Enemies of Society: An Anthology of Individualist and Egoist Thought

An Anthology of Individualist & Egoist Thought This book tells the story of the most neglected tendency in anarchist thought; egoism. The story of anarchism is usually told as a story of great bearded men who had beautiful ideas and a series of beautiful failures, culminating in the most beautiful failure of them all -- the Spanish Civil War: a noble history of failed ideas and practice. Egoism, and individualist anarchism, suffer a different kind of fate. It is not a great history and glorious failure but an obscure series of stories of winning, with victory defined by the only terms that matter, those of people who lived life to their fullest and whose struggle against the existing order defined them. This struggle was not one of abstractions, of Big Ideas, but of people attempting to claim an authentic stake in their own life. Inspired by the writings of Stirner's "The Ego and His Own" the assertion these people make is not of the composition of a better world (for everyone) but of how the machinations of society, especially one of abstractions and Big Ideas, have shaped the individual members of that society. How everything that we know and believe has been shaped (by structure and intent) into a conformed, denatured shadow of what we could be. Individualists anarchists have always argued that anarchism should not be a version of heaven on earth but a "plurality of possibilities". This has relegated their activity to the actions that people make in their lives rather than participating in political bodies and formations that shape, and participate in, society. Egoists have gone to war with this world, robbed banks, practiced free love, and won everything except those things worth nothing: history, politics, & acceptance by society.