The Leipzig Council : III. Saint Max[edit source]

The structure of this chapter parodies Stirner’s manner of presenting his material. In his book Der Einzige und sein Eigenthum Stirner often interrupts his exposition with “episodical insertions” which are not directly connected with the subject-matter. Poking fun at this manner, Marx and Engels begin the chapter with a reference to Stirner’s article “Recensenten Stirners” (published in Wigand’ Vierteljahrsschrift, Vol. 3), which they ironically call “Apologetical Commentary”. It is Stirner’s reply to the criticism of his book by Szeliga, Feuerbach and Hess. Then follows a lengthy “episodical insertion”, which takes up nearly the whole of this long chapter. It contains a critical analysis of Stirner’s book, and only at the end of the chapter, in Section 2, do Marx and Engels return to the above-mentioned article. The structure of the “episode” corresponds to that of the book they criticised, and, just like the latter, it comprises two parts ironically entitled “The Old Testament: Man”, and “The New Testament: ‘Ego"’. The corresponding parts in Stirner’s book are entitled “Der Mensch” (“Man”) and “Ich” (“Ego”). In the subheadings Marx and Engels also use the names of chapters and sections of Stirner’s book, in many cases giving them an ironical twist

“Was jehen mir die jrinen Beeme an?"
["What are the green trees to me?” — a paraphrase (in the Berlin dialect) from Heine’s work Reisebilder, Dritter Teil “Die Bäder von Lucca”, Kapitel IV]

Saint Max exploits, “employs” or “uses” the Council to deliver a long apologetic commentary on “the book”, which is none other than “the book”, the book as such, the book pure and simple, i.e., the perfect book, the Holy Book, the book as something holy, the book as the holy of holies, the book in heaven, viz., Der Einzige und sein Eigenthum. “The book”, as we know, fell from the heavens towards the end of 1844 and took on the shape of a servant with O. Wigand in Leipzig ^[1]. It was, therefore, at the mercy of the vicissitudes of terrestrial life and was attacked by three “unique ones”, viz., the mysterious personality of Szeliga, the gnostic Feuerbach and Hess. [Szeliga, “Der Einzige und sein Eigenthum”; Feuerbach, “Über das ‘Wesen des Christenthums’ in Beziehung auf den ‘Einzigen und sein Eigenthum'”; Hess, Die letzten Philosophen] However much at every moment Saint Max as creator towers over himself as a creation, as he does over his other creations, he nevertheless took pity on his weakly offspring and, in order to defend it and ensure its safety, let out a loud “critical hurrah”. In order to fathom in all their significance both this “critical hurrah” and Szeliga’s mysterious personality, we must here, to some extent, deal with church history and look more closely at “the book”. Or, to use the language of Saint Max: we “shall episodically put” “into this passage” a church-historical “meditation” on Der Einzige und sein Eigenthum “simply because” “it seems to us that it could contribute to the elucidation of the rest”.

“Lift up your heads, O ye gates; and be ye lift up, ye everlasting doors; and the King of Glory shall come in.
"Who is this King of Glory? The War-Lord strong and mighty, the War-Lord mighty in battle.
"Lift up your heads, 0 ye gates; even lift them up, ye everlasting doors; and the King of Glory, shall come in.
"Who is this King of Glory? The Lord Unique, he is the King of Glory,” (Psalms, 24:7-10).

1. The Unique and His Property[edit source]

The man who “has based his cause on nothing’ [here and below Marx and Engels paraphrase the first lines of Goethe’s poem Vanitas! Vanitatum Lanitas!] begins his lengthy “critical hurrah” like a good German, straightway with a Jeremiad: “Is there anything that is not to be my cause?” (p. 5 of the “book”). And he continues lamenting heart-rendingly that “everything is to be his cause”, that “God’s cause, the cause of mankind, of truth and freedom, and in addition the cause of his people, of his lord”, and thousands of other good causes, are imposed on him. Poor fellow! The French and English bourgeois complain about lack of markets, trade crises, panic on the stock exchange, the political situation prevailing at the moment, etc.; the German petty bourgeois, whose active participation in the bourgeois movement has been merely an ideal one, and who for the rest exposed only himself to risk, sees his own cause simply as the “good cause”, the “cause of freedom, truth, mankind”, etc.

Our German school-teacher simply believes this illusion of the German petty bourgeois and on three pages he provisionally discusses all these good causes.

He investigates “God’s cause”, “the cause of mankind” (pp. 6 and 7) and finds these are “purely egoistical causes”, that both “God” and “mankind” worry only about what is theirs, that “truth, freedom, humanity, justice” are “only interested in themselves and not in us, only in their own well-being and not in ours” — from which he concludes that all these persons “are thereby exceptionally well-off”. He goes so far as to transform these idealistic phrases — God, truth, etc. — into prosperous burghers who “are exceptionally well-off” and enjoy a “profitable egoism”. But this vexes the holy egoist: “And I?” he exclaims.

“I, for my part, draw the lesson from this and, instead of continuing to serve these great egoists, I should rather be an egoist myself!” (p. 7)

Thus we see what holy motives guide Saint Max in his transition to egoism. It is not the good things of this world, not treasures which moth and rust corrupt, not the capital belonging to his fellow unique ones, but heavenly treasure, the capital which belongs to God, truth, freedom, mankind, etc., that gives him no peace.

If it had not been expected of him that he should serve numerous good causes, he would never have made the discovery that he also has his “own” cause, and therefore he would never have based this cause of his “on nothing” (i.e., the “book”).

If Saint Max had looked a little more closely at these various causes” and the “owners” of these causes, e.g., God, mankind, truth, he would have arrived at the opposite conclusion: that egoism based on the egoistic mode of action of these persons must be just as imaginary as these persons themselves.

Instead of this, our saint decides to enter into competition with “God” and “truth” and to base his cause on himself —

“on myself, on the I that is, just as much as God, the nothing of everything else, the I that is everything for me, the I that is the unique.... I am nothing in the sense of void, but the creative nothing, the nothing from which I myself, as creator, create everything.”

The holy church father could also have expressed this last proposition as follows: I am everything in the void of nonsense, “but” I am the nugatory creator, the all, from which I myself, as creator, create nothing.

Which of these two readings is the correct one will become evident later. So much for the preface.

The “book” itself is divided like the book “of old”, into the Old and New Testament — namely, into the unique history of man (the Law and the Prophets) and the inhuman history of the unique (the Gospel of the Kingdom of God). The former is history in the framework of logic, the logos confined in the past; the latter is logic in history, the emancipated logos, which struggles against the present and triumphantly overcomes it.

The Old Testament: Man ^[2][edit source]

1. The Book of Genesis, i.e., A Man’s Life[edit source]

Saint Max pretends here that he is writing the biography of his mortal enemy, “man”, and not of a “unique” or “real individual”. This ties him up in delightful contradictions.

As becomes every normal genesis “a man’s life” begins ab ovo, with the “child”. As revealed to us on page 13, the child

“from the outset lives a life of struggle against the entire world, it resists everything and everything resists it”. “Both remain enemies” but “with awe and respect” and “are constantly on the watch, looking for each other’s weaknesses”.

This is further amplified, on page 14:

“we”, as children, “try to find out the basis of things or what lies behind them; therefore” (so no longer out of enmity) “we are trying to discover everybody’s weaknesses”. (Here the finger of Szeliga, the mystery-monger, is evident.)

Thus, the child immediately becomes a metaphysician, trying to find out the “basis of things”. This speculating child, for whom “the nature of things” lies closer to his heart than his toys, “sometimes” in the long run, succeeds in coping with the “world of things”, conquers it and then enters a new phase, the age of youth, when he has to face a new “'arduous struggle of life”, the struggle against reason, for the “spirit means the first self-discovery” and: “We are above the world, we are spirit” (p. 15). The point of view of the youth is a “heavenly one”; the child merely “learned”, “he did not dwell on purely logical or theological problems” — just as (the child) “Pilate” hurriedly passed over the question: “What is truth?” (p. 17). The youth “tries to master thoughts”, he “understands ideas, the spirit” and “seeks ideas”; he “is engrossed in thought” (p. 16), he has “absolute thoughts, i.e., nothing but thoughts, logical thoughts”. The youth who thus “deports himself”, instead of chasing after young women and other earthly things, is no other than the young “Stirner”, the studious Berlin youth, busy with Hegel’s logic and gazing with amazement at the great Michelet. Of this youth it is rightly said on page 17:

“to bring to light pure thought, to devote oneself to it — in this is the joy of youth, and all the bright images of the world of thought — truth, freedom, mankind, Man, etc. — illumine and inspire the youthful soul.”

This youth then “throws aside” the “object” as well and “occupies himself” exclusively “with his thoughts”;

“he includes all that is not spiritual under the contemptuous name of external things, and if, all the same, he does cling to such external things as, for example, students’ customs, etc., it happens only when and because he discovers spirit in them, i.e., when they become symbols for him”. (Who will not “discover” “Szeliga” here?)

Virtuous Berlin youth! The beer-drinking ritual of the students’ association was for him only a “symbol” and only for the sake of the “symbol” was he after a drinking bout many a time found under the table, where he probably also wished to “discover spirit"! — How virtuous is this good youth, whom old Ewald, who wrote two volumes on the “virtuous youth”, [Johann Ludwig Ewald, Der gute Jüngling, gute Gatte und Vater, oder Mittel, um es zu werden.] could have taken as a model, is seen also from the fact that it was “made known” to him (p. 15): “Father and mother should be abandoned, all natural authority should be .considered broken.” For him, “the rational man, the family as a natural authority does not exist; there follows a renunciation of parents, brothers and sisters, etc.” — But they are all “re-born as spiritual, rational authority”, thanks to which the good Youth reconciles obedience and fear of one’s parents with his speculating conscience, and everything remains as before. Likewise “it is said” (p. 15): “We ought to obey God rather than men.” [The Acts of the Apostles 5: 29] Indeed, the good youth reaches the highest peak of morality on page 16, where “it is said": “One should obey one’s conscience rather than God.” This moral exultation raises him even above the “revengeful Eumenides” and even above the “anger of Poseidon” — he is afraid of nothing so much as his “conscience”. Having discovered that “the spirit is the essential” he no longer even fears the following perilous conclusions:

“If, however, the spirit is recognised as the essential, nevertheless it makes a difference whether the spirit is poor or rich, and therefore” (!) “one strives to become rich In spirit; the spirit wishes to expand, to establish its realm, a realm not of this world, which has just been overcome. In this way, the spirit strives to become all in all” [1 Corinthians 15:28] (what way is this?), “i.e., although I am spirit, nevertheless I am not perfect spirit and must” (?) “first seek the perfect spirit” (p. 1 7).

“Nevertheless it makes a difference.” — It”, what is this? What is the “It” that makes the differences We shall very often come across this mysterious “It” in our holy man, and it will then turn out that it is the unique from the standpoint of substance, the beginning of “unique” logic, and as such the true identity of Hegel’s “being” and “nothing”. Hence, for everything that this “It” does, says or performs, we shall lay the responsibility on our saint, whose relation to it is that of its creator. First of all, this “It”, as we have seen, makes a difference between poor and rich. And why? Because “the spirit is recognised as the essential”. Poor “It”, which without this recognition would never have arrived at the difference between poor and rich! “And therefore one strives”, etc. “One!” We have here the second impersonal person which, together with the “It”, is in Stirner’s service and must perform the heaviest menial work for him. How these two are accustomed to support each other is clearly seen here. Since “It” makes a difference whether the spirit is poor or rich, lone” (could anyone but Stirner’s faithful servant [F. Szeliga] have had this idea!) — “one, therefore, strives to become rich in spirit”. “It” gives the signal and immediately “one” joins in at the top of its voice. The division of labour is classically carried out.

Since “one strives to become rich in spirit, the spirit wishes to expand, to establish its realm”, etc. “If however” a connection is present here “it still makes a difference” whether “one” wants to become “rich in spirit” or whether “the spirit wants to establish its realm”. Up to now “the spirit” has not wanted anything, “the spirit” has not yet figured as a person — it was only a matter of the spirit of the “youth”, and not of “the spirit” as such, of the spirit as subject. But our holy writer now needs a spirit different from that of the youth, in order to place it in opposition to the latter as a foreign, and in the last resort, as a holy spirit. Conjuring trick No. 1.

“In this way the spirit strives to become all in all”, a somewhat obscure statement, which is then explained as follows:

“Although I am spirit, nevertheless I am not perfect spirit and must first seek the perfect spirit.”

But if Saint Max is the “Imperfect spirit”, “nevertheless it makes a difference” whether he has to “perfect” his spirit or seek “the perfect spirit”. A few lines earlier he was in fact dealing only with the “poor” and “rich” spirit — a quantitative, profane distinction — and now there suddenly appears the “imperfect” and “perfect” spirit — a qualitative, mysterious distinction. The striving towards the development of one’s own spirit can now be transformed into the hunt of the “imperfect spirit” for “the perfect spirit”. The holy spirit wanders about like a ghost. Conjuring trick No. 2. The holy author continues:

“But thereby” (i.e., by the transformation of the striving towards “perfection” my spirit into the search for “the perfect spirit”) “ I, who have only just found myself as spirit, at once lose myself again, in that I bow down before the perfect spirit, as a spirit which is not my own, but a spirit of the beyond, and I feel my emptiness “ (p. 18).

This is nothing but a further development of conjuring trick No. 2. After the “perfect spirit” has been assumed as an existing being and opposed to the “imperfect spirit”, it becomes obvious that the “imperfect spirit”, the youth, painfully feels his “emptiness” to the depths of his soul. Let us go on!

“True, it is all a matter of spirit, but is every spirit the right spirit? The right and true spirit is the ideal of the spirit, the ‘holy spirit’. It is not my or your spirit but precisely” (!) — “an ideal spirit, a spirit of the beyond — ‘God’. ‘God is spirit” [John 4: 24] (p. 18).

Here the “perfect spirit” has been suddenly transformed into the “right” spirit, and immediately afterwards into the “right and true spirit”. The latter is more closely defined as the “Ideal of the spirit, the holy spirit” and this is proved by the fact that it is “not my or your spirit but precisely, a spirit of the beyond, an ideal spirit — God”. The true spirit is the ideal of the spirit, “precisely” because it is ideal! It is the holy spirit “precisely” because it is — God! What “virtuosity of thought"! We note also in passing that up to now nothing was said about “your” spirit. Conjuring trick No. 3.

Thus, if I seek to train myself as a mathematician, or, as Saint Max puts it, to “perfect” myself as a mathematician, then I am seeking the “perfect” mathematician, i.e., the “right and true” mathematician, the “ideal” of the mathematician, the “holy” mathematician, who is distinct from me and you (although in my eyes you may be a perfect mathematician, just as for the Berlin youth his professor of philosophy is the perfect spirit); but a mathematician who is “precisely ideal, of the beyond”, the mathematician in the heavens, “God”. God is a mathematician.

Saint Max arrives at all these great results because “it makes a difference whether the spirit is rich or poor”; i.e., in plain language, it makes a difference whether anyone is rich or poor in spirit, and because his “youth” has discovered this remarkable fact.

On page 18 Saint Max continues:

“It divides the man from the youth that the former takes the world as it is”, etc.

Consequently, we do not learn how the youth arrives at the point where he suddenly takes the world “as it is”, nor do we see our holy dialectician making the transition from youth to man, we merely learn that “It” has to perform this service and “divide” the youth from the man. But even this “It” by itself does not suffice to bring the cumbersome wagon-load of unique thoughts into motion. For after “It” has “divided the man from the youth”, the man all the same relapses again into the youth, begins to occupy himself afresh “exclusively with the spirit” and does not get going until “one” hurries to his assistance with a change of horses. “Only when one has grown fond of oneself corporeally, etc.” (p. 18), “only then” everything goes forward smoothly again, the man discovers that he has a personal interest, and arrives at “the second self-discovery”, in that he not only “finds himself as spirit”, like the youth, “and then at once loses himself again in the universal spirit”, but finds himself “as corporeal spirit” (p. 19). This “corporeal spirit” finally arrives at having an “interest not only in its own spirit” (like the youth), “but in total satisfaction, in the satisfaction of the whole fellow” (an interest in the satisfaction of the whole fellow!) — he arrives at the point where “he is pleased with himself exactly as he is”. Being a German, Stirner’s “man” arrives at everything very late. He could see, sauntering along the Paris boulevards or in London’s Regent Street, hundreds of “young men”, fops and dandies who have not yet found themselves as “corporeal spirits” and are nevertheless “pleased with themselves exactly as they are”, and whose main interest lies in the ‘,satisfaction of the whole fellow” This second “self-discovery” fills our holy dialectician with such enthusiasm that he suddenly forgets his role and begins to speak not of the man, but of himself, and reveals that he himself, he the unique, is “the man”, and that “the man” = “the unique”. A new conjuring trick.

“How I find myself” (it should read: “how the youth finds himself”) “behind the things, and indeed as spirit, so subsequently, too, I must find myself” (it should read: “the man must find himself”) “behind the thoughts, i.e., as their creator and owner. In the period of spirits, thoughts outgrew me” (the youth), “although they were the offspring of my brain; like delirious fantasies they floated around me and agitated me greatly, a dreadful power. The thoughts became themselves corporeal, they were spectres like God, the Emperor, the Pope, the Fatherland, etc,; by destroying their corporeality, I take them back into my own corporeality and announce: I alone am corporeal. And now I take the world as it is for me, as my world, as my property: I relate everything to myself.”

Thus, the man, identified here with the “unique”, having first given thoughts corporeality, i.e., having transformed them into spectres, now destroys this corporeality again, by taking them back into his own body, which he thus makes into a body of spectres. The fact that he arrives at his own corporeality only through the negation of the spectres, shows the nature of this constructed corporeality of the man, which he has first to “announce” to “himself”, in order to believe in it. But what he “announces to himself” he does not even announce” correctly. The fact that apart from his “unique” body there are not also to be found in his head all kinds of independent bodies, spermatozoa, he transforms into the “fable": I alone am corporeal. Another conjuring trick.

Further, the man who, as a youth, stuffed his head with all kinds of nonsense about existing powers and relations such as the Emperor, the Fatherland, the State, etc., and knew them only as his own “delirious fantasies”, in the form of his conceptions — this man, according to Saint Max, actually destroys all these powers by getting out of his head his false opinion of them. On the contrary: now that he no longer looks at the world through the spectacles of his fantasy, he has to think of the practical interrelations of the world, to get to know them and to act in accordance with them. By destroying the fantastic corporeality which the world had for him, he finds its real corporeality outside his fantasy. With the disappearance of the spectral corporeality of the Emperor, what disappears for him is not the corporeality, but the spectral character of the Emperor, the actual power of whom he can now at last appreciate in all its scope. Conjuring trick No. 3[a].

The youth as a man does not even react critically towards ideas which are valid also for others and are current as categories, but is critical only of those ideas that are the “mere offspring of his brain”, i.e., general concepts about existing conditions reproduced in his brain. Thus, for example, he does not even resolve the category “Fatherland”, but only his personal opinion of this category, after which the generally valid category still remains, and even in the sphere of “philosophical thought” the work is only just beginning. He wants, however, to make us believe that he has destroyed the category itself because he has destroyed his emotional personal relation to it — exactly as he has wanted to make us believe that he has destroyed the power of the Emperor by giving up his fantastic conception of the Emperor. Conjuring trick No. 4.

“And now,” continues Saint Max, “I take the world as it is for me, as my world, as my property.”

He takes the world as it is for him, i.e., as he is compelled to take it. and thereby he has appropriated the world for himself, has made it his property — a mode of acquisition which, indeed, is not mentioned by any of the economists, but the method and success of which will be the more brilliantly disclosed in “the book”. Basically, however, he takes” not the “world”, but only his “delirious fantasy” about the world as his own, and makes it his property. He takes the world as his conception of the world, and the world as his conception is his imagined property, the property of his conception, his conception as property, his property as conception, his own peculiar conception, or his conception of property; and all this he expresses in the incomparable phrase: “I relate everything to myself.”

After the man has recognised, as the saint himself admits, that the world was only populated by spectres, because the youth saw spectres, after the illusory world of the youth has disappeared for the man, the latter finds himself in a real world, independent of youthful fancies.

And so, it should therefore read, I take the world as it is independently of myself, in the form in which it belongs to itself (“the man takes” — see page 18 — “the world as it is”, and not as he would like it to be), in the first place as my non-property (hitherto it was my property only as a spectre); I relate myself to everything and only to that extent do I relate everything to I myself.

“If I as spirit rejected the world with the deepest contempt for it, then I as proprietor reject the spectres or ideas into their emptiness. They no longer have power over me, just as no ‘earthly force’ has power over the spirit” (p. 20).

We see here that the proprietor, Stirner’s man, at once enters into possession, sine beneficio deliberandi atque inventarii, [without the advantage of deliberation and inventory — the right of deliberation and inventory is an old principle of the law of inheritance, which grants the heir time to decide whether he wants to accept or to reject a legacy] of the inheritance of the youth which, according to his own statement, consists only of “delirious fantasies” and “spectres”. He believes that in the process of changing from a child into a youth he had truly coped with the world of things, and in the process of changing from a youth into a man he had truly coped with the world of the spirit, that now, as a man, he has the whole world in his pocket and has nothing more to trouble him. If, according to the words of the youth which he repeats, no earthly force outside him has any power over the spirit, and hence the spirit is the supreme power on earth — and he, the man, has forced this omnipotent spirit into subjection to himself — is he not then completely omnipotent? He forgets that he has only destroyed the fantastic and spectral form assumed by the idea of “Fatherland”, etc., in the brain of the “youth”, but that he has still not touched these ideas, insofar as they express actual relations. Far from having become the master of ideas — he is only now capable of arriving at “ideas”.

“Now, let us say in conclusion, it can be clearly seen” (p. 199) that the holy man has brought his interpretation of the different stages of life to the desired and predestined goal. He informs us of the result achieved in a thesis that is a spectral shade which we shall now confront with its lost body.


unique thesis, p. 20. “The child was realistic, in thrall to the things of this world, until little by little he succeeded in penetrating behind these very things. The youth was idealistic, inspired by thoughts, until he worked his way up to become a man, the egoistic man, who deals with things and thoughts as he pleases and puts his personal interest above everything. Finally, the old man? It will be time enough to speak of this when I become one.”	Owner of the accompanying liberated shade. The child was actually in thrall to the world of his things, until little by little (a borrowed conjuring trick standing for development) he succeeded in leaving these very things behind him. The youth was fanciful and was made thoughtless by his enthusiasm, until he was brought down by the man, the egoistic burgher, with whom things and thoughts deal as they please, because his personal interest puts everything above him. Finally, the old man? — “Woman, what have I to do with thee?” [John 2:4]

The entire history of “a man’s life” amounts, therefore, “let us say in conclusion”, to the following:

1. Stirner regards the various stages of life only as “self-discoveries” of the individual, and these “self-discoveries” are moreover always reduced to a definite relation of consciousness. Thus the variety of consciousness is here the life of the individual. The physical and social changes which take place in the individuals and produce an altered consciousness are, of course, of no concern to Stirner. In Stirner’s work, therefore, child, youth and man always find the world ready-made, just as they merely “find” “themselves”; absolutely nothing is done to ensure that there should be something which can in fact be found. But even the relation of consciousness is not correctly understood either, but only in its speculative distortion. Hence, too, all these figures have a philosophical attitude to the world — “the child is realistic”, “the youth is idealistic”, the man is the negative unity of the two, absolute negativity, as is evident from the above-quoted final proposition. Here the secret of “a man’s life” is revealed, here it becomes clear that the “child” was only a disguise of “realism”, the “youth” a disguise of “idealism”, the “man” of an attempted solution of this philosophical antithesis. This solution, this “absolute negativity”, is arrived at — it is now seen — only thanks to the man blindly taking on trust the illusions both of the child and of the youth, believing thus to have overcome the world of things and the world of the spirit.

2. Since Saint Max pays no attention to the physical and social “life” of the individual, and says nothing at all about “life”, he quite consistently abstracts from historical epochs, nationalities, classes, etc., or, which is the same thing, he inflates the consciousness predominant in the class nearest to him in his immediate environment into the normal consciousness of “a man’s life”. In order to rise above this local and pedantic narrow-mindedness he has only to confront “his” youth with the first young clerk he encounters, a young English factory worker or young Yankee, not to mention the young Kirghiz-Kazakhs.

3. Our saint’s enormous gullibility — the true spirit of his book — is not content with causing his youth to believe in his child, and his man to believe in his youth. The illusions which some youths”, “men”, etc., have or claim to have about themselves, are without any examination accepted by Stirner himself and confused with the “life”, with the reality, of these highly ambiguous youths and men.

4. The prototype of the entire structure of the stages of life has already been depicted in the third part of Hegel’s Encyclopädie and “in various transformations” in other passages in Hegel as well. Saint Max, pursuing “his own” purposes, had, of course, to undertake certain “transformations” here also. Whereas Hegel, for example, is still to such an extent guided by the empirical world that he portrays the German burgher as the servant of the world around him, Stirner has to make him the master of this world, which he is not even in imagination. Similarly, Saint Max pretends that he does not speak of the old man for empirical reasons; he wishes to wait until he becomes one himself (here, therefore, “a man’s life” = his unique life). Hegel briskly sets about constructing the four stages of the human life because, in the real world, the negation is posited twice, i.e., as moon and as comet (cf. Hegel’s Naturphilosophie , and therefore the quaternity here takes the place of the trinity. Stirner finds his own uniqueness in making moon and comet coincide and so abolishes the unfortunate old man from “a man’s life”. The reason for this conjuring trick becomes evident as soon as we examine the construction of the unique history of man.

2. The Economy of the Old Testament[edit source]

We must here, for a moment, jump from the “Law” to the “Prophets”, since at this point already we reveal the secret of unique domestic economy in heaven and on earth. In the Old Testament, too — where the law, man, still is a school-master of the unique (Galatians 3:24) — the history of the kingdom of the unique follows a wise plan fixed from eternity. Everything has been foreseen and preordained in order that the unique could appear in the world, when the time had come [Galatians 4:4] to redeem holy people from their holiness.

The first book, “A Man’s Life”, is also called the “Book of Genesis”, because it contains in embryo the entire domestic economy of the unique, because it gives us a prototype of the whole subsequent development up to the moment when the time comes for the end of the world. The entire unique history revolves round three stages: child, youth and man, who return “in various transformations” and in ever widening circles until, finally, the entire history of the world of things and the world of the spirit is reduced to “child, youth and man”. Everywhere we shall find nothing but disguised 1I child, youth and man”, just as we already discovered in them three disguised categories.

We spoke above of the German philosophical conception of history. Here, in Saint Max, we find a brilliant example of it. The speculative idea, the abstract conception, is made the driving force of history, and history is thereby turned into the mere history of philosophy. But even the latter is not conceived as, according to existing sources, it actually took place — not to mention how it evolved under the influence of real historical relations — but as it was understood and described by recent German philosophers, in particular Hegel and Feuerbach. And from these descriptions again only that was selected which could be adapted to the given end, and which came into the hands of our saint by tradition. Thus, history becomes a mere history of illusory ideas, a history of spirits and ghosts, while the real, empirical history that forms the basis of this ghostly history is only utilised to provide bodies for these ghosts; from it are borrowed the names required to clothe these ghosts with the appearance of reality. In making this experiment our saint frequently forgets his role and writes an undisguised ghost-story.

In his case we find this method of making history in its most naive, most classic simplicity. Three simple categories — realism, idealism and absolute negativity (here named “egoism”) as the unity of the two — which we have already encountered in the shape of the child, youth and man, are made the basis of all history and are embellished with various historical signboards; together with their modest suite of auxiliary categories they form the content of all the allegedly historical phases which are trotted out. Saint Max once again reveals here his boundless faith by pushing to greater extremes than any of his predecessors faith in the speculative content of history dished up by German philosophers. In this solemn and tedious construction of history, therefore, all that matters is to find a pompous series of resounding names for three categories that are so hackneyed that they no longer dare to show themselves publicly under their own names. Our anointed author could perfectly well have passed from the “man” (p. 20) immediately to the “ego” (p. 201) or better still to the “unique” (p. 485); but that would have been too simple. Moreover, the strong competition among the German speculative philosophers makes it the duty of each new competitor to offer an ear-splitting historical advertisement for his commodity.

“The force of true development”, to use Dottore Graziano’s words, “proceeds most forcibly” in the following “transformations": Basis:

I. Realism.
II. Idealism.
III. The negative unity of the two. “One” (p. 485),

First nomenclature:

I.. Child, dependent on things (realism).
II. Youth, dependent on ideas (idealism).
III. Man — (as the negative unity)
expressed positively:
the owner of ideas and things (egoism)
expressed negatively:
free from ideas and things

Second, historical nomenclature:

I. Negro (realism, child).
II. Mongol (Idealism, youth).
III. Caucasian (negative unity of realism and idealism, man).

Third, most general nomenclature:

I. Realistic egoist (egoist in the ordinary sense) — child, Negro.
II. Idealist egoist (devotee) — youth, Mongol.
III. True egoist (the unique) — man, Caucasian.

Fourth, historical nomenclature. Repetition of the preceding stages within the category of the Caucasian.

I. The Ancients. Negroid Caucasians childish men — pagans dependent on things — realists — the world.

Transition (child penetrating behind the “things of this world”): Sophists, Sceptics, etc.

II. The Moderns. Mongoloid Caucasians — youthful men — Christians — dependent on ideas — idealists — spirit.

1. Pure history of spirits, [Geistergeschichte, or “ghost-story” Geister — ghosts or spirits; Geschichte — story or history; here rendered as “history of spirits"] Christianity as spirit. “The spirit.”

2. Impure history of spirits. Spirit in relation to others. “The Possessed”.

A. Purely impure history of spirits.

a) The apparition, the ghost, the spirit in the Negroid state, as thing-like spirit and spiritual thing — objective being for the Christian, spirit as child.

b) The whimsy, the fixed idea, the spirit in the Mongolian condition, as spiritual in the spirit, determination in consciousness, conceptual being in the Christian — spirit as youth.

B. Impurely impure (historical) history of spirits.

a) Catholicism — Middle Ages (the Negro, child, realism, etc.).

b) Protestantism — modern times in modern times (Mongol, youth, idealism, etc.).

Within Protestantism it is possible to make further subdivisions, for example:

[a] English philosophy — realism, child, Negro.

[b] German philosophy — idealism, youth, Mongol.

3. The Hierarchy — negative unity of the two within the Mongoloid-Caucasian point of view. Such unity appears where historical relations are changed into actually existing relations or where opposites are presented as existing side by side. Here, therefore, we have two coexisting stages:

A. The “uneducated”, (evil ones, bourgeois, egoists in the ordinary sense)=Negroes, children, Catholics, realists, etc.

B. The “educated” (good ones, citoyens, devotees, priests, etc.) = Mongols, youths, Protestants, idealists.

These two stages exist side by side and hence it follows easily” that the “educated” rule over the “uneducated” — this is the hierarchy. In the further course of historical development there arises then

the non-Hegelian from the “uneducated”,

the Hegelian from the “educated”,

["The shaman and the speculative philosopher denote the lowest and the highest point in the scale of the inner man, the Mongol” (p. 453).]

from which it follows that the Hegelians rule over the non-Hegelians. In this way Stirner converts the speculative notion of the domination of the speculative idea in history into the notion of the domination of the speculative philosophers themselves. The view of history hitherto held by him — the domination of the idea — becomes in the hierarchy a relation actually existing at present; it becomes the world domination of ideologists. This shows how deeply Stirner has plunged into speculation. This domination of the speculative philosophers and ideologists is finally developing, “for the time has come” for it, into the following, concluding nomenclature:

a) Political liberalism, dependent on things, independent of persons — realism, child, Negro, the ancient, apparition, Catholicism, the “uneducated”, masterless.

b) Social liberalism, independent of things, dependent on the spirit, without object — idealism, youth, Mongol, the modern, whimsy, Protestantism, the “educated”, propertyless.

c) Humane liberalism, masterless and propertyless, that is godless, for God is simultaneously the supreme master and the supreme possession, hierarchy — negative unity in the sphere of liberalism and, as such, domination over the world of things and thoughts; at the same time the perfect egoist in the abolition of egoism — the perfect hierarchy. At the same time, it forms the

Transition (youth penetrating behind the world of thoughts) to

III. the “ego” — i.e., the perfect Christian, the perfect man, the Caucasian Caucasian and true egoist, who — just as the Christian became spirit through the supersession of the ancient world — becomes a corporeal being [Leibhaftige] through the dissolution of the realm of spirits, by entering, sine beneficio deliberandi et inventarii, into the inheritance of idealism, the youth, the Mongol, the modern, the Christian, the possessed, the whimsical, the Protestant, the “educated”, the Hegelian and the humane liberal.

NB. 1. “At times” Feuerbachian and other categories, such as reason, the heart, etc., may be also “included episodically”, should a suitable occasion arise, to heighten the colour of the picture and to produce new effects. It goes without saying that these, too, are only new disguises of the ever present idealism and realism.

2. The very pious Saint Max, Jacques le bonhomme, has nothing real and mundane to say about real mundane history, except that under the name of “nature”, the “world of things”, the “world of the child”, etc., he always opposes it to consciousness, as an object of speculation of the latter, as a world which, in spite of its continual annihilation, continues to exist in a mystical darkness, in order to reappear on every convenient occasion — probably because children and Negroes continue to exist, and hence also their world, the so-called world of things, “easily,” continues to exist. Concerning such historical and non-historical constructions, good old Hegel wrote with regard to Schelling — the model for all constructors — that one can say the following in this context:

“It is no more difficult to handle the instrument of this monotonous formalism than a painter’s palette which has only two colours, say black” (realistic, childish, Negroid, etc.) “and yellow” [Hegel mentions red and green as examples] (idealist, youthful, Mongolian, etc.), “in order to use the former to paint a surface when something historical” (the “world of things”) “is required, and the latter when a landscape” (“heaven”, spirit, holiness, etc.) “is needed” (Phänomenologie, p. 39).

“Ordinary consciousness” has even more pointedly ridiculed constructions of this kind in the following song:

The master sent out John

And told him to cut the hay;

But John did not cut the hay

Nor did he come back home.

Then the master sent out the dog

And told him to bite John;

But the dog did not bite John,

John did not cut the hay

And they did not conic back home.

Then the master sent out the stick

And told it to beat the dog;

But the stick did not beat the dog,

The dog did not bite John,

John did not cut the hay

And they did not come back home.

Then the master sent out fire

And told it to burn the stick;

But the fire did not burn the stick,

The stick did not beat the dog,

The dog did not bite John,

John did not cut the hay

And they did not come back home.

Then the master sent out water

And told it to put out the fire;

But the water did not put out the fire,

The fire did not burn the stick,

The stick did not beat the dog,

The dog did not bite John,

John did not cut the hay

And they did not come back home.

Then the master sent out the ox

And told it to drink the water;

But the ox did not drink the water,

The water did not put out the fire,

The fire did not burn the stick,

The stick did not beat the dog,

The dog did not bite John,

John did not cut the hay

And they did not come back home.

Then the master sent out the butcher

And told him to slaughter the ox;

But the butcher did not slaughter the ox,

The ox did not drink the water,

The water did not put out the fire,

The fire did not burn the stick,

The stick did not beat the dog,

The dog did not bite John,

John did not cut the hay

And they did not come back home.

Then the master sent out the hangman

And told him to hang the butcher;

The hangman did hang the butcher,

The butcher slaughtered the ox,

The ox drank the water,

The water put out the fire,

The fire burnt the stick,

The stick beat the dog,

The dog bit John,

John cut the hay,

And they all came back home.

[A German nursery rhyme]

We shall now see with what “virtuosity of thought” and with what school-boyish material Jacques le bonhomme elaborates on this scheme.

3. The Ancients[edit source]

Properly speaking we ought to begin here with the Negroes; but Saint Max, who undoubtedly sits in the “Council of Guardians”, in his unfathomable wisdom introduces the Negroes only later, and even then “without any claim to thoroughness and authenticity”. if, therefore, we make Greek philosophy precede the Negro era, i.e., the campaigns of Sesostris and Napoleon’s expedition to Egypt ^[3] it is because we are confident that our holy author has arranged everything wisely.

“Let us, therefore, take a look at the activities which tempt” Stirner’s ancients.

“'For the ancients, the world was a truth,’ says Feuerbach; but he forgets to make the important addition: a truth, the untruth of which they sought to penetrate and, finally, did indeed penetrate” (p. 22).

“For the ancients”, their “world” (not the world) “was a truth” — whereby, of course, no truth about the ancient world is stated, but only that the ancients did not have a Christian attitude to their world. As soon as untruth penetrated their world (i.e., as soon as this world itself disintegrated in consequence of practical conflicts — and to demonstrate this materialistic development empirically would be the only thing of interest), the ancient philosophers sought to penetrate the world of truth or the truth of their world and then, of course, they found that it had become untrue. Their very search was itself a symptom of the internal collapse of this world. Jacques le bonhomme transforms the idealist symptom into the material cause of the collapse and, as a German church father, makes antiquity itself seek its own negation, Christianity. For him this position of antiquity is inevitable because the ancients are “children” who seek to penetrate the “world of things”. “And that is fairly easy too": by transforming the ancient world into the later consciousness regarding the ancient world, Jacques le bonhomme can, of course, jump in a single leap from the materialistic ancient world to the world of religion, to Christianity. Now the “word of God” immediately emerges in opposition to the real world of antiquity; the Christian conceived as the modern sceptic emerges in opposition to the ancient man conceived as philosopher. His Christian “is never convinced of the vanity of the word of God” and, in consequence of this lack of conviction, he “believes” “in its eternal and invincible truth” (p. 22). Just as Stirner’s ancient is ancient because he is a non-Christian, not yet a Christian or a hidden Christian, so his primitive Christian is a Christian because he is a non-atheist, not yet an atheist or a hidden atheist. Stirner, therefore, causes Christianity to be negated by the ancients and modern atheism by the primitive Christians, instead of the reverse. Jacques le bonhomme, like all other speculative philosophers, seizes everything by its philosophical tail. A few more examples of this child-like gullibility immediately follow.

“The Christian must consider himself a ‘stranger on the earth’ (Epistle to the Hebrews 11 :13)” (p. 23).

On the contrary, the strangers on earth (arising from extremely natural causes e.g., the colossal concentration of wealth in the whole Roman world, etc., etc.) had to consider themselves Christians. It was not their Christianity that made them vagrants, but their vagrancy that made them Christians. On the same page the holy father jumps straight from Sophocles’ Antigone and the sacredness of the burial ceremonial connected with it to the Gospel of Matthew, 8:22 (let the dead bury their dead), while Hegel, at any rate in the Phänomenologie, gradually passes from the Antigone, etc., to the Romans. With equal right Saint Max could have passed at once. to the Middle Ages and, together with Hegel, have advanced this biblical statement against the Crusaders or even, in order to be quite original, have contrasted the burial of Polynices by Antigone with the transfer of the ashes of Napoleon from St. Helena to Paris. It is stated further:

“In Christianity the inviolable truth of family ties” (which on page 22 is noted as one of the “truths” of the ancients) “is depicted as an untruth which should be got rid of as quickly as possible (Mark, 10: 29) and so in everything” (p. 23).

This proposition, in which reality is again turned upside-down, should be put the right way up as follows: the actual untruth of family ties (concerning which, inter alia, the still existing documents of pre-Christian Roman legislation should be examined) is depicted in Christianity as an inviolable truth, “and so in everything”.

From these examples, therefore, it is superabundantly evident how Jacques le bonhomme, who strives to “get rid as quickly as possible” of empirical history, stands facts on their heads, causes material history to be produced by ideal history, “and so in everything”. At the outset we learn only the alleged attitude of the ancients to their world; as dogmatists they are put in opposition to the ancient world, their own world, instead of appearing as its creators; it is a question only of the relation of consciousness to the object, to truth; it is a question, therefore, only of the philosophical relation of the ancients to their world — ancient history is replaced by the history of ancient philosophy, and this only in the form in which Saint Max imagines it according to Hegel and Feuerbach.

Thus the history of Greece, from the time of Pericles inclusively, is reduced to a struggle of abstractions: reason, spirit, heart, worldliness, etc. These are the Greek parties. In this ghostly world, which is presented as the Greek world, allegorical persons such as Madame Purity of Heart “machinate” and mythical figures like Pilate (who must never be missing where there are children) find a place quite seriously side by side with Timon of Phlius.

After presenting us with some astounding revelations about the Sophists and Socrates, Saint Max immediately jumps to the Sceptics. He discovers that they completed the work which Socrates began. Hence the positive philosophy of the Greeks that followed immediately after the Sophists and Socrates, especially Aristotle’s encyclopaedic learning, does not exist at all for Jacques le bonhomme. He strives “to get rid as quickly as possible” of the past and hurries to the transition to the “moderns”, finding this transition in the Sceptics, Stoics and Epicureans. Let us see what our holy father has to reveal about them.

“The Stoics wish to realise the ideal of the wise man ... the man who knows how to live ... they find this ideal in contempt for the world, in a life without living development [...] without friendly intercourse with the world, i.e., in a life of isolation [... ] not in a life in common with others; the Stoic alone lives, for him everything else is dead. The Epicureans, on the other hand, demand an active life” (p. 30).

We refer Jacques le bonhomme — the man who wants to realise himself and who knows how to live — to, inter alia, Diogenes Laertius: there he will discover that the wise man, the sophos, is nothing but the idealised Stoic, not the Stoic the realised wise man; he will discover that the sophos is by no means Only a Stoic but is met with just as much among the Epicureans, the Neo-academists and the Sceptics. Incidentally, the sophos is the first form in which the Greek philosophos confronts us; he appears mythologically in the seven wise men, in practice in Socrates, and as an ideal among the Stoics, Epicureans, Neo-academists ^[4] and Sceptics. Each of these schools, of course, has its own sofos [wise man] Just as Saint Bruno has his own “unique sex”. Indeed, Saint Max can find “le sage” again in the eighteenth century in the philosophy of Enlightenment, and even in Jean Paul in the shape of the “wise men” like Emanuel [Jean Paul, Hesperus oder 45 Hundsposttage] etc. The Stoical wise man by no means has in mind “life without living development”, but an absolutely active life, as is evident even from his concept of nature, which is Heraclitean, dynamic, developing and living, while for the Epicureans the principle of the concept of nature is the mars immortalis [immortal death. Lucretius, De rerum natura libri sex, Book 3, Verse 882], as Lucretius says, the atom, and, in opposition to Aristotle’s divine energy, divine leisure is put forward as the ideal of life instead of “active life”.

“The ethics of the Stoics (their only science, for they were unable to say anything about the spirit except what its relation to the world should be; and about nature — physics — they could say only that the wise man has to assert himself against it) is not a doctrine of the spirit, but merely a doctrine of rejection of the world and of self-assertion against the world” (p. 31).

The Stoics were able to “say about nature” that physics is one of the most important sciences for the philosopher and consequently they even went to the trouble of further developing the physics of Heraclitus; they were “further able to say” that the wra, masculine beauty, is the highest that the individual could represent, and glorified life in tune with nature, although they fell into contradictions in so doing. According to the Stoics, philosophy is divided into three doctrines: “physics, ethics, logic”.

“They compare philosophy to the animal and to the egg, logic — to the bones and sinews of the animal, and to the. outer shell of the egg, ethics — to the flesh of the animal and to the albumen of the egg, and physics — to the soul of the animal and to the yolk of the egg” (Diogenes Laertius, Zeno).

From this alone it is evident how little true it is to say that “ethics is the only science of the Stoics”. It should be added also that, apart from Aristotle, they were the chief founders of formal logic and systematics in general.

That the “Stoics were unable to say anything about the spirit” is so little true that even seeing spirits originated from them, on account of which Epicurus opposes them, as an Enlightener, and ridicules them as “old women”, while precisely the Neo-Platonists borrowed part of their tales about spirits from the Stoics. This spirit-seeing of the Stoics arises, on the one hand, from the impossibility of achieving a dynamic concept of nature without the material furnished by empirical natural science, and, on the other hand, from their effort to interpret the ancient Greek world and even religion in a speculative manner and make them analogous to the thinking spirit.

The “ethics of the Stoics” is so much a “doctrine of world rejection and of self-assertion against the world” that, for example, it was counted a Stoical virtue to “have a sound fatherland, a worthy friend”, that “the beautiful alone” is declared to be “the good”, and that the Stoical wise man is allowed to mingle with the world in every way, for example, to commit incest, etc., etc. The Stoical wise man is to such an extent caught up “in a life of isolation and not in a life in common with others” that it is said of him in Zeno:

“Let not the wise man wonder at anything that seems wonderful — but nether will the worthy man live in solitude, for he is social by nature and active in practice” (Diogenes Laertius, Book VII, 1).

Incidentally, it would be asking too much to demand that, for the sake of refuting this school-boyish wisdom of Jacques le bonhomme, one should set forth the very complicated and contradictory ethics of the Stoics.

In connection with the Stoics, Jacques le bonhomme has to note the existence of the Romans also (p. 3 1), of whom, of course, he is unable to say anything, since they have no philosophy. The only thing we hear of them is that Horace (!) “did not go beyond the Stoics’ worldly wisdom” (p. 32). Integer vitae, scelerisque purus! [he of life without flaw, pure from sin. Horace, The Odes, Book I — Ode XXII. Verse 1]

In connection with the Stoics, Democritus is also mentioned in the following way: a muddled passage of Diogenes Laertius (Democritus, Book IX, 7, 45), which in addition has been inaccurately translated, is copied out from some textbook, and made the basis for a lengthy diatribe about Democritus. This diatribe has the distinguishing feature of being in direct contradiction to its basis, i.e., to the above-mentioned muddled and inaccurately translated passage, and converts “peace of mind” (Stirner’s translation of euqumia, in Low German Wellmuth) into “rejection of the world”. The fact is that Stirner imagines that Democritus was a Stoic, and indeed of the sort that the unique and the ordinary school-boyish consciousness conceive a Stoic to be. Stirner thinks that “his whole activity amounts to an endeavour to detach himself from the world”, “hence to a rejection of the world”, and that in the person of Democritus he can refute the Stoics. That the eventful life of Democritus, who had wandered through the world a great deal, flagrantly contradicts this notion of Saint Max’s; that the real source from which to learn about the philosophy of Democritus is Aristotle and not a couple of anecdotes from Diogenes Laertius; that Democritus, far from rejecting the world, was, on the contrary, an empirical natural scientist and the first encyclopaedic mind among the Greeks; that his almost unknown ethics was limited to a few remarks which he is alleged to have made when he was an old, much-travelled man; that his writings on natural science can be called philosophy only per abusum, [by abuse, i. e., improperly, wrongly] because for him, in contrast to Epicurus, the atom was only a physical hypothesis, an expedient for explaining facts, just as it is in the proportional combinations of modern chemistry (Dalton and others) — all this does not suit the purpose of Jacques le bonhomme. Democritus must be understood in the “unique” fashion, Democritus speaks of euthymia, hence of peace of mind, hence of withdrawal into oneself, hence of rejection of the world. Democritus is a Stoic, and he differs from the Indian fakir mumbling “Brahma” (the word should have been “Om”),^[5] only as the comparative differs from the superlative, i.e., “only in degree”.

Of the Epicureans our friend knows exactly as much as he does of the Stoics, viz., the unavoidable schoolboy’s minimum. He contrasts the Epicurean “hedone”, [pleasure] with the “ataraxia” [equanimity, imperturbability, intrepidity] of the Stoics and Sceptics, not knowing that this “ataraxia” is also to he found in Epicurus and, moreover, as something placed higher than the “hedone” — in consequence of which his whole contrast falls to the ground. He tells us that the Epicureans “teach only a different attitude to the world” from that of the Stoics; but let him show us the (non-Stoic) philosopher of “ancient or modern times” who does not do “only” the same. Finally, Saint Max enriches us with a new dictum of the Epicureans: “the world must be deceived, for it is my enemy”. Hitherto it was only known that the Epicureans made statements in the sense that the world must be disillusioned and especially freed from fear of gods, for the world is my friend.

To give our saint some indication of the real base on which the philosophy of Epicurus rests, it is sufficient to mention that the idea that the state rests on the mutual agreement of people, on a contrat social (sunqhjh [contract]), is found for the first time in Epicurus.

The extent to which Saint Max’s disclosures about the Sceptics follow the same line is already evident from the fact that he considers their philosophy more radical than that of Epicurus. The Sceptics reduced the theoretical relation of people to things to appearance, and in practice they left everything as of old, being guided by this appearance just as much as others are guided by actuality; they merely gave it another name. Epicurus, on the other hand, was the true radical Enlightener of antiquity; he openly attacked the ancient religion, and it was from him, too, that the atheism of the Romans, insofar as it existed, was derived. For this reason, too, Lucretius praised Epicurus as the hero who was the first to overthrow the gods and trample religion underfoot; for this reason among all church fathers, from Plutarch to Luther, Epicurus has always had the reputation of being the atheist philosopher par excellence, and was called a swine; for which reason, too, Clement of Alexandria says that when Paul takes up arms against philosophy he has in mind Epicurean philosophy alone. (Stromatum, Book I [chap. XI], p. 295, Cologne edition, 1688.) Hence we see how “cunning, perfidious” and “clever” was the attitude of this open atheist to the world in directly attacking its religion, while the Stoics adapted the ancient religion in their own speculative fashion, and the Sceptics used their concept of “appearance” as the excuse for being able to accompany all their judgments with a reservatio mentalis.

Thus, according to Stirner, the Stoics finally arrive at “contempt for the world” (p. 30), the Epicureans at ‘,the same worldly wisdom as the Stoics” (p. 32), and the Sceptics at the point where they “let the world alone and do not worry about it. at all”. Hence, according to Stirner, all three end in an attitude of indifference to the world, of “contempt for the world” (p. 485). Long before him, Hegel expressed it in this way: Stoicism, Scepticism, Epicureanism “aimed at making the mind indifferent towards everything that actuality has to offer” (Philosophie der Geschichte, p. 327).

“The ancients,” writes Saint max, summing up his criticism of the ancient world of ideas, “it is true, had ideas, but they did not know the idea” (p. 30). In this connection, “one should recall what was said earlier about our childhood ideas” (ibid.).

The history of ancient philosophy has to conform to Stirner’s design. In order that the Greeks should retain their role of children, Aristotle ought not to have lived and his thought in and for itself (h nohsis h kaq authn), his self-thinking reason (auton de noeio nous) and his self-thinking intellect (h, nohsis ths nohsews) should never have occurred; and in general his Metaphysics and the third book of his Psychology [Aristoteles, De anima] ought not to have existed.

With just as much right as Saint Max here recalls “what was said earlier about our childhood”, when he discussed “our childhood” he could have said: let the reader look up what will be said below about the ancients and the Negroes and will not be said about Aristotle.

In order to appreciate the true meaning of the last ancient philosophies during the dissolution of the ancient world, Jacques le bonhomme had only to look at the real situation in life of their adherents under the world dominion of Rome. He could have found, inter alia, in Lucian a detailed description of how the people regarded them as public buffoons, and how the Roman capitalists, proconsuls, etc., hired them as court jesters for their entertainment, so that after squabbling at the table with slaves for a few bones and a crust of bread and after being given a special sour wine, they would amuse the master of the house and his guests with delightful words like “ataraxia”, “aphasia” [refusal to express any definite opinion] “hedone”, etc.

Incidentally, if our good man wanted to make the history of ancient philosophy into a history of antiquity, then as a matter of course he ought to have merged the Stoics, Epicureans and Sceptics in the Neo-Platonists, whose philosophy is nothing but a fantastic combination of the Stoic, Epicurean and Sceptical doctrine with the content of the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle. Instead of that, he merges these doctrines directly in Christianity.

It is not “Stirner” that has left Greek philosophy “behind him”, but Greek philosophy that has “Stirner” behind it (cf. Wigand, p. 186 [Max Stirner, “Recensenten Stirners"]). Instead of telling us how “antiquity” arrives at a world of things and “copes” with it,. this ignorant school-master causes antiquity blissfully to vanish by means of a quotation from Timon; whereby antiquity the more naturally “arrives at its final goal” since, according to Saint Max, the ancients “found themselves placed by nature” in the ancient “communality”, which, “let us say in conclusion”, “can be understood” the more easily because this communality, the family, etc., are dubbed “the so-called natural ties” (p. 33). By means of nature the ancient “world of things” is created, and by means of Timon and Pilate (p. 32) it is destroyed. Instead of describing the “world of things” which provides the material basis of Christianity, he causes this “world of things” to be annihilated in the world of the spirit, in Christianity.

The German philosophers are accustomed to counterpose antiquity, as the epoch of realism, to Christianity and modern times, as the epoch of idealism, whereas the French and English economists, historians and scientists are accustomed to regard antiquity as the period of idealism in contrast to the materialism and empiricism of modern times. In the same way antiquity can be considered to be idealistic insofar as in history the ancients represent the “citoyen”, the idealist politician, while in the final analysis the moderns turn into the “bourgeois”, the realist ami du commerce — or again it can be considered to be realistic, because for the ancients the communality was a “truth”, whereas for the moderns it is an idealist “lie”. All these abstract counterposings and historical constructions are of very little use.

The “unique thing” we learn from this whole portrayal of the ancients is that, whereas Stirner “knows” very few “things” about the ancient world, he has all the “better seen through” them (cf. Wigand, p. 191).

Stirner is truly that same “man child” of whom it is prophesied in the Revelation of St. John, 12:5, that he “was to rule all nations with a rod of iron”. We have seen how he sets about the unfortunate heathen with the iron rod of his ignorance. The “moderns” will fare no better.

4. The Moderns[edit source]

“Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new” (2 Corinthians 5:17) (p. 33).

By means of this biblical saying the ancient world has now indeed passed away” or, as Saint Max really wanted to say, “all gone”, and with one leap [Satz, = leap, jump and also sentence or proposition] we have jumped over to the new, Christian, youthful, Mongoloid “world of the spirit”. We shall see that this, too, will have “all gone” in a very short space of time.

“Whereas it was stated above ‘for the ancients, the world was a truth’, we must say here ‘for the modems the spirit was a truth’, but in neither case should we forget the important addition: ‘a truth, the untruth of which they sought to penetrate and, finally, did indeed penetrate'” (p. 33).

While we do not wish to devise any Stirner-like constructions, “we must say here": for the moderns truth was a spirit, namely the holy spirit. Jacques le bonhomme again takes the moderns not in their actual historical connection with the “world of things” — which, despite being “all gone”, nevertheless continues to exist — but in their theoretical, and indeed religious, attitude. For him the history of the Middle Ages and modern times again exists only as the history of religion and philosophy; he devoutly believes all the illusions of these epochs and the philosophical illusions about these illusions. Thus, having given the history of the moderns the same turn as he gave that of the ancients, Saint Max can then easily “demonstrate” in it a ‘similar course to that taken by antiquity”, and pass from the Christian religion to modern German philosophy as rapidly as he passed from ancient philosophy to the Christian religion. On page 37 he himself gives a characterisation of his historical illusions, by making the discovery that “the ancients have nothing to offer but worldly wisdom” and that “the moderns have never gone, and do not go, beyond theology”, and he solemnly asks: “What did the moderns seek to penetrate?” The ancients and moderns alike do nothing else in history but “seek to penetrate something” — the ancients try to find out what is behind the world of things, the moderns behind the world of the spirit. In the end ‘ the ancients are left “without a world” and the moderns “without a spirit”; the ancients wanted to become idealists, the moderns to become realists (p. 485), but both of them were only occupied with the divine (p. 488) — “history up to now” is only the “history of the spiritual man” (what faith!) (p. 442) — in short we have again. the child and the youth, the Negro and the Mongol, and all the rest of the terminology of the “various transformations”. At the same time we see a faithful imitation of the speculative manner, by which children beget their father, and what is earlier is brought about by what is later. From the very outset Christians must “seek to penetrate the untruthfulness of their truth”, they must immediately be hidden atheists and critics, as was already indicated concerning the ancients. But not satisfied with this, Saint Max gives one more brilliant example of his “virtuosity in” (speculative) “thought” (p. 230):

“Now, after liberalism has acclaimed man, one can state that thereby only the last consequence of Christianity has been drawn and that Christianity originally set itself no other task than that of ... realising man.”

Since allegedly the last consequence of Christianity has been drawn, “one” can state that it has been drawn. As soon as the later ones have transformed what was earlier “one can state” that the earlier ones “originally”, namely “in truth”, in essence, in heaven, as hidden Jews, “set themselves no other task” than that of being transformed by the later ones. Christianity, for Jacques le bonhomme, is a self-positing subject, the absolute spirit, which “originally” posits its end as its beginning. Cf. Hegel’s Encyclopädie, etc.

“Hence” (namely because one can attribute an imaginary task to Christianity) “there follows the delusion” (of course, before Feuerbach it was impossible to know what task Christianity “had originally set itself”) “that Christianity attaches infinite value to the ego, as revealed, for example, in the theory of immortality and pastoral work. No, it attaches this value to man alone, man alone is immortal, and only because I am a man, am I also immortal.”

if, then, from the whole of Stirner’s scheme and formulation of tasks it emerges, already sufficiently clearly, that Christian’ try can lend immortality only to Feuerbach’s “man”, we learn here in addition that this comes about also because Christianity does not ascribe this immortality — to animals as well.

Let us now also draw up a scheme à la Saint Max.

“Now, after” modern large-scale landownership, which has arisen from the process of parcellation, has actually “proclaimed” primogeniture, “one can state that thereby only the last consequence” of the parcellation of landed property “has been drawn” “ and that” parcellation “in truth originally set itself no other task than that of realising” primogeniture, true primogeniture. “Hence there follows the delusion” that parcellation “attaches infinite value” to equal rights of members of the family, “as revealed, for example”, in the laws of inheritance of the Code Napoléon. “No, it attaches this value solely” to the eldest son; “only” the eldest son, the future owner of the entailed estate, will become a large landowner, “and only because I am” the eldest son “I will also be” a large landowner.

In this way it is infinitely easy to give history “unique” turns, as one has only to describe its very latest result as the “task” which “in truth originally it set itself”. Thereby earlier times acquire a bizarre and hitherto unprecedented appearance. It produces a striking impression, and does not require great production costs. As, for instance, if one says that the real “task” which the institution of landed property “originally set itself” was to replace people by. sheep — a consequence which has recently, become manifest in Scotland, etc., or that the proclamation of the Capet dynasty ^[6] “originally in truth set itself the task” of sending Louis XVI to the guillotine and M. Guizot into the Government. The important thing is to do it in a solemn, pious, priestly way, to draw a deep breath, and then suddenly to burst out: “Now, at last, one can state it.”

What Saint Max says about the moderns in the above section (pp. 33-37) is only the prologue to the spirit history which is in store

for us. Here, too, we see how he tries “to rid himself as quickly as possible” of empirical facts and parades before us the same categories as in the case of the ancients — reason, heart, spirit, etc. — only they are given different names. The Sophists become sophistical scholastics, “humanists, Machiavellism (the art of printing, the New World”, etc.; cf. Hegel’s Geschichte der Philosophie, III, p. 128) who represent reason; Socrates is transformed into Luther, who extols the heart (Hegel, 1.c., p. 227), and of the post-Reformation period we learn that during that time it was a matter of “empty cordiality” (which in the section about the ancients was called “purity of heart”, cf. Hegel, 1.c., p. 241). All this on page 34. In this way Saint Max “proves” that “Christianity takes a course “similar to that of antiquity”. After Luther he no longer even troubles to provide names for his categories; he hurries in seven-league boots to modern German philosophy. Four oppositions (“until nothing remains but empty cordiality, all the universal love of mankind, love of man, consciousness of freedom, ‘self-consciousness"’, p. 34; Hegel, 1.c., pp. 228, 229), four words fill the gulf between Luther and Hegel and “only thus is Christianity completed”. This whole argument is achieved in one masterly sentence, with the help of such levers as “at last"-"and from that time” — “since one” — “also” — “from day to day” — “until finally”, etc., a sentence which the reader can verify for himself on the classic page 34 already mentioned.

Finally Saint Max gives us a few more examples of his faith, showing that he is so little ashamed of the Gospel that he asserts: “We really are nothing but spirit”, and maintains that at the end of the ancient world “after long efforts” the “spirit” has really “rid itself of the world”. And immediately afterwards he once more betrays the secret of his scheme, by declaring of the Christian spirit that “like a youth it entertains plans for improving or saving the world”. All this on page 36.

“So he carried me away in the spirit into the wilderness: and I saw a woman sit upon a scarlet-coloured beast, full of names of blasphemy.... And upon her forehead was a name written, Mystery, Babylon the Great ... and saw the woman drunken with the blood of the saints”, etc. (Revelation of St. John, 17, Verses 3, 5, 6).

The apocalyptic prophet did not prophesy accurately this time. Now at last, after Stirner has acclaimed man, one can state that he ought to have said: So he carried me into the wilderness of the spirit. And I saw a man sit upon a scarlet-coloured beast, full of blasphemy of names ... and upon his forehead was a name written, Mystery, the unique ... and I saw the man drunken with the blood of holy, etc. So we now enter the wilderness of the spirit.

A. The Spirit (Pure History of Spirits)[edit source]

The first thing we learn about the “spirit” is that it is not the spirit but “the realm of spirits” that “is immensely large”. Saint Max has nothing to say immediately of the spirit except that “an immensely large realm of spirits” exists — just as all he knows of the Middle Ages is that this period lasted for “a long time”. Having presupposed that this “realm of spirits” exists, he subsequently proves its existence with the help of ten theses.

1. The spirit is not a free spirit until it is not occupied with itself alone, until it is not ,,solely concerned” with its own world, the “spiritual” world (first with itself alone and then with its own world).
2. “It is a free spirit only in a world of its own."
3. “Only by means of a spiritual world is the spirit really spirit."
4. “Before the spirit has created its world of spirits, it is not spirit."
5. “Its creations make it spirit.” ...
6. “Its creations are its world.” ...
7. “The spirit is the creator of a spiritual world.” ...
8. “The spirit exists only when it creates the spiritual.” ...
9. “Only together with the spiritual, which is its creation, is it real.” ...
10. “But the works or offspring of the spirit are nothing but — spirits” (pp. 38-39).

In thesis 1 the “spiritual world” is again immediately presupposed as existing, instead of being deduced, and this thesis 1 is again preached to us in theses 2-9 in eight new transformations. At the end of thesis 9 we find ourselves exactly where we were at the end of thesis 1 — and then in thesis 10 a “but” suddenly introduces us to “spirits”, about whom so far nothing has been said.

“Since the spirit exists only by creating the spiritual, we look around for its first creations” (p. 41),

According to theses 3, 4, 5, 8, and 9, however, the spirit is its own creation. This is now expressed thus, the spirit, i.e., the first creation of the spirit,

“must arise out of nothing it must first create itself its first creation is itself, the spirit” (ibid,). “When it has accomplished this creative act there follows from then on a natural reproduction of creations just as, according to the myth, only the first human beings had to be created and the rest of the human race was reproduced of itself” (ibid.).

“However mystical this may sound, we nevertheless experience this daily. Are you a thinking person before you think? In creating your first thought, you can create yourself, the thinker for you do not think until you think, — i.e. — have some thought. Is it not your singing alone that makes you a singer, your speech that makes you a speaking person? Well, in the same way only the creation of the spiritual makes you spirit.”

Our saintly conjurer assumes that the spirit creates the spiritual in order to draw the conclusion that the spirit creates itself as spirit; on the other hand, he assumes it as spirit in order to allow it to arrive at its spiritual creations (which, “according to the myth, are reproduced of themselves” and become spirits). So far we have the long-familiar orthodox-Hegelian phrases. The genuinely “unique” exposition of what Saint Max wants to say only begins with the example he gives. That is to say, if Jacques le bonhomme cannot get any further, if even “One” and “it” are unable to float his stranded ship, “Stirner” calls his third serf to his assistance, the “You”, who never leaves him in the lurch and on whom he can rely in extremity. This “You” is an individual whom we are not encountering for the first time, a pious and faithful servant, [Matthew 25:21] whom we have seen going through fire and water, a worker in the vineyard of his lord, a man who does not allow anything to terrify him, in a word he is: Szeliga. [cf. Die Heilige Familie, oder Kritik der kritischen Kritik, where the earlier exploits of this man of God have already been set forth.] When “Stirner” is in the utmost plight in his exposition he cries out: Szeliga, help! — and trusty Eckart Szeliga immediately puts his shoulder to the wheel to get the cart out of the mire. We shall have more to say later about Saint Max’s relation to Szeliga.

It is a question of spirit which creates itself out of nothing, hence it is a question of nothing, which out of nothing makes itself spirit. From this Saint Max derives the creation of Szeliga’s spirit from Szeliga. And who else if not Szeliga could “Stirner” count on allowing himself to be put in the place of nothing in the manner indicated above? Who could be taken in by such a trick but Szeliga, who feels highly flattered at being allowed to appear at all as one of the dramatis personae? What Saint Max had to prove was not that a given “you”, i.e., the given Szeliga, becomes a thinker, speaker, singer from the moment when he begins to think, speak, sing — but that the thinker creates himself out of nothing by beginning to think, that the singer creates himself out of nothing by beginning to sing, etc., and it is not even the thinker and the singer, but the thought and the singing as subjects that create themselves out of nothing by beginning to think and to sing. For the rest, “Stirner makes only the extremely simple reflection” and states only the “extremely popular” proposition (cf. Wigand, p. 156) that Szeliga develops one of his qualities by developing it. There is, of course, absolutely nothing “to be wondered at” in the fact that Saint Max does not even “make” correctly “such simple reflections”, but expresses them incorrectly in order thereby to prove a still much more incorrect proposition with the aid of the most incorrect logic in the world.

Far from it being true that “out of nothing” I make myself, for example, a “speaker”, the nothing which forms the basis here is a very manifold something, the real individual, his speech organs, a definite stage of physical development, an existing language and dialects, ears capable of hearing and a human environment from which it is possible to hear something, etc., etc. Therefore, in the development of a property something is created by something out of something, and by no means comes, as in Hegel’s Logik, from nothing, through nothing to nothing. [cf. G.W.F. Hegel. Wissenschaft der Logik, Th. I, Abt. 2]

Now that Saint Max has his faithful Szeliga close at hand, everything goes forward smoothly again. We shall see how, by means of hi ‘ S “You”, he again transforms the spirit into the youth, exactly as he earlier transformed the youth into the spirit; here we shall again find the whole history of the youth repeated almost word for word, only with a few camouflaging alterations — just as the “Immensely large realm of spirits” mentioned on page 37 was nothing but the “realm of the spirit”, to found and enlarge which was the “aim” of the spirit of the youth (p. 17).

“Just as you, however, distinguish yourself from the thinker, singer, speaker, so you distinguish yourself no less from the spirit and are well aware that You are something else as well as spirit. However, just as in the enthusiasm of thinking it may easily happen that sight and hearing fail the thinking ego, so the enthusiasm of the spirit has seized you too, and you too, and you now aspire with all four might to become wholly spirit and merged in spirit. The spirit is your ideal, something unattained, something of the beyond: spirit: means your — God, — God is spirit [John 4:24] ... You inveigh against yourself, you who cannot get rid of ‘a relic of the non-spiritual. Instead of saving: I am more than spirit, you say contritely: I am less than spirit, and I can only envisage spirit, pure spirit, or the spirit which is nothing but spirit, but I am not it, and since I am not it, then it is an other, it exists as an other, whom I call ‘God’.”

After previously, for a long time occupying ourselves with the trick of making something out of nothing, we now suddenly, perfectly naturally”, come to an individual who is something else as well as spirit, consequently is something, and wants to become pure spirit, i.e., nothing. This much easier problem, i.e., to turn something into nothing, once again poses the whole story of the youth, who “has yet to seek the perfect spirit”, and one needs merely to repeat the old phrases from pages 17-18 to be extricated from all difficulties. Particularly, when one has such an obedient and gullible servant as Szeliga, on whom “Stirner” can impose the idea that just as “in the enthusiasm of thinking it may easily” (!) “happen that sight and hearing fail” him, “Stirner”, so he, Szeliga, has also been “seized with the enthusiasm of the spirit” and he, Szeliga, “is now aspiring with all his might to become spirit”, instead of acquiring spirit, that is to say, he now has to play the role of the youth as presented on page 18. Szeliga believes it and in fear and trembling he obeys; he obeys when Saint Max thunders at him: The spirit is your ideal — your God. You do this for me, you do that for me. Now you “inveigh”, now “you say” now “you can envisage”, etc. When “Stirner” imposes on him the idea that “the pure spirit is an other, for he” (Szeliga) “is not it”, then in truth, it is only Szeliga who is capable of believing him and who gabbles the entire nonsense after him, word for word. Incidentally, the method by which Jacques le bonhomme makes up this nonsense was already exhaustively analysed when dealing with the youth. Since you are well aware that you are something else as well as a mathematician, you aspire to become wholly a mathematician, to become merged in mathematics, the mathematician is your ideal, mathematician means your — God. You say contritely: I am less than a mathematician and I can only envisage the mathematician, and since I am not him, then he is an other, he exists as an other, whom I call “God”. Someone else in Szeliga’s place would say — Arago.

“Now, at last, after” we have proved Stirner’s thesis to be a repetition of the “youth”, “one can state” that he “in truth originally set himself no other task” than to identify the spirit of Christian asceticism with spirit in general, and to identify the frivolous esprit, for example, of the eighteenth century with Christian spiritlessness.

It follows, therefore, that the necessity of spirit dwelling in the beyond, i.e., being God, is not to be explained, as Stirner asserts, “because ego and spirit are different names for different things, because ego is not spirit and spirit is not ego” (p. 42). The explanation lies in the “enthusiasm of the spirit” which is ascribed without any grounds to Szeliga and which makes him an ascetic, i.e., a man who wishes to become God (pure spirit), and because he is not able to do this posits God outside himself. But it was a matter of the spirit having first to create itself out of nothing and then having to create spirits out of itself. Instead of this, Szeliga now produces God (the unique spirit that makes its appearance here) not because he, Szeliga, is the spirit, but because he is Szeliga, i.e., imperfect spirit, unspiritual spirit, and therefore at the same time non-spirit. But Saint Max does not say a word about how the Christian conception of spirit as God arises, although this is now no longer such a clever feat; he assumes the existence of this conception in order to explain it.

The history of the creation of the spirit “has in truth originally set itself no other task” than to put Stirner’s stomach among the stars.

“Precisely because we are not the spirit which dwells within us, for that very reason we had to ...

Precisely because we are not stomach which dwells within us, for that the very reason we had to ...

that put it outside of ourselves; it was not us, and therefore we could not conceive it as existing except outside of ourselves, beyond us, in the beyond” (p, 43).

It was a matter of the spirit having first to create itself and then having to create something other than itself out of itself; the question was: What is this something else? No answer is given to this question, but after the above-mentioned “various transformations” and twists, it becomes distorted into the following new question:

“The spirit is something other than the ego. But what is this something other?” (p. 45).

Now, therefore, the question arises: What is the spirit other than the ego? whereas the original question was: What is the spirit, owing to its creation out of nothing, other than itself? With this Saint Max jumps to the next “transformation”.

B. The Possessed (Impure History of Spirits)[edit source]

Without realising it, Saint Max has so far done no more than give instruction in the art of spirit-seeing, by regarding the ancient and modern world only as the “pseudo-body of a spirit”, as a spectral phenomenon, and seeing in it only struggles of spirits. Now, however, he consciously and ex professo gives instruction in the art of ghost-seeing.,

Instructions in the art of seeing spirits. First of all one must become transformed into a complete fool, i.e., imagine oneself to be Szeliga, and then say to oneself, as Saint Max does to this Szeliga: “Look around you in the world and say for yourself whether a spirit is not looking at you from everywhere!” If one can bring oneself to imagine this, then the spirits will come “easily”, of themselves; in a “flower” one sees only the “creator”, in the mountains — a “spirit of loftiness”, in water — a “spirit of longing” or the longing of the spirit, and one hears “millions of spirits speak through the mouths of people”. If one has achieved this level, if one can exclaim with Stirner: “ Yes, ghosts are teeming in the whole world,” then “it is not difficult to advance to the point” (p. 93) where one makes the further exclamation: “Only in it? No, the world itself is an apparition” (let your communication be, Yea, yea; Nay, nay: for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil [Matthew 5: 37] i.e., a logical transition), “it is the wandering pseudo-body of a spirit, it is an apparition.” Then cheerfully “look near at hand or into the distance, you are surrounded by a ghostly world.... You see spirits”. If you are an ordinary person you can be satisfied with that, but if you are thinking of ranking yourself with Szeliga, then you can also look into yourself and then “you should not be surprised” if, in these circumstances and from the heights of Szeligality, you discover also that “your spirit is a ghost haunting your body”, that you yourself are a ghost which “awaits salvation, that is, a spirit”. Thereby you will have arrived at the point where you are capable of seeing “spirits” and “ghosts” in “all” people, and therewith spirit-seeing “reaches its final goal” (pp. 46, 47).

The basis of this instruction, only much more correctly expressed, Is to be found in Hegel, inter alia, in the Geschichte der Philosophie, III, pp. 124, 125.

Saint Max has such faith in his own instruction that as a result he himself becomes Szeliga and asserts that

“ever since the word was made flesh [John 1:14], the world is spiritualised, bewitched, a ghost” (p. 47).

“Stirner” “sees spirits”.

Saint Max intends to give us a phenomenology of the Christian spirit and in his usual way seizes on only one aspect. For the Christian the world was not only spiritualised but equally despiritualised as, for example, Hegel quite correctly admits in the passage mentioned, where he brings the two aspects into relation with each other, which Saint Max should also have done if he wanted to proceed historically. As against the world’s despiritualisation in the Christian consciousness, the ancients, “who saw gods everywhere”, can with equal justification be regarded as the spiritualisers of the world — a conception which our saintly dialectician rejects with the well-meaning warning: “Gods, my dear modern man, are not spirits” (p. 47). Pious Max recognises only the holy spirit as spirit.

But even if he had given us this phenomenology (which after Hegel is moreover superfluous), he would all the same have given us nothing. The standpoint at which people are content with such tales about spirits is itself a religious one, because for people who adopt it religion is a satisfactory answer, they regard religion as causa sui [its own cause] (for both “self-consciousness” and “man” are still religious) instead of explaining it from the empirical conditions and showing how definite relations of industry and intercourse are necessarily connected with a definite form of society, hence, with a definite form of state and hence with a definite form of religious consciousness. If Stirner had looked at the real history of the Middle Ages, he could have found why the Christian’s notion of the world took precisely this form in the Middle Ages, and how it happened that it subsequently passed into a different one; he could have found that “Christianity” has no history whatever and that all the different forms in which it was visualised at various times were not “self-determinations” and “further developments” “of the religious spirit”, but were brought about by wholly empirical causes in no way dependent on any influence of the religious spirit.

Since Stirner “does not stick to the rules” (p. 45), it is possible, before dealing in more detail with spirit-seeing, to say here and now that the various “transformations” of Stirner’s people and their world consist merely in the transformation of the entire history of the world into the body of Hegel’s philosophy; into ghosts, which only apparently are an “other being” of the thoughts of the Berlin professor. In the Phänomenologie, the Hegelian bible, “the book”, individuals are first of all transformed into “consciousness” [and the] world into “object”, whereby the manifold variety of forms of life and history is reduced to a different attitude of “consciousness” to the “object”. This different attitude is reduced, in turn, to three cardinal relations: 1) the relation of consciousness to the object as to truth, or to truth as mere object (for example, sensual consciousness, natural religion, Ionic philosophy, Catholicism, the authoritarian state, etc.); 2) the relation of consciousness as the true to the object (reason, spiritual religion, Socrates, Protestantism, the French Revolution); 3) the true relation of consciousness to truth as object, or to the object as truth (logical thinking, speculative philosophy, the spirit as existing for the spirit). In Hegel, too, the first relation is defined as God the Father, the second as Christ, the third as the Holy Spirit, etc. Stirner already used these transformations when speaking of child and youth, of ancient and modern, and he repeats them later in regard to Catholicism and Protestantism, the Negro and the Mongol, etc., and then accepts this series of camouflages of a thought in all good faith as the world against which he has to assert and maintain himself as a “corporeal individual”.

Second set of instructions in spirit-seeing. How to transform the world into the spectre of truth, and oneself into something made holy or spectral. A conversation between Saint Max and his servant Szeliga (pp. 47, 48).

Saint Max: “You have spirit, for you have thoughts. What are your thoughts?"
Szeliga: “Spiritual entities."
Saint Max: “Hence they are not things?"
Szeliga: “No, but they ‘are the spirit of things, the important element in all things, their innermost essence, their idea."
Saint Max: “What you think is, therefore, not merely your thought?"
Szeliga: “On the contrary, it is the most real, genuinely true thing in the world: it is truth itself; when I but truly think, I think the truth. I can admittedly he mistaken about the truth and fail to perceive it, but when I truly perceive, then the object of my perception is the truth."
Saint Max: “Thus, you endeavour all the time to perceive the truth?"
Szeliga: “For me the truth is sacred.... The truth I cannot abolish; in the truth I believe, and therefore I investigate into its nature; there is nothing higher than it, it is eternal. The truth is sacred, eternal, it is the holy, the eternal."
Saint Max (indignantly): “But you, by allowing yourself to become filled with this holiness, become yourself holy.”

Thus, when Szeliga truly perceives some object, the object ceases to be an object and becomes “the truth”. This is the first manufacture of spectres on a large scale. — It is now no longer a matter of perceiving objects, but of perceiving the truth; first he perceives objects truly, which he defines as the truth of perception, and he transforms this into perception of the truth. But after Szeliga has thus allowed truth as a spectre to be imposed on him by the threatening saint, his stern master strikes home with a question of conscience, whether he is filled “all the time” with longing for the truth, whereupon the thoroughly confused Szeliga blurts out somewhat prematurely: “For me the truth is sacred.” But he immediately notices his error and tries to correct it, by shamefacedly transforming objects no longer into the truth, but into a number of truths, and abstracting “the truth” as the truth of these truths, “the truth” which he can now no longer abolish after he has distinguished it from truths which are capable of being abolished. Thereby it becomes “eternal”. But not satisfied with giving it predicates such as “sacred, eternal”, he transforms it into the holy, the eternal, as subject. After this, of course, Saint Max can explain to him that having become “filled” with this holiness, he “himself becomes holy” and “should not be surprised” if he now “finds nothing but a spectre” in himself. Then our saint begins a sermon:

“The holy, moreover, is not for your senses” and quite consistently appends by means of the conjunction “and": “never will you, as a sensuous being, discover its traces”; that is to say, after sensuous objects are “all gone” and “the truth”, “the sacred truth”, “the holy” has taken their place, “But” — obviously, — “for your faith or more exactly for your spirit” (for your lack of spirit), “for it is itself something spiritual” (per appositionen), “a spirit” (again per appos.), “is spirit for the spirit”.

Such is the art of transforming the ordinary world, “objects”, by means of an arithmetical series of appositions, into “spirit for the spirit”. Here we can only admire this dialectical method of appositions — later we shall have occasion to explore it and present it in all its classical beauty.

The method of oppositions can also be reversed — for example here, after we have once produced “the holy”, it does not receive further oppositions, but is made the apposition of a new definition; this is combining progression with equation. Thus, as a result of some dialectical process “there remains the idea of another entity” which “I should serve more than myself” (per appos.), which for me should be more important than everything else” (per appos.), “in short — a something in which I should seek my true salvation” (and finally per appos. the return to the first series), and which becomes “something ‘holy'” (p. 48). We have here two progressions which are equated to each other and can thus provide the opportunity for great variety of equations. We shall deal with this later. By this method too, “the sacred”, which hitherto we have been acquainted with only as a purely theoretical designation of purely theoretical relations, has acquired a new practical meaning as “something in which I should seek my true salvation”, which makes it possible to make the holy the opposite of the egoist. Incidentally we need hardly mention that this entire dialogue with the sermon that follows is nothing but another repetition of the story of the youth already met with three or four times before.

Here, having arrived at the “egoist”, we need not stick to Stirner’s “rules” either, because, firstly, we have to present his argument in all its purity, free from any intervening intermezzos, and, secondly, because in any case these intermezzi (on the analogy of “a Lazaroni” — Wigand, p. 159, the word should be Lazzarone — Sancho would say intermezzi’s) will occur again in other parts of the book, for Stirner, far from obeying his own requirement “always to draw back into himself”, on the contrary expresses himself again and again. We shall only just mention that the question raised on page 45: What is this something distinct from the “ego” that is the spirit? is now answered to the effect that it is the holy, i.e., that which is foreign to the “ego”, and that everything that is foreign to the “ego” is — thanks to some unstated appositions, appositions “in themselves” — accordingly without more ado regarded as spirit. Spirit, the holy, the foreign are identical ideas, on which he declares war, in the same way almost word for word as he did at the very outset in regard to the youth and the man. We have, therefore, still not advanced a step further than we had on page 20.

a) The Apparition[edit source]

Saint Max now begins to deal seriously with the “spirits” that are “offspring of the spirit” (p. 39), with the ghastliness of everything (p. 47). At any rate, he imagines so. Actually, however, he only substitutes a new name for his former conception of history according to which people were from the outset the representatives of general concepts. These general concepts appear here first of all in the Negroid form as objective spirits having for people the character of objects, and at this level are called spectres or — apparitions. The chief spectre is, of course, “man” himself, because, according to what has been previously said, people only exist for one another as representatives of a universal — essence, concept, the holy, the foreign, a the spirit — i.e., only as spectral persons, spectres, and because, according to Hegel’s Phänomenologie, page 25 and elsewhere, the spirit, insofar as for man it has the “form of thinghood”, is another man (see below about “the man”).

Thus, we see here the skies opening and the various kinds of spectres passing before us one after the other. Jacques le bonhomme forgets only that he has already caused ancient and modern times to parade before us like gigantic spectres, compared with which all the harmless fancies about God, etc., are sheer trifles.

Spectre No. 1: the supreme being, God (p. 53). As was to be expected from what has preceded, Jacques le bonhomme, whose faith moves all the mountains’ of world history, believes that “for thousands of years people have set themselves the task”, “have tired themselves out struggling with the awful impossibility, the endless Danaidean labour” — “to prove the existence of God”. We need not waste any more words on this incredible belief.

Spectre No. 2: essence. What our good man says about essence is limited — apart from what has been copied out of Hegel — to “pompous words and miserable thoughts” (p. 53). “The advance from” essence “to” world essence “is not difficult”, and this world essence is, of course,

Spectre No. 3: the vanity of the world. There is nothing to say about this except that from it “easily” arises

Spectre No. 4: good and evil beings. Something, indeed, could be said about this but is not said — and one passes at once to the next:

Spectre No. 5: the essence and its realm. We should not be at all surprised that we find here essence for the second time in our honest author, for he is fully aware of his “clumsiness” (Wigand, p. 166), and therefore repeats everything several times in order not to be misunderstood. Essence is here in the first place defined as the proprietor of a “realm” and then it is said of it that it is “essence” (p. 54), after which it is swiftly transformed into

Spectre No. 6: “essences”. To perceive and to recognise them, and them alone, is religion. “Their realm” (of essences) “is — a realm of essences” (p. 54). Here there suddenly appears for no apparent reason

Spectre No. 7: the God-Man, Christ. Of him Stirner is able to say that he was “corpulent”. If Saint Max does not believe in Christ, he at least believes in his “actual corpus”. According to Stirner, Christ introduced great distress into history, and our sentimental saint relates with tears in his eyes “how the strongest Christians have racked their brains in order to comprehend him” — indeed,

“there has never been a spectre that caused such mental anguish, and no shaman, spurring himself into wild frenzy and nerve-racking convulsions, can have suffered such agony as Christians have suffered on account of this most incomprehensible spectre”.

Saint Max sheds a sympathetic tear at the grave of the victims of Christ and then passes on to the “horrible being”,

Spectre No. 8, man. Here our hold writer is seized with immediate “horror” — “he is terrified of himself”, he sees in every man a “frightful spectre”, a “sinister spectre” in which something “stalks” (pp. 55, 56). He feels highly uncomfortable. The split between phenomenon and essence gives him no peace. He is like Nabal, Abigail’s husband, of whom it is written that his essence too was separated from his phenomenal appearance: “And there was a man in Maon, whose possessions [wesen (essence) — in Luther’s Bible Wesen means “possession"] were in Carmel”. (1 Samuel 25: 2.) But in the nick of time, before the “mental anguish” causes Saint Max in desperation to put a bullet through his head, he suddenly remembers the ancients who “took no notice of anything of the kind in their slaves”. This leads him to

Spectre No. 9, the national spirit (p. 56), about which too Saint Max, who can no longer be restrained, indulges in “frightful” fantasies, in order to transform

Spectre No. 10, “everything”, into an apparition and, finally, where all enumeration ends, to hurl together in the class of spectres the “holy spirit”, truth, justice, law, the good cause (which he still cannot forget) and half a dozen other things completely foreign to one another.

Apart from this there is nothing remarkable in the whole chapter except that Saint Max’s faith moves an historical mountain. That is to say, he utters the opinion (p. 56):

“Only for the sake of a supreme being has anyone ever been worshipped, only as a spectre has he been regarded as a sanctified, i.e.” (that is!) “protected and recognised person.”

