The following was published in the December 1969 issue of S.E. Parker's
Minus One.
by Kurt Zube
translated by Robert H. Beebe
At first one thinks that Helms is joking when he unmasks Stirner as the
ideologist of the middle class who strongly influenced its consciousness
in the first thirty years of this century, promoted the craze for
voluntary political self-interdiction, and proved himself a forerunner of
fascism. Then one thinks he intends to follow the recipe of the Abbe
Galiani who, by means of grossly absurd theses against that which he
attacks, in reality seeks to win the reader over to it. But it soon turns
out that Helms' grotesque theses are in fact meant in dead-earnest and are
the painful cry of a Marxist ideologist whose sacred feelings are
injured. Indeed, Helms cannot do anything else but pull Stirner down to
his own level and show as an ideologist the anti-ideologist par
excellence--the great annihilator of trite talk.
One could leave the whole
thing alone with Lichtenberg's dictum: "When a book and a head collide
and it sounds hollow, then the book doesn't need to be blamed for it."
Or, even more fitting, perhaps, for the undying work of Stirner,
Lichtenberg's other dictum: "This book is a mirror. When a monkey looks
in, no apostle looks out."
But one result of Helms'
assiduous work deserves honest admiration. This is his 105 page appendix,
which includes not only a well-nigh complete bibliography of the various
German and foreign-language editions of Stirner's work, but a really
impressive listing of writings about Stirner, including many newspaper
items. In addition to this, there is a really extensive bibliography of
anarchist literature and the free economy teachings of Silvio Gesell. The
interested reader will find true gems in this, many them out of print or
remaining unknown. For the sake of the bibliography Helms' book deserves
to be most warmly recommended.
The rest of the book is
unfortunate--despite many citations not only from Stirner, but also from
secondary literature--because of the downright foolish way in which Helms
turns completely upside down in his mind that which is torn out of
context. In addition to which, there are often other unfair suppositions
and aspersions in the manner of "revolver journalism."
A relatively harmless
example: Helms cites Stirner's rediscoverer and biographer, John Henry
Mackay (who was not, as he asserts, an "early expressionist writer") who
found out that Stirner's chief work, The Ego and His Own, had
been immediately seized in Leipzig, its place of publication, only to be
released a few days later by the Ministry of the Interior, because it was
"too absurd" to be dangerous. Mackay remarked: "While the most harmless
scribbling was put under observation and banned, the most radical and most
'dangerous' of that or any time was allowed to go from hand to hand--at
that time and still today." Helms writes: "peevish about such insolent
attacks upon his idol, he (Mackay) raged against the censor and the
world. How little it soothes his wounded pride as an evil 'revoluzzer'
that only a little, peripheral and half-hearted persecution is
substantiated."
And in response to Mackay's
assertion that "in Prussia, so also in Mecklenburg-Schwerin, the 'Ego'
was, moreover, forbidden even before Christmas and the ban was, as far as
can be determined, never lifted again," Helms writes in a really silly
way, "One can well imagine how Mackay, this vested-pocket revolutionary,
believing himself surrounded by spies, called at the Berlin magistrates'
office and was sorely disappointed by the portly government officials
because they demonstrated complete political and legal disinterest in his
hero. The 'Ego' has never been de facto persecuted in spite of the ban
and even Mackay's strong denunciation did not result in the desired
status-symbol of an auto-da-fe."
In another place, Helms
comments on an illustration from a French individualist-anarchist paper:
"The picture shows 'what individualists want.' Satisfied with themselves,
they want to watch how the masses behave in the service of church, state,
and capital. While some work, they want to ramble." Actually the picture
unequivocally shows the protest of the individual against the mass, and
the text leaves no doubt that he by no means exhausts himself "watching
and rambling."
This, and even more absurd and
malicious falsifications, result, however, not from the personal meanness
of the author, but from such an unlimited prejudice, that it often
misleads him to self-disclosures that are almost pitiful. Now and then he
acts likes a blubbering child who, against better judgement and aware of
his defeat, reacts with a spiteful kick.
This happens with such
illogical sullenness and emotion that Helms actually appears to be a Saul
desperately defending himself against something which has already gripped
him most profoundly. Thus, in spite of his intentions, the effect of the
entire book on the half-way critical reader is just in the sense of the
Abbe Galiani: where Helms means to refute or discourage he awakens
interest and provokes thought--where he does not refute himself.
One can readily forgive Helms
for the grotesque bowdlerizing of what Stirner said and meant, for Stirner
had to explain himself with vague words in a confused world of conceptions
and is not always easy to understand nor always to be taken literally. He
often makes merry over various ideologies and jeers at their
representatives as he in good-natured mockery plays catch with their fixed
ideas. For the completely humorless Helms, however, ideology is, because
of the all powerfulness of its relation to production, a tenet of faith
and a substitute for religion which he defends in a blind rage,
reproaching Stirner for a serious lack of proletarian
class-consciousness...
It would have been better if
he could have explained how, according to the Marxist conception, it could
come to the murders mentioned by Krushchev in his secret report for the
20th Congress of the Soviet Communist Party and what are, in a state in
which there is officially only one class, the "class-determined causes"
for the Stalinist terror, the cult of personality and other "fascist"
incivilities.
