Recent Notes
To have love for the embodied human being with hide and hair, well, that would no longer be "spiritual" warm-heartedness ; it would be a betrayal of "pure" warm-heartedness, of "theoretical concern." For one doesn't imagine pure warm-heartedness to be like that easy-going pleasantness which gives everyone a friendly handshake ; on the contrary, pure warm-heartedness is warm-hearted to no one ; it is only a theoretical concern, an interest in human beings as human beings, not as persons. The person is disgusting to it, because he is egoistic, because he is not this idea, the human being.
Russian spy?
A reminder of neocons' crimes against humanity:
"The war in Iraq was conceived by 25 neoconservative intellectuals, most of them Jewish, who are pushing President Bush to change the course of history. Two of them, journalists William Kristol and Charles Krauthammer, say it's possible. But another journalist, Thomas Friedman (not part of the group), is skeptical"
https://archive.ph/K7DNm#selection-285.0-285.314 
The following letter from Sidney E. Parker was transcribed from the British journal Freedom: Anarchist Weekly, Vol. 32 No. 5, Feb 27, 1971. Freedom was started in 1886 by volunteers including Peter Kropotkin and Charlotte Wilson and continued with a short interruption in the 1930s until 2014 as a regular publication, moving its news production online and publishing irregularly until 2016, when it became a bi-annual. Originally, the subtitle was “A Journal of Anarchist Socialism”. The title was changed to “A Journal of Anarchist Communism” in June 1889.
Dear Editors,
Bill Dwyer gives a substantially correct report of what I recounted of my experiences as a member of a printing union ‘chapel’ (Freedom, 19.12.70). What he deduces from it, however, is wide of the mark.
Firstly, I do not maintain that ‘the worker (whoever he is) is fitted only for obedience’. What I do maintain is that most workers (like most other people) have supported and defended authoritarianism and servility in the past, do so in the present and that, on the evidence of this, they will do so in the future. Every social upheaval so far has resulted in either the survival of the old authority or the creation of a new, and as far as I can see this is the inevitable outcome of all organized collectivities—no matter what names they are given. Bill Dwyer, like his utopian forebears, has confused ‘the worker’ as he is with ‘the worker’ as he would like him to be. He is, if you will pardon the philosophical pun, trying to deduce an ‘is’ from an ‘ought’.
Because, however, this has been and is true of most workers, it by no means follows that all workers are incapable of transcending authoritarianism and becoming anarchists. A small minority in each generation do just this, as do a small minority of ‘non-workers’. (Anarchism is an individual, not a class, phenomenon.) Secondly, what ‘weakness’ did Francis Ellingham show in my social pessimism? The only ‘evidence’ that he could offer to refute my view was that he believes that mankind can create the kind of world he would like to see by means of some unexplained (and, I suspect, unexplainable) process of concurrent and contagious spontaneity of the sort that will result in what Ellingham wants it to result in. Of course, any millenarian sect can claim the viability of their goal on this kind of ‘evidence’. From Plymouth Brethren to Koreshanists—all can view the world as their oyster. More tough-minded folk, however, would demand better credentials than those so far offered.
Thirdly, I cannot see how I am being ‘insulting’ to point out what I think are the facts of the case. (F.E. is fond of derogatory labelling too. Because I have said most people appear to want a government of some kind or other he accuses me of saying they are ‘stupid’. Not so. Some of the most ardent governmentalists are very intelligent persons. Intelligence is no more a monopoly of anarchists than is stupidity of anarchists.) If I claimed that on the basis of what I knew about Bill Dwyer I thought it unlikely he could run a mile in three minutes would he regard that as being ‘insulting’? Emotive [illegible] of this kind is simply begging the question.
Finally, I have never claimed that ‘no change’ is possible. The world I live in now is in many ways not the world I lived in twenty years ago, nor is it the kind of world I will live in twenty years from now. My point is that what changes will take place are, on the basis of what is and has been in the sphere of social constraint, unlikely to bring about anarchy as a universal condition. For this reason anarchist individualists, such as I claim to be, will shape their perspectives accordingly. Anarchism as an individualism can survive such a reshaping. I am quite prepared to admit that those who regard anarchism as a socialism will reject my view, since their ideas cannot.
Yours Sincerely,
S.E. Parker
London, W.2
Bankrupt Science
Mr. De Casseres on the Victories of Pyrrhonism and Acatalepsy.
To the Editor of The Sun—Sir: Mr. Gallatin’s remarkable letter in this morning’s Sun wherein the general bankruptcy of all scientific speculation is pointed out is a straw which shows us the drift of a world current. Are we going back, or going forward, to the doctrine of the Acataleptics? This doctrine was the doctrine of the incomprehensibility of things. Pyrrho is the supreme acataleptic among the ancients; Anatole France and Rémy de Gourmont are the supreme acataleptics among moderns. All opinion will finally become heretical. To say “I know” will be to put the stamp of ignorance on oneself. If catalepsy is a possession, acatalepsy is a state of ultimate freedom. The brain of the acataleptic was an eye that through an eternity of time focused its vision in an infinite number of directions. The world to it was a whimsey. Nothing can be proven; nothing can be disproven. “Eureka!” was uttered by a madman. And if this is true of science, why not of religion also?
Flux and reflux—what do we know? Belief of any kind is a species of hypnosis. Certainty is the superstition of sensation. Time is an illusion, said Kant. Eternity is a word, says Science. Each thing is only a mask for some other things—infinite veils. Names are the tags we put on incomprehensible objects. There is a Rabelaisian hilarity on the face of Nature, as if it would say, “Presto! Behold me! Behold me not! Whatever is is not. That is my supreme jest.”