If we shift this mountain, moved by faith alone, back into its proper place, then “it will read": Only for the sake of persons who are protected, i.e., who protect themselves, and who are privileged, i.e., who seize privileges for themselves, have supreme beings been worshipped and spectres sanctified. Saint Max imagines, for example, that in antiquity, when each people was held together by material relations and interests, e.g., by the hostility of the various tribes, etc., when owing to a shortage of productive forces each had either to be a slave or to possess slaves, etc., etc., when, therefore, belonging to a particular people was a matter of “the most natural interest” (Wigand, p. [162]) — that then it was only the concept people, or “nationality” that gave birth to these interests from itself; he imagines also that in modern times, when free competition and world trade gave birth to hypocritical, bourgeois cosmopolitanism and the notion of man — that here, on the contrary, the later philosophical construction of man brought about those relations as its “revelations” (p. 51). It is the same with religion, with the realm of essences, which he considers the unique realm, but concerning the essence of which he knows nothing, for otherwise he must have known that religion as such has neither essence, nor realm.

— On Religion —

In religion people make their empirical world into an entity that is only conceived, imagined, that confronts them as something foreign. This again is by no means to be explained from other concepts, from “self-consciousness” and similar nonsense, but from the entire hitherto existing mode of production and intercourse, which is just as independent of the pure concept as the invention of the self-acting mule and the use of railways are independent of Hegelian philosophy. If he wants to speak of an “essence” of religion, i.e., of a material basis of this inessentiality, then he should look for it neither in the “essence of man”, nor in the predicates of God, but in the material world which each stage of religious development finds in existence (cf. above Feuerbach).

All the “spectres” which have filed before us were concepts. These concepts — leaving aside their real basis (which Stirner in any case leaves aside) — understood as concepts inside consciousness, as thoughts in people’s heads, transferred from their objectivity back into the subject, elevated from substance into self-consciousness, are — whimsies or fixed ideas.

Concerning the origin of Saint Max’s history of ghosts, see Feuerbach in Anekdota II, p. 66 [Ludwig Feuerbach, “Verläufige Thesen zur Reformation der Philosophie”], where it is stated:

“Theology is belief in ghosts. Ordinary theology, however, has its ghosts in the sensuous imagination, speculative theology has them in non-sensuous abstraction.”

And since Saint Max shares the belief of all critical speculative philosophers of modern times that thoughts, which have become independent, objectified thoughts — ghosts — have ruled the world and continue to rule it, and that all history up to now was the history of theology, nothing could be easier for him than to transform history into a history of ghosts. Sancho’s history of ghosts, therefore, rests on the traditional belief in ghosts of the speculative philosophers.

b) Whimsy[edit source]

“Man, there are spectres in your head!... You have a fixed idea!” thunders Saint Max at his slave Szeliga. “Don’t think I am joking,” he threatens him. Don’t dare to think that the solemn “Max Stirner” is capable of joking.

The man of God is again in need of his faithful Szeliga in order to pass from the object to the subject, from the apparition to the whimsy.

Whimsy is the hierarchy in the single individual, the domination of thought “in him over him”. After the world has confronted the fantasy-making youth (of page 20) as a world of his “feverish fantasies”, as a world of ghosts, “the off-springs of his own head” inside his head begin to dominate him. The world of his feverish fantasies — this is the step forward he has made’ now exists as the world of his deranged mind. Saint Max — the man who is confronted by “the world of the moderns” in the form of the fantasy-making youth — has necessarily to declare that “almost the whole of mankind consists of veritable fools, inmates of a mad-house” (p.. 57).

The whimsy which Saint Max discovers in the heads of people is nothing but his own whimsy — the whimsy of the “saint” who views the world sub specie aeterni [under the aspect of eternity — see Spinoza, Ethics] and who takes both the hypocritical phrases of people and their illusions for the true motives of their actions; that is why our naive, pious man confidently pronounces the great proposition: “Almost all mankind clings to something higher” (p. 57).

“Whimsy” is “a fixed idea”, i.e., “an idea which has subordinated man to itself” or — as is said later in more popular form — all kinds of absurdities which people “have stuffed into their heads”. With the utmost ease, Saint Max arrives at the conclusion that everything that has subordinated people to itself — for example, the need to produce in order to live, and the relations dependent on this — is such an ,absurdity” or “fixed idea”. Since the child’s world is the only “world of things”, as we learned in the myth of “a man’s life”, everything that does not exist “for the child” (at times also for the animal) is in any case an “idea” and “easily also” a “fixed idea”. We are still a long way from getting rid of the youth and the child.

The chapter on whimsy aims merely at establishing the existence of the category of whimsy in the history of “man”. The actual struggle against whimsy is waged throughout the entire “book and particularly in the second part. Hence a few examples of whimsy can suffice us here.

On page 59, Jacques le bonhomme believes that

our newspapers are full of politics, because they are in the grip of the delusion that man was created in order to become a zoon politikon [political animal — Aristotle]”.

Hence, according to Jacques le bonhomme, people engage in politics because our newspapers are full of them! If a church father were to glance at the stock exchange reports of our newspapers, he could not judge differently from Saint Max and would have to say: these newspapers are full of stock exchange reports because they are in the grip of the delusion that man was created in order to engage in financial speculation. Thus, it is not the newspapers that possess whimsies, but whimsies that possess “Stirner”.

Stirner explains the condemnation of incest and the institutions of monogamy from “the holy”, “they are the holy”. If among the Persians incest is not condemned, and if the institution of polygamy occurs among the Turks, then in those places incest and polygamy are “the holy”. It is not possible to see any difference between these two “holies” other than that the nonsense with which the Persians and Turks have “stuffed their heads” is different from that with which the Christian Germanic peoples have stuffed their heads. — Such is the church father’s manner of “detaching himself” from history “in good time”. — Jacques le bonhomme has so little inkling of the real, materialist causes for the condemnation of polygamy and incest in certain social conditions that he considers this condemnation to be merely the dogma of a creed and in common with every philistine imagines that when a man is imprisoned for a crime of this kind, it means that “moral purity” is confining him in a “house of moral correction” (p. 60) — just as jails in general seem to him to be houses for moral correction — in this respect he is at a lower level than the educated bourgeois, who has a better understanding of the matter — cf. the literature on prisons. “Stirner’s” “jails” are the most trite illusions of the Berlin burgher which for him, however, hardly deserve to be called a “house of moral correction”.

After Stirner, with the help of an “episodically included” “historical reflection”, has discovered that

“it had to come to pass that the whole man with all his abilities would prove to be religious” (p. 64) “so, too, in point of fact” “it is not surprising” — “for we are now so thoroughly religious” — “that” the oath “of the members of the jury condemns us to death and that by means of the ‘official oath’ the police constable, as a good Christian, has us put in the clink”.

When a gendarme stops him for smoking in the Tiergarten ^[7], the cigar is knocked out of his mouth not by the royal Prussian gendarme who is paid to do so and shares in the money from fines, but by the “official oath”. In precisely the same way the power of the bourgeois in the jury court becomes transformed for Stirner — owing to the pseudo-holy appearance which the amis du commerce assume here — into the power of making a vow, the power of the oath, into the “holy”. “Verily, I say unto you: I have not found so great faith, no, not in Israel.” (Matthew 8:10)

“For some persons a thought becomes a maxim, so that it is not the person who possesses the maxim, but rather the latter that possesses him, and with the maxim he again acquires a firm standpoint.” But “it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that sheweth mercy” (Romans 9: 16).

Therefore Saint Max has on the same page to receive several thorns in the flesh [2 Corinthians 12:7] and must give us a number of maxims: firstly, the maxim [to recognise] no maxims, with which goes, secondly, the maxim not to have any firm standpoint; thirdly, the maxim “although we should possess spirit, spirit should not possess us”; and fourthly, the maxim that one should also be aware of one’s flesh, “for only by being aware of his flesh is man fully aware of himself, and only by being fully aware of himself, is he aware or rational”.

C. The Impurely Impure History of Spirits[edit source]

a) Negroes and Mongols[edit source]

We now go back to the beginning of the “unique” historical scheme and nomenclature. The child becomes the Negro, the youth — the Mongol. See “The Economy of the Old Testament”.

“The historical reflection on our mongolhood, which I shall include episodically at this point, I present without any claim to thoroughness or even to authenticity, but solely because it seems to me that it can contribute to clarifying the rest” (p. 87).

Saint Max tries to “clarify” for himself his phrases about the child and the youth by giving them world-embracing names, and he tries to “clarify” these world-embracing names by replacing them with his phrases about the child and the youth. “The Negroid character represents antiquity, dependence on things” (child); “the Mongoloid character — the period of dependence on thoughts, the Christian epoch” (the youth). (Cf. “The Economy of the Old Testament”.) “The following words are reserved for the future: I am owner of the world of things, and I am owner of the world of thoughts” (pp. 87, 88). This “future” has already happened once, on page 20, in connection with the man, and it will occur again later, beginning with page 226.

First “historical reflection without claim to thoroughness or even to authenticity": Since Egypt is part of Africa where Negroes live, it follows that “included” “in the Negro era” (p. 88) are the “campaigns of Sesostris”, which never took place, and the “significance of Egypt” (the significance it had also at the time of the Ptolemics, Napoleon’s expedition to Egypt, Mohammed All, the Eastern question, the pamphlets of Duvergier de Haurannes, etc.), land of North Africa in general” (and therefore of Carthage, Hannibal’s campaign against Rome, and “easily also”, the significance of Syracuse and Spain, the Vandals, Tertuilian, the Moors, AI Hussein Abu Ali Ben Abdallah Ibn Sina, piratical states, the French in Algeria, Abd-el-Kader, Père Enfantin ^[8] and the font. new toads of the Charivari) (p. 88). Consequently, Stirner clarifies the campaigns of Sesostris, etc., by transferring them to the Negro era, and he clarifies the Negro era by “episodically including” it as a historical illustration of his unique thoughts “about our childhood years”.

Second “historical reflection": “To the Mongoloid era belong the campaigns of the Huns and Mongols up to the Russians” (and Wasserpolaken^[9]); thus here again the campaigns of the Huns and Mongols, together with the Russians, are “clarified” by their inclusion in the “Mongoloid era”, and the “Mongoloid era” — by pointing out that it is the era of the phrase “dependence on thoughts”, which we have already encountered in connection with the youth.

Third “historical reflection":

In the Mongoloid era the “value of my ego cannot possibly be put at a high level because the hard diamond of the non-ego is too high in price, because it is still too gritty and impregnable for it to be absorbed and consumed by my ego. On the contrary, people are simply exceptionally busy crawling about on this static world, this substance, like parasitic animalcules on a body from whose juices they extract nourishment, but nevertheless do not devour the body. It is the bustling activity of noxious insects, the industriousness of Mongols. Among the Chinese indeed everything remains as of old, etc.... Therefore” (because among the Chinese everything remains as of old) “in our Mongol era every change has only been reformatory and corrective, and not destructive, devouring or annihilating. The substance, the object remains. All our industriousness is only the activity of ants and the jumping of fleas ... juggling on the tightrope of the objective”, etc. (p. 88. Cf. Hegel, Philosophie der Geschichte, pp. 113, 118, 119 (unsoftened substance). p. 140, etc., where China is understood as “substantiality”).

We learn here, therefore, that in the true Caucasian era people will be guided by the maxim that the earth, “substance”, the “object”, the “static” has to be devoured, “consumed”, “annihilated”, “absorbed”, “destroyed”, and along with the earth the solar system that is inseparable from it. World-devouring “Stirner” has already introduced us to the “reformatory or corrective activity” of the Mongols as the youth’s and Christian’s “plans for the salvation and correction of the world” on page 36. Thus we have still not advanced a step. It is characteristic of the entire “unique” conception of history that the highest stage of this Mongol activity earns the title of “scientific” — from which already now the conclusion can be drawn, which Saint Max later tells us, that the culmination of the Mongolian heaven is the Hegelian kingdom of spirits.

Fourth “historical reflection”. The world on which the Mongols crawl about is now transformed by means of a “flea jump” into the “positive”, this into the “precept”, and, with the help of a paragraph on page 89, the precept becomes “morality”. “Morality appears in its first form as custom” — hence it conies forward as a person, but in a trice it becomes transformed into a sphere:

“To act in accordance with the morals and customs of one’s country means here” (i.e., in the sphere of morality) “to be moral....... Therefore” (because this occurs in the sphere of morality as a custom) “pure, moral behaviour in the most straightforward form is practised in ... China! “

Saint Max is unfortunate in his examples. On page 116 in just the same way he attributes to the North Americans the “religion of honesty”. He regards the two most rascally nations on earth, the patriarchal swindlers — the Chinese, and the civilised swindlers — the Yankees, as “straightforward”, “moral” and “honest”. If he had looked up his crib he could have found the North Americans classed as swindlers on page 81 of the Philosophie der Geschichte and the Chinese ditto on page 130.

“One” — that friend of the saintly worthy man — now helps him to arrive at innovation, and from this an “and” brings him back to custom, and thus the material is prepared for achieving a masterstroke in the

Fifth historical reflection: “There is in fact no doubt that by means of custom man protects himself against the importunity of things, of the world” — for example, from hunger;

“and” — as quite naturally follows from this —

“founds a world of his own” — which “Stirner” has need of now —

“in which alone he feels in his native element and at home”, — “alone”, after he has first by “custom” made himself “at home” in the existing “world” —

“i.e., builds himself a heaven” — because China is called the Celestial Empire.

“For indeed heaven has no other significance than that of being the real homeland of man” — in this context, however, it signifies the imagined unreality of the real homeland —

“where nothing alien any longer prevails upon him”, i.e., where what is his own prevails upon him as something alien, and all the rest of the old story. “Or rather”, to use Saint Bruno’s words, or “it is easily possible”, to use Saint Max’s words, that this proposition should read as follows:

Stirner’s proposition without claim to thoroughness or even to authenticity

“There is in fact no doubt that by means of custom man protects himself against the importunity of things, of the world, and founds a world of his own, in which alone he feels in his native element and at home, i.e., builds himself a heaven.

For indeed ‘heaven’ has no other significance than that of being the real homeland of man, where nothing alien any longer prevails upon him and rules over him, no earthly influence any longer estranges him from himself, in short, where earthly dross is thrown aside and the struggle against the world has come to an end. where, therefore, nothing is forbidden him any more” (p. 89).

Clarified proposition

“There is in fact no doubt” that because China is called the Celestial Empire, because “Stirner” happens to be speaking of China and as he is “accustomed” by means of ignorance “to protect himself against the importunity of things, ,f the world, and to found a world of his own, in which alone he feels in his native element and at home” — therefore he “builds himself a heaven” out of the Chinese Celestial Empire. “For indeed” the importunity of the world, of things, “has no other significance than that of being the real” hell of the unique, “in which” everything “prevails upon him and rules over him” as something “alien”, but which he is able to transform into a “heaven” by “estranging himself” from all “earthly influences”, historical facts and connections, and hence no longer thinks them strange; “in short”, it is a sphere “where the earthly”, the historical “dross is thrown aside”, and where Stirner “does not find” in the “end” “of the world” any more “struggle” — and thereby everything has been said.

Sixth “historical reflection”. On page 90, Stirner imagines that

“in China everything is provided for; no matter what happens, the Chinese always knows how he should behave, and he has no need to decide according to circumstances; no unforeseen event will overthrow his celestial calm”.

Nor any British bombardment either — he knew exactly “how he should behave”, particularly in regard to the unfamiliar steamships and shrapnel-bombs.^[10]

Saint Max extracted that from Hegel’s Philosophie der Geschichte, pages 118 and 127, to which, of course, he had to add something unique, in order to achieve his reflection as given above.

“Consequently,” continues Saint Max, “mankind climbs the first rung of the ladder of education by means of custom, and since it imagines that by gaining culture, it has gained heaven, the realm of culture or second nature, it actually mounts the first rung of the heavenly ladder” (p. 90).

“Consequently”, i.e., because Hegel begins history with China, and because “the Chinese does not lose his equanimity”, “Stirner” transforms mankind into a person who “mounts the first rung of the ladder of culture” and indeed does so “by means of custom”, because China has no other meaning for Stirner than that of being the embodiment of “custom”. Now it is only a question for our zealot against the holy of transforming the “ladder” into a “heavenly ladder”, since China is also called the Celestial Empire. “Since mankind imagines” (“wherefrom” does Stirner “know everything that” mankind imagines, see Wigand, page 189) — and this ought to have been proved by Stirner — firstly that it transforms “culture” into the “heaven of culture”, and secondly that it transforms the “heaven of culture” into the “culture of heaven” — (an alleged notion on the part of mankind which appears on page 91 as a notion of Stirner’s and thereby receives its correct expression) — “so it actually mounts the first rung of the heavenly ladder”. Since it imagines that it mounts the first rung of the heavenly ladder — so — it mounts it actually! “Since” the “youth” “imagines” that he becomes pure spirit, he does actually become such! See the “youth” and the “Christian” on the transition from the world of things to the world of the spirit, where the simple formula for this heavenly ladder of “unique” ideas already occurs.

Seventh historical reflection, page 90. “If Mongolism” (it follows immediately after the heavenly ladder, whereby “Stirner”, through the alleged notion on the part of mankind, was able to ascertain the existence of a spiritual essence [Wesen]), “if Mongolism has established the existence of spiritual beings [Wesen]” (rather — if “Stirner” has established his fancy about the spiritual essence of the Mongols), “then the Caucasians have fought for thousands of years against these spiritual beings, in order to get to the bottom of them”. (The youth, who becomes a man and “tries all the time” “to penetrate behind thoughts”, the Christian, who “tries all the time” ‘,to explore the depths of divinity”.) Since the Chinese have noted the existence of God knows what spiritual beings (“Stirner” does not note a single one, apart from his heavenly ladder) — so for thousands of years the Caucasians have to wrangle with “these” Chinese “spiritual beings”; moreover, two lines below Stirner puts on record that they actually “stormed the Mongolian heaven, the tien”, and continues: “When will they destroy this heaven, when will they finally become actual Caucasians and find themselves?”

Here we have the negative unity, already seen earlier as man, now appearing as the “actual Caucasian”, i.e., not Negroid, not Mongolian, but as the Caucasian Caucasian. This latter, therefore, as a concept, as essence, is here separated from the actual Caucasians, is counterposed to them as the “ideal of the Caucasian”, as a ,,vocation” in which they should “find themselves”, as a “destiny”, a “task”, as “the holy”, as “the holy” Caucasian, “the perfect” Caucasian, “who indeed” is the Caucasian “in heaven — God”.

“In the sedulous struggle of the Mongolian race, men had built a heaven” — so “Stirner” believes (p. 91), forgetting that actual Mongols are much more occupied with sheep than with heaven — “when the people of the Caucasian stock, so long as they ... have to do with heaven ... undertook the business of storming heaven.” Had built a heaven, when ... so long as they have... [they] undertook. The unassuming “historical reflection” is here expressed in a comecutio temporum which also does not “lay claim” to classic form “or even” to grammatical correctness; the construction of the sentences corresponds to the construction of history. “Stirner’s” “claims” “are restricted to this” and “thereby achieve their final goal”.

Eighth historical reflection, which is the reflection of reflections, the alpha and omega of the whole of Stirner’s history: Jacques le bonhomme, as we have pointed out from the beginning, sees in all the movement of nations that has so far taken place merely a sequence of heavens (p. 91), which can also be expressed as follows: successive generations of the Caucasian race up to the present day did nothing but squabble about the concept of morality (p. 92) and “their activity has been restricted to this” (p. 91). If they had got out of their heads this unfortunate morality, this apparition, they would have achieved something; as it was, they achieved nothing, absolutely nothing, and have to allow Saint Max to set them a task as if they were schoolboys. It is completely in accordance with his view of history that at the end (p. 92) he conjures up speculative philosophy so that “in it this heavenly kingdom, the kingdom of spirits and spectres, should find its proper order” — and that in a later passage speculative philosophy should be conceived as the “perfect kingdom of spirits”.

Why it is that for those who regard history in the Hegelian manner the result of all preceding history was finally bound to be the kingdom of spirits perfected and brought into order in speculative philosophy — the solution of this secret “Stirner” could have very simply found by recourse to Hegel himself. To arrive at this result ‘,the concept of spirit must be taken as the basis and then it must be shown that history is the process of the spirit itself” (Geschichte der Philosophie, III, p. 91). After the “concept of spirit” has been imposed on history as its basis, it is very easy, of course, to “show” that it is to be discovered everywhere, and then to make this as a process “find its proper order”.

After making everything “find its proper order”, Saint Max can now exclaim with enthusiasm: “To desire to win freedom for the spirit, that is Mongolism”, etc. (cf. p. 17: “To bring to light pure thought, etc. — that is the joy of the youth”, etc.), and can declare hypocritically: “Hence it is obvious that Mongolism ... represents non-sensuousness and unnaturalness”, etc. — when he ought to have said: it is obvious that the Mongol is only the disguised youth who, being the negation of the world of things, can also be called unnaturalness”, “non-sensuousness”, etc.

We have again reached the point where the “youth” can pass into the “man": “But who will transform the spirit into its nothing? He, who by means of the spirit represented nature as the futile, the finite, the transitory” (i.e., imagined it as such — and, according to page 16 et seq., this was done by the youth, later the Christian, then the Mongol, then the Mongoloid Caucasian, but properly speaking only by idealism), “he alone can also degrade the spirit” (namely ‘it his imagination) “to the same futility” (therefore the Christian, etc.? No, exclaims “Stirner” resorting to a similar trick as on pages 19-20 in the case of the man). “I can do it, each of you can do it who operates and creates” (in his imagination) “as the unrestricted ego”, “in a word, the egoist can do it” (p. 93), i.e., the man, the Caucasian Caucasian, who therefore is the perfect Christian, the true Christian, the holy one, the embodiment of the holy.

Before dealing with the further nomenclature, we also “should like at this point to include an historical reflection” on the origin of Stirner’s “historical reflection about our Mongolism”; our reflection differs, however, from Stirner’s ‘n that it definitely “lays claim to thoroughness and authenticity”. His whole historical reflection, just as that on the “ancients”, is a concoction out of Hegel.

The Negroid state is conceived as “the child” because Hegel says on page 89 of his Philosophie der Geschichte:

“Africa is the country of the childhood of history.” “in defining the African” (Negroid) “spirit we must entirety discard the category of universality” (p. 90) — i.e., although the child or the Negro has ideas, he still does not have the idea. “Among the Negroes consciousness has not yet reached a firm objective existence, as for example God, law, in which man would have the perception of his essence” ... “thanks to which, knowledge of an absolute being is totally absent. The Negro represents natural man in all his lack of restraint” (p. 90). “Although they must be conscious of their dependence on the natural” (on things, as “Stirner” says), “this, however, does not lead them to the consciousness of something higher” (p. 91).

Here we meet again all Stirner’s determinations of the child and the Negro — dependence on things, independence of ideas and especially of “the idea”, “the essence”, “the absolute” (holy) “being”, etc.

He found that in Hegel the Mongols and, in particular, the Chinese appear as the beginning of history and since for Hegel, too, history is a history of spirits (but not in such a childish way as with “Stirner”), it goes without saying that the Mongols brought the spirit into history and are the original representatives of everything “sacred”. In particular, on page 110, Hegel describes the “ Mongolian kingdom” (of the Dalai-Lama) as the “ecclesiastical” realm, the “kingdom of theocratic rule”, a “spiritual, religious kingdom” — in contrast to the worldly empire of the Chinese. “Stirner”, of course, has to identify China with the Mongols. In Hegel, on page 140, there even occurs the “Mongolian principle” from which “Stirner” derived his “Mongolism”. Incidentally, if he really wanted to reduce the Mongols to the category of “idealism”, he could have “found established” in the Dalai-Lama system and Buddhism quite different “spiritual beings” from his fragile “heavenly ladder”. But he did not even have time to look properly at Hegel’s Philosophie der Geschichte. The peculiarity and uniqueness of Stirner’s attitude to history consists in the egoist being transformed into a “clumsy” copier of Hegel.

b) Catholicism and Protestantism (Cf. “The Economy of the Old Testament”)[edit source]

What we here call Catholicism, “Stirner” calls the “Middle Ages”, but as he confuses (as “in everything”) the pious, religious character of the Middle Ages, the religion of the Middle Ages, with the actual, profane Middle Ages in flesh and blood, we prefer to give the matter its right name at once.

“The Middle Ages” were a “lengthy period, in which people were content with the illusion of having the truth” (they did not desire or do anything else), “without seriously thinking about whether one must he true oneself in order to possess the truth”. — “In the Middle Ages people” (that is, the whole of the Middle Ages) “mortified the flesh, in order to become capable of assimilating the holy” (p. 108).

Hegel defines the attitude to the divine in the Catholic church by saying

“that people’s attitude to the absolute was as to something purely external” (Christianity in the form of externality) (Geschichte der Philosophie, Ill, p. 148, and elsewhere). Of course, the individual has to be purified in order to assimilate the truth, but “this also occurs in an external way, through redemptions, fasts, self-flagellations, visits to holy places, pilgrimages” (ibid., p. 140).

“Stirner” makes this transition by saying:

“In the same way, too, as people strain their eyes in order to see a distant object ... so they mortified the flesh, etc.”

Since in “Stirner’s” “book” the Middle Ages are identified with Catholicism, they naturally end with Luther (p. 108). Luther himself is reduced to the following definition, which has already cropped up in connection with the youth, in the conversation with Szeliga and elsewhere:

“Man, if he wants to attain truth, must become as true as truth itself. Only he who already has truth in faith can participate in it.”

Concerning Lutheranism, Hegel says:

“The truth of the gospel exists only in the true attitude to it...... The essential attitude of the spirit exists only for the spirit.... Hence the attitude of the spirit to the content is that although the content is essential, it is equally essential that the holy and consecrating spirit should stand in relation to this content” (Geschichte der Philosophie, III, p. 234). “This then is the Lutheran faith — his” (i.e., man’s) “faith is required of him and it alone can truly be taken into account” (ibid., p. 230). “Luther ... affirms that the divine is divine only insofar as it is apprehended in this subjective spirituality of faith” (ibid., p. 138). “The doctrine of the” (Catholic) “church is truth as existent truth” (Philosophie der Religion, II, p. 331).

“Stirner” continues:

“Accordingly, with Luther the knowledge arises that truth, because it is thought, exists only for the thinking man, and this means that with regard to his object — thought — man must adopt a totally different standpoint, a pious” (per appos.), “scientific standpoint, or that of thinking” (p. 110).

Apart from the repetition which “Stirner” again “includes” here, only the transition from faith to thinking deserves attention. Hegel makes the transition in the following way:

“But this spirit” (namely, the holy and consecrating spirit) “is, secondly, essentially also thinking spirit. Thinking as such must also have its development in it”, etc. ([Geschichte der Philosophie,] p. 234).

“Stirner” continues:

“This thought” (“that I am spirit, spirit alone”) “pervades the history of the Reformation down to the present day” (p. 111).

From the sixteenth century onwards, no other history exists for “Stirner” than the history of the Reformation — and the latter only in the interpretation in which Hegel presents it.

Saint Max has again displayed his gigantic faith. He has again taken as literal truth all the illusions of German speculative philosophy; indeed, he has made them still more speculative, still more abstract. For him there exists only the history of religion and philosophy — and this exists for him only through the medium of Hegel, who with the passage of time has become the universal crib, the reference source for all the latest German speculators about principles and manufacturers of systems.

Catholicism = attitude to truth as thing, child, Negro, the “ancient”.

Protestantism = attitude to truth in the spirit, youth, Mongol, the “modern”.

The whole scheme was superfluous, since all this was already present in the section on “spirit”.

As already mentioned in “The Economy of the Old Testament”, it is now possible to make the child and the youth appear again in new transformations” within Protestantism, as “Stirner” actually does on page 112, where he conceives English, empirical philosophy as the child, in contrast to German, speculative philosophy as the youth. Here again he copies out Hegel, who here, as elsewhere in the “book”, frequently appears as “one”.

“One” — i.e., Hegel — “expelled Bacon from the realm of philosophy.” “And, indeed, what is called English philosophy does not seem to have got any farther than the discoveries made by so-called clear intellects such as Bacon arid Hume” (p. 112).

Hegel expresses this as follows:

“Bacon is in fact the real leader and representative of what is called philosophy in England and beyond which the English have by no means gone as yet” (Geschichte der Philosophie, III, p. 254).

The people whom “Stirner” calls “clear intellects” Hegel (ibid., p. 255) calls “educated men of the world” — Saint Max on one occasion even transforms them into the “simplicity of childish nature”, for the English philosophers have to represent the child. On the same childish grounds Bacon is not allowed to have “concerned himself with theological problems and cardinal propositions”, regardless of what may be said in his writings (particularly De Augmentis Scientiarum, Novum Organum and the Essays). On the other hand, “German thought ... sees life only in cognition itself” (p. 112), for it is the youth. Ecce iterum Crispinus!

How Stirner transforms Descartes into a German philosopher, the reader can see for himself in the “book”, p. 112.

D. Hierarchy[edit source]

In the foregoing presentation Jacques le bonhomme conceives history merely as the product of abstract thoughts — or, rather, of his notions of abstract thoughts — as governed by these notions, which, in the final analysis, are all resolved into the “holy”. This domination of the “holy”, of thought, of the Hegelian absolute idea over the empirical world he further portrays as a historical relation existing at the present time, as the domination of the holy ones, the ideologists, over the vulgar world — as a hierarchy. In this hierarchy, what previously appeared consecutively exists side by side, so that one of the two coexisting forms of development rules over the other. Thus, the youth rules over the child, the Mongol over the Negro, the modern over the ancient, the selfless egoist (citoyen) over the egoist in the usual sense of the word (bourgeois), etc. — see “The Economy of the Old Testament”. The “destruction” of the “world of things” by the “world of the spirit” appears here as the “domination” of the “world of thoughts” over the “world of things”.

— The Professional Thinkers —

The outcome, of course, is bound to be that the domination which the “world of thoughts” exercises from the outset in history is at the end of the latter also presented as the real, actually existing domination of the thinkers — and, as we shall see, in the final analysis, as the domination of the speculative philosophers — over the world of things, so that Saint Max has only to fight against thoughts and ideas of the ideologists and to overcome them, in order to make himself “possessor of the world of things and the world of thoughts”.

“Hierarchy is the domination of thought, the domination of the spirit. We are still — hierarchical to this day, we are under the yoke of those who rely on thoughts, and thoughts” — who has failed to notice it long ago? — “are the holy” (p. 97). (Stirner has tried to safeguard himself against the reproach that in his whole book he has only been producing “thoughts”, i.e., the “holy,”, by in fact nowhere producing any thoughts in it. Although in the Wigand periodical he ascribes to himself “virtuosity in thinking”, i.e., according to his interpretation, virtuosity in the fabrication of the “holy” — and this we shall concede him.) — “Hierarchy is the supreme domination of spirit” (p. 467). — “The medieval hierarchy was only a weak hierarchy, for it was forced to allow all kinds of profane barbarism to exist unrestricted alongside it” (“how Stirner knows so much about what the hierarchy was forced to do”, we shall soon see), “and only the Reformation steeled the power of the hierarchy” (p. 110). “Stirner” indeed thinks that “the domination of spirits was never before so all-embracing and omnipotent” as after the Reformation; he thinks that this domination of spirits “instead of divorcing the religious principle from art, state and science, on the contrary, raised these wholly from actuality into the kingdom of tile spirit and made them religious”.

This view of modern history merely dilates upon speculative philosophy’s old illusion of the domination of spirit in history. Indeed, this passage even shows how pious Jacques le bonhomme in all good faith continually takes the world outlook derived from Hegel, and which has become traditional for him, as the real world, and “manoeuvres” on that basis. What may appear as “his own” and “unique” in this passage is the conception of this domination of the spirit as a hierarchy — and here, again, we will “include” a brief “historical reflection” on the origin of Stirner’s “hierarchy”. Hegel speaks of the philosophy of hierarchy in the following “transformations”:

“We have seen in Plato’s Republic the idea that philosophers should govern; now” (in the Catholic Middle Ages) “the time has come when it is affirmed that the spiritual should dominate, but the spiritual has acquired the meaning that the clerical, the clergy, should dominate. Thus, the spiritual is made a special being, the individual” (Geschichte der Philosophie, III, p. 132). — “Thereby actuality, the mundane, is forsaken by God ... a few individual persons are holy, the others unholy” (ibid., p. 136). “God-forsakenness” is more closely defined thus: “All these forms” (family, work, political life, etc.) “are considered nugatory, unholy” (Philosophie der Religion, II, p. 343). — “It is a union with worldliness which is unreconciled, worldliness which is crude in itself” (for this Hegel elsewhere also uses the word “barbarism”; cf., for example. Geschichte der Philosophie, III, p. 136) “and, being crude in itself, is simply subjected to domination.” (Philosophie der Religion, If, pp. 342, 343). — “This domination” (the hierarchy of the Catholic church) “is, therefore, a domination of passion, although it should be the domination of the spiritual” (Geschichte der Philosophie, III, p. 134). — “The true domination of the spirit, however, cannot he domination of the spirit in the sense that what opposes it should be something subordinate” (ibid., p. 131). — “The true meaning is that the spiritual as such” (according to “Stirner” the “holy”) “should be the determining factor, and this has been so until our times; thus, we see in the French Revolution” Following in the wake of Hegel, “Stirner” sees it) “that the abstract idea should dominate: state constitutions and laws should be determined by it, it should constitute the bond between people, and people should be conscious that that which they hold as valid are abstract ideas, liberty and equality, etc.” (Geschichte dei. Philosophie, III, p. 132). The true domination of spirit as brought about by Protestantism, in contrast to its imperfect form in the Catholic hierarchy, is defined further in the sense that “the earthly is made spiritual in itself” (Geschichte der Philosophie, III, p. 185); “that the divine is realised in the sphere of actuality” (the Catholic God-forsakenness of actuality, therefore, ceases to exist — Philosophie der Religion, II, p. 344); that the “contradiction” between holiness and worldliness “is resolved in morality” (Philosophie der Religion, II, p. 343); that “moral institutions” (marriage, the family, the state, earning one’s livelihood, etc.) are “divine, holy” (Philosophie der Religion, II, p. 344).

Hegel expresses this true domination of spirit in two forms:

“State, government, low, property, civic order” (and, as we know from his other works, art, science, etc., as well), “all this is the religious... emerging in the form of the finite” (Geschichte der Philosophie, III, p. 185).

And, finally, this domination of the religious, the spiritual, etc., is expressed as the domination of philosophy:

“Consciousness of the spiritual is now” (in the eighteenth century) “essentially the foundation, and thereby domination has passed to philosophy” (Philosophie der Geschichte, p. 440).

Hegel, therefore, ascribes to the Catholic hierarchy of the Middle Ages the intention of wanting “to be the domination of spirit” and thereupon regards it as a restricted imperfect form of this domination of spirit, the culmination of which he sees in Protestantism and its alleged further development. However unhistorical this may be, nevertheless, Hegel is sufficiently historically-minded not to extend the use of the name “hierarchy” beyond the bounds of the Middle Ages. But Saint Max knows from this same Hegel that the later epoch is the “truth” of the preceding one; hence the epoch of the perfect domination of spirit is the truth of that epoch in which the domination of spirit was as yet imperfect, so that Protestantism is the truth of hierarchy and therefore true hierarchy. Since, however, only true hierarchy deserves to be called hierarchy, it is clear that the hierarchy of the Middle Ages had to be “weakly”, and it is all the easier for Stirner to prove this since in the passages given above and in hundreds of other passages from Hegel the imperfection of the domination of spirit in the Middle Ages is portrayed. He only needed to copy these out, the whole of his “own” work consisting in substituting the word “hierarchy” for “domination of spirit”. There was no need for him even to formulate the simple argument by means of which domination of spirit as such is transformed by him into hierarchy, since it has become the fashion among German theoreticians to give the name of the cause to the effect and, for example, to put back into the category of theology everything that has arisen out of theology and has not yet fully attained the height of the principles of these theoreticians — e.g., Hegelian speculation, Straussian pantheism, etc. — a trick especially prevalent in 1842. From the above-quoted passages it also follows that Hegel: 1) appraises the French Revolution as a new and more perfect phase of this domination of spirit; 2) regards philosophers as the rulers of the world of the nineteenth century; 3) maintains that now only abstract ideas have validity among people; 4) that he already regards marriage, the family, the state, earning one’s livelihood, civic order, property, etc., as “divine and holy”, as the “religious principle” and 5) that morality as worldly sanctity or as sanctified worldliness is represented as the highest and ultimate form of the domination of spirit over the world — all these things are repeated word for word in “Stirner”.

Accordingly there is no need to say or prove anything more concerning Stirner’s hierarchy, apart from why Saint Max copied out Hegel — a fact, however, for the explanation of which further material data are necessary, and which, therefore, is only explicable for those who are acquainted with ‘the Berlin atmosphere. It is another question how the Hegelian idea of the domination of spirit arose, and about this see what has been said above.

Saint Max’s adoption of Hegel’s world domination of the philosophers and his transformation of it into a hierarchy are due to the extremely uncritical credulity of our saint and to a “holy” or unholy ignorance which is content with “seeing through” history (i.e., with glancing through Hegel’s historical writings) without troubling to “know” many “things” about it. In general, he was bound to be afraid that as soon as he “learned” he would no longer be able to ,abolish and dissolve” (p. 96), and, therefore, remain stuck in the “bustling activity of noxious insects” — a sufficient reason not to “proceed” to the “abolition and dissolution” of his own ignorance.

If, like Hegel, one designs such a system for the first time, a system embracing the whole of history and the present-day world in all its scope, one cannot possibly do so without comprehensive, positive knowledge, without great energy and keen insight and without dealing at least in some passages with empirical history. On the other hand, if one is satisfied with exploiting an already existing pattern, transforming it for one’s “own” purposes and demonstrating this conception of one’s own by means of isolated examples (e.g., Negroes and Mongols, Catholics and Protestants, the French Revolution, etc.) — and this is precisely what our warrior against the holy does — then absolutely no knowledge of history is necessary. The result of all this exploitation inevitably becomes comic; most of all comic when a jump is made from the past into the immediate present, examples of which we saw already in connection with whimsy”.

As for the actual hierarchy of the Middle Ages, we shall merely note here that it did not exist for the people, for the great mass of human beings. For the great mass only feudalism existed, and hierarchy only existed insofar as it was itself either feudal or anti-feudal (within the framework of feudalism). Feudalism itself had entirely empirical relations as its basis. Hierarchy and its struggle against feudalism (the struggle of the ideologists of a class against the class itself) are only the ideological expression of feudalism and of the struggles developing within feudalism itself — which include also the struggles of the feudally organised nations among themselves. Hierarchy is the ideal form of feudalism; feudalism is the political form of the medieval relations of production and intercourse. Consequently, the struggle of feudalism against hierarchy can only be explained by elucidating these practical material relations. This elucidation of itself puts an end to the previous conception of history which took the illusions of the Middle Ages on trust, in particular those illusions which the Emperor and the Pope brought to bear in their struggle against each other.

Since Saint Max merely reduces the Hegelian abstractions about the Middle Ages and hierarchy to “pompous words and paltry thoughts”, there is no need to examine in more detail the actual, historical hierarchy.

From the above it is now clear that the trick can also be reversed and Catholicism regarded not just as a preliminary stage, but also as the negation of the real hierarchy; in which case Catholicism = negation of spirit, non-spirit, sensuousness, and then one gets the great proposition of Jacques le bonhomme — that the Jesuits “saved us from the decay and destruction of sensuousness” (p. 118). What would have happened to “us” If the “destruction” of sensuousness had come to pass, we do riot learn. The whole material movement since the sixteenth century, which did not save “us” from the “decay” of sensuousness, but, on the contrary, developed “sensuousness” to a much wider extent, does not exist for “Stirner” — it is the Jesuits who brought about all that. Compare, incidentally, Hegel’s Philosophie der Geschichte, p. 425.

By carrying over the old domination of the clerics to modern times Saint Max interprets modern times as “clericalism”; and then by regarding this domination of the clerics carried over to modern times as something distinct from the old medieval clerical domination, he depicts it as domination of the ideologists, as “scholasticism”. Thus clericalism = hierarchy as the domination of the spirit, scholasticism = the domination of the spirit as hierarchy.

“Stirner” achieves this simple transition to clericalism — which is no transition at all — by means of three weighty transformations.

Firstly, he “has” the “concept of clericalism” in anyone “who lives for a great idea, for a good cause” (still the good cause!), “for a doctrine, etc.”

Secondly, in his world of illusion Stirner “comes up against” the age-old illusion of a world that has not yet learned to dispense with clericalism”, namely — “to live and create for the sake of an idea, etc.”

Thirdly, “it is the domination of the idea, i.e., clericalism”, that is: “Robespierre, for example” (for example!), “Saint-Just, and so on” (and so on!) “were out-and-out priests”, etc. All three transformations in which clericalism is “discovered”, “encountered” and “called upon” (all this on p. 100), therefore, express nothing more than what Saint Max has already repeatedly told us, namely, the domination of spirit, of the idea, of the holy, over “life” (Ibid.).

After the “domination of the idea, i.e., clericalism” has thus been foisted upon history, Saint Max call, of course, without difficulty find this “clericalism” again in the whole of preceding history, and thus depict “Robespierre, for example, Saint-Just, and so on” as priests and identify them with Innocent III and Gregory VII, and so all uniqueness vanishes in the face of the unique. All of them, properly speaking, are merely different names, different disguises for one person, “clericalism”, which made all history from the beginning of Christianity. As to how. with this sort of conception of history, “all cats become grey”, since all historical differences are “abolished” and “resolved” in the “notion of clericalism” — as to this, Saint Max at once gives us a striking example in his “Robespierre, for example, Saint-Just, and so on”. Here we are first given Robespierre as an “example” of Saint-Just, and Saint-Just — as an “and-so-on” of Robespierre. It is then said:

“These representatives of holy interests are confronted by a world of innumerable ‘personal’, earthly interests.”

By whom were they confronted? By the Girondists and Thermidorians, who (see “for example” R. Levasseur’s Mémoires, “and so on I.e. Nougaret, Histoire des prisons; Barère; “Deux amis de la liberté, ^[11] (et du commerce); Montgaillard, Histoire de France; Madame Roland, Appel à la postérité; J. B. Louvet’s Mémoires and even the disgusting Essais historiques by Beaulieu, etc., etc., as well as all the proceedings before the revolutionary tribunal, “and so on”) constantly reproached them, the real representatives of revolutionary power, i.e., of the class which alone was truly revolutionary, the “innumerable” masses, for violating “sacred interests”, the constitution, freedom, equality, the rights of man, republicanism, law, sainte propriété, “for example” the division of powers, humanity, morality, moderation, “and so on”. They were opposed by all the priests, who accused them of violating all the main and secondary items of the religious and moral catechism (see “for example” Histoire du clergé de France pendant la revolution, by M. R., Paris, libraire catholique, 1828, “and so on”). The historical comment of the bourgeois that during the règne de la terreur “Robespierre, for example, Saint-Just, and so on” cut off the beads of honnêtes gens (see the numerous writings of the simpleton Monsieur Peltier, “for example”, La conspiration de Robespierre by Montjoie, “and so on”) is expressed by Saint Max in the following transformation:

“Because the revolutionary priests and school-masters served Man, they cut the throats of men.”

This, of course, saves Saint Max the trouble of wasting even one “unique” little word about the actual, empirical grounds for the cutting off of heads — grounds which were based on extremely worldly interests, though not, of course, of the stockjobbers, but of the “innumerable” masses. An earlier “priest”, Spinoza, already in the seventeenth century had the brazen audacity to act the “strict school-master” of Saint Max, by saying: “Ignorance is no argument."’ Consequently Saint Max loathes the priest Spinoza to such an extent that he accepts his anti-cleric, the priest Leibniz, and for all such astonishing phenomena as the terror, “for example”, the cutting off of heads, “and so on”, produces “sufficient grounds”, viz., that “the ecclesiastics stuffed their heads with something of the kind” (p. 98).

Blessed Max, who has found sufficient grounds for everything (“I have now found the ground into which my anchor is eternally fastened, ,b in the idea, “for example”, in the “clericalism”, “and so on,’ of “Robespierre, for example, Saint-Just, and so on”, George Sand, Proudhon, the chaste Berlin seamstress,’ etc.) — this blessed Max “does not blame the class of the bourgeoisie for having asked its egoism how far it should give way to the revolutionary idea as such”. For Saint Max “the revolutionary idea” which inspired the habits bleus ^[12] and honnêtes gens of 1789 is the same “idea” as that of the sansculottes of 1793, the same idea concerning which people deliberate whether to “give way” to it — but no further “space can be given"’ to any “idea” about this point.

We now come to present-day hierarchy, to the domination of the idea in ordinary life. The whole of the second part of “the book” is filled with struggle against this “hierarchy”. Therefore we shall deal with it in detail when we come to this second part. But since Saint Max, as in the section on “whimsy”, takes delight in anticipating his ideas here and repeats what comes later in the beginning, as he repeats the beginning in what comes later, we are compelled already at this point to note a few examples of his hierarchy. His method of writing a book is the unique “egoism” which we find in the whole book. His self-delight stands in inverse proportion to the delight experienced by the reader.

Since the middle class demand love for their kingdom, their regime, they want, according to Jacques le bonhomme, to “establish the kingdom of love on earth” (p. 98). Since they demand respect for their domination and for the conditions in which it is exercised, and therefore want to usurp domination over respect, they demand, according to this worthy man, the domination of respect as such, their attitude towards respect is the same as towards the holy spirit dwelling within them (p. 95). Jacques le bonhomme, with his faith that can move mountains, takes as the actual, earthly basis of the tons and bourgeois world the distorted form in which the sanctimonious and hypocritical ideology of the bourgeoisie voices their particular interests as universal interests. Why this ideological delusion assumes precisely this form for our saint, we shall see in connection with “political liberalism”.

Saint Max gives us a new example on page 115, speaking of the family. He declares that, although it is very easy to become emancipated from the domination of one’s own family, nevertheless, “refusal of allegiance easily arouses pangs of conscience”, and so people retain family affection, the concept of the family, and therefore have the “holy conception of the family”, the “holy” (p. 116).

— The Bourgeoisie and the Family —

Here again our good man perceives the domination of the holy where entirely empirical relations dominate. The attitude of the bourgeois to the institutions of his regime is like that of the Jew to the law; he evades them whenever it is possible to do so in each individual case, but he wants everyone else to observe them. If the entire bourgeoisie, in a mass and at one time, were to evade bourgeois institutions, it would cease to be bourgeoise conduct which, of course, never occurs to the bourgeois and by no means depends on their willing or running. ^[13] The dissolute bourgeois evades marriage and secretly commits adultery; the merchant evades the institution of property by depriving others of property by speculation, bankruptcy, etc.; the young bourgeois makes himself independent of his own family, if he can by in fact abolishing the family as far as he is concerned. But marriage, property, the family remain untouched in theory, because they are the practical basis on which the bourgeoisie has erected its domination, and because in their bourgeois form they are the conditions which make the bourgeois a bourgeois, just as the constantly evaded law makes the religious Jew a religious Jew. This attitude of the bourgeois to the conditions of his existence acquires one of its universal forms in bourgeois morality. One cannot speak at all of the family “as such”. Historically, the bourgeois gives the family the character of the bourgeois family, in which boredom and money are the binding link, and which also includes the bourgeois dissolution of the family, which does not prevent the family itself from always continuing to exist. Its dirty existence has its counterpart in the holy concept of it in official phraseology and universal hypocrisy. Where the family is actually abolished, as with the proletariat, just the opposite of what “Stirner” thinks takes place. There the concept of the family does not exist at all, but here and there family affection based on extremely real relations is certainly to be found. In the eighteenth century the concept of the family was abolished by the philosophers, because the actual family was already in process of dissolution at the highest pinnacles of civilisation. The internal family bond, the separate components constituting the concept of the family were dissolved, for example, obedience, piety, fidelity in marriage, etc.; but the real body of the family, the property relation, the exclusive attitude in relation to other families, forced cohabitation — relations determined by the existence of children, the structure of modern towns, the formation of capital, etc. — all these were preserved, although with numerous violations, because the existence of the family is made necessary by its connection with the mode of production, which exists independently of the will of bourgeois society. That it was impossible to do without it was demonstrated in the most striking way during the French Revolution, when for a moment the family was as good as legally abolished. The family continues to exist even in the nineteenth century, only the process of its dissolution has become more general, not on account of the concept, but because of the higher development of industry and competition; the family still exists although its dissolution was long ago proclaimed by French and English socialists and this has at last penetrated also to the German church fathers, by way of French novels.

One other example of the domination of the idea in everyday life. Since school-masters may be told to find consolation for their scanty pay in the holiness of the cause they serve (which could only occur in Germany), Jacques le bonhomme actually believes that such talk is the reason for their low salaries (p. 100). He believes that “the, holy” in the present-day bourgeois world has an actual money value, he believes that the meagre funds of the Prussian state (see, inter alia, Browning on this subject [G. Browning, The domestic (and financial Condition of Great Britain; preceded by a Brief Sketch of her Foreign Policy: and of the Statistics and Politics of France, Russia, Austria and Prussia]) would be so increased by the abolition of “the holy” that every village school-master could suddenly be paid a ministerial salary.

This is the hierarchy of nonsense.

The “keystone of the magnificent cathedral” — as the great Michelet [Carl Michelet, Geschichte der letzten Système der Philosophie in Deutschland von Kant bis Hegel] puts it — of hierarchy is “sometimes” the work of “One”.

“One sometimes divides people into two classes, the educated and the uneducated.” (One sometimes divides apes into two classes, the tailed and the tailless.) “The former, insofar as they were worthy of their name, occupied themselves with thoughts, with the spirit.” They “dominated in the post-Christian epoch and for their thoughts they demanded ... respect”. The uneducated (the animal, the child, the Negro) are “powerless” against thoughts and “are dominated by them. That is the meaning of hierarchy.”

The “educated” (the youth, the Mongol, the modern) are, therefore, again only occupied with “spirit”, pure thought, etc.; they are metaphysicians by profession, in the final analysis Hegelians. “Hence” the “uneducated” are the non-Hegelians.’ Hegel was indubitably “the most educated” Hegelian and therefore in his case it must “become apparent what a longing for things particularly the most educated man possesses”. The point is that the “educated” and “uneducated” are within themselves in conflict with each other; indeed, in every man the “uneducated” is in conflict with the “educated”. And since the greatest longing for things, i.e., for that which belongs to the “uneducated”, becomes apparent in Hegel, it also becomes apparent here that “the most educated” man is at the same time “the most uneducated”.

“There” (in Hegel) “reality should be completely in accordance with thought and no concept be without reality.”

This should read: there the ordinary idea of reality should receive its complete philosophical expression, while Hegel imagines, on the contrary, that “consequently” every philosophical expression creates the reality that is in accordance with it. Jacques le bonhomme takes Hegel’s illusion about his own philosophy for the genuine coin of Hegelian philosophy.

The Hegelian philosophy, which in the form of the domination of the Hegelians over the non-Hegelians appears as the crown of the hierarchy, now conquers the last world empire.

“Hegel’s system was the supreme despotism and autocracy of thought, the omnipotence and almightiness of the spirit” (p. 97).

Here, therefore, we find ourselves in the realm of spirits of Hegelian philosophy, which stretches from Berlin to Halle and Tübingen, the realm of spirits whose history was written by Herr Bayrhoffer [Karl Theodor Bayrhoffer, Die Idee und Geschichte der Philosophie] and for which the great Michelet collected the statistical data.

The preparation for this realm of spirits was the French Revolution, which “did nothing but transform things into ideas about things” (p. 115; cf. above Hegel on the revolution, p. [...])

“So people remained citizens” (in “Stirner”, this occurs earlier, but “what Stirner says is not what he has in mind, and what he has in mind cannot be said”, Wigand, p. 149) and “lived in reflection, they had their eye on an object, before which” (per appos.) “they felt reverence and fear”. “Stirner” says in a passage on page 98: “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.” But we say: the road to the unique is paved with bad concluding clauses, with oppositions, which are his “heavenly ladder” borrowed from the Chinese, and his rope of the objective” (p. 88) on which he makes his “flea-jumps”. In accordance with this, for “modern philosophy or modern times” — since the emergence of the realm of spirits modern times are indeed nothing but modern philosophy — it is an easy matter to “transform the existing objects into notional objects, i.e., into concepts”, page 114, a work which Saint Max continues.

We have already seen our knight of the rueful countenance even “before the mountains were brought forth”, which he later moved by his faith, right at the beginning of his book, galloping headlong towards the great result of his “magnificent cathedral”. His “donkey”, apposition, could not jump swiftly enough for him; now, at last, on page 114, he has reached his goal and by means of a mighty “or” has transformed modern times into modern philosophy.

— On Ideas and Social Conditions —

Thereby ancient times (i.e., the ancient and modern, Negroid and Mongolian but, properly speaking, only pre-Stirnerian times) “reached their final goal”. We can now reveal why Saint Max gave the title “Man” to the whole of the first part of his book and made out his entire history of miracles, ghosts and knights to be the history of “man”. The ideas and thoughts of people were, of course, ideas and thoughts about themselves and their relationships, their consciousness of themselves and of people in general — for it was the consciousness not merely of a single individual but of the individual in his interconnection with the whole of society and about the whole of the society in which they lived. The conditions, independent of them, in which they produced their life, the necessary forms of intercourse connected herewith, and the personal and social relations thereby given, had to take the form — insofar as they were expressed in thoughts — of ideal conditions and necessary relations, i.e., they had to be expressed in consciousness as determinations arising from the concept of man as such, from human essence, from the nature of man, from man as such. What people were, what their relations were, appeared in consciousness as ideas of man as such, of his modes of existence or of his immediate conceptual determinations. So, after the ideologists had assumed that ideas and thoughts had dominated history up to now, that the history of these ideas and thoughts constitutes all history up to now, after they had imagined that real conditions had conformed to man as such and his ideal conditions, i.e., to conceptual determinations, after they had made the history of people’s consciousness of themselves the basis of their actual history, after all this, nothing was easier than to call the history of consciousness, of ideas, of the holy, of established concepts — the history of “man” and to put it in the place of real history. The only distinction between Saint Max and all his predecessors is that he knows nothing about these concepts — even in their arbitrary isolation from real life, whose products they were — and his trivial creative work in his copy of Hegelian ideology is restricted to establishing his ignorance even of what he copies. — It is already evident from this how he can counterpose the history of the real individual in the form of the unique to his fantasy about the history of man.

The unique history takes place at the beginning in the Stoa in Athens, later almost wholly in Germany, and finally at the Kupfergraben ^[14] in Berlin, where the despot of “modern philosophy or modern times” set up his imperial residence. That already shows how exclusively national and local is the matter dealt with. Instead of world history, Saint Max gives a few and, what is more, extremely meagre and biased comments on the history of German theology and philosophy. If on occasion we appear to go outside Germany, it is only in order to cause the deeds and thoughts of other peoples, e.g., the French Revolution, to “reach their final goal” in Germany, namely, at the Kupfergraben. Only national-German facts are given, they are dealt with and interpreted in a national-German manner, and the result remains a national-German one. But even that is not enough. The views and education of our saint are not only German, but of a Berlin nature through and through. The role allotted to Hegelian philosophy is that which it plays in Berlin, and Stirner confuses Berlin with the world and world history. The “youth” is a Berliner; the good citizens that we encounter throughout the book are Berlin beer-drinking philistines. With such premises for the starting-point, it is natural that the result arrived at is merely one confined within the national and local framework. “Stirner” and his whole philosophical fraternity, among whom he is the weakest and most ignorant member, afford a practical commentary to the valiant lines of the valiant Hoffmann von Fallersleben:

In Germany alone, in Germany alone,
Would I for ever live.

The local Berlin conclusion of our valiant saint — that in Hegelian philosophy the world has “all gone” — enables him now without much expense to arrive at a universal empire of his “own”. The Hegelian philosophy transformed everything into thought, into the holy, into apparition, into spirit, into spirits, into spectres. “Stirner” will fight against them, he will conquer them in his imagination and will erect on their dead bodies his “own”, “unique”, “corporeal” empire, the empire of the “whole fellow”.

“For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places” (Ephesians 6:12).

Now “Stirner” has his “feet shod with the preparation” for waging the fight against thoughts. He has no need first to “take the shield of faith”, for he has never laid it down. Armed with the “helmet” of disaster and the “sword” of spiritlessness (see ibid.), he goes into battle. “And it was given unto him to make war with the holy” but not “to overcome” it. (Revelation of St. John 13:7)

5. “Stirner” Delighted in His Construction[edit source]

We now find ourselves again exactly where we were on page 19 in connection with the youth, who became the man, and on page 90 in connection with the Mongoloid Caucasian, who was transformed into the Caucasian Caucasian and “found himself”. We are, therefore, at the third self-finding of the mysterious individual whose “arduous life struggle” Saint Max depicts for us. Only the whole story is now behind us, and, in view of the extensive material we have worked through, we must take a retrospective look at the gigantic corpse of the ruined man.

Though on a later page, where he has long ago forgotten his history, Saint Max asserts that “genius has long since been regarded as the creator of new world-historic productions” (p. 214), we have already seen that even his bitterest enemies cannot revile his history on that score, at any rate, for in it no individuals, let alone geniuses, make their appearance, but only ossified, crippled thoughts and Hegelian changelings.

Repetitio est mater studiorum. Saint Max, who expounded his whole history of “philosophy or time” only in order to find an opportunity for a few hurried studies of Hegel, finally repeats once again his whole unique history. However, he does it with a turn towards natural history, offering us important information about “unique” natural science, the reason being that for him, whenever the “world” has to play an important role, it immediately becomes transformed into nature. “Unique” natural science begins at once with the admission of its impotence. It does not examine the actual relation of man to nature, determined by industry and natural science, but proclaims a fantastic relation of man to nature.

“How little can man conquer! He has to allow the sun to trace its course, the sea to roll its waves, the mountains to tower to the sky” (p. 122).

Saint Max who, like all saints, loves miracles, but can only perform a logical miracle, is annoyed because he cannot make the sun dance the cancan, he grieves because he cannot still the ocean, he is indignant because he must allow the mountains to tower to the sky. Although on page 124 the world already becomes “prosaic” at the end of antiquity, it is still, for our saint, highly unprosaic. For him it still is the “sun” and riot the earth that traces its course, and to his sorrow he cannot à la Joshua command “sun, stand thou still: On page 123, Stirner discovers that

at the end of the ancient world, “spirit” “again foamed and frothed over irresistibly because gases” (spirits) “developed within it and, after the mechanical impact from outside became ineffective, chemical tension, which stimulate in the interior, began to come into wonderful play”.

This sentence contains the most important data of the “unique” philosophy of nature, which on the previous page had already arrived at the conclusion that for man nature is the “unconquerable”. Earthly physics knows nothing about a mechanical impact which becomes ineffective — unique physics alone has the merit of this discovery. Earthly chemistry knows no “gases” which stimulate “chemical tensions” and, what is more, “in the interior”. Gases which enter into new combinations, into new chemical relations, do not stimulate any “tensions”, but at most lead to a fall of tension, insofar as they pass into a liquid state of aggregation and thereby their volume decreases to something less than one-thousandth of their former volume. If Saint Max feels “tensions” “in” his own “interior” due to “gases”, these are highly “mechanical impacts”, and by no means “chemical tensions”. They are produced by a chemical transformation, determined by physiological causes, of certain mixtures into others, whereby part of the constituents of the former mixture becomes gaseous, therefore, occupies a larger volume arid, in the absence of space for it, causes a “mechanical impact” or pressure towards the outside. [That] these nonexistent “chemical tensions” “come” into extremely “wonderful play” in Saint Max’s “interior”, namely, this time in his head, “we see” from the role they play in “unique” natural science. Incidentally, it is to be desired that Saint Max would no longer withhold from the profane natural scientists what nonsense he has in mind with the crazy expression “chemical tensions”, which moreover “stimulate in the interior” (as though a “mechanical impact” on the stomach does not “stimulate it in the interior” as well).

Saint Max wrote his “unique” natural science only because on this occasion he was unable to touch on the ancients in decent fashion without at the same time letting fall a few words about the “world of things”, about nature.

At the end of the ancient world the ancients, we are assured here, are all transformed into Stoics, “whom no collapse of the world” (how many times is it supposed to have collapsed “could put out of countenance” (p. 123). Thus, the ancients become Chinese, who also cannot be thrown down from the heavens of their tranquillity by any unforeseen event” (or idea”) (p. 90). Indeed, Jacques le bonhomme seriously believes that against the last of the ancients “the mechanical impact from outside became ineffective”. How far this corresponds to the actual situation of the Romans and Greeks at the end of the ancient world, to their complete lack of stability and confidence, which could hardly oppose any remnant of vis inertiae to the “mechanical impact” — on this point compare, inter alia, Lucian. The powerful mechanical shocks which the Roman empire received as a result of its division among several Caesars and their wars against one another, as a result of the colossal concentration of property, particularly landed property, in Rome, and the decrease in Italy’s population caused by this, and as a result of the [pressure of the] Huns and Teutons — these shocks, in the opinion of our saintly historian, “became ineffective”; only the “chemical tensions”, only the “gases” which Christianity “stimulated in the interior” overthrew the Roman Empire. The great earthquakes [in the West] and in the East, and other “mechanical impacts” which buried hundreds of thousands of people under the [ruins] of their towns and [which by no] means left the consciousness of people unchanged, were presumably, according to “Stirner”, also “ineffective” or were chemical tensions. And “ in fact” (!) “ancient history ends in this, that I have made the world my property” — which is proved by means of the biblical saying: “All things are delivered unto me” (i.e., Christ) “of my Father. ,a Here, therefore, I = Christ. In this connection, Jacques le bonhomme cannot refrain from believing the Christian that he could move mountains, etc., if he “only wanted to”. As a Christian he proclaims himself the lord of the world, but he is this only as a Christian; he proclaims himself the “owner of the world”. “Thereby egoism won its first full victory, since I elevated myself to be the owner of the world” (p. 124). In order to rise to the level of the perfect Christian, Stirner’s ego had only to carry through the struggle to become poor in spirit as well (which he succeeded in doing even before the mountains arose). “Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven."’ Saint Max has reached perfection as regards poverty of spirit and even boasts of it in his great rejoicing before the Lord.

Saint Max, poor in spirit, believes in the fantastic gas formations of the Christians arising from the decomposition of the ancient world. The ancient Christian owned nothing in this world and was, therefore, satisfied with his imaginary heavenly property and his divine right to ownership. Instead of making the world the possession of the people, he proclaimed himself and his ragged fraternity to be “God’s own possession” (1 Peter 2: 9). According to “Stirner”, the Christian idea of the world is the world into which the ancient world is actually dissolved, although this is at most [a world] of fantasy into which the world of ancient ideas has [been transformed] and in which the Christian [by faith] can move mountains, can feel [all-powerful] and press forward to a position where the “mechanical impact is ineffective”. Since for “Stirner” people are no longer determined by the [external] world, are no longer driven forward by the mechanical impact of the need to produce, since, in general, the mechanical impact, and with it the sexual act as well, has ceased to operate, it is only by a miracle that they have been able to continue to exist. Of course, for German prigs and school-masters with a gaseous content like that of “Stirner”, it is far easier to be satisfied with the Christian fantasy about property — which is truly nothing but the property of Christian fantasy — than to describe the transformation of the real property relations and production relations of the ancient world.

That same primitive Christian who, in the imagination of Jacques le bonhomme, was the owner of the ancient world, actually belonged for the most part to the world of owners; he was a slave and could be sold on the market. But “Stirner”, delighted in his construction, irrepressibly continues his rejoicing.

“The first property, the first splendour has been won!” (p. 124).

In the same way ‘ Stirner’s egoism continues to gain property and splendour and to achieve “complete victories”. The theological attitude of the primitive Christian to the ancient world is the perfect prototype of all his property and all his splendour.

The following are the grounds given for this property of the Christian:

“The world has lost its divine character ... it has become prosaic, it is my property, which I dispose of as I (viz., the spirit) choose” (p. 124).

This means: the world has lost its divine character, therefore, it is freed from my fantasies for my own consciousness; it has become prosaic, consequently its relation to me is prosaic and it disposes of me n the prosaic way it favours, by no means to please me. Apart from the fact that “Stirner” here actually thinks that in ancient times the prosaic world did not exist and the divine principle held sway in the world, he even falsifies the Christian concept, which continually bemoans its impotence in relation to the world, and itself depicts its victory over the world in its fantasy as merely an ideal one, by transferring t to the day of judgment. Only when a great secular power took possession of Christianity and exploited it, whereupon, of course, it ceased to be unworldly, could Christianity imagine itself to be the owner of the world. Saint Max ascribes to the Christian the same false relation to the ancient world as he ascribes to the youth with regard to the “world of the child”; he puts the egoist in the same relation to the world of the Christian as he puts the man to the world of the youth.

The Christian has now nothing more to do than to become poor in spirit as quickly as possible and perceive the world of spirit in all its vanity — just as he did with the world of things — in order to be able to “dispose as he chooses” of the world of spirit also, whereby he becomes a perfect Christian, an egoist. The attitude of the Christian to the ancient world serves, therefore, as the standard for the attitude of the egoist to the modern world. The preparation for this spiritual poverty was the content of “almost two thousand years” of life — a life whose main epochs, of course, took place only in Germany.

“After various transformations the holy spirit in the course of time became the absolute idea, which again in manifold refractions split up into the various ideas of love of mankind, civic virtue, rationality, etc.” (pp. 125, 126).

The German stay-at-home again turns the thing upside-down. The ideas of love of mankind, etc. — coins whose impressions had already been totally worn away, particularly owing to their great circulation in the eighteenth century — were recast by Hegel in the sublimate of the absolute idea, but after this re-minting they were just as little successful in retaining their value abroad as Prussian paper money.

The consistent conclusion — which has already appeared again and again — of Stirner’s view of history is as follows:

“Concepts should play the decisive roll everywhere, concepts should regulate life, concepts should rule. That is the religious world to which Hegel gave systematic expression” (p. 126),

and which our good-natured philistine so much mistakes for the real world that on the following page (p. 127) he can say:

“Now nothing but spirit rules in the world.”

Stuck fast in this world of illusion, he can (on p. 128) build first of all an “altar” and then “erect a church” “round this altar”, a church whose “walls” have legs for making progress and “move ever farther forward”. “Soon this church embraces the whole earth.” He, the unique, and Szeliga, his servant, stand outside, they “wander round these walls, and are driven out to the very edge”. “Howling with agonising hunger”, Saint Max calls to his servant: “One step more and the world of the holy has conquered.” But Szeliga suddenly ‘,sinks into the outermost abyss”, which lies above him — a literary miracle! For, since the earth is a sphere, the abyss can only lie above Szeliga as soon as the church embraces the whole earth. So he reverses the laws of gravity, ascends backwards into heaven and thereby reflects honour on “unique” natural science, which is all the easier for him since, according to page 126, “the nature of the thing and the concept of relation” are a matter of indifference to “Stirner”, “do not guide him in his treatment or conclusion”, and the “relationship into which” Szeliga “entered” with gravity “is itself unique” by virtue of Szeliga’s “uniqueness”, and by no means “depends” on the nature of gravity or on how “others”, for instance, natural scientists, “classify it”. “Stirner” moreover objects to Szeliga’s “action being separated from the real” Szeliga and ,assessed according to human standards”.

Having thus arranged for decent accommodation in heaven for his I faithful servant, Saint Max passes on to the subject of h’ is own I passion. On page 95 he discovers that even the “gallows” has the “colour of the holy”; “people loathe coming into contact with it, there is something uncanny, i.e., unfamiliar, strange about it”. In order to transcend this strangeness of the gallows, he transforms it into his own gallows, which he can only do by hanging himself on it. The lion of Judah makes also this last sacrifice to egoism. [cf. Revelation of John 5:,5] The holy Christian allows himself to he nailed to the cross, not to redeem the cross, but to redeem people from their impiety; the unholy Christian hangs himself on the gallows in order to redeem the gallows from holiness or to redeem himself from the strangeness of the gallows.

“The first splendour, the first property has been won, the first complete victory achieved!” The holy warrior has now conquered history, he has transformed it into thoughts, pure thoughts, which are nothing but thoughts — and at the end of time only a host of thoughts confront him. And so Saint Max, having taken his “gallows” on his back, just like an ass that carries a cross, and his servant Szeliga, who was welcomed in heaven with kicks and has returned to his master with his head hanging, set out to fight against this host of thoughts or, rather, against the mere halo of these thoughts. This time ‘t is Sancho Panza, full of moral sayings, maxims and proverbs, who takes on himself the struggle against the holy, and Don Quixote plays the role of his pious and faithful servant. The honest Sancho fights just as bravely as the caballero Manchego [Don Quixote] did in the old days, and like him does not fail several times to mistake a herd of Mongolian sheep for a swarm of spectres. The plump Maritornes “in the course of time, after various transformations in manifold refractions”, is transformed into a chaste Berlin seamstress, [Marie Wilhelmine Dähnhardt] dying of anaemia, a subject on which Saint Sancho composes an elegy, one which causes all young graduates and Guards lieutenants to remember Rabelais’ statement that the world-liberating “soldier’s prime weapon is the flap of his trousers”. [Rabelais’ Gargantua and Pantagmel]

Sancho Panza achieves his heroic feats by perceiving the entire opposing host of thoughts in its nullity and vanity. All his great deed is confined to mere perception which in the end leaves everything existing as it was, changing only his conception, and that not even of things, but of philosophical phrases about things.

Thus, after the ancients have been presented realistically as child, Negro, Negroid Caucasians, animal, Catholics, English philosophy, the uneducated, non-Hegelians, and the world of things, and the moderns have been presented idealistically as youth, Mongol, Mongoloid Caucasians, man, Protestants, German philosophy, the educated, Hegelians, and the world of thoughts — after everything has happened that was from time immemorial decided in the Council of Guardians, the time has at last arrived. The negative unity of the ancient and the modern, which has already figured as the man, the Caucasian, the Caucasian Caucasian, the perfect Christian, in servant’s clothing, seen “through a glass darkly” (I Corinthians 13:12), can now, after the passion and death of Stirner on the gallows and Szeliga’s ascent to heaven in full glory, return to the simplest nomenclature and appear in the clouds of heaven endowed with great power and majesty. [cf. Matthew 24:30] “And so it is said": what was previously “One” (see “Economy of the Old Testament"'/ has become “ego” — the negative unity of realism and idealism, of the world of things and the world of spirit. Schelling calls this unity of realism and idealism “indifference” or, rendered in the Berlin dialect, “Jeichjiltigkeit; in Hegel it becomes the negative unity in which the two moments are transcended. Saint Max who, being a proper German speculative philosopher, is still tormented by the “unity of opposites”, is not satisfied with this; he wants this unity to be visible to him in the form of a “corporeal individual”, in a “whole fellow”, and he is encouraged in this by Feuerbach’s views expressed in the Anekdota [Ludwig Feuerbach, “Vorläufige Thesen zur Reformation der Philosophie"] and in the Philosophie der Zukunft. This “ego” of Stirner’s which is the final outcome of the hitherto existing world is, therefore, not a “corporeal individual”, but a category constructed on the Hegelian method and supported by oppositions, the further “flea-jumps” of which we shall trace in the New Testament. Here we shall merely add that in the final analysis this ego comes into existence because it has the same illusions about the world of the Christian as the Christian has about the world of things. just as the Christian takes possession of the world of things by “getting into his head” fantastic nonsense about them, so the “ego” takes possession of the Christian world, the world of thoughts, by means of a series of fantastic ideas about it. What the Christian imagines about his own relation to the world, “Stirner” accepts in good faith, finds excellent, and good-naturedly repeats after him.

“Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds” (Epistle to the Romans 3 : 28).

Hegel, for whom the modern world was also resolved into the world of abstract ideas, defines the task of the modern philosopher, in contrast to that of the ancient, as consisting in the following: instead of, like the ancients, freeing himself from “natural consciousness” and “purging the individual of the immediate, sensuous method and making him into conceived and thinking substance” (into spirit), the modern philosopher should “abolish firm, definite, fixed ideas”. This, he adds, is accomplished by “dialectics” (Phänomenologie, pp. 26, 27). The difference between “Stirner” and Hegel is that the former achieves the same thing without the help of dialectics.

6. The Free Ones[edit source]

What role “the free ones” have to play here is stated in the economy of the Old Testament. We cannot help it that the ego, which we had approached so closely, now recedes from us again into the nebulous distance. It is not at all our fault that we did not pass at once to the ego from page 20 of “the book”.

A. Political Liberalism[edit source]

The key to the criticism of liberalism advanced by Saint Max and his predecessors is the history of the German bourgeoisie. We shall call special attention to some aspects of this history since the French Revolution.

The state of affairs in Germany at the end of the last century is fully reflected in Kant’s Critik der Practischen Vernunft. While the French bourgeoisie, by means of the most colossal revolution that history has ever known, was achieving domination and conquering the Continent of Europe, while the already politically emancipated English bourgeoisie was revolutionising industry and subjugating India politically, and all the rest of the world commercially, the impotent German burghers did not get any further than “good will”. Kant was satisfied with “good will” alone, even if it remained entirely without result, and he transferred the realisation of this good will, the harmony between it and the needs and impulses of individuals, to the world beyond. Kant’s good will fully corresponds to the impotence, depression and wretchedness of the German burghers, whose petty interests were never capable of developing into the common, national interests of a class and who were, therefore, constantly exploited by the bourgeois of all other nations. These petty, local interests had as their counterpart, on the one hand, the truly local and provincial narrow-mindedness of the German burghers and, on the other hand, their cosmopolitan swollen-headedness. In general, from the time of the Reformation German development has borne a completely petty-bourgeois character. The old feudal aristocracy was, for the most part, annihilated in the peasant wars; what remained of it were either imperial petty princes who gradually achieved a certain independence and aped the absolute monarchy on a minute, provincial scale, or lesser landowners who partly squandered their little bit of property at the tiny courts, and then gained their livelihood from petty positions in the small armies and government offices — or, finally, Junkers from the backwoods, who lived a life of which even the most modest English squire or French gentilhomme de province would have been ashamed. Agriculture was carried on by a method which was neither parcellation nor large-scale production, and which, despite the preservation of feudal dependence and corvées, never drove the peasants to seek emancipation, both because this method of farming did not allow the emergence of any active revolutionary class and because of the absence of the revolutionary bourgeoisie corresponding to such a peasant class.

As regards the middle class, we can only emphasise here a few significant factors. It is significant that linen manufacture, i.e., an industry based on the spinning wheel and the hand-loom, came to be of some importance in Germany at the very time when in England those cumbersome tools were already being ousted by machines. Most characteristic of all is the position of the German middle class in relation to Holland. Holland, the only part of the Hanseatic League^[15] that became commercially important, tore itself free, cut Germany off from world trade except for two ports (Hamburg and Bremen) and since then dominated the whole of German trade. The German middle class was too impotent to set limits to exploitation by the Dutch. The bourgeoisie of little Holland, with its well-developed class interests, was more powerful than the far more numerous German middle class with its indifference and its divided petty interests. The fragmentation of interests was matched by the fragmentation of political organisation, the division into small principalities and free imperial cities. How could political concentration arise in a country which lacked all the economic conditions for it?

The impotence of each separate sphere of life (one can speak here neither of estates nor of classes, but at most of former estates and classes not yet born) did not allow any one of them to gain exclusive domination. The inevitable consequence was that during the epoch of absolute monarchy, which assumed here its most stunted, semi-patriarchal form, the special sphere which, owing to division of labour, was responsible for the administration of public interests acquired an abnormal independence, which became still greater in the bureaucracy of modern times. Thus, the state built itself up into an apparently independent force, and this position, which in other countries was only transitory — a transition stage — it has maintained in Germany until the present day. This position of the state explains both the conscientiousness of the civil servant, which is found nowhere else, and all the illusions about the state which are current in Germany, as well as the apparent independence of German theoreticians in relation to the middle class — the seeming contradiction between the form in which these theoreticians express the interests of the middle class and these interests themselves.

The characteristic form which French liberalism, based on real class interests, assumed in Germany we find again in Kant. Neither he, nor the German middle class, whose whitewashing spokesman he was, noticed that these theoretical ideas of the bourgeoisie had as their basis material interests and a will that was conditioned and determined by the material relations of production. Kant, therefore, separated this theoretical expression from the interests which it expressed; he made the materially motivated determinations of the will of the French bourgeois into pure self-determinations of “free will”, of the will in and for itself, of the human will, and so converted it into purely ideological conceptual determinations and moral postulates. Hence the German petty bourgeois recoiled in horror from the practice of this energetic bourgeois liberalism as soon as this practice showed itself, both in the Reign of Terror and In shameless bourgeois profit-making.

Under the rule of Napoleon, the German middle class pushed its petty trade and its great illusions still further. As regards the petty-trading spirit which predominated in Germany at that time, Saint Sancho can, inter alia, compare Jean Paul, to mention only works of fiction, since they are the only source open to him. The German citizens, who railed against Napoleon for compelling them to drink chicory ^[16] and for disturbing their peace with military billeting and recruiting of conscripts, reserved all their moral indignation for Napoleon and all their admiration for England; yet Napoleon rendered them the greatest services by cleaning out Germany’s Augean stables and establishing civilised means of communication, whereas the English only waited for the opportunity to exploit them à tort et à travers [at random, recklessly] In the same petty-bourgeois spirit the German princes imagined they were fighting for the principle of legitimism and against revolution, whereas they were only the paid mercenaries of the English bourgeoisie. In the atmosphere of these universal illusions it was quite in the order of things that the estates privileged to cherish illusions — ideologists, school-masters, students, members of the Tugendbund ^[17] — should talk big and give a suitable high-flown expression to the universal mood of fantasy and indifference.

The political forms corresponding to a developed bourgeoisie were passed on to the Germans from outside by the July [1830] revolution — as we mention only a few main points we omit the intermediary period. Since German economic relations had by no means reached the stage of development to which these political forms corresponded, the middle class accepted them merely as abstract ideas, principles valid in and for themselves, pious wishes and phrases, Kantian self-determinations of the will and of human beings as they ought to be. Consequently their attitude to these forms was far more moral and disinterested than that of other nations, i.e., they exhibited a highly peculiar narrow-mindedness and remained unsuccessful in all their endeavours.

Finally the ever more powerful foreign competition and world intercourse — from which it became less and less possible for Germany to stand aside — compelled the diverse local interests in Germany to adopt some sort of common attitude. Particularly since 1840, the German middle class began to think about safeguarding these common interests; its attitude became national and liberal and it demanded protective tariffs and constitutions. Thus it has now got almost as far as the French bourgeoisie in 1789.

If, like the Berlin ideologists, one judges liberalism and the state within the framework of local German impressions, or limits oneself merely to criticism of German-bourgeois illusions about liberalism, instead of seeing the correlation of liberalism with the real interests from which it originated and without which it cannot really exist — then, of course, one arrives at the most banal conclusions. This German liberalism, in the form in which it expressed itself up to the most recent period, is, as we have seen, even in its popular form, empty enthusiasm, ideological reflections about real liberalism. How easy it is, therefore, to transform its content wholly into philosophy, into pure conceptual determinations, into “rational cognition"! Hence if one is so unfortunate as to know even this bourgeoisified liberalism only in the sublimated form given it by Hegel and the school-masters who depend on him, then one will arrive at conclusions belonging exclusively to the sphere of the holy. Sancho will provide us with a pitiful example of this.

“Recently” in active circles “so much has been said” about the rule of the bourgeois, “that it is not surprising that news of it”, if only through the medium of L. Blanc (translated by the Berliner Buhl), [reference to Louis Blanc, Histoire de dix ans 1830-1840, which appeared in Berlin in 1844-45 in Ludwig Buhl’s translation under the title Geschichte der zehn jahre] etc., “has even penetrated to Berlin” and there attracted the attention of easy-going school-masters (Wigand, p. 190). It cannot, however, be said that “Stirner” in his method of appropriating current ideas has “adopted a particularly fruitful and profitable style” (Wigand, ibid.) — as was already evident from his exploitation of Hegel and will now be further exemplified.

It has not escaped our school-master that in recent times the liberals have been identified with the bourgeois. Since Saint Max identifies the bourgeois with the good burghers, with the petty German burghers, he does not grasp what has been transmitted to him as it is in fact and as it is expressed by all competent authors — viz., that the liberal phrases are the idealistic expression of the real interests of the bourgeoisie — but, on the contrary, as meaning that the final goal of the bourgeois is to become a perfect liberal, a citizen of the state. For Saint Max the bourgeois is not the truth of the citoyen, but the citoyen the truth of the bourgeois. This conception, which is as holy as it is German, goes to such lengths that, on page 130, “the middle class” (it should read: the domination of the bourgeoisie) is transformed into a “thought, nothing but a thought” and “the state” comes forward as the “true man”, who in the “Rights of Man” confers the rights of “Man”, the true solemnisation on each individual bourgeois. And — all this occurs after the illusions about the state and the rights of man had already been adequately exposed in the Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher, [In the Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher this was done, in view of the context, only in relation to the rights of man proclaimed by the French Revolution. [Cf. Marx, On the Jewish Question] incidentally, this whole conception of competition as “the rights of man” can already be found among representatives of the bourgeoisie a century earlier (John Hampden, Petty, Boisguillebert, Child, etc.). On the relation of the theoretical liberals to the bourgeois compare what has been said [above] on the relation of the ideologists of a class to the class itself.] a fact which Saint Max notices at last in his “Apologetical Commentary” anno 1845. Hence he can transform the bourgeois — having separated the bourgeois as a liberal from the empirical bourgeois — into a holy liberal, just as he transforms the state into the “holy”, and the relation of the bourgeois to the modern state into a holy relation, into a cult (p. 131) — and with this, in effect, he concludes his criticism of political liberalism. He has transformed it into the “holy”.

We wish to give here a few examples of how Saint Max embellishes this property of his with historical arabesques. For this purpose he uses the French Revolution, concern rig which a small contract to supply him with a few data has been negotiated by his history-broker, Saint Bruno.

On the basis of a few words from Bailly, obtained moreover through the intermediary of Saint Bruno’s Denkwürdigkeiten, [reference to Edgar Bauer’s essay “Bailly und die ersten Tage der Französischen Revolution” in Denkwürdigkeiten zur Geschichte der neueren Zeit seit der Revolution, by Bruno and Edgar Bauer] the statement is made that through the convening of the States General “those who hitherto were subjects arrive at the consciousness that they are proprietors” (p. 132). On the contrary, mon brave! By the convening of the States General, those who hitherto were proprietors show their consciousness of being no longer subjects — a consciousness which was long ago arrived at, for example in the Physiocrats, and — in polemical form against the bourgeoisie — in Linguet (Théorie des lois civiles, 1767), Mercier, Mably, and, in general, in the writings against the Physiocrats. This meaning was also immediately understood at the beginning of the revolution — for example by Brissot, Fauchet, Marat, in the Cercle social ^[18] and by all the democratic opponents of Lafayette. If Saint Max had understood the matter as it took place independently of his history-broker, he would not have been surprised that “Bailly’s words certainly sound [as if each man is ... were now a proprietor...” and that the bourgeois express... the rule of the proprietors ... that now the proprietors have become the bourgeoisie par excellence. ] ^[19]

The “statement of the Bishop of Autun and Barère” is a motion tabled by the former on July 4 (not 8), with which Barère had nothing to do except that together with many others he supported it on July 8. It was carried on July 9, hence it is not at all clear why Saint Max speaks of “July 8”. This motion by no means “destroyed” “the illusion that each man, the individual, was of importance”, etc.; but it destroyed the binding force of the Cahiers given to the deputies, that is, the influence and the “importance”, not of “each man, the individual”, but of the feudal 177 bailliages and 431 divisions des ordres. By carrying the motion, the Assembly discarded the characteristic features of the old, feudal États généraux. ^[20] Moreover, it was at that time by no means a question of the correct theory of popular representation, but of highly practical, essential problems. Broglie’s army held Paris at bay and drew nearer every day; the capital was in a state of utmost agitation; hardly a fortnight had passed since the jeu de paume and the lit de justice ^[21], the court was plotting with the bulk of the aristocracy and the clergy against the National Assembly; lastly, owing to the still existing feudal provincial tariff barriers, and as a result of the feudal agrarian system as a whole, most of the provinces were in the grip of famine and there was a great scarcity of money. At that moment it was a question of an assemblée essentiellement active, as Talleyrand himself put it, while the Cahiers of [the] aristocratic’ and other reactionary groups provided the court with an opportunity, to declare [the] decision of the Assembly [void by referring] to the wishes of the constituents. The Assembly proclaimed its independence by carrying Talleyrand’s motion and seized the power it required, which in the political sphere could, of course, only be done within the framework of political form and by making use of the existing theories of Rousseau, etc. (cf. Le point du jour, par Barère de Vieuzac, 1789, Nos. 15 and 17.) The National Assembly had to take this step because it was being urged forward by the immense mass of the people that stood behind it. By so doing, therefore, it did not at all transform itself into an “utterly egoistical chamber, completely cut off from the umbilical cord and ruthless” [p. 147]; on the contrary it actually transformed itself thereby into the true organ of the vast majority of Frenchmen, who would otherwise have crushed it, as they later crushed “utterly egoistical” deputies who “completely cut themselves off from the umbilical cord”. But Saint Max, with the help of his history-broker, sees here merely the solution of a theoretical question; he takes the Constituent Assembly, six days before the storming of the Bastille, for a council of church fathers debating a point of dogma! The question regarding the “importance of each man, the individual”, can, moreover, only arise in a democratically elected representative body, and during the revolution it only came up for discussion in the Convention, and for as empirical reasons as earlier the question of the Cahiers. A problem which the Constituent Assembly decided also theoretically was the distinction between the representative body of a ruling class and that of the ruling estates; and this political rule of the bourgeois class was determined by each individual’s position, since it was determined by the relations of production prevailing at the time. The representative system is a very specific product of modern bourgeois society which is as inseparable from the latter as is the isolated individual of modern times.

