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

Christians, that he ascribes to God that which

he denies to men. He names him (e. g. page 90) the Propriétaire of the

earth. Herewith he proves that he cannot think away the proprietor as such;

he comes to a proprietor at last, but removes him to the other world.

Neither God nor Man ("human society") is proprietor, but the individual.

Proudhon (Weitling too) thinks he is telling the worst about property when he

calls it theft (vol). Passing quite over the embarrassing question, what

well-founded objection could be made against theft, we only ask: Is the

concept "theft" at all possible unless one allows validity to the concept

"property"? How can one steal if property is not already extant? What belongs

to no one cannot be stolen; the water that one draws out of the sea he does

not steal. Accordingly property is not theft, but a theft becomes possible

only through property. Weitling has to come to this too, as he does regard

everything as the property of all: if something is "the property of all,"

then indeed the individual who appropriates it to himself steals.

Private property lives by grace of the law. Only in the law has it its

warrant -- for possession is not yet property, it becomes "mine" only by

assent of the law; it is not a fact, not un fait as Proudhon thinks, but a

fiction, a thought. This is legal property, legitimate property, guarantied

property. It is mine not through me but through the -- law.

Nevertheless, property is the expression for unlimited dominion over

somewhat (thing, beast, man) which "I can judge and dispose of as seems good

to me." According to Roman law, indeed, *jus utendi et abutendi re sua,

quatenus juris ratio patitur, an exclusive and unlimited right;* but

property is conditioned by might. What I have in my power, that is my own. So

long as I assert myself as holder, I am the proprietor of the thing; if it

gets away from me again, no matter by what power, e. g. through my

recognition of a title of others to the thing -- then the property is extinct.

Thus property and possession coincide. It is not a right lying outside my

might that legitimizes me, but solely my might: if I no longer have this, the

thing vanishes away from me. When the Romans no longer had any might against

the Germans, the world-empire of Rome belonged to the latter, and it would

sound ridiculous to insist that the Romans had nevertheless remained properly

the proprietors. Whoever knows how to take and to defend the thing, to him it

belongs till it is again taken from him, as liberty belongs to him who takes

it.--

Only might decides about property, and, as the State (no matter whether State

or well-to-do citizens or of ragamuffins or of men in the absolute) is the

sole mighty one, it alone is proprietor; I, the unique,(67) have nothing, and

am only enfeoffed, am vassal and as such, servitor. Under the dominion of the

State there is no property of mine.

I want to raise the value of myself, the value of ownness, and should I

cheapen property? No, as I was not respected hitherto because people, mankind,

and a thousand other generalities were put higher, so property too has to this

day not yet been recognized in its full value. Property too was only the

property of a ghost, e. g. the people's property; my whole existence

"belonged to the fatherland"; I belonged to the fatherland, the people, the

State, and therefore also everything that I called my own. It is demanded of

States that they make away with pauperism. It seems to me this is asking that

the State should cut off its own head and lay it at its feet; for so long as

the State is the ego the individual ego must remain a poor devil, a non-ego.

The State has an interest only in being itself rich; whether Michael is rich

and Peter poor is alike to it; Peter might also be rich and Michael poor. It

looks on indifferently as one grows poor and the other rich, unruffled by this

alternation. As individuals they are really equal before its face; in this

it is just: before it both of them are -- nothing, as we "are altogether

sinners before God"; on the other hand, it has a very great interest in this,

that those individuals who make it their ego should have a part in its

wealth; it makes them partakers in its property. Through property, with

which it rewards the individuals, it tames them; but this remains its

property, and every one has the usufruct of it only so long as he bears in

himself the ego of the State, or is a "loyal member of society"; in the

opposite case the property is confiscated, or made to melt away by vexatious

lawsuits. The property, then, is and remains State property, not property of

the ego. That the State does not arbitrarily deprive the individual of what he

has from the State means simply that the State does not rob itself. He who is

State-ego, i.e. a good citizen or subject, holds his fief undisturbed as

such an ego, not as being an ego of his own. According to the code, property

is what I call mine "by virtue of God and law." But it is mine by virtue of

God and law only so long as -- the State has nothing against it.

