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(lemmy.tf)
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this post was submitted on 05 Nov 2023
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both author's books need to be in the trashcan
Who's the second author?
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.
Just finished Stirner's book, it's interesting. (although I do not agree with even half of the things he says)
Marx and Engels wrote about him in "The German Ideology", criticizing him harshly, but the book was only published after their death.
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
To be fair 2/3rds of any given Marx book is him dunking on other people's ideas.
and that's totally fine
True, though Marx does it in a very direct way. Often just naming them and saying that in contrast, they were stupid. Many times.
Nah Stirner was based.
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. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_German_Ideology
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.
Homie claimed that all institutions were spooks, only to reinvented the social contract.
There are less people remembering Engels than Stirner...
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
Reads like the rusty letters of a long transformed institution of 'state socialism'. Egoism doesn't give a shit about Stirner.