Just as here Saint Max takes the 177 bailliages and 431 divisions des ordres for “individuals”, so he later sees in the absolute monarch and his car tel est notre plaisir ["for this is our will” — the concluding words of royal edicts] the rule of the “individual” as against the constitutional monarch, the “rule of the apparition” (p. 141), and in the aristocrat and the guild-member he again sees the “individual” in contrast to the citizen (p. 137).

“The Revolution was not directed against reality, but against this reality, against this definite existence” (p. 145).

Hence, not against the really existing system of landownership, of taxes, of customs duties which hampered commerce at every turn, and the [... gap in the manuscript]

[... “Stirner” thinks] it makes no difference ["to ‘the good burghers’ who defends them] and their principles, whether an absolute or a constitutional king, a republic, etc. — For the “good burghers” who quietly drink their beer in a Berlin beer-cellar this undoubtedly “makes no difference”; but for the historical bourgeois it is by no means a matter of indifference. The “good burgher” “Stirner” here again imagines — as he does throughout this section — that the French, American and English bourgeois are good Berlin beer-drinking philistines. If one translates the sentence above from the language of political illusion into plain language, it means: “it makes no difference” to the bourgeoisie whether it rules unrestrictedly or whether its political and economic power is counterbalanced by other classes. Saint Max believes that an absolute king, or someone else, could defend the bourgeoisie just as successfully as it defends itself. And even “Its principles”, which consist in subordinating state power to “chacun pour soi, chacun chez soi” [each for himself and the devil take the hindmost] and exploiting it for that purpose — an “absolute monarch” is supposed to be able to do that! Let Saint Max name any country with developed trade and industry and strong competition where the bourgeoisie entrusts its defence to an “absolute monarch”.

After this transformation of the historical bourgeois into German philistines devoid of history, “Stirner”, of course, does not need to know any other bourgeois than “comfortable burghers and loyal officials"(!!) — two spectres who only dare to show themselves on “holy” German soil — and can lump together the whole class as ,obedient servants” (p. 138). Let him just take a look at these obedient servants on the stock exchanges of London, Manchester, New York and Paris. Since Saint Max is well under way, he can now go the whole hog and, believing one of the narrow-minded theoreticians of the Einundzwanzig Bogen who savs that “liberalism is rational cognition applied to our existing conditions” [from the article “Preussen seit der Einsetzung Arndt’s bis zur Absetzung Bauer’s” published anonymously in the Einundzwanzig Bogen aus der Schweiz], can declare that the “liberals are fighters for reason”. It is evident from these [...] phrases how little the Germans have recovered [from] their original illusions about liberalism. Abraham “against hope believed in hope” ... and his faith “was imputed to him for righteousness” (Romans 4: 18 and 22).

“The state pays well, so that its good citizens can without danger pay poorly; it provides itself by means of good payment with servants from whom it forms a force — the police — for the protection of good citizens and the good citizens willingly pay high taxes to the state in order to pay so much lower amounts to their workers” (p. 152).

This should read: the bourgeois pay their state well and make the nation pay for it so that without risk they should be able to pay poorly; by good payment they ensure that the state servants are a force available for their protection — the police; they willingly pay, and force the nation to pay high taxes so as to be able without danger to shift the sums they pay on to the workers as a levy (as a deduction from wages). “Stirner” here makes the new economic discovery that wages are a levy, a tax, paid by the bourgeois to the proletarian; whereas the other, mundane economists regard taxes as a tribute which the proletarian pays to the bourgeois. Our holy church father now passes from the holy middle class to the Stirnerian “unique” proletariat (p. 148). The latter consists of “rogues, prostitutes, thieves, robbers and murderers, gamblers, propertyless people with no occupation and frivolous individuals” (ibid.). They form the “dangerous proletariat” and for a moment are reduced by “Stirner” to “individual shouters”, and then, finally, to 1I vagabonds”, who find their perfect expression in the “spiritual vagabonds” who do not “keep within the bounds of a moderate way of thinking...

“So wide a meaning has the so-called proletariat or” (per appos.) “pauperism"! (p. 149).

On page 151 ["on the other hand,] the state sucks the life-blood” of the proletariat. Hence the entire proletariat consists of ruined bourgeois and ruined proletarians, of a collection of ragamuffins, who have existed in every epoch and whose existence on a mass scale after the decline of the Middle Ages preceded the mass formation of the ordinary proletariat, as Saint Max can ascertain by a perusal of English and French legislation and literature. Our saint has exactly the same notion of the proletariat as the “good comfortable burghers” and, particularly, the “loyal officials”. He is consistent also in identifying the proletariat with pauperism, whereas pauperism is the position only of the ruined proletariat, the lowest level to which the proletarian sinks who has become incapable of resisting the pressure of the bourgeoisie, and it is only the proletarian whose whole energy has been sapped who becomes a pauper. Compare Sismondi, [Simonde de Sismondi, Nouveaux principes d'économie politique] Wade, [John Wade, History of the Middle and Working Classes] etc. “Stirner” and his fraternity, for example, can in the eyes of the proletarians, in certain circumstances count as paupers but never as proletarians.

Such are Saint Max’s “own” ideas about the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. But since with these imaginations about liberalism, good burghers and vagabonds he, of course, gets nowhere, he finds himself compelled in order to make the transition to communism to bring in the actual, ordinary bourgeois and proletarians insofar as he knows about them from hearsay. This occurs on pages 15I and 152, where the lumpen-proletariat becomes transformed into “workers”, into ordinary proletarians, while the bourgeois “in course of time” undergoes “occasionally” a series of “various transformations” and “manifold refractions”. In one line we read: “The propertied rule”, i.e., the profane bourgeois; six lines later we read: “The citizen is what he is by the grace of the state”, i.e., the holy bourgeois; yet another six lines later: “The state is the status of the middle class”, i.e., the profane bourgeois; this is then explained by saying that “the state gives the propertied” “their property in feudal possession” and that the “money and property” of the “capitalists”, i.e., the holy bourgeois, Is such “state property” transferred by the state to “feudal possession”. Finally, this omnipotent state is again transformed into the “state of the propertied”, i.e., of the profane bourgeois, which is in accord with a later passage: “Owing to the revolution the bourgeoisie became omnipotent” (p. 156). Even Saint Max would never have been able to achieve these “heart-rending” and “horrible” contradictions — at any rate, he would never have dared to promulgate them — had he not had the assistance of the German word “Bürger”, which he can interpret at will as “citoyen” or as bourgeois” or as the German “good burgher”.

Before going further, we must take note of two more great politico-economic discoveries which our simpleton “brings into being” “in the depths of his heart” and which have in common with the “joy of youth” of page 17 the feature of being also “pure thoughts”.

On page 150 all the evil of the existing social relations is reduced to the fact that “burghers and workers believe in the ‘truth’ of money”. Jacques le bonhomme imagines that it is in the power of the “burghers” and “workers”, who are scattered among all civilised states of the world, suddenly, one fine day, to put on record their “disbelief” in the “truth of money”; he even believes that if this nonsense were possible, something would be achieved by it. He believes that any, Berlin writer could abolish the “truth of money” with the same ease as he abolishes in his mind the “truth” of God or of Hegelian philosophy. That money is a necessary product of definite relations of production and intercourse and remains a “truth” so long as these relations exist — this, of course, is of no concern to a holy man like Saint Max, who raises his eyes towards heaven and turns his profane backside to the profane world.

The second discovery is made on page 152 and amounts to this, that “the worker cannot turn his labour to account” because he “falls into the hands” of “those who” have received “some kind of state property” “in feudal possession”. This is merely a further explanation of the sentence on page 15I already quoted above where the state sucks the life-blood of the worker. And here everyone will immediately “put forward” “the simple reflection” — that “Stirner” does not do so is not “surprising” — how does it come about that the state has not given the “workers” also some sort of “state property” in “feudal possession”. If Saint Max had asked himself this question he would probably have managed to do without his construction of the “holy” burghers, because he would have been bound to see the relation in which the propertied stand to the modern state.

By means of the opposition of the bourgeoisie and proletariat — as even “Stirner” knows — one arrives at communism. But how one arrives at it, only “Stirner” knows.

“The workers have the most tremendous power in their hands ... they have only to cease work and to regard what they have produced by their labour as their property and to enjoy it. This is the meaning of the workers’ disturbances which flare up here and there” (p. 153).

Workers’ disturbances, which even under the Byzantine Emperor Zeno led to the promulgation of a law (Zeno, de novis operibus constitutio [Decree on New Works]), which “flared up” in the fourteenth century in the form of the Jacquerie and Wat Tyler’s rebellion, in 1518 on the Evil May Day in London, and in 1549 in the great uprising of the tanner Kett ^[22] and later gave rise to Act 15 of the second and third year of the reign of Edward VI, and a series of similar Acts of Parliament; the disturbances which soon afterwards, in 1640 and 1659 (eight uprisings in one year), took place in Paris and which already since the fourteenth century must have been frequent in France and England, judging by the legislation of the time; the constant war which since 1770 in England and since the revolution in France has been waged with might and cunning by the workers against the bourgeoisie — all this exists for Saint Max only “here and there”, in Silesia, Poznan, Magdeburg and Berlin, “according to German newspaper reports”.

What is produced by labour, according to Jacques le bonhomme’s imagination, would continue to exist and be reproduced, as an object to be “regarded” and “enjoyed”, even if the producers “ceased work”.

As he did earlier in the case of money, now again our good burgher transforms “the workers”, who are scattered throughout the civilised world, into a private club which has only to adopt a decision in order to get rid of all difficulties. Saint Max does not know, of course, that at least fifty attempts have been made in England since 1830, and at the present moment yet another is being made, to gather all the English workers into a single association and that highly empirical causes have frustrated the success of all these projects. He does not know that even a minority of workers who combine and go on strike very soon find themselves compelled to act in a revolutionary way — a fact he could have learned from the 1842 uprising in England and from the earlier Welsh uprising of 1839, in which year the revolutionary excitement among the workers first found comprehensive expression in the “sacred month”, which was proclaimed simultaneously with a general arming of the people. ^[23] Here again we see how Saint Max constantly tries to pass off his nonsense as “the meaning” of historical facts (in which he is successful at best in relation to his “one”) — historical facts “on which he foists his own meaning, which are thus bound to lead to nonsense” (Wigand, p. 194). Incidentally, it would never enter the head of any proletarian to turn to Saint Max for advice about the “meaning” of the proletarian movements or what should be undertaken at the present time against the bourgeoisie.

After this great campaign, our Saint Sancho returns to his Maritornes with the following fanfare:

“The state rests on the slavery of labour. If labour were to become free, the state would be lost” (p. 153).

— Free Labour —

The modern state, the rule of the bourgeoisie, is based on freedom of labour. The idea that along with freedom of religion, state, thought, etc., and hence “occasionally” “also” “perhaps” with freedom of labour, not I become free, but only one of my enslavers — this idea was borrowed by Saint Max himself, many times, though in a very distorted form, from the Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher. Freedom of labour is free competition of the workers among themselves. Saint Max is very unfortunate in political economy as in all other spheres. Labour is free in all civilised countries; it is not a matter of freeing labour but of abolishing it.

B. Communism[edit source]

Saint Max calls communism “social liberalism”, because he is well aware how great is the disrepute of the word liberalism among the radicals of 1842 and the most advanced Berlin “free-thinkers”. ^[24] This transformation gives him at the same time the opportunity and courage to put into the mouths of the “social liberals” all sorts of things which had never been uttered before “Stirner” and the refutation of which is intended to serve also as a refutation of communism.

Communism is overcome by means of a series of partly logical and partly historical constructions.

First logical construction.

Because “we have seen ourselves made into servants of egoists”, “we should” not ourselves “become egoists ... but should rather see to it that egoists become impossible. We want to turn them all into ragamuffins, we want no one to possess anything, in order that ‘all’ should be possessors. — So say the social [liberals]. — Who is this person whom you call ‘all'? It is ‘society'” (p. 153).

With the aid of a few quotation marks Sancho here transforms “all” into a person, society as a person, as a subject = holy society, the holy. Now our saint knows what he is about and can let loose the whole torrent of his flaming anger against “the holy”, as the result of which, of course, communism is annihilated.

That Saint Max here again puts his nonsense into the mouth of the “social [liberals]”, as being the meaning of their words, is not “surprising”. He identifies first of all “owning” as a private property-owner with “owning” in general. Instead of examining the definite relations between private property and production, instead of examining “owning” as a landed proprietor, as a rentier, as a merchant, as a factory-owner, as a worker — where “owning” would be found to be a quite distinct kind of owning, control over other people’s labour — he transforms all these relations into “owning as such”.

[...four pages of the manuscript missing here.

...] political liberalism, which made the nation” the supreme owner. Hence communism has no longer to “abolish” any “personal property” but, at most, has to equalise the distribution of “feudal possessions”, to introduce égalité there.

On society as “supreme owner” and on the “ragamuffin”, Saint Max should compare, inter alia, L'Égalitaire for 1840:

“Social property is a contradiction, but social wealth is a consequence of communism. Fourier, in contradistinction to the modest bourgeois moralists, repeats a hundred times that it is not a social evil that some have too much but that ill have too little”, and therefore draws attention also to the “poverty of the rich”, in La fausse industrie, Paris, 1835, p. 410.

Similarly as far back as 1839 — hence before Weitling’s Garantien [der Harmonie und Freiheit] — it is stated in the German communist magazine Die Stimme des Volks (second issue, p. 14) published in Paris:

“Private property, the much praised, industrious, comfortable, innocent ‘private gain’, does obvious harm to the wealth of life.” [This seems to be a quotation from the article “Politischer und Socialer Umschwung” published in Blätter der Zukunft, 1846, No. 5. Die Stimme des folks was probably mentioned by mistake]

Saint Sancho here takes as communism the ideas of a few liberals tending towards communism, and the mode of expression of some communists who, for very practical reasons, express themselves in a political form. After “Stirner” has transferred property to “society”, all the members of this society in his eyes at once become paupers and ragamuffins, although — even according to his idea of the communist order of things — they “own” the “supreme owner”. — His benevolent proposal to the communists — “to transform the word ‘Lump’ into an honourable form of address, just as the revolution did with the word ‘citizen’ “ — is a striking example of how he confuses communism with something which long ago passed away. The revolution even “transformed” the word sansculotte “into an honourable form of address”, as against “honnêtes gens”, which he translates very inadequately as good citizens. Saint Sancho does this in order that there may be fulfilled the words in the book of the prophet Merlin about the three thousand and three hundred slaps which the man who is to come will have to give himself:

Needful it is that your squire, Sancho Panza,
Shall deal himself three thousand and three hundred
Lashes upon his two most ample buttocks,
Both to the air exposed, and in such sort
That they shall smart, and sting and vex him sorely.
(Don Quixote, Vol. If, Ch. 35.)

Saint Sancho notes that the “elevation of society to supreme owner” is a “second robbery of the personal element in the interests of humanity”, while communism is only the completed robbery of the “robbery of the personal element”. “Since he unquestionably regards robbery as detestable”, Saint Sancho “therefore believes for example” that he “has branded” communism “already by the” above “proposition” (“the book”, p. 102). “Once” “Stirner” has “detected” “even robbery” in communism, “how could he fail to feel profound disgust’ at it and ‘just indignation"'! (Wigand, p. 156.) We now challenge “Stirner” to name a bourgeois who has written about communism (or Chartism) and has not put forward the same absurdity with great emphasis. Communism will certainly carry out “robbery” of what the bourgeois regards as “personal”.

First corollary.

Page 349: “Liberalism at once came forward with the statement that it is an essential feature of man to be not property, but property-owner. Since it was a question here of man, and not of an individual, the question of how much, which was precisely what constituted the particular interest of individuals, was left to their discretion. Therefore, the egoism of individuals had the widest scope as regards this how much and carried on tireless competition.”

That is to say: liberalism, i.e., liberal private property-owners, at the beginning of the French Revolution gave private property a liberal appearance by declaring it one of the rights of man. They were forced to do so if only because of their position as a revolutionising party; they were even compelled not only to give the mass of the French [rural] population the right to property, [but also] to let them seize actual property, and they could do all this because thereby their own “how much”, which was what chiefly interested them, remained intact and was even made safe. We find here further that Saint Max makes competition arise from liberalism, a slap that he gives history in revenge for the slaps which he had to give himself above. A “more exact explanation” of the manifesto with which he makes liberalism “at once come forward” can be found in Hegel, who in 1820 expressed himself as follows:

“In respect of external things it is rational” (i.e., it becomes me as reason, as a man) “that I should possess property ... what and how much I possess is, therefore, legally a matter of chance” (Rechtsphilosophie, § 49).

It is characteristic of Hegel that he turns the phrase of the bourgeois into the true concept, into the essence of property, and “Stirner” faithfully imitates him. On the basis of the above analysis, Saint Max now makes the further statement, that communism

raised the question as to how much property, and answered it in the sense that man should have as much as he needs. Can my egoism be satisfied with that?... No. I must rather have as much as I am capable of appropriating” (p. 349).

First of all it should be remarked here that communism has by no means originated from § 49 of Hegel’s Rechtsphilosophie and its “what and how much”. Secondly, “communism” does not dream of wanting to give anything to “man”, for “communism” is not at all of the opinion that “man” 1I needs” anything apart from a brief critical elucidation. Thirdly, Stirner foists on to communism the conception of “need” held by the present-day bourgeois; hence he introduces a distinction which, on account of its paltriness, can be of importance only in present-day society and its ideal copy — Stirner’s union of “individual shouters” and free seamstresses. “Stirner” has again achieved great “penetration” into the essence of communism. Finally, in his demand to have as much as he is capable of appropriating (if this is not the usual bourgeois phrase that everyone should have as much as his ability [The German word Vermögen used several times in this passage means not only ability, capability but also wealth, fortune, means, property; the authors here play on the various meanings of the word] permits him, that everyone should have the right of free gain), Saint Sancho assumes communism as having already been achieved in order to be able freely to develop his “ability” and put it into operation, which by no means depends solely on him, any more than his fortune itself, but depends also on the relations of production and intercourse in which he lives. (Cf. the chapter on the “Union” b) Incidentally, even Saint Max himself does not behave according to his doctrine, for throughout his “book” he “needs” things and uses things which he was not “capable of appropriating”.

Second corollary.

“But the social reformers preach a social law to us. The individual thus becomes the slave of society” (p. 246). “in the opinion of the communists, everyone should enjoy the eternal rights of man” (p. 238).

Concerning the expressions “law”, “labour”, etc., how they are used by proletarian writers . and what should be the attitude of criticism towards them, we shall speak in connection with “True Socialism” (see Volume 11). As far as law is concerned, we with many others have stressed the opposition of communism to law, both political and private, as also in its most general form as the rights of man. See the Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher, where privilege, the special right, is considered as. something corresponding to private property inseparable from social classes, and law as something corresponding to the state of competition, of free private property (p. 206 and elsewhere); equally, the rights of man themselves are considered as privilege, and private property as monopoly. Further, criticism of law is brought into connection with German philosophy and presented as the consequence of criticism of religion (p. 72); further, it is expressly stated that the legal axioms that are supposed to lead to communism are axioms of private property, and the right of common ownership is an imaginary premise of the right of private property (pp. 98, 99). Incidentally, even in the works of German communists passages appeared very early — e.g., in the writings of Hess, Einundzwanzig Bogen aus der Schweiz, 1843, p. 326 and elsewhere — which could be appropriated and distorted — “by Stirner” in his criticism of law. Incidentally, the idea of using the phrase quoted above against Babeuf, of regarding him as the theoretical representative of communism could only occur to a Berlin school-master. “Stirner”, however, has the effrontery to assert on page 247 that

communism, which assumes “that all people by nature have equal rights, refutes its own thesis and asserts that people by nature have no rights at all. For it does not want, for example, to admit that parents have rights in relation to their children; it abolishes the family. in general, this whole revolutionary or Babouvist principle (compare Die Kommunisten in der Schweiz, Kommissionalbericht, p. 3) is based on a religious, i.e., false, outlook”.

A Yankee comes to England, where he is prevented by a justice of the Peace from flogging his slave, and he exclaims indignantly: “Do you call this a land of liberty, where a man can’t larrup his nigger? ,d Saint Sancho here makes himself doubly ridiculous. Firstly, he sees an abolition of the “equal rights of man” in the recognition of the “equal rights by nature” of children in relation to parents, in the granting of the same rights of man to children as well as to parents. Secondly, two pages previously Jacques le bonhomme tells us that the state does not interfere when a father beats his son, because it recognises family rights. Thus, what he presents, on the one hand, as a particular right (family right), he includes, on the other hand, among the “equal rights of man by nature”. Finally, he admits that he knows Babeuf only from the Bluntschli report, while this report (p. 3), in turn, admits that its wisdom is derived from the worthy L. Stein, [Lorenz von Stein, Der Socialismus und Communismus des heutigen Frankreichs] Doctor of Law. Saint Sancho’s thorough knowledge of communism is evident from this quotation. just as Saint Bruno is his broker as regards revolution, so Saint Bluntschli is his broker as regards communists. With such a state of affairs we ought not to be surprised that a few lines lower down our rustic word of God reduces the fraternité of the revolution to “equality of the children of God” (in what Christian dogma is there any talk of égalité?).

Third corollary.

Page 414: Because the principle of community culminates in communism, therefore, communism = “apotheosis of the state founded on love”.

From the state founded on love, which is Saint Max’s own fabrication, he here derives communism which then, of course, remains an exclusively Stirnerian communism. Saint Sancho knows only egoism on the one hand or the claim to the loving services, pity and aims of people on the other hand. Outside and above this dilemma nothing exists for him at all.

Third logical construction.

“Since the most oppressive evils are to be observed in society, it is especially” (!) “the oppressed” (!) who “think that the blame is to be found in society and set themselves the task of discovering the right society” (p. 155).

On the contrary, it is “Stirner” who “sets himself the task” of discovering the “society” which is “right” for him, the holy society, the society as the incarnation of the holy. Those who are ,oppressed” nowadays “in society”, “think” only about how to achieve the society which is right for them, and this consists primarily in abolishing the present society on the basis of the existing productive forces. If, e.g., “oppressive evils are to be observed” in a machine, if, for example, it refuses to work, and those who need the machine (for example, in order to make money) find the fault in the machine and try to alter it, etc. — then, in Saint Sancho’s opinion, they are setting themselves the task not of putting the machine right, but of discovering the right machine, the holy machine, the machine as the incarnation of the holy, the holy as a machine, the machine in the heavens. “Stirner” advises them to seek the blame “in themselves”. Is it not their fault that, for example, they need a hoe and a plough? Could they not use their bare hands to plant potatoes and to extract them from the soil afterwards? The saint, on page 156, preaches to them as follows:

“It is merely an ancient phenomenon that one seeks first of all to lay the blame anywhere but on oneself — and therefore on the state, on the selfishness of the rich, for which, however, we ourselves are to blame.”

The “oppressed” who seeks to lay the “blame” for pauperism on the “state” is, as we have noted above, no other than Jacques le bonhomme himself. Secondly, the “oppressed” who comforts himself by causing the “blame” to be laid on the “selfishness of the rich” is again no other than Jacques le bonhomme. He could have learned something better about the other oppressed from the Facts and Fictions of John Watts a tailor and doctor of philosophy, from Hobson’s Poor Man’s Companion, etc. And, thirdly, who is the person that should bear the “blame"? Is it, perhaps, the proletarian child who comes into the world tainted with scrofula, who is reared with the help of opium and is sent into the factory when seven years old — or is it, perhaps, the individual worker who is here expected to “revolt” by himself against the world market — or is it, perhaps, the girl who must either starve or become a prostitute? No, not these but only he who seeks “all the blame”, i.e., the “blame” for everything in the present state of the world, “in himself”, viz., once again no other than Jacques le bonhomme himself. “This is merely the ancient phenomenon” of Christian heart-searching and doing penitence in a German-speculative form, with its idealist phraseology, according to which 1, the actual man, do not have to change actuality, which I can only change together with others, but have to change myself in myself. “It is the internal struggle of the writer with himself” (Die heilige Familie, p. 122, cf. pp. 73, 121 and 306) According to Saint Sancho, therefore, those oppressed by society seek the right society. If he were consistent, he should make those who “seek to lay the blame on the state” — and according to him they are the very same people — also seek the right state. But he cannot do this, because he has heard that the communists want to abolish the state. He has now to construct this abolition of the state, and our Saint Sancho once more achieves this with the aid of his “ass”, the apposition, in a way that “looks very simple":

“Since the workers are in a state of distress” [Notstand], “the existing state of affairs” [Stand der Dinge], “i.e., the state” [Staat] (status = state or estate) “must be abolished” (ibid.).

Thus:

the state of distress = the existing state of affairs

the existing state of affairs = state or estate

state, estate = status

status = the State

Conclusion: the state of distress = the State.

What could “look simpler"? “It is only surprising” that the English bourgeois in 1688 and the French in 1789 did not “put forward” the same “simple reflections” and equations, since in those times it was much more the case that estate = status = the State. It follows from this that wherever a “state of distress” exists, “the State”, which is, of course, the same in Prussia and North America, must be abolished.

As is his custom, Saint Sancho now presents us with a few proverbs of Solomon.

Proverb of Solomon No. 1

Page 163: “That society is no ego, which could give, etc., but an instrument from which we can derive benefit; that we have no social duties, but only interests; that we do not owe any sacrifices to society, but if we do sacrifice something we sacrifice it for ourselves — all this is disregarded by the social [liberals], because they are in — thrall to the religious principle and are zealously striving for a — holy society.”

The following “penetrations” into the essence of communism result from this:

1. Saint Sancho has quite forgotten that it was he himself who transformed “society” into an “ego” and that consequently he finds himself only in his own “society”.

2. He believes that the communists are only waiting for “society” to “give” them something, whereas at most they want to give themselves a society.

3. He transforms society, even before it exists, into an instrument from which he wants to derive benefit, without him and other people by their mutual social relations creating a society, and hence this “instrument”.

4. He believes that in communist society there can be a question of “duties” and “interests”, of two complementary aspects of an antithesis which exists only in bourgeois society (under the guise of interest the reflecting bourgeois always inserts a third thing between himself and his mode of action — a habit seen in truly classic form in Bentham, whose nose had to have some interest before it would decide to smell anything. Compare “the book” on the right to one’s nose, page 247).

5. Saint Max believes that the communists want to “make sacrifices” for “society”, when they want at most to sacrifice existing society; in this case he should describe their consciousness that their struggle is the common cause of all people who have outgrown the bourgeois system as a sacrifice that they make to themselves.

6. That the social [liberals] are in thrall to the religious principle and

7. that they are striving for a holy society — these points have already been dealt with above. How “zealously” Saint Sancho “strives” for a “holy society”, so as to be able to refute communism by means of it, we have already seen.

Proverb of Solomon No. 2.

Page 277: “If interest in the social problem were less passionate and blind, then one ... would understand that a society cannot be turned into a new one so long as those of whom it consists and who constitute it remain as of old,”

“Stirner” believes that the communist proletarians who revolutionise society and put the relations of production and the form of intercourse on a new basis — i.e., on themselves as new people, on their new mode of life — that these proletarians remain “as of old”. The tireless propaganda carried on by these proletarians, their daily discussions among themselves, sufficiently prove how little they themselves want to remain “as of old”, and how little they want people to remain “as of old”. They would only remain “as of old” if, with Saint Sancho, they “sought the blame in themselves”; but they know too well that only under changed circumstances will they cease to be “as of old”, and therefore they are determined to change these circumstances at the first opportunity. In revolutionary activity the changing of oneself coincides with the changing of circumstances. — This great saying is explained by means of an equally great example which, of course, is again taken from the world of “the holy”.

“If, for example, the Jewish people was to give rise to a society which spread a new faith throughout the world, then these apostles could not remain Pharisees.”

The first Christians = a society for spreading faith (founded anno 1).

— Congregatio de propaganda fide ^[25]

(founded anno 1640).

Anno 1 =Anno 1640.

This society which should arise = These apostles.

These apostles = Non-Jews.

The Jewish people = Pharisees.

Christians = Non-Pharisees.

= Not the Jewish people.

What can look simpler?

Reinforced by these equations, Saint Max calmly utters the great historic words [paraphrase of line from Goethe’s Iphigenie auf Tauris]:

“Human beings, by no means intending to achieve their own development, have always wanted to form a society.” .

Human beings, by no means wanting to form a society, have, nevertheless, only achieved the development of society, because they have always wanted to develop only as isolated individuals and therefore achieved their own development only in and through society. Incidentally it would only occur to a saint of the type of our Sancho to separate the development of “human beings” from the development of the “society” in which they live, and then let his fantasy roam on this fantastic basis. Incidentally, he has forgotten his own proposition, inspired by Saint Bruno, in which just previously he set people the moral demand of changing themselves and thereby changing their society — a proposition, therefore, in which he identifies the development of people with the development of their society.

Fourth logical construction.

On page 156 he makes the communists say, in opposition to the citizens:

“Our essence” (!) “does not consist in all of us being equal children of the state” (!) “but in that we all exist for one another. We are all equal in that we all exist for one another, that each works for the other, that each of us is a worker.” He then regards ‘,to exist as a worker” as equivalent to “each of us exists only through the other”, so that the other, “for example, works to clothe me, and I to satisfy his need of entertainment, he for my food and I for his instruction. Hence participation in labour is our dignity and our equality.

“What advantage do we derive from citizenship? Burdens. And what value is put on our labour? The lowest possible What can you put against us? Again, only labour!” “Only for labour do we owe you a recompense”; “only for what you do that is useful to us” “have You any claim on us”. “We want to be only worth so much to you as we perform for you; but you should be valued by us in just the same way.” “Deeds which are of some value to us, i.e., work beneficial to the community, determine value.... He who does something useful takes second place to no one, or — all workers (beneficial to the community) are equal. Since however the worker is worthy of his wage, then let the wage also be equal” (pp. 157,158).

With “Stirner”, “communism” begins with searchings for “essence”; being a good “youth” he wants again only to “ penetrate behind things”. That communism ‘s a highly practical movement, pursuing practical aims by practical means, and that only perhaps in Germany, in opposing the German philosophers, can it spare a moment for the problem of “essence” — this, of course, is of no concern to our saint. This Stirnerian “communism”, which yearns so much for “essence”, arrives, therefore, only at a philosophical category, i.e., “being-for-one-another”, which then by means of a few arbitrary equations:

Being-for-one-another = to exist only through another

= to exist as a worker

= universal community of workers

is brought somewhat closer to the empirical world. We would, moreover, challenge Saint Sancho to indicate, for example, in Owen (who, after all, as a representative of English communism can serve as an example of “communism” just as well as, for example, the non-communist Proudhon, [Proudhon, who was as early as 1841 strongly criticised by the communist workers’ journal La Fraternité for advocating equal wages, community of workers in general and also the other economic prejudices which can be found in the works of this outstanding writer; Proudhon, from whom the communists have accepted nothing but his criticism of property, ... unfinished note] from whom the greater part of the above propositions were abstracted and then rearranged) a passage containing anything of these propositions about “essence”, universal community of workers, etc. Incidentally we do not even have to go so far back. The third issue of Die Stimme des Volks, the German communist magazine already quoted above, says:

“What is today called labour is only a miserably small part of the vast, mighty process of production; for religion and morality honour with the name of labour only the kind of production that is repulsive and dangerous, and in addition they venture to embellish such labour with all kinds of maxims — as it were words of blessing (or witchcraft) — ‘labour in the sweat of thy brow’ as a test imposed by God; ‘labour sweetens life’ for encouragement, etc. The morality of the world in which we live takes very good care not to apply the term work to the pleasing and free aspects of human intercourse. These aspects are reviled by morality, although they too constitute production. morality eagerly reviles them as vanity, vain pleasure, sensuality. Communism has exposed this hypocritical preaching, this miserable morality.”

As universal community of workers, Saint Max reduces the whole of communism to equal wages — a discover which is then repeated in the following three “refractions": on page 351, “Against competition there rises the principle of the society of ragamuffins — distribution. Is it possible then that I, who am very resourceful, should have no advantage over one who is resourceless?” Further, on page 363, he speaks of a “universal tax on human activity in communist society”. And, finally, on page 350, he ascribes to the communists the view that “labour” is “the only resource” of man. Thus, Saint Max re-introduces into communism private property in its dual form — as distribution and wage-labour. As before in connection with “robbery”, Saint Max here again displays the most ordinary and narrow-minded bourgeois views as “his own” “penetrations” into the essence of communism. He shows himself fully worthy of the honour of having been taught by Bluntschli. As a real petty bourgeois, he is then afraid that he, “who is very resourceful”, “should have no advantage over one who is resourceless” — although he should fear nothing so much as being left to his own “resources”.

Incidentally, he “who is very resourceful” imagines that citizenship is a matter of indifference to the proletarians, after he has first assumed that they have it. This is just as he imagined above that for the bourgeoisie the form of government is a matter of in difference. The workers attach so much importance to citizenship, i.e., to active citizenship, that where they have it, for instance in America, they make good use” of it, and where they do not have it, they strive to obtain it. Compare the proceedings of the North American workers at innumerable meetings, the whole history of English Chartism, and of French communism and reformism. ^[26]

First corollary.

“The worker, being conscious that the essential thing about him is that he is a worker, keeps himself away from egoism and subordinates himself to the supremacy of a society of workers, just as the bourgeois adhered with devotion” (!) “to the state based on competition” (p. 162).

The worker’ is at most conscious that for the bourgeois the essential thing about him is that he is a worker, who, therefore, can assert himself against the bourgeois as such. Both these discoveries of Saint Sancho, the “devotion of the bourgeois” and the “state based on competition”, can be recorded only as fresh proofs of the resourcefulness” of the “very resourceful” man.

Second corollary.

“The aim of communism is supposed to be the ‘well-being of all’. This indeed really looks as though in this way no one need be in an inferior position. But what sort of well-being will this be? Have all one and the same well-being? Do all people feel equally well in one and the same circumstances?... If that is so, then it is a matter of ‘true well-being’. Do we not thereby arrive precisely at the point where the tyranny of religion begins?... Society has decreed that a particular sort of well-being is ‘true well-being’, and if this well-being were, for example, honestly earned enjoyment, but you preferred enjoyable idleness, then society ... would prudently refrain from making provision for what is for you well-being. By proclaiming the well-being of all, communism destroys the well-being of those who up to now have lived as rentiers”, etc. (pp. 411. 412).

“If that is so”, the following equations result from it:

The well-being of all = Communism

= If that is so

= One and the same well-being of all

= Equal well-being of all in one and the same circumstances

= True well-being

= [Holy well-being, the holy, the rule of the holy, hierarchy]

= Tyranny of religion.

Communism = Tyranny of religion.

“This indeed really looks as though” “Stirner” has said the same thing about communism as he has said previously about everything else.

How deeply our saint has “penetrated” into the essence of communism is evident also from the fact that he ascribes to communism the desire to bring about “true well-being” in the shape of “honestly earned enjoyment”. Who, except “Stirner” and a few Berlin cobblers and tailors, thinks of “honestly earned enjoyment"!

And, what is more, to put this into the mouth of communists, for whom the basis of this whole opposition between work and enjoyment disappears. Let our highly moral saint put his mind at rest on this score. “Honest earning” will be left to him and those whom, unknown to himself, he represents — his petty handicraftsmen who have been ruined by industrial freedom and are morally indignant”. “Enjoyable idleness”, too, belongs wholly to the most trivial bourgeois outlook. But the crowning point of the whole statement is the artful bourgeois scruple that he raises against the communists: that they want to abolish the “well-being” of the rentier and yet talk about the “well-being of all”. Consequently, he believes that in communist society there will still be rentiers, whose “well-being” would have to be abolished. He asserts that “wellbeing” as rentier is inherent in the individuals who are at present rentiers, that it is inseparable from their individuality, and he imagines that for these individuals there can exist no other “wellbeing” than that which is determined by their position as rentiers.

He believes further that a society which has still to wage a struggle against rentiers and the like, is already organised in a communist way. The communists, at any rate, will have no scruples about overthrowing the rule of the bourgeoisie and abolishing its “wellbeing”, as soon as they are strong enough to do so. It does not matter to them at all whether this “well-being” common to their enemies and determined by class relations also appeals as personal “well-being” to a sentimentality which is narrow-mindedly presumed to exist.

Third corollary.

On page 190, in communist society

“Worry arises again in the form of labour”.

The good citizen “Stirner”, who is already rejoicing that he will again find his beloved “worry” ‘n communism, has nevertheless miscalculated this time. “Worry” ‘s nothing but the mood of oppression and anxiety which in the middle class is the necessary companion of labour, of beggarly activity for securing scanty earnings. “Worry” flourishes in its purest form among the German good burghers, where it is chronic and “always identical with itself”, miserable and contemptible, whereas the poverty of the proletarian assumes an acute, sharp form, drives him into a life-and-death struggle, makes him a revolutionary, and therefore engenders not “worry”, but passion. If then communism wants to abolish both the “worry” of the burgher and the poverty of the proletarian, it goes without saying that it cannot do this without abolishing the cause of both, i.e., “labour”.

We now come to the historical constructions of communism.

First historical construction.

“So long as faith was sufficient for the honour and dignity of man, no objection could be raised against any, even the most arduous labour.... The oppressed classes existing social classes. could tolerate their misery only so long as they were Christians” (the most that can be said is that they were Christians so long as they tolerated their miserable position), “for Christianity” (which stands behind them with a stick) “keeps their grumbling and indignation in check” (p. 158).

“How ‘Stirner’ knows so well” what the oppressed classes could do, we learn from the first issue of the Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung, where “criticism in the form of a master-bookbinder” quotes the following passage from an unimportant book. [from August Theodor Woeniger’s book Publicistische Abhandlungen, quoted by Carl Ernst Reichardt — “the master-bookbinder” — in his article “Schriften über den Pauperismus"]

“Modern pauperism has assumed a political character; whereas formerly the beggar bore his fate submissively and regarded it as God’s will, the modern ragamuffin asks whether he is forced to drag out his life in poverty just because he chanced to be born in rags.”

It was due to this power of Christianity that during the liberation of the feudal serfs the most bloody and embittered struggles were precisely those against the spiritual feudal lords, and it was carried through despite all the grumbling and indignation of Christianity as embodied in the priests (cf. Eden, History of the Poor, Book I; Guizot, Histoire de la civilisation en France; Monteil, Histoire des français des divers états, etc.), while, on the other hand, the minor priests, particularly at the beginning of the Middle Ages, incited the feudal serfs to “grumbling” and “Indignation” against the temporal feudal lords (cf., inter alia, even the well-known capitulary of Charlemagne^[27]). Compare also what was written above in connection with the “workers’ disturbances which flared up here and there”, about the “oppressed classes” and their revolts in the fourteenth century.’ The earlier forms of workers’ uprisings were connected with the degree of development of labour in each case and the resulting form of property; direct or indirect communist uprisings were connected with large-scale industry. Instead of going into this extensive history, Saint Max accomplishes a holy transition from the patient oppressed classes to the impatient oppressed classes:

“Now, when everyone ought to develop into a man” (“how,” for example, do the Catalonian workers ^[28] “know” that “everyone ought to develop into a man"?), “the confining of man to machine labour amounts to slavery” (p. 158).

Hence, prior to Spartacus and the uprising of the slaves, it was Christianity that prevented the “confining of man to machine labour” from “amounting to slavery”; and in the days of Spartacus it was only the concept of “man” that removed this relation and brought about slavery. “Or did” Stirner “perhaps” “even” hear something about the connection between modern labour unrest and machine production and wanted here to give an intimation of this? In that case it was not the introduction of machine labour that transformed the workers into rebels, but the introduction of the concept of “man” that transformed machine labour into slavery. — “If that is so” then “it indeed really looks as though” we have here a “unique” history of the workers’ movements.

Second historical construction.

“The bourgeoisie has preached the gospel of material enjoyment and is now surprised that this doctrine finds supporters among us proletarians” (p. 159).

Just now the workers wanted to realise the concept of “man”, the holy; now it is “material enjoyment”, the worldly; above it was a question of the “drudgery” of labour, now it is only the labour of enjoyment. Saint Sancho strikes himself here on ambas sus valientes posaderasa [his two most ample buttocks] — first of all on material history, and then on Stirner’s, holy history. According to material history, it was the aristocracy that first put the gospel of worldly enjoyment in the place of enjoyment of the gospel; it was at first for the aristocracy that the sober bourgeois’ ie applied itself to work and it very cunningly left to the aristocracy the enjoyment from which it was debarred by its own laws (whereby the power of the aristocracy passed i . n the form of money into the pockets of the bourgeoisie).

According to Stirner’s history, the bourgeoisie was satisfied to seek “the holy”, to pursue the cult of the state and to “transform all existing objects into imaginary ones”, and it required the Jesuits to “save sensuousness from complete decay”. According to this same Stirnerian history, the bourgeoisie usurped all power by means of revolution, consequently also its gospel, that of material enjoyment, although according to the same Stirnerian history we have now reached the point where “ideas alone rule the world”. Stirner’s hierarchy thus finds itself “entre ambas posaderas”.

Third historical construction.

Page 159: “After the bourgeois had given freedom from the commands and arbitrariness of individuals, there remained the arbitrariness which arises from the conjuncture of conditions and which can be called the fortuitousness of circumstances. There remained — luck and those favoured by luck.”

Saint Sancho then makes the communists “find a law and a new order which puts an end to these fluctuations” (the thingumbob), about which order he knows this much, that the communists should now proclaim: “Let this order henceforth be holy!” (whereas he ought now rather to have proclaimed: Let the disorder of my fantasies be the holy order of the communists). “Here is wisdom’ (Revelation of St. John, 13: 18). “Let him that bath understanding count the number” of absurdities which Stirner — usually so verbose and always repeating himself — [here] squeezes into a few [lines].

In its most general form the first proposition reads: after the bourgeoisie had abolished feudalism, the bourgeoisie remained. Or: after the domination of individuals had been abolished in “Stirner’s” imagination, precisely the opposite remained to be done. “It indeed really looks as though” one could bring the two most distant historical epochs into a relationship which is the holy relationship, the relationship as the holy, the relationship in heaven.

Incidentally, this proposition of Saint Sancho’s is not satisfied with the above-mentioned mode simple of absurdity, it has to bring it to the ,mode composé and bicomposé [terms used by Fourier] of absurdity. For, firstly, Saint Max believes the bourgeoisie which liberates itself that, by liberating itself from the commands and arbitrariness of individuals, it has liberated the mass of society as a whole from the commands and arbitrariness of individuals. Secondly, in reality it liberated itself not from the “commands and arbitrariness of individuals”, but from the domination of the corporation, the guild, the estates, and hence was now for the first time, as actual individual bourgeois, in a position to impose “commands and arbitrariness” on the workers. Thirdly, it only abolished the more or less idealistic appearance of the former commands and former arbitrariness of individuals, in order to establish instead these commands and this arbitrariness in their material crudity. He, the bourgeois, wanted his “commands and arbitrariness” to be no longer restricted by the hitherto existing “commands and arbitrariness” of political power concentrated in the monarch, the nobility and the corporations, but at most restricted only by the general interests of the whole bourgeois class, as expressed in bourgeois legislation. He did nothing more than abolish the commands and arbitrariness over the commands and arbitrariness of the individual bourgeois (see “Political Liberalism”).

Instead of making a real analysis of the conjuncture of conditions, which with the rule of the bourgeoisie became a totally different conjuncture of totally different conditions, Saint Sancho leaves it in the form of the general category “conjuncture, etc.”, and bestows on it the still more indefinite name of “fortuitousness of circumstances”, as though the “commands and arbitrariness of individuals” are not themselves a “conjuncture of conditions”. Having thus done away with the real basis of communism, i.e., the definite conjuncture of conditions under the bourgeois regime, he can now also transform this airy communism into his holy communism. “It indeed really looks” as though “Stirner” is a “man with only ideal”, imagined, historical “wealth” — the “perfect ragamuffin”. See “the book”, p. 362.

This great construction or, rather, its major proposition is once more and with great emphasis repeated on page 189 in the following form:

“Political liberalism abolished the inequality of master and servant; it made people masterless, anarchic” (!); “the master was then separated from the individual, from the egoist, to become a spectre, the law or the state.”

Domination of spectres = (hierarchy) = absence of domination equivalent to the domination of the “omnipotent” bourgeois. As we see, this domination of spectres is, on the contrary, the domination of the many actual masters; hence with equal justification communism could be regarded as liberation from this domination of the many. This, however, Saint Sancho could riot do, for then not only his logical constructions of communism but also the whole construction of “the free ones” would be overthrown. But this is how it is throughout “the book”. A single conclusion from our saint’s own premises, a single historical fact, overthrows the entire series of penetrations and results.

Fourth historical construction. On page 350, Saint Sancho derives communism directly from the abolition of serfdom.

I. Major proposition:

“Extremely much was gained when people succeeded in being regarded” (!) “as property-owners. Thereby serfdom was abolished and everyone who until then had himself been property henceforth became a master.”

(According to the mode simple of absurdity this means: serfdom was abolished as soon as it was abolished.) The mode composé of this absurdity is that Saint Sancho believes that people became “property-owners” by means of holy contemplation, by means of “regarding” and “being regarded”, whereas the difficulty consisted in becoming a “property-owner”, and consideration came later of itself. The mode bicomposé of the absurdity is that when the abolition of serfdom, which at first was still partial, had begun to develop its consequences and thereby became universal, people ceased to be able to “succeed” in being “regarded” as worth owning (for the property-owners those they owned had become too expensive); consequently the vast mass “who until then had themselves been property” i.e., unfree workers, became as a result not “masters”, but free workers. II. Minor historical proposition, which embraces about eight centuries, although one “will of course not perceive how momentous” it is (cf. Wigand, p. 194).

“However, henceforth your having [Dein Haben] and what you have [Deine Habe] no longer suffices, and is no longer recognised; on the other hand, your working and your work increases in value. We now respect your mastery of things as previously” (?) “we respected your possession of them. Your labour is your wealth. You are now the master or possessor of what you have obtained by work and not by inheritance” (ibid.).

“Henceforth” — “no longer” — “on the other hand” — “now” — “as previously” — “now” — “or” — “not” — such is the content of this proposition.

Although “Stirner” has “now” arrived at this, that you (viz., Szeliga) are the master of what you have obtained by work and not by inheritance, it “now” occurs to him that just the opposite is the case at present — and so he causes communism to be born as a monster from these two distorted propositions.

III. Communist conclusion.

“Since, however, now everything is inherited and every farthing you possess bears not the stamp of work, but of inheritance” (the culminating absurdity), “SO everything must be remoulded.”

On this basis Szeliga is able to imagine that he has arrived at both the rise and fall of the medieval communes, and the communism of the nineteenth century. And thereby Saint Max, despite everything “inherited” and “obtained by work”, does not arrive at any “mastery of things”, but at most at “having” nonsense.

Lovers of constructions can now see in addition on page 421 how Saint Max, after constructing communism from serfdom, then constructs it again in the form of serfdom under a liege lord — society — on the same model as he already, above, transformed the means by which we earn something into the “holy”, by “grace” of which something is given to us. Now, in conclusion, we shall deal in addition only with a few “penetrations” into the essence of Communism, which follow from the premises given above.

First of all, “Stirner” gives a new theory of exploitation which consists in this:

“the worker in a pin factory performs only one piece of work, only plays into the hand of another and is used. exploited by that other” (p. 158).

Thus, here “Stirner” makes the discovery that the workers in a factory exploit one another, since they “play into the hands” of one another; whereas the factory-owner, whose hands do not work at all, cannot, therefore, exploit the workers. “Stirner” here gives a striking example of the lamentable position in which communism has put the German theoreticians. Now they have to concern themselves also with mundane things like pin factories, etc., in relation to which they behave like real barbarians, like Ojibbeway Indians and New Zealanders.

Stirnerian communism “on the contrary says” (ibid.):

“All work should have the aim of satisfying ‘man’. Therefore, he” (“man”) “must become master of it, i.e., be able to perform it as a totality.”

“Man” must become a master! — “Man” remains a maker of pin-heads, but he has the consolation of knowing that the pin-head is part of the pin and that he is able to make the whole pin. The fatigue and disgust caused by the eternally repeated making of pin-heads is transformed, by this knowledge, into the “satisfaction of man”. O Proudhon! A further penetration:

“Since communists declare that only free activity is the essence” (iterum Crispinus) “of man, they, like every workaday mode of thought, need a Sunday, a time of exaltation and devotion, in addition to their dull labour.”

Apart from the “essence of man” that is dragged in here, the unfortunate Sancho is forced to convert “free activity”, which is for the communists the creative manifestation of life arising from the free development of all abilities of the “whole fellow” (in order to make it comprehensible to “Stirner”), into “dull labour”, for our Berliner notices that the question here is not one of the “hard work of thought”. By this simple transformation the communists can now also be transposed into the “workaday mode of thought”. Then, of course, together with the work-day of the middle-class its Sunday also is to be found again in communism.

Page 161: “The Sunday aspect of communism consists in the communist seeing in you the man, the brother.”

Thus, the communist appears here as “man” and as “worker”. This Saint Sancho calls (loc. cit.) “a dual employment of man by the communists — an office of material earning and one of spiritual earning”.

Here, therefore, he brings back even “earning” and bureaucracy into communism which, of course, thereby “attains its final goal” and ceases to be communism. Incidentally he has to do this, because in his “union”, which he will construct later, each also is given a “dual position” — as man and as the “unique”. For the present he legitimises this dualism by foisting it on communism, a method we shall find again in his theory of feudalism and of utilisation.

On page 344 “Stirner” believes that the “communists” want to “settle the question of property amicably”, and on page 413 he even makes them appeal to the self-sacrifice of people [and to] the self-denying disposition of the capitalists! The few non-revolutionary communist bourgeois who made their appearance since the time of Babeuf were a rare occurrence; the vast majority of the communists in all countries are revolutionary. All communists in France reproach the followers of Saint-Simon and Fourier with their peaceableness and differ from the latter chiefly in their having abandoned all hope of an “amicable settlement”, just as in Britain it is the same criterion which chiefly distinguishes the Chartists from the socialists. Saint Max could discover the communist view of the “self-denying disposition of the rich” and the “self-sacrifice of people” from a few passages of Cabet, the very communist who most of all could give the impression that he appeals for dévoûment, self-sacrifice. These passages are aimed against the republicans and especially against the attacks on communism made by Monsieur Buchez, who still commands the following of a very small number of workers in Paris:

“The same thing applies to self-sacrifice (dévoûment); it is the doctrine of Monsieur Buchez, this time divested of its Catholic form, for Monsieur Buchez undoubtedly fears that his Catholicism is repugnant to the mass of the workers, and drives them away. ‘In order to fulfil their duty (devoir) worthily’ — says Buchez — ‘self-sacrifice (dévoûment) is needed.’ — Let those who can understand the difference between devoir and dévoûment. — ‘We require self-sacrifice from everyone, both for great national unity and for the workers’ association ... it is necessary for us to be united, always devoted (dévoûés) to one another.’ — It is necessary, it is necessary — that is easy to say, and people have been saying it for a long time and they will go on saying it for a very long time yet without any more success, if they cannot devise other means! Buchez complains of the self-seeking of the rich; but what is the use of such complaints? All who are unwilling to sacrifice themselves Buchez declares to be enemies.

“'If,’ he says, ‘impelled by egoism, a man refuses to sacrifice himself for others, what is to be done?... We have not a moment’s hesitation in answering: society always has the right to take from us what our own duty bids us sacrifice to it.... Self-sacrifice is the only means of fulfilling one’s duty. Each one of us must sacrifice himself, always and everywhere. He who out of egoism refuses to fulfil his duty of self-sacrifice must be compelled to do it.’ — Thus Buchez cries out to all: sacrifice yourselves, sacrifice yourselves! Think only of sacrificing yourselves! Does this not mean to misunderstand human nature and trample it underfoot? Is not this a false view? We might almost say — a childish, silly view” (Cabet, Réfutation des doctrines de l'Atelier, pp. 19, 20).

Cabet, further, on page 22, demonstrates to the republican Buchez that he inevitably arrives at an “aristocracy of self-sacrifice” with various ranks, and then asks ironically:

“What then becomes of dévoûment? What remains of dévoûment if people sacrifice themselves only in order to reach the highest pinnacles of hierarchy?... Such a system might originate in the mind of a man who would like to become Pope or Cardinal — but in the minds of workers!!!” — “M. Buchez does not want labour to become a pleasant diversion, nor that man should work for his own well-being and create new pleasures for himself. He asserts ... ‘that man exists on earth only to fulfil a calling, a duty (une fonction, un devoir)’. ‘No,’ he preaches to the communists, ‘man, this great force, has not been created for himself (n'a point été fait Pour lui-même).... That is a crude idea. Man is a worker (ouvrier) in the world, he must accomplish the work (oeuvre) which morality imposes on his activity, that is his duty.... Let us never lose sight of the fact that we have to fulfil a high calling (une haute fonction) — a calling that began with the first day of man’s existence and will come to an end only at the same time as humanity.’ — But who revealed all these fine things to [M.] Buchez? (Mais qui a révélé toutes ces belles chases a M. Buchez lui-même” — which Stirner would have translated: How is it that Buchez knows so well what man should do?) — “Du reste, comprenne qui pourra. — Buchez continues: ‘What! Man had to wait thousands of centuries in order to learn from you communists that he was created for himself and has no other aim than to live in all possible pleasures.... But one must not fall into such an error. One must not forget that we are created in order to labour (faits pour travailler), to labour always, and that the only thing we can demand is what is necessary for life (la suffisante vie), i.e., the well-being that suffices for us to carry out our calling properly. Everything that is beyond this boundary is absurd and dangerous.’ — But just prove it, prove it! And do not be satisfied merely with delivering oracles like a prophet! At the very outset you speak of thousands of centuries! And then, who asserts that people have been waiting for us down all the centuries? But have people perhaps been waiting for you with all your theories about dévoûment, devoir, nationalité française, association ouvrière?’ ‘In conclusion,’ says Buchez, ‘we ask you not to take offence at what we have said.’ — We also are polite Frenchmen and we, too, ask you not to take offence” (p. 31). — “'Believe us,’ says Buchez, ‘there exists a communauté which was created long ago and of which you too are members.’ — Believe us, Buchez,” concludes Cabet, “become a communist!”

“Self-sacrifice”, “duty”, “social obligation”, “the right of society”, “the calling, the destiny of man”, “to be a worker the calling of man”, “moral cause”, “workers’ association”, “creation of what is indispensable for life” — are not these the same things for which Saint Sancho reproaches the communists, and for the absence of which the communists are reproached by M. Buchez, whose solemn reproaches are ridiculed by Cabet? Do we not find here even Stirner’s “hierarchy"? Finally, Saint Sancho deals communism the coup de grace on page 169, by uttering the following proposition:

“By taking away also property” (!) “the socialists do not take into account that its continuance is safeguarded by the peculiarities of human beings. Are only money and goods property, or is not every opinion also something that is mine, that belongs to me? Hence, every opinion must be abolished or made impersonal.”

Or does Saint Sancho’s opinion, insofar as it does not become the opinion of others as well, give him command over anything, even over another’s opinion? By bringing into play against communism the capital of his opinion, Saint Max again does nothing but advance against it the oldest and most trivial bourgeois objections, and he thinks he has said something new because for him, the “educated” Berliner, these hackneyed ideas are new. Destutt de Tracy among, and after, many others said the same thing much better approximately thirty years ago, and also later, in the book quoted below. For example:

“Formal proceedings were instituted against property, and arguments were brought forward for and against it, as though it depended on us to decide whether property should or should not exist in the world; but this is based on a complete misunderstanding of our nature” (Traité de la volonté, Paris, 1826, p. 18).

And then M. Destutt de Tracy undertakes to prove that propriété, individualité and personnalité are identical, that the “ego” [moi] also includes “mine” [mien], and he finds as a natural basis for private property that

“nature has endowed man with an inevitable and inalienable property, property in the form of his own individuality” (p. 17). — The individual “clearly sees that this ego is the exclusive owner of the body which it animates, the organs which it sets in motion, all their capacities, all their forces, all the effects they produce, all their passions and actions; for all this ends and begins with this ego, exists only through it, is set in motion through its action; and no other person can make use of these same instruments or be affected in the same way by them” (p. 16). “Property exists, if not precisely, everywhere that a sentient individual exists, at least wherever there is a conative individual” (p. 19).

Having thus made private property and personality identical, Destutt de Tracy with a play on the words propriété and propre, like “Stirner” with his play on the words Mein and Meinung, Eigentum and Eigenheit, [one’s own, my, mine; opinion, view; property; peculiarity] arrives at the following conclusion:

“It is, therefore, quite futile to argue about whether it would not be better for each of us to have nothing of our own (de discuter s'il ne vaudrait pas mieux que rien ne fût propre à chacun de nous) ... in any case it is equivalent to asking whether it would not be desirable for us to be quite different from what we are, and even to examining whether it would not be better for us not to exist at all” (p. 22).

“these are extremely popular”, now already traditional objections to communism, and for that very reason “it is not surprising that Stirner” repeats them.

— Individuality and Property —

When the narrow-minded bourgeois says to the communists: by abolishing property, i.e., my existence as a capitalist, as a landed proprietor, as a factory-owner, and your existence as workers, you abolish my individuality and your own; by making it impossible for me to exploit you, the workers, to rake in my profit, interest or rent, you make it impossible for me to exist as an individual. — When, therefore, the bourgeois tells the communists: by abolishing my existence as a bourgeois, you abolish my existence as an individual; when thus he identifies himself as a bourgeois with himself as an individual, one must, at least, recognise his frankness and shamelessness. For the bourgeois it is actually the case, he believes himself to be an individual only insofar as he is a bourgeois.

But when the theoreticians of the bourgeoisie come forward and give a general expression to this assertion, when they equate the bourgeois’s property with individuality in theory as well and want to give a logical justification for this equation, then this nonsense begins to become solemn and holy.

Above “Stirner” refuted the communist abolition of private property by first transforming private property into “having” and then declaring the verb “to have” an indispensable word, an eternal truth, because even in communist society it could happen that Stirner will “have” a stomach-ache. In exactly the same way here his arguments regarding the impossibility of abolishing private property depend on his transforming private property into the concept of property, on exploiting the etymological connection between the words Eigentum and eigen and declaring the word eigen an eternal truth, because even under the communist system it could happen that a stomach-ache will be eigen to him. All this theoretical nonsense, which seeks refuge in etymology, would be impossible if the actual private property that the communists want to abolish had not been transformed into the abstract notion of “property”. This transformation, on the one hand, saves one the trouble of having to say anything, or even merely to know anything, about actual private property and, on the other hand, makes it easy to discover a contradiction in communism, since after the abolition of (actual) property it is, of course, easy to discover all sorts of things in communism which can be included in the concept “property”. In reality, of course, the situation is just the reverse. In reality I possess private property only insofar as I have something vendible, whereas what is peculiar to me [meine Eigenheit] may not be vendible at all. My frock-coat is private property for me only so long as I can barter, pawn or sell it, so long [as it] is [marketable]. If it loses that feature, if it becomes tattered, it can still have a number of features which make it valuable for me, it may even become a feature of me and turn me into a tatterdemalion. But no economist would think of classing it as my private property, since it does not enable me to command any, even the smallest, amount of other people’s labour. A lawyer, an ideologist of private property, could perhaps still indulge in such twaddle.

— Private Property and Alienation —

Private property alienates [entfremdet] the individuality not only of people but also of things. Land has nothing to do with rent of land, the machine has nothing to do with profit. For the landed proprietor, land has the significance only of rent of land; he leases his plots of land and receives rent; this is a feature which land can lose without losing a single one of its inherent features, without, for example, losing any part of its fertility; it is a feature the extent and even the existence of which depends on social relations which are created and destroyed without the assistance of individual landed proprietors. It is the same with machines. How little connection there is between money, the most general form of property, and personal peculiarity, how much they are directly opposed to each other was already known to Shakespeare better than to our theorising petty bourgeois:

Thus much of this will make black, white; foul, fair;
Wrong, right; base, noble; old, young; coward, valiant.
This yellow slave...
Will make the hear leprosy adored...

This it is

That makes the wappened widow wed again;
She, whom the spital-house and ulcerous sores
Would cast the gorge at, this embalms and spices
To the April day again...

Thou visible god,

That solder’st close impossibilities,
And makest them kiss!"
[Shakespeare, Timon of Athens, Act IV, Scene 3]

In a word, rent of land, profit, etc., these actual forms of existence of private property, are social relations corresponding to a definite stage of production, and they are “individual” only so long as they have not become fetters on the existing productive forces.

According to Destutt de Tracy, the majority of people, the proletarians, must have lost all individuality long ago, although nowadays it looks as if it was precisely among them that individuality is most developed. For the bourgeois it is all the easier to prove on the basis of his language the identity of commercial and individual, or even universal, human relations, as this language itself is a product of the bourgeoisie, and therefore both in actuality and in language the relations of buying and selling have been made the basis of all others. For example, propriété — property [Eigentum] and characteristic feature [Eigenschaft]; property — possession [Eigentum] and peculiarity [Eigentümlichkeit]; “eigen” ["one’s own"] — In the commercial and in the individual sense; valeur, value, Wert; commerce, Verkehr; échange, exchange, Austausch, etc., all of which are used both for commercial relations and for characteristic features and mutual relations of individuals as such. In the other modern languages this is equally the case. If Saint Max seriously applies himself to exploit this ambiguity, he may easily succeed in making a brilliant series of new economic discoveries, without knowing anything about political economy; for, indeed, his new economic facts, which we shall take note of later, lie wholly within this sphere of synonymy.

Our kindly, credulous Jacques takes the bourgeois play on the words Eigentum [property] and Eigenschaft [characteristic feature] so literally, in such holy earnest, that he even endeavours to behave like a private property-owner in relation to his own features, as we shall see later on.

Finally, on page 421, “Stirner” instructs communism that

“actually it” (viz., communism) “does not attack property, but the alienation of property”.

In this new revelation of his, Saint Max merely repeats an old witticism already used repeatedly by, for example, the Saint-Simonists. Cf., for example, Leçons sur l'industrie et les finances, Paris, 1832, where, inter alia, it is stated:

“Property will not be abolished, but its form will be changed ... it will for the first time become true personification ... it will for the first time acquire its real, individual character” (pp. 42, 43).

Since this phrase, introduced by the French and particularly enlarged on by Pierre Leroux, was seized on with great pleasure by the German speculative socialists and used for further speculation, and finally gave occasion for reactionary intrigues and sharp practices — we shall not deal with it here where it says nothing, but later on, in connection with true socialism.

Saint Sancho, [following the] example of Woeniger, whom Reichardt [used], takes delight in turning the proletarians, [and hence] also the communists, into “ragamuffins”. He defines his “ragamuffin” on page 362 as a “man possessing only ideal wealth”. If Stirner’s “ragamuffins” ever set up a vagabond kingdom, as the Paris beggars did in the fifteenth century, then Saint Sancho will be the vagabond king, for he is the “perfect” ragamuffin, a man possessing not even ideal wealth and therefore living on the interest from the capital of his opinion.

C. Humane Liberalism[edit source]

After Saint Max has interpreted liberalism and communism as imperfect modes of existence of philosophical “man”, and thereby also of modern German philosophy in general (which he was justified in doing, since in Germany not only liberalism but communism as well was given a petty-bourgeois and at the same time high-flown ideological form), after this, it is easy for him to depict the latest forms of German philosophy, what he has called “humane liberalism”, as perfect liberalism and communism, and, at the same time, as criticism of both of them.

With the aid of this holy construction we now get the following three delightful transformations (cf. also “The Economy of the Old Testament”):

1. The individual is not man, therefore he is of no value — absence of personal will, ordinance — “whose name will be named": “masterless” — political liberalism, which we have already dealt with above.

2. The individual has nothing human, therefore no validity attaches to mine and thine or property: “propertyless” — communism, which we have also already dealt with.

3. In criticism the individual should give place to man, now found for the first time: “godless” = identity of “masterless” and “propertyless” — humane liberalism (pp. 180-81). — In a more detailed exposition of this last negative unity, the unshakeable orthodoxy of Jacques reaches the following climax (p. 189):

“The egoism of property loses its last possession if even the words ‘my God’ become meaningless, for” (a grand “for"!) “God only exists if he has at heart the salvation of each individual, just as the latter seeks his salvation in God.”

According to this, the French bourgeois would only “lose” his “last” “Property” if the word adieu were banished from the language. In complete accord with the preceding construction, property in God, holy property in heaven, the property of fantasy, the fantasy of property, are here declared to be supreme property and the last sheet-anchor of property.

From these three illusions about liberalism, communism and German philosophy, he now concocts his new — and, thanks be to the “holy”, this time the last — transition to the “ego”. Before following him in this, let us once more glance at his last “arduous life struggle” with “humane liberalism”.

After our worthy Sancho in his new role of caballero andante [knight-errant], and in fact as caballero de la tristisima figura, [knight of the most rueful countenance] has traversed the whole of history, everywhere battling and “blowing down” spirits and spectres, “dragons and ostriches, satyrs and hobgoblins, wild beasts of the desert and vultures, bitterns and hedgehogs” (cf. Isaiah, 34:11-14), how happy he must now be, after his wanderings through all these different lands, to come at last to his island of Barataria ^[29] to “the land” as such, where “Man” goes about in puris naturalibus [in the pure natural state]! Let us once more recall his great thesis, the dogma imposed on him, on which his whole construction of history rests, to the effect that:

“the truths which arise from the concept of man are revered as revelations of precisely this concept and regarded as holy”; “the revelations of this holy concept”, even “with the abolition of many a truth manifested by means of this concept, are not deprived of their holiness” (p. 51).

We need hardly repeat what we have already proved to our holy author in respect of all his examples, namely, that empirical relations, created by real people in their real intercourse and not at all by the holy concept of man, are afterwards interpreted, portrayed, imagined, consolidated and justified by people as a revelation of the concept “man”. One may also recall his hierarchy. And now on to humane liberalism. On page 44, where Saint Max “in brief” “contrasts Feuerbach’s [theological] view with our view”, at first nothing but phrases are advanced against Feuerbach. As we already saw in regard to the manufacture of spirits, where “Stirner” places his stomach among the stars (the third Dioscuros, a patron saint and protector against seasickness ^[30]), because he and his stomach are “different names for totally different things” (p. 42), so, here, too, essence [Wesen] appears first of all as an existing thing, and “so it is now said” (p. 44):

“The supreme being is, indeed, the essence of man, but precisely because it is his essence, and not man himself, it makes absolutely no difference whether we see this essence outside man and perceive it as ‘God’ or find it in man and call it the ‘essence of man’ or ‘Man’. I am neither God nor Man, neither the supreme being nor my essence — and, therefore, in the main, it makes no difference whether I think of this essence as inside me or outside me.”

Hence, the “essence of man” is presupposed here as an existing thing, it is the “supreme being”, it is not the “ego”, and, instead of saying something about “essence”, Saint Max restricts himself to the simple statement that it makes “no difference” “whether I think of it as inside me or outside me”, in this locality or in that. That this indifference to essence is no mere carelessness of style is already evident from the fact that he himself makes the distinction between essential and inessential and that with him even “the noble essence of egoism” finds a place (p. 71). Incidentally everything the German theoreticians have said so far about essence and non-essence is to be found already far better said by Hegel in his Logik. We found the boundless orthodoxy of “Stirner” with regard to the illusions of German philosophy expressed in concentrated form in the fact that he constantly foists “Man” on history as the sole dramatis persona and believes that “Man” has made history. Now we shall find the same thing recurring in connection with Feuerbach, whose illusions “Stirner” faithfully accepts in order to build further on their foundation.

Page 77: “In general Feuerbach only transposes subject and predicate, giving preference to the latter. But since he says himself: ‘Love is not holy because it is a predicate of God (nor have people ever held it to be holy for that reason) but it is a predicate of God because it is divine by and for itself,’ he was able to conclude that the struggle had to be begun against the predicates themselves, against love and everything holy. How could he hope to turn people away from God, once he had left them the divine? And if, as Feuerbach says, the main thing for people has never been God, but only his predicates, he could after all have allowed them to keep this tinsel, since the puppet, the real kernel, still remained.”

Since, therefore, Feuerbach “himself” says this, it is reason enough for Jacques le bonhomme to believe him that people have esteemed love because it is “divine by and for itself “. If precisely the opposite of what Feuerbach says took place — and we “make bold to say this” (Wigand, p. 157) — if neither God nor his predicates have ever been the main thing for people, if this itself is only a religious illusion of German theory — it means that the very same thing has happened to our Sancho as happened to him before in Cervantes, when four stumps were put under his saddle while he slept and his ass was led away from under him.

— Criticism of Religion —

Relying on these statements of Feuerbach, Sancho starts a battle which was likewise already anticipated by Cervantes in the nineteenth chapter, where the ingenioso hidalgo fights against the predicates, the mummers, while they are carrying the corpse of the world to the grave and who entangled in their robes and shrouds, are unable to move and so make it easy for our hidalgo to overturn them with his lance and give them a thorough thrashing. The last attempt to exploit further the criticism of religion as an independent sphere (a criticism which has been flogged to the point of exhaustion), to remain within the premises of German theory and yet to appear to be going beyond them, and to cook from this bone, gnawed away to the last fibres, a thin Rumford beggar’s broth ^[31] [for “the] book” — this last attempt consisted in attacking material relations, not in their actual form, and not even in the form of the mundane illusions of those who are practically involved in the present-day world, but in the heavenly extract of their mundane form as predicates, as emanations from God, as angels. Thus, the heavenly kingdom was now repopulated and abundant new material created for the old method of exploitation of this heavenly kingdom. Thus, the struggle against religious illusions, against God, was again substituted for the real struggle. Saint Bruno, who earns his bread by theology, in his “arduous life struggle” against substance makes the same attempt pro aris et focie [for home and hearth] as a theologian to go beyond the limits of theology. His “substance” is nothing but the predicates of God united under one name; with the exception of personality, which he reserves for himself — these predicates of God are again nothing but deified names for the ideas of people about their definite, empirical relations, ideas which subsequently they hypocritically retain because of practical considerations.

With the theoretical equipment inherited from Hegel it is, of course, not possible even to understand the empirical, material attitude of these people. Owing to the fact that Feuerbach showed the religious world as an illusion of the earthly world — a world which in his writing appears merely as a phrase — German theory too was confronted with the question which he left unanswered: how did it come about that people “got” these illusions “into their heads"? Even for the German theoreticians this question paved the way to the materialistic view of the world, a view which is not without premises, but which empirically observes the actual material premises as such and for that reason is, for the first time, actually a critical view of the world. This path was already indicated in the Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher — in the Einleitung zur Kritik der Hegelschen Rechtsphilosophie and Zur Judenfrage. But since at that time this was done in philosophical phraseology, the traditionally occurring philosophical expressions such as “human essence”, “species”, etc., gave the German theoreticians the desired reason for misunderstanding the real trend of thought and believing that here again it was a question merely of giving a new turn to their worn-out theoretical garment — just as Dr. Arnold Ruge, the Dottore Graziano of German philosophy, imagined that he could continue as before to wave his clumsy arms about and display his pedantic-farcical mask. One has to “leave philosophy aside” (Wigand, p. 187, cf. Hess, Die letzten Philosophen, p. 8), one has to leap out of it and devote oneself like an ordinary man to the study of actuality, for which there exists also an enormous amount of literary material, unknown, of course, to the philosophers. When, after that, one again encounters people like Krummacher or “Stirner”, one finds that one has long ago left them “behind” and below. Philosophy and the study of the actual world have the same relation to one another as onanism and sexual love. Saint Sancho, who in spite of his absence of thought — which was noted by us patiently and by him emphatically — remains within the world of pure thoughts, can, of course, save himself from it only by means of a moral postulate, the postulate of “thoughtlessness” (p. 196 of “the book”). He is a bourgeois who saves himself in the face of commerce by the banqueroute cochenne, ^[32] whereby, of course, he becomes not a proletarian, but an impecunious, bankrupt bourgeois. He does not become a man of the world, but a bankrupt philosopher without thoughts.

The predicates of God handed down from Feuerbach as real forces over people, as hierarchs, are the monstrosity which is substituted for the empirical world and which “Stirner” finds in existence. So heavily does Stirner’s entire “peculiarity” depend merely on “prompting”. If “Stirner” (see also p. 63) reproaches Feuerbach for reaching no result because he turns the predicate into the subject and vice versa, he himself is far less capable of arriving at anything, [for] he faithfully accepts these Feuerbachian predicates, transformed into subjects, as real personalities ruling [the world], he faithfully accepts these phrases about relations as actual relations, attaching the predicate “holy” to them, transforming this predicate into a subject, the “holy”, i.e., doing exactly the same as that for which he reproaches Feuerbach. And so, after he has thus completely got rid of the definite content that was the matter at issue, he begins his struggle — i.e., his “antipathy” — against this “holy”, which, of course, always remains the same. Feuerbach has still the consciousness “that for him it is ‘only a matter of destroying an illusion'” — and it is this with which Saint Max reproaches him (p. 77 of “the book”) — although Feuerbach still attaches much too great importance to the struggle against this illusion. In “Stirner” even this consciousness has “all gone”, he actually believes in the domination of the abstract ideas of ideology in the modern world; he believes that in his struggle against “predicates”, against concepts, he is no longer attacking an illusion, but the real forces that rule the world. Hence his manner of turning everything upside-down, hence the immense credulity with which he takes at their face value all the sanctimonious illusions, all the hypocritical asseverations of the bourgeoisie. How little, incidentally, the “puppet” is the “real kernel” of the “tinsel”, and how lame this beautiful analogy is, can best be seen from “Stirner’s” own “puppet” — “the book”, which contains no “kernel”, whether “real” or not “real”, and where even the little that there is in its 491 pages scarcely deserves the name “tinsel”. — If, however, we must find some sort of “kernel” in it, then that kernel is the German petty bourgeois.

Incidentally, as regards the source of Saint Max’s hatred of “predicates”, he himself gives an extremely naive disclosure in the “Apologetic Commentary”. He quotes the following passage from Das Wesen des Christenthums (p. 31): “A true atheist is only one for whom the predicates of the divine being, e.g., love, wisdom, justice are nothing, but not one for whom only the subject of these predicates is nothing” — and then he exclaims triumphantly: “Does this not hold good for Stirner?” — “Here is wisdom.” In the above passage Saint Max found a hint as to how one should start in order to go “farthest of all”. He believes Feuerbach that the above passage reveals the “essence” of the “true atheist”, and lets Feuerbach set him the “task” of becoming a “true atheist”. The “unique” is “the true atheist”.

Even more credulously than in relation to Feuerbach does he “handle” matters in relation to Saint Bruno or “criticism”. We shall gradually see all the things that he allows “criticism” to impose on him, how he puts himself under its police surveillance, how it dictates his mode of life, his “calling”. For the time being it suffices to mention as an example of his faith in criticism that on page 186 he treats “Criticism” and the “Mass” as two persons fighting against each other and “striving to free themselves from egoism”, and on page 187 he “accepts” both “for what they ... give themselves out to be”.

With the struggle against humane liberalism, the long struggle of the Old Testament, when man was a school-master of the unique, comes to an end; the time is fulfilled, and the gospel of grace and joy is ushered in for sinful humanity.

The struggle over “man” is the fulfilment of the word, as written in the twenty-first chapter of Cervantes, which deals with “the high adventure and rich prize of Mambrino’s helmet”. Our Sancho, who in everything imitates his former lord and present servant, “has sworn to win Mambrino’s helmet” — Man — for himself. After having during his various “campaigns”, sought in vain to find the longed-for helmet among the ancients and moderns, liberals and communists, “he caught sight of a man on a horse carrying something on his head which shone like gold”. And he said to Don Quixote-Szeliga: “If I am not mistaken, there is someone approaching us bearing on his head that helmet of Mambrino, about which I swore the oath you know of.” “Take good care of what you say, your worship, and even greater care of what you do,” replied Don Quixote, who by now has become wiser. “Tell me, can you not see that knight coming towards us on a dapple-grey steed with a gold helmet on his head?” — “What I see and perceive,” replies Don Quixote, “is nothing but a man on a grey ass like yours with something glittering on his head.” — “Why, that is Mambrino’s helmet,” says Sancho.

Meanwhile, at a gentle trot there approaches them Bruno, the holy barber, on his small ass, criticism, with his barber’s basis on his head; Saint Sancho sets on him lance in hand, Saint Bruno jumps from his ass, drops the basin (for which reason we saw him here at the Council without the basin) and rushes off across country, “for he’s the Critic himself”. Saint Sancho with great joy picks up the helmet of Mambrino, and to Don Quixote’s remark that it looks exactly like a barber’s basin he replies: “This famous, enchanted helmet, which has become ‘ghostly’, undoubtedly fell into the hands of a man who was unable to appreciate its worth, and so he melted down one half of it and hammered out the other half ‘n such a way that, as you say, it appears to be a barber’s basin; in any case, whatever it may look like to the vulgar eye, for me, since I know its value, that is a matter of indifference.”

“The second splendour, the second property, has now been won!” Now that he has gained his helmet, “man”, he puts himself in opposition to him, behaves towards him as towards his “most irreconcilable enemy” and declares outright to him (why, we shall see later) that he (Saint Sancho) is not “man”, but an “unhuman being, the inhuman”. In the guise of this “inhuman”, he now moves to Sierra-Morena, in order to prepare himself by acts of penitence for the splendour of the New Testament. There he strips himself “stark naked” (p. 184) in order to achieve his peculiarity and surpass what his predecessor in Cervantes does in chapter twenty-five:

“And hurriedly stripping off his breeches, he stood in his skin and his shirt. And then, without more ado, he took two goat leaps into the air burning head over heels, thereby revealing such things as caused his trusty armour-bearer to turn Rosinante aside, so as not to see them.”

The “inhuman” far surpasses its mundane prototype. It “resolutely turns its back on itself and thus also turns away from the disquieting critic,”, and “leaves him behind”. The “inhuman” then enters into an argument with criticism that has been “left behind”; it “despises itself”, it “conceives itself in comparison with another”, it “commands God”, it “seeks its better self outside itself”, it does penance for not yet being unique, it declares itself to be the unique, “the egoistical and the unique” — although it was hardly necessary for it to state this after having resolutely turned its back on itself. The “Inhuman” has accomplished all this by its own efforts (see Pfister, Geschichte der Teutschen) and now, purified and triumphant, it rides on its ass into the kingdom of the unique.

End of the Old Testament

The New Testament: “Ego”^[33][edit source]

1. The Economy of the New Testament[edit source]

Whereas in the Old Testament the object of our edification was unique” logic in the framework of the past, we are now confronted by the present time in the framework of “unique” logic. We have already thrown sufficient light on the “unique” in his manifold antediluvian “refractions” — as man, Caucasian Caucasian, perfect Christian, truth of humane liberalism, negative unity of realism and idealism, etc., etc. Along with the historical construction of the “ego”, the “ego” itself also collapses. This “ego”, the end of the historical construction, is no “corporeal” ego, carnally procreated by man and woman, which needs no construction in order to exist; it is an “ego” spiritually created by two categories, “idealism” and “realism,” a merely conceptual existence.

The New Testament, which has already been dissolved together with its premise, the Old Testament, possesses a domestic economy that is literally as wisely designed as that of the Old, namely the same “with various transformations”, as can be seen from the following table:

I. Peculiarity = the ancients, child, Negro, etc., in their truth, i.e., development from the “world of things” to one’s “own” outlook and taking possession of this world. Among the ancients this led to riddance of the world, among the moderns — riddance of spirit, among the liberals — riddance of the individual, among the communists — riddance of property, among the — humane [liberals] — riddance of God: hence it led in general to the category of riddance (freedom) as the goal. The negated category of riddance is peculiarity, which of course has no other content than this riddance. Peculiarity is the philosophically constructed quality of all the qualities of Stirner s individual.

II. The owner — as such Stirner has penetrated beyond the untruthfulness of the world of things and the world of spirit; hence the moderns, the phase of Christianity within the logical development: youth, Mongol. — Just as the moderns divide into the triply determined free ones, so the owner falls into three further determinations:

1. My power, corresponding to political liberalism, where the truth of right is brought to light and right as the power of “man” is resolved in power as the right of the “ego”. The struggle against the state as such.

2. My intercourse, corresponding to communism, whereby the truth of society is brought to light and society (in its forms of prison society, family, state, bourgeois society, etc.) as intercourse mediated by “man” is resolved in the intercourse of the “ego”.

3. My self-enjoyment, corresponding to critical, humane liberalism, in which the truth of criticism, the consumption, dissolution and truth of absolute self-consciousness, comes to light as self-consumption, and criticism as dissolution in the interests of man is transformed into dissolution in the interests of the “ego”.

The peculiarity of the individuals was resolved, as we have seen, in the universal category of peculiarity, which was the negation of riddance, of freedom in general. A description of the special qualities of the individual, therefore, can again only consist in the negation of this “freedom” in its three “refractions”; each of these negative freedoms is now converted by its negation into a positive quality. Obviously, just as in the Old Testament riddance of the world of things and the world of thoughts was already regarded as the acquisition of both these worlds, so here also it is a matter of course that this peculiarity or acquisition of things and thoughts is in its turn represented as perfect riddance.

The “ego” with its property, its world, consisting of the qualities just “pointed out”, is owner. As self-enjoying and self-consuming, it is the “ego” raised to the second power, the owner of the owner, it being as much rid of the owner as the owner belongs to it; the result is “absolute negativity” in its dual determination as indifference, “unconcern"’ and negative relation to itself, the owner. Its property in respect of the world and its riddance of the world is now transformed into this negative relation to itself, into this self-dissolution and self-ownership of the owner. The ego, thus determined, is —

III. The unique, who again, therefore, has no other content than that of owner plus the philosophical determination of the “negative relation to himself”. The profound Jacques pretends that there is nothing to say about this unique, because it is a corporeal, not constructed individual. But the matter here is rather the same as in the case of Hegel’s absolute idea at the end of the Logik and of absolute personality at the end of the Encyklopädie, about which there is likewise nothing to say because the construction contains everything that can be said about such constructed personalities. Hegel knows this and does not mind admitting it, whereas Stirner hypocritically maintains that his “unique” ‘s also something different from the constructed unique alone, but something that cannot be expressed, viz., a corporeal individual. This hypocritical appearance vanishes ‘f the thing is reversed, if the unique is defined as owner, and it is said of the owner that he has the universal category of peculiarity as his universal determination. This not only says everything that is “sayable” about the unique, but also what he is in general — minus the fantasy of Jacques le bonhomme about him.

“O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of the unique! How incomprehensible are his thoughts, and his ways past finding out! “ [Romans 11:33]
"Lo, these are parts of his ways: but how little a portion is heard of him!” (Job 26:14.)

2. The Phenomenology of the Egoist in Agreement with Himself, or the Theory of Justification[edit source]

As we have already seen in “The Economy of the Old Testament” and afterwards, Saint Sancho’s true egoist in agreement with himself must on no account be confused with the trivial, everyday egoist, the egoist in the ordinary sense”. Rather he has as his presupposition both this latter (the one in thrall to the world of things, child, Negro, ancient, etc.) and the selfless egoist (the one in thrall to the world of thoughts, youth, Mongol, modern, etc,). It is, however, part of the nature of the secrets of the unique that this antithesis and the negative unity which follows from it — the “egoist in agreement with himself” — can be examined only now, in the New Testament.

Since Saint Max wishes to present the “true egoist” as something quite new, as the goal of all preceding history, he must, on the one hand, prove to the selfless, the advocates of dévoûment, that they are egoists against their will, and he must prove to the egoists in the ordinary sense that they are selfless, that they are not true, holy, egoists. — Let us begin with the first, with the selfless.

We have already seen countless times that in the world of Jacques le bonhomme everyone is obsessed by the holy. “Nevertheless it makes a difference” whether “one is educated or uneducated”. The educated, who are occupied with pure thought, confront us here as “obsessed” by the holy par excellence. They are the “selfless” in their practical guise.

“Who then is selfless? Completely” (!) “most” (!!) “likely” (!!!) “he who stakes everything else on one thing, one aim, one purpose, one passion.... He is ruled by a passion to which he sacrifices all others. And are these selfless not selfish, perhaps? Since they possess only a single ruling passion, they are concerned only with a single satisfaction, but the more ardently oil that account. All their deeds and actions are egoistic, but it is a one-sided, concealed, narrow egoism; it is — obsession” (p. 99).

