A handwritten note at the head of the letter of 16/1/94 dates when the letter was received.
9 November 1993
David Miller
P.O. Box 162
Ferntree Gully
Vic. 3156
Australia
Dear Syd,
Sorry for my long silence.
Thank you for your kind words in Heraclitus magazine a few years back. However, the position that I had adopted there (that Stirner was not an Anarchist, or even an Individualist Anarchist) resulted from reflection upon your clarification of your own position in the Egoist late 1986–1987. This may seem strange to you as the Australian Anarchist Centenary Celebration conference took place in May 1986 and my piece in Heraclitus was ostensibly the introduction paper to the Workshop on Stirner. But in fact, it wasn’t. After the conference, the organizers had decided that they wanted to produce a report of the AACC proceedings and asked me to write a report on the Stirner workshop. I couldn’t remember what I had actually said in introduction, nor much of what I believed (the workshop was quite successful). So I invented the imaginary introductory paper. As far as I know, the AACC organizers never published the proceedings so some time later I sent the paper to Heraclitus and they published it.
In response, I received a strange letter from a Swami Nirmalananda in India. He wrote as if he knew me. Is he one of our old acquaintances?
Speaking of old acquaintances, I noticed that Paddy McGuinness wrote some editorial pieces for Heraclitus some time back. He is Sydney-based and is a well-known economics commentator. Are you in contact with him?
As you can see from the enclosed program, Dr. Robert Miller is still ‘Zen-ifying’ Stirner. I imagine that his lecture to the Existentialist Society in February ’94 will be another attempt to do so. I’ve ordered a dozen “Ego & Its Own” from A Distribution in London. I’ll insert in them a leaflet publicizing the Ego magazine.
Robert Miller’s lecture to the Atheist Society in May ’94 will be his critique of Paterson’s interpretations of Stirner. My motive in getting Robert to deliver this talk to the Atheists, is to let them know (obliquely) that Total Atheism could imply the rejection of Humanist values (most of the Atheists are Humanists of sorts).
I started the Atheist Society back in 1969 by building it onto the defunct Melbourne University Atheist Students’ Society.
Did I tell you that the Mildura group only lasted for about one year (1956)? Very few people attended the Anarchists (whose bookshop we were meeting in) often didn’t bother to come and open the shop for us.
Colin Wilson has visited Melbourne a few times over the years. On one occasion I reminded him that in the very early days he had asked you to publish something or other of his.
We’ve been making a video recording of our Sunday afternoon Speaker Forum in Melbourne’s City Square. I’ll send you a copy of it. Do you have access to a VHS type video-player?
Yours,
(David Miller’s Signature)