Convince me to finish reading Saint Max when Marx was high on his idea of base/superstructure and his reductionist...

Convince me to finish reading Saint Max when Marx was high on his idea of base/superstructure and his reductionist materialism. His critique of Stirner relies on that Stirner comes off as believing only in an idealistic conception of physical events, in that we are ruled by thoughts and that reality is molded by thought. Where does Stirner actually concieve of this, except for satirizing this very idea with his development of The Unique, which is filled by the unique content (as the dialectical negation of thought development throughout the book). Marx concieves of the unique as petty bourgeois individualism, denying that there is a materialistic factor of ideas and ideals (Stirner's step towards psychoanalysis), and instead concieves a vulgar materialistic idea that consciousness is last in line as a reflection of material and social conditions. Whereas Stirner concieves of the individual as something not able to be completely defined in conceptual networks of intercourse a la base/superstructure, and the underlying physical network cannot be abstracted as simple as other young hegelians concieved (which Marx places him as the pinnacle of).

Not to say that Stirner's critique isn't dated, which Marx continously nitpicks. But Marx doesn't seem to accept that there are conscious changes that can be made on the individual level to affect larger scale thought, and just regards Stirner's efforts against morality as individualistic trash, as if the whole moralic structure is defined by communal/social factors, and not involving the material consciousness in the organic process.
So convince me Stirner is the idealist that he's made out to be, compared to Marx's profile of materialism.

t. Brainlet

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Stirner's notion of property of course aren't backed up by force nor the threat thereof, thus his claims to property are just LARPing. "Asserting your right to property" by word alone is putting the ideal before the material, as if words can change physical reality by themselves. In other words, Stirner's philosophy boils down to "it's magic, I ain't gotta explain shit".

I've yet to see Marx concisely take down the notion of material power as property. Stirner takes property as everything that involves material force, even mental force of an individual. Stirner may seem like an idealist when he says "asserting your right to property" (if he does actually say that) but that's just hyperbole, there is no right involved but your power and its extent as Stirner plainly states in My Power I'm pretty sure. It's less assert your right but more assert yourself as holder of the thing. If you do not really have the power to defend it, but just the assistance of a state apperatus to defend your "rightful" property, is it really yours? Or has it just been abstractly defined as yours? Marx thought as though this was the defining feature of Stirner's "private" property, when Stirner never even defines how people would socially handle property except for however it was seen fit to needs of whatever The Unique has.

After you've read TEaiO once you feel like you read it at least five times, so you get the best bang for the buck as far as leftist literature goes.

You're right, the idea of The Unique transcends mere idealism. It's (viewed as) irrational, because it's trans-rational, it doesn't need the justification from rationality, and the longer you sit with the ideas, you'll see that materialists are serial rationalists. Rationality is just one lens, out of many available to Me, in order to view the ("""objective..""") world. The Rational Society is a bourgeois liberal dream, it's shakily held together by 'democracy', and it's full of ectoplasmic residue.

Even the most hardcore materialist holds the view as their ideal. There's no escape from 'the realm of ideas', and why should there be? Be in control of the ideas and don't be controlled by them, that's all.


read dr. bones on gun ownership and go to bed

As expected, an-nils don't show up in this thread

like just do your own thing man

bump

Read this: theanarchistlibrary.org/library/stirner-the-wise-guy

Wrong, his philosophy is:
"Everything in the world already belongs to me, I have only yet to obtain power over it first"
So he affirms the material, and so does when he also says
"When despooked the spooks no longer affect me, but other people still spooked may oppress me"
These paraphrased. Read the actual book pls.

Yeah and?

