45th issue of the egoist journal “Stand Alone”.
16 pages, 5.5″ x 8.5″, Saddle-stitched
Limited to 66 copies.

Available from: Underworld Amusements

“Anarchists are an interesting body of people whom governments take too seriously and who, unfortunately, do not take themselves seriously enough.”  So begins Dora Marsden in this essay from The Egoist.

The Illusion of Anarchism was written in September 1914. Anarchism was so avant that Kropotkin was still alive. Britain was taking its first steps into World War One. The world was not yet on fire, but Dora was ready to stoke the flames against anyone who would dampen them.

Against the mutalist murmmering of anarchism comes Dora’s egoist exhortation that “men do not act after the anarchistic fashion one towards another. They are friendly and affectionate animals in the main: but interests are as imperative with them as with the tiger and the ape. [The world] is a bundle of interests, and falls to those who can push their own furthest.” But by its conclusion, The Illusion of Anarchism offers “the stirrings of a power sufficient” for anarchists willing to set aside their illusions.