[lbo-talk] Nietzsche, Mencken, and anarchism

B. docile_body at yahoo.com
Mon Jul 21 05:08:07 PDT 2008


Chris,

And why do you think this, given that I just linked to an article whose anarchist author points out the good, the bad, and the ugly in Nietzsche, and who, by the way, has also printed several of Nietzsche's books at his own expense? I can tell you didn't take a look at the piece I linked to, that's for sure.

In fact, at that link I provide an example of not an anarchist site, but the World Socialist Website, who throw the Nietzschean baby out with the bath water in a 3 part series that condemns the Germanophobe [that is, Nietzsche, who wished he was Polish] wholesale. That's a statist-socialist, I reiterate, and not an anarchist site, that condemn him for the thing you mention. (Misogyny -- which, incidentally, is odious.
:))

So -- I just posted an article by an anarchist on the value of Nietzsche, and not something that excoriates him wholesale. Emma Goldman was a fan of Nietzsche's, too, and I have a recent anthology in my hands titled _I Am Not A Man, I Am Dynamite: Friedrich Nietzsche and the Anarchist Tradition_ (2004, Autonomedia, John Moore, ed.) that finds much value in him, too.

There are indeed people that hold the view you caricature -- but what exactly is the evidence for your assertion?

Most "reconciliations" nowadays with Nietzsche take place in the misty, murky academic backwaters of publish-or-perish niche journals; I find it nice to come across pieces now & then that don't go that route.

-B.

Chris Doss wrote:

"(I comment after reading your preface). I think a lot of anarchism is characterized by a strange kind of mixed cultural moral provincialism and ethical absolutism. 'Oh noes! Nietzsche didn't like women! I better nor read him then!' If I wanted to limit myself to reading only writers with my own political sensibilities, that would close off pretty much everything ever written before around 1900."



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