Anarchism as Nietzschean anti-politics

My interpretation of anarchism as a social and (anti-)political philosophy is inspired from this quote of Nietzsche. It does point to some new interpretation of politics, and to a new conception of society, so to speak. And the fundamental antagonism between the state and culture that the quote points out, is a great insight, something that has already influenced many anarchists, such as Rudolf Rocker who expanded upon it in his works like Nationalism and Culture and Anarcho-Syndicalism. A beautiful quote!

Also, direct action is, for us anarchists, a manifestation of a strong will to power, just as the anarchic nature itself is the consequence of an overflowing life: of fullness — of overfullness of existence!

“As little State as possible. — Political and economic affairs are not worthy of being the enforced concern of society’s most gifted spirits: such a wasteful use of the spirit is at bottom worse than having none at all. They are and remain domains for lesser heads, and others than lesser heads ought not to be in the service of these workshops: better for the machinery to fall to pieces again! But as things now stand, with everybody believing he is obliged to know what is taking place here every day and neglecting his own work in order to be continually participating in it, the whole arrangement has become a great and ludicrous piece of insanity. The price being paid for ‘universal security’ is much too high: and the maddest thing is that what is being effected is the very opposite of universal security, a fact our lovely century is undertaking to demonstrate: as if demonstration were needed! To make society safe against thieves and fireproof and endlessly amenable to every kind of trade and traffic, and to transform the state into a kind of providence in both the good and the bad sense – these are lower, mediocre and in no way indispensable goals which ought not to be pursued by means of the highest instruments which in any way exist – instruments which ought to be saved up for the highest and rarest objectives! Our age may talk about economy but it is in fact a squanderer: it squanders the most precious thing there is, the spirit.”

— Friedrich Nietzsche,
The Dawn of Day (179)

“I heartily accept the motto,—‘That government is best which governs least;’ and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which also I believe—‘That government is best which governs not at all;’ and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have. Government is at best but an expedient; but most governments are usually, and all governments are sometimes, inexpedient. The objections which have been brought against a standing army, and they are many and weighty, and deserve to prevail, may also at last be brought against a standing government. The standing army is only an arm of the standing government. The government itself, which is only the mode which the people have chosen to execute their will, is equally liable to be abused and perverted before the people can act through it.”

— Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience

Constitutionalism is a hopeless ideology...
It is impotent against fascism...
Don't forget that it is Constitutionalism that makes fascism possible.

A bourgeois, representative democracy — i.e., a fake democracy — is what makes fascism possible.
Demagoguery is an essential feature of bourgeois democracy, as is oppression and exploitation, fundamentally.

You can never really completely overcome the threat of fascism within a statist, hierarchical society. Pretty much all countries today prove this, even Germany and Italy which had the most brutal, most horrible fascist regimes in history.

The fight against fascism is also a fight against the state, against all social hierarchies, against caste, against patriarchy, and against Constitutionalism, liberalism, capitalism, etc.

we will burn the constitution just like we burnt the Ramayana, Mahabharatham, Geethai, Prabandam etc.

Just like how we declared and burnt all of those texts as being impractical and harmful for our everyday lives, we will do the same with this constitution that has been put in place to make it easy for those in power to enslave and exploit the people of this country.

We will burn it. Yes, we will!

— Periyar E. V. Ramasamy

my friends tell me that I have made the Constitution. But I am quite prepared to say that I shall be the first person to burn it out. I do not want it. It does not suit anybody. But whatever that may be, if our people want to carry on, they must not forget that there are majorities and there are minorities, and they simply cannot ignore the minorities…

People always keep on saying to me, ‘Oh, you are the maker of the Constitution.’ My answer is, I was a hack. What I was asked to do, I did much against my will.

The Hindus wanted the Vedas, and they sent for Vyasa who was not a caste Hindu. The Hindus wanted an epic, and they sent for Valmiki, who was an untouchable. The Hindus wanted a Constitution, and they have sent for me.

— Dr. B. R. Ambedkar

https://www.roundtableindia.co.in/should-bahujans-burn-the-constitution

„Das Ehren-Wort für mittelmäßig ist bekanntlich das Wort ‚liberal‘.“

“The honorable term for mediocre is, of course, the word ‘liberal’.”