Hence, according to Saint Sancho, they possess only a single ruling passion; ought they to be concerned also with the passions which not they, but others possess, in order to rise to an all-round, unconcealed, unrestricted egoism, in order to correspond to this alien scale of “holy” egoism? In this passage are incidentally introduced also the “miser” and the “pleasure-seeker” probably because Stirner thinks that he seeks “pleasure” as such, holy pleasure, and not all sorts of real pleasures), as also “Robespierre, for example, Saint-Just, and so on “ (p. 100) as examples of “selfless, obsessed egoists”. “From a certain moral point of view it is argued” (i.e., our holy “egoist in agreement with himself “ argues from his own point of view in extreme disagreement with himself) “approximately as follows":

“But if I sacrifice other passions to one passion, still do not thereby sacrifice myself to this passion, and I do not sacrifice anything thanks to which I am truly I myself” (p. 386).

Saint Max is compelled by these two propositions “in disagreement with each other” to make the “paltry” distinction that one may well sacrifice six “for example”, or seven, “and so on”, passions to a single other passion without ceasing to be “truly I myself”, but by no means ten passions, or a still greater number. Of course, neither Robespierre nor Saint-Just was “truly I myself”, Just as neither was truly “man”, but they were truly Robespierre and Saint-Just, those unique, incomparable individuals.

The trick of proving to the “selfless” that they are egoists is an old dodge, sufficiently exploited already by Helvétius and Bentham. Saint Sancho’s “own” trick consists in the transformation of “egoists in the ordinary sense”, the bourgeois, into non-egoists. Helvétius and Bentham, at any rate, prove to the bourgeois that by their narrow-mindedness they in practice harm themselves, but Saint Max’s “ own trick consists in proving that they do not correspond to the “ideal”, the “concept”, the essence”, the “calling”, etc., of the egoist and that their attitude towards themselves is not that of absolute negation. Here again he has ‘n mind only his German petty bourgeois. Let us point out, incidentally, that whereas on page 99 our saint makes the “miser” figure as a “selfless egoist”, on page 78, on the other hand, the “avaricious one” is included among “egoists in the ordinary sense”, among the “impure, unholy”.

This second class of the hitherto existing egoists is defined on page 99 as follows:

“These people” (the bourgeois) “are therefore not selfless, not inspired, not ideal, not consistent, not enthusiasts; they are egoists in the ordinary sense, selfish people, thinking of their own advantage, sober, calculating, etc.”

Since “the book” is not all of a piece, we have already had occasion, in connection with “whimsy” and “political liberalism”, to see how Stirner achieves the trick of transforming the bourgeois into non-egoists, chiefly owing to his great ignorance of real people and conditions. This same ignorance serves him here as a lever.

“This” (i.e., Stirner’s fantasy about unselfishness) “is repugnant to the stubborn brain of worldly man but for thousands of years he at least succumbed so far that he had to bend his obstinate neck and worship higher powers” (p. 104). The egoists in the ordinary sense “behave half clerically and half in a worldly way, they serve both God and Mammon” (p. 105).

We learn on page 78: “The Mammon of heaven and the God of the world both demand precisely the same degree of self-denial”, hence it is impossible to understand how self-denial for Mammon and self-denial for God can be opposed to each other as “worldly” and “clerical”. On page 105-106, Jacques le bonhomme asks himself:

“How does it happen, then, that the egoism of those who assert their personal interest nevertheless constantly succumbs to a clerical or school-masterly, i.e., an ideal, interest?”

(Here, one must in passing “point out” that in this passage the bourgeois are depicted as representatives of personal interests.) It happens because:

“Their personality seems to them too small, too unimportant — as indeed it is — to lay claim to everything and be able to assert itself fully. A sure sign of this is the fact that they divide themselves into two persons, an eternal and a temporal; on Sundays they take care of the eternal aspect and on weekdays the temporal. They have the priest within them, therefore they cannot get rid of him.”

Sancho experiences some scruples here; he asks anxiously whether ‘,the same thing will happen” to peculiarity, the egoism in the extraordinary sense.

We shall see that it is not without grounds that this anxious question is asked. Before the cock has crowed twice, Saint Jacob (Jacques le bonhomme) will have “denied” himself thrice. [cf. Mark 14: 30]

He discovers to his great displeasure that the two sides prominently appearing in history, the private interest of individuals and the so-called general interest, always accompany each other. As usual, he discovers this in a false form, in its holy form, from the aspect of ideal interests, of the holy, of illusion. He asks: how is it that the ordinary egoists, the representatives of personal interests, are at the same time dominated by general interests, by school-masters, by the hierarchy? His reply to the question is to the effect that the bourgeois, etc., “seem to themselves too small”, and he discovers a “sure sign” of this in the fact that they behave in a religious way, i.e., that their personality is divided into a temporal and an eternal one, that is to say, he explains their religious behaviour by their religious behaviour, after first transforming the struggle between general and personal interests into a mirror image of the struggle, into a simple reflection inside religious fantasy.

How the matter stands as regards the domination of the ideal, see above in the section on hierarchy.

If Sancho’s question is translated from its high-flown form into everyday language, then “it now reads":

— On Class Interests —

How is it that personal interests always develop, against the will of individuals, into class interests, into common interests which acquire independent existence in relation to the individual persons, and in their independence assume the form of general interests? How is it that as such they come into contradiction with the actual individuals and in this contradiction, by which they are defined as general interests, they can be conceived by consciousness as ideal and even as religious, holy interests? How is it that in this process of private interests acquiring independent existence as class interests the personal behaviour of the individual is bound to be objectified [sich versachlichen], estranged [sich entfremden], and at the same time exists as a power independent of him and without him, created by intercourse, and is transformed into social relations, into a series of powers which determine and subordinate the individual, and which, therefore, appear in the imagination as “holy” powers? Had Sancho understood the fact that within the framework of definite modes of production, which, of course, are not dependent on the will, alien [fremde] practical forces, which are independent not only of isolated individuals but even of all of them together, always come to stand above people — then he could be fairly indifferent as to whether this fact is presented in a religious form or distorted in the fancy of the egoist, above whom everything is placed in imagination, in such a way that he places nothing above himself. Sancho would then have descended from the realm of speculation into the realm of reality, from what people fancy to what they actually are, from what they imagine to how they act and are bound to act in definite circumstances. What seems to him a product of thought, he would have understood to be a product of life. He would not then have arrived at the absurdity worthy of him — of explaining the division between personal and general interests by saying that people imagine this division also in a religious way and seem to themselves to be such and such, which is, however, only another word for “imagining”.

Incidentally, even in the banal, petty-bourgeois German form in which Sancho perceives the contradiction of personal and general interests, he should have realised that individuals have always started out from themselves, and could not do otherwise, and that therefore the two aspects he noted are aspects of the personal development of individuals; both are equally engendered by the empirical conditions under which the individuals live, both are only expressions of one and the same personal development of people and are therefore only in seeming contradiction to each other. As regards the position — determined by the special circumstances of development and by division of labour — which falls to the lot of the given individual, whether he represents to a greater extent one or the other aspect of the antithesis, whether he appears more as an egoist or more as selfless — that was a quite subordinate question, which could only acquire any interest at all if it were raised in definite epochs of history in relation to definite individuals. Otherwise this question could only lead to morally false, charlatan phrases. But as a dogmatist Sancho falls into error here and finds no other way out than by declaring that the Sancho Panzas and Don Quixotes are born such, and that then the Don Quixotes stuff all kinds of nonsense into the heads of the Sanchos; as a dogmatist he seizes on one aspect, conceived in a school-masterly manner, declares it to be characteristic of individuals as such, and expresses his aversion to the other aspect. Therefore, too, as a dogmatist, the other aspect appears to him partly as a mere state of mind, dévoûment, partly as a mere “principle”, and not as a relation necessarily arising from the preceding natural mode of life of individuals. One has, therefore, only to “get this principle out of one’s head”, although, according to Sancho’s ideology, it creates all kinds of empirical things. Thus, for example, on page 180 ,social life, all sociability, all fraternity and all that ... was created by the life principles or social principle”. It is better the other way round: life created the principle.

— On Communism and Morality —

Communism is quite incomprehensible to our saint because the communists do not oppose egoism to selflessness or selflessness to egoism, nor do they express this contradiction theoretically either in its sentimental or ‘it its high-flown ideological form; they rather demonstrate its material source, with which it disappears of itself. The communists do not preach morality at all, as Stirner does so extensively. They do not put to people the moral demand: love one another, do not be egoists, etc.; on the contrary, they are very well aware that egoism, just as much as selflessness, is in definite circumstances a necessary form of the self-assertion of individuals. Hence, the communists by no means want, as Saint Max believes, and as his loyal Dottore Graziano (Arnold Ruge) repeats after him (for which Saint Max calls him “an unusually cunning and politic mind”, Wigand, p. 192), to do away with the “private individual” for the sake of the “general”, selfless man. That is a figment of the imagination concerning which both of them could already have found the necessary explanation in the Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher. Communist theoreticians, the only communists who have time to devote to the study of history, are distinguished precisely by the fact that they alone have discovered that throughout history the “general interest” is created by individuals who are defined as “private persons”. They know that this contradiction is only a seeming one because one side of it, what is called the “general interest”, is constantly being produced by the other side, private interest, and in relation to the latter it is by no means an independent force with an independent history — so that this contradiction is in practice constantly destroyed and reproduced. Hence it is not a question of the Hegelian “negative unity” of two sides of a contradiction, but of the materially determined destruction of the preceding materially determined mode of life of individuals, with the disappearance of which this contradiction together with its unity also disappears.

Thus we see how the “egoist in agreement with himself” as opposed to the “egoist in the ordinary sense” and the “selfless egoist”, is based from the outset on an illusion about both of these and about the real relations of real people. The representative of personal interests is merely an “egoist in the ordinary sense” because of his necessary contradiction to communal interests which, within the existing mode of production and intercourse, are given an independent existence as general interests and are conceived and vindicated in the form of ideal interests. The representative of the interests of the community is merely “selfless” because of his opposition to personal interests, fixed as private interests, and because the interests of the community are defined as general and ideal interests.

Both the “selfless egoist” and the “egoist in the ordinary sense” coincide, in the final analysis, in self-denial.

Page 78: “Thus, self-denial is common to both the holy and unholy, the pure and impure: the impure denies all better feelings, all shame, even natural timidity, and follows only the desire which rules him. The pure renounces his natural relation to the world.... Impelled by the thirst for money, the avaricious person denies all promptings of conscience, all sense of honour, all soft-heartedness and pity; he is blind to all consideration, his desire drives him on. The holy person acts similarly: he makes himself a laughing-stock in the eyes of the world, he is ‘hard-hearted’ and ‘severely just’, for he is carried away by his longing.”

The “avaricious man”, shown here as an impure, unholy egoist, hence as an egoist in the ordinary sense, is nothing but a figure on whom moral readers for children and novels dilate, but that actually occurs only as an exception, and is by no means the representative of the avaricious bourgeois. The latter, on the contrary, have no need to deny the “promptings of conscience”, “the sense of honour”, etc., or to restrict themselves to the one passion of avarice alone. On the contrary, their avarice engenders a series of other passions — political, etc. — the satisfaction of which the bourgeois on no account sacrifice. Without going more deeply into this matter, let us at once turn to Stirner’s “self-denial”. For the self which denies itself, Saint Max here substitutes a different self which exists only in Saint Max’s imagination. He makes the “impure” sacrifice general qualities such as “better feelings”, “shame”, “timidity”, “sense of honour”, etc., and does not at all ask whether the impure actually possesses these properties. As if the “impure” is necessarily bound to possess all these qualities! But even if the “impure” did possess all of them, the sacrifice of these qualities would still be no self-denial, but only confirm the fact — which has to be justified even in morality “in agreement with itself” — that for the sake of one passion several others are sacrificed. And, finally, according to this theory, everything that Sancho does or does not do is “self-denial”. He may or may not act in a particular manner ...

[there is a gap here. An extant page, which has been crossed out and greatly damaged, contains the following:] he is an egoist, his own self-denial. If he pursues an interest he denies the indifference to this interest, if he does something he denies idleness. Nothing is easier for Sancho than to prove to the “egoist in the ordinary sense — his stumbling-block-that he always denies himself, because he always denies the opposite of what he does, and never denies his real interest.
In accordance with his theory of self-denial Sancho can exclaim on page 80: “Is perhaps unselfishness unreal and non-existent? On the contrary, nothing is more common!”
We are really very happy [about the “unselfishness"] of the consciousness of the German petty [bourgeois]....
He immediately gives a good example of this unselfishness by [adducing] Orphanage-F[rancke ^[34] O'Connell, Saint Boniface, Robespierre, Theodor Körner ... ].
O'Connell [... ], every [child] in Britain knows this. Only in Germany, and particularly in Berlin, is it still possible to believe that O'Connell is “unselfish”. O'Connell, who “tirelessly works” to place his illegitimate children and to enlarge his fortune, who has not for love exchanged his lucrative legal practice (£10,000 per annum) for the even more lucrative job of an agitator (£20,000-30,000 per annum) (especially lucrative in Ireland, where he has no competition); O'Connell who, acting as middleman a “hard-heartedly” exploits the Irish peasants making them live with their pigs while he, King Dan, holds court in princely style in his palace in Merrion Square and at the same time laments continually over the misery of these peasants, “for he is carried away by his longing”; O'Connell, who always pushes the movement just as far as is necessary to secure his national tribute and his position as chief, and who every year after collecting the tribute gives up all agitation in order to pamper himself on his estate at Derrynane. Because of his legal charlatanism carried on over many years and his exceedingly brazen exploitation of every movement in which he participated, O'Connell is regarded with contempt even by the English bourgeoisie, despite his usefulness.
It is moreover obvious that Saint Max, the discoverer of true egoism, is strongly interested in proving that unselfishness has hitherto ruled the world. Therefore he puts forward the great proposition (Wigand, p. 165) that the world was “not egoistic for millennia”. At most he admits that from time to time the “egoist” appeared as Stirner’s forerunner and “ruined nations”.

[III. Consciousness]

Although on page 420 Saint Max now says:

“Over the portals of our [epoch] are written not the words ... ‘know thyself’, [but] turn yourself to account"’ [Verwerte Dich]

(here our school-master again transforms the actual turning to account which he finds in existence into a moral precept about turning to account), nevertheless [for the] “egoist in the ordinary [sense’ instead of for] the former “selfless egoist”, “the [Apollonic” maxim ^[35] should read:

“Only know yourselves], only know what [you] are in reality and give up your foolish endeavour to be something different from what you are!” “For": “This leads to the phenomenon of deceived egoism, in which I satisfy not myself, but] only one [of my desires, e.] g., the [thirst for] happiness. [ — All] your deeds and [actions are secret], concealed ... [egoism,] unconscious egoism, [but] for that very reason not egoism, but slavery, service, self-denial. You are egoists and at the same time not egoists, inasmuch as you deny egoism” (p. 217).

“No sheep, no dog, endeavours to become a real” egoist (p. 443);

no animal” calls to the others: “Only know yourselves, only know what you are in reality”. — “It is your nature to be” egoistical, “you are” egoistical “natures, i. e.”, egoists. “But precisely because you are that already, you have no need to become so” (ibid.). To what you are belongs also your consciousness, and since you are egoists you possess also the consciousness corresponding to your egoism, and therefore there is no reason at all for paying the slightest heed to Stirner’s moral preaching to look into your heart and do penance.

Here again Stirner exploits the old philosophical device to which we shall return later. The philosopher does not say directly: You are not people. [He says:] You have always been people, but you were not conscious of what you were, and for that very reason you were not in reality True People. Therefore your appearance was not appropriate to your essence. You were people and you were not people.

In a roundabout way the philosopher here admits that a definite consciousness is appropriate to definite people and definite circumstances. But at the same time he imagines that his moral demand to people — the demand that they should change their consciousness — will bring about this altered consciousness, and in people who have changed owing to changed empirical conditions and who, of course, now also possess a different consciousness, he sees nothing but a changed [consciousness]. — It is just the same [with the consciousness for which you are secretly] longing; [in regard to this] you are [secret, unconscious] egoists — i.e., you are really egoists, insofar as you are unconscious, but you are non-egoists, insofar as you are conscious. Or: at the root of your present [consciousness lies] a definite being, which is not the [being] which I demand; your consciousness is the consciousness of the egoist such as he should not [be], and therefore it shows that you yourselves are egoists such as egoists should not be — or it shows that you should be different from what you really are. This entire separation of consciousness from the individuals who are its basis and from their actual conditions, this notion that the egoist of present-day bourgeois society does not possess the consciousness corresponding to his egoism, is merely an old philosophical fad that Jacques le bonhomme here credulously accepts and copies. Let us deal with Stirner’s “touching example” of the avaricious person. He wants to persuade this avaricious person, who is not an “avaricious person” in general, but the avaricious “Tom or Dick”; a quite individually defined, “unique” avaricious person, whose avarice is not the category of “avarice” (an abstraction of Saint Max’s from his all-embracing, complex, “unique” manifestation of life) and “does not depend on the heading under which other people” (for example, Saint Max) “classify it” — he wants to persuade this avaricious person by moral exhortations that he “is satisfying not himself but one of his desires”. But “you are you only for a [moment], only as a momentary being are you real. What [is separated from you,] from the ‘momentary being” is something absolutely higher, [e.g., money. But whether] “for you” money is “rather” [a higher pleasure], whether it is for you [something “absolutely higher” or] not [... ?] perhaps ["deny"] myself [? — He] finds that O am possessed [by avarice] day and night, [but] this is so only in his reflection. It is he who makes “day and night” out of the many moments in which I am always the momentary being, always myself, always real, just as he alone embraces in one moral judgment the different moments of my manifestation of life and asserts that they are the satisfaction of avarice. When Saint Max announces that I am satisfying only one of my desires, and not myself, he puts me as a complete and whole being in opposition to me myself. “And in what does this complete and whole being consist? It is certainly not your Momentary being, not what you are at the present moment” — hence, according to Saint Max himself, it consists in the holy “being” (Wigand, p. 171). When “Stirner” says that I must change my consciousness, then I know for my part that my momentary consciousness also belongs to my momentary being, and Saint Max, by disputing that I have this consciousness, attacks as a covert moralist my whole mode of life. [III (Consciousness)] And then — “do you exist only when you think about yourself, do you exist only owing to self-consciousness?” (Wigand, pp. 157-158.) How can I be anything but an egoist? How can Stirner, for example, be anything but an egoist — whether he denies egoism or not? “You are egoists and you are not egoists, inasmuch as you deny egoism,” — that is what you preach.

Innocent, “deceived”, “unavowed” school-master! Things are just the reverse. We egoists in the ordinary sense, we bourgeois, know quite well: Charité bien ordonnée commence par soi-même, [charity begins at home] and we have long had the motto: love thy neighbour as thyself, interpreted lit the sense that each is his own neighbour. But we deny that we are heartless egoists, exploiters, ordinary egoists, whose hearts can not be lifted up to the exalted feeling of making the interests of their fellow-men their own — which, between ourselves, only means that we declare our interests to be the interests of our fellow-men. [You] deny the “ordinary” [egoism of the] unique egoist [only because] you ["deny]” your ["natural] relations to the [world]”. Hence you do not understand why we bring practical egoism to perfection precisely by denying the phraseology of egoism — we who are concerned with realising real egoistical interests, not the holy interest of egoism. Incidentally, it could be foreseen — and here the bourgeois coolly turns his back on Saint Max — that you German school-masters, if you once took up the defence of egoism, would proclaim not real, “mundane and plainly evident” egoism (“the book”, p. 455), that is to say, “not what is called” egoism, but egoism in the extraordinary, school-masterly sense, philosophical or vagabond egoism.

The egoist in the extraordinary sense, therefore, is “only now discovered”. “Let us examine this new discovery more closely” (p. 11).

From what has been just said it is already clear that the egoists who existed till now have only to change their consciousness in order to become egoists in the extraordinary sense, hence that the egoist in agreement with himself is distinguished from the previous type only by consciousness, i.e., only as a learned man, as a philosopher. It further follows from the whole historical outlook of Saint Max that, because the former egoists were ruled only by the “holy”, the true egoist has to fight only against the “holy”. “Unique” history has shown us how Saint Max transformed historical conditions into ideas, and then the egoist into a sinner against these ideas; how every egoistic manifestation was transformed into a sin [against these] ideas, [the power of] the privileged into a sin [against the ideal of equality, into the sin of despotism. [Concerning the] idea of freedom [of competition,] therefore, it could be [said in “the book"] that [private property is regarded] by him [(p. 155) as"] the personal” [...] great, [...] [selfless] egoists [...] essential arid invincible [...] only to be fought by transforming them into something holy and then asserting that he abolishes the holiness in them, i.e., his holy idea about them, [i.e.,] abolishes them only insofar as they exist in him as a holy one.

[II (Creator and Creation)]

Page 50: “How you are at each moment you are as your creation, and it is precisely in this creation that you do not want to lose yourself, the creator. You yourself are a higher being than yourself, i.e., you are not merely a creation, but likewise a creator; and it is this that you fail to recognise as an involuntary egoist, and for that reason the higher being is something foreign to you.”

In a somewhat different variation, this same wisdom is stated on page 239 of “the book":

“The species is nothing” (later it becomes all sorts of things, see “Self-Enjoyment”), land when the individual rises above the limitations of his individuality, it is precisely here that he himself appears as an individual; he exists only by raising himself, he exists only by not remaining what he is, otherwise he would be done for, dead.”

In relation to these propositions, to his “creation”, Stirner at once begins to behave as “creator”, “by no means losing himself in them":

“You are only for a moment, only as a momentary being are you real.... At each moment I am wholly what I am ... what is separated from you, the momentary being”, is “something absolutely higher” ... (Wigand, p. 170); arid, on page 171 (ibid.), “your being” is defined as momentary being”.

Whereas lit “the book” Saint Max says that besides a momentary being he has also another, higher being, in the “Apologetical Commentary” “the momentary being” [of his] individual is equated with his “complete [and whole] being”, and every [being] as a “momentary being” is transformed [into an] “absolutely higher being”. In “the book” therefore he is, at every moment, a higher being than what he is at that moment, whereas in the Commentary”, everything that he is not directly at a given moment is defined as an absolutely higher being”, a holy, being. — And in contrast to all this division we read on page 200 of “the book":

“I know nothing about a division into an ‘imperfect’ and a ‘perfect’ ego.”

“The egoist in agreement with himself” needs no longer sacrifice himself to something higher, since in his own eyes he is himself this higher being, and he transfers this schism between a “higher” and a “lower being” into himself. So, in fact (Saint Sancho contra Feuerbach, “the book”, p. 243), “the highest being has undergone nothing but a metamorphosis”. The true egoism of Saint Max consists in an egoistic attitude to real egoism, to himself, as he is “at each moment”. This egoistic attitude to egoism is selflessness. From this aspect Saint Max as a creation is an egoist in the ordinary sense; as creator he is a selfless egoist. We shall also become acquainted with the opposite aspect, for both these aspects prove to be genuine determinations of reflection since they undergo absolute dialectics in which each of them is the opposite of itself.

Before entering more deeply into this mystery in its esoteric form, one has to observe some of [its arduous] life battles.

[on pages 82, 83 Stirner achieves the feat of] bringing the most general quality, [the egoist,] [into agreement] with himself as creator, [from the standpoint of the world] of spirit:

["Christianity aimed] at [delivering us from natural determination (determination through nature), from desires as a driving force, it consequently wished that man should not allow himself to be] determined [by his desires. This does not mean that] he [should have] no [desires], but that [desires] should not possess [him,] that [they] should not become fixed, unconquerable, ineradicable. Could we not apply these machinations of Christianity against desires to its own precept, that we should be determined by the spirit ... ? ... Then this would signify the dissolution of spirit, the dissolution of all thoughts. As one ought to have said there ... so one would have to say now: We should indeed possess spirit, but spirit should not possess us.”

“And they that are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts” (Galatians 5:24) — thus, according to Stirner, they deal with their crucified affections and lusts like true owners. He accepts Christianity in instalments, but will not let matters rest at the crucified flesh alone, wanting to crucify his spirit as well, consequently, the “whole fellow”.

— Human Nature —

The only reason why Christianity wanted to free us from the domination of the flesh and “desires as a driving force” was because it regarded our flesh, our desires as something foreign to us; it wanted to free us from determination by nature only because it regarded our own nature as not belonging to us. For if I myself am not nature, if my natural desires, my whole natural character, do not belong to myself — and this is the doctrine of Christianity — then all determination by nature — whether due to my own natural character or to what is known as external nature — seems to me a determination by something foreign, a fetter, compulsion used against me, heteronomy as opposed to autonomy of the spirit. Stirner accepts this Christian dialectic without examining it and then applies it to our spirit. Incidentally, Christianity has indeed never succeeded in freeing us from the domination of desires, even in that juste milieu sense foisted on it by Saint Max; it does not go beyond mere moral injunctions, which remain ineffective in real life. Stirner takes moral injunctions for real deeds and supplements them with the further categorical imperative: “We should indeed possess spirit, but spirit should not possess us” — and consequently all his egoism in agreement with itself is reduced “on closer examination”, as Hegel would say, to a moral philosophy that is as delightful as it is edifying and contemplative.

— On Desire and the Conditions of Life —

Whether a desire becomes fixed or not, i.e., whether it obtains exclusive [power over us] — which, however, does [not] exclude [further progress] — depends on whether material circumstances, “bad” mundane conditions permit the normal satisfaction of this desire and, on the other hand, the development of a totality of desires. This latter depends, in turn, on whether we live in circumstances that allow all-round activity and thereby the full development of all our potentialities. On the actual conditions, and the possibility of development they give each individual, depends also whether thoughts become fixed or not — just as, for example, the fixed ideas of the German philosophers, these “victims of society”, qui nous font pitié [for whom we feel pity] are inseparable from the German ‘conditions. Incidentally, in Stirner the domination of desires is a mere phrase, the imprint of the absolute saint. Thus, still keeping to the “touching example” of the avaricious person, we read:

“An avaricious person is not an owner, but a servant, and he can do nothing for his own sake without at the same time doing it for the sake of his master” (p. 400).

No one can do anything without at the same time doing it for the sake of one or other of his needs and for the sake of the organ of this need — for Stirner this means that this need and its organ are made into a master over him, just as earlier he made the means for satisfying a need (cf. the. sections on political liberalism and communism) into a master over him. Stirner cannot eat without at the same time eating for the sake of his stomach. If the worldly conditions prevent him from satisfying his stomach, then his stomach becomes a master over him, the desire to eat becomes a fixed desire, and the thought of eating becomes a fixed idea — which at the same time gives him an example of the influence of world conditions in fixing his desires and ideas. Sancho’s “revolt” against the fixation of desires and thoughts is thus reduced to an impotent moral injunction about self-control and provides new evidence that he merely gives an ideologically high-sounding expression to the most trivial sentiments of the petty bourgeois.

Thus, in this first example he fights, on the one hand, against his carnal desires, and on the other against his spiritual thoughts — on the one hand against his flesh, on the other against his spirit — when they, his creations, want to become independent of him, their creator. How our saint conducts this struggle, how he behaves as creator towards his creation, we shall now see.

In the Christian “in the ordinary sense”, in the chrétien “simple”, to use Fourier’s expression,

“spirit has undivided power and pays no heed to any persuasion of the ‘flesh’. However, only through the ‘flesh’ can I break the tyranny of the spirit; for only when man perceives also his flesh does he perceive himself wholly, and only when he perceives himself wholly does he become perceptive or rational.... But as soon as the flesh speaks and — as cannot be otherwise — in a passionate tone... then he” (the chrétien simple) “believes he hears devil voices, voices against the spirit... and with good reason comes out passionately against them. He would not he a Christian if he were prepared to tolerate them” (p. 83).

Hence, when his spirit wishes to acquire independence in relation to him, Saint Max calls his flesh to his aid, and when his flesh becomes rebellious, he remembers that he is also spirit. What the Christian does in one direction, Saint Max does in both. He is the chrétien “composé”, he once again reveals himself as the perfect Christian.

Here, in this example, Saint Max, as spirit, does not appear as the creator of his flesh and vice versa; he finds his flesh and his spirit both present, and only when one side rebels does he remember that he has also the other, and asserts this other side, as his true ego, against it. Here, therefore, Saint Max is creator only insofar as he is one who is “also-otherwise-determined”, insofar as he possesses yet another quality besides that which it just suits him to subsume under the category of “creation”. His entire creative activity consists here in the good resolution to perceive himself, and indeed to perceive himself entirely or be rational, [Here, therefore, Saint Max completely justifies Feuerbach’s “touching example” of the hetaera and the beloved. In the first case, a man “perceives” only his flesh or only her flesh, in the second he perceives himself entirely or her entirely. See Wigand, pp. 170, 171.] to perceive himself as a “complete, entire being”, as a being different from “his momentary being”, and even in direct contradiction to the kind of being he is “momentarily”.

[Let us now turn to one of the “arduous] life battles” [of our saint]:

[Pages 80, 81: “My zeal] need not [be less than the] most fanatical, [but at the same] time [I remain] towards [it cold as ice, sceptical], and its [most irreconcilable enemy;] I remain [its judge, for I am its] owner.”

[If one desires to] give [meaning] to what Saint [Sancho] says about himself, then it amounts to this: his creative activity here is limited to the fact that in his zeal he preserves the consciousness of his zeal, that he reflects on it, that he adopts the attitude of the reflecting ego to himself as the real ego. It is to consciousness that he arbitrarily gives the name “creator”. He is “creator” only insofar as he possesses consciousness.

“Thereupon, you forget yourself in sweet self-oblivion.... But do you exist only when you think of yourself, and do you vanish when you forget yourself? Who does not forget himself at every instant, who does not lose sight of himself a thousand times an hour?” (Wigand, pp. 157, 158).

This, of course, Sancho cannot forgive his “self-oblivion” and therefore “remains at the same time its most irreconcilable enemy”.

Saint Max, the creation, burns with immense zeal at the very time when Saint Max, the creator, has already risen above his zeal by means of reflection; or the real Saint Max burns with zeal, and the reflecting Saint Max imagines that he has risen above this zeal. This rising in reflection above what he actually is, is now amusingly and adventurously described in the phrases of a novel to the effect that he allows his zeal to remain in existence, i.e., he does not draw any serious consequences from his hostility to it, but his attitude towards it is “cold as ice”, “sceptical” and that of its “most irreconcilable enemy”.

Insofar as Saint Max burns with zeal, i.e., insofar as zeal is his true quality, his attitude to it is not that of creator; and insofar as his attitude is that of creator, he does not really burn with zeal, zeal is foreign to him, not a quality of him. So long as he burns with zeal he is not the owner of zeal, and as soon as he becomes the owner, he ceases to burn with zeal. As an aggregate complex, he is at every instant, in the capacity of creator and owner, the sum total of all his qualities, with the exception of the one quality which he puts in opposition to himself, the embodiment of all the others, as creation and property — so that precisely that quality which he stresses as his own is always foreign to him.

No matter how extravagant Saint Max’s true story of his heroic exploits within himself, in his own consciousness, may sound, it is nevertheless an acknowledged fact that there do exist reflecting individuals, who imagine that in and through reflection they have risen above everything, because in actual fact they never go beyond reflection.

This trick — of declaring oneself against some definite quality as being someone who is also — otherwise-determined, namely, in the present example as being the possessor of reflection directed towards the opposite — this trick can be applied with the necessary variations to any quality you choose. For example, my indifference need be no less than that 6f the most blasé person; but at the same time I remain towards it extremely ardent, sceptical and its most irreconcilable enemy, etc.

[It should] not be forgotten that [the aggregate] complex of all his [qualities, the owner] — in which capacity [Saint] Sancho [by reflecting opposes one particular] quality — is in this [case nothing but Sancho’s] simple [reflection about this] one quality, [which he has] transformed [into his ego by] putting forward, instead of the whole [complex, one] merely reflecting [quality and] putting forward in opposition to each of his qualities [and to] the series [merely the one] quality of reflection, an ego, and himself as the imagined ego.

Now he himself gives expression to this hostile attitude to himself, this solemn parody of Bentham’s book-keeping ^[36] of his own interests and qualities.

Page 188: “An interest, no matter towards what end it may be directed, acquires a slave in the shape of myself, if I am unable to rid myself of it; it is no longer my property, but I am its property. Let us, therefore, accept the directive of criticism that we should feel happy only in dissolution.”

“We!” — Who are “We?” It never occurs to “us” to “accept” the “directive of criticism”. — Thus Saint Max, who for the moment is under the police surveillance of “criticism”, here demands “the same well-being for all”, “equal well-being for all in one and the same [respect]”, “the direct tyrannical domination of religion”.

His interestedness in the extraordinary sense is here revealed as a heavenly disinterestedness.

Incidentally, there is no need here to deal at length with the fact that in existing society it does not at all depend on Saint Sancho whether an “interest” “acquires a slave in the shape of himself” and whether “he is unable to rid himself of it”. The fixation of interests through division of labour and class relations is far more obvious than the fixation of “desires” and “thoughts”.

In order to outbid critical criticism, our saint should at least have gone as far as the dissolution of dissolution, for otherwise dissolution becomes an interest which he cannot get rid of, which in him acquires a slave. Dissolution is no longer his property, but he is the property of dissolution. Had he wanted to be consistent in the example just given, [he should] [have treated his zeal against his] own “zeal” as [an “interest"] and [behaved] towards it [as an “irreconcilable] enemy”. [But he should have] also considered his ["ice-cold” disinterestedness] in relation to his ["ice-cold” zeal] and become [just as wholly “ice-cold"] and thereby, [obviously, he would have spared] his original ["interest"] and hence himself the “temptation” to turn [in a circle] on the [heel] of speculation. — Instead, he cheerfully continues (ibid.):

I shall only take care to safeguard my own property for myself” (i.e., to safeguard myself from my property) “and, in order to safeguard it, I take it back into myself at any time, I destroy in it any inclination towards independence and absorb it before it becomes fixed and can become a fixed idea or passion.”

How does Stirner “absorb” the persons who are his property!

Stirner has just allowed himself to be given a “vocation” by “criticism”. He asserts that he at once absorbs this “vocation” again, by saying on page 189:

“I do this, however, not for the sake of my human vocation, but because I call on myself to do so.”

If I do not call on myself to do so, I am, as we have just heard, a slave, not an owner, not a true egoist, I do not behave to myself as creator, as I should do as a true egoist; therefore, insofar as a person wants to be a true egoist, he must call himself to this vocation given him by “criticism”. Thus, it is a universal vocation, a vocation for all, not merely his vocation, but also his vocation.

On the other hand, the true egoist appears here as an ideal which is unattainable by the majority of individuals, for (p. 434) “innately limited intellects unquestionably form the most numerous class of mankind” — and how could these “limited intellects” be able to penetrate the mystery of unlimited absorption of oneself and the world.

Incidentally, all these terrible expressions — to destroy, to absorb etc. — are merely a new variation of the above-mentioned “ice-cold, most irreconcilable enemy”.

Now, at last, we are put in a position to obtain an insight into Stirner’s objections to communism. They were. nothing but a preliminary, concealed legitimisation of his egoism in agreement with itself, in which these objections are resurrected in the flesh. The “equal well-being of all in one and the same respect” is resurrected in the demand that “we should [only] feel happy in [dissolution”. “Care]” is resurrected [in the form of the unique “care]” to secure [one’s ego] [as one’s property]; [but “with the passage of time]” ["care"] again arises as to “how” [one can arrive] at a [unity — ] viz., unity [of creator and creation.] And, finally, humanism re[-appears, which in the form of the true] egoist confronts empirical individuals as an unattainable ideal. Hence page 117 of “the book” should read as follows: Egoism in agreement with itself really endeavours to transform every man into a “secret police state”. The spy and sleuth “reflection” keeps a strict eye on every impulse of spirit and body, and every deed and thought, every manifestation of life is, for him, a matter of reflection, i.e., a police matter. It is this dismemberment of man into “natural instinct” and “reflection” (the inner plebeian-creation, and the internal police — creator) which constitutes the egoist in agreement with himself.

Hess (Die letzten Philosophen, p. 26) reproached our saint:

“He is constantly under the secret police surveillance of his critical conscience.... He has not forgotten the ‘directive of criticism ... to feel happy only in dissolution..... The egoist — his critical conscience is always reminding him — should never become so interested in anything as to devote himself entirely to his subject”, and so on.

Saint Max “empowers himself” to answer as follows:

When “Hess says of Stirner that he is constantly, etc’. — What does this mean except that when he criticises he wants to criticise not at random” (i.e., by the way: in the unique fashion), “not talking twaddle, but criticising properly” (i.e., like a human being)?

“What it means”, when Hess speaks of the secret police, etc., is so clear from the passage by Hess quoted above that even Saint Max’s “unique” understanding of it can only be explained as a deliberate misunderstanding. His “virtuosity of thought” is transformed here into a virtuosity in lying, for which we do not reproach him since it was his only way out, but which is hardly in keeping with the subtle little distinctions on the right to lie which he sets out elsewhere in “the book”. Incidentally, we have already demonstrated — at greater length than he deserves — that “when he criticises”, Sancho by no means “criticises properly”, but “criticises at random” and “talks twaddle”.

Thus, the attitude of the true egoist as creator towards himself as creation was first of all defined in the sense that in opposition to a definition in which he became fixed as a creation — for example, as against himself as thinker, as spirit — he asserts himself as a person also-otherwise-determined, as flesh. Later, he no longer asserts himself as really also-otherwise-determined, but as the mere idea of being also-otherwise-determined in general — hence, in the above example as someone who also-does-not think, who is thoughtless or indifferent to thought, an idea which he abandons again as soon as its nonsensicalness becomes evident. See above on turning round on the heel of speculation. Hence the creative activity consisted here in the reflection that this single determination, in the present case thought, could also be indifferent for him, i.e., it consisted in reflecting in general; as a result, of course, he creates only reflective definitions, if he creates anything at all (e.g., the idea of antithesis, the simple essence of which is concealed by all kinds of fiery arabesques).

As for the content of himself as a creation, we have seen that nowhere does he create this content, these definite qualities, e.g., his thought, his zeal, etc., but only the reflective definition of this content as creation, the idea that these definite qualities are his creations. All his qualities are present in him and whence they come is all the same to him. He, therefore, needs neither to develop them — for example, to learn to dance, in order to have mastery over his feet, or to exercise his thought on material which is not given to everyone, and is not procurable by everyone, in order to become the owner of his thought — nor does he need to worry about the conditions in the world, which in reality determine the extent to which an individual can develop.

Stirner actually only rids himself of one quality by means of another (i.e., the suppression of his remaining qualities by this “other”). In reality, however, [as we] have [already shown,] he does this only insofar as this quality has not only achieved free development, i.e., has not remained merely potential, but also insofar as conditions in the world have permitted him to develop in an equal measure a totality of qualities, [that is to say,] thanks to the division of [labour,] thus making possible the [predominant pursuit] of a [single passion, e.g., that of [writing] books. [In general], it is an [absurdity to assume], as Saint [Max does], that one could satisfy one [passion], apart from all others, that one could satisfy it without at the same time satisfying oneself, the entire living individual. If this passion assumes an abstract, isolated character, if it confronts me as an alien power, if, therefore, the satisfaction of the individual appears as the one-sided satisfaction of a single passion — this by no means depends on consciousness or “good will” and least of all on lack of reflection on the concept of this quality, as Saint Max imagines.

— Individual and Class Interests —

It depends not on consciousness, but on being; not on thought, but on life; it depends on the individual’s empirical development and manifestation of life, which in turn depends on the conditions obtaining in the world. If the circumstances in which the individual lives allow him only the [one]-sided development of one quality at the expense of all the rest, [If] they give him the material and time to develop only that one quality, then this individual achieves only a one-sided, crippled development. No moral preaching avails here. And the manner in which this one, pre-eminently favoured quality develops depends again, on the one hand, on the material available for its development and, on the other hand, on the degree and manner in which the other qualities are suppressed. Precisely because thought, for example, is the thought of a particular, definite individual, it remains his definite thought, determined by his individuality and the conditions in which he lives. The thinking individual therefore has no need to resort to prolonged reflection about thought as such in order to declare that his thought is his own thought, his property; from the outset it is his own, peculiarly determined thought and it was precisely his peculiarity which [in the case of Saint] Sancho [was found to be] the “opposite” of this, a peculiarity which is peculiarity “as such”. In the case of an individual, for example, whose life embraces a wide circle of varied activities and practical relations to the world, and who, therefore, lives a many-sided life, thought has the same character of universality as every other manifestation of his life. Consequently, it neither becomes fixed in the form of abstract thought nor does it need complicated tricks of reflection when the individual passes from thought to some other manifestation of life. From the outset it is always a factor in the total life of the individual, one which disappears and is reproduced as required,

In the case of a parochial Berlin school-master or author, however, whose activity is restricted to arduous work on the one hand and the pleasure of thought on the other, whose world extends from Moabit to Köpenick and ends behind the Hamburger Tor, ^[37] whose relations to this world are reduced to a minimum by his pitiful position in life, when such an individual experiences the need to think, it is indeed inevitable that his thought becomes just as abstract as he himself and his life, and that thought confronts him, who is quite incapable of resistance, in the form of a fixed power, whose activity offers the individual the possibility of a momentary escape from his “bad world”, of a momentary pleasure. In the case of such an individual the few remaining desires, which arise not so much from intercourse with the world as from the constitution of the human body, express themselves only through repercussion, i.e., they assume in their narrow development the same one-sided and crude character as does his thought, they appear only at long intervals, stimulated by the excessive development of the predominant desire (fortified by immediate physical causes, e.g. [stomach] spasm) and are manifested turbulently and forcibly, with the most brutal suppression of the ordinary, [natural] desire [ — this leads to further] domination over [thought.] As a matter of course, the school-master’s [thinking reflects on and speculates about] this empirical [fact in a school]masterly fashion. [But the mere announcement] that Stirner in general “creates” [his qualities] does not [explain] even their particular form of development. The extent to which these qualities develop on the universal or local scale, the extent to which they transcend local narrow-mindedness or remain within its confines, depends not on Stirner, but on the development of world intercourse and on the part which he and the locality where he lives play in it. That under favourable circumstances some individuals are able to rid themselves of their local narrow-mindedness is by no means due to individuals imagining that they have got rid of, or intend to get rid of their local narrow-mindedness, but is only due to the fact that in their real empirical life individuals, actuated by empirical needs, have been able to bring about world intercourse.

The only thing our saint achieves with the aid of his arduous reflection about his qualities and passions is that by his constant crotchetiness and scuffling with them he poisons the enjoyment and satisfaction of them.

Saint Max creates, as already said, only himself as a creation, i.e., he is satisfied with placing himself in this category of created entity. His activity [as] creator consists in regarding himself as a creation, and he does not even go on to resolve this division of himself into [creator and] creation, which is his own [product]. The division [into the “essential” and] the “Inessential” becomes [for him a] permanent life process, [hence mere appearance,] i.e., his real life exists only [in “pure"] reflection, is [not] even actual existence; [for since this latter is at every] instant outside [him and his reflection], he tries [in vain to] present [reflection as] essential.

“But [since] this enemy” (viz., the true egoist as a creation) “begets himself in his defeat, since consciousness, by becoming fixed on him, does not free itself from him, but instead always dwells on him and always sees itself besmirched, and since this content of his endeavour is at the same time the very lowest, we find only an individual restricted to himself and his petty activity” (inactivity), “and brooding over himself, as unhappy as he is wretched” (Hegel) [Phänomenologie des Geistes. B. Selbstbewusstsein. 3. Das unglückliche Bewusstsein].

What we have said so far about the division of Sancho into creator and creation, he himself now finally expresses in a logical form: the creator and the creation are transformed into the presupposing and the presupposed ego, or (inasmuch as his presupposition [of his ego] is a positing) into the positing and the posited ego:

“I for my part start from a certain presupposition since I presuppose myself; but my presupposition does not strive for its perfection” (rather does Saint Max strive for its abasement), “on the contrary, it serves me merely as something to enjoy and consume!’ (an enviable enjoyment!). “I am nourished by my presupposition alone and exist only by consuming it. But for that reason” (a grand “for that reason"!) “the presupposition in question is no presupposition at all, for since” (a grand “for since"!) “I am the unique” (it should read: the true egoist in agreement with himself), “I know nothing about the duality of a presupposing and presupposed ego (of an ‘imperfect’ and ‘perfect’ ego or man)” — it should read: the perfection of my ego consists in this alone, that at every instant I know myself as an imperfect ego, as a creation — “ but” (a magnificent “but"!) “the fact that I consume myself signifies merely that I am.” (It should read: The fact that I am signifies here merely that in me I consume in imagination the category of the presupposed.) “I do not presuppose myself, because I really only posit or create myself perpetually” (viz., I posit and create myself as the presupposed, posited or created) “and I am I only because I am not presupposed, but posited” (it should read: and I exist only because I am antecedent to my positing) land, again, I am posited only at the moment when I posit myself, i.e., I am creator and creation in one.”

Stirner is a “posited man”, since he is always a posited ego, and his ego is “also a man” (Wigand, p. 183). “For that reason” he is a posited man; “for since” he is never driven by his passions to excesses, “therefore”, he is what burghers call a sedate man, “but” the fact that he is a sedate man “signifies merely” that he always keeps an account of his own transformations and refractions.

What was so far only “for us” — to use for once, as Stirner does, the language of Hegel — viz., that his whole creative activity had no other content than general definitions of reflection, is now “posited” by, Stirner himself. Saint Max’s struggle against “essence” here attains its “final goal” in that he identifies himself with essence, and indeed with pure, speculative essence. The relation of creator and creation is transformed into an explication of self-presupposition, i.e., [Stirner transforms] into an extremely “clumsy” and confused [idea] what Hegel [says] about reflection in “the [Doctrine of Essence]”. [Since] Saint Max takes out one [element of his] reflection, [viz., positing reflection, his fantasies become] “negative”, [because he] transforms himself, etc., into “self-[presupposition”, in] contradistinction to [himself as the positing] and himself as the posited, [and] transforms reflection into the mystical antithesis of creator and creation. It should be pointed out, by the way, that in this section of his Logik Hegel analyses the “machinations” of the “creative nothing”, which explains also why Saint Max already on page 8 had to “posit” himself as this “creative nothing”.

We shall now “episodically insert” a few passages from Hegel’s explanation of self-presupposition for comparison with Saint Max’s explanation. But as Hegel does not write so incoherently and “at random” as our Jacques le bonhomme, we shall have to collect these passages from various pages of the Logik in order to bring them into correspondence with Sancho’s great thesis.

“Essence presupposes itself and is itself the transcendence of this presupposition. Since it is the repulsion of itself from itself or indifference towards itself, negative relation to itself, it thereby posits itself against itself ... positing has no presupposition ... the other is only posited through essence itself... Thus, reflection is only the negative of itself. Reflection in so far as it presupposes is simply positing reflection. It consists therefore in this, that it is itself and’ not itself in a unity” (“creator and creation in one”) (Hegel, Logik, II, pp. 5, 16, 17, 18, 22).

One might have expected from Stirner’s “virtuosity of thought” that he would have gone on to further researches into Hegel’s Logik. However, he wisely refrained from doing so. For, if he had done so, he would have found that he, as mere “posited” ego, as creation, i.e., insofar as he possesses existence, is merely a seeming ego, and he is “essence”, creator, only insofar as he does not exist, but only imagines himself. We have already seen, and shall see again further on, that all his qualities, his whole activity, and his whole attitude to the world, are a mere appearance which he creates for himself, nothing but “juggling tricks on the tightrope of the objective”. His ego is always a dumb, hidden “ego”, hidden in his ego imagined as essence.

Since the true egoist in his creative activity is, therefore, only a paraphrase of speculative reflection or pure essence, it follows, “according to the myth”, “by natural reproduction”, as was already revealed when examining the “arduous life battles” of the true egoist, that his “creations” are limited to the simplest determinations of reflection, such as identity, difference, equality, inequality, [opposition,] etc. — determinations [of reflection] which he [tries] to make clear for himself in ["himself"], concerning whom “the tidings have [gone] as far as [Berlin]”. [Concerning] his presuppositionless [ego] we [shall] have occasion to “hear [a little] word” later on. See, inter alia, “The Unique”.

As in Sancho’s construction of history the later historical phenomenon is transformed, by Hegel’s method, into the cause, the creator, of an earlier phenomenon, so in the case of the egoist in agreement with himself the Stirner of today is transformed into the creator of the Stirner of yesterday, although, to use his language, the Stirner of today is the creation of the Stirner of yesterday. Reflection, indeed, reverses all this, and in reflection the Stirner of yesterday is the creation of the Stirner of today, as a product of reflection, as an idea — just as in reflection the conditions of the external world are creations of his reflection.

Page 216: “Do not seek in ‘self-denial’ the freedom that actually deprives you of yourselves, but seek yourselves” (i.e., seek yourselves in self-denial), “become egoists, each of you should become an all-powerful ego!”

After the foregoing, we should not be surprised if later on Saint Max’s attitude to this proposition is again that of creator and most irreconcilable enemy and he “dissolves” his lofty moral postulate: “Become an all-powerful ego” into this, that each, in any case, does what he can, and that he can do what he does, and therefore, of course, for Saint Max, he is “all-powerful”.

Incidentally, the nonsense of the egoist in agreement with himself is summarised in the proposition quoted above. First comes the moral injunction to seek and, moreover, to seek oneself. This is defined in the sense that man should become something that he so far is not, namely, an egoist, and this egoist is defined as being an “all-powerful ego”, in whom the peculiar ability has become resolved from actual ability into the ego, into omnipotence, into the fantastic idea of ability. To seek oneself means, therefore, to become something different from what one is and, indeed, to become all-powerful, i.e., nothing, a non-thing, a phantasmagoria.

We have now progressed so far that one of the profoundest mysteries of the unique, and at the same time a problem that has long kept the civilised world in a state of anxious suspense, can be disclosed and solved.

Who is Szeliga? Since the appearance of the critical Literatur-Zeitung (see Die heilige Familie, etc.) this question has been put by everyone who has followed the development of German philosophy. Who is Szeliga? Everyone asks, everyone listens attentively when he hears the barbaric sound of this name — but no one replies.

Who is Szeliga? Saint Max gives us the key to this “secret of secrets”.

Szeliga is Stirner as a creation, Stirner is Szeliga as creator. Stirner is the “I”, Szeliga the “you”, in “the book”. Hence Stirner, the creator, behaves towards Szeliga, his creation, as towards his “most irreconcilable enemy”. As soon as Szeliga wishes to acquire independence in relation to Stirner — he a made a hapless attempt in this direction in the Norddeutsche Blätter — Saint Max “takes him back into himself”, an experiment which was carried out against this attempt of Szeliga’s on pages 176-79 of the “Apologetic Commentary” in Wigand. The struggle of the creator against the creation, of Stirner against Szeliga, is, however, only a seeming one: [Now] Szeliga advances against his creator the phrases of this [creator himself] — for example, the assertion “that [the mere,] bare body is [absence of] thought” (Wigand, p. 148). Saint [Max,] as we have seen, [was thinking] only of [the bare flesh], the body before its [formation], and in [this connection] he gave the body the [determination] of being “the other of thought”, non-thought and the non-thinking being, hence absence of thought; and indeed in a later passage he bluntly declares that only absence of thought (as previously only the flesh — thus the two concepts are treated as identical) saves him from thoughts (p. 196).

We find a still more striking proof of this mysterious connection in Wigand, We have already seen on page 7 of “the book” that the “ego”, i.e., Stirner, is “the unique”. On page 153 of the “Commentary” he addresses his “you": “You......... are the content of the phrase”,. viz., the content of the “unique”, and on the same page it is stated: “he overlooks the fact that he himself, Szeliga, is the content of the phrase”. “The unique” is a phrase, as Saint Max says in so many words. Considered as the “ego”, i.e., as creator, he is the owner of the phrase — this is Saint Max. Considered as “you”, i.e., as creation, he is the content of the phrase — this is Szeliga, as we have just been told. Szeliga the creation appears as a selfless egoist, as a degenerate Don Quixote; Stirner the creator appears as an egoist in the ordinary sense, as Saint Sancho Panza.

Here, therefore, the other aspect of the antithesis of creator and creation makes its appearance, each of the two aspects containing its opposite in itself. Here Sancho Panza Stirner, the egoist in the ordinary sense, is victorious over Don Quixote Szeliga, the selfless and illusory egoist, is victorious over him precisely as Don Quixote by his faith in the world domination of the holy. Who indeed was Stirner’s egoist in the [ordinary] sense if not Sancho [Panza,] and who his self-sacrificing egoist [if not] Don Quixote, and what was [their mutual] relation in the [form in which it has so far existed if] not the relation of [Sancho Panza Stirner] to Don Quixote [Szeliga? Now as] Sancho Panza [Stirner belongs to himself as] Sancho only [in order to make Szeliga as] Don Quixote [believe that] he surpasses him in Don [quixotry] and [in accordance with this role, as] the presupposed universal Don [quixotry,] he takes [no steps] against the [Don quixotry of his] former master (Don quixotry, by which he swears with all the firm faith of a servant), and at the same time he displays the cunning already described by Cervantes. In actual content he is, therefore, the defender of the practical petty bourgeois, but he combats the consciousness that corresponds to the petty bourgeois, a consciousness which in the final analysis reduces itself to the idealising ideas of the petty bourgeois about the bourgeoisie to whom he cannot attain.

Thus, Don Quixote now, as Szeliga, performs mental services for his former armour-bearer.

How greatly Sancho in his new “transformation” has retained his old habits, he shows on every page. “Swallowing” and “consuming” still constitute one of his chief qualities, his “natural timidity” has still such mastery over him that the King of Prussia and Prince Heinrich LXXII become transformed for him into the “Emperor of China” or the “Sultan” and he ventures to speak only about the “G[erman] chambers”; he still strews around him proverbs and moral sayings from his knapsack, he continues to be afraid of “spectres” and even asserts that they alone are to be feared; the only difference is that whereas Sancho in his unholiness was bamboozled by the peasants in the tavern, now in a state of saintliness he continually bamboozles himself.

But let us return to Szeliga. Who has not long ago discovered the hand of Szeliga in all the “phrases” which Saint Sancho put into the mouth of his “you"? And it is always possible to discover traces of Szeliga not only in the phrases of this “you”, but also in the phrases in which Szeliga appears as creator, i.e., as Stirner. But because Szeliga is a creation, he could only figure in Die heilige Familie as a “mystery”. The revelation of this mystery was the task of Stirner the creator. Me surmised, of course, that some great, holy adventure was at the root of this. Nor were we deceived. The unique adventure really has never been seen or heard of and surpasses the adventure with the fulling mills in Cervantes’ twentieth chapter.

3. The Revelation of John the Divine, or “The Logic of the New Wisdom”[edit source]

In the beginning was the word, the logos. In it was life, and the life was the light of men. And the light shone in darkness and the darkness did not comprehend it. That was the true light, it was in the world, and the world did not know it. He came into his own, and his own received him not. But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become owners, who believe in the name of the unique. [But who] has ever [seen] the unique [?]

[Let] us now [examine] this “light of the [world” in “the] logic of the new wisdom [”, for Saint] Sancho does not rest content with his previous [destructions].

[In the case of our] “unique” author, it is a matter [of course that] the basis of his [genius lies] in the brilliant [series of personal] advantages [which constitute] his special [virtuosity] of thought. [Since] all these advantages have already been extensively demonstrated, it suffices here to give a brief summary of the most important of them: carelessness of thought — confusion — incoherence — admitted clumsiness — endless repetitions — constant contradiction with himself — unequalled comparisons — attempts to intimidate the reader — systematic legacy-hunting in the realm of thoughts by means of the levers “you”, “it”, “one”, etc., and crude abuse of the conjunctions for, therefore, for that reason, because, accordingly, but, etc. — ignorance — clumsy assertions — solemn frivolity — revolutionary phrases and peaceful thoughts — bluster — bombastic vulgarity and coquetting with cheap indecency — elevation of Nante the loafer^[38] to the rank of an absolute concept — dependence on Hegelian traditions and current Berlin phrases — in short, sheer manufacture of a thin beggar’s broth (491 pages of it) in the Rumford manner.

Drifting like bones in this beggar’s broth are a whole series of transitions, a few specimens of which we shall now give for the amusement of the German public depressed as it is:

“Could we not — now, however — one sometimes shares — one can then — to the efficacy of ... belongs especially that which one frequently ... hears called — and that is to say — to conclude, it can now be clear — in the meantime — thus it can, incidentally, be thought here — were it not for — or if, perhaps, it were not — progress from ... to the point that ... is not difficult — from a certain point of view it is argued approximately, thus — for example, and so on”, etc., and “it is to that” in all possible “transformations”.

We can at once mention here a [logical] trick about which [it is impossible] to decide whether it owes [its] existence to the [lauded] efficiency of Sancho [or to] the inefficiency of his [thinking]. This [trick consists] in seizing on [one aspect], treating it as if it were the sole [and only] aspect so far known of an idea [or] concept which [has several well]-defined aspects, foisting this aspect [on the concept as] its sole characteristic and then setting [against it every other] aspect under a [new name, as] something original. This is how the concepts of freedom and peculiarity are dealt with, [as] we shall see later.

Among the categories which owe their origin not so much to the personality of Sancho, as to the universal distress in which the German theoreticians find themselves at the present time, the first place is taken by trashy distinction, the extreme of trashiness. Since our saint immerses himself in such “soul-torturing” antitheses as singular and universal, private interest and universal interest, ordinary egoism and selflessness, etc., in the final analysis one arrives at the trashiest mutual concessions and dealings between the two aspects, which again rest on the most subtle distinctions — distinctions whose existence side by side is expressed by “also” and whose separation from each other is then maintained by means of a miserable “insofar as”. Such trashy distinctions, for instance, are: how people exploit one another, but none does so at the expense of another, the extent to which something in me is inherent or suggested; the construction of human and of unique work, existing side by side, what is indispensable for human life and what is indispensable for unique life; what belongs to personality in its pure form and what is essentially fortuitous, to decide which Saint Max, from his point of view, has no criterion at all; what belongs to the rags and tatters and what to the skin of the individual; what by means of denial he gets rid of altogether or appropriates, to what extent he sacrifices merely his freedom or merely his peculiarity, in which case he also makes a sacrifice but only insofar as, properly speaking, he does not make a sacrifice; what brings me into relation with others as a link or as a personal relation. Some of these distinctions are absolutely trashy, others — in the case of Sancho at least — lose all meaning and foundation. One can regard as the peak of these trashy distinctions that between the creation of the world — by the individual and the impulse which the individual receives from the world. If, for example, he had gone more deeply here into this impulse, into the whole extent and multifarious character of its influence on him, he would in the end have discovered the contradiction that he is as blindly [dependent] on the world as he [egoistically] and ideologically creates [it]. (See: “My Self-Enjoyment”.) He [would not then have put] side by side [his"] .also” and “insofar as”, [any more than] “human” work [and] unique” work; he would not have opposed one to the other, therefore one would [not have] attacked the other [in the rear,] and the “egoist in agreement [with himself"] would not be completely [subordinated to himself] — but we [know] that the latter did not need to be [presupposed] because from the outset this was the point of departure.

This trashy play with distinctions occurs throughout “the book”; It is a main lever also for the other logical tricks and particularly takes the form of a moral casuistry that is as self-satisfied as it is ridiculously cheap. Thus, it is made clear to us by means of examples how far the true egoist has the right to tell lies and how far he has not; to what extent the betrayal of confidence is “despicable” and to what extent it is not; to what extent the Emperor Sigismund and the French King Francis I had the right to break their oath ^[39] and how far their behaviour in this respect was “disgraceful”, and other subtle historical illustrations of the same sort. Against these painstaking distinctions and petty questions there stands out in strong relief the indifference of our Sancho for whom it is all the same and who ignores all actual, practical and conceptual differences. In general we can already say now that his ability to distinguish is far inferior to his ability not to distinguish, to regard all cats as black in the darkness of the holy, and to reduce everything to anything — an art which finds its adequate expression in the use of the apposition.

Embrace your “ass”, Sancho, you have found him again here. He gallops merrily to meet you, taking no notice of the kicks he has been given, and greets you with his ringing voice. Kneel before him, embrace his neck and fulfil the calling laid down for you by Cervantes in Chapter XXX.

The apposition is Saint Sancho’s ass, his logical and historical locomotive, the driving force of “the book”, reduced to its briefest and simplest expression. In order to transform one idea into another, or to prove the identity of two quite different things, a few intermediate links are sought which partly by their meaning, partly by their etymology and partly by their mere sound can be used to establish an apparent connection between the two basic ideas. These links are then appended to the first idea in the form of an apposition, and in such a way that one gets farther and farther away from the starting-point and nearer and nearer to the point one wants to reach. If the chain of oppositions has got so far that one can draw a conclusion without any danger, the final idea is likewise fastened on in the form of an apposition by means of a dash, and the trick is done. This is a highly recommendable method of insinuating thoughts, which is the more effective the more it is made to serve as the lever for the main arguments. When this trick has been successfully performed several times, one can, following Saint Sancho’s procedure, gradually omit some of the intermediate links and finally reduce the series of oppositions to a few absolutely essential hooks.

The apposition, as we have seen above, can also be reversed and thus lead to new, even more complicated tricks and more astounding results. We have seen there, too, that the apposition is the logical form of the infinite series of mathematics.

Saint Sancho employs the apposition in two ways: on the one hand, purely logically, in the canonisation of the world, where it enables him to transform any earthly thing into “the holy”, and, on the other hand, historically, in disquisitions on the connection of various epochs and in summing them up, each historical stage being reduced to a single word, and the final result is that the last link of the historical series has not got us an inch farther than the first, and in the end all the epochs of the series are combined in a single abstract category like idealism, dependence on thoughts, etc. If the historical series of oppositions is to be given the appearance of progress, this is achieved by regarding the concluding phrase as the completion of the first epoch of the series, and the intermediate links as ascending stages of development leading to the final, culminating phrase.

Alongside the apposition we have synonymy, which Saint Sancho exploits in every way. If two words are etymologically linked or are merely similar in sound, they are made responsible for each other, or if one word has different meanings, then, according to need, it is used sometimes in one sense and sometimes in the other, while Saint Sancho makes it appear that he is speaking of one and the same thing in different “refractions”. Further, a special branch of synonymy consists of translation, where a French or Latin expression is supplemented by a German one which only half-expresses it, and in addition denotes something totally different; as we saw above, for example, when the word “ respektieren” was translated “to experience reverence and fear”, and so on. One recalls the words Staat, Status, Stand, Notstand, etc. In the section on communism we have already had the opportunity of observing numerous examples of this use of ambiguous expressions. Let us briefly examine an example of etymological synonymy.

“The word ‘Gesellschaft’ [society] is derived from the word ‘Sal’. If there are many people in a Saal, [hall, room] then the Saal brings it about that they are in society. They are in society and they constitute at most a salon society, since they talk in conventional salon phrases. If real intercourse takes place, it should be regarded as independent of society” (p. 286).

Since the “word ‘Gesellschaft’ is derived from ‘Sal"’ (which, incidentally, is not true, for the original roots of all words are verbs) then “Sal” must be equivalent to “Saal”. But “Sal” in old High-German means a building; Kisello, Geselle — from which Gesellschaft is derived — means a house companion; hence “Saal” is dragged in here quite arbitrarily. But that does not matter; “Saal” is immediately transformed into “salon”, as though there was not a gap of about a thousand years and a great many miles between the old High-German “ Sal” and the modern French “salon”. Thus society is transformed into a salon society, in which, according to the German philistine idea, an intercourse consisting only of phrases takes place and all real intercourse is excluded. — Incidentally since Saint Max only aimed at transforming society into “the holy”, he could have arrived at this by a much shorter route if he had made a somewhat more accurate study of etymology and consulted any dictionary of word roots. What a find it would have been for him to discover there the etymological connection between the words “Gesellschaft” and “selig”; Gesellschaft — selig — heilig — das Heilige [society-blessed-holy-the holy] — what could look simpler?

If “Stirner’s” etymological synonymy is correct, then the communists are seeking the true earldom, the earldom as the holy. As Gesellschaft comes from Sal, a building, so Graf [earl] (Gothic garâvo) comes from the Gothic râvo, house. Sal, building = râvo, house; consequently Gesellschaft=Grafschaft. [earldom] The prefixes and suffixes are the same in both words, the root syllables have the same meaning — hence the holy society of the communists is the holy earldom, the earldom as the holy — what could look simpler? Saint Sancho had an inkling of this, when he saw in communism the perfection of the feudal system, i.e., the system of earldoms.

Synonymy serves our saint, on the one hand, to transform empirical relations into speculative relations, by using in its speculative meaning a word that occurs both in practical life and in philosophical speculation, uttering a few phrases about this speculative meaning and then making out that he has thereby also criticised the actual relations which this word denotes as well. He does this with the word speculation. On page 406, “speculation” “appears” showing two sides as one essence that possesses a “dual manifestation” — O Szeliga! He rages against philosophical speculation and thinks he has thereby also settled accounts with commercial speculation, about [which] he knows nothing. On the other hand, this synonymy enables him, a concealed petty bourgeois, to transform bourgeois relations (see what was said above in dealing with “communism about the connection between language and bourgeois relations') into personal, individual relations, which one cannot attack without attacking the individuality, “peculiarity” and “uniqueness” of the individual. Thus, for example, Sancho exploits the etymological connection between Geld [money] and Geltung, [worth, value] Vermögen [wealth, property] vermögen, [to be able, capable] etc.

Synonymy, combined with the apposition, provides the main lever for his conjuring tricks, which we have already exposed on countless occasions. To give an example how easy this art is, let us also perform a conjuring trick à la Sancho.

Wechsel, [change, bill of exchange] as change, is the law of phenomena, says Hegel, This is the reason, “Stirner” could continue, for the phenomenon of the strictness of the law against false bills of exchange; for we see here the law raised above phenomena, the law as such, holy law, the law as the holy, the holy itself, against which sin is committed and which is avenged in the punishment. Or in other words: Wechsel “in its dual manifestation”, as a bill of exchange (lettre de change) and as change (changement), leads to Verfall [expiry, falling due, decline], (échéance and décadence). Decline as a result of change is observed in history, inter alia, in the fall of the Roman Empire, feudalism, the German Empire and the domination of Napoleon. The “transition from” these great historical crises “to” the commercial crises of our day “is not difficult”, and this explains also why these commercial crises are always determined by the expiry of bills of exchange.

Or he could also, as in the case of “Vermögen” and “Geld”, justify the “Wechsel” etymologically and “from a certain point of view argue approximately as follows”. The communists want, among other things, to abolish the Wechsel (bill of exchange). But does not the main pleasure of the world lie precisely in Wechsel (change)? They want, therefore, the dead, the immobile, China — that is to say, the perfect Chinese is a communist. “Hence” communist declamations against Wechselbriefe and Wechsler. As though every letter were not a Wechselbrief, a letter that notes a change, and every man not a Wechselnder, a Wechsler.

To give the simplicity of his construction and logical tricks the appearance of great variety, Saint Sancho needs the episode. From time to time he “episodically” inserts a passage which belongs to another part of the book, or which could quite well have been left out altogether, and thus still further breaks the thread of his so-called argument, which has already been repeatedly broken without that. This is accompanied by the naive statement that “we” “do not stick to the rules”, and after numerous repetitions causes in the reader a certain insensitiveness to even the greatest incoherence. When one reads “the book”, one becomes accustomed to everything and finally one readily submits even to the worst. Incidentally, these episodes (as was only [to be] expected from Saint Sancho) are themselves only imaginary and mere repetitions under [other guises] of phrases encountered hundreds of times [already].

After Saint Max has [thus displayed] his personal qualities, and then revealed himself as ["appearance” and] as “essence” in the distinction, [in] synonymy and in the episode, [we] come [to the] true culmination and completion of logic, the “concept”.

[The] concept is the “ego” (see Hegel’s Logik, Part 3), logic [as the ego]. This is the pure relation [of the] ego to the world, a relation [divested] of all the real relations that exist for it; [a formula] for all the equations to [which the holy] man reduces mundane [concepts]. It was already [revealed] above that by applying this formula to all sorts of things Sancho merely makes an unsuccessful “attempt” to understand the various pure determinations of reflection, such as identity, antithesis,, etc.

Let us begin at once with a definite example, e.g., the relation between the “ego” and the people.

1=I am not the people.

The people = non-I

I = the non-people.

Hence, I am the negation of the people, the people is dissolved in me.

The second equation can be expressed also by an auxiliary equation:

The people’s ego is non-existent,

or:

The ego of the people is the negation of my ego.

The whole trick, therefore, consists in: 1) that the negation which at the outset belonged to the copula is attached first to the subject and then to the predicate; and 2) that the negation, the “not”, is, according to convenience, regarded as an expression of dissimilarity, difference, antithesis or direct dissolution. In the present example it is regarded as absolute dissolution, as complete negation; we shall find that — at Saint Max’s convenience — it is used also in the other meanings. Thus the tautological proposition that I am not the people is transformed into the tremendous new discovery that I am the dissolution of the people.

For the equations given above, it was not even necessary for Saint Sancho to have any idea of the people; it was enough for him to know that I and the people are “totally different names for totally different things”; it was sufficient that the two words do not have a single letter in common. If now there is to be further speculation about the people from the standpoint of egoistical logic, it suffices to attach any kind of trivial determination to the people and to “I” from outside, from day-to-day experience, thus giving rise to new equations. At the same time it is made to appear that different determinations are being criticised in different ways. We shall now proceed to speculate in this manner about freedom, happiness and wealth:

Basic equations:

The people = non-I.

Equation No. 1:

Freedom of the people = Not my freedom.

Freedom of the people = My non-freedom.

Freedom of the people = My lack of freedom.

(This can also be reversed, resulting in the grand proposition: My lack of freedom = slavery is the freedom of the people.)

Equation No. 2:

Happiness of the people = Not my happiness.

Happiness of the people = My non-happiness.

Happiness of the people = My unhappiness.

(Reversed equation: My unhappiness, my distress, is the happiness of the people.)

Equation No. 3:

Wealth of the people = Not my wealth.

Wealth of the people = My non-wealth.

Wealth of the people = My poverty.

Reversed equation: My poverty is the wealth of the people.) This can be continued ad libitum and extended to other determinations.

For the formation of such equations all that is required, apart from a very general acquaintance with such ideas as Stirner can combine in one notion with “people”, is to know the positive expression for the result obtained in the negative form, e.g., “poverty” — for “non-wealth”, etc. That is to say, as much knowledge of the language as one acquires in everyday life is quite sufficient to arrive in this way at the most surprising discoveries.

The entire trick here, therefore, consisted in transforming not-my-wealth, not-my-happiness, not-my-freedom into my non-wealth, my non-happiness, my non-freedom. The “not”, which in the first equation is a general negation that can express all possible forms of difference, e.g., it may merely mean that it is our common, and not exclusively my, wealth — this “not” is transformed in the [second] equation into the negation of my wealth, [my] happiness, etc., and ascribes to me [non-happiness], unhappiness, slavery. [Since] I am denied some definite form of wealth, [the people’s] wealth but by no means [wealth] in general, [Sancho believes poverty] must be ascribed to me. [But] this is also [brought about] by expressing my non-freedom in a positive way and so transforming it into my ["lack of freedom"]. But [my non-freedom] can, of course, also mean hundreds [of other] things — e.g., my ["lack of freedom]”, my non-freedom from [my] body, etc.

We started out just now from the second equation: the people = non-I. We could also have taken the third equation as Our starting-point: I =the non-people, and then, in the case of wealth for example, according to the same method, it would be proved in the end that “my wealth is the poverty of the people”. Here, however, Saint Sancho would not proceed in this way, but would dissolve altogether the property relations of the people and the people itself, and then arrive at the following result: my wealth is the destruction not only of the people’s wealth but of the people itself. This shows how arbitrarily Saint Sancho acted when he transformed non-wealth into poverty. Our saint applies these different methods higgledy-piggledy and exploits negation sometimes in one meaning and sometimes in another. Even “anyone who has not read Stirner’s book” “sees at once” (Wigand, p. 191) what confusions this is liable to produce.

In just the same way the “ego” “operates” against the state.

1=I am not the state.

State=non-I.

I="Negation” of the state.

Nothing of the state=I.

Or in other words: I am the “creative nothing” in which the state is swallowed up.

This simple melody can be used to ring the changes with any subject.

The great proposition that forms the basis of all these equations is: I am not non-I. This non-I is given various names, which, on the one hand, can be purely logical, e.g., being-in-itself, other-being, or, on the other hand, the names of concrete ideas such as the people, state, etc. In this way the appearance of a development can he produced by taking these names as the starting-point and gradually reducing them — with the aid of equations, or a series of appositions — again to the non-ego, which was their basis at the outset. Since the real relations thus introduced figure only as different modifications of the non-ego, and only nominally different modifications at that — nothing at all need be said about these real relations themselves. This is all the more ludicrous since [the real] relations are the relations [of the individuals] themselves, and declaring them to be relations [of the non]-ego only proves that one knows nothing about them. The matter is thereby so greatly simplified that even “the great majority consisting of innately limited intellects” can learn the trick in ten minutes at most. At the same time, this gives us a criterion of the “uniqueness” of Saint Sancho.

Saint Sancho further defines the non-ego opposed to the ego as being that which is alien to the ego, that which is the alien. The relation of the non-ego to the ego is “therefore” that of alienation [Entfremdung]. We have just given the logical formula by which Saint Sancho presents any object or relation whatsoever as that which is alien to the ego, as the alienation of the ego; on the other hand, Saint Sancho can, as we shall see, also present any object or relation as something created by the ego and belonging to it. Apart, first of all, from the arbitrary way in which he presents, or does not present, any relation as a relation of alienation (for everything can he made to fit in the above equations), we see already here that his only concern is to present all actual relations, [and also] actual individuals, [as alienated] (to retain this philosophical [expression] for the time being), to [transform] them into the wholly [abstract] phrase of alienation. Thus [instead] of the task of describing [actual] individuals in their [actual] alienation and in the empirical relations of this alienation, [purely empirical] relations, the same happens here — the setting forth is replaced by the [mere idea] of alienation, of [the Alien], of the Holy. [The] substitution of the category of alienation (this is again a determination of reflection which can be considered as antithesis, difference, non-identity, etc.) finds its final and highest expression in “the alien” being transformed again into “the holy”, and alienation into the relation of the ego to anything whatever as the holy. We prefer to elucidate the logical process on the basis of Saint Sancho’s relation to the holy, since this is the predominant formula, and in passing we note that “the alien” is considered also as ‘,the existing” (per appos.), that which exists apart from me, that which exists independently of me, per appos., that which is regarded as independent owing to my non-independence, so that Saint Sancho can depict as the holy everything that exists independently of him, e.g., the Blocksberg. ^[40]

Because the holy is something alien, everything alien is transformed into the holy; and because everything holy is a bond, a fetter, all bonds and all fetters are transformed into the holy. By this means Saint Sancho has already achieved the result that everything alien becomes for him a mere appearance, a mere idea, from which he frees himself by simply protesting against it and declaring that he does not have this idea. just as we saw in the case of the egoist not in agreement with himself: people have only to change their consciousness to make everything in the world all right.

Our whole exposition has shown that Saint Sancho criticises all actual conditions by declaring them “the holy”, and combats them by combating his holy idea of them. This simple trick of transforming everything into the holy was achieved, as we have already seen in detail above, by Jacques le bonhomme accepting in good faith the illusions of philosophy, the ideological, speculative expression of reality divorced from its empirical basis, for reality, just as he mistook the illusions of the petty [bourgeois concerning] the bourgeoisie for the “[holy essence” of the] bourgeoisie, and could therefore imagine that he was only dealing with thoughts and ideas. With equal ease people were transformed into the “holy”, for after their thoughts had been divorced from them themselves and from their empirical relations, it became possible to consider people as mere vehicles for these thoughts and thus, for example, the bourgeois was made into the holy liberal.

The positive relation of [Sancho] — who is in the final analysis [pious] — to the holy (a relation [he] calls respect) figures also [under the] name of “love”. “Love” [is a ] relation that approves of “[man"], the holy, the ideal, the supreme being, or such a human, holy, ideal, essential relation. Anything that was elsewhere designated as the existence of the holy, e.g., the state, prisons, torture, police, trade and traffic, etc., can also be regarded by Sancho as “another example” of “love”. This new nomenclature enables him to write new chapters about what he has already utterly rejected under the trade mark of the holy and respect. It is the old story of the goats of the shepherdess Torralva, in a holy form. And as at one time, with the aid of this story, he led his master by the nose, so now he leads himself and the public by the nose throughout the book without, however, be) rig able to break off his story as wittily as he did in those earlier times when he was still a secular armour-bearer. In general, since his canonisation Sancho has lost all his original mother wit.

The first difficulty appears to arise because this holy is in itself very diverse, so that when criticising some definite holy thing one ought to leave the holiness out of account and criticise the definite content itself. Saint Sancho avoids this rock by presenting everything definite as merely an “example” of the holy; just as in Hegel’s Logik it is immaterial whether atom or personality is adduced to explain “being-for-itself”, or the solar system, magnetism or sexual love as an example of attraction. It is, therefore, by no means an accident that “the book” teems with examples, but is rooted in the innermost essence of the method of exposition employed in it. This is the unique” possibility which Saint Sancho has of producing an appearance of some sort of content, the prototype of which is already to be found in Cervantes, since Sancho also speaks all the time in examples. Thus Sancho is able to say: “Another example of the holy” (the uninteresting) “is labour”. He could have continued: another example is the state, another is the family, another is rent of land, another is Saint Jacob (Saint-Jacques, le bonhomme), another is Saint Ursula and her eleven thousand virgins.^[41] Indeed, in his imagination, all these things have this in common: that they are the “holy”. But at the same time they are totally different things, and it is just this that constitutes their specific nature. Insofar as one speaks of their specific nature, one does not speak of them as “the holy”.

[Labour is] not rent of land, and [rent of land] is not the state; [the main] thing, therefore, is to define [what] the state, land rent and labour are [apart from] their imagined holiness, [and Saint] Max achieves this in the following way. [He pretends to] be speaking about the state, [labour,] etc., and then calls ["the” state] the reality of some [sort of idea] — of love, of [being]-for-one-another, of the existing, of power over [Individuals], and — by means [of a] dash — of “the holy”, but [he could] have said [that at the] outset. Or [he says] of labour that it is regarded as a life task, [a vocation, a] destiny — “the holy”. That is to say, the state and labour are first of all brought under a particular kind of the holy which has been previously prepared in the same way, and this particular holy is then again dissolved in the universal “holy”; all of which can take place without saying anything about labour and. the state. The same stale cud can then be chewed over again on any convenient occasion, because everything that is apparently the object of criticism serves our Sancho merely as an excuse for declaring that the abstract ideas and the predicates transformed into subjects (which are nothing but suitably assorted holies, a sufficient store of which is always kept in reserve) are what they were made to be at the outset, viz., the holy. He has in fact reduced everything to its exhaustive, classic expression, by saying of it that it is “another example of the holy”. The definitions which he has picked up by hearsay, and which are supposed to relate to content, are altogether superfluous, and on closer examination it is found, too, that they introduce neither definition nor content and amount to no more than ignorant banalities. This cheap “virtuosity of thought” which polishes off any subject-matter whatever even before knowing anything about it, can of course be acquired by anyone, and not in ten minutes, as previously [stated], but even in five. In the “Commentary” Saint Sancho threatens us with “treatises” about Feuerbach, socialism, bourgeois society, and only the holy knows what else. Provisionally we can already here reduce these treatises to their simplest expression as follows:

First treatise: Another example of the holy is Feuerbach.

Second treatise: Another example of the holy is socialism.

Third treatise: Another example of the holy is bourgeois society.

Fourth treatise: Another example of the holy is the “treatise” in the Stirner manner.

Etc., in infinitum.

A little reflection shows that the second rock against which Saint Sancho was bound to suffer shipwreck was his own assertion that every individual is totally different from every other, is unique. Since every individual is an altogether different being, hence an other-being, it is by no means necessary that what is alien, holy, for one individual should be so for another individual; it even cannot be so. And the common name used, such as state, religion, morality, etc., should not mislead us, for these names are only abstractions from the actual attitude of separate individuals, and these objects, in consequence of the totally different attitude towards them of the unique individuals, become for each of the latter unique objects, hence totally different objects, which have only their name in common. Consequently, Saint Sancho could at most have said: for me, Saint Sancho, the state, religion, etc., are the alien, the holy. Instead of this he has to make them the absolutely holy, the holy for all individuals — how else could he have fabricated his constructed ego, his egoist in agreement with himself, etc., how else could he at all have written his whole “book"? How little it occurs to him to make each “unique” the measure of his own “uniqueness”, how much he uses his own “uniqueness” as a measure, as a moral norm, to be applied to all other individuals, like a true moralist forcing them into his Procrustean bed, is already evident, inter alia, from his judgment on the departed and forgotten Klopstock, whom he opposes with the moral maxim that he ought to have adopted an “attitude to religion altogether his own”, in that case he would have arrived not at a religion of his own, which would be the correct conclusion (a conclusion that “Stirner” himself draws innumerable times, e.g., in regard to money), but at a “dissolution and swallowing up of religion” (p. 85), a universal result instead of an individual, unique result. As though Klopstock had not arrived at a “dissolution and swallowing up of religion”, and indeed at a quite individual, unique dissolution, such as only this unique Klopstock could have ,achieved”, a dissolution whose uniqueness “Stirner” could have easily seen even from the many unsuccessful imitations. Klopstock’s attitude to religion is supposed to be not his “own”, although it was altogether peculiar to him, and indeed was a relation to religion which made Klopstock Klopstock. His attitude to religion would have been “peculiar” only if he had behaved towards it not like Klopstock but like a modern German philosopher.

The “egoist in the ordinary sense”, who is not so docile as Szeliga and who has already above put forward all sorts of objections, here makes the following retort to our saint: here in the actual world, as I know very well, I am concerned with my own advantage and nothing else, rien pour la gloire [mere honour is worth nothing]. Besides this, I enjoy thinking that I am immortal and can have advantages also in heaven. Ought I to sacrifice this egoistical conception for the sake of the mere consciousness of egoism in agreement with itself, which will not bring me in a farthing? The philosophers tell me: that is inhuman. What do I care? Am I not a human being? Is not everything I do human, and human because I do it, and is it any concern of mine how “others” “classify” my actions? You, Sancho, who indeed are also a philosopher, but a bankrupt one — and because of your philosophy you deserve no financial credit, and because of your bankruptcy you deserve no intellectual credit — you tell me that my attitude to religion is not one peculiar to me. What you say, therefore, is the same as what the other philosophers tell me, but in your case, as usual, it loses all meaning since you call “peculiar” what they call “human”. Could you speak of any other peculiarity than your own and transform your own relation again into a universal one? In my own way, my attitude to religion, if you like, is also a critical one. Firstly, I have no hesitation in sacrificing it, as soon as it attempts to interfere in my commerce; secondly, in my business affairs it is useful for me to be regarded as religious (as it is useful for my proletarian, if the pie that I eat here he eats at least in heaven); and, finally, I turn heaven into my property. It is une propriété ajoutée à la propriété, [property added to property] although already Montesquieu, who was of course a quite different type of man from you, tried to make me believe that it is une terreur ajoutée à la terreur. [terror added to terror]My attitude to heaven is not like that of any other person, and by virtue of the unique attitude that I adopt towards it, it is a unique object, a unique heaven. At most, therefore, you are criticising your idea of my heaven, but not my heaven. And now immortality! Here you become simply ridiculous. I deny my egoism — as you assert to please the philosophers — because I immortalise it and declare the laws of nature and thought null and void, as soon as they want to give my existence a determination which is not produced by me myself and is highly unpleasant for rite, namely, death. You call immortality “tedious stability” — as though I could not always live an “eventful” life so long as trade is flourishing in this or the other world and I can do business in other things than your “book”. And what can be “more stable” than death, which against my will puts an end to my movement and submerges me in the universal, nature, the species, the holy? And now the state, law, police! For many an “ego” they may appear to be alien powers; but I know that they are my own powers. Incidentally — and at this point the bourgeois, this time with a gracious nod of the head, again turns his back on our saint — as far as I am concerned, go on blustering against religion, heaven, God and so on. I know all the same that in everything that interests me — private property, value, price, money, purchase and sale — you always perceive something “peculiar”.

We have just seen how individuals differ from one another. But every individual again is diverse in himself. Thus, by reflecting himself in one of these qualities, i.e., by regarding, defining his “ego” through one of these determinations, Saint Sancho can define the object of the other qualities and these other qualities themselves as the alien, the holy; and so in turn with all his qualities. Thus, for example, that which is object for his flesh is the holy for his spirit, or that which is object for his need of rest is the holy for his need of movement. His transformation, described above, of all action and inaction into self-denial is based on this trick. Moreover, his ego is no real ego, but only the ego of the equations given above, the same ego that in formal logic, in the theory of propositions, figures as Caius ^[42].

