Dionysian Anarchism

I became alive once more. At the dances I was one of the most untiring and gayest. One evening a cousin of Sasha, a young boy, took me aside. With a grave face, as if he were about to announce the death of a dear comrade, he whispered to me that it did not behoove an agitator to dance. Certainly not with such reckless abandon, anyway. It was undignified for one who was on the way to become a force in the anarchist movement. My frivolity would only hurt the Cause. I grew furious at the impudent interference of the boy. I told him to mind his own business, I was tired of having the Cause constantly thrown into my face. I did not believe that a Cause which stood for a beautiful ideal, for anarchism, for release and freedom from conventions and prejudice, should demand the denial of life and joy. I insisted that our Cause could not expect me to become a nun and that the movement should not be turned into a cloister. If it meant that, I did not want it. ‘I want freedom, the right to self-expression, everybody’s right to beautiful, radiant things.’ Anarchism meant that to me, and I would live it in spite of the whole world – prisons, persecution, everything. Yes, even in spite of the condemnation of my own closest comrades I would live my beautiful ideal.

— Emma Goldman, Living My Life

Punishment follows crime. If crime falls because the sacred disap­pears, punishment must no less be dragged into its fall; because it too only has meaning in relation to something sacred. They have abolished ecclesiastical punishments. Why? Because how someone behaves toward the “holy God” is his own affair. But as this one punishment, ecclesiastical punishment, has fallen, so all punishments must fall. As sin against the so-called God is a person's own affair, so is that against every sort of so-called sacred thing. According to our theories of penal law, with whose “timely improvement” people are struggling in vain, they want to punish people for this or that “inhumanity” and make the foolishness of these theories especially clear by their consequences, in that they hang the little thieves and let the big ones go. For violation of property, you have the penitentiary, while for “forced thought,” sup­pression of “natural human rights,” only—presentations and petitions. The criminal code has continued existence only through the sacred, and falls to pieces by itself if they give up punishment. Now every­where they want to create a new penal law without having reserva­tions about punishment. But it is precisely punishment that must give way to satisfaction, which again cannot aim at satisfying right or justice, but at procuring a satisfactory outcome for us. If one does to us something we won't put up with, we break his power and bring our own to bear; we satisfy ourselves on him and don't fall into the folly of trying to satisfy right (the phantasm). The sacred isn't to defend itself against human beings, but rather the human being is to defend himself against human beings; as, of course, God too no longer de­fends himself against human beings, that God to whom once and in part, indeed, even now, all “God's servants” offered their hands to punish the blasphemer, as still to this very day, they offer their hands to the sacred. That devotion to the sacred also brings it about that without any lively interest of one's own, one only delivers malefactors into the hands of the police and the courts: an apathetic giving over to the authorities, “who will, of course, best administer sacred things.” The people goes utterly nuts, sending the police against everything that seems immoral, or even only unseemly, to it; and this popular rage for the moral protects the police institution more than the mere government could possibly protect it. In crime the egoist has up to now asserted himself and mocked the sacred; the breaking with the sacred, or rather of the sacred, can be­come general. A revolution never returns, but an immense, reckless, shameless, conscienceless, proud—crime, doesn't it rumble in the dis­tant thunder, and don't you see how the sky grows ominously silent and gloomy?

— Max Stirner, The Unique and Its Property

The best state would clearly be the one which has the most loyal citizens, and the more the devoted sense of legality is lost, the more the state, this system of morality, this moral life itself, becomes dimin­ished in force and quality. With the “good citizens,” the good state also degenerates and dissolves into anarchy and lawlessness. “Respect for the law!” The state as a whole is held together by this cement. “The law is sacred, and anyone who transgresses it is a criminal.” Without crime, no state: the moral world—and that is the state—is stuffed full of rogues, swindlers, liars, thieves, etc. Since the state is the rule of law, its hierarchy, therefore the egoist, in all cases where his advantage runs up against the state, can only satisfy himself through crime. The state cannot give up the claim that its laws and regulations are sacred. With this, the individual is considered precisely as the unholy (barbarian, natural human being, egoist), since he is against the state, which is precisely how the church once viewed him.

As the church had mortal sins, so the state has capital crimes; as the one had heretics, so the other has traitors; the one had ecclesiastical penalties, the other has criminal penalties; the one had inquisitorial trials, the other has fiscal trials; in short, there sins, here crimes, there sinners, here crim­inals, there inquisition and here—inquisition. Won't the sanctity of the state fall like that of the church? The awe of its laws, the reverence of its sovereignty, the humility of its “subjects”—will this last? Will the “sacred face” not be disfigured? What a folly to demand of state power that it should enter into an honest fight with the individual, and, as one expresses himself with freedom of the press, share sun and wind equally! If the state, this concept, is to be an effective power, it must simply be a higher power against the individual. The state is “sacred” and should not expose itself to the “impudent attacks” of individuals. If the state is sacred, then there must be censorship. The political liberals acknowledge the former and deny the consequence. But in any case, they concede re­pressive penalties to it, because—they insist that the state is more than the individual and practices a justified revenge, called punishment. Punishment only has a meaning when it is to grant atonement for the violation of a sacred thing.