— Friedrich Nietzsche, Der Wille zur Macht (The Will to Power; 864)

Liberalism as the ideology of Nietzsche's Last Man

Cis people's gender dysphoria: when others' gender identity doesn't align with their gender expectations

“The first question is by no means whether we are content with ourselves, but whether we are content with anything at all. If we affirm one single moment, we thus affirm not only ourselves but all existence. For nothing is self-sufficient, neither in us ourselves nor in things; and if our soul has trembled with happiness and sounded like a harp string just once, all eternity was needed to produce this one event—and in this single moment of affirmation all eternity was called good, redeemed, justified, and affirmed.”

— Friedrich Nietzsche,
The Will to Power (1032)

I'm not really addressing the main point of the post here...
just a small observation

Ego is not really a bad translation in this context, since it's Latin for "I", just as ich is its German counterpart...

(Interestingly, this is also what happened with Freud... the translator(s) translated das Ich as 'ego'; and likewise, das Es as 'id', das Über-Ich as 'super-ego')


But the noscript of the first (1907) English translation, as The Ego and His Own, is of course a bad translation... since Stirner was talking about der Einzige — 'the unique one' — and it's very different from the ego/I/ich...

It also contributed to a misunderstanding of his (anti-)philosophy, since what he valued more in his writing was ownness (die Eigenheit) rather than a more vague notion of egoism... the latter concept, conflated with the colloquial meaning of ego(t)ism, contributed to the misunderstanding that Stirner advocated a narrow egoism


As for Marx, it was typical of him to strawman his opponents with petty arguments

passive nihilism, capitalism

“We few or many who again dare to live in a dismoralized world, we pagans in faith: we are probably also the first to grasp what a pagan faith is:—to have to imagine higher creatures than man, but beyond good and evil; to have to consider all being higher as also being immoral. We believe in Olympus—and not in the ‘Crucified’.”

— Friedrich Nietzsche,
The Will to Power (1034)

When Fichte says, “the ego* is all”, this seems to harmonize per­fectly with my thesis. But it is not that the ego is all, but the ego destroys all, and only the self-dissolving ego, the never-being ego, the – finite ego is really I. Fichte speaks of the “absolute” ego, but I speak of me, the transitory ego.

* das Ich – the “I”

People have always supposed that they must give me a destiny lying outside myself, so that at last they demanded that I should lay claim to the human because I am – man. This is the Christian magic circle. 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, everything about me is unique. And it is only as this unique I that I take every thing for my own, as I set myself to work, and develop myself, only as this. I do not develop men, nor as man, but, as I, I develop – myself.

This is the meaning of the – unique one [Einzigen].

— Max Stirner

“The mass of men serve the State thus, not as men mainly, but as machines, with their bodies. They are the standing army, and the militia, jailers, constables, posse comitatus, etc. In most cases there is no free exercise whatever of the judgment or of the moral sense; but they put themselves on a level with wood and earth and stones; and wooden men can perhaps be manufactured that will serve the purpose as well. Such command no more respect than men of straw, or a lump of dirt. They have the same sort of worth only as horses and dogs. Yet such as these even are commonly esteemed good citizens. Others, as most legislators, politicians, lawyers, ministers, and office-holders, serve the state chiefly with their heads; and, as they rarely make any moral distinctions, they are as likely to serve the devil, without intending it, as God. A very few, as heroes, patriots, martyrs, reformers in the great sense, and men, serve the State with their consciences also, and so necessarily resist it for the most part; and they are commonly treated by it as enemies.”

— Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience

liberal democracy, social contract

Stirner here destroys the concept of a social contract—without even specifically mentioning it—by striking at its root: the concept of duty itself

And of course, social contract is a most obvious lie, it is baseless liberal nonsense

to be more precise...

"Hinduism is not a religion, it is a way of life"

“Beggars. — Beggars ought to be abolished: for one is vexed at giving to them and vexed at not giving to them.”

— Friedrich Nietzsche,
The Dawn of Day (185)

“Business people. — Your business – is your greatest prejudice: it ties you to your locality, to the company you keep, to the inclinations you feel. Diligent in business – but indolent in spirit, content with your inadequacy, and with the cloak of duty hung over this contentment: that is how you live, that is how you want your children to live!”

— Friedrich Nietzsche,
The Dawn of Day (186)