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

machine work. In the same style everything is done by the *State

machine* too; for it moves the clockwork of the individual minds, none of

which follow their own impulse. The State seeks to hinder every free activity

by its censorship, its supervision, its police, and holds this hindering to be

its duty, because it is in truth a duty of self-preservation. The State wants

to make something out of man, therefore there live in it only made men;

every one who wants to be his own self is its opponent and is nothing. "He is

nothing" means as much as, the State does not make use of him, grants him no

position, no office, no trade, etc.

Edgar Bauer,(51) in the Liberale Bestrebungen (vol. II, p.50), is still

dreaming of a "government which, proceeding out of the people, can never stand

in opposition to it." He does indeed (p.69) himself take back the word

"government": "In the republic no government at all obtains, but only an

executive authority. An authority which proceeds purely and alone out of the

people; which has not an independent power, independent principles,

independent officers, over against the people; but which has its foundation,

the fountain of its power and of its principles, in the sole, supreme

authority of the State, in the people. The concept government, therefore, is

not at all suitable in the people's State." But the thing remains the same.

That which has "proceeded, been founded, sprung from the fountain" becomes

something "independent" and, like a child delivered from the womb, enters upon

opposition at once. The government, if it were nothing independent and

opposing, would be nothing at all.

"In the free State there is no government," etc. (p.94). This surely means

that the people, when it is the sovereign, does not let itself be conducted

by a superior authority. Is it perchance different in absolute monarchy? Is

there there for the sovereign, perchance, a government standing over him?

Over the sovereign, be he called prince or people, there never stands a

government: that is understood of itself. But over me there will stand a

government in every "State," in the absolute as well as in the republican or

"free." I am as badly off in one as in the other.

The republic is nothing whatever but -- absolute monarchy; for it makes no

difference whether the monarch is called prince or people, both being a

"majesty." Constitutionalism itself proves that nobody is able and willing to

be only an instrument. The ministers domineer over their master the prince,

the deputies over their master the people. Here, then, the parties at least

are already free -- videlicet, the office-holders' party (so-called people's

party). The prince must conform to the will of the ministers, the people dance

to the pipe of the chambers. Constitutionalism is further than the republic,

because it is the State in incipient dissolution.

Edgar Bauer denies (p.56) that the people is a "personality" in the

constitutional State; per contra, then, in the republic? Well, in the

constitutional State the people is -- a party, and a party is surely a

"personality" if one is once resolved to talk of a "political" (p.76) moral

person anyhow. The fact is that a moral person, be it called people's party or

people or even "the Lord," is in no wise a person, but a spook.

Further, Edgar Bauer goes on (p.69): "guardianship is the characteristic of a

government." Truly, still more that of a people and "people's State"; it is

the characteristic of all dominion. A people's State, which "unites in

itself all completeness of power," the "absolute master," cannot let me become

powerful. And what a chimera, to be no longer willing to call the "people's

officials" "servants, instruments," because they "execute the free, rational

law-will of the people!" (p.73). He thinks (p.74): "Only by all official

circles subordinating themselves to the government's views can unity be

brought into the State"; but his "people's State" is to have "unity" too; how

will a lack of subordination be allowed there? subordination to the --

people's will.

"In the constitutional State it is the regent and his disposition that the

whole structure of government rests on in the end." (p. 130.) How would that

be otherwise in the "people's State"? Shall I not there be governed by the

people's disposition too, and does it make a difference for me whether I

see myself kept in dependence by the prince's disposition or by the people's

disposition, so-called "public opinion"? If dependence means as much as

"religious relation," as Edgar Bauer rightly alleges, then in the people's

State the people remains for me the superior power, the "majesty" (for God

and prince have their proper essence in "majesty") to which I stand in

religious relations. -- Like the sovereign regent, the sovereign people too

would be reached by no law. Edgar Bauer's whole attempt comes to a *change

of masters. Instead of wanting to make the people* free, he should have had

his mind on the sole realizable freedom, his own.

In the constitutional State absolutism itself has at last come in conflict

with itself, as it has been shattered into a duality; the government wants to

be absolute, and the people wants to be absolute. These two absolutes will

wear out against each other.

Edgar Bauer inveighs against the determination of the regent by birth, by

chance. But, when "the people" have become "the sole power in the State" (p.