Weitling lays the blame for crime on “social disorder” and lives in the expectation that under communist institutions crimes will be­come impossible because the temptations to them, such as money, will be removed. But since his organized society is also extolled as sacred and inviolable, he miscalculates in that kind-hearted opinion. Those who declared their support with their mouth for the commu­nist society, but worked underhandedly for its ruin, would not be lacking. Besides, Weitling has to continue with “remedies against the natural remainder of human diseases and weaknesses,” and “remedies” always announce at the start that one considers individuals to be “called” to a certain “well-being” [Heil] and will consequently treat them in accordance with this “human calling.” The remedy or cure is only the reverse side of punishment, the theory of cure runs parallel with the theory of punishment; if the latter sees in an action a sin against right, the former takes it for a sin against himself, as a wasting of his health. But the appropriate thing is for me to look at it as an action that suits me or that doesn't suit me, as hostile or friendly to me, i.e., that I treat it as my property, which I cultivate or destroy. Neither “crime” nor “disease” is an egoist view of the matter, i.e., a judgment coming from me, but from something else, namely whether it violates the right, generally, or the health in part of the individual (the sick one) and in part of the universal (society). “Crime” is treated implacably, “disease” with “loving kindness, compassion,” and the like.

— Max Stirner, The Unique and Its Property

The boy believes that he'll only become a proper I, a proper guy, when he becomes a man; the man thinks that only in the afterlife will he be something proper. And for us to come nearer to actuality immediately, even the best are still today telling each other the tale that one has to take up into himself the state, his people, humanity, and who knows what all, in order to be an actual I, a “free, state citizen,” a “free or true man”; they also see my truth and actuality in the acceptance of an alien I and devotion to it. And what sort of an I? An I that is neither an I nor a you, an imaginary I, a phantasm. During the Middle Ages the church could well tolerate many states living united in it; likewise, after the Reformation, and especially af­ter the Thirty Years' War, states learned to tolerate many churches (denominations) being gathered under one crown. But all states are religious and, as the case may be, are often “Christian states,” and set themselves the task of forcing the ungovernable, the “egoists,” under the bond of the unnatural, i.e., to Christianize them. All institutions of the Christian state have the objective of Christianizing the peo­ple. Thus, the court has the objective of forcing people to justice, the school that of forcing them to spiritual culture; in short, the objective of protecting those who act in a Christian manner from those who act in an unchristian manner, of bringing Christian action to dom­inance, of making it powerful. Among these means of coercion, the state also counted the church, it required a—particular religion from everybody. Dupin recently said against the clergy: “Instruction and education belong to the state.” Certainly, all that concerns the principle of morality is a state mat­ter. Thus, the Chinese state meddles so much in family affairs, and one is nothing, if one is not, above all, a good child to his parents. With us as well, family affairs are thoroughly state affairs; it's just that our state—places trust in the families without anxious supervision; it keeps the family bound through the ties of marriage, and these ties cannot be broken without it. But that the state makes me responsible for my principles, and de­mands certain ones from me, could lead me to ask: What does the “bat in my belfry” (principle) have to do with it? Very much, because the state is the—ruling principle. People suppose that in matters of divorce, in marriage law in general, it's a question of the proportion of rights between church and state. Rather it's a question of whether something sacred should rule over human beings, whether it is called faith or moral law (morality). The state, as a ruler, behaves the same way the church did. The latter is based on devoutness, the former on morality.