It was not Stirner, despite
Engel's accusation, who drank blood like water. Helms should explain why
his political friends in Moscow have not realized their avowed ultimate
goal of the disappearance of the State in a half-century of unlimited
power and have, instead, developed a new ruling class. He does not
understand that the spirit that he grasps, or means to grasp, in
Stirner's work is not Stirner's spirit and that the latter has nothing to
do with the former, which clings to slogans which were put into
circulation by misapprehending Stirner's interpreters.
The most popular
misunderstanding of Stirner is that of his "egoism." Stirner, however,
unequivocally condemns "egoism" in the ordinary sense of the word, that
is, ego-mania as a natural drive, as well as ego-delusion (ego-mania
disguised as altruism or "idealism"). Nor is his work the revelation of a
new ideology or an advice to others, but an assertion, a proclamation, a
manifesto of an until then unheard of boldness. He spoke of his ego,
his ego, which had delivered itself from all the bonds which
those possessed by fixed ideas tried to put upon him. Stirner was also a
realist who saw the conditions of power, not just the ratio of production,
as the reality. However, he did not bow before them, but rather tried to
succeed against them. There are many places in his book (Helms also turns
these upside down) where Stirner recommends for practical purposes the
combined efforts of those who have achieved consciousness of their
individuality and state of uniqueness. And he does this in an anarchist
sense--refusing power over others and, at the same time, refusing to be
dominated by others.
This is what is socially new
about his work. That which is philosophically new is that he created no
further ideology, but declared a practice. And he is not irrefutable
simply because of that. One could even take him for a religious mystic,
if it was not that with this conception one was bound to an obligatory
system.
Stirner became conscious of
his inner self, commented upon this and arrived at nearly the same kind of
formulation used by B™
Yin R‰, who asserted that he possessed the most heart-felt
recognition of eternal reality: each individuation is one-of-a-kind, a
unique emanation of eternal being and life cut off from the rest. In the
same way, one could put Stirner's work in a nutshell even if Stirner had
not preferred to make only a subjective statement, without setting up a
system encompassing others. At various times in his work he leaves it to
one's discretion to follow his example. Poor old Helms, however, as a
class-conscious atheist--according to Stirner a duped egoist--is never
clear about the "circumstances of production," which, in a hundred
thousand years of human development, have played a role for only a
relatively short period of time. Indeed, for much less time than the
consciousness of the individual, and Helms brings the numerous mistakes
and crazes of this consciousness against the heretic Stirner, who lacks
respect for Helms' idol.
Helms' falsification of
Stirner is like that of Marx who, in a good half of the first chapter of
the Communist Manifesto, sings an enthusiastic song of praise for the
historical mission of the bourgeoisie--explaining this to the convinced
bourgeoisie. Helms understands as little as Marx that the circumstances
of production are only a function of the situations of authority.
Stirner, for the first time, unmasked every authoritarian ideology and
declared himself in opposition, while Marx only announced a new ideology
of authority as he saddled the proletariat with the alleged "mission" of
the bourgeoisie and made himself Pope of the new religion.
The ersatz religion of fascism
is made according to the same recipe and the competition between it and
communism is therefore embittered in the same way as that within the
communist priesthood, in which the struggle of the "right-believers" and
the "deviators" is carried on with fascist methods and the unrestrained
calumny of communist tactics.
Helms betrays his communistic
training in the accusations he makes against those who do not believe in
the communist ideology. Against Mackay, the biographer of Stirner, who
was regarded as a model of propriety by all who knew him, Helms asserts:
"I suspected, moreover, that Mackay has either falsified or suppressed
material that did not suit his conception." Yet he himself declares that
the Mackay Stirner Collection, the fruit of a 30 year enthusiasm, which
includes 1100 volumes and over 300 handwritten pieces, is to be found in
the Marxist-Leninist Institute in Moscow! Verification, therefore, would
have been easy. Other Stirnerians, like the free economist Hans Timm,
with his Waraaktion, he represents, against better knowledge, as swindlers.
In another chapter he bitterly
turns against those of his Marxist fellow-believers who, like Max Adler,
rightly said that Stirner's teaching was "thoroughly democratic" and that
"also all of Stirner's ardour stands on the side of the proletariat."
Helms clings to the term "lumpenproletariat"--coined by Marx and meant to
be insulting--that Stirner snatched when he recommended to the 'lumps' not
to let themselves be oppressed any longer, but to become self-conscious
and to struggle alongside of others for their freedom. Helms makes out
that it was Stirner, not Marx, who was contemptuous of the individual
proletarian and only granted him any value insofar as he let himself be
moved as the willing object of his theory.
The spook of fascism was the
real descendant of the ghost that Marx had described in the Communist
Manifesto, for it arose directly from the theory of the class struggle.
To investigate this, for which purpose he would have to have laid aside
his blinkers, would have been a more significant task for the author than
his awkward fishing for Stirner as the agent of capitalism's connection
with fascism--a fiction not made any more productive by his setting up as
witnesses several "Stirnerites" who had misunderstood Stirner in the same
way as he himself had.
However, he has, and one can
call this the irony of the story, performed a dubious service for his
cause, for most of those who will read his book, namely, his communist
partisans, will only become incurably infected with the Stirner bacillus,
as he is himself. Let us wait for the incubation period to pass. Helms
has, already, founded a Stirner Archive in a meritorious manner.
(Die Ideologie der anonymen
Gesellschaft by Hans G. Helms, Koln: Verlag M. DuMont Schauberg, 1966)