“Another example”, namely, a more general example of the canonisation of the world, is the transformation of real collisions, i.e., collisions between individuals and their actual conditions of life, into ideal collisions, i.e., into collisions between these individuals and the ideas which they form or get into their heads. This trick, too, is extremely simple. As Saint Sancho earlier made the thoughts of individuals into something existing independently, so here he separates the ideal reflection of real collisions from these collisions and turns this reflection into something existing independently. The real contradictions in which the Individual finds himself are transformed into contradictions of the individual with his idea or, as Saint Sancho also expresses it more simply, into contradictions with the idea as such, with the holy. Thus he manages to transform the real collision, the prototype of its ideal copy, into the consequence of this ideological pretence. Thus he arrives at the result that it is not a question of the practical abolition of the practical collision, but only of renouncing the idea of this collision, a renunciation which he, as a good moralist, insistently urges people to carry out.

After Saint Sancho has thus transformed all the contradictions and collisions in which the individual finds himself into mere contradictions and collisions of the individual with one or other of his ideas, an idea which has become independent of him and has subordinated him to itself, and, therefore, is “easily” transformed into the idea as such, the holy idea, the holy — after this there remains only one thing for the individual to do: to commit the sin against the Holy Spirit, to abstract from this idea and declare the holy to be a spectre. This logical swindle, which the individual performs on himself, our saint regards as one of the greatest efforts of the egoist. On the other hand, however, anyone can see how easy it is in this way to declare that from the egoistical point of view all historically occurring conflicts and movements are subsidiary, without knowing anything about them. To do this one has only to extract a few of the phrases usually adopted in such cases, to transform them, in the manner indicated, into “the holy”, to depict the individuals as being subordinated to this holy, and to put oneself forward as one who despises “the holy as such”.

A further offshoot of this logical trick, and indeed our saint’s favourite manoeuvre, is the exploitation of the words designation, vocation, task, etc., thereby immensely facilitating the transformation of whatever he likes into the holy. For, in vocation, designation, task, etc., the individual appears in his own imagination as something different from what he actually is, as the alien, hence as the holy, and in opposition to his real being he asserts his idea of what he ought to be as the rightful, the ideal, the holy. Thus, when it is necessary for him, Saint Sancho can transform everything into the holy by means of the following series of oppositions: to designate oneself, i.e., to choose a designation (insert here any content you like) for oneself; to choose the designation as such; to choose a holy designation, to choose a designation as the holy, i.e., to choose the holy as designation. Or: to be designated, i.e., to have a designation, to have the designation, the holy designation, designation as the holy, the holy as designation, the holy for designation, the designation of the holy.

And now, of course, it only remains for him strongly to admonish people to select for themselves the designation of absence of any designation, the vocation of absence of any vocation, the task of absence of any task — although throughout “the book”, “up to and including” the “Commentary”, he does nothing but select designations for people, set people tasks and, like a prophet in the wilderness, call them to the gospel of true egoism, about whom, of course, it is said: many are called but only one — O'Connell — is chosen.

— The Conditions of Life of a Class Appear as Universal —

We have already seen above how Saint Sancho separates the ideas of individuals from the conditions of their life, from their practical collisions and contradictions, in order then to transform them into the holy. Now these ideas appear in the form of designation, vocation, task. For Saint Sancho vocation has a double form; firstly as the vocation which others choose for me — examples of which we have already had above in the case of the newspapers that are full of politics and the prisons that our saint mistook for houses of moral correction. Afterwards vocation appears also as a vocation in which the individual himself believes. If the ego is divorced from all its empirical conditions of life, its activity, the conditions of its existence, if it is separated from the world that forms its basis and from its own body, then, of course, it has no other vocation and no other designation than that of representing the Caius of the logical proposition and to assist Saint Sancho in arriving at the equations given above. In the real world, on the other hand, where individuals have needs, they thereby already have a vocation and task; and at the outset it is still immaterial whether they make this their vocation in their imagination as well. It is clear, however, that because the individuals possess consciousness they form an idea of this vocation which their empirical existence has given them and, thus, furnish Saint Sancho with the opportunity of seizing on the word vocation, that is, on the mental expression of their actual conditions of life, and of leaving out of account these conditions of life themselves. The proletarian, for example, who like every human being has the vocation of satisfying his needs and who is not in a position to satisfy even the needs that he has in common with all human beings, the proletarian whom the necessity to work a 14-hour day debases to the level of a beast of burden, whom competition degrades to a mere thing, an article of trade, who from his position as a mere productive force, the sole position left to him, is squeezed out by other, more powerful productive forces — this proletarian is, if only for these reasons, confronted with the real task of revolutionising his conditions. He can, of course, imagine this to be his “vocation”, he can also, if he likes to engage in propaganda, express his “vocation” by saying that to do this or that is the human vocation of the proletarian, the more so since his position does not even allow him to satisfy the needs arising directly from his human nature. Saint Sancho does not concern himself with the reality underlying this idea, with the practical aim of this proletarian — he clings to the word “vocation” and declares it to be the holy, and the proletarian to be a servant of the holy — the easiest way of considering himself superior and “proceeding further”.

Particularly in the relations that have existed hitherto, when one class always ruled, when the conditions of life of an individual always coincided with the conditions of life of a class, when, therefore, the practical task of each newly emerging class was bound to appear to each of its members as a universal task, and when each class could actually overthrow its predecessor only by liberating the individuals of all classes from certain chains which had hitherto fettered them — under these circumstances it was essential that the task of the individual members of a class striving for domination should be described as a universal human task.

Incidentally, when for example the bourgeois tells the proletarian that his, the proletarian’s, human task is to work fourteen hours a day, the proletarian is quite justified in replying in the same language that on the contrary his task is to overthrow the entire bourgeois system.

We have already repeatedly seen how Saint Sancho puts forward a whole series of tasks all of which resolve themselves into the final task, which exists for all people, that of true egoism. But even where he does not reflect, and does not see himself as creator and creation, he manages to arrive at a task by means of the following trashy distinction.

Page 466: “Whether you want to continue to occupy yourself with thinking depends on you. If you wish to achieve anything substantial in thinking, then” (the conditions and designations begin for you) “then ... anyone who wishes to think, therefore, certainly has a task, which by having that wish he sets himself, consciously or unconsciously; but no one has the task of thinking.”

First of all, apart from any other content of this proposition, it is incorrect even from Saint Sancho’s own viewpoint, since the egoist in agreement with himself, whether he wishes it or not, certainly has the “task” of thinking. He must think, on the one hand, to keep in check the flesh, which can be tamed only through the spirit, through thought, and, on the other hand, to be able to fulfil his reflective determination as creator and creation. Consequently he sets the whole world of deceived egoists the “task” of knowing themselves — a “task” which, of course, cannot be accomplished without thought.

In order to change this proposition from the form of trashy distinction into a logical form, one must first of all get rid of the term “substantial”. For each person the “substantial” that he wishes to achieve in thought is something different, depending on his degree of education, the conditions of his life and his aim at the time. Saint Max, therefore, does not give us here any firm criterion for determining when the task begins which one sets oneself by thinking and how far one can go in thought without setting oneself any task — he limits himself to the relative expression “substantial”. But for me everything is “substantial” that induces me to think, everything about which I think is “substantial”. Therefore instead of: “if you want to achieve anything substantial in thinking”, it should read: “if you want to think at all”. This depends, however, not at all on your wishing or not wishing, since you possess consciousness and can satisfy your needs only by an activity in which you have to use your consciousness as well. Further, the hypothetical form must be got rid of. “If you want to think” — then from the outset you are setting yourself the “task” of thinking; Saint Sancho had no need to proclaim this tautological statement with such pomposity. The whole proposition was only clothed in this form of trashy distinction and pompous tautology in order to conceal the content: as a definite person, an actual person, you have a designation, a task, whether you are conscious of it or not. It arises from your need and the connection of the latter with the existing world. Sancho’s real wisdom lies in his assertion that it depends on your will whether you think, live, etc., whether in general you possess any sort of determinateness. He is afraid that otherwise determination would cease to be your self-determination. When you equate your self with your reflection, or according to need, with your will, then it is obvious that in this abstraction everything that is not posited by your reflection or your will is not self-determination — therefore also, for example, your breathing, your blood circulation, thought, life, etc. For Saint Sancho, however, self-determination does not even consist in will but, as we saw already in regard to the true egoist, in the reservatio mentalis of indifference to any kind of determinateness — an indifference which reappears here as absence of determination. In his “own” series of oppositions this would assume the following form: as opposed to all real determination, he chooses absence of determination as his determination, at each moment he distinguishes between himself and the undeterminated, thus at each moment he is also some other than he is, a third person, and indeed the other pure and simple, the holy other, the other counterposed to all uniqueness, the undeterminated, the universal, the ordinary — the ragamuffin.

If Saint Sancho saves himself from determination by his leap into absence of determination (which is itself a determination and indeed the worst of all), then the practical, moral content of this whole trick, apart from what was said above in connection with the true egoist, is merely an apology for the vocation forced on every individual in the world as it has existed so far. If, for example, the workers assert in their communist propaganda that the vocation, designation, task of every person is to achieve all-round development of all his abilities, including, for example, the ability to think, Saint Sancho sees in this only the vocation to something alien, the assertion of “the holy”. He seeks to free them from this by defending the individual who has been crippled by the division of labour at the expense of his abilities and relegated to a one-sided vocation against his own need to become different, a need which has been stated to be his vocation by others. What is here asserted in the form of a vocation, a designation, is precisely the negation of the vocation that has hitherto resulted in practice from the division of labour, i.e., the only actually existing vocation — hence, the negation of vocation altogether. The all-round realisation of the individual will only cease to be conceived as an ideal, a vocation, etc., when the impact of the world which stimulates the real development of the abilities of the individual is under the control of the individuals themselves, as the communists desire.

Finally, in the egoistical logic all the twaddle about vocation has moreover the purpose of making it possible to introduce the holy into things and to enable us to destroy them without having to touch them. Thus, for example, one person or another regards work, business affairs, etc., as his vocation. Thereby these become holy work, holy business affairs, the holy. The true egoist does not regard them as vocation; thereby he has dissolved holy work and holy business affairs. So they remain what they are and he remains what he was. It does not occur to him to investigate whether work, business affairs, etc., these modes of existence of individuals, by their real content and process of development necessarily lead to those ideological notions which he combats as independent beings, or, to use his expression, which he canonises.

Just as Saint Sancho canonises communism in order later, in connection with the union, the better to palm off his holy idea of it as his “own” invention, so, in exactly the same way, he blusters against “vocation, designation, task” merely in order to reproduce them throughout his book as the categorical imperative. Wherever difficulties arise, Sancho hacks his way through them by means of a categorical imperative such as “turn yourself to account”, “recognise yourself”, “let each become an all-powerful ego”, etc. On the categorical imperative, see the section on the “union”; on “vocation”, etc., see the section on “self-enjoyment”.

We have now revealed the chief logical tricks Saint Sancho uses to canonise the existing world and thereby to criticise and consume it. Actually, however, he consumes only the holy in the world, without even touching the world itself. Hence it is obvious that he has to remain wholly conservative in practice. If he wanted to criticise, then earthly criticism would begin just where any possible halo ends.

— Social Development Exposes Falsehoods —

The more the normal form of intercourse of society, and with it the conditions of the ruling class, develop their contradiction to the advanced productive forces, and the greater the consequent discord within the ruling class itself as well as between it and the class ruled by it, the more fictitious, of course, becomes the consciousness which originally corresponded to this form of intercourse (i.e., it ceases to be the consciousness corresponding to this form of intercourse), and the more do the old traditional ideas of these relations of intercourse, in which actual private interests, etc., etc., are expressed as universal interests, descend to the level of mere idealising phrases, conscious illusion, deliberate hypocrisy. But the more their falsity is exposed by life, and the less meaning they have for consciousness itself, the more resolutely are they asserted, the more hypocritical, moral and holy becomes the language of this normal society. The more hypocritical this society becomes, the easier it is for such a credulous man as Sancho to discover everywhere the idea of the holy, the ideal. From the universal hypocrisy of society he, the credulous, can deduce universal faith in the holy, the domination of the holy, and can even mistake this holy for the pedestal of existing society. He is the dupe of this hypocrisy, from which he should have drawn exactly the opposite conclusion.

The world of the holy is in the final analysis epitomised in “man”. As we have already seen throughout the Old Testament, Sancho regards “man” as the active subject on which the whole of previous history ‘s based; in the New Testament he extends this domination of “man” to the whole of the existing, contemporary physical and spiritual world, and also to the properties of the individuals at present existing. Everything belongs to “man” and thus the world is transformed into the “world of man”. The holy as a person is “man”, which for Sancho is only another name for the concept, the idea. The conceptions and ideas of people, separated from actual things, are bound, of course, to have as their basis not actual individuals, but the individual of the philosophical conception, the individual separated from his actuality and existing only in thought, man as such, the concept of man. With this, his faith in philosophy reaches its culmination.

Now that everything has been transformed into “the holy” or into what belongs to “man”, our saint is enabled to proceed further to appropriation, by renouncing the idea of “the holy” or of “man” as a power standing above him. Owing to the alien having been transformed into the holy, into a mere idea, this idea of the alien, which he mistakes for the actually existing alien, is of course his property. The basic formulas for the appropriation of the world of man (the way in which the ego gains possession of the world when it no longer has any respect for the holy) are already contained in the equations given above.

As we have seen, Saint Sancho is already master of his qualities as the egoist in agreement with himself. In order to become master of the world, all he has to do is to make it one of his qualities. The simplest way of doing so is for Sancho to proclaim the quality of “man”, with all the nonsense contained in this, directly as his quality. Thus he claims for himself, for example, as a quality of the ego, the nonsense of universal love of mankind by asserting that he loves “everyone” (p. 387) and indeed with the consciousness of egoism, for “love makes him happy”. A person who has such a happy nature, indubitably belongs to those of whom it is said: Woe unto you if you offend even one of these little ones! [cf. Luke 17:1-2]

The second method is that Saint Sancho tries to preserve something as a quality of his, while he transforms it — when it seems necessary to him as a relation — into a relation, a mode of existence, of “man”, a holy relation, and thereby repudiates it. Saint Sancho does this even when the quality, separated from the relation through which it is realised, becomes pure nonsense. Thus, for example, on page 322 he wants to preserve national pride by declaring that “nationality is one of his qualities and the nation his owner and master”. He could have continued: religiousness is a quality of mine, I have no intention of renouncing it as one of my qualities — religion is my master, the holy. Family love is a quality of mine, the family is my master. justice is a quality of mine, the law is my master; to engage in politics is a quality of mine, the state is my master.

The third method of appropriation is employed when some alien power whose force he experiences in practice is regarded by him as holy and spurned altogether without being appropriated. In this case he sees his own powerlessness in the alien power and recognises this powerlessness as his property, his creation, above which he always stands as creator. This, for example, is the case with the state. Here, too, he fortunately arrives at the point at which he has to deal not with something alien, but only with a quality of his own, against which he needs only to set himself as creator in order to overcome it. In an emergency, therefore, the lack of a quality is also taken by him as a quality of his. When Saint Sancho is starving to death it is not due to lack of food, but to his own hungriness, his own quality of starving. If he falls out of a window and breaks his neck, it happens not because the force of gravity plunges him downwards, but because absence of wings, inability to fly, is a quality of his own.

The fourth method, which he employs with the most brilliant success, consists in declaring that everything that is the object of one of his qualities, is, since it is his object, his property, because he has a relation to it by virtue of one of his qualities, irrespective of the character of this relation. Thus, what has up to now been called seeing, hearing, feeling, etc., Sancho, this inoffensive acquisitor, calls: acquiring property. The shop at which I am looking is, as something seen by me, the object of my eye, and its reflection on my retina is the possession of my eye. And now the shop, besides its relation to the eye, becomes his possession and not merely the possession of his eye — his possession, which is as much upside-down as the image of the shop on his retina. When the shopkeeper lets down the shutters (or, as Szeliga puts it, the “blinds and curtains”), his property disappears and, like a bankrupt bourgeois, he retains only the painful memory of vanished brilliance. If “Stirner” passes by the royal kitchen he will undoubtedly acquire possession of the smell of the pheasants roasting there, but he will not even see the pheasants themselves. The only persisting possession that falls to his share is a more or less vociferous rumbling in his stomach. incidentally, what and how much he can see depends not only on the existing state of affairs in the world, a state of affairs by no means created by him, but also on his purse and on the position in life which falls to his lot owing to division of labour, which perhaps shuts away very much from him, although he may have very acquisitive eyes and ears.

If Saint Sancho had said simply and frankly that everything that is the object of his imagination, as an object imagined by him, i.e., as his idea of an object, is his idea, i.e., his possession (and the same thing holds with looking at something, etc.), one would only have marvelled at the childish näiveté of a man who believes that such a triviality is a discovery and a fortune. But the fact that he passes off this conjectural property as property in general was bound, of course, to have a magical attraction for the propertyless German ideologists.

Every other person in his sphere of action, too, is his object, and “as his object — his property”, his creature. Each ego says to the other (see p. 184):

“For me you are only what you are for me” (for example, my exploiteur), “namely my object and, because my object, my property.”

Hence also my creature, which at any moment as creator I can swallow up and take back into myself. Thus, each ego regards the other not as a property-owner, but as his property; not as “ego” (see [p. 184)l but as being-for-him, as object; not as belonging to himself, but as belonging to him, to another, as alienated from himself. “Let us take both for what they give themselves out to be” (p. 187), for property-owners, for something belonging to themselves, “and for what they take each other to be”, for property, for something belonging to the alien. They are property-owners and they are not property-owners (cf. p. 187). What is important for Saint Sancho, however, in all relations to others, is not to take the real relation, but how each can see himself in his imagination, in his reflection.

Since everything that is object for the “ego” is, through the medium of one or other of his properties, also his object and, therefore, his property — thus, for example, the beatings he receives as the object of his members, his feelings and his mind, are his object and, therefore, his property — he is able to proclaim himself the owner of every object that exists for him. By this means he can proclaim that the world surrounding him is his property, and that he is its owner — no matter how much it maltreats him and debases him to the level of a “man having only ideal wealth, a ragamuffin”. On the other hand, since every object for the “ego” is not only my object, but also my object, it is possible, with the same indifference towards the content, to declare that every object is not-my-own, alien, holy. one and the same object and one and the same relation can, therefore, with equal ease and with equal success be declared to be the holy and my property. Everything depends on whether stress is laid on the word “my” or on the word “object”. The methods of appropriation and canonisation are merely two different “refractions” of one “transformation”.

All these methods are merely positive expressions for negating what was posited as alien to the ego in the above equations; except that the negation is again, as above, taken in various determinations. Negation can, firstly, be determined in a purely formal way, so that it does not at all affect the content — as we saw above in the case of love of mankind and in all cases when its whole alteration is limited to introducing consciousness of indifference. Or the whole sphere of the object or predicate, the whole content, can be negated, as in the case of religion and the state. Or, thirdly, the copula alone, my hitherto alien relation to the predicate, can be negated and the stress laid on the word “my” so that my attitude to what is mine is that of property-owner — in the case of money, for instance, which becomes coin of my own coining. In this last case both the quality of Man and his relation can lose all meaning. Every one of the qualities of Man, by being taken back into myself, is extinguished in my individuality. It is no longer possible to say what the quality is. It remains only nominally what it was. As “mine”, as determinateness dissolved in me, it no longer has any determinateness whether in relation to others or in relation to me, it is only posited by me, an illusory quality. Thus, for example, my thought. just as with my qualities, so with the things which stand in a relation to me and which, as we have seen above, are basically also only my qualities — as, for example, in the case of the shop I am looking at. Insofar, [therefore,] as thought in me is totally [different] from all [other] qualities, just as, for example, a jeweller’s shop is totally different from a sausage shop, etc. — the [difference] emerges again as a difference of appearance, and reasserts itself externally too in my manifestation for others. Thereby this annihilated determinateness is fortunately restored and, insofar as it is at all possible to express it in words, must also be reproduced in the old expressions. (Incidentally, we shall be hearing a little more yet concerning Saint Sancho’s non-etymological illusions about language.)

The simple equation encountered above is here replaced by the antithesis. In its simplest form it is expressed, for example, as follows:

Man’s thought — my thought, egoistical thought,

where the word my means only that he can also be without thoughts, so that the word my abolishes thought. The antithesis already becomes more complicated in the following example:

Money as man’s means of exchange —

Money of my own coining as the egoist’s means of exchange

where the absurdity stands revealed.

The antithesis becomes still more complicated when Saint Max introduces a determination and wants to create the appearance of a far-reaching development. Here the single antithesis becomes a series of antitheses. First of all, for example, it is stated:

Right in general as the right of man

Right is what is right for me,

where, instead of right, he might equally well have put any other word, since admittedly it no longer has any meaning. Although this nonsense continues to crop up all the time, in order to proceed further he has to introduce another, well-known determination of right which can be used both in the purely personal and in the ideological sense — for example, might as the basis of right. Only now, where the right mentioned in the first thesis has acquired yet another determination, which is retained in the antithesis, can this antithesis produce Some content. Now we get:

Right — might of Man — Might — my right

which then again simply becomes reduced to:

1=Might as my right = My might.

These antitheses are no more than positive reversals of the above-mentioned negative equations, in which antitheses continually proved to be contained in the conclusion. They even surpass those equations in simple grandeur and great simple-mindedness.

Just as previously Saint Sancho could regard everything as alien, as existing independently of him, as holy, so now with equal ease he can regard everything as his own product, as only existing thanks to him, as his property. Indeed, since he transforms everything into his qualities, it only remains for him to behave towards them as he behaves towards his original qualities, in the capacity of the egoist in agreement with himself, a procedure we do not need to repeat here. In this way our Berlin school-master becomes the absolute master of the world — “this, of course, is also the case with every goose, every dog, every horse” (Wigand, p. 187).

The real logical experiment, on which all these forms of appropriation are based, is a mere form of speech, namely a paraphrase, expressing one relation as a manifestation, as a mode of existence of another. just as we have seen that every relation can be depicted as an example of the relation of property, in exactly the same way it can be depicted as the relation of love, might, exploitation, etc. Saint Sancho found this manner of paraphrase ready-made in philosophical speculation where it plays a very important part. See below on the “theory of exploitation”.

The various categories of appropriation become emotional categories as soon as the appearance of practice is introduced and appropriation is to be taken seriously. The emotional form of assertion of the ego against the alien, the holy, the world of “Man”, is bragging. Refusal to revere the holy is proclaimed (reverence, respect, etc. — these emotional categories serve to express his relation to the holy or to some third thing as the holy), and this permanent refusal is entitled a deed, a deed that appears all the more comic because all the time Sancho is battling only against the spectre of his own sanctifying conception. On the other hand, since the world, despite his refusal to revere the holy, treats him in the most ungodly fashion, he enjoys the inner satisfaction of declaring to the world that he has only to attain power over it in order to treat it without any reverence. This threat with its world-shattering reservatio mentalis completes the comedy. To the first form of bragging belongs Saint Sancho’s statement on page 16 that he “is not afraid of the anger of Poseidon, nor of the vengeful Eumenides”, “does not fear the curse” (p. 58), “desires no forgiveness” (p. 242), etc., and his final assurance that he commits “the most boundless desecration” of the holy. To the second form belongs his threat against the moon (p. 218):

“If only I could seize you, I would in truth seize you, and if only I could find a means to get to you, you would in no way terrify me.... I do not surrender to you, but am only hiding my time. Even if for the present I refrain from having designs on you, I still have a grudge against you” —

an apostrophe in which our saint sinks below the level of Pfeffel’s pug-dog in the ditch. ^[43] And likewise on page 425, where he “does not renounce power over life and death”, etc.

Finally, the practice of bragging [can] again become mere [practice] within the sphere of theory [by] our holy man [asserting] in the [most] pompous language that he has performed actions that he has never performed, and [at the same time] endeavouring by means of high-sounding phrases to smuggle in traditional trivialities [as] his original creations. Actually this is characteristic of the entire book, particularly his construction of history — which is foisted on us as an exposition of his thought but is only a bad piece of copying out — then the assurance that “the book” “appears to be written against man” (Wigand, p. 168), and a multitude of separate assertions, such as: “With one puff of the living ego I blow down whole peoples” (p. 219 of “the book”), “I recklessly attack” (p. 254), “the people is dead” (p. 285), further the assurance that he “delves into the bowels of right” (p. 275), and, finally, the challenging call, embellished with quotations and aphorisms, for “a flesh-and-blood opponent” (p. 280).

Bragging is already in itself sentimental. But, in addition, sentimentality occurs in “the book” as a particular category, which plays a definite part especially in positive appropriation that is no longer mere assertion against the alien. However simple the methods of appropriation so far examined, with a more detailed exposition the appearance has to be given that the ego thereby acquires also property “in the ordinary sense”, and this can only be achieved by a forcible puffing-up of this ego, by enveloping himself and others in a sentimental charm. Sentimentality cannot be avoided since, without previous examination, he claims the predicates of “Man” as his own — he asserts, for example, that he “loves” “everyone” “out of egoism” — and thus gives his qualities an exuberant turgidity. Thus, on page 351, he declares that the “smile of the infant” is “his property” and in the same passage the stage of civilisation at which old men are no longer killed off is depicted with the most touching expressions as the deed of these old men themselves, etc. His attitude to Maritornes also belongs wholly to this same sentimentality.

The unity of sentimentality and bragging is rebellion. Directed outwards, against others, it is bragging; directed inwards, as grumbling-in-oneself, it is sentimentality. It is the specific expression of the impotent dissatisfaction of the philistine. He waxes indignant at the thought of atheism, terrorism, communism, regicide, etc. The object against which Saint Sancho rebels is the holy; therefore rebellion, which indeed is also characterised as a crime, becomes, in the final analysis, a sin. It is therefore by no means necessary for rebellion to take the form of an action, as it is only the “sin” against “the holy”. Saint Sancho, therefore, is satisfied with “getting” “holiness” or the “spirit of alienation” “out of his head” and accomplishing his ideological appropriation. But just as present and future are altogether confused in his head, and just as he sometimes asserts that he has already appropriated everything and sometimes that it has still to be acquired, so in connection with rebellion also at times it occurs to him quite accidentally that he is still confronted by the actually existing alien even after he has finished with the halo of the alien. In this case, or rather in the case of this sudden idea, rebellion is transformed into an imaginary act, and the ego into we”. We shall examine this in more detail later (see “Rebellion”).

The true egoist, who from the description given so far has proved to be the greatest conservative, finally collects up the fragments of the “world of man”, twelve basketfuls; for “far be it that anything should be lost!” Since his whole activity is limited to trying a few hackneyed, casuistical tricks on the world of thoughts handed down to him by philosophical tradition, it is a matter of course that the real world does not exist for him at all and, therefore, too, remains in existence as before. The content of the New Testament will furnish us with detailed proof of this.

Thus, “we appear at the bar of majority and are declared of age” (p. 86).

4. Peculiarity[edit source]

“To create for oneself one’s own world, that means building a heaven for oneself” (p. 89 of “the book”).
[Leopold Ranke’s “Einleitung” in Historisch-politische Zeitschrift. I. Band, Hamburg, 1832 — the place and date of publication are cited incorrectly in the text]

We have already “penetrated” into the innermost sanctuary of this heaven; now we shall try to learn “more things” about it. In the New Testament, however, we shall rediscover the same hypocrisy that permeated the Old Testament. just as in the latter the historical data were only names for a few simple categories, so here in the New Testament, too, all worldly relations are only disguises, different designations, for the meagre content which we have assembled in the “Phenomenology” and “Logic”. Under the appearance of speaking about the actual world, Saint Sancho always speaks only about these meagre categories.

“You do not want the freedom to have all these fine things.... You want to have them in actuality ... to possess them as your property.... You ought to be not only a free person, but also an owner” (p. 205).

One of the oldest formulas arrived at by the early social movement — the opposition between socialism in its most miserable form and liberalism — is here exalted into an utterance of the “egoist in agreement with himself”. How old this opposition is even for Berlin, our holy man could have seen if only from the fact that it is mentioned with terror already in Ranke’s Historisch-politische Zeitschrift, Berlin, 1831 .

“How I utilise it” (freedom) “depends on my peculiarity” (p. 205).

The great dialectician can also reverse this and say: “How I utilise my peculiarity depends on my freedom.” — Then he continues:

“Free — from what?”

Here, therefore, by means of a dash freedom is already transformed into freedom from something and, per appos., from “everything”. This time, however, the apposition is given in the form of a proposition that apparently provides a closer definition. Having thus achieved this great result, Sancho becomes sentimental.

“Oh, how much can be shaken off!" First, the “yoke of serfdom”, then a whole series of other yokes, leading imperceptibly to the result that “the most perfect self-denial is nothing but freedom, freedom ... from one’s own ego, and the urge towards freedom as something absolute ... has deprived us of our peculiarity.”

By means of an extremely artless series of yokes, liberation from serfdom, which was the assertion of the individuality of the serfs and at the same time the abolition of a definite empirical barrier, is here equated with the much earlier Christian-idealist freedom of the Epistles to the Romans and Corinthians, thereby transforming freedom in general into self-denial. At this point we have already finished with freedom, since it is now indisputably the “holy”. Saint Max transforms a definite historical act of self-liberation into the abstract category of “freedom”, and this category is then defined more closely by means of a totally different historical phenomenon which can likewise be included under the general conception of “freedom”. This is the whole trick by which the throwing off of the yoke of serfdom is transformed into self-denial. To make his theory of freedom as clear as noonday to the German burgher, Sancho now begins to declaim in the burgher’s own language, particularly that of the Berlin burgher:

“But the freer I become, the larger does compulsion loom before my eyes, and the more powerless do I feel. The unfree son of the wilds is not yet aware of all the limitations that trouble an ‘educated’ man, he imagines himself freer than the latter. In proportion as I achieve freedom for myself I create new limits and new tasks for myself; no sooner have I invented railways than I again feel myself weak because I still cannot sail through the air like a bird, and I have no sooner solved a problem that was perplexing my mind than countless others await me,” etc. (pp. 205, 206).

O “clumsy” story-writer for townsman and villager!

Not the “unfree sons of the wilds” but “educated people” “imagine” the savage freer than the educated man. That the son of the wilds” (whom F. Halm brought on the stage [Friedrich Halm, Der Sohn der Wildniss]) is ignorant of the limitations of the educated man because he cannot experience them is just as clear as that the “educated” citizen of Berlin, who only knows the “son of the wilds” from the theatre, knows nothing of the limitations of the savage. The simple fact is this: the limitations of the savage are not those of the civilised man. The comparison that our saint draws between them is the fantastic comparison of an “educated” Berliner whose education consists of knowing nothing about either of them. That he knows nothing of the limitations of the savage is explicable, although after the large number of new travel books, it is certainly easy enough to know something about them; but that he is also ignorant of the limitations of the educated man, is proved by his example of railways and flying. The inactive petty bourgeois, for whom railways dropped from the sky and who for that very reason I imagines that he invented them himself, begins to indulge in fantasies about aerial flight after having once travelled by railway. Actually, the balloon came first and then the railways. Saint Sancho had to reverse this, for otherwise everyone would have seen that when the balloon was invented the demand for railways was still a long way off, whereas the opposite is easy to imagine. In general, Sancho turns empirical relations upside down. When hackney carriages and carts no longer sufficed for the growing requirements of communication, when, inter alia, the centralisation of production due to large-scale industry necessitated new methods to accelerate and expand the transport of its mass of products, the locomotive was invented and thus the use of railways for transport on a large scale. The inventor and shareholders were interested in their profits, and commerce in general in reducing production costs; the possibility, indeed the absolute necessity, of the invention lay in the empirical conditions. The application of the new invention in the various countries depended on the various empirical conditions; in America, for example, on the need to unite the individual states of that vast area and to link the semi-civilised districts of the interior with the sea and the markets for their products. (Compare, inter alia, M. Chevalier, Lettres sur 1'Amérique du Nord.) In other countries, for example in Germany, where every new invention makes people regret that it does not complete the sum total of inventions — in such countries after stubbornly resisting these detestable railways which cannot supply them with wings, people are nevertheless compelled by competition to accept them in the end and to give up hackney carriages and carts along with the time-honoured, respectable spinning-wheel. The absence of other profitable investment of capital made railway construction the predominant branch of industry in Germany. The development of her railway construction and reverses on the world market went hand in hand. But nowhere are railways built for the sake of the category “freedom from”; Saint Max could have realised this even from the fact that no one builds railways in order to free himself from his money. The real kernel of the burgher’s ideological contempt for railways due to his longing to fly like a bird is to be found in his preference for hackney carriages, vans and country roads. Sancho yearns for his “own world” which, as we saw above, is heaven. Therefore he wants to replace the locomotive by Elijah’s fiery chariot and be carried up to heaven.

After the actual tearing down of restrictions — which is at the same time an extremely positive development of the productive forces, real energy and satisfaction of urgent requirements, and an expansion of the power of individuals — after the actual tearing down of restrictions has been transformed in the eyes of this passive and ignorant spectator into simple freedom from a restriction, which he can again logically make into a postulate of freedom from restriction as such — at the conclusion of the whole argument, we arrive at what was already presupposed at the beginning:

“To be free from something means only to be relieved of something, to be rid of something” (p. 206).

He at once gives an extremely unfortunate example: “He is free of headache is equivalent to saying: he is rid of it”; as though this “riddance” of headache were not equivalent to a wholly positive ability to dispose of my head, equivalent to ownership of my head, while as long as I had a headache I was the property of my sick head.

“In ‘riddance’ — in riddance from sin, from God, from morality, etc. — we consummate the freedom that Christianity recommends” (p. 206).

Hence our “consummate Christian”, too, finds his peculiarity only in “riddance” from “thought”, from “determination”, from “vocation”, from “law”, from “constitution”, etc., and invites his brothers in Christ to “feel happy only in dissolution”, i.e., in accomplishing “riddance” and the “consummate”, “Christian freedom”.

He continues:

“Ought we, perhaps, to renounce freedom because it turns out to he a Christian ideal? No, nothing should be lost” (voilà notre conservateur tout trouvé [there’s the conservative all complete]), “freedom too should not be lost, it should however become our own, and it cannot become our own in the form of freedom” (p. 207).

Here “our egoist” (toujours et partout [always and everywhere]) “in agreement with himself” forgets that already in the Old Testament, thanks to the Christian ideal of freedom, i.e., thanks to the illusion of freedom, we became “owners” of the “world of things”; he forgets, likewise, that accordingly we had only to get rid of the “world of thoughts” to become “owners” of that world as well, that in this context peculiarly” was for him a consequence of freedom, of riddance.

Having interpreted freedom as the state of being free from something, and this, in turn, as “riddance”, and this as the Christian ideal of freedom, and hence as the freedom of “Man”, our saint can, with the material thus prepared, carry through a practical course of his logic. The first, simplest antithesis reads:

Freedom of Man — My freedom,

where in the antithesis freedom ceases to exist “in the form of freedom”. Or:

Riddance in the interests of Man — Riddance in my interests.

Both these antitheses, with a numerous retinue of declamations, continually appear throughout the chapter on peculiarity, but with their help alone our world-conquering Sancho would attain very little, he would not even attain the island of Barataria. Earlier, when observing the behaviour of people from his “own world”, from his “heaven”, he set aside two factors of actual liberation in making his abstraction of freedom. The first factor was that individuals in their self-liberation satisfy a definite need actually experienced by them. As the result of setting aside this factor, “Man” has been substituted for actual individuals, and striving for a fantastic ideal — for freedom as such, for the “freedom of Man” — has been substituted for the satisfaction of actual needs.

The second factor was that an ability that has hitherto existed merely as a potentiality in the individuals who are freeing themselves begins to function as a real power, or that an already existing power becomes greater by removal of some restriction. The removal of the restriction, which is merely a consequence of the new creation of power, can of course be considered the main thing. But this illusion arises only if one takes politics as the basis of empirical history, or if, like Hegel, one wants everywhere to demonstrate the negation of negation, or finally if, after the new power has been created, one reflects, as an ignorant citizen of Berlin, on this new creation.

By setting aside this second factor for his own use, Saint Sancho acquires a determinateness that he can counterpose to the remaining, abstract caput mortuum of “freedom”. Thus he arrives at the following new antitheses:

Freedom, the empty removal of alien power — Peculiarity, the actual possession of one’s own power.

Or, even:

Freedom, repulsion of alien power — Peculiarity, possession of one’s own power.

To show the extent to which Saint Sancho has juggled his own “power”, which he here counterposes to freedom, out of this same freedom and into himself, we do not intend to refer him to the materialists or communists, but merely to the Dictionnaire de 1'académie, where he will find that the word liberté is most frequently used in the sense of puissance. If, however, Saint Sancho should maintain that he does not combat “liberté “, but “freedom”, then he ought to consult Hegel on negative and positive freedom. As a German petty bourgeois, he might enjoy the concluding remark in this chapter.

The antithesis can also be expressed as follows:

Freedom, idealistic striving for riddance and the struggle against other-being

Peculiarity, actual riddance and pleasure in one’s own existence.

Having thus, by means of a cheap abstraction, distinguished peculiarity from freedom, Sancho pretends that he is only now beginning to analyse this difference and exclaims:

“What a difference there is between freedom and peculiarity!” (p. 207).

We shall see that, apart from the general antitheses, he has achieved nothing, and that peculiarity “in the ordinary sense” continues most amusingly to creep in side by side with this definition of peculiarity.

“In spite of the state of slavery, one can be inwardly free, although, again, only from various things, but not from everything, but the slave cannot be free from the whip, from the despotic mood, etc., of his master.”

“On the other hand, peculiarity is my whole essence and existence, it is I myself. I am free from that which I have got rid of; I am the owner of that which I have in my power or which I have mastered. I am my own at all times and under all circumstances, if only I know how to possess myself and do not abandon myself to others. I cannot truly want the state of being free, because I cannot ... achieve it; I can only wish for it and strive towards it, for it remains an ideal, a spectre. At every moment the fetters of actuality cut very deeply into my flesh. But I remain my own. Belonging as a feudal serf to some master, I think only of myself and of my own advantage; his blows, it is true, strike me: I am not free from them; but I endure them only for my own good, for example, in order to deceive him by an appearance of patience and to lull him into security or perhaps in order not to incur something worse by my defiance. But since I constantly have in mind myself and my own advantage” (while the blows retain possession of him and his back) “I seize on the first convenient opportunity” (i.e., he “wishes”, he “strives” towards the first convenient opportunity, which, however, “remains an ideal, a spectre”) “to crush the slave-owner. That I then become free from him and his whip is only a consequence of my previous egoism. It will, perhaps, he said here that even in the state of slavery I was free, namely ‘in myself’ or ‘inwardly'; however, ‘free in oneself’ is not ‘actually free’, and ‘inwardly’ is not ‘outwardly’. On the other hand, was myself, my own wholly and completely, both inwardly and outwardly. Under the domination of a cruel master, my body is not ‘free’ from the pain of torture and the lashes of the whip; but it is my bones that crack under torture, my muscles that twitch under the blows, and it is I who groan because my body suffers. The fact that I sigh and tremble proves that I still belong to myself, that I am my own” (pp. 207, 208).

Our Sancho, who here again acts the story-teller for the petty bourgeois and villagers, proves here that, despite the numerous drubbings he has already received in Cervantes, he has always remained “owner” of himself and that these blows belonged rather to his “peculiarity”. He is “his own” “at all times and under all circumstances” provided he knows how to possess himself. Here, therefore, peculiarity is hypothetical and depends on his knowledge, by which term he understands a slavish casuistry. This knowledge later on becomes thinking as well, when he begins “to think” about himself and his “advantage” — this thinking and this imagined “advantage” being his imagined “property”. It is further interpreted in the sense that he endures the blows “for his own good”, where peculiarity once again consists in the idea of “good”, and where he “endures” the bad in order not to become the “owner” of “something worse”. Subsequently, knowledge is revealed also as the “owner” of the reservation about “the first convenient opportunity”, hence of a mere reservatio mentalis, and, finally, as the “crushing” of the “slave-owner”, in the anticipation of the idea, in which case he is the “owner” of this anticipation, whereas at present the slave-owner actually tramples him underfoot. While, therefore, he identifies himself here with his consciousness, which endeavours to calm itself by means of all kinds of maxims of worldly wisdom, in the end he identifies himself with his body, so that he is wholly “his own”, outwardly as well as inwardly, so long as he still retains a spark of life, even if it is merely unconscious life. Such phenomena as the cracking of his “bones”, the twitching of his muscles, etc., are phenomena which, when translated from the language of unique natural science into the language of pathology, can be produced with the aid of galvanism on his corpse, when freshly cut down from the gallows on which he hanged himself, as we saw above, and which can be produced even in a dead frog — these phenomena serve him here as proof that he is “wholly and completely” “both inwardly and outwardly” still “his own”, that he still has control over himself. The very fact which demonstrates the power and peculiarity of the slave-owner, namely that it is precisely he who is flogged and not someone else, that it is precisely his bones that “crack”, his muscles that twitch, without his being able to alter it — this very fact here serves our saint as proof of his own peculiarity and power. Thus, when he lies trussed up in the spanso bocko” ^[44] torture of Surinam, unable to move hand or foot, or any other of his limbs, and has to put up with everything done to him, in such circumstances his power and peculiarity do not consist in his being able to make use of his limbs, but in the fact that they are his limbs. Here once again he has saved his peculiarity by always considering himself as otherwise-determined — sometimes as mere consciousness, sometimes as an unconscious body (see the “Phenomenology”).

At any rate, Saint Sancho “endures” his portion of blows with more dignity than actual slaves do. However often, in the interests of the slave-owners, missionaries may tell the slaves that they have to “endure” the blows “for their own good”, the slaves are not taken in by such twaddle. They do not coldly and timidly reflect that they would otherwise “incur something worse”, nor do they imagine that they “deceive the slave-owner by an appearance of patience”. On the contrary, they scoff at their torturers, they jeer at the latter’s impotence even to force them to humble themselves, and they in suppress every “groan” and every sigh, as long as the physical pain permits them to do so. (See Charles Comte, Traité de legislation.) They are therefore, neither “inwardly” nor “outwardly” their own “owners”, but only the “owners” of their defiance, which could equally well be expressed by saying that they are neither “inwardly” nor “outwardly” “free”, but are free only in one respect, namely that they are “inwardly” free from self-humiliation as they also show “outwardly”. Insofar as “Stirner” suffers blows, he is the owner of the blows and thus free from being not beaten; and this freedom, this riddance, belongs to his peculiarity.

From the fact that Saint Sancho assumes that the reservation about running away at “the first convenient opportunity” is a special characteristic of peculiarity and sees in the “liberation” thus obtained “merely the consequence of his previous egoism” (of his own egoism, i.e., egoism in agreement with itself), it follows that he imagines that the insurgent Negroes of Haiti^[45] and the fugitive Negroes of all the colonies wanted to free not themselves, but “man”. The slave who takes the decision to free himself must already be superior to the idea that slavery is his “peculiarity”. He must be “free” from this “peculiarity”. The peculiarity” of an individual, however, can consist in his “abandoning” himself. For “one” to assert the opposite means to apply an “alien scale” to this individual.

In conclusion, Saint Sancho takes revenge for the blows he has received by the following address to the “owner” of his “peculiarity”, the slave-owner:

“My leg is not ‘free’ from the blows of the master, but it is my leg, and it cannot be taken away. Let him tear it firm me and see whether he has possession of my leg! He will find in his hands nothing but the corpse of my leg, which is as little my leg as a dead dog is a dog” (p. 208).

But let him — Sancho, who imagines here that the slave-owner wants to have his living leg, probably for his own use — let him “see” what he still retains of his leg which “cannot be taken away”. He retains nothing but the loss of his leg and has become the one-legged owner of his torn-out leg. If he has to labour at a treadmill eight hours every day, then it is he who in the course of time becomes an idiot, and idiocy will then be his “peculiarity”. Let the judge who sentences him to this “see” whether he has still Sancho’s brain “in his hands”. But that will be of little help to poor Sancho.

“The first property, the first splendour has been won!”

After our saint, by means of these examples, which are worthy of an ascetic, has revealed the difference between freedom and peculiarity, at a considerable belletristical production cost, he quite unexpectedly declares on page 209 that

“between peculiarity and freedom there lies a still deeper gulf than the simple verbal difference”.

This “deeper gulf” consists in the fact that the above definition of freedom is repeated with “manifold transformations” and “refractions” and numerous “episodical insertions”. From the definition of “freedom” as “riddance” the questions arise: from what should people be free (p. 209), etc., disputes concerning this “from what” (ibid.) (here, too, as a German petty bourgeois, he sees in the struggle of actual interests only wrangling about the definition of this “from what”, in which connection, of course, it appears very strange to him that the “citizen” does not wish to be free “from citizenship”, page 210). Then the proposition is repeated that the removal of a barrier is the establishment of a new barrier, in the form that “the striving for a definite freedom always includes the aim of a new rule”, page 210 (in which connection we learn that in the revolution the bourgeois was not striving for his own rule but for the “rule of law” — see above concerning liberalism); then follows the result that one does not wish to be rid of what “is wholly to one’s liking, e.g., the irresistible glance of the beloved” (p. 211). Further on, it turns out that freedom is a “phantom” (p. 211), a “dream” (p. 212); then we learn by the way that the “voice of nature” can sometimes also become “peculiarity” (p. 213); on the other hand the “voice of God and conscience” is to be considered “devil’s work”, and the author boasts: “Such godless people” (who consider it the work of the devil) “do exist; how will you deal with them?” (pp. 213, 214). But it is not nature that should determine me, but I who should determine my nature, says the egoist in agreement with himself. And my conscience is also a “voice of nature”.

In this connection it also turns out that the animal “takes very correct steps” (p. 213). We learn further that “freedom is silent about what should happen after I have become free” (p. 215). (See “Solomon’s Song of Songs”) The exposition of the abovementioned “deeper gulf” is closed by Saint Sancho repeating the scene with the blows and this time expressing himself somewhat more clearly about peculiarity:

“Even when unfree, even bound by a thousand fetters, I nevertheless exist, and I exist not only just in the future, and in the hope, like freedom, but even as the most abject of slaves I am present” (p. 215).

Here, therefore, he counterposes himself and “freedom” as two persons, and peculiarity becomes mere existence, being present, and indeed the “most abject” presence. Peculiarity here is the simple registering of personal identity. Stirner, who in an earlier passage has already constituted himself the “secret police state”, here sets himself up as the passport department. “By no means” should anything be lost” from “the world of human beings!” (See “Solomon’s Song of Songs”.)

According to page 218, one can also “give up” one’s peculiarity through “submissiveness”, “submission”, although, according to the preceding, peculiarity cannot cease so long as one is present at all, even in the most “abject” or “submissive” form. And is not the most abject” slave the “most submissive"? According to one of the earlier descriptions of peculiarity, one can only “give up” one’s peculiarity by giving up one’s life.

On page 218, peculiarity as one aspect of freedom, as power, is once again set against freedom as riddance; and among the means by which Sancho pretends to protect his peculiarity, are mentioned “hypocrisy”, “deception” (means which my peculiarity employs. because it had to “submit” to the conditions of the world), etc.,

“for the means that I employ are determined by what I am”.

We have already seen that among these means the absence of any means plays a major role, as was evident also from his proceedings against the moon (see above “Logic”). Then, for a change, freedom is regarded as “self-liberation”, “i.e., that I can only have as much freedom as I procure by my peculiarity”, where the definition of freedom as self-determination, which occurs among all, and particularly German, ideologists, makes its appearance as peculiarity. This is then explained to us on the example of “sheen”; to whom it is of no use” at all “if they are given freedom of speech” (p. 220). How trivial is his conception here of peculiarity as self-liberation is evident if only from his repetition of the most hackneyed phrases about granted freedom, setting free, self-liberation, etc. (pp. 220, 221). The antithesis between freedom as riddance and peculiarity as the negation of this riddance is now also portrayed poetically:

“Freedom arouses your wrath against everything that you are not” (it is, therefore, wrathful peculiarity, or have choleric natures, e.g., Guizot, in Saint Sancho’s opinion, no “peculiarity"? And do I not enjoy myself in wrath against others,,), “egoism calls on you to rejoice over yourself, to delight in yourself “ (hence egoism is freedom which rejoices; incidentally, we have already become acquainted with the joy and self-enjoyment of the egoist in agreement with himself). “Freedom is and remains a longing” (as though longing were not also a peculiarity, the self-enjoyment of individuals of a particular nature, especially of Christian-German individuals — and should this longing “be lost"?). “Peculiarity is a reality which of itself abolishes all the non-freedom which is an impediment and blocks your own path” (in which case, then, until non-freedom is abolished my peculiarity is a blocked peculiarity. It is characteristic again of the German petty bourgeois that for him all barriers and obstacles disappear “of themselves”, since he never lifts a finger to achieve it, and by habit he turns those barriers which do not disappear “of themselves” into his peculiarity. It may be remarked in passing that peculiarity appears here as an acting person, although it is later demoted to a mere description of its owner) (p. 215).

The same antithesis appears again in the following form:

“As being your own, you are in actuality rid of everything, and what remains with you, you have yourself accepted, it is your choice and option. One who is his own is born free, one who is free on the other hand is only one who desires freedom.”

Nevertheless Saint Sancho “admits” on page 252

“that each is born as a human being; hence in this respect the newborn children are equal”.

What you as being your own have not “rid yourself of” is “your choice and option”, as in the case of the beatings of the slave mentioned above. — Banal paraphrase! — Here, therefore, peculiarity is reduced to the fantastic idea that Saint Sancho has voluntarily accepted and retained everything from which he has not “rid” himself, e.g., hunger when he has no money. Apart from the many things, e.g., dialect, scrofula, haemorrhoids, poverty, one-leggedness, forced philosophising imposed on him by division of labour, etc., etc. — apart from the fact that it in no way depends on him whether he “accepts” these things or not; all the same, even if for an instant we accept his premises, he has only the choice between definite things which lie within his province and which are in no way posited by his peculiarity. As an Irish peasant, for example, he can only choose to eat potatoes or starve, and he is not always free to make even this choice. In the sentence quoted above one should note also the beautiful apposition, by which, just as in jurisprudence, “acceptance” is directly identified with “choice” and “option”. Incidentally, it is impossible to say what Saint Sancho means by one who is “born free”, whether in the context or outside it.

And is not a feeling instilled into him, his feeling accepted by him? And do we not learn on pages 84, 85, that “instilled” feelings are not “ones own” feelings? For the rest, it turns out here, as we have already seen in connection with Klopstock (who is put forward here as an example), that “one’s own” behaviour by no means coincides with individual behaviour, although for Klopstock Christianity seems to have been “quite right” and in no way to have “obstructively blocked his path”.

“One who is his own does not need to free himself, because from the outset he rejects everything except himself.... Although he remains in the confines of childish reverence, he already works to ‘free’ himself from this enthralment.”

Since one who is his own does not need to free himself, already as a child he works to free himself, and all this because, as we have seen, he is one who is “born free”. “Although he remains in the confines of childish reverence” he already reflects without any restraint, namely in his own fashion, about this his own enthralment. But this should not surprise us: we already saw at the beginning of the Old Testament what a prodigy the egoist in agreement with himself was.

“Peculiarity works in the little egoist and secures him the desired ‘freedom’.”

It is not “Stirner” who lives, it is “peculiarity” that lives, “works” and “secures” in him. Here we learn that peculiarity is not a description of one who is his own, but that one who is his own is merely a paraphrase of peculiarity.

As we have seen, “riddance” at its climax was riddance from one’s own self, self-denial. We saw also that on the other hand he put forward “peculiarity” as the assertion of self, as self-interestedness. But we have seen likewise that this self-interestedness itself was again self-denial.

For some time past we have been painfully aware that “the holy” was missing. But we rediscover it suddenly, on page 224, at the end of the section on peculiarity, where it stands quite bashfully and proves its identity by means of the following new turn of expression:

“My relation to something which I selfishly carry on” (or do not carry on at all) “is different from my relation to something which I unselfishly serve” (or which I carry on).

But Saint Max is not satisfied with this remarkable piece of tautology, which he “accepted” from “choice and option”; there suddenly reappears the long forgotten “one”, in the shape of the night watchman who establishes the identity of the holy, and declares that he

“could put forward the following distinguishing mark: against the former I can sin or commit a sin” (a remarkable tautology!), “the other I can only lose by my folly, push away from myself, deprive myself of it, i.e., do something stupid” (it follows that he can lose himself by his folly, can deprive himself of himself, can be deprived of himself — can be deprived of life). “Both these points of view are applicable to freedom of trade, because it” is partly taken for the holy and partly not so taken, or, as Sancho himself expresses it more circumstantially, “because it is partly regarded as a freedom which can be granted or withdrawn depending on circumstances, and partly as a freedom which should be regarded as holy under all circumstances” (pp. 224, 225).

Here again Sancho reveals his “peculiar” “penetration” into the question of freedom of trade and protective tariffs. He is herewith given the “vocation” of pointing out just one single case where freedom of trade was regarded as “holy” 1) because it is a “freedom”, and 2) “under all circumstances”. The holy comes in useful for all purposes. After peculiarity, by means of logical antitheses and the phenomenological “being-also-otherwise-determined”, has been constructed, as we have seen, from a “freedom” previously trimmed up for the purpose — Saint Sancho meanwhile having “dismissed” everything that happened to suit him (e.g., beatings) into peculiarity, and whatever did not suit him into freedom — we learn finally that all this was still not true peculiarity.

“Peculiarity,” it is stated on page 225, “is not at all an idea, such as freedom, etc., it is only a description — of the owner.”

We shall see that this “description of the owner” consists in negating freedom in the three refractions which Saint Sancho ascribes to it — liberalism, communism and humanism — comprehending it in its truth and then calling this process of thought, which is extremely simple according to advanced logic, the description of a real ego.

The entire chapter about peculiarity boils down to the most trivial self-embellishments by means of which the German petty bourgeois consoles himself for his own impotence. Exactly like Sancho, he thinks that in the struggle of bourgeois interests against the remnants of feudalism and absolute monarchy in other countries everything turns merely on a question of principles, on the question of from what “Man” should free himself. (See also above on political liberalism.) Therefore in freedom of trade he sees only a freedom and, exactly like Sancho, expatiates with a great air of importance about whether “Man” ought to enjoy freedom of trade “under all circumstances’ or not. And when, as is inevitable in such conditions, his aspirations for freedom suffer a miserable collapse, then, again like Sancho, he consoles himself that “Man”, or he himself, cannot “become free from everything”, that freedom is a highly indefinite concept, and that even Metternich and Charles X were able to appeal to “true freedom” (p. 210 of “the book”; and it need only be remarked here that it is precisely the reactionaries, especially the Historical School and the Romanticists^[46] who — again just like Sancho — reduce true freedom to peculiarity, for instance, to the peculiarity of the Tyrolean peasants, and in general, to the peculiar development of individuals, and also of localities, provinces and estates). — The petty bourgeois also consoles himself that as a German, even if he is not free, he finds compensation for all sufferings in his own indisputable peculiarity. Again like Sancho, he does not see in freedom a power that he is able to obtain and therefore declares his own impotence to be power.

What the ordinary German petty bourgeois whispers to himself as a consolation, in the quiet depths of his mind, the Berliner trumpets out loudly as an ingenious turn of thought. He is proud of his trashy peculiarity and his peculiar trashiness.

5. The Owner[edit source]

For the way in which the “owner” is divided into three refractions": “my power”, “my intercourse” and my self-enjoyment”, see “The Economy of the New Testament”. We shall pass directly to the first of these refractions.

A. My Power[edit source]

The chapter on power has in its turn a trichotomous structure in that it treats of: 1) right, 2) law, and 3) crime. In order to conceal this trichotomy, Sancho resorts very frequently to the “episode”. We give here the entire content in tabular form, with the necessary episodical insertions.

I. Right[edit source]

A. Canonisation in General

Another example of the holy is right.

Right is not ego

All existing right

= not my right

= alien right

= existing right.

= alien right

= right of others

(not my right)

= right given by others

= (right, which one gives me, which is meted out to me)

(pp. 244, 245).

The Holy

Note No. 1. The reader will wonder why the conclusion of equation No. 4 suddenly appears in equation No. 5 as the antecedent of the conclusion of equation No. 3, so that in the place of “right”, “all existing right” suddenly appears as the antecedent. This is done to create the illusion that Saint Sancho is speaking of actual, existing right which, however, he by no means intends to do. He speaks of right only insofar as it is represented to be a holy “predicate”.

Note No. 2. After right has been determined as “alien right”, it can be given any names you like, such as “Sultan’s right”, “people’s right”, etc., depending on how Saint Sancho wishes to define the alien from whom he receives the right in question. This allows Sancho to go on to say that “alien right is given by nature, God, popular choice, etc.” (p. 250), hence “not by me”. What is naive is only the method by which our saint through the use of synonymy tries to give some semblance of development to the above simple equations.

“If some blockhead considers me right” (what if he himself is the blockhead who considers him right?). “I begin to be mistrustful of my right” (it would be desirable in “Stirner’s” interests that this were so). “But even if a wise man considers me right, this still does not mean that I am right. Whether I am right is quite independent of my being acknowledged right by fools or wise men. Nevertheless, up to now we have striven for this right. We seek right and to this end we appeal to the court.... But what do I seek from this court? I seek Sultan’s right, not my right, I seek alien right ... before the high court of censorship I seek, therefore, the right of censorship” (pp. 244, 245).

One has to admire the cunning use of synonymy in this masterly proposition. Recognition of right in the ordinary conversational sense is identified with recognition of right in the juridical sense. Even more worthy of admiration is the faith capable of moving mountains in the idea that one “appeals to the court” for the sake of the pleasure of vindicating one’s right — a faith which explains that courts are due to litigiousness. Notable, finally, is also the craftiness with which Sancho — as in the case of equation No. 5 above — smuggles in, in advance, the more concrete name, in this case “Sultan’s right”, in order to be able more confidently later to bring in his universal category of “alien right”.

Alien right	=not my right.
My being right according to alien right	= not to be right = to have no right = to be rightless (p. 247).
My right	= not your right = your wrong.
Your right	= my wrong.

Note. “You desire to be in the right against others” (it should read: to be in Your right). “You cannot be this, in relation to them you will always remain in the ‘wrong’, for they would not be your opponents if they were not also in ‘their’ right. They will always ‘consider’ You ‘wrong..... if You remain on the basis of right, then you remain on the basis of litigiousness” (pp. ‘248, 253).

“Let us in the meantime consider the subject from yet another aspect.” Having thus given adequate evidence of his knowledge of right. Saint Sancho can now restrict himself to defining right once again as the holy, in this connection repeating some of the epithets previously given to the holy with the addition of the word “right”.

“Is not tight a religious concept, i.e., something holy?” (p. 247).
"Who can ask about ‘right’ if he does not have a religious standpoint?” (ibid.).
"Right ‘in and for itself’. Therefore without relation to me? ‘Absolute right'! Therefore separated from me. — Something ‘being in and for itself'! — An Absolute! An eternal right, like an eternal truth” — the holy (p. 270).
"You recoil in horror before others because You imagine You see by their side the spectre of right"’ (p. 253).
"You creep about in order to win the apparition over to Your side” (ibid.).
"Right is a whimsy, dispensed by an apparition” (the synthesis of the two propositions given above) (p. 276).
"Right is ... a fixed idea” (p. 270).
"Right is spirit ...” (p. 244).
"Because right can be dispensed only by a spirit” (p. 275).

Saint Sancho now expounds again what he already expounded in the Old Testament, viz., what a “fixed idea” is, with the only difference that here “right” crops up everywhere as another example” of the “fixed idea”.

“Right is originally my thought, or it” (!) “has its origin in me. But if it’ has escaped from me” (in common parlance, absconded), “if the ‘word’ has been uttered, then it has become flesh” [cf. John 1:14] (and Saint Sancho can cat his fill of it), “a fixed idea” — for which reason Stirner’s whole book consists of “fixed ideas”, which have “escaped” from him, but have been caught by us and confined in the much-praised “house for the correction of morals”. “Now I can no longer get rid of the idea” (after the idea has got rid of him!); “however I twist and turn, it confronts me.” (The pigtail, which hangs down behind him.) “Thus, people have been unable to regain control of the idea of ‘right’ that they themselves have created. Their creature runs away with them. That is absolute right, which is absolved” (o synonymy!) “and detached from me. Since we worship it as Absolute, we cannot devour it again and it deprives us of our creative power; the creation is more than the creator, it exists in and for itself. Do not allow right to run about freely any longer...... (We shall already in this sentence follow this advice and chain it up for the time being) (p. 270).

Having thus dragged right through all possible ordeals of sanctification by fire and water and canonised it, Saint Sancho has thereby destroyed it.

“With absolute right, right itself disappears, at the same time the domination of the concept of right” (hierarchy) “is wiped out. For one should not forget that concepts, ideas, and principles have up to now ruled over us and that among these rulers the concept of right or the concept of justice has played one of the most important parts” (p. 276).

That relations of right here once again appear as the domination of the concept of right and that Stirner kills right simply by declaring it a concept, and therefore the holy, is something to which we are already accustomed; on this see “Hierarchy”. Right [according to Stirner] does not arise from the material relations of people and the resulting antagonism of people against one another, but from their struggle against their own concept, which they should “get out of their heads”. See “Logic”.

This last form of the canonisation of right comprises also the following three notes:

Note 1.

“So long as this alien right coincides with mine, I shall, of course, find the latter also in it” (p. 2451).

Saint Sancho might ponder awhile over this proposition.

Note 2.

“If once an egoistic interest crept in, then society was corrupted ... as is shown, for example, by the Roman society with its highly developed civil law” (p. 278).

According to this, Roman society from the very outset must have been corrupted Roman society, since egoistic interest is manifested in the Ten Tables ^[47] even more sharply than in the “highly developed civil law” of the imperial epoch. In this unfortunate reminiscence from Hegel, therefore, civil law is considered a symptom of egoism, and not of the holy. Here, too, Saint Sancho might well reflect on the extent to which civil law [Privatrecht] is linked with private property [Privateigentum] and to what extent civil law implies a multitude of other legal relations (cf. “Private Property, State and Right ) about which Saint Max has nothing to say except that they are the holy. Note 3.

“Although right is derived from the concept, nevertheless it only comes into existence because it serves men’s needs.”

So says Hegel (Rechtsphilosophie par 209, Addition) from whom our saint derived the hierarchy of concepts in the modern world. Hegel, therefore, explains the existence of right from the empirical needs of individuals, and rescues the concept only by means of a simple assertion. One can see how infinitely more materialistically Hegel proceeds than our “corporeal ego”, Saint Sancho.

B. Appropriation by Simple Antithesis

a) The right of man

b) Human right

c) Alien right = to be authorised by others

d) Right is that which man considers right

My right.

Egoistic right.

My right = to be authorised by myself.

Right is that which I consider right.

“This is egoistic right, i.e., I consider it right, therefore, it is right” (passin; the last sentence is on p. 25 1).

Note 1.

“I am authorised by myself to commit murder if I do not forbid myself to do so, if I myself am not afraid of murder as a wrong” (p. 249).

This should read: I commit murder if I do not forbid myself to do so, if I am not afraid of murder. This whole proposition is a boastful expansion of the second equation in antithesis c, where the word authorised” has lost its meaning. Note 2.

“I decide whether it is right within me; outside me, no right exists” (p. 249). — “Are we what is in us? No, no more than we are what is outside us.... Precisely because we are not the spirit which dwells in us, for that very reason we had to transfer it outside us ... think of it as existing outside us ... in the beyond” (p. 43).

Thus, according to his own statement on page 43, Saint Sancho has again to transfer the right “in him” to “outside himself”, and indeed “into the beyond”. But if at some stage he wants to appropriate things for himself in this fashion, then he can transfer “into himself” morality, religion, everything “holy”, and decide whether “in him” it is the moral, the religious, the holy — “outside him there exists no” morality, religion, holiness — in order thereupon to transfer them, according to page 43, again outside himself, into the beyond. Thereby the “restoration of all things” [Mark 9:12] according to the Christian model is brought about. Note 3.

“Outside me no right exists. If I consider it right then it is right. It is possible that it is still not on that account right for others” (p. 249).

This should read: If I consider it right then it is right for me, but it is still not right for others. We have by now had sufficient examples of the sort of synonymical “flea-jumps” Saint Sancho makes with the word “right”. The right and right, legal “right”, moral “right”, what he considers “right”, etc. — all are used higgledy-piggledy, as it suits him. Let Saint Max attempt to translate his propositions about right into another language; his nonsense would then become fully apparent. Since this synonymy was dealt with exhaustively in “The Logic [of the New Wisdom]”, we need here only refer to that section. The proposition mentioned above is also presented in the following three “transformations":

A. “Whether I am right or not, of that there can be no other judge than I myself. Others can judge and decide only whether they agree with my right and whether it exists as right also for them” (p. 246).

B. “it is true that society wants each person to attain his right, but only light sanctioned by society, social right, and not actually his right” (it should read: “what is his” — “right” is a quite meaningless word here. And then he continues boastfully:) “1, however, give myself, or take for myself, right on my own authority.... Owner and creator of my right” (“creator” only insofar as he first declares right to be his thought and then asserts that he has taken this thought back into himself), “I recognise no other source of right but myself — neither God, nor the state, nor nature, nor man, neither divine nor human right” (p. 269).

C. “Since human right is always something given, in reality it always amounts to the right which people give to, i.e., concede, one another” (p. 251).

Egoistical right, on the other hand, is the right which I give myself or take.

However, “let us say in conclusion, it can be seen” that in Sancho’s millennium egoistical right, about which people “came to terms” with each other, is not so very different from that which people “give to” or “concede” one another.

Note 4.

“In conclusion, I have now still to take back the half-and-half mode of expression which I desired to use only while I was delving into the bowels of right and allowed at least the word to remain. In point of fact, however, together with the concept the word loses its meaning. What I called my right, is no longer right at all” (p. 275).

Everyone will see at a glance why Saint Sancho allowed the “word” right to remain in the above antitheses. For as he dces not speak at all about the content of right, let alone criticise it, he can only by retaining the word right make it appear that he is speaking about right. If the word right is left out of the antithesis, all that it contains is “my” and the other grammatical forms of the first person pronoun. The content was always introduced only by means of examples which, however, as we have seen, were nothing but tautologies, such as: if I commit murder, then I commit murder, etc., and in which the words “right”, “authorised”, etc., were introduced only to conceal the simple tautology and give it some sort of connection with the antitheses. The synonymy, too, was intended to create the appearance of dealing with some sort of content. Incidentally, one can see at once what a rich source of bragging this empty chatter about right provides.

Thus, all the “delving into the bowels of right” amounted to this, that Saint Sancho “made use of a half-and-half mode of expression” and “allowed at least the word to remain”, because he was unable to say anything about the subject itself. If the antithesis is to have any meaning, that is to say, if “Stirner” simply wanted to demonstrate in it his repugnance to right, then one must say rather that it was not he who “delved into the bowels of right”, but that right “delved” into his bowels and that he merely recorded the fact that right is not to his liking. “Keep this right uncurtailed”, Jacques le bonhomme!

To introduce some sort of content into this void, Saint Sancho has to undertake vet another logical manoeuvre, which with great “virtuosity” he thoroughly shuffles together with canonisation and the simple antithesis, and so completely masks with numerous episodes that the German public and German philosophers, at any rate, were unable to see through it.

C. Appropriation by Compound Antithesis

“Stirner” now has to introduce an empirical definition of right, which he can ascribe to the individual, i.e., he has to recognise something else in right besides holiness. In this connection, he could have spared himself all his clumsy machinations, since, starting with Machiavelli, Hobbes, Spinoza, Bodinus and others of modern times, not to mention earlier ones, might has been represented as the basis of right. Thereby the theoretical view of politics was freed from morality, and apart from the postulate of an independent treatment of politics nothing was accepted. Later, in the eighteenth century in France and in the nineteenth century in England, all right was reduced to civil law (which Saint Max does not discuss) and the latter to a quite definite power, the power of the owners of private property. Moreover, the matter was by no means left at a mere phrase.

Thus Saint Sancho draws the definition of might from right and explains it as follows:

“We are in the habit of classifying states according to the various ways in which the ‘supreme power’ is divided ... hence, the supreme power! Power over whom, Over the individual.... The state uses force ... the behaviour of the state is exercise of force, and it calls its force right.... The collective as a whole ... has a power which is called rightful, i.e., which is right” (pp. 259, 260).

Through “our” “habit”, our saint arrives at his longed-for power and can now “look after” [in German a pun on pflegen, which can mean to be accustomed to and to look after] himself.

Right, the might of man — might, my right.

Intermediate equations:

1=To be authorised = to be empowered. To authorise oneself = to empower oneself.

Antithesis:

To be authorised by man — to be empowered by me.

First antithesis:

Right, might of man — Might, my right

now becomes converted into:

Right of man — Might of me, My might,

because in the thesis right and might are identical, and in the antithesis the “half-and-half mode of expression” has to be “taken back”, since right, as we have seen, has “lost all meaning”.

Note 1. Examples of bombastic and boastful paraphrases of the above antitheses and equations:

“What You have the power to be, You have the right to be.” “I derive all right and all authority from myself, I am authorised to do everything which I have the power to do.” — “I do not demand any right, and therefore I need recognise none. What I can obtain for myself by force, I obtain for myself, and what I cannot obtain by force, to that I have no right either, etc. — It is a matter of indifference to me whether I am authorised or not; if only I have the power, then I am already empowered as a matter of course and do not need any other power or authority” (pp. 248, 275).

Note 2. Examples of the way in which Saint Sancho expounds might as the real basis of right:

“Thus, ‘the communists’ say” (how on earth does “Stirner” know what the communists say, since he has never set eves on anything concerning them except the Bluntschli report,’ Becker’s Volksphilosophie and a few other things?): “Equal work gives people the right to equal enjoyment.... No, equal work does not give you this right, only equal enjoyment gives you the right to equal enjoyment. Enjoy, and you are entitled to enjoyment.... if You take enjoyment, then it is your right; if, on the other hand, you only yearn for it, without seizing it, it will remain as before the ‘established right’ of those who have the privilege of enjoyment. It is their right, just as it would become your right, by your seizing it” (p. 250).

Compare what is here put into the mouth of the communists with what was previously said about “communism”. Saint Sancho again presents the proletarians here as a “closed society”, which has only to take the decision of “seizing” in order the next day to put a summary end to the entire hitherto existing world order. But in reality the proletarians arrive at this unity only through a long process of development in which the appeal to their right also plays a part. Incidentally, this appeal to their right is only a means of making them take shape as “they”, as a revolutionary, united mass. As for the above proposition itself, from start to finish it is a brilliant example of tautology, as is at once clear if one omits both might and right, which can be done without any harm to the content. Secondly, Saint Sancho himself distinguishes between personal and material property, [vermögen] thereby making a distinction between enjoying and the power to enjoy. I may have great personal power (capacity) of enjoyment without necessarily having the corresponding material power (money, etc.). Thus my actual “enjoyment” still remains hypothetical.

“That the child of royalty sets himself above other children,” continues our school-master, using examples suitable for a child’s book, “is already his act, one which ensures his superiority, and that other children recognise and approve this act is their act, which makes them deserving of being subjects” (p. 250).

In this example, the social relation in which the royal child stands to other children is regarded as the power and indeed as the personal power of the royal child, and as the impotence of other children. If the fact that other children allow themselves to be commanded by the royal child is regarded as the “act” of the other children, this proves at most that they are egoists. “Peculiarity is at work in the little egoists” and induces them to exploit the royal child, to extract an advantage from him.

“It is said” (i.e., Hegel said) “that punishment is the right of the criminal. But impunity is equally his right. If he succeeds in his undertakings, he gets his right, and if he fails it equally serves him right. If someone with reckless courage puts himself in danger and is killed, we say: it serves him right, he asked for it. But if he overcomes the danger, i.e., if his power is victorious, it appears he is also right. If a child plays with a knife and cuts himself, it serves him right; if he does not cut himself, that is also all right. Therefore it serves the criminal right if he suffers the penalty he risked; why did he take the risk, knowing the possible consequences?” (p. 255).

in the concluding words of the last sentence, where the criminal is asked why he took the risk, the school-masterish nonsense of the whole passage is latent. Whether it serves a criminal right if on burgling a house he falls down and breaks his leg, or a child who cuts himself all these important questions, with which only a man like Saint Sancho is capable of occupying himself, yield only the result that here chance is declared to be my power. Thus, in the first example it was my action that was “my power”, in the second example it was social relations independent of me, in the third it was chance. But we have already encountered these contradictory definitions in connection with peculiarity. Between the above childish examples Sancho inserts the following amusing little intermezzo:

“For otherwise right would be a humbug. The tiger who attacks me is right and I, who kill it, am also right. I am protecting against it not my right, but myself” (p. 251).

In the first part of this passage Saint Sancho sets himself in a relation of right to the tiger, but in the second part it occurs to him that basically no relation of right is involved at all. For that reason “right” appears to “be a humbug”. The right of “Man” merges into the right of the “Tiger”.

This concludes the criticism of right. Long after having learned from hundreds of earlier writers that right originated from force, we now learn from Saint Sancho that “right” is “the power of man”. Thus he has successfully eliminated all questions about the connection between right and real people and their relations, and has established his antithesis. He restricts himself to abolishing right in the form in which he posits it, namely, as the holy, i.e., he restricts himself to abolishing the holy and leaving right untouched.

This criticism of right is embellished with a host of episodes — all sorts of things which people are “in the habit” of discussing at Stehely’s between two and four in the afternoon.

Episode 1. “The right of man” and “established right”.

“When the revolution made ‘equality’ into a ‘right’, it [the revolution] fled into the religious sphere, into the domain of the holy, the ideal. Therefore a struggle has been waged ever since over the holy, inalienable rights of man. Quite naturally and with equal justification, the ‘established right of the existing’ is asserted against the eternal right of man; right against right, and of course each of these condemns the other as a wrong. Such has been the dispute over right since the revolution” (p. 248).

Here Saint Sancho first of all repeats that the rights of man are “the holy” and that therefore a struggle over the rights of man has been waged ever since. Thereby he only proves that the material basis of this struggle is still, for him, holy, i.e., alien.

Since the “right of man” and “established right” are both rights”, they are “equally justified” and here in fact “justified” in the historical sense. Since both are “rights” in the legal sense, they are “equally justified” in the historical sense. In this way one can dispose of everything in the shortest space of time without knowing anything about the matter. Thus, for example, it can be said of the struggle over the Corn Laws in England: “quite naturally and with equal justification” rent, which is also profit (gain), is “asserted” against the profit (gain) [of the manufacturers], gain against gain, and “of course each of these decries the other. Such has been the struggle” over the Corn Laws in England since 1815.^[48]

Incidentally, Stirner might have said from the outset: existing right is the right of man, human right. In certain circles one is also “in the habit” of calling ‘t “established right”. Where then is the difference between the “right of man” and “established right"?

We already know that alien, holy right is what is given to me by others. But since the rights of man are also called natural, innate rights, and since for Saint Sancho the name is the thing itself, it follows that they are rights which are mine by nature, i.e., by birth.

But “established rights amount to the same thing, namely to nature, which gives me a right, that is to birth and, furthermore, to inheritance”, and so on. “I am born as a man is equivalent to saying: I am born as a king’s son”

This is on pages 249, ‘50, where Babeuf is reproached for not having had this dialectical talent for dissolving differences. Since under all circumstances”, the “ego” is “also” man, as Saint Sancho later concedes, and therefore has the benefit “also” of what it has as man, just as the ego, for instance, as a Berliner has the benefit of the Berlin Tiergarten,’ so “also” the ego has the benefit of the right of man “under all circumstances”. But since he is by no means born a “king’s son” “under all circumstances”, he by no means has the benefit of “established right” “under all circumstances”. In the sphere of right, therefore, there is an essential difference between the “right of man” and “established right”. If it had not been necessary for Saint Sancho to conceal his logic it “should have been said here": After I have, in my opinion, dissolved the concept of right, in the way in which I am generally “in the habit” of dissolving concepts, the struggle over these two special rights becomes a struggle within a concept which, in my opinion, has been dissolved by me, and “therefore” does not need to be touched upon any further by me.

For greater thoroughness Saint Sancho could have added the following new turn of expression: The right of man too is acquired, hence well acquired, and well-acquired [i.e., established] right is the human right possessed by men, the right of man.

That such concepts, if they are divorced from the empirical reality underlying them, can be turned inside-out like a glove [Shakespeare, Twelfth Night, Act III, Scene 1] has already been thoroughly enough proved by Hegel, whose use of this method, as against the abstract ideologists, was justified. Saint Sancho, therefore, has no need to make it appear ridiculous by his own “clumsy” “machinations”.

So far established right and the right of man “have amounted to the same thing”, so that Saint Sancho could reduce to nothing a struggle that exists outside his mind, in history. Now our saint proves that he is as keen-witted in drawing distinctions as he is all-powerful in heaping everything together, in order to be able to bring about a new terrible struggle in the “creative nothing” of his head.

“I am also ready to admit” (magnanimous Sancho) “that everyone is born as a human being” (hence, according to the above-mentioned reproach against Babeuf, also as a “king’s son”), “hence, the newly born are in this respect equal to one another ... only because as Yet they reveal themselves and act as nothing but mere children of men, naked little human beings.” On the other hand, adults are the “children of their own creation”. They “possess more than merely innate rights, they have acquired rights”.

(Does Stirner believe that the infant emerged from the mother’s womb without any act of his own, an act by which he acquired the right” to be outside the mother’s womb; and does not every child from the very beginning reveal himself and act as a “unique” child?)

“What a contradiction, what a battlefield! The old battle of innate rights and established rights!” (p. 252).

What a battle of bearded men against babes!

Incidentally, Sancho speaks against the rights of man only because “in recent times” it has again become “customary” to speak against them. In fact he has “acquired” these innate rights of man. In connection with peculiarity we already met the man who is “born free”; there Sancho made peculiarity the innate right of man, because merely by being born he revealed himself as being free and acted as such’. Furthermore: “Every ego is already from birth a criminal against the state”, whereby a crime against the state becomes an innate right of man, and the child already commits a crime against something that does not yet exist for him, but for which he exists. Finally, “Stirner” speaks further on about “innately limited intellects”, “born poets”, “born musicians”, etc. Since here the power (musical, poetic resp. limited ability) is innate, and right = power, one sees how “Stirner” claims for the “ego” the innate rights of man, although this time equality does not figure among these rights.

Episode 2. Privileges and equal rights. Our Sancho first of all transforms the struggle over privilege and equal right into a struggle over the mere “concepts” privileged and equal. In this way he saves himself the trouble of having to know anything about the medieval mode of production, the political expression of which was privilege, and the modern mode of production, of which right as such, equal right, is the expression, or about the relation of these two modes of production to the legal relations which correspond to them. He can even reduce the two above-mentioned “concepts” to the still simpler expression: equal and unequal, and prove that one and the same thing (e.g., other people, a dog, etc.) may, according to circumstances, be a matter of indifference i.e., of equanimity,, equality, or it may not be a matter of indifference — i.e., it may be different, unequal, preferred, etc., etc.

“Let the brother of low degree rejoice in that he is exalted.” (Saint-Jaques le bonbomme [James] 1:9)

II. Law[edit source]

Here we must disclose to the reader a great secret of our saint, viz., that he begins his whole treatise about right with a general explanation of right, which “escapes” from him so long as he is speaking about right, and which he is only able to recapture when he begins to speak about something totally different, namely — law. Then the gospel called out to our saint: judge not, that ye be not judged [Matthew 7:1] — and he opened his mouth and taught, saying:

“Right is the spirit of society. “ (But society is the holy). “If society has a will, then this will is indeed right: society exists only thanks to right. But since it exists only thanks to the fact” (not thanks to right, but only thanks to the fact) “that it exercises its domination over individuals, so right is its dominant will” (p. 244).

That is to say: “right ... is ... has ... then ... indeed ... exists only since ... exists only thanks to the fact ... that ... so ... dominant will”. This passage is Sancho in all his perfection. This passage “escaped” at that time from our saint because it was not suitable for his theses, and has now been partially recaptured because it is now partially suitable again.

“States endure so long as there is a dominant will and this dominant will is regarded as equivalent to one’s own will. The will of the ruler is law” (p. 256).

1=The dominant will of society = right

Dominant will = law

Right = law.

“Sometimes”, i.e., as the trade mark of his “treatise” about law, there will still turn out to be a distinction between right and law, a distinction which — strange to say — has almost as little to do with his treatise” about law as the definition of right which “escaped” from him has to do with the “treatise” about “right":

“But what is right, what is considered legitimate in a society is also given a verbal expression — in law” (p. 255),

This proposition is a “clumsy” copy of Hegel:

“That which is lawful is the source of the knowledge of what is right or, properly, what is legitimate.”

What Saint Sancho calls “receiving verbal expression”, Hegel also calls: “posited”, “known”, etc., Rechtsphilosophie, par. 211 et seq.

It is very easy to understand why Saint Sancho had to exclude right as the “will” or the “dominant will” of society from his “treatise” about right. Only to the extent that right was defined as man’s power could he take it back into himself as his power. For the sake of his antithesis, therefore, he had to hold fast to the materialistic definition of “power” and let the idealistic definition of “will” “escape”. Why, when speaking of “law”, he now recaptures “will” we shall understand in connection with the antitheses about law.

— Material Life the Basis of the State —

In actual history, those theoreticians who regarded might as the basis of right were in direct contradiction to those who looked on will as the basis of right — a contradiction which Saint Sancho could have regarded also as that between realism (the child, the ancient, the Negro, etc.) and idealism (the youth, the modern, the Mongol, etc.). If power is taken as the basis of right, as Hobbes, etc., do, then right, law, etc., are merely the symptom, the expression of other relations upon which state power rests. The material life of individuals, which by no means depends merely on their “will”, their mode of production and form of intercourse, which mutually determine each other — this is the real basis of the state and remains so at all the stages at which division of labour and private property are still necessary, quite independently of the will of individuals. These actual relations are in no way created by the state power; on the contrary they are the power creating it, The individuals who rule in these conditions — leaving aside the fact that their power must assume the form of the state — have to give their will, which is determined by these definite conditions, a universal expression as the will of the state, as law, an expression whose content is always determined by the relations of this class, as the civil and criminal law demonstrates in the clearest possible way. Just as the weight of their bodies does not depend on their idealistic will or on their arbitrary decision, so also the fact that they enforce their own will in the form of law, and at the same time make it independent of the personal arbitrariness of each individual among them, does not depend on their idealistic will. Their personal rule must at the same time assume the form of average rule. Their personal power is based on conditions of life which as they develop are common to many individuals, and the continuance of which they, as ruling individuals, have to maintain against others and, at the same time, to maintain that they hold good for everybody. The expression of this will, which is determined by their common interests, is the law. It is precisely because individuals who are independent of one another assert themselves and their own will, and because on this basis their attitude to one another is bound to be egoistical, that self-denial is made necessary in law and right, self-denial in the exceptional case, and self-assertion of their interests in the average case (which, therefore, not they, but only the “egoist in agreement with himself” regards as self-denial). The same applies to the classes which are ruled, whose will plays just as small a part in determining the existence of law and the state. For example, so long as the productive forces are still insufficiently developed to make competition superfluous, and therefore would give rise to competition over and over again, for so long the classes which are ruled would be wanting the impossible if they had the “will” to abolish competition and with it the state and the law. Incidentally, too, it is only in the imagination of the ideologist that this “will” arises before relations have developed far enough to make the emergence of such a will possible. After relations have developed sufficiently to produce it, the ideologist is able to imagine this will as being purely arbitrary and therefore as conceivable at all times and under all circumstances.

Like right, so crime, i.e., the struggle of the isolated individual against the predominant relations, is not the result of pure arbitrariness. On the contrary, it depends on the same conditions as that domination. The same visionaries who see in right and law the domination of some independently existing general will can see in crime the mere violation of right and law. Hence the state does not exist owing to the dominant will, but the state, which arises from the material mode of life of individuals, has also the form of a dominant will. If the latter loses its domination, it means that not only the will has changed but also the material existence and life of the individuals, and only for that reason has their will changed. It is possible for rights and laws to be “inherited”, [paraphrase of a passage from Goethe’s Faust, 1. Teil, 2. “Studierzimmerszene”, where Mephistopheles says: “Laws and rights are inherited like an eternal malady"] but in that case they are no longer dominant, but nominal, of which striking examples are furnished by the history of ancient Roman law and English law. We saw earlier how a theory and history of pure thought could arise among philosophers owing to the separation of ideas from the individuals and their empirical relations which serve as the basis of these ideas. In the same way, here too one can separate right from its real basis, whereby one obtains a “dominant will” which in different eras undergoes various modifications and has its own, independent history in its creations, the laws. On this account, political and civil history becomes ideologically merged in a history of the domination of successive laws. This is the specific illusion of lawyers and politicians, which Jacques le bonhomme adopts sans façon. He succumbs to the same illusion as, for example, Frederick William IV, who also regards laws as mere caprices of the dominant will and hence always finds that they come to grief against the “awkward something” [paraphrase from Goethe’s Faust, 1. Teil, 1. “Studierzimmerszene”, where Mephistopheles says: “This something, this awkward world"] of the world. Hardly [one] of his quite harmless whims reaches a further stage of realisation than cabinet decrees. Let him issue an order for a twenty-five million loan, i.e., for one hundred and tenth part of the English national debt, and he will see whose will his dominant will is. Incidentally, we shall — find later on, too, that Jacques le bonhomme uses the phantoms or apparitions of his sovereign and fellow-Berliner as documents out of which to weave his own theoretical whimsies about right, law, crime, etc. This should occasion us the less surprise since even the spectre of the Vossische Zeitung repeatedly “offers” him something, e.g., the constitutional state. The most superficial examination of legislation, e. g., poor laws in all countries, shows how far the rulers got when they imagined that they could achieve something by means of their “dominant will” alone, i. e., simply by exercising their will. Incidentally, Saint Sancho has to accept the illusion of the lawyers and politicians about the dominant will in order to let his own will be splendidly displayed in the equations and antitheses with which we shall presently delight ourselves, and in order to arrive at the result that he can get out of his head any idea which he has put into it.

