalty of failing in its historic mission. The
|
|
complete expropriation of all who have the means of
|
|
exploiting human beings. The return to common ownership by
|
|
the nation of all that can serve in the hands of any one for
|
|
the exploitation of others." [7]
|
|
|
|
Now let us take our definitions of communism and
|
|
anarchism and see where they lead us. The first part of the
|
|
definition of communism calls for the abolition of private
|
|
property. "Abolition" is itself a rather authoritarian
|
|
concept - unless, of course, you're talking about abolishing
|
|
something which is inherently authoritarian and invasive
|
|
itself (like slavery or government, for example). So the
|
|
question boils down to "Is private property authoritarian
|
|
and invasive?" The communists answer "yes"; the
|
|
individualists disagree. Who is right? Which is the more
|
|
"anarchistic" answer? The communists argue that "private
|
|
property has become a hindrance to the evolution of mankind
|
|
towards happiness" [8], that "private property offends
|
|
against justice" [9] and that it "has developed
|
|
parasitically amidst the free institutions of our earliest
|
|
ancestors." [10] The individualists, far from denying these
|
|
assertions, reaffirm them. After all wasn't it Proudhon who
|
|
first declared property "theft"?* But when the communist
|
|
|
|
--------------------
|
|
*By property Proudhon means property as it exists under
|
|
government privilege, i.e. property gained not through
|
|
labour or the exchange of the products of labour (which he
|
|
favours), but through the legal privileges bestowed by
|
|
government on idle capital.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
- 6 -
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
says, "Be done, then, with this vile institution; abolish
|
|
private property once and for all; expropriate and
|
|
collectivise all property for the common good," the
|
|
individualist must part company with him. What's wrong with
|
|
private property today is that it rests primarily in the
|
|
hands of a legally privileged elite. The resolution of this
|
|
injustice is not to perpetrate an even greater one, but
|
|
rather to devise a social and economic system which will
|
|
distribute property in such a manner that everyone is
|
|
guaranteed the product of his labour by natural economic
|
|
laws. I propose to demonstrate just such a system at the end
|
|
of this article. If this can be done, it will have been
|
|
shown that private property is not intrinsically invasive
|
|
after all, and that the communists in expropriating it would
|
|
be committing a most UNanarchistic act. It is, therefore,
|
|
incumbent upon all communists who call themselves anarchists
|
|
to read carefully that section and either find a flaw in its
|
|
reasoning or admit that they are not anarchists after all.
|
|
|
|
The second part of the definition of communism says
|
|
that economic affairs should be controlled by the community.
|
|
Individualists say they should be controlled by the market
|
|
place and that the only law should be the natural law of
|
|
supply and demand. Which of these two propositions is the
|
|
more consistent with anarchism? Herbert Spencer wrote in
|
|
1884, "The great political superstition of the past was the
|
|
divine right of kings. The great political superstition of
|
|
the present is the divine right of parliaments." [11] The
|
|
communists seem to have carried Spencer's observation one
|
|
step further: the great political superstition of the future
|
|
shall be the divine right of workers' majorities. "Workers'
|
|
control" is their ideology; "Power to the People" their
|
|
battle cry. What communist-anarchists apparently forget is
|
|
that workers' control means CONTROL. Marxists, let it be
|
|
said to their credit, at least are honest about this point.
|
|
They openly and unashamedly demand the dictatorship of the
|
|
proletariat. Communist-anarchists seem to be afraid of that
|
|
phrase, perhaps subconsciously realising the inherent
|
|
contradiction in their position. But communism, by its very
|
|
nature, IS dictatorial. The communist-anarchists may
|
|
christen their governing bodies "workers' councils" or
|
|
"soviets", but they remain GOVERNMENTS just the same.
|
|
|
|
Abraham Lincoln was supposed to have asked, "If you
|
|
call a tail a leg, how many legs has a dog? Five? No!
|
|
Calling a tail a leg don't MAKE it a leg." The same is true
|
|
about governments and laws. Calling a law a "social habit"
|
|
[12] or an "unwritten custom" [13] as Kropotkin does,
|
|
doesn't change its nature. To paraphrase Shakespeare, that
|
|
which we call a law by any other name would smell as foul.
|
|
|
|
----
|
|
|
|
REFERENCES
|
|
|
|
1. Joseph Stalin, "Anarchism or Socialism" (Moscow; Foreign
|
|
Languages Publishing House, 1950), p. 85. Written in 1906
|
|
but never finished.
|
|
|
|
2. Ibid., pp. 90-1.
|
|
|
|
3. Ibid., p.95.
|
|
|
|
4. Ibid., p. 87.
|
|
|
|
5. Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, "What is Property: An Inquiry
|
|
into the Principle of Right and of Government," trans.
|
|
Benjamin R. Tucker (London: William Reeves), p. 260.
|
|
Originally published in French in 1840.
|
|
|
|
6. Bill Dwyer, "This World", "Freedom," March 27, 1971.
|
|
|
|
7. Pierre Kropotkine, "Paroles d'un Revolte" (Paris: Ernest
|
|
Flammarion, 1885), pp. 318-9.
|
|
|
|
8. Paul Eltzbacher, "Anarchism: Exponents of the Anarchist
|
|
Philosophy," trans. Steven T. Byington, ed. James J. Martin
|
|
(London: Freedom Press, 1960), p. 108. "Der Anarchismus" was
|
|
originally published in Berlin in 1900.
|
|
|
|
9. Ibid., p. 109.
|
|
|
|
10. Ibid., p. 110.
|
|
|
|
11. Herbert Spencer, "The Man Versus The State," ed. Donald
|
|
MacRae
|
|
(London: Penguin Books, 1969), p. 151. Originally published
|
|
in 1884.
|
|
|
|
12. Prince Peter Kropotkin, "The Conquest of Bread" (London:
|
|
Chapman & Hall, Ltd., 1906), p. 41.
|
|
|
|
13. Eltzbacher, op. cit., p. 101.
|
|
|
|
____________________________________________________________________
|
|
|
|
***********************************************************************
|
|
* "Better to reign in hell, than serve in heaven" *
|
|
* -- Milton, Paradise Lost *
|
|
***********************************************************************
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|