Is there an anarchist refutation of The German Ideology?

Question

And if not, would you consider writing one?

Comments

Do you mean the entire screed or just the part about Saint Max?

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More the parts having to do with Stirner & Proudhon

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That'd be a pretty tall order. Since I'm off work for a while, I'll try to see if I can wade into the scurrilous bad faith attacks to see if any of it is even worthy of a serious response.

Answer 1

No, there is no anarchist refutation of Marx's The German Ideology, at least from a Stirnerite position.  And no, I would not consider writing one, because I believe that, despite his many petty misunderstandings and ad hominems, Marx's critique of Stirner is basically sound.   

If you're desperate you can try Saul Newman, an academic who has written on Stirner from a post-structrualist anarchist perspective, including an attack on Marx (that is, a shallow and reductive interpretation of Marx).  Newman says, for instance, in From Bakunin to Lacan: "For Stirner—and this is the crux of his critique of the humanist Marx—man creates himself".  Newman basically reiterates Stirner by arguing, for instance, that Marx posits a normative "human essence" that denies difference, that Marx subordinates the concrete individual to an abstract and imaginary "Society", etc.

Comments

Also, any serious Stirnerite or anarchist refutation of G.I. would need to consider an important and overlooked point: Marx's critique of Stirner in G.I. cannot be isolated within the section entitled "Saint Max".  The first and justly famous part of G.I. (misleadingly) entitled "Feuerbach", and the later part dealing with utopian or "True Socialism", were in fact culled from Marx's original response to Stirner.  Marx with Engels re-arranged and edited the book in order to make their break with Feuerbach and "old" socialism appear independent and original, when in fact Stirner had beat them to the punch in The Ego and Its Own!