“My brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations” (Saint-Jacques le bonhomme [James ] 1:2).”

Law	= Dominant will of the state,
	= state will.

Antitheses:

State will, alien will	— My will, own will.
Dominant will of the state	— My own will
	— My self-will.
Subjects of the state, who sustain the law of the state	“Subjects of themselves (unique ones), who bear their own law in themselves” (p. 268).

Equations:

A)	State will	= Not-my will.
B)	My will	= Not-state will.
C)	Will	= Desire.
D)	My will	= Non-desire of the state,
		= Will against the state,
		= Ill will towards the state.
E)	To desire the non-state	= Self-will.
	Self-will	= Not to desire the state.
F)	State will	= Negation of my will,
		= My lack of will.
G)	My lack of will	= Existence of state will.

(We know already from the preceding that the existence of the state will is equal to the existence of the state, from which the following new equation results:)

H)	My lack of will	= Existence of the state.
I)	The negation of my lack of will	= Non-existence of the state.
K)	Self-will	= Negation of the state.
L)	My will	= Non-existence of the state.

Note 1.

According to the already quoted passage from page 256:

“States endure so long as the dominant will is regarded as equivalent to one’s own will.”

Note 2.

“He who in order to exist” (the conscience. of the state is appealed to) “is compelled to count on the lack of will of others is a creation of those others, just as the master is a creation of the servant” (p. 257). (Equations F, G, H, I.)

Note 3.

“My own will is the corrupter of the state. Therefore, it is branded by the latter as self-will. One’s own will and the state are powers that are mortal enemies, between whom eternal peace is impossible” (p. 257). — “Therefore it in fact watches everybody, it sees an egoist in everyone” (self-will), “and it fears the egoist” (p. 263). “The state ... opposes the duel ... even a scuffle is punishable” (even if the police are not called in) (p. 245).

Note 4.

“For it, for the state, it is absolutely essential that no one should have his own will; if anyone had such a will, the state would have to expel him” (imprison, banish); “if everyone had it” (“who is this person whom you call ‘everyone'"?) “then they would abolish the state” (p. 257).

This can also be expressed rhetorically:

“What is the use of your laws if no one obeys them, what is the use of your orders if everybody refuses to accept any orders?” (p. 256).

Note 5.

The simple antithesis: “state will — my will” is given an apparent motivation in the following paragraph: “Even if one were to imagine a case where each individual in the nation had expressed the same will and thus a perfect collective will” (!) “had come into existence, things would still remain the same. Would I not today and later be bound by my will of yesterdays... My creation, that is, a definite expression of will, would have become my master: but I ... the creator, would be hampered in my course and my dissolution.... Because yesterday I possessed will, I have today no will of my own; yesterday voluntary, today involuntary” (p. 258).

The old thesis, which has often been put forward both by revolutionaries and reactionaries, that in a democracy individuals. only exercise their sovereignty for a moment and then at once relinquish their authority — this thesis Saint Sancho endeavours to appropriate here in a “clumsy” fashion by applying to it his phenomenological theory of creator and creation. But the theory of creator and creation deprives this thesis of all meaning. According to this theory of his, it is not that Saint Sancho has no will of his own today because he has changed his will of yesterday, i.e., has a differently defined will, so that the nonsense which yesterday he exalted into a law as the expression of his will, now weighs like a bond or fetter on his more enlightened will of today. On the contrary, according to his theory, his, will of today must be the negation of his will of yesterday, because, as creator, he is in duty bound to dissolve his will of yesterday. Only as “one without will” is he creator, as one actually having will he is always the creation. (See “Phenomenology”) In that case, however, it by no means follows that “because yesterday he possessed will”, today he is “without will”, but rather that he bears ill will to his will of yesterday, whether the latter has assumed the form of law or not. In both cases he can abolish it as he, in general, is accustomed to do, namely as his will. Thereby he has done full justice to egoism in agreement with itself. It is, therefore, a matter of complete indifference here whether his will of yesterday has assumed as law the form of something existing outside his head, particularly if we recall that earlier the “word which escaped from him” behaved likewise in a rebellious way towards him. In the above-mentioned thesis, moreover, Saint Sancho desires to preserve, not indeed his self-will, but his free will, freedom of will, freedom, which is a serious offence against the moral code of the egoist in agreement with himself. In committing this offence, Saint Sancho even goes so far as to proclaim that true peculiarity is the inner freedom that was so much condemned above, the freedom of bearing ill will.

“How is this to be changed?,” cries Sancho. “Only in one way: by not recognising any duty, i.e., not binding myself and not allowing myself to be bound [...]

“However, they will bind me’ No one can bind my will, and my ill will remains free!” (p. 258).

Drums and trumpets pay homage

To his youthful splendour!

[From Heine’s poem “Berg-Idylle"]

Here Saint Sancho forgets “to make the simple reflection” that his will” is indeed “bound” inasmuch as, against his will, it is “ill will”.

The above proposition that the individual will is bound by the general will expressed through law completes, by the way, the idealistic conception of the state, according to which it is only a matter of the will, and which has led French and German writers to the most subtle philosophising.

Incidentally, if it is merely a matter of “desiring” and not of “being able” and, at worst, merely of “ill will”, then it is incomprehensible why Saint Sancho wants to abolish altogether an object so productive of “desiring” and “ill will” as state law.

“Law in general, etc. — that is the stage we have reached today” (p. 256).

The things Jacques le bonhomme believes!

The equations so far examined were purely destructive as regards state and law. The true egoist had to adopt a purely destructive attitude to both. We missed appropriation; on the other hand, we had the satisfaction of seeing Saint Sancho performing a great trick

in which he shows how the state is destroyed by a mere change of will, a change which in turn depends, of course, only on the will. However, appropriation is not lacking here either, although it is quite secondary, and can produce results only later on “from time to time”. The two antitheses given above:

State will, alien will — My will, own will, Dominant will of the state — My own will

can also be summarised as follows:

Domination of alien will — Domination of one’s own will.

In this new antithesis, which incidentally all the time formed the concealed basis of his destruction of the state through his self-will, Stirner appropriates the political illusion about the domination of arbitrariness, of ideological will. He could also have expressed this as follows:

Arbitrariness of law — Law of arbitrariness.

Saint Sancho, however, did not reach such simplicity of expression.

In antithesis III we already have a “law within him”, but he appropriates the law still more directly in the following antithesis:

Law, the state’s declaration of will — Law, declaration of my will, my declaration of will.

“Someone can, of course, declare what he is prepared to put up with, and consequently forbid the opposite by a law,” etc. (p. 256).

This prohibition is necessarily accompanied by threats. The last antithesis is of importance for the section on crime.

Episodes. We are told on page 256 that there is no difference between “law” and “arbitrary command, ordinance” because both = “declaration of will”, consequently “command”. — On pages 254, 255, 260 and 263, while pretending to speak about “the State” Stirner substitutes the Prussian state and deals with questions that are of the greatest importance for the Vossische Zeitung, such as the constitutional state, removability of officials, bureaucratic arrogance and similar nonsense. The only important thing here is the discovery that the old French parliaments insisted on their right to register royal edicts because they wanted “to judge according to their own right”. The registration of laws by the French parliaments came into being at the same time as the bourgeoisie and hence the acquisition of absolute power by the kings, for whom in face of both the feudal nobility and foreign states it became necessary to plead an alien will on which their own will depended, and at the same time to give the bourgeois some sort of guarantee. Saint Max can learn more about this from the history of his beloved Francis 1; for the rest, before speaking about the French parliaments again, he might consult the fourteen volumes of Des Etats généraux et autres assemblées nationales, Paris, 1788 [by Charles Joseph Mayer] concerning what the French parliaments wanted or did not want and their significance. In general it would be in place here to introduce a short episode about the erudition of our saint who is so desirous of conquests. Apart from theoretical works, such as the writings of Feuerbach and Bruno Bauer, as well as the Hegelian tradition, which is his main source, apart from these meagre theoretical sources, our Sancho uses and quotes the following historical sources: on the French Revolution — Rutenberg’s Politische Reden and the Bauers’ Denkwürdigkeiten; on communism — Proudhon, August Becker’s Volksphilosophie, the Einundzwanzig Bogen and the Bluntschli report; on liberalism — the Vossische Zeitung, the Sächsische Vaterlands-Blätter, Protocols of the Baden Chamber, the Einundzwanzig Bogen again and Edgar Bauer’s epoch-making work [Edgar Bauer, Die liberalen Bestrebungen in Deutschland]; in addition, here and there as historical evidence there are also quoted: the Bible, Schlosser’s 18. Jahrhundert [Friedrich Christoph Schlosser, Geschichte des achtzehnten Jahrhunderts und des neunzehnten bis zum Sturz des französischen Kaiserreichs], Louis Blanc’s Histoire de dix ans, Hinrichs’ Politische Vorlesungen, Bettina’s Dies Buch gehört dem König, Hess’ Triarchie, [Moses Hess, Die europäische Triarchie] the Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher, the Zurich Anekdota, Moriz Carrière on Cologne Cathedral, the session of the Paris Chamber of Peers of April 25, 1844, Karl Nauwerck, Emilia Galotti [reference is to Moriz Carrière, Der Kölner Dom als freie deutsche Kirche; François Guizot, Discours dans la chambre des pairs le 25 april 1844; Karl Nauwerck, Ueber die Theilnahme am Staate; Gotthold Ephraim Lessing’s drama Emilia Galotti], the Bible — in short, the entire Berlin reading-room together with its owner, Willibald Alexis Cabanis. After this sample of Sancho’s profound studies, one can easily understand why it is that he finds in this world so very much that is alien, i.e., holy.

III. Crime[edit source]

Note 1.

“If You allow yourself to be judged right by someone else, then you must equally allow yourself to be judged wrong by him. If you receive justification and reward from him, then expect also accusation and punishment from him. Right is accompanied by wrong, Legality by crime. Who — are — you? — You — are — a — criminal!!” (p. 262).

The code civil is accompanied by the code pénal, the code pénal by the code de commerce. Who are you? You are a commerçant!

Saint Sancho could have spared us this nerve-shattering surprise. In his case the words: “If you allow yourself to be judged right by someone else, then you must equally allow yourself to be judged wrong by him” have lost all meaning if they are intended to add a new definition; for one of his earlier equations already states: If you allow yourself to be judged right by someone else, then you allow yourself to be judged by alien right, hence your wrong.

A. Simple Canonisation of Crime and Punishment

a) Crime

As regards crime, we have already seen that this is the name for a universal category of the egoist in agreement with himself, the negation of the holy, sin. In the previously given antitheses and equations concerning examples of the holy (state, right, law), the negative relation of the ego to these holies, or the copula, could also be called crime, just as about Hegelian logic, which is likewise an example of the holy, Saint Sancho can also say: I am not Hegelian logic, I am a sinner against Hegelian logic. Since he was speaking of right, state. etc., he should now have continued: another example of sin or crime are what are called juridical or political crimes. Instead of this, he again informs us in detail that these crimes are

sin against the holy,

sin against the fixed idea,

sin against the spectre,

sin against “Man”.

“Criminals exist only against something holy” (p. 268).
"Only owing to the holy does the criminal code exist” (p. 318).
"Crimes arise from the fixed idea” (p. 269).
"One sees here that it is again ‘man’ who also creates the concept of crime, of sin, and thereby also of right.” (Previously it was the reverse.) “A man in whom I do not recognise man is a sinner” p, 268).

Note 1.

“Can I assume that someone commits a crime against me” (this is asserted in opposition to the French people in the revolution), “without also assuming that he ought to act as I consider right? And actions of this kind I call the right, the good, etc., those deviating from this — a crime. Accordingly I think that the others ought to aim with me at the same goal ... as beings who should obey some sort of ‘rational’ law” (Vocation! Designation! Task! The Holy!!!). “I lay down what man is and what it means to act truly as a man, and I demand from each that this law should become for hint the norm and the ideal; in the reverse case he proves himself a sinner and criminal ...” (pp. [267,] 268).

At the same time, he sheds an anxious tear at the grave of those “proper people” who in the epoch of terror were slaughtered by the sovereign people in the name of the holy. Further, by means of an example, he shows how the names of real crimes can I be construed from this holy-point of view.

“If, as in the revolution, this spectre, man, is understood to mean the ‘good citizen’, then the familiar ‘political transgressions and crimes’ are brought about from this concept of man.” (He should have said: this concept, etc., brings up the familiar crimes) (p. 268).

A brilliant example )f the extent to which credulity is Sancho’s predominant quality in the section on crime is furnished by his transformation of the sansculottes of the revolution into “good citizens” of Berlin through a synonymical abuse of the word citoyen. According to Saint Max, “good citizens and loyal officials” are inseparable. Hence “Robespierre, for example, Saint-Just, and so on” would be “loyal officials”, whereas Danton was responsible for a cash deficit and squandered state money. Saint Sancho has made a good start for a history of the revolution for the Prussian townsman and villager.

Note 2.

Having thus described for us political and juridical crime as an example of crime in general — namely his category of crime, sin, negation, enmity. insult, contempt for the holy, disreputable behaviour towards the holy — Saint Sancho can now confidently declare:

“In crime, the egoist has hitherto asserted himself and mocked the, holy” (p. 319)

In this passage all the crimes hitherto committed are assigned to the credit of the egoist in agreement with himself, although subsequently we shall have to transfer a few of them to the debit side. Sancho imagines that hitherto crimes have been committed only in order to mock at “the holy” and to assert oneself not against things, but against the holy aspect of things. Because the theft committed by a poor devil who appropriates someone else’s taler can be put in the category of a crime against the law, for that reason the poor devil committed the theft just because of a desire to break the law. In exactly the same way as in an earlier passage Jacques le bonhomme imagined that laws are issued only for the sake of the holy, and that thieves are sent to prison only for the sake of the holy.

b) Punishment

Since we are at present concerned with juridical and political crimes we discover in this connection that such crimes “in the ordinary sense” usually involve a punishment, or, as it is written, “the wages of sin is death”. [Romans 6:23] After what we have already learned about crime, it follows, of course, that punishment is the self-defence and resistance of the holy to those who desecrate it.

Note 1.

“Punishment has sense only when it is intended as expiation for violating something holy” (p. 316). In punishing, ,we commit the folly of desiring to satisfy right, a spectre” (the holy). “The holy must” here “defend itself against man”. (Saint Sancho here “commits the folly” of mistaking “Man” for “the unique ones”, the “proper egos”, etc.) (p. 318).

Note 2.

“Only owing to the holy does the criminal code exist and it disintegrates of itself when punishment is abandoned” (p. 318).

What Saint Sancho really wants to say is: Punishment falls into decay of itself if the criminal code is abandoned, i.e., punishment only exists owing to the criminal code. “But is not” a criminal code that only exists owing to punishment “all nonsense, and is not” punishment that exists only owing to the criminal code “also nonsense"? (Sancho contra Hess, Wigand, [Max Stirner, “Recensenten Stirners"] p. 186.) Sancho here mistakes the criminal code for a textbook of theological morality.

Note 3.

As an example of how crime arises from the fixed idea, there is the following:

“The sanctity of marriage is a fixed idea. From this sanctify it follows that infidelity is a crime, and — therefore a certain law on marriage” (to the great annoyance of the “G[erman] Chambers” and of the “Emperor of all R[ussians]”, not to speak of the “Emperor of Japan” and the “Emperor of China”, and particularly the “Sultan”) “imposes a shorter or longer term of punishment for that” (p. 269).

Frederick William !V, who thinks he is able to promulgate laws in accordance with the holy, and therefore is always at loggerheads with the whole world, can comfort himself with the thought that in our Sancho he has found at least one man imbued with faith in the state. Let Saint Sancho just compare the Prussian marriage law, which exists only in the head of its author, with the provisions of the Code civil, which are operative in practice, and he will be able to discover the difference between holy and worldly marriage laws.^[49] In the Prussian phantasmagoria, for reasons of state, the sanctity of marriage is supposed to be enforced both upon husband and wife; in French practice, where the wife is regarded as the private property of her husband, only the wife can be punished for adultery, and then only on the demand of the husband, who exercises his property right.

B. Appropriation of Crime and Punishment Through Antithesis

1=Crime in the sense of man = Violation of man’s law (of the state’s declaration of will, of state power), p. 259 et seq. 1=Crime in my sense = Violation of my law (of my declaration of will, of my power), p. 256 and passim.

These two equations are counterposed as antitheses and derive simply from the opposition of “man” and the “ego”. They merely sum up what has been said already.

The holy punishes the “ego”	—	I punish the ‘ego”
Crime = hostility to Man’s law (the Holy).	—	Hostility = crime against my law.
The criminal the enemy or opponent of the holy (the Holy as a moral person).	—	Enemy or opponent = criminal against the “ego”, the corporeal.
Punishment = self-defence of the holy against the “ego”.	—	My self-defence = My punishment of the “ego”.
Punishment = satisfaction (vengeance) of man in relation to the “ego”.	—	Satisfaction (vengeance) = My punishment of the “ego”,

In the fast antithesis, satisfaction can also be called self-satisfaction, since it is the satisfaction of me, in opposition to the satisfaction of man.

If in the above antithetical equations only the first member is taken into account, then one obtains the following series of simple antitheses where the thesis always contains the holy, universal, alien name, while the anti-thesis always contains the worldly, personal, appropriated name.

Crime	—	Hostility.
Criminal	—	Enemy or opponent.
Punishment	—	My defence.
Punishment	—	Satisfaction, vengeance, self-satisfaction.

In an instant we shall say a few words about these equations and antitheses which are so simple that even a “born simpleton” (p. 434) can master this “unique” method of thought in five minutes. But first a few more quotations in addition to those given earlier.

Note 1.

“in relation to me you can never be a criminal but only an opponent” (p. 268),and “enemy” in the same sense on p. 256. — Crime as the hostility of man is illustrated on page 268 by the example of the “enemies of the Fatherland”. — “punishment ought” (a moral postulate) “to be replaced by satisfaction, which again cannot aim at satisfying right or justice, but at giving us satisfaction” (p. 318).

Note 2.

While Saint Sancho attacks the halo (the windmill) of existing power, he does not even understand this power, let alone come to grips with it; he only advances the moral demand that the relation of the ego to it should be formally changed. (See “Logic”)

“I am forced to put up with the fact” (bombastic assurance) “that he” (viz. My enemy, who has a few million people behind him) “treats me as his enemy; but I shall never permit him to treat me as his creature or to make his reason or unreasonableness my guiding principle” (p. 256, where he allows the aforesaid Sancho a very restricted freedom, namely the choice between allowing himself to be treated as his creature or of suffering the 3,300 lashes imposed by Merlin on his posaderas. This freedom is allowed him by any criminal code which. it is true, does not first ask the aforesaid Sancho in what form it should declare its hostility to him)."But even if you impress your opponent as a force” (being for him an “impressive force”) “You do not on that account become a sanctified authority; unless he is a wretch. He is not obliged to respect you and pay regard to you even if he has to be on his guard against you and your power” (p. 258).

Here Saint Sancho himself appears as a “wretch” when with the greatest seriousness he haggles [pun on the word Schächer which means “wretch” or “robber”, while schachern means “to barter” to haggle"] about the difference between “to impress” and “to be respected”, “to be on one’s guard” and to “have regard for” — a difference of a sixteenth part at most. When Saint Sancho is “on his guard” against someone,

“he gives himself over to reflection, and he has an object which he has in view, which he respects and which inspires him with reverence and fear” (p. 115).

In the above equations, punishment, vengeance, satisfaction, etc., are depicted as coming only from me; inasmuch as Saint Sancho is the object of satisfaction, the antitheses can be turned round: then self-satisfaction is transformed into another-getting-satisfaction-with-regard-to-me or the prejudicing-of-my-satisfaction.

Note 3.

The very same ideologists who could imagine that right, law, state, etc., arose from a general concept, in the final analysis perhaps the concept of man, and that they were put into effect for the sake of this concept — these same ideologists can, of course, also imagine that crimes are committed purely because of a wanton attitude towards some concept, that crimes, in general, are nothing but making mockery of concepts and are only punished in order to do justice to the insulted concepts. Concerning this we have already said what was necessary in connection with right, and still earlier in connection with hierarchy, to which we refer the reader.

In the above-mentioned antitheses, the canonised definitions — crime, punishment, etc. — are confronted with the name of another definition, which Saint Sancho in his favourite fashion extracts from these first definitions and appropriates for himself. This new definition, which, as we have said, appears here as a mere name, being worldly is supposed to contain the direct individual relation and express the factual relations. (See “Logic”.) The history of right shows that in the earliest, most primitive epochs these individual, factual relations in their crudest form directly constituted right. With the development of civil society, hence with the development of private interests into class interests, the relations of right underwent changes and acquired a civilised form. They were no longer regarded as individual, but as universal relations. At the same time, division of labour placed the protection of the conflicting interests of separate individuals into the hands of a few persons, whereby the barbaric enforcement of right also disappeared. Saint Sancho’s entire criticism of right in the above-mentioned antitheses is limited to declaring the civilised form of. legal relations and the civilised division of labour to be the fruit of the “fixed idea”, of the holy, and, on the other hand, to claiming for himself the barbaric expression of relations of right and the barbaric method of settling conflicts. For him it is all only a matter of names; he does not touch on the content itself, since he does not know the real relations on which these different forms of right are based, and in the juridical expression of class relations perceives only the idealised names of those barbaric relations. Thus, in Stirner’s declaration of will, we rediscover the feud; in hostility, self-defence, etc. — a copy of club-law and practice of the old feudal mode of life; in satisfaction, vengeance, etc. — the jus talionis, the old German Gewere, compensatio, satisfactio — in short, the chief elements of the leges barbarorum and consuetudines feudorum ^[50], which Sancho has appropriated for himself and taken to his heart not from libraries, but from the tales of his former master about Amadis of Gaul. In the final analysis, therefore, Saint Sancho again arrives merely at an impotent moral injunction that everybody should himself obtain satisfaction and carry out punishment. He believes Don Quixote’s assurance that by a mere moral injunction he can without more ado convert the material forces arising from the division of labour into personal forces. How closely juridical relations are linked with the development of these material forces due to the division of labour is already clear from the historical development of the power of the law courts and the complaints of the feudal lords about the legal development. (See, e.g., Monteil. loc. cit., XIV, XV siècle) It was just in the epoch between the rule of the aristocracy and the rule of the bourgeoisie, when the interests of two classes came into conflict, when trade between the European nations began to be important, and hence international relations themselves assumed a bourgeois character, it was just at that time that the power of the courts of law began to be important, and under the rule of the bourgeoisie, when this broadly developed division of labour becomes absolutely essential, the power of these courts reaches its highest point. What the servants of the division of labour, the judges and still more the professores juris, imagine in this connection is a matter of the greatest indifference.

C. Crime in the Ordinary and Extraordinary Sense

We saw above that crime in the ordinary sense, by being falsified, was put to the credit of the egoist in the extraordinary sense. Now this falsification becomes obvious. The extraordinary egoist now finds that he commits only extraordinary crimes, which have to be set against the ordinary crimes. Therefore we debit the aforesaid egoist with the ordinary crimes, which have been previously entered into the credit column.

The struggle of the ordinary criminals against other people’s property can also be expressed as follows (although this holds good of any competitor):

that they — “seek other people’s goods” (p. 265),

seek holy goods,

seek the holy, and in this way the ordinary criminal

is transformed into a “believer” (p. 265).

But this reproach which the egoist in the extraordinary sense levels against the criminal in the ordinary sense is only an apparent one — for it is indeed he himself who strives for the halo of the whole world. The real reproach that he levels against the criminal is not that he seeks “the holy”, but that he seeks “goods”.

After Saint Sancho has built himself a “world of his own, a heaven”, namely this time an imaginary world of feuds and knights-errant, transferred to the modern world, after he has at the same time given documentary evidence of his difference, as a knightly criminal, from ordinary criminals, after this he once more undertakes a crusade against “dragons and ostriches, hobgoblins”, “ghosts, apparitions and fixed ideas”. His faithful servant, Szeliga, gallops reverently after him. As they wend their way, however, there occurs the astounding adventure of the unfortunate ones who were being dragged off to some place they had no wish to go to, as described in Chapter XXII of Cervantes. For while our knight-errant and his servant Don Quixote were jogging along their path, Sancho raised his eyes and saw coming towards him some dozen men on foot manacled and bound together by a long chain, accompanied by a commissar and four gendarmes, belonging to the holy Hermandad,^[51] to the Hermandad which is holy, to the holy. When they came close, Saint Sancho very politely asked the guards to be so kind as to tell him why these people were being led in chains. — They are convicts of His Majesty sent to work at Spandau,^[52] you do not have to know any more. — How, cried Saint Sancho, men being forced? Is it possible that the king can use force against someone’s “proper ego"? In that case I take upon myself the vocation of putting a stop to this force. “The behaviour of the state is violent action, and it calls this justice. Violent action of an individual, however, it calls crime.” Thereupon Saint Sancho first of all began to admonish the prisoners, saying that they ought not to grieve, that although they were “not free”, they were still their “own”, and that although maybe their “bones” might “crack” under the lash of the whip and that perhaps they might even have a “leg torn off”, yet, he said, you will triumph over all that, for “no one can bind your will"! “And I know for certain that there is no witchcraft in the world that could direct and compel the will, as some simpletons imagine; for the will is our free arbitrary power and there is no magic herb or spell that can subdue it.” Yes, “your will no one can bind and your ill will remains free!”

But since this sermon did not pacify the convicts, who began one after the other to relate how they had been unjustly condemned, Sancho said: “Dear brethren, from what you have related it has become clear to me that, although you have been punished for your crimes, yet the punishment which you are suffering gives you little pleasure and that hence you are reluctant to receive it and do not look forward to it. And it is highly possible that the cause of your ruin is pusillanimity on the rack in one case, poverty in another, lack of favour in a third and, finally, the judge’s unfair judgment, and that you have not been given the justice that was your due, ‘your right’. All this compels me to show you why heaven sent me into the world. But since the wisdom of the egoist in agreement with himself prescribes not doing by force what can be done by agreement, I hereby request the commissar and gendarmes to release you and let you go your ways. Moreover, my dear gendarmes, these unfortunates have done you no harm. It does not behove egoists in agreement with themselves to become the executioners of other unique ones who have done them no harm. Evidently, with you ‘the category of the one who has been robbed stands in the forefront’. Why do you show such ‘zeal’ in your actions ‘against crime'? ‘Verily, verily I say unto you, you are enthusiastic for morality, you are filled with the idea of morality’, ‘You persecute all those who are hostile to it’ — ‘Owing to your oath as officials’, you are bringing these poor convicts ‘to prison’, you are the holy! Therefore release these people voluntarily. if you do not, you will have to reckon with me, who overthrows nations with one puff of the living ego’, who ‘commits the most unmeasured desecration’ and ‘is not afraid even of the Moon’.”

“This is a fine piece of impudence indeed!,, cried the commissar. ,You'd do better to put that basin straight on your head and be on your way!”

Saint Sancho, however, infuriated by this Prussian rudeness, couched his lance and rushed at the commissar with as much speed as the “apposition” is capable of, so that he immediately threw him to the ground. There ensued a general mêlée, during which the convicts freed themselves from their chains, a gendarme threw Szeliga-Don Quixote into the Landwehrgraben ^[53] or sheep’s ditch [Schafgraben], and Saint Sancho performed the most heroic feats in his struggle against the holy. A few minutes later, the gendarmes were scattered, Szeliga crept out of the ditch and the holy was abolished for the time being.

Then Saint Sancho gathered round him the liberated convicts and addressed them as follows (pp. 265, 266 of “the book”):

“What is the ordinary criminal” (the criminal in the ordinary sense) “but a man who has committed the fatal mistake” (a fatal story-teller for the citizen and the countryman!) “of striving after what belongs to the people instead of seeking what is his own? He has desired the contemptible” (a general muttering among the convicts at this moral judgment) “goods of another, he has done what believers do who aspire to what belongs to God” (the criminal as a noble soul). “What does the priest do who admonishes the criminal? He tells him of the great violation of right he has committed by his action in desecrating what the state has sanctified, the property of the state, which also includes the life of the state’s subjects. Instead of this the priest might have done better to reproach the criminal with having besmirched himself” (titters among the convicts at this egoistical appropriation of banal clerical phraseology) “by not despising the alien but regarding it as worthy of being robbed” (murmuring among the convicts). “He could have done so, were he not a priest” (one of the convicts: “In the ordinary sense!”). I, however, “speak with the criminal as with an egoist, and he will be ashamed” (shameless, loud cheers from the criminals, who do not wish to he called upon to feel shame), “not because he has committed a crime against your laws and your goods, but because he considered it worth while to circumvent your laws” (this refers only to “circumvention in the ordinary sense”; elsewhere, however, “I go round a rock so long as I am unable to blow it up” and I “circumvent”, for example, even the “censorship”), “and to desire your goods” (renewed cheers); “he will be ashamed ...

Gines de Passamonte, the arch-thief, who in general was not very patient, shouted: “Are we then to do nothing but feel ashamed, be submissive, when a priest in the extraordinary sense ‘admonishes’ us?”

“He will be ashamed,” continues Sancho, “,that he did not despise you, together with what is yours, that he was too little of an egoist.” (Sancho here applies an alien measure to the egoism of the criminal. In consequence, a general bellowing breaks out among the convicts; in some confusion, Sancho gives way, turning with a rhetorical gesture to the absent “good burghers”.) “But you cannot speak to him egoistically, for you have not the stature of a criminal, you ... perpetrate nothing.”

Gines again interrupts: “What credulity, my good man! Our prison warders perpetrate all kinds of crimes, they embezzle, they defraud, they commit rape [... twelve pages of manuscript missing here ...]

[B. My Intercourse][edit source]

[I. Society]^[54][edit source]

[...] again he reveals only his credulity. The reactionaries knew already that by the constitution the bourgeoisie abolishes the naturally arisen state and establishes and makes its own state, that “le pouvoir constituant, qui était dans le temps” naturally “passa dans la volonté humaine”, ["The constitutional power which had been shaped in the course of time had permeated the human will.” Lourdoueix, “Appel à la France contre la division des opinions”, quoted from Karl Wilhelm Lancizolle’s book Ueber Ursachen, Character und Folgen der Julitage] that “this fabricated state was like a fabricated, painted tree”, etc. See Fiévée’s Correspondance politique et administrative, Paris, 1815, Appel à la France contre la division des opinions, Le drapeau blanc by Sarran ainé the Gazette de France of the Restoration period, and the earlier works of Bonald, de Maistre, etc. The liberal bourgeois, in turn, reproach the old republicans — about whom they obviously know as little as Saint Max knows about the bourgeois state — on the grounds that their patriotism is nothing but “une passion factice envers un être abstrait, une idée générale” ["An artificial passion directed towards something abstract, a general idea."] (Benj. Constant, De 1'esprit de conquête, Paris, 1814, p. 48), whereas the reactionaries accused the bourgeois on the grounds that their political ideology is nothing but “une mystification que la classe aisée fait subir à celles qui ne le sont pas” (Gazette de France, 1831, Février. ["A deception with which the wealthy class deludes those that are not wealthy.” Quoted from Karl Wilhelm Lancizolle, op. cit.]

On page 295, Saint Sancho declares that the state is “an institution for making the nation Christian”, and all he can say about the basis of the state is that it “is held together” with the “cement” o “respect for the law”, or that the holy “is held together” by respect (the holy as link) for the holy (p. 314).

Note 4.

If the state is holy, there must be censorship” (p. 316). “The French Government does not contest freedom of the press as a right of man, but it demands a guarantee from the individual that he is really a human being.” (Quel bonhomme! [What a simpleton] Jacques le bonhomme is “called upon” to study the September Laws^[55]) (p. 380).

Note 5, in which we find the most profound explanations about the various forms of the state, which Jacques le bonhomme makes independent and in which he sees only different attempts to realise the true state.

“The republic is nothing but absolute monarchy, for it makes no difference whether the monarch is called prince of people, since both are majesties” (the holy) ... “Constitutionalism is a step further than the republic, for it is the state in the process of dissolution.”

This dissolution is explained as follows:

“In the constitutional state ... the government wants to be absolute, and the people wants to be absolute. These two absolutes” (i.e., holies) “will destroy one another” (p. 302). “I am not the state, I am the creative negation of the state”; “thereby all questions” (about the constitution, etc.) “sink into their true nothing” (p. 310).

He should have added that these propositions about forms of the state are merely a paraphrase of this “nothing”, whose sole creation is the proposition given above: I am not the state. Saint Sancho, just like a German school-master, speaks here of “the republic,” which is, of course, far older than constitutional monarchy, e.g., the Greek republics.

That in a democratic, representative state like North America class conflicts have already reached a form which the constitutional monarchies are only just being forced to approach — about this, of course, he knows nothing. His phrases about constitutional monarchy prove that since 1842 by the Berlin calendar^[56], he has learned nothing and forgotten nothing. [paraphrase of the French saying: “Ils n'ont rien appris ni rien oublié” — “They have learned nothing and forgotten nothing”; when it was first coined, shortly after the French Revolution, it was used in relation to the royalists]

Note 6.

“The state owes its existence only to the contempt which I have for myself”, and with the disappearance of this disdain it will fade away entirely” (it seems that it depends solely on Sancho how soon all the states on earth will “fade away”. Repetition of Note 3 in the reversed equation, see “Logic”): “It exists only when it is superior to me, only as might [Macht] and the mighty [Mächtiger]. Or” (a remarkable or which proves just the opposite of what it is intended to prove) “can you imagine a state the inhabitants of which in all their entirety” (a jump from “I” to “we”) “attach no importance to it [sich allesamt nichts aus ihm machen]?” (p. 377).

There is no need to dwell on the synonymy of the words “ Macht “Mächtig” and “machen”.

From the fact that in any state there are people who attach importance to it, i.e., who, in the state and thanks to the state, themselves acquire importance, Sancho concludes that the state is a power standing above these people. Here again it is only a matter of getting the fixed idea about the state out of one’s mind. Jacques le bonhomme continues to imagine that the state is a mere idea and he believes in the independent power of this idea of the state. He is the true “politician who believes in the state, is possessed by the state” (p. 309). Hegel idealises the conception of the state held by the political ideologists who still took separate individuals as their point of departure, even if it was merely the will of these individuals; Hegel transforms the common will of these individuals into the absolute will, and Jacques le bonhomme bona fide accepts this idealisation of ideology as the correct view of the state and, in this belief, criticises it by declaring the Absolute to be the Absolute.

5. Society as Bourgeois Society

We shall spend somewhat more time on this chapter because, not unintentionally, it is the most confused of all the confused chapters in “the book”, and because at the same time it proves most strikingly how little our saint succeeds in getting to know things in their mundane shape. Instead of making them worldly, he makes them holy by “giving” the reader the “benefit” only of his own holy conception. Before coming to bourgeois society proper, we shall hear some new explanations about property in general and in its relation to the state. These explanations appear the newer because they give Saint Sancho the opportunity to put forward again his most favourite equations about right and the state and thus to give his “treatise” “more manifold transformations” and “refractions”. We need, of course, only quote the last members of these equations since the reader will still have it mind their context from the chapter “My Power”.

Private property or bourgeois property	= Not my property
	= Holy property
	= Property of others
	= Respected property or respect for the property of others
	= Property of man (pp. 327, 369).

From these equations one obtains at once the following antitheses:

Property in the bourgeois sense	= Property in the egoistical sense (p. 327).
“Property of man”	= “My property.”
(“Human belongings”	= My, belongings.) p. 324.
Equations: Man	= Right
	= State power.
Private property or bourgeois property	= Rightful property (p. 324),
	= mine by virtue of right (p. 332),
	= guaranteed property,
	= property of others,
	= property belonging to another,
	= property belonging to right,
	= property by right (pp. 367, 332),
	= a concept of right,
	= something spiritual,
	= universal,
	= fiction,
	= pure thought,
	= fixed idea,
	= spectre,
	= property of the spectre (pp. 368, 324, 332, 367, 369).
Private property	= Property of right.
Right	= Power of the state.
Private property	= Property in the power of the state
	= State property or also
Property	= State Property.
State property	= My non-property.
State	= The sole owner (pp. 339, 334).

We now come to the antitheses:

Private property	— Egoistical property.
Authorised by right (by the state, by Man) to have property	— Empowered by me to have property (p. 339).
Mine by virtue of right	— Mine by virtue of my power or force (p. 332).
Property given by another	— Property taken by, me (p. 339).
Rightful property of others	— Rightful property of another is what I consider right(p. 339),

which can be repeated in a hundred other formulas if, for example, one puts plenary powers instead of power, or uses formulas already given.

Private property = alien relation to the

property of all others

— My property, = property relation to the property of all

others.

Or also:

Property comprising a few objects

— Property comprising everything (p. 343).

Alienation [Entfremdung], as the relation or link in the above equations, can be expressed also in the following antitheses:

Private property	— Egoistical property.
“To behave towards property as towards something holy,	— “To renounce the holy relation towards property”,
a spectre”,	no longer to regard it as alien,
“to respect it”,	no longer to fear the spectre,
“to have respect for property” (p. 324).	to have no respect for property,
	to have the property of lack of respect (pp. 368, 340, 343).

The modes of appropriation contained in the above equations and antitheses will be dealt with when we come to the “ union “, but as for the time being we are still in the “holy society”, we are here only concerned with canonisation.

Note. In the section “Hierarchy” we already dealt with the question why the ideologists can regard the property relation as a relation of “Man”, the different forms of which in different epochs are determined by the individuals’ conception of “Man”. It suffices here to refer the reader to that analysis.

Treatise 1. On the parcellation of landed property, the redemption of feudal obligations and the swallowing-up of small landed property by large landed property.

All these things are deduced from holy property and the equation: bourgeois property = respect for the holy.

1) “Property in the bourgeois sense means holy property, in such a way that I must respect your property. ‘Respect for property!’ Hence the politicians would like everyone to possess his little piece of property and by their endeavour have partly brought about an incredible parcellation” (pp. 327, 328). — 2) “The political liberals see to it that as far as possible all feudal obligations are redeemed and that everyone is a free master on his land, even though this land has only such a quantity of ground” (the land has a quantity of ground!) “that it can be adequately fertilised by the manure from one person.... No matter how small it is, so long as it is one’s own, i.e., a respected property! The more such owners there are, the more free people and good patriots has the state” (p. 328). — 3) “Political liberalism, like everything religious, counts on respect, humanity, the virtues of love. Therefore it experiences constant vexation. For in practice people respect nothing, and every day small properties are being bought up by large landowners, and the ‘free people’ are turned into day-labourers. If, on the other hand, the ‘small owners’ had borne in mind that large property also belongs to them, they would not have respectfully excluded themselves from it and would not have become excluded” (p. 328).

1) Here, therefore, first of all the whole development of parcellation, about which Saint Sancho knows only that it is the holy, is explained from a mere idea which “the politicians” “have got into their heads”. Because “the politicians” demand “respect for property”, hence they “would like” parcellation, which moreover was carried out everywhere by not respecting other people’s property! “The politicians” actually have “partly brought about an incredible parcellation”. It was therefore through the action of the “politicians” that in France even before the revolution, just as today in Ireland and partly in Wales, parcellation had long existed in agriculture, and that capital and all other conditions were lacking for large-scale cultivation. Incidentally, how much “politicians” nowadays “world like” to carry out parcellation, Saint Sancho could see from the fact that all the French bourgeois are dissatisfied with parcellation, both because it weakens competition among the workers and also for political reasons; further, from the fact that all reactionaries (as Sancho could see if only from the Erinnerungen of the old Arndt) regarded parcellation simply as the conversion of landed property into modern, industrial, marketable, desanctified property. We shall not here set forth for our saint the economic reasons why the bourgeoisie, as soon as it has attained power, must carry out this conversion, which can come about both by the abolition of land rents that exceed profit and by parcellation. Nor shall we explain to him that the form in which this conversion takes place depends on the level of development of industry, trade, shipping, etc., in the country concerned. The propositions cited above about parcellation are nothing more than a bombastic circumlocution of the simple fact that in various places “here and there” considerable parcellation exists — expressed in our Sancho’s canonising manner of speech, which suits everything and nothing. For the rest, Sancho’s propositions given above contain merely the fantasies of the German petty bourgeois about parcellation which, of course, is for him the alien, “the holy”. Cf. “Political Liberalism”.

2) The redemption of feudal obligations, a misery which occurs only in Germany, where the governments were only compelled to carry it through by the more advanced conditions in neighbouring countries and by financial difficulties — this redemption is held by our saint to be something that “the political liberals” desire in order to produce “free people and good burghers”. Sancho’s horizon again does not go beyond the Pomeranian Landtag and the Saxon Chamber of Deputies. This German redemption of feudal obligations never led to any political or economic results and, being a half-measure, remained without any effect at all. Sancho knows nothing, of course, about the historically important redemption of feudal obligations in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries which was due to the commencing development of trade and industry and the landowners’ need for money.

The very same people who, like Stein and Vincke, wanted the redemption of feudal obligations in Germany in order, as Sancho believes, to make good burghers and free people, found later on that in order to produce “good burghers and free people” feudal obligations ought to be restored, as is just now being attempted in Westphalia. From which it follows that “respect”, like the fear of God, is useful for all purposes.

3) The “buying-up” of small landed property by the “large landowners” takes place, according to Sancho, because in practice “respect for property” does not occur. Two of the most common consequences of competition — concentration and buying-up — and competition as a whole, which does not exist without concentration, seem here to our Sancho to be violations of bourgeois property, which moves within the sphere of competition. Bourgeois property is already violated by the very fact of its existence. In Sancho’s opinion, it is not possible to buy anything without attacking property. How deeply Saint Sancho has penetrated into the concentration of landed property can already be deduced from the fact that he sees in it only the most obvious act of concentration, the mere “buying-up”. Incidentally, from what Sancho says it is not possible to perceive to what extent small landowners cease to be owners by becoming day-labourers. Indeed, on the following page (p. 329) Sancho himself with great solemnity advances as an argument against Proudhon that they continue to be “owners of the share remaining to them in the utilisation of the land”, namely owners of wages. “It can sometimes be observed in history” that large landed property swallows up small landed property, and then in turn the small swallows up the large, two phenomena which, in Saint Sancho’s opinion, become peacefully resolved into the adequate reason that “in practice people respect nothing”. The same thing holds good for the other manifold forms of landed property. And then the wise “if the small owners had”, etc.! In the Old Testament we saw how Saint Sancho, in accordance with the speculative method, made earlier generations reflect on the experiences of later ones; now we see how, in accordance with his ranting method, he complains that the earlier generations have failed to bear in mind not only the thoughts of later generations about them, but also his own nonsense. What schoolmasterly “wisdom! If the terrorists had considered that they would bring Napoleon to the throne, if the English barons at the time of Runnymede and Magna Charta had considered that in 1849 the Corn Laws ^[57] would be repealed, if Croesus had considered that Rothschild would surpass him in riches, if Alexander the Great had considered that Rotteck would judge him and that his Empire would fall into the hands of the Turks, if Themistocles had considered that he would defeat the Persians in the interests of Otto the Child,^[58] if Hegel had considered that he would be exploited in such a “vulgar” way by Saint Sancho, if, if, if! About what kind of “small owners” does Saint Sancho fancy that he is talking? About the propertyless peasants who only became “small owners” as a result of the parcelling out of large landed property, or about those who are being ruined nowadays as a result of concentration? For Saint Sancho these two cases are as like as two drops of water. In the first case, the small owners did not by any means exclude themselves from “large property”, but each took possession of it insofar as he was not excluded by others and had the power to do so. This power, however, was not Stirner’s vaunted power, but was determined by quite empirical relations, e.g., their development and the whole preceding development of bourgeois society, the locality and its greater or lesser degree of connection with the neighbourhood, the size of the piece of land taken into possession, and the number of those who appropriated it, the relations of industry, of intercourse, means of communication, instruments of production, etc., etc’ That they had no intention of excluding themselves from large landed property is evident even from the fact that many of them became large landed proprietors themselves. Sancho makes himself ridiculous even in Germany by his unreasonable demand that these peasants should have jumped the stage of parcellation, which did not yet exist and was at that time the only revolutionary form for them, and that they should have thrown themselves at a bound into his egoism in agreement with itself. Disregarding this nonsense of his, it was not possible for these peasants to organise themselves communistically, since they lacked all the means necessary for bringing about the first condition of communist association, namely collective husbandry, and since, on the contrary, parcellation was only one of the conditions which subsequently evoked the need for such an association. In general, a communist movement can never originate from the countryside, but only from the towns.

In the second case, when Saint Sancho talks of the ruined small owners, these still have a common interest with the big landowners as against the wholly propertyless class and the industrial bourgeoisie. If this common interest is absent, they lack the power to appropriate large landed property, since they live scattered and their whole activity and way of life make association, the first condition for such appropriation, impossible for them, and such a movement, in its turn, presupposes a much more general movement which by no means depends on them.

Finally, Sancho’s whole tirade amounts to this: that they ought merely to get rid of their respect for the property of others. We shall hear a little more about this later on.

In conclusion, let us take one more proposition ad acta. “The point is that in practice people respect nothing,” so, after all, it appears that it is not “just” a matter of “respect”.

Treatise No. 2. Private property, state and right.

“If, if, if!”

“If” Saint Sancho had for one moment set aside the current ideas of lawyers and politicians about private property, and also the polemic against it, if he had once looked at this private property in its empirical existence, in its connection with the productive forces of individuals, then all his Solomon’s wisdom, with which he will now entertain us, would have been reduced to nothing. Then it would hardly have escaped him (although like Habakkuk he is capable de tout ^[59] ) that private property is a form of intercourse necessary for certain stages of development of the productive forces; a form of . intercourse that cannot be abolished, and cannot be dispensed with in the production of actual material life, until productive forces have been created for which private property becomes a restricting fetter. In that case it could not have escaped the reader also that Sancho ought to have occupied himself with material relations, instead of dissolving the whole world in a system of theological morality in order to set against it a new system of would-be egoistical morality. It could not have escaped him that it was a question of things altogether different from “respect” or disrespect. “If, if, if!”

Incidentally, this “if” is only an echo of Sancho’s proposition given above; for “if” Sancho had done all that, he obviously could not have written his book.

Since Saint Sancho accepts in good faith the illusion of politicians, lawyers and other ideologists which puts all empirical relations upside-down, and, in addition, in the German manner adds something of his own, private property for him becomes transformed into state property, or property by right, on which he can now make an experiment to justify his equations given above. Let us first of all look at the transformation of private property into state property.

“The question of property is decided only by force” (on the contrary, the question of force has so far been decided by property), “and since the state alone is the mighty one — irrespective of whether it is a state of burghers, a state of ragamuffins” (Stirner’s “union”) “or simply a state of human beings — it alone is the owner” (p. 333).

Side by side with the fact of the German “state of burghers” here again fantasies invented by Sancho and Bauer appear on an equal footing, whereas no mention is made anywhere of the historically important state formations. First of all he transforms the state into a person, into “the Mighty one”. The fact that the ruling class establishes its joint domination as public power, as the state, Sancho interprets and distorts in the German petty bourgeois manner as meaning that the “state” is established as a third force against this ruling class and absorbs all power in the face of it. He proceeds now to confirm this belief of his by means of a series of examples.

Because property under the rule of the bourgeoisie, as in all epochs, is bound up with definite conditions, first of all economic, which depend on the degree of development of the productive forces and intercourse — conditions which inevitably acquire a legal and political expression — Saint Sancho in his simplicity believes that

“the state links possession of property” (car tel est son bon plaisir [because it chooses to do so — a paraphrase of the concluding words of French royal edicts]) “just as it links everything else, e.g., marriage, with certain conditions” (p. 335).

Because the bourgeois do not allow the state to interfere in their private interests and give it only as much power as is necessary for their own safety and the maintenance of competition and because the bourgeois in general act as citizens only to the extent that their private interests demand it, Jacques le bonhomme believes that they are “nothing” in face of the state.

“The state is only interested in being wealthy itself; whether Michael is rich and Peter poor is a matter of indifference to it ... in face of it both of them are nothing” (p. 334).

On page 345 he derives the same wisdom from the fact that competition is tolerated in the state.

Because the board of a railway is concerned about its shareholders only insofar as they make their payments and receive their dividends, the Berlin school-master in his innocence concludes that the shareholders are “nothing in face of the board just as we are all sinners in the face of God”. On the basis of the impotence of the state in face of the activities of private property-owners Sancho proves the impotence of private property-owners in face of the state and his own impotence in face of both.

Further, since the bourgeois have organised the defence of their own property in the state, and the “ego” cannot, therefore, take away his factory “from such and such a manufacturer”, except under the conditions of the bourgeoisie, i.e., under the conditions of competition, Jacques le bonhomme believes that

“the state has the factory as property, the manufacturer holds it only in fee, as possession” (p. 347).

In exactly the same way when a dog guards my house it “has” the house “as property”, and I hold it only “in fee, as possession” from the dog. Since the concealed material conditions of private property are often bound to come into contradiction with the juridical illusion about private property — as seen, for example, in expropriations — Jacques le bonhomme, concludes that

“here the otherwise concealed principle that only the state is the property-owner whereas the individual is a feudal tenant, strikes the eye” (p. 335).

All that “strikes the eye here” is the fact that worldly property relations are hidden from the eyes of our worthy burgher behind the mantle of “the holy”, and that he has still to borrow a “heavenly ladder” from China In order to “climb” to the “rung of civilisation” attained even by school-masters in civilised countries. In the same way as Sancho here transforms the contradictions belonging to the existence of private property into the negation of private property, he dealt, as we saw above, with the contradictions within the bourgeois family. Since the bourgeois, and in general all the members of civil society, are forced to constitute themselves as “we”, as a juridical person, as the state, in order to safeguard their common interests and — if only because of the division of labour — to delegate the collective power thus created to a few persons, Jacques le bonhomme imagines that

“each has the use of property only so long as he bears within himself the ego of the state or is a loyal member of society.... He who is a state — ego, i.e., a good burgher or subject, he, as such an ego, not as his own, holds the fee undisturbed” (pp. 334, 335).

From this point of view, a. person possesses a railway share only so long as he “bears within himself” the “ego” of the board; consequently it is only as a saint that one can possess a railway share.

Having in this way convinced himself of the identity of private and state property, Saint Sancho can continue:

“That the state does not arbitrarily take away from the individual that which he has from the state, only means that the state does not rob itself” (pp. 334, 335).

That Saint Sancho does not arbitrarily rob others of their property only means that Saint Sancho does not rob himself, for indeed he “regards” all property as his own.

One cannot demand of us that we should deal further with the rest of Saint Sancho’s fantasies about the state and property, e.g., that the state “tames” and “rewards” individuals by means of property, that out of special malice it has invented high stamp duties in order to ruin the citizens if they are not loyal, etc., etc. and in general with the petty-bourgeois German idea of the omnipotence of the state, an idea which was already current among the old German lawyers and is here presented in the form of grandiloquent assertions.

Finally Saint Sancho also tries to confirm his adequately proved identity of state and private property by means of etymological synonymy; in doing which, however, he belabours his erudition en ambas posaderas.

“My private property is only that which the state allows me out of its property, by depriving [privieren] other state members of it: it is state property” (p. 339).

By chance this is just the reverse of what happened. Private property in Rome, to which alone this etymological witticism can relate, was in the most direct contradiction to state property. True, the state gave the plebeians private property; in doing so it did not, however, deprive “others” of their private property but deprived these plebeians themselves of their state property (ager publicus [common land]) and their political rights, and it was precisely on that account that they themselves were called privati, robbed ones. and not the fantastical “other state members” of whom Saint Sancho dreams. Jacques le bonhomme covers himself with shame in all countries, all languages and all epochs as soon as he begins to talk about positive facts concerning which “the holy” cannot have any knowledge a priori. Desperation because the state swallows up all property drives Sancho back to his innermost “indignant” self-consciousness, where he is surprised to discover that he is a man of letters. He expresses his astonishment in the following remarkable words:

“In opposition to the state I feel ever more clearly that I still retain one great power, power over myself.”

Further on this is developed thus:

“My thoughts constitute real property for me with which I can carry on trade” (p. 339).

Thus, Stirner the “ragamuffin”, the “man of only ideal wealth”, arrives at the desperate decision to carry on trade with the curdled, sour milk of his thoughts. ^[60] But what cunning does he use if the state declares his thoughts to be contraband? Just listen to this:

“I renounce them” (which is undoubtedly very wise) “and exchange them for others” (that is, if anyone should be such a bad businessman as to accept his exchanges of thoughts), “ which then become my new, purchased property” (p. 339).

Our honourable burgher will not rest until he has it in black and white that he has bought his property honestly. Here one sees the consolation of the Berlin burgher in the face of all his political calamities and police tribulations: “Thoughts are free of customs duty!” [Martin Luther, Von weltlicher Obrigkeit]

The transformation of private property into state property reduces itself, in the final analysis, to the idea that the bourgeois has possessions only as a member of the bourgeois species, a species which as a whole is called the state and which invests individuals with the fief of property. He re again the matter is put upside-down. In the bourgeois class, as in every other, it is only personal conditions that are developed into common and universal conditions under which the separate members of the class possess and live. Although previously philosophical illusions of this kind could be current in Germany, they have now become completely ludicrous, since world trade has adequately proved that bourgeois gain is quite independent of politics, but that politics, on the other hand, is entirely dependent on bourgeois gain. Already in the eighteenth century, politics was so dependent on trade that when, for example, the French Government wanted to raise a loan, the Dutch demanded that a private individual should stand security for the state.

That “my worthlessness” or “pauperism” is the “realisation of the value” or the “existence” of the “state” (p. 336) is one of the thousand and one Stirnerian equations which we mention here only because in this connection we shall hear something new about pauperism.

“Pauperism is my worthlessness, the phenomenon that I cannot realise my value. Hence state and pauperism are one and the same.... The state is always trying to derive benefit from me, i.e., to exploit me. make use of me, to utilise me, even though this utilisation consists merely in my providing proles [offspring] (proletariat). It wants me to be its creature” (p. 336).

Apart from the fact that one sees here how little it depends on him to realise his value, although everywhere and at all times he can assert his peculiarity, and that here once again, in contradiction to former statements, essence and appearance are totally divorced from each other, we have again the above-mentioned petty-bourgeois view of our bonhomme that the “state” wants to exploit him. The only further point of interest to us is the ancient Roman etymological derivation of the word “proletariat”, which is here naively smuggled into the modern state. Does Saint Sancho really not know that wherever the modern state has developed, “providing proles” is for the state, i.e., the official bourgeois, precisely the most unpleasant activity of the proletariat? Perhaps he ought to translate Malthus and Minister Duchâtel into German, [Thomas Robert Malthus, An Essay on the Principle of Population; Charles Marie Duchâtel, De la Charité] for his own benefit’, just now, Saint Sancho, as a German petty bourgeois, “felt” “ever more clearly” that “in opposition to the state he still retained one great power”, namely — the power to think in defiance of the state. If he were an English proletarian He would have felt that he “retained the power” to produce children in defiance of the state. Another Jeremiad against the state! Another theory of pauperism! To start with he, as “ego”, “creates” “flour, linen or iron and coal”, thereby from the outset abolishing division of labour. Then he begins “to complain” “at length” that his work is not paid for at its value, and in the first instance he comes into conflict with those who pay for it. Then the state comes between them in the role of “conciliator”.

“If I am not satisfied with the price it” (i.e., the state) “pays for my commodity and labour, if instead I myself endeavour to fix the price of my commodity, i.e., try to see that it is lucrative for me, I come into conflict in the first instance” (a great “in the first instance"! — not with the state, but) “with the buyers of the commodity” (p. 337).

If then he wants to enter into “direct relation” with these buyers, i.e., “seize them by the throat”, the state “intervenes”, “tears man from man” (although it was not a matter of “man in general” but of worker and employer or, what he lumps together in confusion, of the seller and buyer of commodities); moreover, the state does this with the malicious intention “to put itself in the middle as spirit” (obviously the holy spirit).

“Workers who demand higher wages are treated as criminals as soon as they try to achieve this by force” (p. 337).

Once more we are presented with a bouquet of nonsense. Mr. Senior need never have written his letters on wages [Nassau William Senior, Three Lectures on the Rate of Wages] if he had first entered into “direct relation” with Stirner, especially as in that case the state would hardly have “torn man from man”. Sancho here gives the state a triple function. It first acts as a “conciliator”, then as price fixer, and finally as “spirit”, as the holy. The fact that, after having gloriously identified private and state property, Saint Sancho also makes the state fix the level of wages, is testimony equally to his great consistency and his ignorance of the affairs of this world. The fact that in England, America and Belgium “workers A ho try to gain higher wages by force” are by no means immediately treated as “criminals”, but on the contrary quite often actually succeed in obtaining higher wages, is also something of which our saint is ignorant, and which disposes of his whole legend about wages. The fact that, even if the state did not “put itself in the middle”, the workers would gain nothing by “seizing” their employers “by the throat” or at any rate much less than through association and strikes, that is, so long as they remain workers and their opponents capitalists — this is also something that could be comprehended even in Berlin. There is likewise no need to demonstrate that bourgeois society, which is based on competition, and its bourgeois state, owing to their whole material basis, cannot permit any struggle among the citizens except the struggle of competition, and are bound to intervene not as “spirit”, but with bayonets if people “seize each other by the throat”.

Incidentally, Stirner’s idea that only the state becomes richer when individuals become richer on the basis of bourgeois property, or that up to now all private property has been state property, is an idea that again puts historical relations upside-down.

— Economic Dependence of the State on the Bourgeoisie —

With the development and accumulation of bourgeois property, i.e., with the development of commerce and industry, individuals grew richer and richer while the state fell ever more deeply into debt. This phenomenon was evident already in the first Italian commercial republics; later, since the last century, it showed itself to a marked degree in Holland, where the stock exchange speculator Pinto drew attention to it as early as 1750, [Isaac Pinto, Lettre sur la Jalousie du Commerce in Traité de la Circulation et du Crédit] and now it is again occurring in England. It is therefore obvious that as soon as the bourgeoisie has accumulated money, the state has to beg from the bourgeoisie and in the end it is actually bought up by the latter. This takes place in a period in which the bourgeoisie is still confronted by another class, and consequently the state can retain some appearance of independence in relation to both of them. Even after the state has been bought up, it still needs money and, therefore, continues to be dependent on the bourgeoisie; nevertheless, when the interests of the bourgeoisie demand it, the state can have at its disposal more funds than states which are less developed and, therefore, less burdened with debts. However, even the least developed states of Europe, those of the Holy Alliance, are inexorably approaching this fate, for they will be bought up by the bourgeoisie; then Stirner will be able to console them with the identity of private and state property, especially his own sovereign, who is trying in vain to postpone the hour when political power will be sold to the “burghers” who have become “angry”.

We come now to the relation between private property and right, where we have to listen to the same stuff in another form. The identity of state and private property is apparently given a new turn. Political recognition of private property in law is declared to be the basis of private property.

“Private property lives by grace of right. It is guaranteed only in right — for possession is not yet property — it becomes mine only with the consent of right; it is not a fact, but a fiction, a thought. That is property by right, rightful property, guaranteed property; it is mine not thanks to me, but thanks to right” (p. 332).

In this passage the previous nonsense about state property merely reaches still more comical heights. We shall, therefore, pass on at once to Sancho’s exploitation of the fictitious jus utendi et abutendi. [the right of using and consuming (also: abusing), i.e., of disposing of a thing at will] On page 332 we learn, besides the beautiful passage above, that property

“is unlimited power over something which I can dispose of as I please”. But “power” is “not something existing of itself, but exists only in the powerful ego, in me, the possessor of power” (p. 366). Hence property is not a “thing”, “what is mine is not this tree, but my power over it, my ability to dispose of it” (p. 366). He only knows “things” or “egos”. “The power” which is “separated from the ego”, given independent existence, transformed into a “spectre”, is “right”. “This perpetuated power” (treatise on right of inheritance) “is not extinguished even when I die, but is passed on or inherited. Things now really belong not to me, but to right. On the other hand, this is nothing but a delusion, for the power of the individual becomes permanent, and becomes a right, only because other individuals combine their power with his. The delusion consists in their belief that they cannot take back their power” (pp. 366, 367). “A dog who sees a bone in the power of another dog stands aside only if it feels it is too weak. Man, however, respects the right of the other man to his bone.... And as here, so in general, it is called ‘human’ when something spiritual, in this case right, is seen in everything, i.e., when everything is made into a spectre and treated as a spectre.... It is human to regard the individual phenomenon not as an individual, but as a universal phenomenon” (pp. 368, 369).

Thus once again the whole mischief arises from the faith of individuals in the conception of right, which they ought to get out of their heads. Saint Sancho only knows “things” and “egos”, and as regards anything that does not come under these headings, as regards all relations, he knows only the abstract concepts of them, which for him, therefore, also become “spectres”. “On the other hand”, it does dawn on him at times that all this is “nothing but a delusion” and that the “power of the individual” very much depends on whether others combine their power with his. But in the final analysis everything is nevertheless reduced to the “illusion” that individuals “believe that they cannot take back their power”. Once again the railways do not “actually” belong to the shareholders, but to the statutes. Sancho immediately puts forward the right of inheritance as a striking example. He explains it not from the necessity for accumulation and from the family which existed before right, but from the juridical fiction of the prolongation of power beyond death. However, the more feudal society passes into bourgeois society, the more is this juridical fiction itself abandoned by the legislation of all countries. (Cf., for example, the Code Napoléon.) There is no need to show here that absolute paternal power and primogeniture — both natural feudal primogeniture and the later form — were based on very definite material relations. The same thing is to be found among ancient peoples in the epoch of the disintegration of the community in consequence of the development of private life (the best proof of this is the history of the Roman right of inheritance). In general, Sancho could not have chosen a more unfortunate example than the right of inheritance, which in the clearest possible way shows the dependence of right on the relations of production. Compare, for example, Roman and German right of inheritance. Certainly, no dog has ever made phosphorus, bone-meal or lime out of a bone, any more than it has ever “got into its head” anything about its “right” to a bone; equally, it has never “entered the head” of Saint Sancho to reflect whether the right to a bone which people, but not dogs, claim for themselves, is not connected with the way in which people, but not dogs, utilise this bone in production. In general, in this one example we have before us Sancho’s whole method of criticism and his unshakeable faith in current illusions. The hitherto existing production relations of individuals are bound also to be expressed as political and legal relations. (See above a) Within the division of labour these relations are bound to acquire an independent existence over against the individuals. All relations can be expressed in language only in the form of concepts. That these general ideas and concepts are looked upon as mysterious forces is the necessary result of the fact that the real relations, of which they are the expression, have acquired independent existence. Besides this meaning in everyday consciousness, these general ideas are further elaborated and given a special significance by politicians and lawyers, who, as a result of the division of labour, are dependent on the cult of these concepts, and who see in them, and not in the relations of production, the true basis of all real property relations. Saint Sancho, who takes over this illusion without examination, is thus enabled to declare that property by right is the basis of private property, and that the concept of right is the basis of property by right, after which he can restrict his whole criticism to declaring that the concept of right is a concept, a spectre. That is the end of the matter for Saint Sancho. To set his mind at rest, we can add that in all the early law books the behaviour of two dogs who have found a bone is regarded as right: vim vi repellere licere [it is permissible to repel force by force], say the Pandects ^[61]; idque jus nature comparatur [and this right is fixed by nature], by which is meant jus quod nature omnia animalia (people and dogs) docuit [a right which nature has taught all living beings]; but that later it is “just” the organised repulsion of force by force that becomes right. Saint Sancho, who is now well under way, proves his erudition in the field of the history of right by disputing a “bone” with Proudhon.

Proudhon, he says, “tries to humbug us into believing that society is the original possessor and sole owner of imprescriptible right; that the so-called owner has committed theft with regard to society; that if society takes from any present-day owner his property, it does not steal anything from him, for it is only asserting its imprescriptible right. That is where one can get with the spectre of society as a juridical person” (pp. 330, 331).

In contrast to this Stirner “tries to humbug us into believing” (pp. 340, 367, 420 and elsewhere) that we, viz., the propertyless, presented the owners with their property,, out of ignorance, cowardice or good nature, etc., and he calls on us to take back our gift. The difference between these two “attempts at humbugging” is that Proudhon bases himself on a historical fact, while Saint Sancho has only “got something into his head” in order to give the matter a new turn”. For recent investigations into the history of right have established that both in Rome and among the German, Celtic and Slay peoples the development of property had as its starting-point communal or tribal property and that private property strictly speaking arose everywhere by usurpation; Saint Sancho could of course not extract this from the profound idea that the concept of right is a concept. In relation to the legal dogmatists, Proudhon was perfectly right when he stressed this fact and in general combated them by means of their own premises. “That is where one can get with the spectre” of the concept of right as a concept. Proudhon could only have been attacked on account of his proposition quoted above if he had defended the earlier and cruder form of property against the private property that had developed out of this primitive communal system. Sancho sums up his criticism of Proudhon in the arrogant question:

“Why such a sentimental appeal for sympathy as if he were a poor victim of robbery?” (p. 420).

Sentimentality, of which, incidentally, not a trace is to be found in Proudhon, is only permitted towards Maritornes. Sancho really imagines that he is a “whole fellow” compared with such a believer in apparitions as Proudhon. He considers his inflated bureaucratic style, of which even Frederick William IV would be ashamed, to be revolutionary. “Blessed are those that believe.”

On page 340 we learn:

“All the attempts to enact rational laws about property proceeded from the bay of love into a barren ocean of definitions.”

A fitting companion to this is the equally bizarre statement:

“Intercourse hitherto has been based on love, on considerate behaviour, on care for one another” (p. 385).

Saint Sancho here surprises himself with a striking paradox about right and intercourse. If, however, we recall that by “love” he understands love of “Man”, love of something existing in and for itself, of the universal, that by love he understands the relation to an individual or thing regarded as essence, the holy, then this appearance of brilliance is dissipated. The oracular utterances quoted above are then reduced to the old trivialities which have bored us throughout the “book”, i.e., that two things, about which Sancho knows nothing, viz., in this case hitherto existing right and hitherto existing intercourse, are “the holy”, and that in general only “concepts have ruled the world” up to now. The relation to the holy, as a rule called “respect”, can on occasion also be entitled “love”. (See “Logic”.)

Just one example of how Saint Sancho transforms legislation into a love relation, and trade into a love-affair:

“In a Registration Bill for Ireland, the government put forward the proposal to give the suffrage to those who pay a tax of £5 for the poor. Consequently one who gives alms acquires political rights or, elsewhere, becomes a Knight of the Swan” (p. 344).

It is to be noted here first of all that this “Registration Bill” granting “political rights” was a municipal or corporation Bill or, in more comprehensible language to Sancho, an “urban regulation”, which was not designed to grant “political rights” but only urban rights, the right to elect local officials. Secondly, Sancho, who translates McCulloch, surely ought to know quite well the meaning of “to be assessed to the poor-rates at five pounds”. [McCulloch, Statistical Account of the British Empire] This does not mean “to pay a tax of £5 for the poor”, but means to be entered on the list of those who pay this tax as the tenants of a house the annual rent of which amounts to £5. Our Berlin bonhomme does not know that the poor-rate in England and Ireland is a local tax which varies in amount in different towns and different years, so that it would be a sheer impossibility to connect any sort of right with the payment of a particular amount of tax. Finally, Sancho believes that the English and Irish poor-rate is an “alms”; whereas it only provides funds for a direct and open offensive war of the ruling bourgeoisie against the proletariat. It pays the cost of work-houses which, as is well known, are a Malthusian deterrent against pauperism. We see how Sancho “proceeds from the bay of love into a barren ocean of definitions”.

It may be remarked in passing that German philosophy, because it took consciousness alone as its point of departure, was bound to end in moral philosophy, where the various heroes squabble about true morals. Feuerbach loves man for the sake of man, Saint Bruno loves him because he “deserves” it (Wigand, p. 137 [Bruno Bauer, “Charakteristic Ludwig Feuerbachs"]), while Saint Sancho loves “everyone”, because he likes to do so, with the consciousness of egoism (“the book”, p. 387).

We have already seen above — in the first treatise — how the small landed proprietors respectfully excluded themselves from large landed property. This self-exclusion from other people’s property, out of respect, is depicted in general as the characteristic of bourgeois property. From this characteristic Stirner is able to explain to himself why it is that

“within the bourgeois system, in spite of its implication that everyone should be an owner, the majority have practically nothing” (p. 348). This “occurs because the majority are pleased if they are owners at all, even if they are merely owners of a few rags” (p. 349).

That the “majority” possess only “a few rags”, Szeliga regards as a perfectly natural consequence of their love of rags.

Page 343: “Am I thus nothing but an owner? No, hitherto a person was merely an owner, secure in possession of a plot of land by allowing others also to possess their plot; now, however, everything belongs to me. I am the owner of everything that I need and can take possession of.”

Just as Sancho previously made small landed proprietors respectfully exclude themselves from large landed property, and now makes the small landed proprietors exclude one another, so he could go into more detail and make respect responsible for the exclusion of commercial property from landed property, of industrial property from commercial property proper, etc., and thus arrive at a totally new political economy on the basis of the holy. He has only then to get respect out of his head in order to abolish at one stroke division of labour and the form of property that arises from it. Sancho gives an example of this new political economy on page 128 of “the book”, where he buys a needle not from a shopkeeper a but from respect, and not with money paid to the shopkeeper, but with respect paid to the needle. Incidentally, the dogmatic self-exclusion of each individual from other people’s property which Sancho attacks is a purely juridical illusion. Under the modern mode of production and intercourse each person delivers a blow at this illusion and directs his efforts precisely to excluding all others from the property that at present belongs to them. How the matter stands with regard to Sancho’s “property in everything” is clear enough from the supplementary clause: “that I need and can take possession of “ He explains this in more detail on page 353:

“If I say: the world belongs to me, then, properly speaking, this too is empty talk, which has meaning only insofar as I do not respect any property of others”;

that is insofar as non-respect of the property of others constitutes his property.

What irks Sancho about the. private property that is so dear to him is precisely its exclusiveness, without which it would be nonsense — the fact that besides him there are also other private owners. For the private property of others is something holy. We shall see how in his “union” he gets over this inconvenience. We shall find that his egoistical property, property in the extraordinary sense, is nothing but ordinary or bourgeois property transfigured by his sanctifying fantasy.

Let us conclude with the following wisdom of Solomon:

“If people reach a stage where they lose respect for property, then each will possess property ... then [in this matter, too, unions will augment the means of the individual and safeguard his contested property” (p. 342)].”

[Four pages of the manuscript are missing here ... Treatise No. 3. On competition in the ordinary and extraordinary sense.]

One morning the writer of these lines, in suitable attire, went to see Herr Minister Eichhorn:

“Since things have come to nothing with the factory-owner” (for the Finance Minister had given him neither a site nor funds to build a factory of his own, and the Minister of justice had not given him permission to take the factory away from the factory-owner — see above on bourgeois property) “I will compete with this professor of law; the man is a blockhead, and I, who know a hundred times more than he does, will take his audience away from him.” — “But, my friend, did you study at a university and get a degree?” — “No, but what of that? I fully understand all that is necessary for teaching.” — “I'm sorry, but in this matter there is no free competition. I have nothing against you personally, but the essential thing is lacking — a doctor’s diploma — and I, the state, demand it.” — “So that is the freedom of competition,” sighed the author. “Only the state, my master, gives me the possibility of competing.” Whereupon he returned home downcast (p. 347).

In a more advanced country it would not have occurred to him to ask the state for permission to compete with a professor of law. But once he turns to the state as an employer and asks for remuneration, i.e., wages, thus entering the sphere of competition, then of course after his previous treatises about private property and privati, communal property, the proletariat, lettres patentes, the state and status, etc., one cannot suppose that his “solicitation will be successful”. Judging by his past feats, the state can at best appoint him as custodian (custos) of “the holy” on some domanial estate in the backwoods of Pomerania.

By way of amusement we can “insert” here “episodically” Sancho’s great discovery that there is no “other difference” between the “poor” and the “rich” “than that between the resourceful [vermögende] and the resourceless [unvermögende]” (p. 354).

Let us plunge once more into the “barren ocean” of Stirner’s “definitions” of competition:

“Competition is connected less” (Oh, “less"!) “with the intention of doing a thing as well as possible, than with the intention of making it as profitable, lucrative, as possible. For that reason people study for the sake of a post (bread-and-butter study), cultivate obsequiousness and flattery, routine and knowledge of business; they work for appearance. Hence while apparently it is a matter of a good performance, in reality people aim only at a good stroke of business and monetary gain. Of course, no one wants to be a censor, but people want to get advancement ... people are afraid of being transferred or even more of being dismissed” (pp. 354, 355).

Let our bonhomme discover a textbook on political economy where even theoreticians assert that in competition it is a matter of a “good performance” or “of doing a thing as well as possible” and not of making “it as profitable as possible”. Incidentally, in any such book he will find it stated that under the system of private property highly developed competition, for example in England, certainly causes a “thing” to be “done as well as possible”. Small-scale commercial and industrial swindling flourishes only in conditions of restricted competition, among the Chinese, Germans and Jews, and in general among hawkers and small shopkeepers. But even hawking is not mentioned by our saint; he only knows the competition of supernumerary officials and school-masters on probation, he reveals himself here as a downright royal-Prussian junior official. He might just as well have given as an example of competition the endeavour of courtiers in every age to win the favour of their sovereign, but that lay much too far beyond his petty-bourgeois field of vision.

After these tremendous adventures with supernumerary officials, salaried accountants and registrars, Saint Sancho experiences his great adventure with the famous horse Clavileño, of which the prophet Cervantes has already spoken in the New Testament, Chapter 41. For Sancho mounts the high horse of political economy and determines the minimum wage by means of “the holy”. True, here once again he reveals his innate timidity and at first refuses to mount the flying steed that carries him far above the clouds into the region “where hail and snow, thunder, lightning and thunderbolts are engendered”. But the “Duke”, i.e., the “state”, encourages him and as soon as the bolder and more experienced Szeliga-Don Quixote has swung himself into the saddle, our worthy Sancho climbs behind him on to the horse’s crupper. And when Szeliga’s hand had turned the peg on the horse’s head, the horse soared high into the air and all the ladies — especially Maritornes — cried after them: “May egoism in agreement with itself guide you, valiant knight, and you, still more valiant armour-bearer, and may you succeed in liberating us from the spectre of Malambruno, of ‘the holy’. Only keep your balance, valiant Sancho, so that you do not fall and suffer the same fate as Phaeton, when he wanted to drive the chariot of the sun.”

“If we assume” (he is already wavering hypothetically) “that just as order belongs to the essence of the state, subordination too is based on its nature” (a pleasant modulation between “essence” and “nature” — the “goats” which Sancho observed during his flight), “then we observe that the underprivileged are excessively overcharged and defrauded by the inferior” (it should probably read superior) “or privileged” (p. 357).

“If we assume ... then we observe.” It should read: then we assume. If we assume that “superior” and “inferior” exist in the state, then “we assume” likewise that the former are “privileged” compared with the latter. We can, however, ascribe the stylistic beauty of this sentence, as also the sudden recognition of the “essence” and “nature” of a thing, to the timidity and confusion of our Sancho while anxiously trying to retain his balance during his aerial flight, and to the rockets set alight under his nose. We are not even surprised that Saint Sancho derives the consequences of competition not from competition but from bureaucracy, and once again makes the state determine wages.

He does not take into consideration that the continual fluctuations in wages explode the whole of his beautiful theory; a closer examination of industrial conditions would certainly have provided him with examples of a factory-owner being “overcharged” and “defrauded” by his workers according to the universal laws of competition, if these juridical and moral expressions had not lost all meaning within the framework of competition.

The dwarfish form to which competition has shrunk for Sancho once again demonstrates the naive and petty-bourgeois manner in which world-embracing relations are reflected inside his unique skull, and the extent to which he as a school-master is bound to extract moral applications from all these relations and to refute them with moral postulates. We must give this precious passage in extenso “so that nothing should be lost”.

“As regards competition again, it exists precisely because not all persons attend to their business and come to an understanding with one another about it. Thus, for example, bread is needed by all the inhabitants of a town; hence they could easily come to an agreement to establish a public bakery. Instead, they leave the supply of bread to competing bakers. Similarly, they leave the supply of great to the butchers, of wine to the wine merchants, etc.... If I do not concern myself with my business, then I have to be content with what it suits others to offer me. To have bread is my business, my wish and desire, and yet people leave it to the bakers, and hope at most, thanks to their contention, rivalry and their attempts to outstrip one another, in a word, thanks to their competition, to get an advantage which people could not count on under the guild-system, when the right to bake bread belonged wholly and solely to the guilds-men” (p. 365).

It is characteristic of our petty bourgeois that he here recommends to his fellow-philistines, in place of competition, an institution like public bakeries, which existed in many places under the guild-system and which were put an end to by the cheaper competitive mode of production. That is to say, he recommends an institution of a local nature, which could only persist under narrowly restricted conditions and was inevitably bound to perish with the rise of competition, which abolished local narrowness. He has not even learned from competition that the “need” of bread, for example, differs from day to day, that it does not at all depend on him whether tomorrow bread will still be “his business” or whether others will still regard his need as their business, and that within the framework of competition the price of bread is determined by the costs of production and not by the whim of the bakers. He ignores all those relations which were brought about by competition: the abolition of local narrowness, the establishment of means of communication, highly developed division of labour, world intercourse, the proletariat, machinery, etc., and regretfully looks back to medieval philistinism. All he knows about competition is that it is “contention, rivalry and attempts to outstrip one another”; he is not concerned about its connection with division of labour, the relation between supply and demand, etc. That the bourgeois, whenever their interests demanded it (and they are better judges of this than Saint Sancho), always “came to an understanding” insofar as this was possible in the framework of competition and private property, is proved by the joint-stock companies, which came into being with the rise of sea-borne trade and manufacture and took possession of all the branches of industry and commerce accessible to them. Such “agreements”, which led among other things to the conquest of an empire in the East Indies,^[62] are of course a small matter compared with the well-meaning fantasy about public bakeries, which is worthy of being discussed in the Vossische Zeitung.

As for the proletarians, they — at any rate in the modern form — first arose out of competition; they have already repeatedly set up collective enterprises which, however, always perished because they were unable to compete with the “contending” private bakers, butchers, etc., and because for proletarians — owing to the frequent opposition of interests among them arising out of the division of labour — no other “agreement” is possible than a political one directed against the whole present system. Where the development of competition enables the proletarians to “come to an understanding”, they reach an understanding not about public bakeries but about quite different matters. The lack of “agreement” between competing individuals that Sancho notes here entirely corresponds to and contradicts his further exposition of competition, which we can enjoy in the “Commentary” (Wigand, p. 173).

“Competition was introduced because it was looked upon as a blessing for all. People came to an agreement about it, attempts were made to approach it jointly ... people agreed about it in much the same way as on a hunting expedition all the hunters taking part... may find it expedient for their purpose to scatter in the forest and to hunt “singly..... True, it now turns out ... that in the case of competition not everyone gets ... his advantage.”

“It turns out” that Sancho knows as much about hunting as he knows about competition. He is not speaking about a battue nor about hunting with hounds, but about hunting in the extraordinary sense. It only remains for him to write a new history of industry and commerce according to the above principles, and to set up a “union” for this kind of extraordinary hunting.

In the same calm, comfortable style appropriate to a parish magazine he speaks of the relation of competition to morality.

“Those corporeal goods which man as such” (!) “cannot maintain, we have the right to take away from him: this is the meaning of competition, of freedom of industry. Any of the spiritual goods that he cannot maintain devolve likewise upon us. But sanctified goods are inviolable. Sanctified and guaranteed — by whom?... By man or the concept, the concept of the matter under consideration.” As such sanctified goods he cites “life”, “freedom of the person”, “religion”, “honour”, “sense of decency”, “sense of shame”, etc. ([Stirner, Der Einzige and sein Eigenthum,] p. 325).

In the advanced countries, Stirner “has the right” to take all these “sanctified goods”, although not from “man as such”, but from actual men, of course, by means of and under the conditions of competition. The great revolution of society brought about by competition, which resolved the relations of the bourgeois to one another and to the proletarians into purely monetary relations, and converted all the above-named “sanctified goods” into articles of trade, and which destroyed for the proletarians all naturally derived and traditional relations, e.g., family and political relations, together with their entire ideological superstructure — this mighty revolution did not, of course, originate in Germany. Germany played only a passive role in it; she allowed her sanctified goods to be taken from her without even getting the current price for them. Hence our German petty bourgeois knows only the hypocritical assertions of the bourgeoisie about the moral limits of competition observed by the bourgeoisie, which every day tramples underfoot the “sanctified goods” of the proletarians, their “honour”, “sense of shame” and “freedom of the person”, and which even deprives them of religious instruction. These would-be “moral limits” are regarded by Sancho as the true “meaning” of competition, and its reality is excluded from its meaning.

Sancho sums up the results of his investigation of competition as follows:

“Is the competition free which the state, this ruler, according to bourgeois principles, cramps by a thousand barriers?” (p. 347).

Sancho’s “bourgeois principles” of everywhere making the “state” the “ruler” and regarding the barriers of competition that arise from the mode of production and intercourse as barriers by which the state” “cramps” competition, are here once more proclaimed with suitable “indignation”. “Recently” Saint Sancho has vaguely heard miscellaneous news “from France” (cf. Wigand, p. 190), inter alia, about the objectification of persons in competition and the difference between competition and emulation. But the “poor Berliner” has, “out of stupidity, spoilt these fine things” (Wigand, ibid., where it is his guilty conscience that speaks). “Thus, for example, he says” on page 346 of “the book":

“Is free competition actually free? Indeed, is it real competition, i.e., competition of persons, as it gives itself out to be, because it bases its right on this title?”

Madame Competition gives herself out to be something, because she (i.e., some lawyers, politicians and petty-bourgeois dreamers, trailing in the tail of her suite) bases bet, right on this title. With this allegory Sancho begins to adapt the “fine things” “from France” to suit the Berlin meridian. We shall skip the absurd assertion already dealt with above that “the state has no objection to make against me personally” and thus allows me to compete, but does not give me the “thing” (p. 347), and we shall pass straight on to his proof that competition is not at all a competition of persons.

“But is it persons who actually compete? No, it is again only things! In the first place — money, etc. There is always one who lags behind the other in the contest. But it makes a difference whether the means that are lacking can be gained through personal power or can only be obtained by grace, as a gift, and moreover by the poorer, for instance, being forced to leave, I.e., to present, his wealth to the richer” (p. 348).

As for the gift theory, we shall “spare him” [schenken] (Wigand, p. 190). Let him look up the chapter on “contract” in any textbook of law and find out whether a “gift” he is “forced to present” is still a gift. In this way, Stirner “presents” us with our criticism of his book, for he “is forced to leave, i.e., to present”, it to us.

— Competition —

The fact that of two competitors whose “things” are equal one ruins the other, does not exist for Sancho. That workers compete among themselves, although they possess no “things” (in Stirner’s sense) is also a fact that does not exist for him. By doing away with the competition of workers among themselves, he is fulfilling one of the most pious wishes of our “true socialists”, whose deepest thanks he is sure to receive. So it is “only things” and not “persons” that compete. Only weapons fight, not the people who use them, and who have learned to wield them. The people are only there to be shot dead. This is how the competitive struggle is reflected in the minds of petty-bourgeois school-masters who, faced with modern stock exchange barons and cotton-lords, console themselves with the thought that they only lack the “things” in order to bring their “personal power” to bear against them. This narrow-minded idea appears still more comic if one looks a little more closely at the “things” instead of restricting oneself to the commonest and most popular, e.g., “money (which, however, is not so popular as it seems). These “things” include, among others: that the competitor lives in a country and town, where he enjoys the same advantages as the competitors whom he encounters; that relations between town and countryside have reached an advanced stage of development, that he is competing under favourable geographical, geological and hydrographical conditions; that as a silk manufacturer he carries on his business in Lyons, as a cotton manufacturer in Manchester, or, in an earlier period, as a shipper in Holland; that division of labour in his branch of industry — as in other branches totally independent of him — has become highly developed; that the means of communication ensure him the same cheap transport as his competitors; and that he finds in existence skilful workers and experienced overseers. All these “things”, which are essential for competition and in general the ability to compete on the world market (which he does not know and cannot know because of his theory of the state and public bakeries, but which, unfortunately, determines competition and the ability to compete), are “things” that he can neither gain by personal power” nor “get presented” to him by “grace” of the “state” (cf. p. 348). The Prussian state, which attempted to “present” all this to the Seehandlung,^[63] could give him the best instruction or, that subject. Sancho appears here as the royal Prussian philosopher of the Seehandlung, by giving a detailed commentary. on the illusion of the Prussian state about its omnipotence and the illusion of the Seehandlung about its competitive capacity. Incidentally, competition certainly began as a “competition of persons” possessing “personal means”. The liberation of the feudal serfs, the first condition of competition, and the first accumulation of “things” were purely personal” acts. If, therefore, Sancho wishes to put the competition of persons In the place of competition of things, it means that he wishes to return to the beginning of competition, imagining in doing so that by his good will and his extraordinary egoistical consciousness, he can give a different direction to the development of competition.

