The Ego and his Own by Max Stirner (most read books txt) 📕

gamester stakes

everything on the game, ruins himself and others -- no guarantee. All who

appear to the commoner suspicious, hostile, and dangerous might be comprised

under the name "vagabonds"; every vagabondish way of living displeases him.

For there are intellectual vagabonds too, to whom the hereditary

dwelling-place of their fathers seems too cramped and oppressive for them to

be willing to satisfy themselves with the limited space any more: instead of

keeping within the limits of a temperate style of thinking, and taking as

inviolable truth what furnishes comfort and tranquillity to thousands, they

overlap all bounds of the traditional and run wild with their impudent

criticism and untamed mania for doubt, these extravagating vagabonds. They

form the class of the unstable, restless, changeable, i.e. of the

prolétariat, and, if they give voice to their unsettled nature, are called

"unruly fellows."

Such a broad sense has the so-called proletariat, or pauperism. How much one

would err if one believed the commonalty to be desirous of doing away with

poverty (pauperism) to the best of its ability! On the contrary, the good

citizen helps himself with the incomparably comforting conviction that "the

fact is that the good things of fortune are unequally divided and will always

remain so -- according to God's wise decree." The poverty which surrounds him

in every alley does not disturb the true commoner further than that at most he

clears his account with it by throwing an alms, or finds work and food for an

"honest and serviceable" fellow. But so much the more does he feel his quiet

enjoyment clouded by innovating and discontented poverty, by those poor

who no longer behave quietly and endure, but begin to run wild and become

restless. Lock up the vagabond, thrust the breeder of unrest into the darkest

dungeon! He wants to "arouse dissatisfaction and incite people against

existing institutions" in the State -- stone him, stone him!

But from these identical discontented ones comes a reasoning somewhat as

follows: It need not make any difference to the "good citizens" who protects

them and their principles, whether an absolute king or a constitutional one, a

republic, if only they are protected. And what is their principle, whose

protector they always "love"? Not that of labor; not that of birth either.

But, that of mediocrity, of the golden mean: a little birth and a little

labor, i. e., an interest-bearing possession. Possession is here the

fixed, the given, inherited (birth); interest-drawing is the exertion about it

(labor); laboring capital, therefore. Only no immoderation, no ultra, no

radicalism! Right of birth certainly, but only hereditary possessions; labor

certainly, yet little or none at all of one's own, but labor of capital and of

the -- subject laborers.

If an age is imbued with an error, some always derive advantage from the

error, while the rest have to suffer from it. In the Middle Ages the error was

general among Christians that the church must have all power, or the supreme

lordship on earth; the hierarchs believed in this "truth" not less than the

laymen, and both were spellbound in the like error. But by it the hierarchs

had the advantage of power, the laymen had to suffer subjection. However,

as the saying goes, "one learns wisdom by suffering"; and so the laymen at

last learned wisdom and no longer believed in the medieval "truth." -- A like

relation exists between the commonalty and the laboring class. Commoner and

laborer believe in the "truth" of money; they who do not possess it believe

in it no less than those who possess it: the laymen, therefore, as well as the

priests.

"Money governs the world" is the keynote of the civic epoch. A destitute

aristocrat and a destitute laborer, as "starvelings," amount to nothing so far

as political consideration is concerned; birth and labor do not do it, but

money brings consideration.(71) The possessors rule, but the State trains

up from the destitute its "servants," to whom, in proportion as they are to

rule (govern) in its name, it gives money (a salary).

I receive everything from the State. Have I anything without the *State's

assent? What I have without this it takes* from me as soon as it discovers

the lack of a "legal title." Do I not, therefore, have everything through its

grace, its assent?

On this alone, on the legal title, the commonalty rests. The commoner is

what he is through the protection of the State, through the State's grace.

He would necessarily be afraid of losing everything if the State's power were

broken.

But how is it with him who has nothing to lose, how with the proletarian? As

he has nothing to lose, he does not need the protection of the State for his

"nothing." He may gain, on the contrary, if that protection of the State is

withdrawn from the protégé.

Therefore the non-possessor will regard the State as a power protecting the

possessor, which privileges the latter, but does nothing for him, the

non-possessor, but to -- suck his blood. The State is a -- commoners' State,

is the estate of the commonalty. It protects man not according to his labor,

but according to his tractableness ("loyalty") -- to wit, according to whether

the rights entrusted to him by the State are enjoyed and managed in accordance

with the will, i. e., laws, of the State.

