Individualist anarchism

From Libertarian Wiki

Individualist Anarchism is a philosophical tradition that opposes collectivism and has a particularly strong emphasis on the supremacy and autonomy of the individual. An amoral radical form of individualist anarchism is found in the writings of Max Stirner. However, a different form centered around free markets began in the United States with Josiah Warren as its originater. In turn, the Americans influenced Europeans such as Emile Armand and John Henry Mackay who also adopted the individualist philosophy. Other individualists include Benjamin Tucker, Lysander Spooner, Ezra Heywood, Stephen Pearl Andrews, and later, Murray Rothbard. Individualist anarchism is sometimes seen as an evolution of classical liberalism, and hence, has been called "liberal anarchism" [1]. The key difference between the individualist anarchists and social anarchists is that the individualists support private property and distribution through markets while communist anarchists oppose that, instead supporting collective ownership of land and goods and distribution to according to "need." "While social anarchists seek to abolish the state as the source of private property, the individualists want to eliminate it because they see it as an obstacle to private property." ^[1]

Stirnerite individualist anarchism

Max Stirner was one of the first individualist anarchists. Around the same time as Proudhon's most famous work was published, Max Stirner argued in The Ego and Its Own, considered to be "a founding text in the tradition of individualist anarchism."^[2] Stirner believs that most commonly accepted social institutions - including the notion of State, property as a right, natural rights in general, and the very notion of society - were mere illusions or ghosts in the mind, saying of society that "the individuals are its reality." He advocated egoism and a form of amoralism, in which individuals would unite in 'associations of egoists' only when it was in their self interest to do so. For him, property simply comes about through might: "Whoever knows how to take, to defend, the thing, to him belongs property." And, "What I have in my power, that is my own. So long as I assert myself as holder, I am the proprietor of the thing."

Stirner never called himself an anarchist - he accepted only the label 'egoist'. Nevertheless, he is considered by most to be an anarchist because of his rejection of the state, law and government, and his ideas influenced many anarchists, although interpretations of his thought are diverse.