This great man, for whom nothing is holy, and who is not interested in the “nature of things’ and the “concept of the relation”, has nevertheless in the end to declare the “nature” of the difference between personal and material to be holy, as also the concept of the relation,” between these two qualities and so renounce the role of “creator” in respect of them. The difference — regarded by him as holy — which he notes in the passage quoted, can nevertheless be abolished without thereby committing, the most unmitigated profanation”. Firstly, he, abolishes it himself by causing material means to be acquired through personal power and thus converts personal power into material power. He can then calmly address others with the moral postulate that they should adopt a personal attitude to him. In just the same way, the Mexicans could have demanded that the Spaniards should not shoot them with rifles but attack them with their fists or, according to Saint Sancho’s proposal, “seize them by the throat” in order to adopt a “personal” attitude to them.

If one person, thanks to good food, careful education and physical exercise, has acquired well-developed bodily powers and skill, while another, owing to inadequate and unhealthy food and consequent poor digestion, and as the result of neglect in childhood and over-exertion, has never been able to acquire the “things” necessary for developing his muscles — not to mention acquiring mastery over them — then the “personal power” of the first in relation to the second is a purely material one. It was not “through personal power” that he gained the “means that were lacking”; on the contrary, he owes his “personal power” to the material means already existing. Incidentally, the transformation of personal means into material means and of material means into personal means is only an aspect of competition and quite inseparable from it. The demand that competition should be conducted not with material means but with personal means amounts to the moral postulate that competition and the relations on which it depends should have consequences other than those inevitably arising from them.

Here is yet another, and this time the final summing-up of the philosophy of competition:

“Competition suffers from the drawback that not everyone has the means for competition, because these means are taken not from personality, but from chance. The majority are without means and therefore” (Oh, Therefore!) “impecunious” (p. 349).

It has already been pointed out to him that in competition personality itself is a matter of chance, while chance is personality. The “means” for competition which are independent of personality are the conditions of production and intercourse of the persons themselves, which within the framework of competition appear as an independent force in relation to these persons, as means which are accidental for them. The liberation of people from these forces comes about, according to Sancho, by people getting out of their heads the ideas about these forces, or rather the philosophical and religious distortions of these ideas — whether by etymological synonymy (“Vermögen” and “vermögen”), moral postulates (e.g., let each one be an all-powerful ego), or by making monkey faces and by sentimentally comic bragging against “the holy”.

We have heard the complaint made before that in present-day bourgeois society the “ego”, especially because of the state, cannot realise its value, i.e., cannot bring its “abilities” [ Vermögen] into play. Now we learn in addition that “peculiarity” does not give the “ego” the means for competition, that “its might” is no might at all and that it remains “impecunious”, although every object, “being its object, is also its property”. It is a complete denial of egoism in agreement with itself. But all these “drawbacks” of competition will disappear, once “the book” has become part of the general consciousness of people. Until then Sancho persists in his trade in thoughts, without however achieving a “good performance” or “doing things as well as possible”.

II. Rebellion[edit source]

The criticism of society brings to an end the criticism of the old, holy world. By means of rebellion we make a leap into the new, egoistical world.

We have already seen in “Logic” what rebellion is in general; it is refusal to respect the holy. Here, however, rebellion acquires in addition a distinct practical character.

Revolution = holy rebellion.

Rebellion = egoistical or wordly revolution.

Revolution = transformation of existing conditions.

Rebellion = transformation of me.

Revolution = a political or social act.

Rebellion = my egoistical act.

Revolution = overthrow of the existing [state of affairs].

Rebellion = existence of overthrow.

Etc., etc. Page 422 et seq. The method hitherto used by people to overthrow the world in which they found themselves had, of course, also to be declared holy, and a peculiar” method of smashing the existing world had to be asserted against it.

Revolution “consists in a transformation of the existing conditions [Zustand — state of affairs] or status, of the state or society; hence it is a political or social act”. “Although ‘the inevitable consequence” of rebellion “is a transformation of existing conditions, it is not this transformation that is its starting-point, but people’s dissatisfaction with themselves”. “It is an uprising of individuals, a rising without regard for the arrangements that develop out of it. Revolution aimed at new arrangements; rebellion leads to a position where we no longer allow others to arrange things for us, but arrange things for ourselves. It is not a struggle against what exists, for if it prospers what exists will collapse of itself; it is only the setting free of me from what exists. If I abandon what exists, then it is dead and putrefies. But since my aim is not to overthrow something that exists, but for me to rise above it, my aim and action are not political or social, but egoistical for they are directed solely towards me and my peculiarity” (pp. 421, 422).

Les beaux esprits se rencontrent. [noble minds think alike] That which was proclaimed by the voice crying in the wilderness [Mark 1:3] is now come about. The impious John the Baptist “Stirner” has found his holy Messiah in the shape of “Dr. Kuhlmann from Holstein”. Listen:

“You should not tear down or destroy what stands in your way, but avoid it and abandon it. And when you have avoided and abandoned it, it will disappear of itself, for it will no longer find sustenance” (Das Reich des Geistes, etc., Genf, 1845. p. 116).

The difference between revolution and Stirner’s rebellion is not, as Stirner thinks. that the one .s a political and social act whereas the other is an egoistical act. but that the former is an act whereas the is no act at all. The whole senselessness of the antithesis that Stirner puts forward is evident at once from the fact that he speaks of the Revolution” as a juridical person, which has to fight against “what exists”, another Juridical person. If Saint Sancho had studied the various actual revolutions and revolutionary attempts perhaps he might even have found in them the forms of which he had a vague inkling when he created his ideological “rebellion”; he might have found them, for example, among the Corsicans, Irish, Russian serfs, and in general among uncivilised peoples. If, moreover, he had concerned himself with the actual individuals “existing” in every revolution, and with their relations, instead of being satisfied with the pure ego and “what exists”, i.e., substance (a phrase the overthrow of which requires no revolution,. but merely a knight-errant like Saint Bruno), then perhaps he would have come to understand that every revolution, and its results, was determined by these relations, by needs, and that the “political or social act” was in no way in contradiction to the “egoistical act”. The depth of Saint Sancho’s insight into “revolution” is shown in his statement:

“Although the consequence of rebellion is a transformation of existing conditions [...] this transformation is not its starting-point.”

This implies, by way of antithesis, that the starting-point of the revolution is “a transformation of existing conditions”, i.e., that revolution originates in revolution. “The starting-point” of rebellion, on the other hand, is “people’s dissatisfaction with themselves”. This “dissatisfaction with oneself” fits admirably with the earlier phrases about peculiarity and the “egoist in agreement with himself”, who is always able to go “his own way”, who is always delighted with himself and who at every instant is what he can be. Dissatisfaction with oneself is either dissatisfaction with oneself within the framework of a definite condition which determines the whole personality, e.g., dissatisfaction with oneself as a worker, or it is moral dissatisfaction. In the first case, therefore, it is simultaneously and mainly dissatisfaction with the existing relations; in the second case — an ideological expression of these relations themselves, which does not at all go beyond them, but belongs wholly to them. The first case, as Sancho believes, leads to revolution; for rebellion there remains, therefore, only the second case — moral dissatisfaction with oneself. “What exists” is, as we know, “the holy”; hence, “dissatisfaction with oneself” reduces itself to moral dissatisfaction with oneself as a holy one, i.e., one who believes in the holy, in what exists. It could only occur to a discontented school-master to base his arguments about revolution and rebellion on satisfaction and dissatisfaction, moods that belong wholly to the petty-bourgeois circle from which, as we continually find, Saint Sancho derives his inspiration.

We already know what meaning “going beyond the framework of what exists” has. It is the old fancy that the state collapses of itself as soon as all its members leave it and that money loses its validity if all the workers refuse to accept it. Even in a hypothetical form, this proposition reveals all the fantasy and impotence of pious desire. It is the old illusion that changing existing relations depends only on the good will of people, and that existing relations are ideas. The alteration of consciousness divorced from actual relations — a pursuit followed by philosophers as a profession, i.e., as a business, is itself a product of existing relations and inseparable from them. This imaginary rising above the world is the ideological expression of the impotence of philosophers in face of the world. Practical life every day gives the lie to their ideological bragging.

In any event, Sancho did not “rebel” against his own state of confusion when he wrote those lines. For him there is the “transformation of existing conditions” on one side, and “people” on the other side, and the two sides are entirely separate from each other. Sancho does not give the slightest thought to the fact that the “conditions” have always been the conditions of these people and it would never brave been possible to transform them unless the people transformed themselves and, if it has to be expressed in this way, unless they became “dissatisfied with themselves” in the old conditions. He thinks he is dealing a mortal blow at revolution when he asserts that it aims at new arrangements, whereas rebellion leads to position where we no longer allow others to arrange things for us, but arrange things for ourselves. But the very fact that “we” arrange things for “ourselves”, that it is “we” who rebel, denotes that the individual. despite all Sancho’s repugnance”, has to “allow” that “we” “arrange things” for him, and that therefore the only difference between revolution and rebellion is that in the former this is known, whereas in the latter people harbour illusions about it. Next Sancho leaves it open whether the rebellion “prospers” or not. One cannot understand why it should not “prosper”, and even less why it should prosper, since each rebel goes his own way. Worldly conditions would have to intervene to show the rebels the necessity of a joint act, one which would be “political or social”, irrespective of whether it arises from egoistical motives or not. A further “trashy distinction”, based again on confusion, is that drawn by Sancho between the “overthrow” of what exists and “rising” above it, as though in overthrowing what exists he does not rise above it, and in rising above it, he does not overthrow it, if only insofar as it exists in him himself. Incidentally, neither “overthrow” by itself nor “rising” by itself tells us anything; that “rising” also take place in revolution Sancho could have seen from the fact that “Levons-nous!"^[64] was a well-known slogan in the French Revolution.

“Revolution bids” (!) “us to create institutions, rebellion urges us to rise or rise up. [Einrichtung — arrangement, institution; sich aufrichten and emporrichten — to stand up, to raise oneself, to rise] Revolutionary minds were occupied with the choice of a constitution, and the entire political period teems with constitutional struggles and constitutional questions, just as socially-gifted persons revealed extraordinary inventiveness as regards social institutions (phalansteries and such-like). To be without a constitution is the endeavour of the rebel” (p. 422).

That the French Revolution brought institutions in its train is a fact; that Empörung is derived from the word empor [Empörung — rising, rebellion; empor — up, upwards] is also a fact . that during the revolution and after it people fought for constitutions is another fact, and equally so that various social systems were outlined; and it is no less a fact that Proudhon spoke about anarchy. From these five facts Sancho has concocted the above-quoted passage.

From the fact that the French Revolution led to “Institutions”, Sancho concludes that this is a “bidding” of revolution in general. From the fact that the political revolution was a political one in which the social transformation had also an official expression in the form of constitutional struggles, Sancho — faithfully following his history-broker [i.e. Bruno Bauer] — deduces that in it people fought over the best constitution n. To this discovery he links, by means of the words “just as”, a mention of social systems. In the epoch of the bourgeoisie, people occupied themselves with constitutional questions, “just as” in recent times various social systems have been devised. This is the train of thought in the above-quoted passage.

It follows from what was said above against Feuerbach that previous revolutions within the framework of division of labour were bound to lead to new political institutions; it likewise follows that the communist revolution, which removes the division of labour, ultimately abolishes political institutions ; and, finally, it follows also that the communist revolution will be guided not by the “social institutions of inventive socially-gifted persons”, but by the productive forces.

But “to be without a constitution is the endeavour of the rebel"! He who is “born free”, who is from the outset rid of everything, endeavours at the end of time to get rid of the constitution.

It should be mentioned also that all sorts of earlier illusions of our bonhomme contributed to Sancho’s concept of “rebellion”. They include, among others, his belief that the individuals who make a revolution are linked by some ideal bond and that their “raising the standard of revolt” is limited to inscribing on it a new concept. fixed idea, spectre, or apparition — the holy. Sancho makes them get this ideal bond out of their heads, whereby in his imagination they become a disorderly mob which can now only “rebel”. In addition, he has heard that competition is a war of all against all, [Hobbes, De Cive] and this proposition, mixed with his desanctified revolution, constitutes the main factor of his “rebellion”.

“When, for the sake of clarity, I try to think of a comparison, there comes to my mind, against my expectation, the foundation of Christianity” (p. 423). “Christ”, we learn here, “was not a revolutionary but a rebel who rose. Therefore, he was concerned about one thing alone: ‘be ye wise as serpents'”. (ibid.).

In order to suit the “expectation” and the “alone” of Sancho the second half of the biblical text quoted (Matthew 10: 16) “and harmless as doves” ought not to exist. Christ has to figure here for the second time as a historical person in order to play the same role as the Mongols and Negroes played above. Whether Christ is meant to clarify the rebellion or the rebellion to clarify Christ is not known. The Christian-German gullibility of our saint is concentrated in the statement that Christ “drained the sources of life of the entire heathen world, and without them” (this ought to read: without him) “the existing state was anyway bound to wither” (p. 424). A withered flower of pulpit eloquence! See above on the “ancients”. For the rest, credo ut intelligam, [I believe in order to understand. — Anselm of Canterbury] or, in order to find a “comparison for the sake of clarity”.

Countless examples have already shown us that everywhere nothing but sacred history comes into our saint’s mind and, indeed, in precisely those passages where the reader “has not expected” it. “Against expectation” it occurs to him again even in the “Commentary”, where Sancho on page 154 makes the “Judaic reviewers” in ancient Jerusalem exclaim in opposition to the Christian definition “God is love": “Thus You see that it is heathen God that is proclaimed by the Christians; for if God is love, then he is the God Amor, the God of love! “ — “Against expectation”, however, the New Testament was written in Greek, and the “Christian definition” reads: o qeos agaph estin [God is love] (1 John 4:16), whereas “the God Amor, the God of love” is called “Erws. Sancho has, therefore, still to explain how it is that the “Judaic reviewers” were able to achieve the transformation of agaph into erws. In this passage of the “Commentary”, Christ — again “for the sake of clarity” — is compared with Sancho, and at any rate it must be admitted that they have a striking resemblance to each other, both are “corpulent beings” and the joyful heir at least believes in the existence, or the uniqueness, of both of them. Sancho is the modern Christ, at this “fixed idea” of his the whole historical construction is “aimed”.

The philosophy of rebellion, which has just been presented to us in the form of bad antitheses and withered flowers of eloquence, is in the final analysis only a boastful apology for the parvenu system (parvenu, Emporkömmling, Emporgekommener, Empörer [pun on Stirner’s synonymy: Emporkömmling — upstart, Emporgehommener — one who has raised himself up, and Empörer — rebel]). Every rebel in his “egoistical act” is faced by a particular existing reality, over which he endeavours to rise, without regard to the general conditions. He strives to get rid of the existing world only insofar as it is a fetter, for the rest, he endeavours, on the contrary, to appropriate it. The weaver who “rises” to become a factory-owner thereby gets rid of his loom and abandons it; for the rest, the world goes on as before and our “prosperous” rebel offers to others only the hypocritical moral demand that they should become parvenus like himself. Thus, all Stirner’s belligerent rodomontades end in moral deductions from Gellert’s fables and speculative interpretations of middle-class wretchedness.

So far we have seen that rebellion is anything you like, except action. On page 342 we learn that

“the procedure of seizure is not contemptible, but expresses the pure action of the egoist in agreement with himself”.

This should surely read: of egoists in agreement with one another, since otherwise seizure amounts to the uncivilised “procedure” of thieves or to the civilised “procedure” of the bourgeois, and in the first case does not prosper, while in the second case it is not rebellion”. It is to be noted that corresponding to the egoist in agreement with himself, who does nothing, we have here the “pure” act, certainly the only act which could be expected from such an inactive individual. We learn by the way what created the plebs, and we can be sure in advance that it was created by a “dogma”, and faith in that dogma, in the holy, a faith which here for a change appears as consciousness of sin:

“Seizure is a sin a crime — this is the dogma that alone creates a plebs ... the old consciousness of sin alone is to blame” (p. 342).

The belief that consciousness is to blame for everything is his dogma, which makes him a rebel and the plebs a sinner.

In contrast to this consciousness of sin, the egoist incites himself, respectively the plebs, to seizure as follows:

“I tell myself: where my power extends, that is my property, and I claim as my property everything that I feel strong enough to reach,” etc. (p. 340).

Thus, Saint Sancho tells himself that he wants to tell himself something, calls on himself to have what he has, and formulates his real relation as a relation of power — a paraphrase which in general is the secret of all his rodomontades. (See “Logic”) Then he — who at each instant is what he can be, and therefore has what he can have — distinguishes his realised, actual property, which he has in his capital account, from his possible property, his unrealised “feeling of strength”, which he enters in his profit and loss account. This is a contribution to the science of book-keeping of property in the extraordinary sense.

The meaning of his solemn “telling” was revealed by Sancho in a passage already quoted:

“I tell myself ... then that is, properly speaking, empty talk.”

Sancho continues:

“Egoism” says “to the propertyless plebs” in order to “exterminate” it: “Seize and take what you need!” (p. 341).

How “empty” this “talk” is can be seen at once from the following example:

“I as little regard the wealth of the banker as something alien, as Napoleon did the lands of the kings. We” (“I” is suddenly transformed into “we”) “are not at all afraid to conquer this wealth, and we also seek the means to do so. Thus, we divest it of its alien character which we were afraid of” (p. 369).

How little Sancho has “divested” the wealth of the banker of its “alien character” he proves at once by his well-meaning advice to the plebs to “conquer” it by seizure. “Let him seize and see what is left in his hands! “ Not the wealth of the banker but useless paper, the “corpse” of that wealth which is no more wealth than “a dead dog is a dog”. The wealth of the banker is wealth only in the framework of the existing relations of production and intercourse and can be “conquered” only in the conditions of these relations and with the means which are valid for them. And if Sancho were to turn to some other wealth, he would find that the prospect was no better. Thus, the “pure act of the egoist in agreement with himself” amounts in the final analysis to an extremely impure misunderstanding. “That is where one can get with the spectre” of the holy.

Having told himself what he wanted to tell himself, Sancho makes the rebellious plebs say what he has prompted it to say. The fact is that in case of a rebellion he has drawn up a proclamation together with instructions as to its use, which should be posted up in all village ale-houses and distributed throughout the countryside. The proclamation claims a place in Der hinkende Bottle ^[65] and in the Duchy of Nassau’s country almanac. For the time being Sancho’s tendances incendiaires are limited to the countryside, to propaganda among agricultural labourers and dairy maids, not touching the towns, which is a further proof of the extent to which he has “divested” large-scale industry of its “alien character”. Nevertheless we should like here to give as detailed an account as possible of this valuable document, which ought not to be lost, in order “to contribute to the spread of a well-deserved fame insofar as it lies in our power” (Wigand, p. 191).

The proclamation is printed on page 358 et seq. [of “the book"] and begins as follows:

“But what is it due to that your property is safe, you privileged ones?... It is due to the fact that we refrain from attacking, consequential, it is due to our protection.... It is due to the fact that you use force against us.”

First it is due to the fact that we refrain from attacking, i.e., to the fact that we use force against ourselves, and then to the fact that you use force against us. Cela va à merveille! Let us continue.

“If you desire our respect, then buy it at a price acceptable to us.... We only want good value.”

First the “rebels” want to sell their respect at an “acceptable price” and then they make “good value” the criterion of the price. First an arbitrary price, then a price determined independently of arbitrariness by commercial laws, by the costs of production and the relation between supply and demand.

“We agree to leave you your property provided you properly compensate this leaving.... You will shout about force if we help ourselves.... without force we shall not get them” (i.e., the oysters that the privileged enjoy)....... We intend taking nothing from you, nothing at all.”

First we “leave” it to you, then we take it away from you and have to use “force”, and finally we prefer taking nothing from you after all. We leave it to you in the event of your giving it up yourself; in a moment of enlightenment, the only one we have, we see that this “leaving” amounts to “helping oneself” and use of “force”, but in the end we cannot be reproached with “taking” anything from you. And there the matter must rest.

“We toil for twelve hours in the sweat of our brows and you offer us a few pence for it. In that case you should take an equal amount for your work too.... No equality at all!

The “rebellious” agricultural labourers reveal themselves as true Stirnerian “creations”.

“You do not like that? You imagine that our work is more than adequately paid with those wages, but that yours, on the other hand, deserves a wage of several thousand. But if you did not put such a high value on Your work and allowed us to realise a better value for ours, we would, if need be, achieve something more important than you do for many thousand taler, and if You received only such wages as ours, you would soon become more diligent in order to earn more. If you were to do something that appears to us to be ten and a hundred times more valuable than our own work, ah” (ah, — you good and faithful servant!) “then you should get a hundred times more for it; we, for our part, are also thinking of making you things for which you will pay us more than the usual daily wage.”

First the rebels complain that they are paid too little for their work. At the end, however, they promise that only if they receive a higher daily wage, they will perform work for which it will be worth paying more than the usual daily wage”. Further, they believe they would achieve extraordinary things if only they were to receive better wages, although at the same time they expect extraordinary achievements from the capitalist only if his “ wage” is reduced to the level of theirs. Finally, after having performed the economic feat of transforming profit — this necessary form of capital, without which they would perish together with the capitalist — into wages, they perform the miracle of paying “a hundred times more” than they receive for “their own work”, i.e., a hundred times more than they earn. “This is the meaning” of the above phrase, if Stirner “means what he says”. But if this is only a stylistic error on his part, if the rebels intend jointly to offer the capitalist a hundred times more than each of them earns, then Stirner is only making them offer the capitalist what each capitalist already has nowadays. For it is clear that the work of the capitalist, in combination with his capital, is worth ten or a hundred times more than that of a single person who is merely a worker. Hence in this case, as always, Sancho leaves everything as it was before.

“We shall get on with one another if only we agree that no one any longer needs to present anything to someone else. Then we shall presumably go as far as to pay a decent price even to cripples, the sick and the aged, to prevent them from dying of hunger and want, for if we wish them to live it is fitting that we should pay for the fulfilment of our desire. I say pay for, hence I do not mean any miserable alms.”

This sentimental episode about cripples, etc., is intended to prove that Sancho’s rebellious agricultural labourers have already “risen” to those heights of middle-class consciousness where they do not wish to present anything or be presented with anything, and where the,,, consider that the dignity and interests of the two parties in a relation .ire assured as soon as this relation is turned into a purchase. This thunderous proclamation of the people who, in Sancho’s imagination, are in rebellion, is followed by directions for its use in the form of a dialogue between a landowner and his labourers, the master this time behaving like Szeliga and the labourers like Stirner. In these directions the English strikes and the French workers’ coalitions are interpreted a priori in the Berlin manner.

Spokesman of the labourers: “What have you got?"
Landowner: “I have an estate of 1,000 morgen,"
"And I am your labourer and henceforth I will only cultivate your land for a wage of a taler a day.
Landowner: “In that case I shall hire someone else."
Spokesman: “You won’t find anyone, for we labourers will not work in future on any other conditions, and if you find anyone who agrees to take less, let him beware of us. Even a servant-girl now demands as much, and you will no longer find anyone for a lower wage."
Landowner: “Oh! Then I shall be ruined!"
Labourers (in chorus): “Don’t be in such a hurry! You are sure to get as much as we get. And if not, we'll deduct sufficient for You to live like us, — We are not talking of equality!"
Landowner: “But I am accustomed to better living!"
Labourers: “We have nothing against that, but that’s not our concern; if you can save more, all right. Do we have to hire ourselves out at a reduced price so that you can live well?"
Landowner: “But you uneducated people do not need so much!"
Labourers: “Well, we shall take a little more so as to be able to get the education that we may, perhaps, need."
Landowner: “But if you ruin the rich, who will support the arts and sciences?"
Labourers: “Well, our numbers must see to that. We'll all contribute, it will make a good round sum. Anyway, you wealthy people now buy only the trashiest books and pictures of tearful madonnas or a pair of nimble dancer’s legs."
Landowner: “Oh, miserable equality!"
Labourers: “No, dear worthy master, we are not talking of equality! We only want to be appraised according to our worth, and if you are worth more, then after all you will also be appraised more highly. We only want good value and intend to show ourselves worth the price you will pay.”

At the end of this dramatic masterpiece Sancho admits that, of course, “unanimity of the labourers” will be “required”. How this will come about we are not told. What we do learn is that the agricultural labourers have no intention of changing in any way the existing relations of production and intercourse, but merely want to _force the landowner to yield them the amount by which his expenditure exceeds theirs. It is a matter of indifference to our well-meaning bonhomme that this excess of expenditure, if distributed over the mass of the proletarians, would give each of them a mere trifle and not improve his position in the slightest. The stage of development of agriculture to which these heroic labourers belong becomes evident immediately after the conclusion of the drama, when they are transformed into “domestic servants”. They are living, therefore, under patriarchal conditions in which division of labour is still very little developed, and in which, incidentally, the whole conspiracy “will reach its final goal” by the landowner taking the spokesman into a barn and giving him a thrashing, whereas in more civilised countries the capitalist ends the matter by closing his enterprise for a time and letting his workers go and “play”. Sancho’s highly practical way of constructing his work of art, his strict adherence to the limits of probability, is evident not only from his peculiar idea of arranging a turn-out of agricultural labourers, but especially from his coalition of “servant-girls”. And how complacent to imagine that the price of corn on the world market will depend on the wage demands of these agricultural labourers from Further Pomerania and not on the relation between supply and demand! A real sensation is caused by the surprising discourse of the labourers about literature, the latest art exhibition and the fashionable dancer of the day, surprising even after the unexpected question of the landowner about art and science. They become quite friendly as soon as they touch on this literary subject and for a moment the harassed landowner even forgets his threatened ruin in order to demonstrate his dévoûment to art and science. Finally the rebels give him an assurance of their upright character and make the reassuring statement that they are guided neither by vexatious interests nor subversive tendencies, but by the highest moral motives. All they ask is price according to worth and they promise on their honour and conscience to be worthy of the higher price. All this has the sole aim of ensuring for each his own, his honest and fair earnings, “honestly earned pleasure”. That this price depends on the state of the labour-market, and not on the moral rebellion of a few literary-minded agricultural labourers, is, of course, a fact which our worthy folk could not be expected to know.

These rebels from Further Pomerania are so modest that despite their “unanimity”, which gives them the power to do something very different, they prefer to remain servants with the “wage of a taler a day” as their highest desire. It is quite consistent, therefore, that they do not cross-examine the landowner, who is in their power, but he cross-examines them.

The “firm spirit” and “strong self-consciousness of the domestic servant” find expression also in the “firm”, “strong” language in which he and his comrades speak. “Perhaps — well — our numbers must see to that — a good round sum — dear worthy master — after all.” Previously we read in the proclamation: “If need be — ah — we are thinking of making — perhaps, maybe, etc.” One would think that the agricultural labourers had also mounted the wonderful steed Clavileño.

Our Sancho’s whole noisy “rebellion”, therefore.. reduces itself in the final analysis to a turn-out, but a turn-out in the extraordinary sense, viz., a turn-out on Berlin lines. Whereas in civilised countries the real turn-out plays a smaller and smaller role in the labour movement, because the more widespread association of workers leads to other forms of action, Sancho tries to depict the petty bourgeois caricature of a turn-out as the ultimate and highest form of the world-historic struggle.

The waves of rebellion now cast us on the shore of the promised land, flowing with milk and honey, where every true Israelite sits beneath his fig-tree and where the millennium of “agreement” has dawned.

III. Union[edit source]

In the section on rebellion we first of all collected examples of Sancho’s bragging, and then traced the practical course of the “pure act of the egoist in agreement with himself”. With regard to “union”, we shall do the opposite: we shall first of all examine the actual institutions and then compare them with the illusions of our saint about them.

1. Landed Property

“If we no longer wish to leave the land to the landed proprietors, but want to appropriate it for ourselves, then we unite to this end and form a union, société” (society), “which makes itself the owner, if we are successful, the landed proprietors cease to be such.” The “land” will then be the “property of the conquerors.... And the attitude to the land of these individuals collectively will be no less arbitrary than that of an isolated individual or so-called propriétaire. Hence, in this case too, property continues to exist, and indeed even as ‘exclusive’ property, since mankind, that great society, excludes the individual from its property, leasing to him, perhaps, only a part of it, as a reward.... So it remains and so it will come to be. That in which all want to have a share will be taken away from the individual who wants to have it for himself alone and turned into common property. Since it is common property each has his share in it and this share is his property. Thus in our old conditions, a house belonging to five heirs is likewise their common property; one-fifth part of the income, however, is the property of each of them” (pp. 329, 330).

After our brave rebels have formed a union, a society, and in this form have won a portion of land for themselves, this “société”, this juridical person, “makes itself “ the “proprietor”. To avoid any misunderstanding, he adds at once that “this society excludes the individual from the property, leasing to him, perhaps, only a part of it, as a reward”. In this way Saint Sancho appropriates for himself and his “union” his notion of communism. The reader will recall that Sancho in his ignorance reproached the communists for wanting to make society the supreme owner that gives each individual his “property” in feudal tenure. Further, Sancho offers his recruits the prospect of a “share in the common property”. On a later occasion, this same Sancho says, again against the communists:

“Whether wealth belongs to the whole community, which allows me a portion of it, or to separate owners, for me the compulsion is the same, since in both cases I am powerless to decide about it”

(for this reason, too, his “collective” “takes away” from him what it does not want him to have in his exclusive possession, and so makes him feel the power of the collective will).

Thirdly, we here again encounter the “exclusiveness” with which he has often reproached bourgeois property, so that “even the miserable spot on which he stands does not belong to him”. On the contrary, he has only the right and power to squat on it as a miserable and oppressed corvée peasant.

Fourthly, Sancho here appropriates the feudal system which, to his great annoyance, he has discovered in all hitherto existing or proposed forms of society. The “society,” of conquerors behaves much as did the “unions” of semi-barbarian Germans who conquered the Roman provinces and introduced there a crude feudal system which was still strongly alloyed with the old tribal mode of life. It gives every individual a piece of land “as a reward”. At the stage where Sancho and the sixth-century Germans are, the feudal system still coincides in many respects with the system of “reward”.

It goes without saying, incidentally, that the tribal property which Sancho here restores afresh to honour would be bound before long to be dissolved again in the conditions now existing. Sancho feels this himself, for he exclaims: “So it remains and” (a beautiful “and"!) “so it will come to be”, and finally, he proves — by his great example of the house belonging to five heirs — that he has not the slightest intention of going outside the framework of our old relations. His whole plan for the organisation of landed property has only the aim of leading us by ‘historical detour back to petty-bourgeois hereditary tenure and the family, property of German imperial towns.

Of our old relations, i.e., those now existing, Sancho has appropriated only the legal nonsense that individuals, or propriétaires, behave “arbitrarily” in relation to landed property. In the union”, this imagined “arbitrariness” is to be continued by society”. To the “union” it is so much, a matter of indifference what happens to the land that “perhaps” “society” leases plots of land to individuals, or perhaps not. All that is quite immaterial.

Sancho, of course, cannot know that a definite structure of agriculture is linked lo a definite form of activity and determined by a definite stage of the division of labour. But anyone else can see how little the small corvée peasants, as proposed here by, Sancho, are in a position where “each of them can become an omnipotent ego”, and how little their ownership of a miserable plot of land resembles the greatly praised “ownership of everything”. In the real world, the intercourse of individuals depends on their mode of production, and therefore Sancho’s “perhaps” completely overthrows — perhaps — his whole union. But “perhaps”, or rather undoubtedly, there emerges here Sancho’s real view concerning intercourse in the union, namely, the view that the basis of egoistical intercourse is the holy.

Sancho brings to light here the first “institution” of his future union. The rebels who strove to be “without a constitution”, “arrange things for themselves”, by “choosing” for themselves a “constitution” of landed property. We see that Sancho was right in not placing any brilliant hopes in new “Institutions”. At the same time, however, we see that he ranks highly among the “socially-gifted persons” and is “extraordinarily inventive in regard to social institutions”.

2. Organisation of Labour

“The organisation of labour concerns only such work as can be done for us be others, such as cattle-slaughtering, ploughing, etc.; other work remains egoistical because, for example, no one can compose your music for you, complete the sketches for your paintings, etc. No one can do Raphael’s works for him. These are works of a unique individual which only this unique person is capable of producing, whereas the former work deserves to be called human” (on page 356 this is made identical with “generally useful”), “since peculiarity is of little consequence here and almost every person can be trained to do it” (p.

“It is always expedient for us to come to an agreement about human labour, in order that it should not claim all our time and effort, as is the case under competition,.... For whom, however, should time be gained? For what purpose does a human being need more time than is required to restore his exhausted labour-power? To this communism gives no reply. For what purpose? In order to enjoy himself as the unique, having done his share as a human being” (pp. 356, 357).

“Through work I can fulfil the official duties of a president, minister, etc.; these posts require only a general education, namely, the education that is generally accessible.... Although, however, anyone could occupy these posts, it is only the unique power of the individual, peculiar to him alone, that gives them, as it were, life and significance. For performing his duties not as an ordinary man would do, but by exerting the power of his uniqueness, he does not get paid, if lie is paid only as an official or minister. If he has acted to your satisfaction, and you wish for your benefit to retain this power of the unique person, which is worthy of gratitude, then you ought to pay him not simply as a man who performs a merely human task. but as one who accomplishes something unique” (pp. 362, 363),

“If you are in a position to afford joy to thousands of people, then thousands will remunerate you for it; for it is in your power not to do it and therefore they have to pay you for the fact that you do it” (p. 351).

“One cannot establish any general rate of payment forms, uniqueness, as can be done for work I perform as a man. Only for the latter can a tariff be fixed. Therefore you may fix a general tariff for human work, but do not deprive your uniqueness, of what is due to it” (p. 363).

As an example of the organisation of labour in the union, the public bakeries already mentioned are cited on page 365. Under the conditions of vandal parcellation presupposed above, these public institutions must be a real miracle.

First of all human labour must be organised and thereby shortened so that Brother Straubinger,^[66] having finished his work early, can “enjoy himself as the unique” (p. 357), but on page 363 the “enjoyment” of the unique one ‘s reduced to his extra earnings.

On page 363 it is stated that the vital activity of the unique person does not have to take place subsequently to human labour; the latter can be performed as unique labour, and in that case it requires an additional wage. Otherwise the unique one, who is interested not in his uniqueness but in a higher wage, could shelve his uniqueness and to spite society be satisfied with acting as an ordinary person, at the same time playing a trick on himself.

According to page 356, human labour coincides with generally useful labour, but according to pages 351 and 363 unique labour shows its worth by being paid for additionally as generally useful or, at least, useful to many people.

Thus, the organisation of labour in the union consists in the separation of human labour from unique labour, in the establishment of a tariff for the former and in haggling for an additional wage for the latter. This addition is again twofold, one part being for the unique performance of human labour and the other for the unique performance of unique labour. The resulting bookkeeping is the more complicated because what was unique labour yesterday (e.g., spinning cotton thread No. 200) becomes human labour today, and because the unique performance of human labour requires a continual moucharderie [spying] upon oneself in one’s own interest and universal moucharderie in the public interest. Hence this whole great organisational plan amounts to a wholly petty-bourgeois appropriation of the law of supply and demand, which exists at present and has been expounded by ail economists. The law which determines the price of those types of labour that Sancho declares unique (e.g., that of a dancer, a prominent physician or lawyer), he could have found already explained by Adam Smith, and a tariff fixed for it by the American Cooper. Modern economists explain on the basis of this law the high payment for what they call travail improductif and the low wages of the agricultural day-labourer, and in general all inequalities in wages. Thus, with God’s help, we have again arrived at competition, but a competition which has so much come down in the world that Sancho can propose a fixed rate, the establishment of wages by law, as was the case of old in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.

It deserves mention also that the idea which Sancho puts forward here is also to be found as something completely new in the Herr Messiah — Dr. Georg Kuhlmann of Holstein.

What Sancho here calls human labour is, apart from his bureaucratic fantasies, the same thing as is usually meant by machine labour, labour which, as industry develops, devolves more and more on machines. True, because of ‘the above-described organisation of landownership, machines are an impossibility in the “union” and therefore the corvée peasants in agreement with themselves prefer to reach an agreement with one another about this work. As regards “presidents” and “ministers”, Sancho — this poor localised being, as Owen puts it — forms his opinion only by his immediate environment.

Here, as always, Sancho is again unlucky with his practical examples. He thinks that “no one can compose your music for you, complete the sketches for your paintings. No one can do Raphael’s works for him”. Sancho could surely have known, however, that it was not Mozart himself, but someone else who composed the greater part of Mozart’s Requiem and finished it, ^[67] and that Raphael himself “completed” only an insignificant part of his own frescoes.

He imagines that the so-called organisers of labour^[68] wanted to organise the entire activity of each individual, and yet it is precisely they who distinguish between directly productive labour, which has to be organised, and labour which is not directly productive. In regard to the latter, however, it was not their view, as Sancho imagines, that each should do the work of Raphael, but that anyone in ‘ whom there is a potential Raphael should be able to develop without hindrance. Sancho imagines that Raphael produced his pictures independently of the division of labour that existed in Rome at the time. ff he were to compare Raphael with Leonardo da Vinci and Titian, he would see how greatly Raphael’s works of art depended on the flourishing of Rome at that time, which occurred under Florentine influence, while the works of Leonardo depended on the state of things in Florence, and the works of Titian, at a later period, depended on the totally different development of Venice. Raphael as much as any other artist was determined by the technical advances in art made before him, by the organisation of society and the division of labour in his locality, and, finally, by the division of labour in all the countries with which his locality had intercourse. Whether an individual like Raphael succeeds in developing his talent depends wholly on demand, which in turn depends on the division of labour and the conditions of human culture resulting from it.

In proclaiming the uniqueness of work in science and art, Stirner adopts a position far inferior to that of the bourgeoisie. At the present time it has already been found necessary to organise this “unique” activity. Horace Vernet would not have had time to paint even a tenth of his pictures if he regarded them as works which “only this unique person is capable of producing”. In Paris, the great demand for vaudevilles and novels brought about the organisation of work for their production; this organisation at any rate yields something better than its “unique” competitors in Germany. In astronomy, people like Arago, Herschel, Encke and Bessel considered it necessary to organise joint observations and only after that obtained some moderately good results. In historical science, it is absolutely impossible for the “unique” to achieve anything at all, and :in this field, too, the French long ago surpassed all other nations thanks to organisation of labour. Incidentally, it is self-evident that all these organisations based on modern division of labour still lead to extremely limited results, and they represent a step forward only compared with the previous narrow isolation.

Moreover, it must be specially emphasised that Sancho confuses the organisation of labour with communism and is even surprised that “communism” gives him no reply to his doubts about this organisation. just like a Gascon village lad is surprised that Arago cannot tell him on which star God Almighty has built his throne.

The exclusive concentration of artistic talent in particular individuals, and its suppression in the broad mass which is bound up with this, is a consequence of division of labour. Even if in certain social conditions, everyone were an excellent painter, that would by no means exclude the possibility of each of them being also an original painter, so that here too the difference between “human” and “unique” labour amounts to sheer nonsense. In any case, with a communist organisation of society. there disappears the subordination of the artist to local and national narrowness, which arises entirely from division of labour, and also the subordination of the individual to some definite art, making him exclusively a painter, sculptor, etc.; the very name amply expresses the narrowness of his professional development and his dependence on division of labour. In a communist society there are no painters but only people who engage in painting among other activities.

Sancho’s organisation of labour shows clearly how much all these philosophical knights of “substance” content themselves with mere phrases. The subordination of “substance” to the “subject” about which they all talk so grandiloquently, the reduction of “substance” which governs the “subject” to a mere “accident” of this subject, is revealed to be mere “empty talk”. Hence they wisely refrain from examining division of labour, material production and material intercourse, which in fact make individuals subordinate to definite relations and modes of activity. For them it is in general only a matter of finding new phrases for ‘Interpreting the existing world-phrases which are the more certain to consist only of comical boasting, the more these people imagine they have risen above the world and the more they put themselves in opposition to it. Sancho is a lamentable example of this.

3. Money

“Money is a commodity and indeed an essential means or faculty, for it protects wealth against ossification, keeps it fluid and affects its circulation. If you know of a better means of exchange, all right., but it too will be a variety of money” (p. 364).

On page 353 money is defined as “marketable property or property in circulations.

Thus the “union” retains money, this purely social property which has been stripped of all individuality. The extent to which Sancho is in the grip of the bourgeois outlook is shown by his question about a better means of exchange. Consequently, he first of aft assumes that a means of exchange is necessary, and moreover he knows of no other means of exchange except money. The fact that ships and railways, which serve to transport commodities, are also means of exchange does not concern him. Hence in order to speak not merely of means of exchange, but particularly of money, he has to include the other attributes of money; that it is a means of exchange that is universally marketable and in circulation, that it keeps all property fluid, etc. These bring in also economic aspects which Sancho does not know but which actually constitute money; and with them the whole present situation, class economy, domination of the bourgeoisie. etc.

First of all, however, we learn something about the — extremely odd — course of monetary crises in the union.

The question arises:

“Where is money to be obtained?... People pay not with money, of which there may be a shortage, but with their ability [Vermögen], thanks to which alone we are wealthy [vermögend].... it is not money that harms you, but your inability [Unvermögen] to obtain it.”

Now comes the moral exhortation:

“Let your ability [Vermögen] have its effect, brace yourself, and you will not lack money [Geld], your money, money of your coining.... Know then that you have as much money as you have power; for the extent to which You can assert yourself [Dir Geltung verschaffst] determines how much you are worth [giltst]"(pp. 353, 364) [Geld — money; sich Geltung verschaffen — to assert oneself; gelten — to be worth]

The power of money, the fact that the universal means of exchange becomes independent in relation both to society and to individuals, reveals most clearly that the relations of production and intercourse as a whole assume an independent existence. Consequently, Sancho as usual knows nothing about the connection of money relations with production in general and intercourse. As a good citizen, he unhesitatingly keeps money in force; indeed it could not be otherwise with his ‘view of division of labour and the organisation of landed ownership. The material power of money, which is strikingly revealed in monetary crises and which, in the form of a permanent scarcity of money, oppresses the petty bourgeois who ;s “inclined to make purchases”, is likewise a highly unpleasant fact for the egoist in agreement with himself. He gets rid of the difficulty by reversing the ordinary idea of the petty bourgeois, thus making it appear that the attitude of individuals to the power of money is something that depends solely on their personal willing or running. This fortunate turn of thought then gives him the chance of reading a moral lecture, buttressed by synonymy, etymology and vowel mutation, to the astounded petty bourgeois already disheartened by lack of money, thus debarring in advance all inconvenient questions about the causes of the pecuniary embarrassment.

The monetary crisis consists primarily in the fact that all “wealth” [Vermögen] suddenly becomes depreciated in relation to the means of exchange and loses its “power” [Vermögen] over money. A crisis is in existence precisely when one can no longer pay with one’s “wealth” [Vermögen], but must pay with money. And this again does not happen because of a shortage of money, as is imagined by the petty bourgeois who judges the crisis by his personal difficulties, but because the specific difference becomes fixed between money as the universal commodity, the “marketable property and property in circulation”, and all the other, particular commodities, which suddenly cease to be marketable property. It cannot be expected that, to please Sancho, we shall analyse here the causes of this phenomenon. Sancho first of all consoles the moneyless and hopeless small shopkeepers by saying that it is not money that causes the scarcity of money and the . whole crisis, but their inability to obtain it. It is not arsenic that is to blame for someone dying who takes it, it is the inability of his organism to digest it.

After first defining money as an essential and indeed specific form of wealth [Vermögen], as the universal means of exchange, money in the ordinary sense, Sancho suddenly turns the thing round when he sees the difficulties this would lead to and declares all ability, [Vermögen] to be money, in order to create the appearance of personal power. The difficulty during a crisis is precisely that “all wealth” [Vermögen] has ceased to be “money”. Incidentally, this amounts to the practice of the bourgeois who accepts “all wealth” as means of payment so long as it is money, and who only begins to raise difficulties when it becomes difficult to turn this “wealth” into money in which case he also ceases to regard it as “wealth”. Further, the difficulty in time of crisis is precisely that you, petty bourgeois, whom Sancho addresses here, can no longer put into circulation the money of your coining, your bills of exchange; but you are expected to pay with money, not coined by you and which shows no evidence that it has passed through your hands.

Finally, Stirner distorts the bourgeois motto “You are worth as much as the money you possess” into “You have as much money as you are worth”, which alters nothing, but only introduces an appearance of personal power and thus expresses the trivial bourgeois illusion that everyone is himself to blame if he has ne, money. Thus Sancho disposes of the classic bourgeois saying: L'argent n'a pas de maitre [money has no master], and can now mount the pulpit and exclaim: “Let your ability have its effect, brace yourself, and you will not lack money.” Je ne connais pas de lieu à la bourse où se fasse le transfers des bonnes intentions [I do not know a place at the stock exchange where people trade in good intentions]. He had but to add: Obtain credit; knowledge is power ; it is harder to earn the first taler than the last million; be moderate and save your money and, most important of all, do not multiply overmuch, etc. — to reveal not one ass’s ear, but both at once. In general, the man for whom everyone is what he can be and does what he can do, ends all chapters with moral exhortations.

The monetary system in Stirner’s union is, therefore, the existing monetary system expressed in the euphemistic and gushingly sentimental manner of the German petty bourgeois.

After Sancho has paraded in this way with the ears of his ass, Don Quixote-Szeliga draws himself up to his full height and delivers a solemn speech about the modern knight-errant, in the course of which money is transformed into Dulcinea del Toboso and the manufacturers and commerçants en masse into knights, namely, into chevaliers d'industrie. The speech has also the subsidiary aim of proving that because money is an “essential means”, it is also essentially a daughter”.* And he stretched out his right hand and said:

“On money depends fortune and misfortune. In the bourgeois period it is a force because like a maiden” (a dairymaid; per appositionem Dulcinea) “it is only wooed but is not indissolubly joined in marriage to anyone. All the romance and chivalry of wooing a dear object is revived in competition. Money, an object of ardent desire, is abducted by the bold chevaliers d'industrie” (p. 364).

Sancho has now arrived at a profound explanation why money in the bourgeois epoch is a power, namely, because in the first place fortune and misfortune depends on it and, secondly, because it is a maiden. He has further learned why he can lose his money, namely, because a maiden is not indissolubly joined in marriage to anyone. Now the poor wretch knows where he stands. Szeliga, who has thus made the burgher into a knight, now in the following way makes the communist into a burgher and indeed into a burgher husband.

“He on whom fortune smiles leads the bride home. The ragamuffin is fortunate, he takes her into his household, society, and destroys the maiden. In his home she is no longer a bride, but a wife, and her maiden name disappears with her maidenhood. As a housewife, the money-maiden is called labour, for labour is the name of the husband. She is the property of the husband.

“To complete the picture, the child of labour and money is again a girl” (“essentially a daughter”), “an unmarried girl” (has Szeliga ever known of a girl coming “Married” out of the maternal womb?) “and therefore money” (according to the above proof that all money is an “unmarried girl”, it is self-evident that “all unmarried girls” are “money”) — “therefore money, but having its definite descent from labour, its father” (toute recherche de la paternité est interdite [any investigation regarding paternity is forbidden — the formula used in article 340 of the Code Napoléon]). “The shape of the face, the image, bears a different stamp” (pp. 364, 365).

This story of marriage, burial and baptism is surely of itself sufficient proof that it is “essentially a daughter” of Szeliga, and indeed a daughter of “definite descent”. Its ultimate basis, however, lies in the ignorance of his former stableman, Sancho. This is clearly seen at the end, when the orator is again anxiously concerned about the “coining” of money. thereby betraying that he still considers that coins are the most important medium of circulation. If he had taken the trouble to examine a little more closely the economic relations of ,none Y, instead of weaving a beautiful. leafy bridal wreath for it, he would have known that — without mentioning state securities, shares, etc. — the major part of the medium of circulation consists of bills of exchange, whereas paper money forms a comparatively small part, and coin a still smaller part. In England, for example. fifteen times as much money circulates in the form of bills of exchange and bank-notes as in the form of coin. And even as regards coin, it is determined exclusively by the costs of production, i.e., labour. Hence Stirner’s elaborate process of procreation was superfluous here.

Szeliga’s solemn reflections about a means of exchange based on labour but, nevertheless’, different from the money of today, which he claims to have discovered among certain communists, only prove once again the simplicity with which our noble couple believe everything they read without even examining it.

When the two heroes ride homewards after this “knightly and romantic” campaign of “wooing”, they are bringing back no “fortune”, still less the “bride”, and least of all “money”, but at best one “ragamuffin” is bringing home the other.

4. State

We have seen that Sancho retains in his “union” the existing form of landownership, division of labour and money, in the way in which a petty bourgeois conceives these relations in his imagination. It is clear at a glance that with such premises Sancho cannot do without the state.

First of all his newly acquired property will have to assume the form of guaranteed, legal property. We have already heard his words:

“That in which all want to have a share will be taken away from the individual who wants to have it for himself alone” (p. 330).

Here, therefore, the will of the whole community is enforced against the will of the separate individual. Since each of the egoists in agreement with themselves may turn out to be not in agreement with the other egoists and thus become involved in this contradiction, the collective will must also find some means of expression in relation to the separate individuals —

“and this will is called the will of the state” (p. 257).

Its decisions are then legal decisions. The enforcement of this collective will in its turn requires repressive measures and public power.

“In this matter also” (in the matter of property) “the unions will multiply the means of the individual and safeguard his disputed property” (they guarantee, therefore, guaranteed property, i.e., legal property, i.e., property that Sancho possesses not “unconditionally”, but “holds on feudal tenure” from the “union”) (p. 342).

Obviously, the whole of civil law is re-established along with the relations of property, and Sancho himself, for example, sets forth the theory of contract fully in the spirit of the lawyers, as follows:

“It is of no importance, too, that I deprive myself of one or other freedom, for example, through any contract” (p. 409).

And in order to “safeguard” “disputed” contracts, it will also “be of no importance” if he has again to submit himself to a court and to all the actual consequences of a civil court case.

Thus, “little by little out of the twilight and the night” we come closer again to the existing relations, but only as these relations exist in the dwarfish imagination of the German petty bourgeois.

Sancho admits:

“In relation to freedom there is no essential difference between state and union. The latter cannot arise and exist without restricting freedom in various ways just as the state is incompatible with boundless freedom. Restriction of freedom is always unavoidable, for it is impossible to get rid of everything; one cannot fly like a bird just because one would like to fly, etc.... In the union there will still be a fair amount of compulsion and lack of freedom, for its aim is not freedom which, on the contrary, it sacrifices for the sake of peculiarity, but only for the sake of peculiarity” (pp. 410, 411).

Leaving aside for the time being the strange distinction between freedom and peculiarity, it should be noted that Sancho, without intending to do so, has already sacrificed his “peculiarity” in his union owing to its economic institutions. As a true “believer in the state”, he sees a restriction only where political institutions begin. He lets the old society continue in existence and with it also the subordination of individuals to division of labour; in which case he cannot escape the fate of having a special “peculiarity” prescribed for him by the division of labour and the occupation and position in life that falls to his lot as a result of it. If, for example, it fell to his lot to work as an apprentice fitter in Willenhall, ^[69] then the “peculiarly” imposed on him would consist in a twisted hip-bone resulting in a “game leg”; if the “title spectre [Marie Dähnhardt, Stirner’s wife] of his book” ^[70] has to exist as a female throstle spinner, then her “peculiarity” would consist in stiff knees. Even if our Sancho continues his old vocation of a corvée peasant, already assigned to him by Cervantes, and which he now declares to be his own vocation, which he calls upon himself to fulfil, then, owing to division of labour and the separation of town and countryside, he will have the “peculiarity” of being a purely local animal cut off from all world intercourse and, consequently, from all culture.

Thus, in the union, owing to its social organisation, Sancho malgré lui loses his peculiarity if, by way of exception, we take peculiarity in the sense of individuality. That owing to its political organisation, he then surrenders his freedom as well is quite consistent and only shows still more clearly how much he strives to retain the present state of affairs in his union.

Thus, the essential distinction between freedom and peculiarity constitutes the difference between the present state of affairs and the “union”. We have already seen how essential this distinction is. The majority of the members of the union, too, will possibly not be particularly embarrassed by this distinction and will hasten to decree their “riddance” from it, and if Sancho is not satisfied with that, they will show him on the basis of his own “book” that, firstly, there are no essences, but that essences and essential differences are “the holy”; secondly, that the union does not have to trouble about the “nature of the matter” and the “concept of the relation”; and, thirdly, that they in no way encroach on his peculiarity but only on his freedom to express it. They will perhaps prove to him, if it is his “endeavour to be without a constitution”, that they restrict only his freedom by putting him in prison, striking blows at him, or tearing off his leg, and that he remains partout et toujours “peculiar”, so long as he is still able to show the signs of life of a polyp, an oyster or even a galvanised dead frog. They will “set a definite price” on his work, as we have already heard, and “will not allow a truly free” (!) “realisation of his property”, for thereby they restrict only his freedom, not h . is peculiarity. These are things for which Sancho, on page 338, reproaches the state. “What then should” our corvée peasant Sancho “do? He should be firm and pay no attention” to the union (ibid.). Finally whenever he begins to grumble about the restrictions imposed on him, the majority will suggest that so long as he has the peculiarity of declaring that freedoms are peculiarities, they can take the liberty of regarding his peculiarities as freedoms.

Just as the difference mentioned above between human and unique labour was only a miserable appropriation of the law of supply and demand, so now the difference between freedom and peculiarity is a miserable appropriation of the relation between the state and civil society or, as Monsieur Guizot says, between liberté individuelle and pouvoir public. This is so much the case that in what follows he can copy Rousseau’ almost word for word.

“The agreement [...] according to which everyone must sacrifice a part of his freedom” occurs “not at all the sake of something universal or even for the sake of another person”, on the contrary, “I only concluded it out of self-interest. As far as sacrificing is concerned, after all I merely sacrifice what is not in power, i. e. I sacrifice nothing at all” (p. 418).

Our corvée peasant in agreement with himself shares this quality with all other corvée peasants and, in general, with every individual, who has ever lived on the earth. Compare also Godwin, Politica; Justice.

Incidentally, Sancho appears to possess the peculiarity, of imagining that according to Rousseau individuals concluded the contract for the sake of the universal, which never entered Rousseau’s head.

One consolation, however, remains for him.

“The state is holy ... the union, however, is ... not holy.” And herein lies the “great difference between the state and the union” p. 411).

The whole difference, therefore, amounts to this, that the union is the actual modern state, and the “state” is Stirner’s illusion about the Prussian state, which he confuses with the state in general.

5. Rebellion

Sancho quite rightly has so little faith in his subtle distinctions between state and union, holy and not holy, human and unique, peculiarity and freedom, etc., that in the end he takes refuge in the ultima ratio of the egoist in agreement with himself — in rebellion. This time, however, he rebels not against himself, as he earlier asserted, but against the union. just as earlier Sancho sought to achieve clarity on all points in the union, so he does here, too, as regards rebellion.

“If the community treats me unjustly, I rebel against it and defend my property” (p. 343)

If the rebellion does not “prosper”, the union will “expel (imprison, exile, etc.) him” (pp. 256, 257).

Sancho here tries to appropriate the droits de 1'homme of 1793, which included the right of insurrection ^[71] -a human right that, of course, bears bitter fruits for him who tries to make use of it at his “ own” discretion.

Thus Sancho’s whole union amounts to the following. Whereas in his previous criticism he regarded existing relations only from the aspect of illusion, when speaking of the union he tries to get to know the actual content of these relations and to oppose this content to the former illusions. In this attempt, our ignorant school-master was of i course bound to fall ignominiously. By way of exception, he did once endeavour to appropriate the “nature of the matter” and the “concept of the relation”, but he failed to “divest” any matter or any relation of its “alien character”.

Now that we have become acquainted with the union in its real form, it only remains for us to examine Sancho’s enthusiastic ideas about it, i.e., the religion and philosophy of the union.

6. Religion and Philosophy of the Union

Here we again start from the point at which, above, we began the description of the union. Sancho employs two categories: property and wealth; the illusions about property correspond mainly to the positive data given on landed property, the illusions about wealth to the data on the organisation of labour and the monetary system in the union.

A. Property

Page 331: “The world belongs to me.”

Interpretation of his hereditary tenure of a plot of land.

Page 343: “I am the owner of everything that I need”,

a euphemistic way of saying that his needs are his possession and that what he needs as a corvée peasant is determined by his circumstances. In the. same way the economists maintain that the worker is the owner of everything that he needs as a worker. See the discourse on the minimum wage in Ricardo. [David Ricardo, On the Principles of Political Economy and Taxation]

Page 343: “Now, however, everything belongs to me.”

A musical flourish in honour of his rate of wages, his plot of land, his permanent lack of money, and his expulsion from everything that the “society” does not want him to have in exclusive possession. The same idea occurs on page 327, expressed thus:

“His” (i.e., of another person) “possessions are mine and I dispose of them as the owner to the extent of my power.”

This pompous allegro marciale passes in the following way into a gentle cadence, in which it gradually collapses on its backside — Sancho’s usual fate:

Page 331: “The world belongs to me. Do You” (communists) “say anything different with your opposite thesis: the world belongs to all? All are I, and once more I, etc.” (for example, “Robespierre, for example. Saint-Just, and so on”).

Page 415: “I am I and you are I, but ... this I, in which we are all equal, is only my thought [... ] a generality” (the holy).

The practical variation on this theme occurs on page 330, where the “individuals collectively” (i.e., all) are counterposed as a regulating force to the “Isolated individual” (i.e., the I as distinct from all).

These dissonances are at last resolved in the soothing final chord, to the effect that what I do not possess is at any rate the property of another “ego”. Thus, “ownership of everything” is only an interpretation of the statement that each person possesses exclusive property.

Page 336: “But property is only my property if I have unconditional possession of it. As the unconditional ego, I have property, I carry on free trade.”

We already know that only freedom, and not peculiarity, is affected if freedom of trade and unconditionality are not respected in the union. “Unconditional property” is a fitting supplement to the secure”, guaranteed property in the union.

Page 342: “In the opinion of the communists, the community should be the owner. On the contrary, I am the owner and only come to an agreement with others about my property.”

On page 329 we saw how “the société makes itself the owner” and on page 330 how it “excludes individuals from its property”. In general, we saw that the tribal system of feudal tenure, the crudest beginnings of the system of feudal tenure, was introduced. According to page 416, the “feudal system = absence of property”; hence, according to the same page, “property is recognised in the union, and only in the union”, and moreover for a conclusive reason: “because no one any longer holds his possession in feudal tenure from any being [Wesen]” (ibid.). That is to say, under the hitherto existing’ feudal system, the feudal lord was this “being”, in the union it is the société. From this one may at least conclude that Sancho possesses an “exclusive” but by no means “secure” property in the “essence” [Wesen] [Wesen can mean “being” or “essence"], of past history. In connection with page 330, according to which each individual’ is excluded from that which society does not consider it right for him to hold in his sole possession, and in connection with the state and legal system of the union, it is stated:

Page 369: “The rightful and legitimate property of another will only be that which you consider it right to recognise as his property. If you no longer consider it right, it loses its rightfulness for you and You will deride any claim to absolute right in it.”

He thus proves the astounding fact that what is right in the union does not have to be right for him — an Indisputable right of man. If there exists in the union the institution of the old French parliaments, which Sancho loves so much, then he can even have his dislike recorded and deposit the document in the office of the law courts, consoling himself with the thought that lone cannot get rid of everything”.

These various statements appear to contradict themselves, one another and the actual state of things in the union. But the key o this riddle is to be found ‘n the juridical fiction, already mentioned, that when Sancho is excluded from the property of others, he is merely coming to an agreement with these others. This fiction is expounded in more detail in the following statements:

Page 369: “This” (i.e., respect for the property of others) “comes to an end when I can leave the tree in question to another, just as I leave my stick, etc., to another, but do not from the outset regard it as something alien, i. e., holy. Rather ... it remains my property, no matter for what period I cede it to another; it is mine and remains mine. see nothing alien in the wealth belonging to the banker.”

Page 328: “I do not retreat timidly before thy and your property, but always regard it as my property, which I do not need to respect at all. just do the same with what you call my property. With this point of view we shall most easily reach agreement with one another.”

If, according to the rules of the union, Sancho is “given a drubbing” as soon as he tries to seize another’s property, he will, of course, maintain that pilfering is a “peculiarity” of his; nevertheless, the union will decide that Sancho has merely taken a “liberty”. And if Sancho takes the “liberty” of attempting to seize another’s possessions, the union has the “peculiarity” of sentencing him to a flogging for it.

The essence of the matter is this. Bourgeois and, particularly, petty-bourgeois and small-peasant property is, as we have seen, retained in the union. Merely the interpretation, the “point of view”, is different, for which reason Sancho always lays stress on the way of “regarding”. “Agreement” is reached when this new philosophy of regarding enjoys the regard of the whole union. This philosophy consists of the following. Firstly, every relation, whether caused by, economic conditions or direct compulsion, is regarded as a relation of “agreement”. Secondly, it is imagined that all property belonging to others is relinquished to them by us and remains with them only until we have the power to take it from them; and if we never get the power, tant mieux. Thirdly, Sancho and his union in theory guarantee each other absence of respect, whereas in practice the. union “reaches agreement” with Sancho with the aid of a stick. Finally, this “agreement” is a mere phrase, since everyone knows that the others enter into it only with the secret reservation that they will reject it on the first convenient occasion, I see in your property something that is not yours but mine; since every ego does likewise, they see in it the universal, by which we arrive at the modern-German philosophical interpretation of ordinary, special and exclusive private property.

The union’s philosophy of property includes, inter alia, the following fancies derived from Sancho’s system:

On page 342, that property can be acquired in the union through, absence of respect; on page 351, that “we are all in the midst of “abundance”, and “have only to help myself to as much as I can” whereas in actual fact the whole union belongs to Pharaoh’s seven lean kine^[72] and finally, that Sancho “cherishes thoughts” which arc written in his book; and which are sung on page 374 in the incomparable ode addressed to himself imitating Heine’s three odes to Schlegel: “You, who cherishes such thoughts as are written in your. book ... you cherish nonsense” Such is the hymn which for the time being Sancho addresses to himself, and about which the union will later “reach agreement” with him.

Finally, it is obvious even without reaching “agreement” that property in the extraordinary sense, about which we already spoke in the “Phenomenology”, is accepted in the union in lieu of payment, as “marketable” property and “property in circulation”. Concerning simple facts, e.g., that I feel sympathy, that I talk to others, that my leg is amputated (or torn off), the union will reach agreement that “the feeling experienced by sentient beings is also mine, my property” (p. 387); that other people’s ears and tongues are Likewise my property, and that mechanical relations too are my property.

Thus, appropriation in the union will consist chiefly in all relations being transformed into property relations by means of a facile paraphrase. This new mode of expressing “evils” that are already now rife is an “essential means or faculty” in the union and will successfully make up for the deficit in the means of existence that is inevitable in view of Sancho’s “social gifts”.

B. Wealth

Page 216: “Let each of you become an omnipotent ego!"
Page 353: “Think about increasing your wealth!"
Page 420: “Keep up the value of your gifts;
"Keep up their price,
"Do not allow yourself to be compelled to sell below the price,
"Do not allow yourself to be persuaded that your commodity is not worth the price,
"Do not make yourself ridiculous by a ridiculously low price,
"Follow the example of the courageous man, etc.!
Page 420: “Increase the value of your property!"
"Increase your value”

These moral sayings, which Sancho learned from an Andalusian Jewish huckster who drew up rules of life and trade for his son, and which Sancho now pulls out of his knapsack, form the main wealth of the union. The basis of all these statements is the great proposition on page 351:

“Everything that you are able to do [vermagst — inflected form of vermögen] is your wealth [Vermögen].”

This proposition is either meaningless, i. e., mere tautology, or is nonsense. It is tautology if it means: what you are able to do, you are able to do. It is nonsense if Vermögen No. 2 is meant to denote wealth “in the ordinary sense”, commercial wealth, and if the proposition is based, therefore, on the etymological similarity. The collision consists precisely in the fact that what is expected of my ability [Vermögen] is different from what it is capable of doing, c. g., it is demanded of my ability to write verses that it should make money out of these verses. My ability is expected to produce something quite different from the specific product of this special ability, viz., a product depending on extraneous conditions which are not subject to my ability. This difficulty is supposed to be resolved in the union by means of etymological synonymy. We see that our egoistical school-master hopes to occupy an important post in the union. Incidentally, this difficulty is only an apparent one. The usual pithy moral saying of the bourgeois: “Anything is good to make money of”, is here expounded at length in Sancho’s solemn manner.

C. Morality, Intercourse, Theory of Exploitation

Page 352: “You behave egoistically when you regard one another neither as owners nor as ragamuffins or workers, but as part of your wealth, as useful creatures. Then you will not give anything either to the owner, the proprietor, for his property, or to the one who works, but only to him whom you can make use of. Do we need a king? the North Americans ask themselves, and they reply: ‘He and his work are not worth a farthing to us’,”

On the other hand, on page 229, he reproaches the “bourgeois period” for the following:

“Instead of taking me as I am. attention is paid only to my property, my qualities, and a marriage alliances is concluded with me only for the sake of what I possess. The marriage is concluded, so to speak, with what I have and not with what I am.”

That is to say, attention is paid solely to what I am for others, to my usefulness, I am dealt with as a useful creature. Sancho spits into the “bourgeois period’s” soup, so that in the union he alone can devour it. If the individuals of modern society regard one another as owners, as workers and, if Sancho wishes, as ragamuffins, this only means that they treat one another as useful creatures, a fact which can only be doubted by such a useless individual as Sancho. The capitalist, who “regards” the worker “as a worker”, shows consideration for him only because he needs workers; the worker treats the capitalist in the same way, and the Americans too, in Sancho’s opinion (we would like him to point out the source from which he took this historic fact), have no use for a king, because he is useless to them as a worker. Sancho has chosen his example with his usual clumsiness, for it is supposed to prove exactly the opposite of what it actually proves.

Page 395: “For me, you are nothing but food, just as I am eaten up and consumed by you. We stand in only one relation to one another: that of usefulness, utility, use.”

Page 416: “No one is to me a person to be held in respect, not even my fellow-man; but, like other beings” (!), “he is solely an object, for which I may or may not have sympathy, an interesting or uninteresting object, a useful or useless creature.”

The relation of “usefulness”, which is supposed to be the sole relation of the individuals to one another in the union, is at once paraphrased as “eating” one another. The “perfect Christians” of the union, of course, also celebrate holy communion, only not by eating together but by eating one another.

The extent to which this theory of mutual exploitation, which Bentham expounded ad nauseam, could already at the beginning of the present century be regarded as a phase of the previous one is shown by Hegel in his Phänomenologie. See there the chapter “The Struggle of Enlightenment with Superstition”, where the theory of usefulness is depicted as the final result of enlightenment. The apparent absurdity of merging all the manifold relationships of people in the one relation of usefulness, this apparently metaphysical abstraction arises from the fact that in modern bourgeois society all relations are subordinated in practice to the one abstract monetary-commercial relation. This theory came to the fore with Hobbes and Locke, at the same time as the first and second English revolutions, those first battles by which the bourgeoisie won political power. it is to be found even earlier, of course, among writers on political economy, as a tacit presupposition. Political economy is the real science of this theory of utility; it acquires its true content among the Physiocrats, since they were the first to treat political economy systematically. In Helvétius and Holbach one can already find an idealisation of this doctrine, which fully corresponds to the attitude of opposition adopted by the French bourgeoisie before the revolution. Holbach depicts the entire activity of individuals in their mutual intercourse, e. g., speech, love, etc., as a relation of utility and utilisation. Hence the actual relations that are presupposed here are speech, love, definite manifestations of definite qualities of individuals. Now these relations are supposed not to have the meaning peculiar to them but to be the expression and manifestation of some third relation attributed to them, the relation of utility or utilisation. This paraphrasing ceases to be meaningless and arbitrary only when these relations have validity for the individual not on their own account, not as spontaneous activity, but rather as disguises, though by no means disguises of the category of Utilisation, but of an actual third aim and relation which is called the relation of utility.

The verbal masquerade only has meaning when it is the unconscious or deliberate expression of an actual masquerade. In this case, the utility relation has a quite definite meaning, namely, that I derive benefit for myself by doing harm to someone else (exploitation de 1'homme par l'homme, [exploitation of man by man.” See Doctrine de Saint-Simon. Exposition. Première année]); in this case moreover the use that I derive from some relation is entirely extraneous to this relation, as we saw above in connection with ability [Vermögen] that from each ability a product alien to it was demanded, a relation determined by social relations — and this is precisely the relation of utility. All this is actually the case with the bourgeois. For him only one relation is valid on its own account — the relation of exploitation; all other relations have validity for him only insofar as he can include them under this one relation; and even where he encounters relations which cannot be directly subordinated to the relation of exploitation, he subordinates them to it at least in his imagination. The material expression of this use is money which represents the value of all things, people and social relations. Incidentally, one sees at a glance that the category of “utilisation” is first abstracted from the actual relations of intercourse which I have with other people (but by no means from reflection and mere will) and then these relations. are made out to be the reality of the category that has been abstracted from them themselves, a wholly metaphysical method of procedure. In exactly the same way and with the same justification, Hegel depicts all relations as relations of the objective spirit. Hence Holbach’s theory is the historically justified philosophical illusion about the bourgeoisie just then developing in France, whose thirst for exploitation could still be regarded as a thirst for the full development of individuals in conditions of intercourse freed from the old feudal fetters. Liberation from the standpoint of the bourgeoisie, i. e., competition, was, of course, for the eighteenth century the only possible way of offering the individuals a new career for freer development. The theoretical proclamation of the consciousness corresponding to this bourgeois practice, of the consciousness of mutual exploitation as the universal mutual relation of all individuals, was also a bold and open step forward. It was a kind of enlightenment which interpreted the political, patriarchal, religious and sentimental embellishment of exploitation under feudalism in a secular way; the embellishment corresponded to the form of exploitation existing at that time and it had been systematised especially by the theoretical writers of the absolute monarchy.

Even if Sancho had done the same thing in his “book” as Helvétius and Holbach did in the last century, the anachronism would still have made it ridiculous. But we have seen that in the place of active bourgeois egoism he put a bragging egoism in agreement with itself.

His sole service — rendered against his will and without realising it — was that he expressed the aspirations of the German petty bourgeois of today whose aim it is to become bourgeois. It was quite fitting that the petty, shy and timid behaviour of these petty bourgeois should have as its counterpart the noisy, blustering and impertinent public boasting of “the unique” among their philosophical representatives. It is quite in accordance with the situation of these petty bourgeois that they do not want to know about their theoretical loud-mouthed champion, and that he knows nothing about them; that they are at variance with one another, and he is forced to preach egoism in agreement with itself. Now, perhaps, Sancho will realise the sort of umbilical cord that connects his “union” with the Customs Union.^[73]

The advances made by the theory of utility and exploitation, its various phases are closely connected with the various periods of development of the bourgeoisie. In the case of Helvétius and Holbach, the actual content of the theory never went much beyond paraphrasing the mode of expression of writers belonging to the period of the absolute monarchy. It was a different method of expression which reflected the desire to reduce all relations to the relation of exploitation and to explain the intercourse of people from their material needs and the ways of satisfying them, rather than the actual realisation of this desire. The problem was set. Hobbes and Locke had before their eyes not only the earlier development of the Dutch bourgeoisie (both of them had lived for some time in Holland) but also the first political actions by which the English bourgeoisie emerged from local and provincial limitations, as well as a comparatively highly developed stage of manufacture, overseas trade and colonisation. This particularly applies to Locke, who wrote during the first period of the English economy, at the time of the rise of joint-stock companies, the Bank of England and time of England’s mastery of the seas. In their case, and particularly in that of Locke, the theory of exploitation was still directly connected with the economic content.

Helvétius and Holbach had before them, besides English theory and the preceding development of the Dutch and English bourgeoisie, also the French bourgeoisie which was still struggling for its free development. The commercial spirit, universal in the eighteenth century, had especially in France taken possession of all classes in the form of speculation. The financial difficulties of the government and the resulting disputes over taxation occupied the attention of all France even at. that time. In addition, Paris in the eighteenth century was the only world city, the only city where there was personal intercourse among individuals of all nations. These premises, combined with the more universal character typical of the French in general, gave the theory of Helvétius and Holbach its peculiar universal colouring, but at ,he same time deprived it of the positive economic content that was still to be found among the English. The theory which for the English was still simply the registration of facts becomes for the French a philosophical system. This generality devoid of positive content, such as we find it in Helvétius and Holbach, is essentially different from the substantial comprehensive view which is first found in Bentham and Mill. The former corresponds to the struggling, still undeveloped bourgeoisie, the latter to the ruling, developed bourgeoisie.

The content of the theory of exploitation that was neglected by Helvétius and Holbach was developed and systematised by the Physiocrats — who worked at the same time as Holbach — but because their basis was the undeveloped economic relations of France where feudalism, under which landownership plays the chief role, was still unshaken, they remained in thrall to the feudal outlook insofar as they declared landownership and land cultivation to be that [productive force] which determines the whole structure of society.

The theory of exploitation owes its further development in England to Godwin, and especially to Bentham. As the bourgeoisie succeeded in asserting itself more and more both in England and in France, the economic content, which the French had neglected, was gradually re-introduced by Bentham. Godwin’s Political Justice was written during the terror, and Bentham’s chief works during and after the French Revolution and the development of large-scale industry in England. The complete union of the theory of utility with political economy is to be found, finally, in Mill.

At an earlier period political economy had been the subject of inquiry either by financiers, bankers and merchants, i.e., in general by persons directly concerned with economic relations, or by persons with an all-round education like Hobbes, Locke and Hume, for whom it was of importance as a branch of encyclopaedic knowledge. Thanks to the Physiocrats, political economy for the first time was raised to the rank of a special science and has been treated as such ever since. As a special branch of science it absorbed the other relations — political, juridical, etc. — to such an extent that it reduced them to economic relations. But it regarded this subordination of all relations to itself as only one aspect of these relations, and thereby allowed them for the rest an independent significance outside political economy. The complete subordination of all existing relations to the relation of utility, and its unconditional elevation to the sole content of all other relations, occurs for the first time in Bentham’s works, where, after the French Revolution and the development of large-scale industry, the bourgeoisie is no longer presented as a special class, but as the class whose conditions of existence are those of the whole society.

When the sentimental and moral paraphrases, which for the French were the entire content of the utility theory, had been exhausted, all that remained for its further development was the question how individuals and relations were to be used, to be exploited. Political economy had meanwhile already provided the answer to this question; the only possible advance consisted in the inclusion of the economic content. Bentham achieved this advance. Political economy, however, had already given expression to the fact that the chief relations of exploitation are determined by production in general, independently of the will of individuals, who find them already in existence. Hence, no other field of speculative thought remained for the utility theory than the attitude of individuals to these important relations, the private exploitation of an already existing world by individuals. On this subject Bentham and his school indulged in lengthy moral reflections. The whole criticism of the existing world by the utility theory was consequently restricted within a narrow range. Remaining within the confines of bourgeois conditions, it could criticise. only those relations which had been handed down from a past epoch and were an obstacle to the development of the bourgeoisie. Hence, although the utility theory does expound the connection of all existing relations with economic relations, it does so only in a restricted way.

From the outset the utility theory had the aspect of a theory of general utility, yet this aspect only became fraught with meaning when economic relations, especially division of labour and exchange, were included. With division of labour, the private activity of the individual becomes generally useful; Bentham’s general utility becomes reduced to the same general utility which is asserted in competition as a whole. By taking into account the economic relations of rent, profit and wages, the definite relations of exploitation of the various classes were introduced, since the manner of exploitation depends on the social position of the exploiter. Up to this point the theory of utility was able to base itself on definite social facts; its further account of the manner of exploitation amounts to a mere recital of catechism phrases.

The economic content gradually turned the utility theory into a mere apologia for the existing state of affairs, an attempt to prove that under existing conditions the mutual relations of people today are the most advantageous and generally useful. It has this character among all modern economists.

But whereas the utility theory had thus at least the advantage of indicating the connection of all existing relations with the economic foundations of society, in Sancho the theory has lost all positive content; it is divorced from all actual relations and is restricted to the mere illusion cherished by the isolated bourgeois about his “cleverness”, by means of which he reckons to exploit the world. Incidentally, it is only in a few passages that Sancho deals with the theory of utility even in this diluted form; almost the entire “book” is taken up, as we have seen, with egoism in agreement with itself, i.e., with an illusion about this illusion of the petty bourgeois. Even these few passages are finally reduced by Sancho to mere vapour, as we shall see.

D. Religion

“In this community” (namely with other people) “I perceive nothing at all but a multiplication of my power, and I retain it only for so long as it is my multiplied power” (p. 416).

“I no longer abase myself before any power, and recognise that all powers are only my power, which I have immediately to subdue if they threaten to become a power against me or over me; each of them is permitted to be only one of my means for achieving my purpose.”

I “perceive”, I “recognise”, I “have to subdue”, power “ is permitted to be only one of my means”. We have already been shown in connection with the “union” what these moral demands mean and how far they correspond to reality. This illusion about his power is closely connected with the other illusion: that in the union “substance” is abolished (see “Humane Liberalism”), and that the relations of the union members never assume a rigid form in respect to separate individuals.

“The union, the association, this eternally fluid association of everything that exists.... Of course, society can arise also from union, but only as a fixed idea arises out of a thought.... If a union has crystallised into a society, it has ceased to be an association, for association is the unceasing process of associating with one another; it has reached the state of being associated, it has become society, the corpse of the union or association.... Neither a natural nor a spiritual bond holds the union together” (pp. 294, 408, 416).

As regards the “natural bond”, it exists, despite Sancho’s “ill will”, in the form of corvée peasant economy and organisation of labour, etc., in the union; likewise the “spiritual bond” in Sancho’s philosophy. For the rest we need only refer to what we have already said several times, and repeated in connection with the union, about division of labour causing the relations to confront individuals as something existing independently of them.

“In short, society is holy, the union is your own; society uses you, you use the union”, etc. [p. 418].

E. Supplement to the Union

Whereas hitherto we were shown no other possibility of reaching the “union” than through rebellion, now we learn from the “Commentary” that the “union of egoists” already exists in “hundreds of thousands” of cases as one of the aspects of existing bourgeois society and that it is accessible to us even without any rebellion and any “Stirner”. Then Sancho shows us

“such unions in actual life. Faust is within such unions when he exclaims: Here I am a human being” (!), “here I dare to be one [Goethe, Faust, I. Teil, “Osterspaziergang"] here Goethe states it even in black and white” (“but the holy person is called Humanus, see Goethe”, [Humanus — a character in Goethe’s unfinished poem “Die Geheimnisse"] cf. “the book”)....... If Hess were to look attentively at real life, he would see hundreds of thousands of such egoistical unions — some of short duration, some enduring.”

Sancho then makes some “children” meet for a game in front of Hess’ window, and makes “a few friends” take Hess to a tavern and lets him associate with his “beloved”.

“Of course, Hess does not notice how full of significance these trivial examples are and how infinitely different they are from the holy societies and indeed from the fraternal, human society of holy socialists” (Sancho contra Hess, Wigand, pp. 193, 194).

In just the same way, on page 305 of “the book”, “association for interests” is graciously accepted as a voluntary material aims and union of egoists.

Thus the union here is reduced, on the one hand, to bourgeois associations and joint-stock companies and, on the other hand, to bourgeois clubs, picnics, etc. That the former belong wholly to the present epoch is well known, and that this equally applies to the latter is a so well known. Let Sancho look at the “unions” of an earlier epoch, e.g., of feudal times, or those of other nations, e.g., of the Italians, English, etc., right down to the “unions” of children, in order to realise what the difference is. By this new interpretation of the union he confirms only his obdurate conservatism. Sancho, who incorporated the whole of bourgeois society, insofar as he liked it, into his allegedly new institution, here by way of supplement only assures us that in his union people will also enjoy themselves and indeed in quite the traditional way. Our bonhomme, of course, does not consider the question: what relations existing independently of him enable — or do not enable — him to “accompany a few friends to a tavern”.

The idea of resolving the whole of society into voluntary groups — which is here, on the basis of hearsay accounts current in Berlin, turned into a Stirnerian idea — belongs to Fourier. [Charles Fourier, Théorie de l'unité universelle] But with Fourier this view presupposes a complete transformation of society and is based on a criticism of the existing “unions”, so much admired by Sancho, and of their infinite tedium. Fourier describes these present-day attempts at amusement in their connection with the existing relations of production and intercourse, and wages a polemic against them; Sancho, far from criticising them, wants on the contrary to transplant them in their entirety into his new “mutual agreement” institution for promoting happiness; he thereby only proves once again how strongly he is held in thrall to existing bourgeois society.

Finally, Sancho delivers the following oratio pro domo, i.e., in defence of the “union”.

“Is a union in which the majority allow themselves to be cheated in regard to their most natural and obvious interests, a union of egoists? Have egoists united where one is the slave or serf of another?... Societies in which the needs of some are satisfied at the expense of others, in which, for example, some can satisfy the need for rest by others having to work to the point of exhaustion ... Hess ... identifies ... these ‘egoistical unions’ of his with Stirner’s union of egoists” ([Wigand,] pp. 192, 193).

Sancho, therefore, expresses the pious wish that in his union, based on mutual exploitation, all the members will be equally powerful, cunning, etc., etc., so that each can exploit the others to exactly the same extent as they exploit him, and so that no one will be “cheated” in regard to his “most natural and obvious interests” or be able to “satisfy his needs at the expense of others”. We note here that Sancho recognises “natural and obvious interests” and “needs” of all — consequently, equal interests and needs. Further, we recall at once page 456 of the book, according to which “overreaching” is a “moral idea inculcated by the guild spirit”, and for a man who has had a “wise education”, it remains a “fixed idea from which no freedom of thought can give protection”. Sancho “gets his thoughts from above and adheres to them” (ibid.). This equal power of all consists, according to his demand, in that everyone should become “omnipotent”, i.e., all should become impotent in relation to one another, a perfectly consistent postulate that coincides with the sentimental desire of the petty bourgeois for a world of hucksters, in which everyone gets his advantage. Or, on the other hand, our saint quite suddenly presupposes a society in which each can satisfy his needs unhampered, without doing so “at the expense of others”, and in that case the theory of exploitation again becomes a meaningless paraphrase for the actual relations of individuals to one another. After Sancho in his “union” has “devoured” and consumed the others, thereby transforming intercourse with the world into intercourse with himself, he passes from this indirect self-enjoyment to direct self-enjoyment, by consuming himself.

C. My Self-Enjoyment[edit source]

The philosophy which preaches enjoyment is as old in Europe as the Cyrenaic school. ^[74] just as in antiquity it was the Greeks who were the protagonists of this philosophy, so in modern times it is the French, and indeed for the same reason, because their temperament and their society made them most capable of enjoyment. The philosophy of enjoyment was never anything but the clever language of certain social circles who had the privilege of enjoyment. Apart from the fact that the manner and content of their enjoyment was always determined by the whole structure of the rest of society and suffered from all its contradictions, this philosophy became a mere phrase as soon as it began to lay claim to a universal character and proclaimed itself the outlook on life of society as a whole. It sank then to the level of edifying moralising, to a sophistical palliation of existing society, or it was transformed into its opposite, by declaring compulsory asceticism to be enjoyment.

In modern times the philosophy of enjoyment arose with the decline of feudalism and with the transformation of the feudal landed nobility into the pleasure-loving and extravagant nobles of the court under the absolute monarchy. Among these nobles this philosophy still has largely the form of a direct, naive outlook on life which finds expression in memoirs, poems, novels, etc. It only becomes a real philosophy in the hands of a few writers of the revolutionary bourgeoisie, who, on the one hand, participated in the culture and mode of life of the court nobility and, on the other hand, shared the more general outlook of the bourgeoisie, based on the more general conditions of existence of this class. This philosophy was, therefore, accepted by both classes, although from totally different points of view. Whereas among the nobility this language was restricted exclusively to its estate and to the conditions of life of this estate, it was given a generalised character by the bourgeoisie and addressed to every individual without distinction. The conditions of life of these individuals were thus disregarded and the theory of enjoyment thereby transformed into an insipid and hypocritical moral doctrine. When, in the course of further development, the nobility was overthrown and the bourgeoisie brought into conflict with its opposite, the proletariat, the nobility became devoutly religious, and the bourgeoisie solemnly moral and strict in its theories, or else succumbed to the above-mentioned hypocrisy, although the nobility in practice by no means renounced enjoyment, while among the bourgeoisie enjoyment even assumed an official, economic form — that of luxury.

