By Ruth Kinna and Clifford Harper.

Read by Barbara Graham and Jim Donaghey.

Learning to love Stirner is not an uncomplicated task – as one of the most controversial anarchists, he is by turns celebrated as the seminal anarchist theorist and marginalised as a political philosopher only tangentially related to the anarchist movement. Stirner’s politics was anti-revolutionary and insurrectionary, and swathes of anarchist communists have accepted the Marxist critique of Stirner and effectively removed him from anarchism’s history. Stirner’s most vocal anarchist advocates have barely eased his rehabilitation. In the work of his followers, Stirner variously emerges as a neo-Hobbesian, hyper-liberal or joyful hedonist. Stirner’s greatness comes from the dilemma he creates for anarchists broadly attracted by his commitment to ‘ownness’ – his refusal to suspend individual judgment, and his positive endorsement that individuals discover themselves and recover their uniqueness.

The Great Anarchists pamphlet series is published by Dog Section Press and Active Distribution. See: http://dogsection.org/ and http://www.activedistributionshop.org/ for more details.

Music by Them’uns - https://soundcloud.com/user-178917365

Pamphlet available to buy here: 

http://dogsection.org/press/stirner/

https://www.activedistributionshop.org/shop/pamphlets-booklets/4773-great-anarchists-max-stirner.html