I think I stole it from PhilosophyMemes in the before times. They had some really great ones. I agree that Stirner is not someone to look up to, but he makes for a great meme.
I have heard so much about Ayn Rand that I decided to see what all the buzz was about and listened to Atlas Shrugged during my commute. That shit was the most insufferable, unrealistic, out-of-touch BS I’ve ever “read.” She really thought a lot of herself. It was a horrible exercise in self-flagellation.
Max Stirner. Some kind of weird egoistic anarchist. Friedrich Engels liked him a lot in his early years. If I am right Karl Marx wrote a lot about him, but mostly how stupid his ideas were.
Yeah, I looked it up and gave a link to wikipedia here, already. I was not sure, cause the last time I read something about him was like 10 years, ago. You have to read the exchange between Marx and Engels, you’ll find more there. It’s obvious that nobody would remember Stirner, if Marx & Engels hadn’t critized his ideas.
The edition I read has a commentary at the end that talks about various people’s opinions of the book in the years following its publication, and quotes some passages from Marx and Engels’ letters.
It’s amazing how few people have maintained a positive opinion about him/his work for more than a few years
LOL! Hell no, he wasn’t. His ideas were simple, stupid and had not really a connection to the reality. It works maybe on a personal level, but mostly in your mind. If you have a connection with economics and the materialistic world, nah - it doesn’t. I think the funniest part is that nobody would remember him, if Engels didn’t make a lot of jokes about him. Even the only existing portrait of him is from Engels making fun of him. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_German_Ideology
In what world? Outside of the shitposting of some political internet bubbles Stirner is practically unheard of, while Engels is a cornerstone of scientific socialism and materialist philosophy in general
im pretty sure there are still statues of engels all over the world, while stirner still lies in paper, seen as nothing but a sketch made by engels himself.
stirner is like the rest of anarchism, a overvalued idiot who is only worth anything due to profiting off the actions of their marxist betters
Ideas about personal connections and your mind are also incredibly important.
If you don’t understand how humans work, then you won’t be able to create an ideology that works. Economics aren’t everything.
Sure, a lot of his works weren’t particularly good, but he tried to encompass a psychological component into his works, which hadn’t been done previously. His assertions were almost all wrong, but the fact that he tried had massive impacts on socialism as a whole.
In that sense I see him fulfilling a similar role to Freud: He wasn’t correct, but his ideas opened up a new direction, which lead the broader field to actually think about and look into that stuff. Writing against Stirner made Marxism encompass some important aspects, like the historical materialism itself, that might not have existed had Stirner not existed.
Stirner was a pioneer, but also mostly wrong. He was important for the development of socialism and for his time, but is now almost useless.
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