By Saint Max he means Marx's critique of Stirner. I've never read the critique myself but I have read The Ego and Its Own. Everyone on this board seems to say Marx's critique boils down to him being butthurt tho so I haven't touched it.s

p-pls respond

Pretty sure he was mad he attacked Freuerbach by saying he "clothed his materialism in the property of idealism". What Stirner talks about is how people appraise objects. What Marx critiques Stirner over, was outside the scope of the original work. He's right to say that material factors influence the self, but Stirner still expresses some awareness of this and doesn't discount it outright. For instance, look at how he describes the difference between freedom and owness:


He understands the reality of being a slave isn't molded by thought, but "owness" is also unavoidable for him,

How is this not the basis of cognitive psych?
Christ, Lacanians can be fucking dense.
Go away, Mirror-Man

Marx was a great man who's idea that changed the world was: great men and their ideas don't change the world*

*except when they sometimes do in an unspecifiable way

it's absolutely ridiculous.

Thanks but no thanks.


You're right about the use of "right" there, I was wrongly paraphrasing. I meant it in the way of being personally able to enforce your property over something, not as in having a right which a State will protect. My bad.

Anyway, I don't see how material power can be property because of its nature as something that can't be properly discretized, categorized, measured etc. Altho it certainly can be commodified, but that's another matter entirely.

You can have property of material or even ideal things, but said things have to be able to be discretized, categorized, measured etc., or to simplify it, it has to be unique. With material things this is a given, because no two bodies are the same and no two bodies can occupy the same space; if you see two identical chairs and assert property over one of them, it doesn't make a iota of difference whether the two chairs are completely different or identical down to atomic level, because your property extends only to one specific chair, which is the one you would defend from theft. Each chair is its own chair, much like any two people are their own selves. Property over ideas, like patents or even a futures contract, might need some arbitration, but can still be unique.

Material power however is neither a physical object nor a new idea. Rather it's a simple threat of an action, with the action itself being violence. Either way, it's something that happens instead of something that really exists. The threat of violence, at its most basic, is previous property of material goods in the form of visible armaments; violence is its usage. In other words, material power is an action of exhibiting or using force, and as such it can't be property. I should point out that this is completely different from simply having the property of armaments. After all, a weapon by itself, especially one which you have no willingness to use, is just another commodity.

So then, material power is something you do with that weapon i.e. exhibit it or use it. It's an action you execute, using specific commodities or machinery, exactly like labor; in fact, it can be considered a form of labor. Private security, for example, will sell their labor-power (which is his property) to execute the action of enforcing your property over whatever. This is what I meant by commodification. It does not, however, mean that material power can be a property instead of an action.


But user, that's exactly what I said about putting the ideal before the material. Your property over anything is meaningless if it can't be enforced, which is why the means of enforcing claims of property come before claims of property. The latter can be, let's say, improvised or informal; the former can't. Let's say you're in charge of rebuilding a city that was leveled during a war, which one would you build first: a notary office, or a police headquarters? Exactly.

Stirner's theory could be seen as a more direct shortcut to class consciousness, where his book will simply wake up all the normies, whereas Marx declared the necessity of a comprehensive program including party politics, infiltrated trade unions, and so on as forming the basis of praxis required to reflect truly historical awareness back into the faulty sheeple brain.

...

Hol up. You can't hold anything as of actual property, because you don't own the thing in itself, what you hold is your own unique force over the property, and of course this unique force is a property of yourself that only uyou can own. It's a means, and the object the end. You cannot own anything outside yourself, because it's not you.

Stirner is obviously not the idealist. Stirner just doesn't care about Marx's ideology lol. Seriously simple as that.

He might take a look into his theory of analysis of Capitalism, he didn't but well I'm referencing any Egoist here might want to if he wants to but the ideology, he doesn't needs the ideology.

I think basically it comes down to the law of large numbers. To understand the behavior of a single human requires a very individualistic model of that person's mind, but to understand the behavior of 7 billion people only requires you to understand human nature in general terms which is quite simple. Large groups of people don't act rationally, but they do act predictably. That predictability is, for example, the basis of the whole advertising industry.

If a very large system has been stable for a few generations, it's unlikely any change be effected spontaneously by the people. People get stuck in patterns and don't really like to deviate from them too much. There needs to be some kind of outside force in the form of changing material conditions to cause people to change their behavior.

I get ya, but take these sayings.

yes