Dear Comrades,
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.
I am most grateful for the three generally favourable reviews of Illuminatus! in your current issue, but I would like to reply to some of the criticisms of Albert Meltzer.
Meltzer writes: “They are in earnest about their propaganda of anarcho-capitalism.” Neither Shea, my co-author, nor I myself are advocates of anarcho-capitalism; Shea is a Tolstoyan anarcho-pacifist and I am an individualist-anarchist in the tradition of Stirner, Warren, Spooner and Tucker. The book itself presents a spectrum of anarchist views including the anarcho-syndicalism of Tim Moon, the Tolstoyism of Molly Moon, the Stirnerism of Simon Moon, the anarcho-capitalism of Mavis, the Taoist (passive) anarchism of the Dalai Lama, the Zen individualistic-anarchism of Hagbard Celine, etc.
Meltzer traces anarcho-capitalism to F.A. Hayek, which is more or less correct, although Hayek, a limited government libertarian, is distressed that so many of his former disciples have gone on from limited government theories to the no-government theory. But since Shea’s position derives from Tolstoy (and Gandhi) and mine from Josiah Warren, all of whom preceded Hayek in time and held ideas strongly different from Hayek’s, all of Meltzer’s criticisms of Hayek are misapplied when directed towards Shea and me. Certainly, our position is different from Meltzer’s; but let him please, in the future, criticise us for our actual positions and not for those of the anarcho-capitalists.
For instance, the rejection of interest, rent and monopolistic profit, explicitly and repeatedly in Illuminatus!, is included, among other reasons, to make crystal-clear our ideological difference from the anarcho-capitalists. If it wasn’t clear to Meltzer, perhaps he should take a remedial reading course or a refresher course on economics.
Meltzer says of the philosophy of Illuminatus! that “this theory consoles those who want to smoke pot and all the rest of it but not feel guilty about the way they bought their leisure.” Damned right! If there is one central idea behind all the other mindfucks in Illuminatus! it is the unmitigated and unashamed rejection of guilt in all forms, in all guises, in all cases. But an equally important theme is the acceptance of personal responsibility, which is not identical with guilt but the non-neurotic transcendence of guilt.
This doctrine of responsibility is central to the Laurel-Hardy “Now Look What YOU made Me Do” parable which even Meltzer admits is one of the funniest parts of the trilogy. It is also the most serious part, and if Meltzer understood it he would not wallow in guilt himself or attempt to foist guilt upon others.
When Meltzer says that Shea and I “cannot even spell correctly,” let him reflect that it took five years to get Illuminatus! into print, fighting every inch of the way (and with 500 pages finally excised at the last minute leading to hurried rewrite and repatching). It is, for instance, not our fault that “immanentize” is spelled correctly consistently throughout volumes I and III and is spelled incorrectly consistently throughout Volume II.
Let Meltzer struggle with New York publishers for five years before judging any first novel by what the publishers do to it. I have more clout now in negotiations and take full responsibility for what goes out under my name in the future, but Illuminatus! is the literary equivalent of a five-car highway wreck, a bare caricature of the original manuscript.
Meltzer objects to our use of John Dillinger as an anarchist hero. Oh for Christ’s sake, man, satire is not supposed to be reasonable. Besides, I seem to have heard somewhere of some English anarchists publishing posters praising Guy Fawkes as “the only man to enter parliament with honest motives.” Such jokes perhaps do not translate well from one culture to another, but since they are satirical, they are not meant to be examined as syllogisms or as history, merely as sarcasm.
Meltzer claims that we “apparently think the working class does not exist.” He doesn’t seem to have noticed the working-class background of Simon Moon or the continuous running history of the IWW that is perpetually part of Simon’s interior monologue. Nor does he realise that Hagbard Celine’s “Snafu Principle” (“Communication is only possible between equals”) means that all class systems are unworkable.
This is the psychological, as distinct from economic, argument against continuing a class-structured society and has special relevance in those capitalist nations (such as the USA) where most workers have a higher standard of living than those in socialist countries. What such workers are still angry about, and can still be mobilised around, is the issue of autonomy—of decentralisation of control—which Hagbard’s philosophy directly addresses.
This is not to deny that in other less technologically advanced countries workers have still the traditional grievances of near-starvation wages and all the economic motives for fighting the class system. But Hagbard is writing specifically for the American unionised worker, who has the highest living standard in the world, and whose only motive for embracing libertarian-anarchist thought is the remaining fact that, even in affluence, the employee role degrades him or her to robothood and sub-humanity.
Despite all this carping I am very grateful for the three reviews in general and am grateful that your journal devoted so much space to our little comedy.
May the force be with you,
Robert Anton Wilson
Reply to Illuminatus! Reviews
by Robert Anton Wilson appeared in Anarchist Review (Cienfuegos Press), Number 3 (Autumn 1977)