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

other is locked up. Your life is your property; but it is

sacred for men only if it is not that of an inhuman monster.

What a man as such cannot defend of bodily goods, we may take from him: this

is the meaning of competition, of freedom of occupation. What he cannot defend

of spiritual goods falls a prey to us likewise: so far goes the liberty of

discussion, of science, of criticism.

But consecrated goods are inviolable. Consecrated and guarantied by whom?

Proximately by the State, society, but properly by man or the "concept," the

"concept of the thing"; for the concept of consecrated goods is this, that

they are truly human, or rather that the holder possesses them as man and not

as un-man.(64)

On the spiritual side man's faith is such goods, his honor, his moral feeling

-- yes, his feeling of decency, modesty, etc. Actions (speeches, writings)

that touch honor are punishable; attacks on "the foundations of all religion";

attacks on political faith; in short, attacks on everything that a man

"rightly" has.

How far critical liberalism would extend the sanctity of goods -- on this

point it has not yet made any pronouncement, and doubtless fancies itself to

be ill-disposed toward all sanctity; but, as it combats egoism, it must set

limits to it, and must not let the un-man pounce on the human. To its

theoretical contempt for the "masses" there must correspond a practical snub

if it should get into power.

What extension the concept "man" receives, and what comes to the individual

man through it -- what, therefore, man and the human are -- on this point the

various grades of liberalism differ, and the political, the social, the humane

man are each always claiming more than the other for "man." He who has best

grasped this concept knows best what is "man's." The State still grasps this

concept in political restriction, society in social; mankind, so it is said,

is the first to comprehend it entirely, or "the history of mankind develops

it." But, if "man is discovered," then we know also what pertains to man as

his own, man's property, the human.

But let the individual man lay claim to ever so many rights because Man or the

concept man "entitles" him to them, because his being man does it: what do I

care for his right and his claim? If he has his right only from Man and does

not have it from me, then for me he has no right. His life, e. g.,

counts to me only for what it is worth to me. I respect neither a

so-called right of property (or his claim to tangible goods) nor yet his right

to the "sanctuary of his inner nature" (or his right to have the spiritual

goods and divinities, his gods, remain un-aggrieved). His goods, the sensuous

as well as the spiritual, are mine, and I dispose of them as proprietor, in

the measure of my -- might.

In the property question lies a broader meaning than the limited statement

of the question allows to be brought out. Referred solely to what men call our

possessions, it is capable of no solution; the decision is to be found in him

"from whom we have everything." Property depends on the owner.

The Revolution directed its weapons against everything which came "from the

grace of God," e. g., against divine right, in whose place the human was

confirmed. To that which is granted by the grace of God, there is opposed that

which is derived "from the essence of man."

Now, as men's relation to each other, in opposition to the religious dogma

which commands a "Love one another for God's sake," had to receive its human

position by a "Love each other for man's sake," so the revolutionary teaching

could not do otherwise than, first, as to what concerns the relation of men to

the things of this world, settle it that the world, which hitherto was

arranged according to God's ordinance, henceforth belongs to "Man."

The world belongs to "Man," and is to be respected by me as his property.

Property is what is mine!

Property in the civic sense means sacred property, such that I must

respect your property. "Respect for property!" Hence the politicians would

like to have every one possess his little bit of property, and they have in

part brought about an incredible parcellation by this effort. Each must have

his bone on which he may find something to bite.

The position of affairs is different in the egoistic sense. I do not step

shyly back from your property, but look upon it always as my property, in

which I need to "respect" nothing. Pray do the like with what you call my

property!

With this view we shall most easily come to an understanding with each other.

The political liberals are anxious that, if possible, all servitudes be

dissolved, and every one be free lord on his ground, even if this ground has

only so much area as can have its requirements adequately filled by the manure

of one person. (The farmer in the story married even in his old age "that he

might profit by his wife's dung.") Be it ever so little, if one only has

somewhat of his own -- to wit, a respected property! The more such owners,

such cotters,(65) the more "free people and good patriots" has the State.

Political liberalism, like everything religious, counts on respect,

humaneness, the virtues of love. Therefore does it live in incessant vexation.

