Two classic introductions to anarchism

Anarchy by Errico Malatesta:
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/errico-malatesta-anarchy

Anarchism and Other Essays by Emma Goldman:
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/Emma-goldman-anarchism-and-other-essays

“Even a quick assesment shows that it is not only obvious that German culture is declining but that there is sufficient reason for that. In the end, no one can spend more than they have: that is true of an individual, it is true of a people. If one spends oneself for power, for power politics, for economics, world trade, parliamentarianism, and military interests – if one spends in this direction the quantum of understanding, seriousness, will, and self-overcoming which one represents, then it will be lacking for the other direction.

Culture and the state – one should not deceive oneself about this – are antagonists: ‘Culture-State’ [‚Kultur-Staat‘] is merely a modern idea. One lives off the other, one thrives at the expense of the other. All great ages of culture are ages of political decline: what is great culturally has always been unpolitical, even anti-political.”

— Friedrich Nietzsche,
Twilight of the Idols (§8. 4)

Whether philosophy comforts

A friendly suggestion to post-structutalists and post-modernists:
Go read some actual anarchist literature instead of forming your opinion about so-called "classical anarchism" based on the writings of a few "post-anarchist" writers who, it seems, have to distort and misrepresent anarchism in order to sell "post"-anarchism — depicting a vast, highly diverse philosophy and movement as some simplistic monolith...

(I'm not criticizing post-structutalist/post-modernist philosophy here... this is not about that philosophy itself. But only about what I perceived to be a rather common tendency among "post-anarchists")

https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/jesse-cohn-and-shawn-wilbur-what-s-wrong-with-postanarchism

“The state practices ‘violence’, the individual must not do so. The state's behaviour is violence, and it calls its violence ‘law’; that of the individ­ual, 'crime’.”

— Max Stirner

Scientists then vs now (on philosophy)

„Verhasst ist mir das Folgen und das Führen.
Gehorchen? Nein! Und aber nein – Regieren!“

“Despicable to me are following and leading.
Commanding? Even worse to me than heeding!”

— Friedrich Nietzsche,
Die fröhliche Wissenschaft
(The Gay Science; Prelude. 33)


(Regieren = to govern, to rule;
Gehorchen = to obey)

“It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere.”

— Voltaire

“Anti-Darwin. — As for the famous ‘struggle for existence,’ so far it seems to me to be asserted rather than proved. It occurs, but as an exception; the total appearance of life is not the extremity or starvation, but rather riches, profusion, even absurd squandering — and where there is struggle, it is a struggle for power. One should not mistake Malthus for nature.

Assuming, however, that there is such a struggle for existence — and, indeed, it occurs — its result is unfortunately the opposite of what Darwin's school desires, and of what one might perhaps desire with them — namely, in favor of the strong, the privileged, the fortunate exceptions. The species do not grow in perfection: the weak prevail over the strong again and again, for they are the great majority — and they are also more intelligent. Darwin forgot the spirit (that is English!); the weak have more spirit. One must need spirit to acquire spirit; one loses it when one no longer needs it. Whoever has strength dispenses with the spirit (‘Let it go!’ they think in Germany today; ‘the Reich must still remain to us’). It will be noted that by ‘spirit’ I mean care, patience, cunning, simulation, great self-control, and everything that is mimicry (the latter includes a great deal of so-called virtue).”

— Friedrich Nietzsche,
Twilight of the Idols (§9. 14)

virgin reactionary empiricist vs chad critical theorist

“Schopenhauer. — Schopenhauer, the last German worthy of consideration (who represents a European event like Goethe, like Hegel, like Heinrich Heine, and not merely a local event, a ‘national’ one), is for a psychologist a first-rate case: namely, as a maliciously ingenious attempt to adduce in favor of a nihilistic total depreciation of life precisely the counter-instances, the great self-affirmations of the ‘will to life,’ life's forms of exuberance. He has interpreted art, heroism, genius, beauty, great sympathy, knowledge, the will to truth, and tragedy, in turn, as consequences of ‘negation’ or of the ‘will's’ need to negate — the greatest psychological counterfeit in all history, not counting Christianity. On closer inspection, he is at this point merely the heir of the Christian interpretation: only he knew how to approve that which Christianity had repudiated, the great cultural facts of humanity — albeit in a Christian, that is, nihilistic, manner (namely, as ways of ‘redemption,’ as anticipations of ‘redemption,’ as stimuli of the need for ‘redemption’).

— Friedrich Nietzsche,
Twilight of the Idols (§9. 21)

Anti-natalist vs Nietzschad

„Ob Hedonismus, ob Pessimismus, ob Utilitarismus, ob Eudämonismus: alle diese Denkweisen, welche nach Lust und Leid, das heißt nach Begleitzuständen und Nebensachen den Werth der Dinge messen, sind Vordergrunds-Denkweisen und Naivetäten, auf welche ein Jeder, der sich gestaltender Kräfte und eines Künstler-Gewissens bewusst ist, nicht ohne Spott, auch nicht ohne Mitleid herabblicken wird.“

— Friedrich Nietzsche,
Jenseits von Gut und Böse (225)

“Power [Gewalt; might] is a fine thing, and useful for many purposes; for ‘one goes further with a handful of might than with a bagful of right’. You long for freedom? You fools! If you took might, freedom would come of itself. See, one who has might ‘stands above the law’. How does this prospect taste to you, you ‘law-abiding’ people? But you have no taste!”

