Nothing (joke answer)
It is a contradiction to Marxism
Why would an ideology obsessed with change want anything to do with one afraid of it?
I’m not really an expert on philosophy but I’d imagine that Marxism and nihilism aren’t really compatible on a fundamental level. Marxism is about revolutionary struggle and fighting to make things better which to me sounds like the antithesis of nihilism. Nihilism seems more compatible with some sort of Socdem philosophy where class struggle is believed to be futile and it’s better off just asking kindly for pretty sugar coating.
I can’t seem to find it anywhere, but I swear I once read a fascinating critique of nihilism by Marx himself.
The outline was a brilliant bait and switch:
- Nihilism is true: we’re all just isolated individuals (and therefore whatever else nihilists claim, I can’t remember the details, is true)
- But individuals exist in social relations, like capitalist/worker, regardless of their thoughts or feelings about them
- So nihilism is false
Huumm, I mean Marx was also very anti-Stirner, but Stirner’s thoughts work very well with Marxism. Like any “conscious egoist” can realize that the only path to liberation for the individual is through communism. Communism is literally the free individual acting out its own self-interest, but realising his own self-interest is intertwined with all of humanity, and all of Earth.
Nihilism doesn’t have to be incompatible with Marxism or communism. Like I never thought that deeply about it, but I don’t think anything about it is inherently anti-communist. Nihilism is about how there is not grand plan, or purpose, to any individual or collective. That all ideals are empty. That’s basically it. Nothing about that is anti-communist.
The thing is, with Stirner, it seems to me if the communist union of egoists couldn’t continue, at the temporary expense of one of their egos, then it would cease to be a union of egoists, and thus he’d reject any such organization of it…
That’s making his thought into something it definitely is not. It’s not a system. The idea of the union of egoists is that it is the only possible truly free association between people. Under communism, all associations would be union of egoists, and no one would ever think about them or even have that name for them. They would just exist, and do things with other people for different purposes at different times, always only when it’s beneficial to all involved, and stopping when it stops being beneficial for any party.
Or isn’t communism the total liberation of the individual? (among other things ofc, but to me it was always the main one tbh, in how I understand things - not a libertarian or anything)
its the middle class throwing there hands up and going ‘well i guess nothing can change’ and then falling asleep with spite against the working class for not shooting them in a revolution.
Under a liberal society, it will be used for liberal means for capitalist apologia…
However, the concept of optimistic nihilism is something I’d enjoy… if there were no meaning in this world, it’d be up to us to create that meaning…
