No Gods, no Masters!

Read: Labor Discipline and the Decline of the Soviet System by Don Filtzer

"Just go with the flow"

No thanks, dead bodies go with the flow, I'm alive

Renzo Novatore on the antagonistic attitude of Nietzsche et al towards the working class:

If you want to go from the field of the living to the field of the dead, it would be the chance to immediately encounter F. Nietzsche himself, the satanic, playfully destructive philosopher, saturated with desperately and divinely creative, intoxicating poetry, discoverer of the strangest and most original truths of the human mind—well, he himself, I said, when he tried to concern himself with social questions was seized by the same myopia, by that same weakness: which one might call: The ignorance of great men! and in that book of his… Beyond Good and Evil, he sought to create (though under a formula all his own) a certain legislative theory for the use and consumption of a certain aristocracy (which I would call imperialistic) that he invented at the complete and exclusive injury of the people.

And saying that it would be enough that the people went to quench their thirst (oh! if they only had thirst…) at the springs of Nietzschean philosophy to throw it all into the air in an absolute and radical way both in the spiritual realm and in that of this materialistically experienced life of ours… Yes, precisely this, all in the air including his theory of aristocratic (thus not very aristocratic in the libertarian sense) domination!

In this instance Stirner himself seems more noble, more logical, and less cruel to me…

In fact on social questions, if it were granted to me to give advice to the great men, I would say (at least to those who are still living, and who still know how to read) to go back a bit to read that little, but so valuable, booklet that is called The Soul of Man Under Socialism, author Oscar Wilde who is more than one of their peers… But perhaps it is useless to make predictions about this since, alas!, there must be a certain fatality that weighs on all things. Even on the brains of the great men… With all this, however, I can’t yet close this topic without adding something else that is perhaps what matters most. And that is to explain, from my point of view, the psychology of this ugly affair.

It is, I believe, and I don’t just believe, I’m sure, that the phenomenon is explained like this. The great man, by his nature, lives in the world of his own greatness, meaning outside of the life of the people. Two lives, two worlds, two realities, and also two faults, this: that the people still haven’t learned how to become deserving of the name that they bear, that is: real people. The great men that of not having learned how to become truly great. Meaning that they still have to learn to not stick their so keenly delicate nose into the affairs of the people. Politics is a low, vulgar thing, linked to the economy, or rather is the economy itself. Now the economic affair, being an affair of the belly and of the kitchen, is important, indispensable, the most indispensable of all, but an affair for cooks, so not for poets and higher men.

— Renzo Novatore,
The Great Brains… in the Time That Turns

"Then first of all ban cricket, a British invention"

Renzo Novatore's and Emma Goldman's Libertarian Aristocracy

Aristocratic anarchism? A contradiction in terms!
Why would these anarchists speak of "aristocracy" with anything but contempt? What the hell is 'libertarian aristocracy' anyway?

This (libertarian) "aristocracy" has little to do with the political aristocracy; is in fact opposed to it, libertarian as it is. It is only aesthetic and cultural, and of course anti-political (not apolitical).
Their individualism, or that aristocratic aesthetic, is the very negation of the bourgeois elitism/individualism/aristocracy etc.

Now, in the case of Novatore in particular, it might seem from his writings that he was elitist or extremely individualistic. But it has to be kept in mind that he was no elitist academic making judgements about the masses from on high; no leader of any vanguard party.

Born in a poor peasant family, he was—right from his childhood—too rebellious and free spirited to fit into the authoritarian society around him.
"Unwilling to adapt to scholastic discipline, he only attended a few months of the first grade of grammar school and then left school forever. Though his father forced him to work on the farm, his strong will and thirst for knowledge led him to become a self-taught poet and philosopher."

At a young age he became a militant antifascist and lived the life of a vagabond by robbing the rich. He was almost always fighting the law and the Fascists no less. After being connoscripted for WW-I, he deserted the regiment and was sentenced to death for that. Etc etc.
Novatore was understandably pissed off that the dull, submissive masses were not rising up against the state and the capitalists; that they were even supporting the Fascists etc.

To quote Novatore himself:
“The proletariat bowed and resigned under the burden of enslavement disgusts me…. The proletariat in revolt is quite a pleasure for me. And I enjoy seeing the idiotic bourgeoisie weeping and despairing because the sacred table of the right to property has fallen broken under the rebellious fist of the new force.”

Below are some quotes from Goldman and especially from Novatore, referring to the libertarian "aristocracy":

“Nietzsche was not a social theorist but a poet, a rebel and innovator. His aristocracy was neither of birth nor of purse; it was of the spirit. In that respect Nietzsche was an anarchist, and all true anarchists were aristocrats”.

— Emma Goldman,
Living My Life

Now that the age of obligation and slavery is agonizing, we want to close the cycle of theoretical and contemplative thought in order to open the breach to violent action, which is still the will of life and the exultation of expansion.
On the ruins of piety and religion we want to erect the creative hardness of our proud hearts.
We are not the admirers of the “ideal man” of “social rights”, but the proclaimers of the “actual individual”, enemy of social abstractions.
We fight for the liberation of the individual.
For the conquest of life.
For the triumph of our idea.
For the realization of our dreams.
And if our ideas are dangerous, it is because we are those who love to live dangerously.
And if our dreams are mad, it is because we are mad.
But our madness is supreme wisdom.
But our ideas are the heart of life; but our thoughts are the beacons of humanity.
And what the war has not done, revolution must do.
Because revolution is the fire of our will and a need of our solitary minds; it is an obligation of the libertarian aristocracy.
To create new ethical values.
To create new aesthetic values.
To communalize material wealth.
To individualize spiritual wealth.