— Max Stirner

“The heaviest weight. – What if some day or night a demon were to steal into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: ‘This life as you now live it and have lived it you will have to live once again and innumerable times again; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything unspeakably small or great in your life must return to you, all in the same succession and sequence – even this spider and this moonlight between the trees, and even this moment and I myself. The eternal hourglass of existence is turned over again and again, and you with it, speck of dust!’ Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus? Or have you once experienced a tremendous moment when you would have answered him: ‘You are a god, and never have I heard anything more divine.’ If this thought gained power over you, as you are it would transform and possibly crush you; the question in each and every thing, ‘Do you want this again and innumerable times again?’ would lie on your actions as the heaviest weight! Or how well disposed would you have to become to yourself and to life to long for nothing more fervently than for this ultimate eternal confirmation and seal?”

— Friedrich Nietzsche,
The Gay Science (341)

Das ist wahrscheinlich das Schönste, was ich in meinem ganzen Leben gelesen habe!

"The eternal yea to life"
(passive nihilism, denial of life vs active nihilism, affirmation of life)

“The fact that the Anarchist move­ment for which I have striven so long is to a certain extent in abeyance and overshadowed by philosophies of au­thority and coercion affects me with concern, but not with despair. It seems to me a point of special signifi­cance that many countries decline to admit Anarchists. All governments hold the view that while parties of the right and left may advocate social changes, still they cling to the idea of government and authority. Anar­chism alone breaks with both and propagates uncompromising rebellion. In the long run, therefore, it is Anar­chism which is considered deadlier to the present regime than all other social theories that are now clamoring for power.

Considered from this angle, I think my life and my work have been suc­cessful. What is generally regarded as success—acquisition of wealth, the capture of power or social prestige—I consider the most dismal failures. I hold when it is said of a man that he has arrived, it means that he is finished—his development has stopped at that point. I have always striven to re­main in a state of flux and continued growth, and not to petrify in a niche of self-satisfaction. If I had my life to live over again, like anyone else, I should wish to alter minor details. But in any of my more important ac­tions and attitudes I would repeat my life as I have lived it. Certainly I should work for Anarchism with the same devotion and confidence in its ultimate triumph.”

— Emma Goldman,
Was My Life Worth Living? (III)

“But ‘the egoist is someone who thinks only of himself!’ — This would be someone who doesn’t know and relish all the joys that come from participation with others, i.e., from thinking of others as well, someone who lacks countless pleasures — thus a poor sort. But why should this desolate loner be an egoist in comparison to richer sorts? Certainly, for a long time, we were able to get used to considering poverty a disgrace, as a crime, and the sacred socialists have clearly proven that the poor are treated like criminals. But sacred socialists treat those who are in their eyes contemptibly poor in this way, just as much as the bourgeoisie do it to their poor.

But why should the person who is poorer with respect to a certain interest be called more egoistic than the one who possesses that interest? Is the oyster more egoistic than the dog; is the Moor more egoistic than the German; is the poor, scorned, Jewish junkman more egoistic than the enthusiastic socialist; is the vandal who destroys artworks for which he feels nothing more egoistic than the art connoisseur who treats the same works with great love and care because he has a feeling and interest for them? And now if someone — we leave it open whether such a one can be shown to exist — doesn’t find any ‘human’ interest in human beings, if he doesn’t know how to appreciate them as human beings, wouldn’t he be a poorer egoist with regard to this interest rather than being, as the enemies of egoism claim, a model of egoism? One who loves a human being is richer, thanks to this love, than another who doesn’t love anyone. But there is no distinction between egoism and non-egoism in this at all, because both are only pursuing their own interest.”

— Max Stirner, Stirner's Critics

“Egoism, as Stirner uses it, is not opposed to love nor to thought; it is no enemy of the sweet life of love, nor of devotion and sacrifice; it is no enemy of intimate warmth, but it is also no enemy of critique, nor of socialism, nor, in short, of any actual interest. It doesn’t exclude any interest. It is directed against only disinterestedness and the uninteresting; not against love, but against sacred love, not against thought, but against sacred thought, not against socialists, but against sacred socialists, etc.

The ‘exclusiveness’ of the egoist, which some want to pass off as isolation, separation, loneliness, is on the contrary full participation in the interesting by — exclusion of the uninteresting.

No one gives Stirner credit for his global intercourse and his union of egoists from the largest section of his book, ‘My Intercourse’.”

— Max Stirner, Stirner's Critics

Neoliberal manipulation, capitalist totalitarianism