7/31/2019 A Reply to A Marxist Critique of Bakounine By Ren Berthier 15 Janvier 2008, (300 Pages Against Stirner),

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Reply to A Marxist Critique of Bakounine

ByRen Berthier15 Janvier 2008

300 pages against Stirner

Lets get back to the German

Ideology. Those who took the

trouble to read it entirely, andnot only chosen abstracts as isusually the case (it is a very

thick book), realised that only avery small part of it concerns the

explanation of the historicalmethod Marx and Engels are

supposed to have discovered.

The main part of the book isdedicated to hysterical polemics.

And 300 pages (2/3 of thebook !) concern Max Stirner.

This man is considered byauthorised marxists who never

read him as totally uninteresting.Now, who is this uninteresting

bloke about whom Marx writes

300 pages ?

Most people (and particularlyanarchists) ignore that if Stirner

had been famous for a short timein the intellectual circles of

Berlin, he had fallen intooblivion until the late 1880s

and was literally propelled intothe anarchist Pantheon by

Engels, who wanted to kick theanarchists out of the 2

nd

International. In order todiscredit the anarchists, Engels

tried to link Bakunin and

Stirner, saying that the former

had been influenced by thelatter, which is absolutelywrong. Bakunin, who never

hesitated to praise the authors heappreciated, never refers to his

thought and mentions him onlyonce, casually, in an

enumeration of progressisthegelians: Were part of this

group the Bauer brothers, Brunoand Edgar, Max Stirner et then,

in Berlin, the first circle ofGerman nihilists who, by their

cynical logic, left the wildRussian nihilists far behind.

(Statism and Anarchy.) This isthe only mention he ever makes

of Stirner. As you can see, beingconsidered as a nihilist was

not a particularly favorableopinion to Bakunin. It is

significant that the Bauerbrothers and Stirner are put in

the same boat: they are part ofthat fraction of the leftHegelians who stuck to

intellectuel criticism and nevertook action. In fact, Marx,

Engels and Bakunin shared thesame opinion on him and if

Engels hadnt been so sectarian,he would have realized it.

I, personally, dont consider

Stirner as an anarchist, butthats a strictly personal

opinion. Most anarchists thinkhe is an individualist but they

are wrong. His concern is notthe individual but the

individuality. That makes agreat difference. There is

nothing anarchist in him ; Iwould say he is more of a

precursor of Freud.

The young intellectuals who,around 1840, criticized Hegelsphilosophy finally split into two

branches.

The first branch, influenced byFeuerbach, but mainly by a Pole

called Cieskovsky, concludedthat it was necessary now to start

acting. That was Bakunin, Marx,Engels, Hess.

The second branch refused to

act and stuck to a strictlyintellectually criticist point of

view. That was Bruno Bauerand Max Stirner. During the

1848 revolution in Germany,Stirner strictly did nothing. This

is, among other reasons, why Icant consider him as an

anarchist.

Anyway, Stirners thought

deserves being studied because,among other things, he played an

important part in the constitutionof marxism. Which, of course,

marxists wont admit, and whichis why they are unable to explain

why Marx wrote 300 pagesagainst him

In 1844, Marxs thought wastotally influenced by Feuerbach ;he enthusiastically mentioned the

great discoveries of thephilosopher who had given a

philosophical foundation tosocialism. At that time Marx

was a humanist. When he says inthe 1844 Manuscripts that

communism is not as such the

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aim of human development, hemeans that the aim is Man with a

capital M. At that time hethought philosophy was the truth

of religion.

Stirner vigorously criticizedFeuerbach for not having

destroyed the Sacred but only itssurface. Philosophy has only

taken away the sacred envelopeof religion. Feuerbachs generic

man is a new form of theDivine and reproduces Christian

morals. The very moment Marxwanted to show that the

suppression of philosophy is theactualization of philosophy,

Stirner showed that it can only

accomplish itself as theology.

These ideas were developped in

a book, The Unique and itsproperty, published in 1845, and

were a shock to Marx. Worse,Engels himself adhered to

Stirners theses, a time. (He wascurtly reprimanded by his pal,

beleive me)

Even worse, Stirners critique ofFeuerbach was obviously animplicit critique of Marx.

And even worse again, a number

of the smartest minds in Berlinwere gathering around Stirner.

Marxist authors usually forget tosay that.

All that, for Marx, was

unbearable. Which explains whyhe wrote The German Ideology.After that, Marx gives up the

idea of generic man and allthese humanistic concepts.

So here we have another

example of connection betweenanarchism (if you consider

Stirner as an anarchist) and

marxism, evolving intosomething finally positive, since

without Stirners philosophicalkick in the ass, Marx would have

developped a sort of flabby,spineless socialism. We can

consider that Marx becametruely a marxist after that. And

naturally, his attack againstStirner was proportional to his

(philosophical) pain in the ass.

There are many otherexamples of positive

connection between marxismand anarchism.

When Bakunin escaped from

Siberia, he went to England and

met Marx before settling downin Italy. Marx then askedBakunin to help him in his fight

against Mazzini. This isprecisely what he did. Of course,

he would have fought Mazzinisinfluence anyway, but he was

quite efficient. He personallyinitiated several sections of the

International, although he wasnot yet a member, and had a

decisive influence in theconstitution of the Italian

working class (working class,not peasantry). (On that

question, see : Bakunin & theItalians, T.R. Ravindranathan,

McGill-Queens UniversityPress, Kingston and Montreal in English.)

When Bakunin joined the

International, he supported themarxists against the right-wing

Proudhonians.

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