— Renzo Novatore,
Toward the Creative Nothing (X)

Now, it is proven…
Life is sorrow!
But we have learned to love sorrow in order to love life!
Because in loving sorrow we have learned to struggle.
And in struggle—in struggle alone—is our joy of living.
To remain suspended halfway is not our task.
The half circle symbolizes the ancient “yes and no”.
The impotence of life and death.
It is the circle of socialism, of pity and of faith.
But we are not socialists…
We are anarchists. And individualists, and nihilists, and aristocrats.
Because we come from the mountains.
From close to the stars.
We come from the heights: to laugh and to curse!
We have come to light a forest of pyres upon the earth to illuminate it during the night which precedes the great noon.
And our pyres will be extinguished when the fire of the sun bursts majestically over the sea. And if this day should not come, our pyres will continue to crackle tragically amidst the darkness of the eternal night.
Because we love all that is great.
We are the lovers of every miracle, the promoters of every prodigy, the creators of every wonder!
Yes: we know it!
For you, great things are in good as in evil.
But we live beyond good and evil, because all that is great belongs to beauty.
Even “crime”.
Even “perversity”.
Even “sorrow”.
And we want to be great like our crime!
In order not to slander it.
We want to be great like our perversity!
In order to render it conscious.
We want to be great like our sorrow.
In order to be worthy of it.
Because we come from the heights. From the home of Beauty.

— Renzo Novatore,
Toward the Creative Nothing (XI)

Our nihilism is not christian nihilism.
We do not deny life.
No! We are the great iconoclasts of the lie.
And all that is declared “sacred” is a lie.
We are the enemies of the “sacred” .
And to you a law is “sacred”; a society “sacred”; a moral “sacred”; an idea “sacred”!
But we—the masters and lovers of pitiless strength and strong-willed beauty, of the ravishing idea—we, the iconoclasts of all that is consecrated—we laugh satanically, with a fine broad and mocking laughter.
We laugh!…
And laughing, we keep the bow of our pagan will to enjoy always stretched toward the full integrity of life.
And we write our truths with laughter.
And we write our passions with blood.
And we laugh!…
We laugh the fine healthy and red laughter of hatred.
We laugh the fine blue and fresh laughter of love.
We laugh!
But laughing, we remember, with supreme gravity, to be the legitimate offspring and the worthy heirs of a great libertarian aristocracy that transmitted to us satanic outbursts of mad heroism in the blood, and waves of poetry, of solos, of songs in the flesh!
Our brain is a sparkling pyre, where the crackling fire of thought burns in joyful torments.
Our mind is a solitary oasis, always flowering and cheerful, where a secret music sings the complicated melody of our winged mystery.
And in our brain all the winds of the mountains cry to us; in our flesh all the tempests of the sea shout to us; all the Nymphs of Evil; our dreams are actual heavens inhabited by thrilling virgin muses.
We are the true demons of Life.
The forerunner of the time.
The first announcements!
Our vital exuberance intoxicates us with strength and with scorn.
It teaches us to despise Death.

— Renzo Novatore,
Toward the Creative Nothing (XII)

History, materialism, monism, positivism, and all the other isms of this world are old and rusty swords which are of no use to me and don’t concern me. My principle is life and my end is death. I want to live my life intensely so that I can embrace my death tragically.

You are waiting for the revolution! Very well! My own began a long time ago! When you are ready—God, what an endless wait!—it won’t nauseate me to go along the road awhile with you!

But when you stop, I will continue on my mad and triumphant march toward the great and sublime conquest of Nothing!

Every society you build will have its fringes, and on the fringes of every society, heroic and restless vagabonds will wander, with their wild and virgin thoughts, only able to live by preparing ever new and terrible outbreaks of rebellion!

I shall be among them!

And after me, as before me, there will always be those who tell human beings:
“So turn to yourselves rather than to your gods or idols: discover what is hidden within you, bring it to the light; reveal yourself!”

Because everyone who searches his inner being and draws out what is mysteriously hidden there, is a shadow eclipsing every form of Society that exists beneath the rays of the Sun!

All societies tremble when the scornful aristocracy of Vagabonds, Unique ones, Unapproachable ones, rulers over the ideal, and Conquerors of Nothing advance without inhibitions. So, come on, Iconoclasts, forward!

“Already the foreboding sky grows dark and silent!”

— Renzo Novatore,
My Iconoclastic Individualism

Anarchy is not a social form, but a method of individuation. No society will concede to me more than a limited freedom and a well being that it grants to each of its members. But I am not content with this and want more. I want all that I have the power to conquer. Every society seeks to confine me to the august limits of the permited and the prohibited. But I do not acknowledge these limits, for nothing is forbidden and all is permited to those who have the force and the valor.

Consequently, anarchy, which is the natural liberty of the individual freed from the odious yoke of spiritual and material rulers, is not the construction of a new and suffocating society. It is a decisive fight against all societies—christian, democratic, socialist, communist, etc, etc. Anarchism is the eternal struggle of a small minority of aristocratic outsiders against all societies that follow one another on the stage of history.

— Renzo Novatore