132), have we not then in it a master from chance? Why, what is the

people? The people has always been only the body of the government: it is

many under one hat (a prince's hat) or many under one constitution. And the

constitution is the -- prince. Princes and peoples will persist so long as

both do not collapse, i. e., fall together. If under one constitution

there are many "peoples" -- as in the ancient Persian monarchy and today

--then these "peoples" rank only as "provinces." For me the people is in any

case an --accidental power, a force of nature, an enemy that I must overcome.

What is one to think of under the name of an "organized" people (p. 132)? A

people "that no longer has a government," that governs itself. In which,

therefore, no ego stands out prominently; a people organized by ostracism. The

banishment of egos, ostracism, makes the people autocrat.

If you speak of the people, you must speak of the prince; for the people, if

it is to be a subject(52) and make history, must, like everything that acts,

have a head, its "supreme head." Weitling sets this forth in [*Die

Europäische] Triarchie, and Proudhon declares, "une société, pour ainsi dire

acéphale, ne peut vivre*."(53)

The vox populi is now always held up to us, and "public opinion" is to rule

our princes. Certainly the vox populi is at the same time vox dei; but is

either of any use, and is not the vox principis also vox dei?

At this point the "Nationals" may be brought to mind. To demand of the

thirty-eight States of Germany that they shall act as one nation can only be

put alongside the senseless desire that thirty-eight swarms of bees, led by

thirty-eight queen-bees, shall unite themselves into one swarm. Bees they

all remain; but it is not the bees as bees that belong together and can join

themselves together, it is only that the subject bees are connected with the

ruling queens. Bees and peoples are destitute of will, and the instinct of

their queens leads them.

If one were to point the bees to their beehood, in which at any rate they are

all equal to each other, one would be doing the same thing that they are now

doing so stormily in pointing the Germans to their Germanhood. Why, Germanhood

is just like beehood in this very thing, that it bears in itself the necessity

of cleavages and separations, yet without pushing on to the last separation,

where, with the complete carrying through of the process of separating, its

end appears: I mean, to the separation of man from man. Germanhood does indeed

divide itself into different peoples and tribes, i.e. beehives; but the

individual who has the quality of being a German is still as powerless as the

isolated bee. And yet only individuals can enter into union with each other,

and all alliances and leagues of peoples are and remain mechanical

compoundings, because those who come together, at least so far as the

"peoples" are regarded as the ones that have come together, are *destitute of

will*. Only with the last separation does separation itself end and change to

unification.

Now the Nationals are exerting themselves to set up the abstract, lifeless

unity of beehood; but the self-owned are going to fight for the unity willed

by their own will, for union. This is the token of all reactionary wishes,

that they want to set up something general, abstract, an empty, lifeless

concept, in distinction from which the self-owned aspire to relieve the

robust, lively particular from the trashy burden of generalities. The

reactionaries would be glad to smite a people, a nation, forth from the

earth; the self-owned have before their eyes only themselves. In essentials

the two efforts that are just now the order of the day - to wit, the

restoration of provincial rights and of the old tribal divisions (Franks,

Bavarians, Lusatia, etc.), and the restoration of the entire nationality --

coincide in one. But the Germans will come into unison, i.e. unite

themselves, only when they knock over their beehood as well as all the

beehives; in other words, when they are more than -- Germans: only then can

they form a "German Union." They must not want to turn back into their

nationality, into the womb, in order to be born again, but let every one turn

in to himself. How ridiculously sentimental when one German grasps another's

hand and presses it with sacred awe because "he too is a German!" With that he

is something great! But this will certainly still be thought touching as long

as people are enthusiastic for "brotherliness," i.e. as long as they have a

"family disposition". From the superstition of "piety," from "brotherliness"

or "childlikeness" or however else the soft-hearted piety-phrases run -- from

the family spirit -- the Nationals, who want to have a great *family of

Germans*, cannot liberate themselves.

Aside from this, the so-called Nationals would only have to understand

themselves rightly in order to lift themselves out of their juncture with the

good-natured Teutomaniacs. For the uniting for material ends and interests,

which they demand of the Germans, comes to nothing else than a voluntary

union. Carrière, inspired, cries out,(54) "Railroads are to the more

penetrating eye the way to