Under the regime of the commonalty the laborers always fall into the hands

of the possessors, of those who have at their disposal some bit of the State

domains (and everything possessible in State domain, belongs to the State, and

is only a fief of the individual), especially money and land; of the

capitalists, therefore. The laborer cannot realize on his labor to the

extent of the value that it has for the consumer. "Labor is badly paid!" The

capitalist has the greatest profit from it. -- Well paid, and more than well

paid, are only the labors of those who heighten the splendor and dominion of

the State, the labors of high State servants. The State pays well that its

"good citizens," the possessors, may be able to pay badly without danger; it

secures to itself by good payment its servants, out of whom it forms a

protecting power, a "police" (to the police belong soldiers, officials of all

kinds, e. g. those of justice, education, etc. -- in short, the whole

"machinery of the State") for the "good citizens," and the "good citizens"

gladly pay high tax-rates to it in order to pay so much lower rates to their

laborers.

But the class of laborers, because unprotected in what they essentially are

(for they do not enjoy the protection of the State as laborers, but as its

subjects they have a share in the enjoyment of the police, a so-called

protection of the law), remains a power hostile to this State, this State of

possessors, this "citizen kingship." Its principle, labor, is not recognized

as to its value; it is exploited,(72) a spoil(73) of the possessors, the

enemy.

The laborers have the most enormous power in their hands, and, if they once

became thoroughly conscious of it and used it, nothing would withstand them;

they would only have to stop labor, regard the product of labor as theirs, and

enjoy it. This is the sense of the labor disturbances which show themselves

here and there.

The State rests on the -- slavery of labor. If labor becomes free. the

State is lost.

§2. Social Liberalism

We are freeborn men, and wherever we look we see ourselves made servants of

egoists! Are we therefore to become egoists too! Heaven forbid! We want rather

to make egoists impossible! We want to make them all "ragamuffins"; all of us

must have nothing, that "all may have."

So say the Socialists.

Who is this person that you call "All"? -- It is "society"! -- But is it

corporeal, then? -- We are its body! -- You? Why, you are not a body

yourselves -- you, sir, are corporeal to be sure, you too, and you, but you

all together are only bodies, not a body. Accordingly the united society may

indeed have bodies at its service, but no one body of its own. Like the

"nation of the politicians, it will turn out to be nothing but a "spirit," its

body only semblance.

The freedom of man is, in political liberalism, freedom from persons, from

personal dominion, from the master; the securing of each individual person

against other persons, personal freedom.

No one has any orders to give; the law alone gives orders.

But, even if the persons have become equal, yet their possessions have

not. And yet the poor man needs the rich, the rich the poor, the former the

rich man's money, the latter the poor man's labor. So no one needs another as

a person, but needs him as a giver, and thus as one who has something to

give, as holder or possessor. So what he has makes the man. And in

having, or in "possessions," people are unequal.

Consequently, social liberalism concludes, no one must have, as according to

political liberalism no one was to give orders; i.e. as in that case the

State alone obtained the command, so now society alone obtains the

possessions.

For the State, protecting each one's person and property against the other,

separates them from one another; each one is his special part and has his

special part. He who is satisfied with what he is and has finds this state of

things profitable; but he who would like to be and have more looks around for

this "more," and finds it in the power of other persons. Here he comes upon

a contradiction; as a person no one is inferior to another, and yet one person

has what another has not but would like to have. So, he concludes, the one

person is more than the other, after all, for the former has what he needs,

the latter has not; the former is a rich man, the latter a poor man.

He now asks himself further, are we to let what we rightly buried come to life

again? Are we to let this circuitously restored inequality of persons pass?

No; on the contrary, we must bring quite to an end what was only half

accomplished. Our freedom from another's person still lacks the freedom from

what the other's person can command, from what he has in his personal power --

in short, from "personal property." Let us then do away with *personal

property*. Let no one have anything any longer, let every one be a --

ragamuffin. Let property be impersonal, let it belong to -- society.

Before the supreme ruler, the sole commander, we had all become equal,

equal persons, i. e., nullities.

Before