In expropriations, disarmaments, etc. (as, when the exchequer confiscates

inheritances if the heirs do not put in an appearance early enough) how

plainly the else-veiled principle that only the people, "the State," is

proprietor, while the individual is feoffee, strikes the eye!

The State, I mean to say, cannot intend that anybody should for his own sake

have property or actually be rich, nay, even well-to-do; it can acknowledge

nothing, yield nothing, grant nothing to me as me. The State cannot check

pauperism, because the poverty of possession is a poverty of me. He who is

nothing but what chance or another -- to wit, the State -- makes out of him

also has quite rightly nothing but what another gives him. And this other

will give him only what he deserves, i.e. what he is worth by service.

It is not he that realizes a value from himself; the State realizes a value

from him.

National economy busies itself much with this subject. It lies far out beyond

the "national," however, and goes beyond the concepts and horizon of the

State, which knows only State property and can distribute nothing else. For

this reason it binds the possessions of property to conditions -- as it

binds everything to them, e. g. marriage, allowing validity only to the

marriage sanctioned by it, and wresting this out of my power. But property is

my property only when I hold it unconditionally : only I, an unconditional

ego, have property, enter a relation of love, carry on free trade.

The State has no anxiety about me and mine, but about itself and its: I count

for something to it only as its child, as "a son of the country"; as ego I

am nothing at all for it. For the State's understanding, what befalls me as

ego is something accidental, my wealth as well as my impoverishment. But, if I

with all that is mine am an accident in the State's eyes, this proves that it

cannot comprehend me: I go beyond its concepts, or, its understanding is too

limited to comprehend me. Therefore it cannot do anything for me either.

Pauperism is the valuelessness of me, the phenomenon that I cannot realize

value from myself. For this reason State and pauperism are one and the same.

The State does not let me come to my value, and continues in existence only

through my valuelessness: it is forever intent on getting benefit from me,

i.e. exploiting me, turning me to account, using me up, even if the use it

gets from me consists only in my supplying a proles (proletariat); it wants

me to be "its creature."

Pauperism can be removed only when I as ego realize value from myself, when

I give my own self value, and make my price myself. I must rise in revolt to

rise in the world.

What I produce, flour, linen, or iron and coal, which I toilsomely win from

the earth, is my work that I want to realize value from. But then I may long

complain that I am not paid for my work according to its value: the payer will

not listen to me, and the State likewise will maintain an apathetic attitude

so long as it does not think it must "appease" me that I may not break out

with my dreaded might. But this "appeasing" will be all, and, if it comes into

my head to ask for more, the State turns against me with all the force of its

lion-paws and eagle-claws: for it is the king of beasts, it is lion and eagle.

If I refuse to be content with the price that it fixes for my ware and labor,

if I rather aspire to determine the price of my ware myself, e. g., "to pay

myself," in the first place I come into a conflict with the buyers of the

ware. If this were stilled by a mutual understanding, the State would not

readily make objections; for how individuals get along with each other

troubles it little, so long as therein they do not get in its way. Its damage

and its danger begin only when they do not agree, but, in the absence of a

settlement, take each other by the hair. The State cannot endure that man

stand in a direct relation to man; it must step between as --mediator, must

-- intervene. What Christ was, what the saints, the Church were, the State

has become -- to wit, "mediator." It tears man from man to put itself between

them as "spirit." The laborers who ask for higher pay are treated as criminals

as soon as they want to compel it. What are they to do? Without compulsion

they don't get it, and in compulsion the State sees a self-help, a

determination of price by the ego, a genuine, free realization of value from

his property, which it cannot admit of. What then are the laborers to do? Look

to themselves and ask nothing about the State? -- --

But, as is the situation with regard to my material work, so it is with my

intellectual too. The State allows me to realize value from all my thoughts

and to find customers for them (I do realize value from them, e. g. in the

very fact that they bring me