— Max Stirner

The boy believes that he'll only become a proper I, a proper guy, when he becomes a man; the man thinks that only in the afterlife will he be something proper. And for us to come nearer to actuality immediately, even the best are still today telling each other the tale that one has to take up into himself the state, his people, humanity, and who knows what all, in order to be an actual I, a “free, state citizen,” a "free or true man"; they also see my truth and actuality in the acceptance of an alien I and devotion to it. And what sort of an I? An I that is neither an I nor a you, an imaginary I, a phantasm. During the Middle Ages the church could well tolerate many states living united in it; likewise, after the Reformation, and especially af­ter the Thirty Years' War, states learned to tolerate many churches (denominations) being gathered under one crown. But all states are religious and, as the case may be, are often “Christian states,” and set themselves the task of forcing the ungovernable, the “egoists,” under the bond of the unnatural, i.e., to Christianize them. All institutions of the Christian state have the objective of Christianizing the peo­ple. Thus, the court has the objective of forcing people to justice, the school that of forcing them to spiritual culture; in short, the objective of protecting those who act in a Christian manner from those who act in an unchristian manner, of bringing Christian action to dom­inance, of making it powerful. Among these means of coercion, the state also counted the church, it required a—particular religion from everybody. Dupin recently said against the clergy: “Instruction and education belong to the state.” Certainly, all that concerns the principle of morality is a state mat­ter. Thus, the Chinese state meddles so much in family affairs, and one is nothing, if one is not, above all, a good child to his parents. With us as well, family affairs are thoroughly state affairs; it's just that our state—places trust in the families without anxious supervision; it keeps the family bound through the ties of marriage, and these ties cannot be broken without it. But that the state makes me responsible for my principles, and de­mands certain ones from me, could lead me to ask: What does the “bat in my belfry” (principle) have to do with it? Very much, because the state is the—ruling principle. People suppose that in matters of divorce, in marriage law in general, it's a question of the proportion of rights between church and state. Rather it's a question of whether something sacred should rule over human beings, whether it is called faith or moral law (morality). The state, as a ruler, behaves the same way the church did. The latter is based on devoutness, the former on morality.

— Max Stirner

‘Pure spirit’ a prejudice. — Wherever the teaching of pure spirituality has ruled, it has destroyed nervous energy with its excesses: it has taught deprecation, neglect or tormenting of the body and men to torment and deprecate themselves on account of the drives which fill them; it has produced gloomy, tense and oppressed souls – which believed, moreover, they knew the cause of their feeling of wretchedness and were perhaps able to abolish it! ‘It must reside in the body! the body is still flourishing too well!’ – thus they concluded, while in fact the body was, by means of the pains it registered, raising protest after protest against the mockery to which it was constantly being subjected. A general chronic over-excitability was finally the lot of these virtuous pure-spirits: the only pleasure they could still recognise was in the form of ecstasy and other precursors of madness – and their system attained its summit when it came to take ecstasy for the higher goal of life and the standard by which all earthly things stood condemned.

— Friedrich Nietzsche, The Dawn of Day (39)

Drives transformed by moral judgments. — The same drive evolves into the painful feeling of cowardice under the impress of the reproach custom has imposed upon this drive: or into the pleasant feeling of humility if it happens that a custom such as the Christian has taken it to its heart and called it good. That is to say, it is attended by either a good or a bad conscience! In itself it has, like every drive, neither this moral character nor any moral character at all, nor even a definite attendant sensation of pleasure or displeasure: it acquires all this, as its second nature, only when it enters into relations with drives already baptised good or evil or is noted as a quality of beings the people has already evaluated and determined in a moral sense. – Thus the older Greeks felt differently about envy from the way we do; Hesiod counted it among the effects of the good, beneficent Eris, and there was nothing offensive in attributing to the gods something of envy: which is comprehensible under a condition of things the soul of which was contest; contest, however, was evaluated and determined as good. The Greeks likewise differed from us in their evaluation of hope: they felt it to be blind and deceitful; Hesiod gave the strongest expression to this attitude in a fable whose sense is so strange no more recent commentator has understood it – for it runs counter to the modern spirit, which has learned from Christianity to believe in hope as a virtue. With the Greeks, on the other hand, to whom the gateway to knowledge of the future seemed not to be entirely closed and in countless cases where we content ourselves with hope elevated inquiry into the future into a religious duty, hope would, thanks to all these oracles and soothsayers, no doubt become somewhat degraded and sink to something evil and dangerous. – The Jews felt differently about anger from the way we do, and called it holy: thus they saw the gloomy majesty of the man with whom it showed itself associated at an elevation which a European is incapable of imagining; they modelled their angry holy Jehovah on their angry holy prophets. Measured against these, the great men of wrath among Europeans are as it were creations at second hand.

— Friedrich Nietzsche, The Dawn of Day (38)

False conclusions from utility. — When one has demonstrated that a thing is of the highest utility, one has however thereby taken not one step towards explaining its origin: that is to say, one can never employ utility to make it comprehensible that a thing must necessarily exist. But it is the contrary judgment that has hitherto prevailed – and even into the domain of the most rigorous science. Even in the case of astronomy, has the (supposed) utility in the way the satellites are arranged (to compensate for the diminished light they receive owing to their greater distance from the sun, so that their inhabitants shall not go short of light) not been advanced as the final objective of this arrangement and the explanation of its origin? It reminds us of the reasoning of Columbus: the earth was made for man, therefore if countries exist they must be inhabited. ‘Is it probable that the sun should shine on nothing, and that the nocturnal vigils of the stars are squandered upon pathless seas and countries unpeopled?’

— Friedrich Nietzsche, The Dawn of Day (37)