For in practice people respect nothing, and every day the small possessions

are bought up again by greater proprietors, and the "free people" change into

day- laborers.

If, on the contrary, the "small proprietors" had reflected that the great

property was also theirs, they would not have respectfully shut themselves out

from it, and would not have been shut out.

Property as the civic liberals understand it deserves the attacks of the

Communists and Proudhon: it is untenable, because the civic proprietor is in

truth nothing but a property-less man, one who is everywhere shut out.

Instead of owning the world, as he might, he does not own even the paltry

point on which he turns around.

Proudhon wants not the propriétaire but the possesseur or

usufruitier.(66) What does that mean? He wants no one to own the land; but

the benefit of it -- even though one were allowed only the hundredth part of

this benefit, this fruit -- is at any rate one's property, which he can

dispose of at will. He who has only the benefit of a field is assuredly not

the proprietor of it; still less he who, as Proudhon would have it, must give

up so much of this benefit as is not required for his wants; but he is the

proprietor of the share that is left him. Proudhon, therefore, denies only

such and such property, not property itself. If we want no longer to leave

the land to the landed proprietors, but to appropriate it to ourselves, we

unite ourselves to this end, form a union, a société, that makes itself

proprietor; if we have good luck in this, then those persons cease to be

landed proprietors. And, as from the land, so we can drive them out of many

another property yet, in order to make it our property, the property of the

-- conquerors. The conquerors form a society which one may imagine so great

that it by degrees embraces all humanity; but so-called humanity too is as

such only a thought (spook); the individuals are its reality. And these

individuals as a collective (mass will treat land and earth not less

arbitrarily than an isolated individual or so-called propriétaire. Even so,

therefore, property remains standing, and that as exclusive" too, in that

humanity, this great society, excludes the individual from its property

(perhaps only leases to him, gives his as a fief, a piece of it) as it besides

excludes everything that is not humanity, e. g. does not allow animals to

have property. -- So too it will remain, and will grow to be. That in which

all want to have a share will be withdrawn from that individual who wants

to have it for himself alone: it is made a common estate. As a *common

estate every one has his share in it, and this share is his property*.

Why, so in our old relations a house which belongs to five heirs is their

common estate; but the fifth part of the revenue is, each one's property.

Proudhon might spare his prolix pathos if he said: "There are some things that

belong only to a few, and to which we others will from now on lay claim or --

siege. Let us take them, because one comes to property by taking, and the

property of which for the present we are still deprived came to the

proprietors likewise only by taking. It can be utilized better if it is in the

hands of us all than if the few control it. Let us therefore associate

ourselves for the purpose of this robbery (vol)." -- Instead of this, he

tries to get us to believe that society is the original possessor and the sole

proprietor, of imprescriptible right; against it the so-called proprietors

have become thieves (La propriété c'est le vol); if it now deprives of his

property the present proprietor, it robs him of nothing, as it is only

availing itself of its imprescriptible right. -- So far one comes with the

spook of society as a moral person. On the contrary, what man can obtain

belongs to him: the world belongs to me. Do you say anything else by your

opposite proposition? "The world belongs to all"? All are I and again I,

etc. But you make out of the "all" a spook, and make it sacred, so that then

the "all" become the individual's fearful master. Then the ghost of "right"

places itself on their side.

Proudhon, like the Communists, fights against egoism. Therefore they are

continuations and consistent carryings-out of the Christian principle, the

principle of love, of sacrifice for something general, something alien. They

complete in property, e. g., only what has long been extant as a matter of

fact -- to wit, the propertylessness of the individual. When the laws says,

*Ad reges potestas omnium pertinet, ad singulos proprietas; omnia rex imperio

possidet, singuli dominio*, this means: The king is proprietor, for he alone

can control and dispose of "everything," he has potestas and imperium over

it. The Communists make this clearer, transferring that imperium to the

"society of all." Therefore: Because enemies of egoism, they are on that

account -- Christians, or, more generally speaking, religious men, believers

in ghosts, dependents, servants of some generality (God, society, etc.). In

this too Proudhon is like the