Pyrrho and Montaigne arrive at ecstasy; the ecstasy of indifference. They lived in a world without longitude or latitude. The “I think, therefore I am” of Descartes would have been written by Pyrrho “I think, therefore I think I am.” At the touch of this Prospero of negations the dogmas, religious and scientific, that we have nuzzled to our bosoms turn to fantastic mockeries. If Shakespeare created a world, Pyrrho and Montaigne destroyed a sidereal system. “Only the absurd is true,” whispers Satan into the ear of St. Anthony in Flaubert’s great dream poem. The senses lie, the brain lies, the heart lies, consciousness lies. How do we know they lie? Because another lie proves it. Man, the eternal Sancho Panza on his ass of Certitude!
In the retorts of the brain of the Supreme Sceptic cosmologies and gods are melted. He puts his finger on Death and says: “Not proven.” He puts his ear to the heart of Life, thundering in its Gargantuan hulk of matter, and says: “Thou art only a seeming.” Crescent and Cross, Scarabee and Dragon are fused and evaporate in the mighty menstrum of this alchemic mind. One folly is pitted against another folly, one monstrous illusion rises to comfort another monstrous illusion. Mr. Gallatin’s reasoning solves the universe. The iron gates of God are papier mâché. Plato’s eternal Ideas are plaster paris. The celestial seraglios of Mohammedanism are sacrosanct pigsties, the “Mansion in the Skies” is in cinders. The First Cause of theology is a metaphysical spite wall. The Ego of the Romantics is a huge dummy swollen taut with flatulent German metaphysics. Anarchism, socialism, agnosticism, all isms, are merely mirage, the affabulations of temperaments. They are the passing incarnations of the Incomprehensible, the yawns of Maya, the god of illusions.
If, then, we are bankrupt in intellect, in faith, what attitude? While the battle rages the acataleptic polishes a spyglass. He belongs, then, to no army. He is not interested in victory or defeat. Only the spectacle enchants. His brain is ascetic; his eye alone is gluttonous. He is at Troy, at Waterloo, at Gettysburg. It is all the horseplay of ants on an unimportant star. And Aristotle, Plato, Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Spinoza, Hobbes, Leibnitz, Pascal and Hegel? They are interesting but unimportant, like life itself.
According to Mr. Gallatin to know will be the cardinal heresy. Ah! This little man who comes all ahuff into the world and solves the riddle of Being! This self-constituted aide-de-camp to the Infinite! This sculpted piece of protoplasm who, with arms akimbo, budgets his prejudices into the ears of the Sphinx!
The smile on the face of this ironic nihilist—the Pyrrhonian sceptic—is a smile that is more terrible than the grief of a world. He is the grand dissociater of ideas, the surgeon of illusions, a snow that blankets all growing things. Anatole France, before his descent to socialism, and Rémy de Gourmont are the modern prophets of this creedless creed. With the bare bodkin of incredulity they have slain the eidolons of the ages.
“What do I know?” asks Montaigne. “Just that,” answers enigmatically Pyrrho from his tomb.
Benjamin De Casseres.
New York, January 1.
WHO WANTS TO BE “FREE”?
by James J. Martin
The following essay by historian James J. Martin was printed in Sidney E. Parker’s egoist journal Minus One in February, 1971. It was reprinted from an unspecified 1948 issue of The Interpreter.
I am indicting a society which has no more concept of freedom and responsibility than it has of a twelve-legged dog. Is it ‘free enterprise’ which is to occupy the trial seat before socialism and communism?
Is there anyone engaged in making profits by the present system who is willing to face the consequences of complete free enterprise– the reduction of all price through the most rigorous competition? Why no, he merely wishes the free-enterprise system to operate in his favor, and is as willing as the collectivist to employ the fantastic superstructure of law and police in prohibiting any freedom of action which endangers his privileged position.
Who wants ‘free enterprise’ in the steel and other heavy industries? Who wants ‘free competition’ with the producers of the rest of the world? What banker is willing to tolerate any concept but that of the ‘national’ system? Would he willingly face the competition of free banking?
The free enterprise of which special interest groups bray is that of the right to open a banana stand or shoe shine parlor, and function within the rigid rules of the atrophied system about them… Witness the struggle of a Tucker in penetrating the automobile manufacturing priesthood. Where can one turn to escape the hurdles of merely obtaining credit in order to enter the economy on a level higher than thread-peddling? Advocates of free enterprise are hypocrites until a breach is made in the above mentioned closed circles.
The farmer is always cited as an example of unregenerate free enterprise, but where is there any campaign against the state crutch of subsidies, shouldering of the mortgage structure, protection with law and police of land monopoly for the perpetuation of tenantry, and other serious deviations from the principle of freedom!
The great majority of people accept the current game and its rules without query, though there is a strong case to show the legal origin of the inequity in the system. With most people the complaint is the way the score is being compiled. This they want their politicians to bring into balance. Thus the politician has rapidly been acquiring a non-propertied power-holding stock in the ‘system’.
The great dodge of our time is “society”, a sociological dream-concept, in whose name we dump our responsibility as individuals. “Society”, we say, is to blame. for any evils which beset people, yet an investigation would reveal a number of real humans with much guilt attached. Our spirit-sickness also calls on the government as the Hebrews called upon Jehovah in the desert, and denies the fact of individual life, liberty of action and its consequence, responsibility.
Perhaps a few will embrace decentralism, but the vast majority will, when the time comes, quietly crawl under a warm blanket of collectivism in their delusion that this is the way to security. Yet ‘salvation’ is even an individual matter, and those to whom freedom and responsibility still mean something can even now construct for themselves a passably satisfying existence in this indifferent environment.