[The following passage is crossed out in the manuscript:] In the Middle Ages the pleasures were strictly classified; each estate had its own distinct forms of pleasure and its distinct manner of enjoyment. The nobility was the estate privileged to devote itself exclusively to pleasure, while the separation of work and enjoyment already existed for the bourgeoisie and pleasure was subordinated to work. The serfs, the class destined exclusively to labour, had only extremely few and restricted. pleasures, which came their way mostly by chance, depended on the whim of their masters and other contingencies, and are hardly worth considering.
Under the rule of the bourgeoisie the nature of the pleasures depended on the classes of society. The pleasures of the bourgeoisie are determined by the material brought forth by this class at various stages of its development and they have acquired the tedious character which they still retain from the individuals and from the continuous subordination of pleasure to money-making. The present crude form of proletarian pleasure is due, on the one hand, to the long working hours, which led to the utmost intensification of the need for enjoyment, and, on the other hand, to the restriction -both qualitative and quantitative – of the means of pleasure accessible to the proletarian.
In general, the pleasures of all hitherto existing estates and classes had to be either childish, exhausting or crude, because they were always completely divorced from the vital activity, the real content of the life of the individuals. and more or less reduced to imparting an illusory content to a meaningless activity. The hitherto existing forms of enjoyment could, of course, only be criticised when the contradiction between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat had developed to such an extent that the existing mode of production and intercourse could be criticised as well.

It was only possible to discover the connection between the kinds of enjoyment open to individuals at any particular time and the class relations in which they live, and the conditions of production and intercourse which give rise to these relations, the narrowness of the hitherto existing forms of enjoyment, which were outside the actual content of the life of people and in contradiction to it, the connection between every philosophy of enjoyment and the enjoyment actually present and the hypocrisy of such a philosophy which treated all individuals without distinction — it was, of course, only possible to discover all this when it became possible to criticise the conditions of production and intercourse in the hitherto existing world, i.e., when the contradiction between t — he bourgeoisie and the proletariat had given rise to communist and socialist views. That shattered the basis of all morality, whether the morality of asceticism or of enjoyment.

Our insipid, moralising Sancho believes, of course, as his whole book shows, that it is merely a matter of a different morality, of what appears to him a new outlook on life, of “getting out of one’s head” a few “fixed ideas”, to make everyone happy and able to enjoy life. Hence the chapter on self-enjoyment could at most reproduce under a new label the same phrases and maxims which he had already so frequently had the “self-enjoyment” of preaching to us. This chapter has only one original feature, namely that he deifies and turns into philosophical German all enjoyment, by giving it the name “self-enjoyment”. While the French philosophy of enjoyment of the eighteenth century at least gave a witty description of the gay and audacious mode of life that then existed, Sancho’s whole frivolity is limited to such expressions as “consuming” and “squandering”, to images such as the “light” (it should read a candle) and to natural-scientific recollections which amount either to belletristic nonsense such as that the plant “imbibes the air of the ether” and that “song-birds swallow beetles”, or else to wrong statements, for example, that a candle burns itself. On the other hand, here we again enjoy all the solemn seriousness of the statements against “the holy”, which, we are told, in the guise of “vocation — designation — task” and “ideal” has hitherto spoiled people’s self-enjoyment.

For the rest, without dwelling on the more or less dirty forms in which the “self” in “self-enjoyment” can be more than a mere phrase, we must once more as briefly as possible outline for the reader Sancho’s machinations against the holy, with the insignificant modulations occurring in this chapter.

— Revolutionary Tasks —

To recapitulate briefly, “vocation, designation, task, ideal” are either

1) the idea of the revolutionary tasks laid down for an oppressed class by the material conditions; or

2) mere idealistic paraphrases, or also the apt conscious expression of the individuals’ modes of activity which owing to division of labour have assumed independent existence as various professions; or

3) the conscious expression of the necessity which at every moment confronts individuals, classes and nations to assert their position through some quite definite activity; or

4) the conditions of existence of the ruling class (as determined by the preceding development of production), ideally expressed in law, morality, etc., to which [conditions] the ideologists of that class more or less consciously give a sort of theoretical independence; they can be conceived by separate individuals of that class as vocation, etc., and are held up as a standard of life to the individuals of the oppressed class, partly as an embellishment or recognition of domination, partly as a moral means for this domination. It is to be noted here, as in general with ideologists, that they inevitably put the thing upside-down and regard their ideology both as the creative force and as the aim of all social relations, whereas it is only an expression and symptom of these relations.

As for our Sancho, we know that he has the most ineradicable faith in the illusions of these ideologists. Because people, depending on their various conditions of life, construct various notions about themselves, that is about man, Sancho imagines that the various ideas created the various conditions of life and thus the wholesale manufacturers of these ideas, i.e., the ideologists, have dominated the world. Cf. page 433.

“Thinkers rule in the world”, “thought rules the world”; priests or school-masters” “stuff their heads with all sorts of trash”, “they imagine a human ideal” which other people have to take as a guide (p. 442).

Sancho even knows exactly the conclusion by virtue of which people were subjected to the fancies of the school-masters and owing to their stupidity subjected themselves to these fancies:

“Because it is conceivable for me” (the school-master), “it is possible for people; because it is possible for people, it means that they ought to be such, it was their vocation; and, finally, it is only according to this vocation, only as persons having a vocation, that one must judge human beings. And the further conclusion? It is not the individual who is man, but it is a thought, an ideal, that is man (p. 441). — species — mankind”

All collisions in which, owing to their actual conditions of life, human beings become involved with themselves or with others appear to our school-master Sancho as collisions between people and their ideas about the life of “Man”, ideas which they either have put themselves into their heads or have allowed school-masters to put into their heads. If they managed to get these ideas out of their heads “how happily” “these unfortunate beings could live”, what “capers” they could cut, whereas now they have to “dance to the pipe of the school-masters and bear-leaders"! (p. 435). (The lowest of these “bear-leaders” is Sancho, for it is only himself whom he leads by the nose.) If, for example, people almost always and almost everywhere — in China as well as in France — did not get it into their heads that they suffer from over-population, what an overflowing abundance of the means of existence would these “unfortunate beings” suddenly have at their disposal.

Under the pretext of writing a treatise on possibility and reality, Sancho here once more attempts to put forward his old story of the rule of the holy in the world. For him everything a school-master gets into his head about me is possible, and then Sancho can easily prove that this possibility has no reality except in his head. His solemn assertion that “behind the word possible lay concealed the most momentous misunderstanding of thousands of years” (p. 441) is sufficient proof that it is impossible for him to conceal behind word s the consequences of his abundant misunderstanding of thousands of years.

This treatise on the “coincidence of possibility and reality” (p. 439), on what people have the ability to be and what they are, a treatise that harmonises so well with his earlier insistent exhortations that one should bring all one’s abilities into play, etc., leads him, however, to a few more digressions on the materialist theory of circumstances, which we shall presently deal with in more detail. But first, one more example of his ideological distortion. On page 428 he makes the question “how can one acquire life” identical with the question how is one to “create in oneself the true ego” (or “life”). According to the same page, “worrying about life” ceases with his new moral philosophy and the “squandering” of life begins. Our Solomon expresses still more “eloquently” the miraculous power of his allegedly new moral philosophy in the following saying:

“Regard yourself as more powerful than others say You are, then you will have more power: value yourself more and you will have more” (p. 483).

See above, in the section on the “union”, Sancho’s method of acquiring property. Now for his theory of circumstances.

“Man has no vocation. but he has powers which manifest themselves where they exist, because their being consists solely in their manifestation, and they cannot remain inactive any more than life itself.... Everyone at each instant uses as much power as he has” (“increase your value, follow the example of the courageous man, let each of you become an omnipotent ego”, etc. — Sancho said above). ... One’s powers can indeed be intensified and multiplied, particularly by hostile resistance or friendly support; but where their application is missing one can be sure that they are absent. It is possible to strike fire from a stone, but without striking it, nothing comes out; similarly man needs an impulse. Since powers always prove to be operative of themselves, the injunction to use them would be superfluous and senseless.... Power is merely a simpler word for manifestation of power” (pp. 436, 437).

“Egoism in agreement with itself”, which just as it pleases brings or does not bring its powers or abilities into play and which applies the jus utendi et abutendi to them, here suddenly and unexpectedly comes to grief. Once they are present, the forces here all of a sudden act autonomously, without caring about Sancho’s “pleasure”, they act like chemical or mechanical forces, independently of the individual who possesses them. We learn further that a force is not present if its manifestation is missing; the correction being made that power requires an impulse for its manifestation. We do not learn, however, how Sancho will decide whether it is the impulse or the power that is lacking when the manifestation of power is deficient. On the other hand, our unique investigator of nature teaches us that “it is possible to strike fire from a stone”, and, as is always the case with Sancho, he could not have chosen a more unfortunate example. Sancho, like a simple village school-master, believes that the fire he strikes in this way comes from the stone, where it was previously latent. But any fourth-form schoolboy could tell him that in this method of obtaining fire, a method long forgotten in all civilised countries, by the friction of steel and stone, particles which become red-hot owing to this friction are separated from the steel, and not from the stone; that, consequently, the “fire”, which for Sancho is not a definite relation, at a definite temperature, of certain bodies to certain other bodies, in particular oxygen, but is an independent thing, an “element”, a fixed idea, “the holy" — that this fire does not come either from the stone or from the steel. Sancho might just as well have said: one can make bleached linen from chlorine, but if the “impulse”, viz., the unbleached linen, is lacking, then “nothing comes out”. We shall take this opportunity, for Sancho’s “self-enjoyment”, of noting an earlier fact of “unique” natural science. In the ode on crime it is stated:

“Is there not a distant peal of thunder
And do you not see how the sky
Filled with foreboding is silent and overcast?” (p. 319 of “the book”),

It thunders and the sky is silent. Hence Sancho knows of some other place than the sky from which thunder comes. Further, Sancho notices the silence of the sky by means of his organ of sight— a feat which no one will be able to imitate. Or perhaps Sancho hears thunder and sees silence, so that the two phenomena can take place simultaneously. We saw how Sancho in dealing with “apparitions” made mountains represent the “spirit of loftiness” . Here the silent sky represents for him the spirit of foreboding.

Incidentally, it is not clear why Sancho here rails against the “injunction to us c one’s powers”. This injunction, after all, could possibly be the missing “impulse”, which, it is true, fails to have effect in the case of a stone, but the efficacy of which Sancho could observe during the exercises of any battalion. That the “injunction” is an “impulse” even for his feeble powers follows also from the fact that for him it turns out to be a “stumbling block”. [anstoss — impulse, shock, scandal, offence; Stein des Anstosses — stumbling block]

Consciousness is also a power which, according to the doctrine which has just been enunciated, “always proves to be operative of itself”. In accordance with this, therefore, Sancho ought not to have set out to change consciousness, but at most the “impulse” which affects consciousness; consequently Sancho would have written his whole book in vain. But in this case, of course, he regards his moral preaching and “injunctions” as a sufficient “impulse”.

“What an individual can become he will become. A born poet may be prevented, owing to unfavourable circumstances, from being abreast of the times and creating great works of art, for which much study is indispensable; but he will compose poetry whether he is an agricultural labourer or has the good fortune to live at the Weimar Court. A born musician will occupy himself with music, no matter whether on all instruments” (he found this fantasy about “all instruments” in Proudhon. See “Communism”) “or only on a shepherd’s reed” (Virgil’s Eclogues, of course, again come into the mind of our school-master). “A born philosophical intellect can prove its worth either as a university philosopher or a village philosopher. Finally, a born dunce always remains a blockhead. Indeed, innate limited intellects undoubtedly form the most numerous class of mankind. And why should not the same differences occur in the human species as are unmistakably seen in every species of animate” (p. 434).

Sancho has again chosen his example with his usual lack of skill. If all his nonsense about born poets, musicians and philosophers is accepted, then this example only proves, on the one hand, that a born poet, etc., remains what he is from birth — namely a poet, etc.; and, on the other hand, that the born poet, etc., in so far as he becomes, develops, may, ,owing to unfavourable circumstances”, not become what he could become. His example, therefore, on the one hand, proves nothing at all, and, on the other hand, proves the opposite of what it was intended to prove; and taking both aspects together it proves that either from birth or owing to circumstances, Sancho belongs to “the most numerous class of mankind”. However, he shares the consolation of being a unique “blockhead” with this class and with his own blockheadedness.

Here Sancho experiences the adventure with the magic potion which Don Quixote brewed from rosemary, wine, olive oil and salt. As Cervantes relates in the seventeenth chapter, after Sancho had drunk this mixture he spent two hours in sweats and convulsions pouring it out from both channels of his body. The materialist potion which our valiant armour-bearer imbibed’ for his self-enjoyment purges him of all his egoism in the extraordinary sense. We saw above that Sancho suddenly lost all his solemnity when confronted with the “impulse”, and renounced his “ability”, like of yore the Egyptian magicians when confronted with the lice of Moses. Now we observe two new attacks of faint-heartedness, in which he also gives way “to unfavourable circumstances” and finally even admits that his original physical organisation is something that becomes crippled without co-operation from him. What is left now to our bankrupt egoist? He has no power over his original physical organisation; nor can he control the “circumstances” and the “impulse” under the influence of which this organisation develops; “what he is at every instant” is not “his own creation”, but something created by the interaction between his innate potentialities and the circumstances acting on them — all this Sancho concedes. Unfortunate “creator”! Most unfortunate “creation”!

But the greatest calamity comes at the end. Sancho, not satisfied that already long ago he received the full count of the tres mil azotes y trecientos en ambas sus valientes posaderas [three thousand acid three burial lashes upon his ample buttocks] finally delivers himself another and mighty blow by proclaiming himself a believer in species. And what a believer in species! Firstly, he attributes division of labour to species by making it responsible for the fact that some people are poets, others musicians, and still others school-masters. Secondly, he ascribes to species the existing physical and intellectual defects of “the most numerous class of mankind” and makes it responsible for the fact that under the rule of the bourgeoisie the majority of individuals are like himself. According to his views on innate limited intellects, one would have to explain the present spread of scrofula from the fact that “the species” finds a special satisfaction in making innate scrofulous constitutions form “the most numerous class of mankind”. Even the most ordinary materialists and medical men had got beyond such naive views long before the egoist in agreement with himself was “called” upon by “the species”, “unfavourable circumstances” and the “impulse” to make his début before the German public. just as previously Sancho explained all crippling of individuals, and hence of their relations, by means of the fixed ideas of school-masters, without worrying about the origin of these ideas, so now he explains this crippling as merely due to the natural process of generation. He has not the slightest idea that the ability of children to develop depends on the development of their parents and that all this crippling under existing social relations has arisen historically, and in the same way can be abolished again in the course of historical development. Even naturally evolved differences within the species, such as racial differences, etc., which Sancho does not mention at all, can and must be abolished in the course of historical development. Sancho — who in this connection casts a stealthy glance at zoology and so makes the discovery that “innate limited intellects” form the most numerous class not only among sheep and oxen, but also among polyps and infusoria, which have no heads at all — has perhaps heard that it is possible to improve races of animals and by cross-breeding to create entirely new, more perfect varieties both for human enjoyment and for their own self-enjoyment.. “Why should not” Sancho be able to draw a conclusion from this in relation to people as well?

We shall take this opportunity to “introduce episodically” Sancho’s “transformations” in relation to species. We shall see that his attitude to species is exactly the same as to the holy: the more he blusters against it, the more he believes in it.

No. I. We have already seen that species engenders division of labour and the crippling that takes place under existing social circumstances and indeed in such a way that the species together with its products is regarded as something immutable under all circumstances, as outside the control of people.

No. II. “Species is already realised owing to inherent constitution; on the other hand, what you make of this constitution” (according to what was said above, this ought to be: what “circumstances” make of it) “is the realisation of you. Your hand is fully realised in the sense of species, otherwise it would not be a hand but, let us sav, a paw.... You make of it what and how you wish it to be and what you can make of it” (Wigand, pp. 184, 185).

Here Sancho repeats in a different form what was already said in No. I.

We have seen, therefore, from what has been said so far that species, independently of control by individuals and the stage of their historical development, brings into the world all physical and spiritual potentialities, the immediate existence of individuals and, in embryo, division of labour.

No. III. Species remains as “impulse”, which is only a general term for the “circumstances” that determine the development of the original individual, again engendered by species. For Sancho species is here precisely the same mysterious force which other bourgeois call the nature of things and which they make responsible for all relationships that are independent of them as bourgeois, and whose interconnection, therefore, they do not understand.

No. IV. Species taken as “what is possible for man” and “required by man” forms the basis of the organisation of labour in “Stirner’s union”, where likewise what is possible for all and required by all is regarded as a product of species.

No. V. We have already heard about the role that agreement plays in the union.

Page 462: “If it is a matter of coming to an agreement or communicating with one another, then, of course, I can only make use of the human means that are at my disposal because I am at the same time a man” (i.e., a specimen of the species).

Here, therefore, language is regarded as a product of the species. That Sancho speaks German and not French, however, is something he in no way owes to the species, but to circumstances. Incidentally, in every modern developed language, partly as a result of the historical development of the language from pre-existing material, as in the Romance and Germanic languages, partly owing to the crossing and mixing of nations, as in the English language, and partly as a result of the concentration of the dialects within a single nation brought about by economic and political concentration, the spontaneously evolved speech has been turned into a national language. As a matter of course, the individuals at some time will take completely under their control this product of the species as well. In the union, language as such will be spoken, holy language, the language of the holy — Hebrew, and indeed the Aramaic dialect spoken by that “corporeal essence”, Christ. This “occurred” to us here “against the expectation” of Sancho, and “indeed exclusively because it seems to us that it could help to clarify the remainder”.

No. VI. On pages 277, 278, we learn that “the species reveals itself in nations, towns, estates, diverse corporations” and, finally, “in the family”; hence it is perfectly logical that up to now it has “made history”. Thus, here all preceding history, up to the unfortunate history of the unique, becomes a product of the “species” and, indeed, for the sufficient reason that this history has sometimes been summed up under the title of the history of mankind, i. e., of the species.

No. VII. In what has been said so far Sancho has attributed to the species more than any mortal had ever done before him, and he now sums it up in the following proposition:

“Species is nothing ... species is only a conception” (spirit, spectre, etc.) (p. 239).

Ultimately, then, this “nothing” of Sancho’s, which is identical with a “conception”, means nothing, for Sancho himself is ‘,the creative nothing”, and the species, as we have seen, creates a great deal, and in doing so it can therefore very well be “nothing”. Moreover Sancho tells us on page 456:

“Being justifies nothing at all; something imagined exists just as well as something not imagined.”

Starting with page 448, Sancho spins out a yarn lasting thirty pages in order to strike “fire” out of thought and criticism of the egoist in agreement with himself. We have already experienced too many expressions of his thought and criticism to give the reader further “offence ,a with Sancho’s beggar’s broth. One spoonful of it will suffice.

“Do you believe that thoughts fly about freely for the taking, so that anyone can capture some of them and then put them forward against me as his inviolable property? Everything that flies about, all of it is — mine” (p. 457).

Here Sancho poaches snipe existing only in the mind. We have seen how many of the thoughts flying about he has captured for himself. He fancied that he could catch them as soon as he put the salt of the holy on their tails. This colossal contradiction between his actual property in regard to thoughts and his illusions on that score may serve as a classic and striking example of his entire property in the extraordinary sense. It is precisely this contrast that constitutes his self-enjoyment.

6. Solomon’s Song of Songs or The Unique[edit source]

Cease man of Troy, and cease thou sage of Greece,
To boast of Navigations great ye made;
Let the high Fame of Alexander cease,
And Trajan’s Banners in the East display'd:

Cease All, whose Actions ancient Bards exprest:
A brighter Valour arises in the West.
And you (my Spree Nymphs)...
[Marx and Engels substituted “Spree” — the river on which Berlin stands — for Tagus]
Give me a mighty Fury, Nor rude Reeds
Or rustic Bag-Pipes sound, But such as War’s
Lowd Instrument (the noble Trumpet) breeds,
Which fires the Breast, and stirs the blood to jars.
[This and the following quotations are from Luis de Camões, Lusiada]

give me, o nymphs of the Spree, a song worthy of the heroes who fight on your banks against Substance and Man, a song that will spread over the whole world and will be sung in all lands — for it is a matter here of the man whose deeds are

Beyond what strength of human nature here,

greater than mere “human” power can perform, the man who

... acquir'd
A modern Scepter which to Heaven aspired

who has founded a new kingdom among a far-off people, viz., the “union" — it is a matter here of being a

... fair and tender Blossom of that Tree
Belov'd by Him, who dy’d on one for Man

of the tender and young blossoming shoot of a tree especially loved by Christ, a tree which is nothing less than

. ... certain Hope t'extend the Pale,
One day, of narrow Christianitie.

the surest hope of growth for faint-hearted Christianity — in a word, it is a matter of something “unprecedented”, the “unique”.

Everything that is to be found in this unprecedented song of songs about the unique was in existence earlier in the “book”. We mention this chapter only for the sake of good order; so that we should be able to do it properly we have left the examination of some points until now and we shall briefly recapitulate others.

Conclusion to “The Unique”[edit source]

Sancho’s “ego” has gone through the full gamut of soul migration. We already met it as the egoist in agreement with himself, as corvée peasant, as trader in thoughts, as unfortunate competitor, as owner, as a slave who has had one of his legs torn out, as Sancho tossed into the air by the interaction between birth and circumstances, and in a hundred other shapes. Here it bids us farewell as an “inhuman being”, under the same banner as that under which it made its entry into the New Testament.

“Only the inhuman being is the real man” (p. 232).

This is one of the thousand and one equations in which Sancho expounds his legend of the holy.

The concept “man” is not the real man.

The concept “man” = Man.

Man = not the real man.

The real man = the non-man,

= the inhuman being.

“Only the inhuman being is the real man. “

Sancho tries to explain to himself the harmlessness of this proposition by means of the following transformations:

“It is not so difficult to express in a few plain words what an inhuman being is; it is a man [ I who does not correspond to the concept of what is human. Logic calls this a nonsensical judgment. Would one have the right to pronounce this judgment that someone can be a man without being a man, if one did not admit the validity of the hypothesis that the concept of man can be separated from his existence, that the essence can be separated from the appearance? People say: so and so seems to be a man, but he is not a man. People have pronounced this nonsensical judgment throughout many centuries: moreover, during this long period of time there have only been inhuman beings. What individual did ever correspond to his concept?” (p. 232).

This passage is again based on our school-master’s fantasy about the school-master who has created for himself an ideal of “Man” and “put it into the heads” of other people, a fantasy which forms the basic theme of “the book”.

Sancho calls it a hypothesis that the concept and existence, the essence and appearance of “man” can be separated, as though the possibility of this separation is not already expressed in the very words he uses. When he says concept, he is speaking of something different from existence; when he says essence, he is speaking of something different from appearance. it is not these statements that he brings into contradiction, but they themselves are the expressions of a contradiction. Hence the only question that could have been raised is whether it is permissible for him to range something under these points of view; and in order to deal with this Sancho would have had to consider the actual relations of people who have been given other names in these metaphysical relations. For the rest, Sancho’s own arguments about the egoist in agreement with himself and about rebellion show how these points of view can be made to diverge, while his arguments about peculiarity, possibility and reality — in connection with “self-enjoyment” — show how they can be made simultaneously to coincide and to diverge.

The nonsensical judgment of the philosophers that the real man is not man is in the sphere of abstraction merely the most universal, all-embracing expression of the actually existing universal contradiction between the conditions and needs of people. The nonsensical form of the abstract proposition fully corresponds to the nonsensical character, carried to extreme lengths, of the relations of bourgeois society, just as Sancho’s nonsensical judgment about his environment — they are egoists and at the same time they are not egoists — corresponds to the actual contradiction between the existence of the German petty bourgeois and the tasks which existing relations have imposed on them and which they themselves entertain in the form of pious wishes and desires. Incidentally, philosophers have declared people to be inhuman, not because they did not correspond to the concept of man, but because their concept of man did not correspond to the true concept of man, or because they had no true understanding of man. Tout comme chez nous, [modified phrase from Nolant de Fatouville’s comedy Harlequin, empereur dans la lune — “tout comme ici” (just as here) is the stock response made by the people listening to Harlequin’s inventions about life on the moon] in “the book”, where Sancho also declares that people are non-egoists for the sole reason that they have no true understanding of egoism.

In view of its extreme triviality and indisputable certainty, there should have been no need to mention the perfectly inoffensive proposition that the idea of man is not the real man, that the idea of a thing is not the thing itself — a proposition which is also applicable to a stone and to the idea of a stone, in accordance with which Sancho should have said that the real stone is non-stone. But Sancho’s well-known fantasy that only because of the domination of ideas and concepts mankind has up to now been subjected to all sorts of misfortunes, makes it possible for him to link his old conclusions again with this proposition. Sancho’s old opinion that one has only to get a few ideas out of one’s head in order to abolish from the world the conditions which have given rise to these ideas, is reproduced here in the form that one has only to get out of one’s head the idea of man in order to put an end to the actually existing conditions which are today called inhuman — whether this predicate “inhuman” expresses the opinion of the individual in contradiction with his conditions or the opinion of the normal, ruling society about the abnormal, subjected class. In just the same way, a whale taken from the ocean and put in the Kupfergraben,^[75] if it possessed consciousness, would declare this situation created by “unfavourable circumstances” to be unwhale-like, although Sancho could prove that it is whale-like, if only because it is its, the whale’s, own situation — that is precisely how people argue in certain circumstances.

— The Idea and the Realisation of Freedom —

On page 185, Sancho raises the important question:

“But how to curb the inhuman being who dwells in each individuals How can one manage not to set free the inhuman being along with the human being'? All liberalism has a mortal enemy, an invincible opponent, as God has the devil; at the side of the human being there is always the inhuman being, the egoist, the individual. State, society, mankind cannot master this devil.”

“And when the thousand years are expired, Satan shall be loosed out of his prison,

“And shall go out to deceive the nations which are in the four quarters of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them together to battle....

“And they went up on the breadth of the earth, and compassed the camp of the saints about, and the beloved city” (Revelation of St. John 20:7-9).

In the form in which Sancho understands it, the question again becomes sheer nonsense. He imagines that people up to now have always formed a concept of man, and then won freedom for themselves to the extent that was necessary to realise this concept; that the measure of freedom that they achieved was determined each time by their idea of the ideal of man at the time; it was thus unavoidable that in each individual there remained a residue which did not correspond to this ideal and, hence, since it was “inhuman”, was either not set free or only freed malgré eux.

In reality, of course, what happened was that people won freedom for themselves each time to the extent that was dictated and permitted not by their ideal of man, but by the existing productive forces. All emancipation carried through hitherto has been based, however, on restricted productive forces. The production which these productive forces could provide was insufficient for the whole of society and made development possible only if some persons satisfied their needs at the expense of others, and therefore some — the minority — obtained the monopoly of development, while others — the majority — owing to the constant struggle to satisfy their most essential needs, were for the time being (i.e., until the creation of new revolutionary productive forces) excluded from any development. Thus, society has hitherto always developed within the framework of a contradiction — in antiquity the contradiction between free men and slaves, in the Middle Ages that between nobility and serfs, in modern times that between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. This explains, on the one hand, the abnormal, “inhuman” way in which the oppressed class satisfies its needs, and, on the other hand, the narrow limits within which intercourse, and with it the whole ruling class, develops. Hence this restricted character of development consists not only in the exclusion of one class from development, but also in the narrow-mindedness of the excluding class, and the “inhuman” is to be found also within the ruling class. This so-called “inhuman” is just as much a product of present-day relations as the “human” is; it is their negative aspect, the rebellion — which is not based on any new revolutionary productive force — against the prevailing relations brought about by the existing productive forces, and against the way of satisfying needs that corresponds to these relations. The positive expression “human” corresponds to the definite relations predominant at a certain stage of production and to the way of satisfying needs determined by them, just as the negative expression “inhuman” corresponds to the attempt to negate these predominant relations and the way of satisfying needs prevailing under them without changing the existing mode of production, an attempt that this stage of production daily engenders afresh.

For our saint, such world-historical struggles are reduced to a mere collision between Saint Bruno and “the mass”. Cf. the whole criticism of humane liberalism, especially page 192 et seq.

Thus, our simple-minded Sancho with his naive little statement about the inhuman being and with his talk of getting-man-out-of-one’s-head, thanks to which the inhuman being also disappears and there is no longer any measure for individuals, finally arrives at the following result. He regards the physical, intellectual and social crippling and enslavement which as a result of the existing relations afflict an individual, as the individuality and peculiarity of that individual; like an ordinary conservative he calmly recognises these relations once he has freed his mind of all worry by getting out of his head the philosophers’ idea of these relations. just as here he declares fortuitous features imposed on the individual to be the latter’s individuality, so earlier (cf. “Logic”), in connection with the ego, he abstracted not only from any fortuity, but also in general from any individuality.

About the “inhuman” great result obtained by him Sancho sings in the following Kyrie eleison, [Lord have mercy] which he puts into the mouth of “the inhuman being":

“I was despicable because I sought my better self outside me;
"I was the inhuman, because I dreamed of the human;
"I was like the pious ones who hunger for their true ego and always remain poor sinners;
"I thought of myself only in comparison with someone else;
"I was not all in all, I was not — unique.
"Now, however, I cease to appear to myself as the inhuman;
"I cease to measure myself by man and to let others measure me;
"I cease to recognise anything above myself —
"I was inhuman, but I am no longer inhuman, I am the unique!” Hallelujah!

We shall not dwell further here on how “the inhuman” — which, it may be said in passing, put itself in the right frame of mind by “turning its back” “on itself and the critic”, Saint Bruno — how “the inhuman” here “appears”, or does not “appear” to itself. We shall only point out that the “unique” (it or he) is characterised here by his getting the holy out of his, head for the nine-hundredth time, whereby, as we in our turn are compelled to repeat for the nine-hundredth time, everything remains as before, not to mention the fact that it is no more than a pious wish.

We have here, for the first time, the unique person, Sancho, who with the litany mentioned above has received the accolade of knighthood, now appropriates his new, noble name. Sancho arrives at his uniqueness by getting “Man” out of his head. He thereby ceases “to think of himself only in comparison with someone else” and “to recognise something above him”. He becomes incomparable. This is again the same old fantasy of Sancho’s that it is not the needs of individuals, but concepts, ideas, “the holy” — here in the shape of “Man” — that are the sole tertium comparationis and the sole bond between individuals. He gets an idea out of his head and thereby becomes unique.

To become “unique” in his sense of the word he must above all prove to us his freedom from premises.

Page 470: “Your thought has as its premise not thought, but you. But thus you nevertheless have yourself as a premise? Yes, but not to me, but to my thought. I am before my thought. It follows hence that no thought precedes my thinking, or that my thinking is without any premise. For the premise which I am for my thinking is not one created by thinking, not one that is thought, but ... is the owner of thinking, and proves only that thinking is nothing but — property.”

“We are prepared to allow” that Sancho does not think before he thinks, and that he and everyone else is in this respect a thinker without premises. Similarly we concede that he does not have any thought as the premise of his existence, i.e., that he was not created by thoughts. If for a moment Sancho abstracts from all his thoughts — which with his meagre assortment cannot be very difficult — there remains his real ego, but his real ego within the framework of the actual relations of the world that exist for it. In this way he has divested himself for a moment of all dogmatic premises, but now for the first time the real premises begin to come to light for him. And these real premises are also the premises of his dogmatic premises which, whether he likes it or not, will reappear to him together with the real ones so long as he does not obtain different real premises, and with them also different dogmatic premises, or so long as he does not recognise in a materialistic way that the real premises are the premises of his thinking, and a,, a result his dogmatic ones will disappear altogether. just as his development up to now and his Berlin environment have at present led to the dogmatic premise of egoism in agreement with itself, so, despite all imaginary freedom from premises, this premise will remain with him as long as he fails to overcome its real premises.

As a true school-master, Sancho still continues to strive for the famous Hegelian “premiseless thinking”, i.e., thinking without dogmatic premises, which in Hegel too is only a pious wish. Sancho believed he could achieve this by a skilful leap and even surpass it by going in pursuit of the premiseless ego. But both the one and the other eluded his grasp.

Then Sancho tries his luck in another fashion:

Pages 214, 215: “Make full use” of the demand for freedom! “Who shall become free? You, I, we. Free from what? From everything that is not you, not I, not we, I, therefore, am the core.... What remains if I become free from everything that is not I? Only I and nothing but I.”

So that was the poodle’s core!
A travelling scholar? The incident makes me laugh.
[Goethe, Faust, I. Teil, 1. “Studierzimmerszene"]

“Everything that is not you, not I, not we” is, of course, here again a dogmatic idea, like state, nationality, division of labour, etc. Once these ideas have been subjected to criticism — and, in Sancho’s opinion, this has already been done by “criticism”, namely critical criticism — he again imagines that he is also free from the actual state, actual nationality and division of labour. Consequently the ego, which is here the “core”, which “has become free from everything that is not I” — is still the above-mentioned premiseless ego with everything that it has not got rid of.

If, however, Sancho were once to tackle the subject of “becoming tree” with the desire of freeing himself not merely from categories, but from actual fetters, then such liberation would presuppose a change common to him and to a large mass of other people, and would produce a change in the state of the world which again would be common to him and others. Although his “ego” “remains” after liberation, it is hereafter a totally changed ego sharing with others a changed state of the world which is precisely the premise, common to him and others, of his and their freedom, and it follows that the uniqueness, incomparability and independence of his “ego” again come to nothing.

Sancho tries again in a third fashion:

Page 237: “Their disgrace is not that they” (Jew and Christian) “exclude each other but that this only half occurs. If they could be perfect egoists they would totally exclude each other.”

Page 273: “If one desires only to resolve the contradiction one grasps its meaning in too formal and feeble a way. The contradiction deserves rather to be sharpened.”

Page 274: “Only when you recognise your contradiction fully and when everyone asserts himself from head to foot as unique will you no longer simply conceal your contradiction.... The final and most decisive contradiction — that between one unique person and another — goes basically beyond the bounds of what is called contradiction.... As a unique person you have nothing more in common with the other and, for that reason, nothing that makes you separate from him or hostile to him.... Contradiction disappears in perfect ... separateness or uniqueness.”

Page 183: “I do not want to have or to be something special in relation to others; nor do I measure myself by others.... I want to be everything I can be, and to have everything I can have. What do I care whether others are or have something similar to me? They can neither be nor have something equal, the same. I do nothing detrimental to them any more than it is to the detriment of the cliff that I have the advantage of movement. If they could have it, they would have it. Doing nothing to the detriment of other people, that is the meaning of the demand to have no privileges.... One should not regard oneself as ‘something special’, e.g., Jew or Christian. Well, I regard myself not as something special but as unique. True, I have a resemblance to others; but this holds only for comparison or reflection; in fact, however, I am incomparable, unique. My flesh is not their flesh, my spirit is not their spirit. If you bring them under the general concept ‘flesh’, ‘spirit’, then those are your thoughts, which have nothing to do with ray flesh, my spirit.”

Page 234: “Human society perishes because of the egoists, for they no longer treat one another as human beings, but act egoistically as an ego against a you that is totally distinct from and hostile to me.”

Page 180: “As though one individual will not always seek out another, and as though one person does not have to adapt himself to another, when he needs him. But the difference is that in this case the individual actually unites with another individual, whereas previously he was linked to him by a bond.”

Page 178: “Only when you are unique can you in your intercourse with one another be what you actually are.”

As regards Sancho’s illusion about the intercourse of the unique ones “as what they actually are”, about “the uniting of the individual with the individual”, in short, about the “union”, that has been completely dealt with. We shall merely point out: whereas in the union each regarded and treated the other merely as his object, his property (cf. page 167 and the theory of property and exploitation), in the “Commentary” (Wigand, p. 157), on the contrary, the governor of the island of Barataria realises and recognises that the other also belongs to himself, is his own, is unique, and in that capacity also becomes Sancho’s object, although no longer Sancho’s property. In his despair, lie saves himself only by the unexpected idea that “because of this” he “forgets himself in sweet self-oblivion”, a delight which he “affords himself a thousand times every hour” and which is still further sweetened by the sweet consciousness that nevertheless he has not “completely disappeared”. The result, therefore, is the old wisdom that each exists for himself and for others.

Let us now reduce Sancho’s pompous statements to their actual modest content.

The bombastic phrases about “contradiction” which has to be sharpened and taken to extremes, and about the “something special”, which Sancho does not want to have as his advantage, amount to one and the same thing. Sancho wants, or rather believes he wants, that intercourse between individuals should be purely personal, that their intercourse should not be mediated through some third thing (cf. competition). This third thing here is the “something special”, or the special, not absolute, contradiction, i.e., the position of individuals in relation to one another determined by present-day social relations. Sancho does not want, for example, two individuals to be in “contradiction” to one another as bourgeois and proletarian; he protests against the “special” which forms the “advantage” of the bourgeois over the proletarian; he would like to have them enter into a purely personal relation, to associate with one another merely as individuals. He does not take into consideration that in the framework of division of labour personal relations necessarily and inevitably develop into class relations and become fixed as such and that, therefore, all his talk amounts simply to a pious wish, which he expects to realise by exhorting the individuals of these classes to get out of their heads the idea of their “contradiction” and their “special” “privilege”. In the passages from Sancho quoted above, everything turns only on people’s opinion of themselves, and his opinion of them, what they want and what he wants. “Contradiction” and the “special” are abolished by a change of “opinion” and “wanting”.

— On Individuality —

Even that which constitutes the advantage of an individual as such over other individuals, is in our day at the same time a product of society and in its realisation is bound to assert itself as privilege, as we have already shown Sancho in connection with competition. Further, the individual as such, regarded by himself, is subordinated to division of labour, which makes him one-sided, cripples and determines him.

What, at best, does Sancho’s sharpening of contradiction and abolition of the special amount to? To this, that the mutual relations of individuals should be their behaviour to one another, while their mutual differences should be their self-distinctions (as one empirical self distinguishes itself from another). Both of these are either, as with Sancho, an ideological paraphrase of what exists, for the relations of individuals under all circumstances can only be their mutual behaviour, while their differences can only be their self-distinctions. Or they are the pious wish that they should behave in such a way and differ from one another in such a way, that their behaviour does not acquire independent existence as a social relationship independent of them, and that their differences from one another should not assume the material character (independent of the person) which they have assumed and daily continue to assume.

Individuals have always and in all circumstances “proceeded from themselves”, but since they were not unique in the sense of not needing any connections with one another, and since their needs, consequently their nature, and the method of satisfying their needs, connected them with one another (relations between the sexes, exchange, division of labour), they had to enter into relations with one another. Moreover, since they entered into intercourse with one another not as pure egos, but as individuals at a definite stage of development of their productive forces and requirements, and since this intercourse, in its turn, determined production and needs, it was, therefore, precisely the personal, individual behaviour of individuals, their behaviour to one another as individuals, that created the existing relations and daily reproduces them anew. They entered into intercourse with one another as what they were, they proceeded “from themselves”, as they were, irrespective of their “outlook on life”. This “outlook on life” — even the warped one of the philosophers — could, of course, only be determined by their actual life. Hence it certainly follows that the development of an individual is determined by the development of all the others with whom he is directly or indirectly associated, and that the different generations of individuals entering into relation with one another are connected with one another, that the physical existence of the later generations is determined by that of their predecessors, and that these later generations inherit the productive forces and forms of intercourse accumulated by their predecessors, their own mutual relations being determined thereby. In short, it is clear that development takes place and that the history of a single individual cannot possibly be separated from the history of preceding or contemporary individuals, but is determined by this history.

The transformation of the individual relationship into its opposite, a purely material relationship, the distinction of individuality and fortuity by the individuals themselves, is a historical process, as we have already shown,’ and at different stages of development it assumes different, ever sharper and more universal forms. In the present epoch, the domination of material relations over individuals, and the suppression of individuality by fortuitous circumstances, has assumed its sharpest and most universal form, thereby setting existing individuals a very definite task. It has set them the task of replacing the domination of circumstances and of chance over individuals by the domination of individuals over chance and circumstances. It has not, as Sancho imagines, put forward the demand that “I should develop myself”, which up to now every individual has done without Sancho’s good advice; it has on the contrary called for liberation from a quite definite mode of development. This task, dictated by present-day relations, coincides with the task of organising society in a communist way.

We have already shown above that the abolition of a state of affairs in which relations become independent of individuals, in which individuality is subservient to chance and the personal relations of individuals are subordinated to general class relations, etc. — that the abolition of this state of affairs is determined in the final analysis by the abolition of division of labour. We have also shown that the abolition of division of labour is determined by the development of intercourse and productive forces to such a degree of universality that private property and division of labour become fetters on them. We have further shown that private property can be abolished only on condition of an all-round development of individuals, precisely because the existing form of intercourse and the existing productive forces are all-embracing and only individuals that are developing in an all-round fashion can appropriate them, i.e., can turn them into free manifestations of their lives. We have shown that at the present time individuals must abolish private property, because the productive forces and forms of intercourse have developed so far that, under the domination of private property, they have become destructive forces, and because the contradiction between the classes has reached its extreme limit. Finally, we have shown that the abolition of private property and of the division of labour is itself the association of individuals on the basis created by modern productive forces and world intercourse.

Within communist society, the only society in which the genuine and free development of individuals ceases to be a mere phrase, this development is determined precisely by the connection of individuals, a connection which consists partly in the economic prerequisites and partly in the necessary solidarity of the free development of all, and, finally, in the universal character of the activity of individuals on the basis of the existing productive forces. We are, therefore, here concerned with individuals at a definite historical stage of development and by no means merely with individuals chosen at random, even disregarding the indispensable communist revolution, which itself is a general condition for their free development. The individuals’ consciousness of their mutual relations will, of course, likewise be completely changed, and, therefore, will no more be the “principle of love” or dévoûment than it will be egoism.

Thus, “uniqueness” — taken in the sense of genuine development and individual behaviour, as outlined above — presupposes not only things quite different from good will and right consciousness, but even the direct opposite of Sancho’s fantasies. With him “uniqueness” is nothing more than an embellishment of existing conditions, a little drop of comforting balm for the poor, impotent soul that has become wretched through wretchedness.

As regards Sancho’s “incomparability”, the situation is the same as with his “uniqueness”. He himself will recall, if he is not completely “lost” in “sweet self-oblivion”, that the organisation of labour in “Stirner’s union of egoists” was based not only on the comparability of needs, but also on their equality. And he assumed not only equal needs, but also equal activity, so that one individual could take the place of another in “human work”. And the extra remuneration of the “unique” person, crowning his efforts — what other basis had it than the fact that his performance was compared with that of others and in view of its superiority was better paid? And how can Sancho talk at all about incomparability when he allows money — the means of comparison that acquires independent existence in practice — to continue in being, subordinates himself to it and allows himself to be measured by this universal scale in order to be compared with others? It is quite evident that he himself gives the lie to his doctrine rid of incomparability. Nothing is easier than to call equality and inequality, similarity and dissimilarity, determinations of reflection. Incomparability too is a determination of reflection which has the activity of comparison as its premise. To show that comparison is not at all a purely arbitrary determination of reflection, it is enough to give just one example, money, the permanent tertium comparationis of all people and things.

Incidentally, incomparability can have different meanings. The only meaning in question here, namely “uniqueness” in the sense of originality, presupposes that the activity of the incomparable individual in a definite sphere differs from the activity of his equals. Persiani is an incomparable singer precisely because she is a singer and is compared with other singers, and indeed by people who are able to recognise her incomparability through comparison based on normal hearing and musical training. Persiani’s singing and the croaking of a frog are incomparable, although even here there could be a comparison, but it would be a comparison between a human being and a frog, and not between Persiani and a particular unique frog. Only in the first case is it possible to speak of a comparison between individuals, in the second it is a matter only of their properties as species or genus. A third type of incomparability — the incomparability of Persiani’s singing with the tail of a comet — we leave to Sancho for his “self-enjoyment”, since at any rate he finds pleasure in “nonsensical judgments”, although even this absurd comparison has a real basis in the absurdity of present-day relations. Money is the common measure for all, even the most heterogeneous things.

Incidentally, Sancho’s incomparability amounts to the same empty phrase as his uniqueness. Individuals are no longer to be measured by some tertium comparationis independent of them, but comparison should be transformed into their self-distinction, i.e., into the free development of their individuality, which, moreover, is brought about by their getting “fixed ideas” out of their heads.

Incidentally, Sancho is acquainted only with the type of comparison made by scribblers and ranters, which leads to the magnificent conclusion that Sancho is not Bruno and Bruno is not Sancho. On the other hand, he is, of course, unacquainted with the sciences which have made considerable advances just by comparing and establishing differences in the spheres of comparison and in which comparison acquires a character of universal importance — i.e., in comparative anatomy, botany, philology, etc.

Great nations — the French, North Americans, English — are constantly comparing themselves with one another both in practice and theory, in competition and in science. Petty shopkeepers and philistines, like the Germans, who are afraid of comparison and competition, hide behind the shield of incomparability supplied them by their manufacturer of philosophical labels. Not only in their interests, but also in his own, has Sancho refused to tolerate any comparison.

On page 415 Sancho says:

“There exists no one equal to me,”

and on page 408 association with “my equals” is depicted as the dissolution of society in intercourse:

“The child prefers intercourse with his equals to society.”

However, Sancho sometimes uses “equal to me” and “equal” in general in the sense of “the same”, e.g., the passage on page 183 quoted above:

“They can neither be nor have something equal, the same.”

Here he arrives at his final “new turn of expression”, which he uses especially in the “Commentary”.

The uniqueness, the originality, the “peculiar” development of individuals which, according to Sancho, does not for example occur in all “human works”, although no one will deny that one stove-setter does not set a stove in the “same” way as another; the unique” development of individuals which, in the opinion of this same Sancho, does not occur in religious, political, etc., spheres (see “Phenomenology”), although no one will deny that of all those who believe in Islam not one believes in it in the “same” way as another and to this extent each of them is “unique”, just as among citizens not one has the “same” attitude to the state as another if only because it is a matter of his attitude, and not that of some-other — all this much praised “uniqueness” which [according to Sancho] was so distinct from “sameness”, identity of the person, that in all individuals who have so far existed he could hardly see anything but “specimens” of a species, is thus reduced here to the identity of a person with himself, as established by the police, to the fact that one individual is not some other individual. Thus Sancho, who was going to take the world by storm, dwindles to a clerk in a passport office.

On page 184 of the “Commentary” he relates with much unction and great self-enjoyment that he does not become replete when the Japanese Emperor eats, because his stomach and that of the Japanese Emperor are “unique”, “incomparable stomachs”, i.e., not the same stomachs. If Sancho believes that in this way he has abolished the social relations hitherto existing or even only the laws of nature, then his naiveté is excessively great and it springs merely from the fact that philosophers have not depicted social relations as the mutual relations of particular individuals identical with themselves, and the laws of nature as the mutual connections of these particular bodies.

The classic expression which Leibniz gave to this old proposition (to be found on the first page of any physics textbook as the theory of the impenetrability of bodies) is well known:

“However, every monad necessarily differs from every other; for in nature there are never two things that exactly coincide with each other.” (Principia Philosophiae seu Theses, etc.)

Sancho’s uniqueness is here reduced to a quality which he shares with every louse and every grain of sand.

The greatest disclaimer with which his philosophy could end is that it regards the realisation that Sancho is not Bruno, which is obvious to every country bumpkin and police sergeant, to be one of the greatest discoveries, and that it considers the fact of this difference to be a real miracle.

Thus the “critical hurrah” of our “virtuoso of thought” has become an uncritical miserere.

After all these adventures our “unique” squire again sails into the harbour of his native serf’s cottage. “The title spectre of his book” rushes out to meet him “joyfully”. Her first enquiry is: how is the ass?

Better than his master, replies Sancho.

Thanks be to God for so much goodness. But tell me now, my friend, what profit have you got out of your squiredom? What new dress have you brought me?

I have brought nothing like that, replies Sancho, but I have brought “the creative nothing, the nothing from which I myself as creator create everything”. This means you will yet see me in the capacity of church father and archbishop of an island and, indeed, one of the best it is possible to find.

God grant it, my treasure, and may it be soon, for we sorely need it. But as regards the island you mention, I don’t know what you mean.

Honey is not for the ass’s mouth, replies Sancho. You will see it for ourself in due course, wife. But even now I can tell you that nothing is more pleasant in the world than the honour of seeking adventures as an egoist in agreement with himself and as the squire of the rueful countenance. True, most of these adventures do not “reach the final goal” so that “human requirement is satisfied” (tan como el hombre querría [as the human being desires]), for ninety-nine adventures out of a hundred go awry and follow a tangled course. I know this from experience, for in some of them I was cheated and from others I went home soundly pounded and thrashed. But in spite of all that, it is a fine thing, for at any rate the “unique” requirement is always satisfied when one wanders through the whole of history, quoting all the books in the Berlin reading-room, getting an etymological night’s lodging in all languages, falsifying political facts in all countries, boastfully throwing down gages to all dragons and ostriches, elfs, field hobgoblings and “spectres”, exchanging blows with all church fathers and philosophers and yet, finally, paying for it only with your own body (cf. Cervantes, I, Chapter 52).

2. Apologetical Commentary[edit source]

Although formerly, when in a state of humiliation (Cervantes, Chapters 26 and 29), Sancho had all kinds of “doubts” about accepting an ecclesiastical benefice, nevertheless, after pondering over the changed circumstances and his earlier preparation as beadle to a religious brotherhood (Cervantes, Chapter 21), he finally decided to “get” this doubt “out of his head”. He became archbishop of the island of Barataria and a cardinal and as such sits with solemn mien and arch-ecclesiastical dignity among the foremost of our Council. Now, after the long episode of “the book”, we return to this Council.

True, we find that “brother Sancho” in his new station in life has changed considerably. He now represents the ecclesia triumphans — in contrast to the ecclesia militans [Church militant] in which he was before. Instead of the belligerent fanfares of “the book” there is a solemn seriousness; “Stirner” has taken the place of the “ego”. This shows how true the French saying is: qu'il n'y a qu'un pas du sublime au ridicule. [There is only one step from the sublime to the ridiculous, an expression used by Napoleon on many occasions] Since he became a father of the church and began to write pastoral epistles, Sancho calls himself nothing but “Stirner”. He learned this “unique” way of self-enjoyment from Feuerbach, but unfortunately it befits him no better than playing the lute does his ass. When he speaks of himself in the third person, everyone sees that Sancho the “creator”, after the manner of Prussian non-commissioned officers, addresses his “creation” Stirner in the third person, and should on no account be confused with Caesar. [The reference is to Julius Caesar’s Commentarii de bello Callico written in the third person about himself]

The impression is all the more comical because Sancho commits this inconsistency only in order to compete with Feuerbach. Sancho’s “self-enjoyment” of his performance as a great man becomes here malgré lui an enjoyment for others.

The “special” thing that Sancho does in his “Commentary”, insofar as we have not “used it up” already in the episode, consists in his regaling us with a new series of variations on the familiar themes already played with such long-winded monotony in “the book”. Here Sancho’s music, which like that of the Indian priests of Vishnu knows only one note, is played a few registers higher. But its narcotic effect remains, of course, the same. Thus, for example, the antithesis of “egoistical” and “holy” is again thoroughly kneaded, this time under the signboards of “interesting” and “uninteresting”, and then of “interesting” and “absolutely interesting”, an innovation which, incidentally, could only be of interest to lovers of unleavened bread, in common parlance matzos. One should not, of course, blame an “educated” Berlin petty bourgeois for the belletristic distortion of the interested into the interesting.

All the illusions which, according to Sancho’s pet crotchet, were created by “school-masters” appear here “as difficulties — doubts”, which “only spirit created” and which “the poor souls who allowed themselves to be talked into these doubts” “should ... overcome” by “light-heartedness” (the famous getting out of one’s head) (p. 162). Then comes a “treatise” in which he considers whether “doubts” should be got out of one’s head by “thinking” or by “thoughtlessness”, and a critical-moral adagio in which he laments in minor chords:

“Thought must on no account be suppressed by rejoicing” (p. 166).

For the tranquillity of Europe, and especially of the oppressed old merry and young sorry England as soon as Sancho has become somewhat accustomed to his episcopal chaise percée, [night commode] he issues from this eminence the following gracious pastoral epistle:

“Civil society is not at all dear to Stirner, and he has no intention of extending it so that it swallows up the state and the family” (p. 189).

Let Mr. Cobden and Monsieur Dunoyer bear this in mind.

In his capacity of archbishop, Sancho immediately takes control of the spiritual police, and on page 193 he gives Hess a reprimand for confusing matters, which “are contrary to police regulations” and the more unpardonable the greater the efforts that our church father continually makes to establish identity. To prove to this same Hess that “Stirner” also possesses the “heroic courage of lying”, that orthodox quality of the egoist in agreement with himself, he sings on page 188: “But Stirner does not say at all — contrary to what Hess makes him say — that the whole mistake of previous egoists was merely that they were not conscious of their egoism.” Cf. “Phenomenology” and the entire “book”. The other quality of the egoist in agreement with himself — credulity — he displays on page 182, where he “does not dispute” Feuerbach’s opinion that “the individual is a communist”. A further exercise of his police powers consists in censuring (on page 154) all his reviewers for not having dealt “in more detail with egoism as Stirner conceives it”. Indeed, they all made the mistake of thinking that it was a question of actual egoism, whereas it was merely a question of “Stirner’s” conception of it.

The “Apologetical Commentary” also proves Sancho’s aptitude for acting as a church father by beginning with a piece of hypocrisy:

“A brief reply may be of benefit, if not perhaps to the reviewers named, then at least to some other reader of the book” (p. 147).

Here Sancho plays the devotee and asserts that he is prepared to sacrifice his valuable time for the “benefit” of the public, although he constantly assures us that he always has in view only his own benefit, and although he is only trying here to save his own clerical skin.

Thereby we have finished with the “special” of the “Commentary”. The “unique” feature, which, however, occurs already in “the book”, on page 49 1, has been kept by us in reserve not so much for the “benefit” of “some other reader” as for “Stirner’s” own benefit. One hand washes the other, from which it indisputably follows that “the individual is a communist”.

— Thought and Language —

One of the most difficult tasks confronting philosophers is to descend from the world of thought to the actual world. Language is the immediate actuality of thought. Just as philosophers have given thought an independent existence, so they were bound to make language into an independent realm. This is the secret of philosophical language, in which thoughts in the form of words have their own content. The problem of descending from the world of thoughts to the actual world is turned into the problem of descending from language to life.

We have shown that thoughts and ideas acquire an independent existence in consequence of the personal circumstances and relations of individuals acquiring independent existence. We have shown that exclusive, systematic occupation with these thoughts on the part of ideologists and philosophers, and hence the systematisation of these thoughts, is a consequence of division of labour, and that, in particular, German philosophy is a consequence of German petty-bourgeois conditions. The philosophers have only to dissolve their language into the ordinary language, from which it is abstracted, in order to recognise it, as the distorted language of the actual world, and to realise that neither thoughts nor language in themselves form a realm of their own, that they are only manifestations of actual life.

Sancho, who follows the philosophers through thick and thin, must inevitably seek the philosophers stone, the squaring of the circle and elixir of life, or a “word” which as such would possess the miraculous power of leading from the realm of language and thought to actual life. Sancho has been so infected by his long years of association with Don Quixote that he fails to notice that this “task” of his, this “vocation”, is nothing but the result of his faith in weighty philosophical books of knight-errantry.

Sancho begins by showing us once again the domination of the holy and of ideas in the world, this time in the new form of the domination of language or phrase. Language, of course, becomes a phrase as soon as it is given an independent existence.

On page 151, Sancho calls the modern world “a world of phrases, a world where in the beginning was the word”. He describes in more detail the motives for his chase after the magic word:

“Philosophical speculation strove to find a predicate which would be so universal as to include everyone in itself.... in order that the predicate should include everyone in it, each should appear in it as subject, i.e., not merely as what he is, but as who he is” (p. 152).

Since speculation “sought” such predicates, which Sancho had previously called vocation, designation, task, species, etc., therefore actual people up to now “sought” themselves “in the word, the logos, the predicate” (p. 153). Up to now one has used the name when one wanted to distinguish in language one individual from another, merely as an identical person. But Sancho is not satisfied with ordinary names; because philosophical speculation has set him the task of finding a predicate so universal that it would include in itself everyone as subject, he seeks the philosophical, abstract name, the “Name” that is above all names, the name of names, name as a category which, for example, would distinguish Sancho from Bruno, and both of them from Feuerbach, as precisely as their own proper names, and which would nevertheless be applicable to all three and also to all other people and corporeal beings — an innovation which would introduce the greatest confusion into all bills of exchange, marriage contracts, etc., and at one blow put an end to all notaries and registry offices. This miraculous name, this magic word, which in language spells the death of language, this asses’ bridge leading to life and the highest rung of the Chinese celestial ladder is — the unique. The miraculous properties of this word are sung in the following stanzas:

“The unique one should be only the last, dying statement of you and me, should be only that statement which is transformed into opinion:
"a statement that is no longer a statement, “a muted, mute statement” (p. 153).
"With him” (the unique one) “what is not expressed is the chief thing” (p. 149). He “is without determination” (ibid.).
"He points to the content, lying outside or beyond the concept” (ibid.).
This is “a concept without determination and cannot be made more definite by any other concept” (p. 150).
This is the philosophical “christening” of worldly names (p. 150).
"The unique is a word devoid of thought.
"It has no thought content."
"It expresses a person” “that cannot exist a second time, and consequently cannot be expressed either;
"For if he could be expressed actually and completely, then he would exist a second time, he would exist in the expression” (p. 151).

Having thus sung the properties of this word, he celebrates in the following antistrophic stanzas the results obtained by the discovery of its miraculous power:

“With the unique one the realm of absolute thoughts is completed” (p. 150).
"He is the keystone of our world of phrases” (p. 151).
"He is logic that comes to an end as a phrase” (p. 153).
"In the unique one, science can merge in life,
"By transforming its this into such-and-such a one,
"Who no longer seeks himself in the word, the logos, the predicate” (p. 153).

True, as regards his reviewers Sancho has had the unpleasant experience of learning that the unique, too, can be “fixed as a concept”, and “that is what the opponents do” (p. 149), who are so opposed to Sancho that they do not feel at all the expected magical effect of the magical word, but instead sing, as in the opera: Ce nest pas ça, ce nest pas ça! With great exasperation and solemn seriousness Sancho turns particularly against his Don Quixote-Szeliga, for in him the misunderstanding presupposes an open “rebellion” and a complete misapprehension of his position as a “creature”.

“If Szeliga had understood that the unique, being a completely empty phrase or category, thereby is no longer a category, he might, perhaps, have recognised it as the name of that for which he still has no name” (p. 179).

Here, therefore, Sancho expressly recognises that he and his Don Quixote are striving towards one and the same goal, with the only difference that Sancho imagines that he has discovered the true morning star, whereas Don Quixote, still in darkness

Swims in the wild liver-sea
of the unfathomable world.
[Meister Kuonrat von Wurzeburc, Diu guldin Smitte, Verse 143]

Feuerbach said in his Philosophie der Zukunft, p. 49:

“Being, based on sheer inexpressibles, is therefore itself something inexpressible. Yes, the inexpressible. Where words end, only there does life begin, only there can the secret of being be deduced.”

Sancho has found the transition from the expressible to the inexpressible, he has found the word which is simultaneously more and less than a word.

— Language and Life —

We have seen that the whole problem of the transition from thought to reality, hence from language to life, exists only in philosophical illusion, i.e., it is justified only for philosophical consciousness, which cannot possibly be clear about the nature and origin of its apparent separation from life. This great problem, insofar as it at all entered the minds of our ideologists, was bound, of course, to result finally in one of these knights-errant setting out in search of a word which, as a word, formed the transition in question, which, as a word, ceases to be simply a word, and which, as a word, in a mysterious superlinguistic manner, points from within language to the actual object it denotes; which, in short, plays among words the same role as the Redeeming God-Man plays among people in Christian fantasy. The emptiest, shallowest brain among the philosophers had to “end” philosophy by proclaiming his lack of thought to be the end of philosophy and thus the triumphant entry into “corporeal” life. His philosophising mental vacuity was already in itself the end of philosophy just as his unspeakable language was the end of all language. Sancho’s triumph was also due to the fact that of all philosophers he was least of all acquainted with actual relations, hence philosophical categories with him lost the last vestige of connection with reality, and with that the last vestige of meaning.

So now go forth, pious and faithful servant Sancho, go or, rather, ride forth on your ass, to your unique’s self-enjoyment, “use up” your “unique” to the last letter, the unique whose miraculous title, power and courage have already been sung by Calderón in the following words:

The unique —
The valiant fighter,
the generous leader,
the gallant knight,
the illustrious Paladin,
the always faithful Christian,
the fortunate Admiral of Africa,
the sovereign King of Alexandria,
the judge of Barbary,
the Cid of Egypt,
Marabout, and Grand Seignior
of Jerusalem.
[Calderón, La puenta de Vantible, Act 1. The words “The always faithful Christian” have been inserted by Marx and Engels]

“In conclusion, it would not be unsuitable to remind” Sancho, the Grand Seignior of Jerusalem, of Cervantes’ “criticism” of Sancho in Don Quixote, Chapter 20, page 171, Brussels edition, 1617. (Cf. the “Commentary”, p. 194.)

↑ Max Stimer’s book Der Einzige und sein Eigenthum, Leipzig, Wigand, 1845, was published in October-November 1844. Engels was one of the first readers of this book, for Wigand sent him the advance proofs. This is mentioned in the letter Engels wrote to Marx on November 19, 1844
↑ Part One of Stirner’s book, “Der Mensch” (“Man”), has the following structure: I. Ein Menschenleben (A Man’s Life); II. Menschen der alten und neuen Zeit (People of Ancient and Modern Times): 1. Die Alten (The Ancients); 2. Die Neuen (The Moderns) — § 1. Der Geist (The Spirit), § 2. Die Besessenen (The Possessed), § 3. Die Hierarchie (Hierarchy); 3. Die Frcien (The Free Ones) — § 1. Der politische Liberalismus (Political Liberalism), §2. Der sociale Liberalismus (Social Liberalism), § 3. Der humane Liberalismus (Humane Liberalism)
↑ The campaigns of Sesostris — according to the Greek historians Herodotus and Diodorus, campaigns by a legendary Egyptian pharaoh to conquer countries in Asia and Europe. napoleon’s expedition to Egypt — a reference to the landing of the French army, commanded by General Bonaparte, in Egypt in the summer of 1798 and to the subsequent campaigns of this army to subdue Egypt and Syria. Napoleon’s expedition to Egypt ended in failure in 1801
↑ The seven wise men — a term usually applied to seven eminent Greek philosophers and statesmen who lived in the 6th century BC: Bias, Chilon, Cleobulus, Periander, Pittacus, Solon and Thales. Neo-academists — philosophers belonging to the Athenian school of neo-Platonism
↑ Brahm (or Brahma, Brahman) — the basic category of ancient Hindu idealist philosophy denoting the essence of the universe, impersonal, immaterial, uncreated, illimitable, timeless. Om — ritualistic word invoking Brahma
↑ From 987, when Hugh Capet claimed the throne of France, until the French Revolution, the kings of France were in fact members of the Capet dynasty, for both the Valois, who ruled from 1328, and the Bourbons, who followed them in 1589, were branches of the Capet family. Louis XVI, a member of the Bourbon dynasty, was executed in January 1793 by order of the National Convention
↑ Until the revolution of 1848 smoking was prohibited in the streets of Berlin and in the Tiergarten (a park in the city) under penalty of a fine or corporal punishment
↑ The attempt which Enfantin made in 1832 to establish a labour commune in Ménilmonant, then a suburb of Paris, led to legal proceedings against the Saint-Simonists, who were accused of immorality and the spread of dangerous ideas. On August 28, 1832, Enfantin was sentenced to one year’s imprisonment but was released before serving the full term. Afterwards, Enfantin and several of his followers went to Egypt, where he worked as an engineer
↑ Wasserpolacken (literally water Poles) — nickname given to the Silesian Poles in Germany
↑ A reference to the bombardment of Chinese maritime towns and ports on the Yangtse and other rivers by the British naval and land forces during the First Opium War, Britain’s war of conquest against China waged from 1839 to 1842. With this war began the transformation of China into a semi-colony
↑ Deux amis de la liberté” (“Two friends of freedom”) — pseudonym used by Fr. Marie Kerverseau and G. Clavelin, authors of the Histoire de la Révolution de 1789, a work in twenty volumes published in Paris at the end of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th century
↑ Habits bleus” (“blue coats”) — a name given to the soldiers of the French Republic at the end of the 18th century because of the colour of their uniform. In a wider sense it was applied to the Republicans as distinct from the royalists, who were called Blancs (“Whites”)
↑ Cf. Romans 9:16: “So then it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that sheweth mercy.”
↑ Kupfergraben — the name of a canal in Berlin. Hegel lived on the Kupfergraben embankment
↑ Hanseatic League (Hanse) — a league of German and other North-European merchant cities, situated on the Baltic and the North Sea and the rivers flowing into them. At one time it also included several Dutch cities. The heyday of the Hanseatic League was the second half of the 14th century. It began to decline and to disintegrate towards the end of the 15th century but continued to exist formally until 1669
↑ The Continental System, or the Continental Blockade, proclaimed by Napoleon I in 1806, after Prussia’s defeat, prohibited trade between the countries of the European Continent and Great Britain. This made the import into Europe of a number of products, including sugar and coffee, very difficult. Napoleon’s defeat in Russia in 1812 put an end to the Continental System.
↑ Tugendbund (League of Virtue) — secret political society which was founded in Prussia in 1808. Its principal aims were to foster patriotic feelings among the population and to organise the struggle for the liberation of Germany from the Napoleonic occupation and for the establishment of a constitutional system in the country. At Napoleon’s request the Tugendbund was formally dissolved in 1809 by the King of Prussia but it actually continued to exist until the end of the Napoleonic wars
↑ Cercle social — an organisation established by democratic intellectuals in Paris in the first years of the French Revolution. Its chief spokesman, Claude Fauchet, demanded an equalitarian division of the land, restrictions on large fortunes and employment for all able-bodied citizens. The criticism to which Fauchet and his supporters subjected the formal equality proclaimed in the documents of the French Revolution prepared the ground for bolder action in defence of the destitute by Jacques Roux, Théphile Leclerc and other members of the radical-plebeian “Enragés
↑ The end of this sentence from the words “the bourgeois ... express ... the rule of the proprietors ...” and the following five paragraphs up to and including the words “customs duties which hampered commerce at every rum, and they” are part of the manuscript discovered in the early 1960s and first published (in German) in the International Review of Social History, Vol. VII, 1962, Part 1. The text is written on two pages, the beginning of the first one is damaged
↑ The motion of the Bishop of Autun (Talleyrand) — one of the representatives of the clergy who supported the decision of the deputies of the Third Estate to transform the States-General (a consultative organ based on social estates) into a National Assembly(later, the Constituent Assembly) — was designed to extend the powers of the Assembly. It proposed that the deliberations of the Assembly should no longer be restricted to matters mentioned in the Cahiers de doléances — lists of grievances and instructions given by the constituents of each estate to their deputies in connection with the convocation of the States-General (États généraux) — and that the deputies should have the right to decide each question according to their own judgment. Bailliages — bailiwicks in pre-revolutionary France, also electoral districts during the elections to the States-General; divisions des ordres — each bailliage was divided into three social estates: the nobility, the clergy and the Third Estate. The figure 431 is apparently a slip of the pen, for there were 531 divisions des ordres
↑ Jeu de paume — a tennis-court in Versailles. On June 20, 1789, the deputies of the Third Estate, who on June 17 proclaimed themselves a National Assembly, met in this building (because their official meeting-place had been closed by order of the King) and took a solemn oath not to separate until they had given France a constitution. Lit de justice — sessions of the French parliaments (the supreme judicial bodies in pre-revolutionary France) in the presence of the King. Orders by the King issued at these sessions had the force of law. The reference here is to the meeting of the States-General on June 23, 1789. At this meeting the King declared the decisions adopted by the Third Estate on June 17 null and void and demanded the immediate dispersal of the Assembly, but the deputies of the Third Estate refused to obey and continued their deliberations
↑ Jacquerie — French peasant revolt which took place in May and June 1358 and was supported by the poor in a number of cities. A peasant rebellion under the leadership of Wat Tyler flared up in England in the summer of 1381. It had the support of ‘ the lower strata of the London population, who opened the gates of the capital to the insurgents. Some demands of the latter, for example, the abolition of the Statute of Labourers, were also in the interest of the plebeian townsmen. Evil May Day — name given to the uprising of the poorer citizens of London on May 1, 1517. It was directed against the increasing power of foreign merchants and usurers. A peasant uprising under the leadership of Robert Kett (a local squire and owner of a tannery) took place between June and August 1549 in East Anglia. Among the insurgents were many unemployed weavers, ruined artisans and other destitute people. With the help of the town poor the insurgents seized Norwich
↑ This refers to events connected with the Chartist movement in England. When Parliament rejected their first Petition in July 1839, the Chartists attempted to call a general strike (a “sacred month”). At the beginning of November 1839 a rising of miners took place in South Wales, which was crushed by police and government troops. In July 1840, the National Charter Association was founded which united a considerable number of the country’s local Chartist organisations. In August 1842, after the second Petition had been rejected by Parliament, spontaneous action of the workers took place in many industrial regions of the country. In Lancashire and in a considerable part of Cheshire and Yorkshire the strikes were very widespread, and in a number of places they grew into spontaneous uprisings
↑ Free-thinkers (Freijeister — by spelling the word according to the Berlin dialect pronunciation the authors have given the name an ironical note) — an allusion to “The Free”, a group of Berlin Young Hegelians which came into being in the first half of 1842. Among its principal members were Bruno Bauer, Edgar Bauer, Eduard Meyen, Ludwig Buhl and Max Stirner. The existing system was criticised by “The Free” in an abstract way, their statements were devoid of real revolutionary content, their ultra-radical form often compromised the democratic movement. Many of “The Free” renounced radicalism in the following years. For the criticism of “The Free” in Marx’s early writings see MECW, Vol. 1, pp. 287, 390, 393-95
↑ Congregatio de propaganda fide (Congregation for Propagating the Faith) — an organisation founded by the Pope in 1622 in order to propagate Catholicism in all countries and to fight heretics
↑ This refers to the movement for a democratic electoral reform whose members — republican democrats and petty-bourgeois socialists — gathered round La Réforme, an opposition newspaper published in Paris from 1843. The supporters of La Réforme were also known as the socialistic democratic party
↑ Capitularies — legislative or administrative ordinances of the Frankish kings. Many of these enactments legalised serfdom and were designed to ensure stricter fulfilment by the peasants of the numerous obligations imposed on them (Charlemagne’s well-known capitulary referred to in the text is presumably the Capitulare de villis — Capitulary on Royal Estates — issued about A.D. 800). Some of these acts threatened peasants who were disobedient, took part in revolts and so on with severe punishment (for example, Charlemagne’s Capitulary on Saxony of 782 directed against the fight of the free Saxon peasants against the Frankish conquerors)
↑ An allusion to disturbances which took place in Catalonia at the beginning of July 1845 and were caused by the attempt of the government to introduce a law under which one man out of five was to serve in the army. The disturbances were brutally suppressed
↑ Barataria — the island of which Sancho Panza was made governor in Cervantes’ Don Quixote
↑ Dioscuri — Castor and Pollux (or in Greek Polydeuces), heroes of classical mythology, the twin sons of Zeus, by whom they were turned into the constellation Gemini (the Twins); as such they were considered to be the patrons of seamen
↑ Rumford broth — thin soup for the poor prepared from bones and cheap substitutes; the recipe for it was made up at the end of the 18th century by Count Rumford (alias Benjamin Thompson)
↑ Banquerouse cochonne(swinish bankruptcy) — the 32nd of the 36 types of bankruptcy described by Fourier in his work Des trois unités externes published in the journal La Phalange, 1845, Vol. 1. Excerpts from this work are given by Engels in his article “A Fragment of Fourier’s on Trade” (for the passage about “swinish bankruptcy” see MECW, Vol. 4, p. 638)
↑ Part Two of Stirner’s book Der Einzige und sein Eigenthum — “Ich” (“Ego”) — is subdivided as follows: I. Die Eigenheit (Peculiarity); II. Der Eigner (The Owner): 1. Meine Macht (My Power), 2. Mein Verkehr (My Intercourse), 3. Mein Selbstgenuss (My Self-Enjoyment); III. Der Einzige (The Unique).
↑ Orphanage-Francke — the nickname stems from the fact that August Hermann Francke founded an orphanage and several other philanthropic institutions for children in Halle at the end of the 17th century
↑ The maxim “Know Thyself” was written over the entrance of Apollo’s temple at Delphi
↑ According to Bentham’s utilitarian ethics, actions were to be considered good if they produced a greater amount of pleasure than suffering. The compilation of long tedious lists cataloguing pleasure and suffering, and their subsequent balancing in order to determine the morality of an action, is here called by Marx and Engels “Bentham’s book-keeping
↑ In the middle of the 19th century Moabit was a north-western suburb of Berlin; Köpenick — a south-eastern suburb of Berlin, and the Hamburger Tor (Hamburg Gate) — a gate at the northern boundary of Berlin
↑ Nante the loafer (Eckensteher Nante) — a character in Karl von Holtei’s play Ein Trauerspiel in Berlin. On the basis of this prototype Fritz Beckmann, a well-known German comedian, produced a popular farce Der Eckensteher Nante im Verhör. The name Nante became a byword for a garrulous, philosophising wag, who seizes every opportunity to crack stale jokes in the Berlin dialect
↑ Emperor Sigismund handed over Jan Huss to the Council of Constance (1414-15) despite the safe conduct he had granted him. Francis I, who was defeated at Pavia (1525) and taken prisoner by Charles V, was released only after renouncing his claims to Milan and Burgundy (Madrid Treaty of 1526). But after his release he repudiated the treaty
↑ Blocksberg — popular name of several German mountains and in particular of the Brocken, the highest peak of the Harz Mountains. According to German folklore, the witches meet to celebrate their Sabbath on the Blocksberg
↑ According to legend, the early Christian Saint Ursula and “her eleven thousand virgins” were martyred in Cologne. The alleged number of virgins is probably due to the name of Ursula’s companion, Undecimilla, which in Latin means “eleven thousand
↑ Caius — a name adopted by many textbooks and other works on formal logic to denote a human being, especially in syllogisms
↑ Apparently a reference to Gottlieb Konrad Pfeffel’s book Biographie eines Pudels
↑ Spanso bocko — one of the most cruel forms of corporal punishment, which was used by the colonialists in Surinam (in the north-eastern part of South America)
↑ The uprising of Negro slaves which took place in Haiti in 1791 marked the beginning of a revolutionary movement against the colonial regime. Toussaint Louverture, the leader of the insurgents, played an outstanding part in the war of liberation which the Negroes waged against the French, English and Spanish colonialists. In the course of the struggle, which ended with the proclamation of Haiti’s independence in January 1804, slavery was abolished and subsequently the estates of the planters were divided among the former slaves
↑ The Historical School of Law — a trend in German historiography and jurisprudence in the late 18th century. The representatives of this school, Gustav Hugo, Friedrich Karl Savigny and others, sought to justify the privileges of the nobility and feudal institutions by referring to the inviolability of historical traditions. Romanticists — adherents of reactionary romanticism in the social sciences who tried to vindicate the Middle Ages and the feudal system and to oppose them to the ideas of bourgeois Enlightenment, democracy and liberalism. Among the prominent ideologists of romanticism were Louis Gabriel Bonald, Joseph de Maistre, Karl Ludwig Haller and Adam Müller. For a criticism of these two trends see Marx’s works: “The Philosophical Manifesto of the Historical School of Law” and “Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Law. Introduction” (MECW, Vols. 1 and 3)
↑ The “Ten Tables” — the original version of the “Twelve Tables” (lex duoderim tabularum), the oldest legislative document of the Roman slave-owners’ state. These laws were enacted as a result of the struggle which the plebeians waged against the patricians during the republican period in the middle of the 5th century BC; they became the point of departure for the further development of Roman civil law
↑ For the Corn Laws The Anti-Corn Law League was founded in 1838 by the Manchester manufacturers Cobden and Bright. The English Corn Laws, first adopted in the 15th century, imposed high tariffs on imported cereals in order to maintain high prices for them in the home market. In the first third of the 19th century, in 1815, 1822 and later, several laws were passed changing the conditions for corn imports, and in 1828 a sliding scale was introduced which raised import tariffs on corn when prices in the home market declined and, on the other hand, lowered tariffs when prices rose in Britain.
The League widely exploited the popular discontent over the raising of corn prices. In its efforts to obtain the repeal of the Corn Laws and the establishment of complete freedom of trade, it aimed at weakening the economic and political positions of the landed aristocracy and lowering the cost of living thus making possible a lowering of the workers’ wages.
The struggle between the industrial bourgeoisie and the landed aristocracy over the Corn Laws ended with the repeal of these laws in 1846.
↑ This refers to the Law of 1844 which made it very difficult to obtain a divorce. The Bill was drafted in 1842 on the instructions of Frederick William IV by Savigny, one of the founders of the Historical School of Law (see Note 46), who was Prussian Minister for the Revision of Laws from 1842 to 1848
↑ Leges barbarorum (laws of the barbarians) — codes of law which originated between the 5th and the 9th centuries and were, in the main, a written record of the customary or prescriptive law of the various Germanic tribes. Consuetudines feudorum (feudal customs) — a compilation of medieval feudal laws which was made in Bologna in the last third of the 12th century. Jus talionis (right of retaliation) — the right of retaliation by inflicting a punishment of the same kind (“an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth”). The old German Gewere — the legitimate rule of a free man over a piece of land where he exercised sovereign authority and was responsible for the protection of every person and thing. Compensatio — the balancing of claim and counter-claim against each other. Satisfactio — reparation, or atonement, for an offence; it can also mean satisfying a creditor not by repaying the debt incurred but by some other service
↑ The Holy Hermandad (Holy Brotherhood) — league of Spanish towns set up at the end of the 15th century with the approbation of the king, who sought to make use of the bourgeoisie in the struggle between absolutism and the powerful feudal lords. From the middle of the 16th century the armed detachments of the Hermandad performed police duties. The term “Holy Hermandad” was later used ironically for the police
↑ Spandau — at that time a Prussian fortress west of Berlin with a jail for political prisoners
↑ Landwehrgraben — a canal in Berlin which extended up to Charlottenburg, then a Berlin suburb. It is possible that Marx and Engels are alluding to Egbert Bauer’s publishing house in Charlottenburg, where Szeliga’s works were published
↑ The following section is a critical analysis of the second section, “Mein Verkehr” (“My Intercourse”), Chapter Two, Part Two of Stirner’s book Der Einzige und sein Eigenthum. From the introductory remarks of Marx and Engels to this part of their work (see this volume, p. 240) it follows that they intended to use the heading “My Intercourse” and to mark it with the letter “B”, for the preceding section is called “A. Meine Macht” (“A. My Power”), and the following one “C. Mein Selbstgenuss” (“C. My Self-Enjoyment”). The section “B. My Intercourse” probably consisted of three subsections: “1. Society”, “If. Rebellion” and “III. Union.” The first three subdivisions and the beginning of the fourth subdivision of the section “1. Society” are missing. When Paul Weller was preparing The German Ideology for publication as Band 5, Erste Abteilung of Marx/Engels Gesamtausgabe (MEGA), he suggested that the subsection “I. Society” may have consisted of five parts. The heading of the first is unknown, but it might have been “1. Die verstirnerte Gesellschaft” (“1. Stirnerised Society”), or “1. Die Gesellschaft im allgemeinen"’ (“1. Society in General”), or “1. Die menschliche Gesellschaft” (“1. Human Society”). That of the second was probably “2. Die Gesellschaft als Gefängnisgesellschaft” (“2. Society as Prison Society”); of the third, “3. Die Gesellschaft als Familie” (“3. Society as a Family”); of the fourth, “4. Die Gesellschaft als Staat” (“Society as State”), of which only the last portion has been found. The fifth part has been preserved in its entirety and is called “5. Die Gesellschaft als bürgerliche Gesellschaft” (“5. Society as Bourgeois Society”).
↑ The September Laws — reactionary laws promulgated by the French Government in September 1835. They restricted the rights of juries and introduced severe measures against the press. The clauses directed against the latter provided for higher amounts to be deposited as security by periodical publications, and made the people responsible for publications directed against private property and the existing political regime liable to imprisonment and heavy fines
↑ The reference is apparently to the Commissions of the Estates in the Landtags (provincial diets), which were instituted in Prussia in June 1842. Elected by the Landtags from their deputies according to the estates principle, they formed a single advisory body known as the “United Commissions”. With the help of this body, which was a mockery of representative institution, Frederick William IV hoped to enforce new taxes and obtain a loan
↑ When the Corn Laws were repealed in 1846, a small, temporary tariff on the import of corn was retained until 1849. Magna Charta Libertatum — the charter which the insurgent barons, who were supported by knights and townsmen, forced King John of England to sign at Runnymede on June 15, 1215. Magna Charta limited the powers of the king, mainly in the interests of the feudal lords, and also contained some concessions to the knights and the towns
↑ Under the leadership of Themistocles the Greeks defeated the Persians in the naval battle of Salamis in 480 BC After the Greek War of Independence (1821-29) against Turkish rule, Britain, Russia and France compelled the new Greek state to adopt a monarchical form of government, and placed the 17-year-old prince Otto of Bavaria on the Greek throne
↑ Marx and Engels are alluding to Voltaire’s description of Habakkuk. There is a direct reference to it in their article “Konflikte zwischen Polizei und Volk. — Über die Ereignisse auf der Krim” published on July 9, 1855. The expression “capable de tout” (capable of anything) is used here ironically, i.e., “capable of nothing
↑ An allusion to the fact that in the summer of 1845 Stirner attempted to earn his living by selling milk since he could not exist on the proceeds from his literary work. But the undertaking proved a complete failure, and the curdled milk had to be poured down the drain
↑ The Pandects are part of a compendium of Roman civil law (Corpus juris civilis) made by order of the Byzantine Emperor Justinian I in the 6th century. They contained extracts from the works of prominent Roman jurists
↑ A reference to the British and Dutch East India Companies which were founded at the beginning of the 17th century. They had the monopoly, of trade with the East Indies and played a decisive part in the establishment of the British and Dutch colonial empires
↑ The Preussische Seehandlungsgesellschaft (Prussian Maritime Trading Company) was founded as a commercial and banking company in 1772 and granted a number of important privileges by the state. It advanced big loans to the government and in fact became its banker and broker
↑ Levons-nous! (Let us rise up!) — part of the motto of the Révolutions de Paris, a revolutionary-democratic weekly which was published in Paris from July 1789 to February 1794 (until September 1790 its editor was Elisée Lousatalot). The entire motto was: “Les grands ne nous paraissent grands que parce que nous sommes à genoux: levons-nous!” (“The great only seem great to us because we are on our knees: Let us rise up!”)
↑ Der hinkende Botte, also called Der hinkende Bote (The Lame Messenger) — a name given to a sort of popular almanac which contained rather stale news relating to events of the preceding year
↑ Straubinger — a name for Gerinan travelling journeymen. In their works and letters Marx and Engels frequently applied it ironically to artisans who remained under the influence of backward guild notions and believed that society could abandon large-scale capitalist industry and return to the petty handicraft stage of production
↑ Mozart’s Requiem was completed, on the basis of his manuscript notes, by Franz Xaver Süssmayer
↑ Organisers of labour — an allusion to the utopian socialists (in particular Fourier and his followers) who put forward a plan for the peaceful transformation of society by means of associations, that is, by “organisation of labour”, which they opposed to the anarchy of production under capitalism. Some of these ideas were used by the French petty-bourgeois socialist Louis Blanc in his book Organisation du travail (Paris, 1839) in which he proposed that the bourgeois state should transform contemporary society into a socialist society
↑ Willenhall, a town in Staffordshire, England, with a considerable iron industry
↑ An allusion to the fact that Max Stirner dedicated his book to his wife Marie Dähnhardt. The phrase “the title spectre of his book” was derived from Stirner’s phrase “the title spectre of her book”. In his book Der Einzige und sein Eigenthum he used it in relation to Bettina von Arnim’s work, Dies Buch gehört dem König
↑ This refers to one of the main principles of the “Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen” (Déclaration des droits de 1'homme et du citoyen), a preamble to the Constitution adopted by the French Convention in 1793 during the revolutionary dictatorship of the Jacobins. The last article, the 35th, of the Declaration reads: “When the government violates the rights of the people, insurrection is the imprescriptible right and the irremissible duty of the people as a whole and of each of its sections
↑ According to the Bible (Genesis 41:18-20), the Egyptian pharaoh dreamed that seven fat cows were eaten by seven lean cows but the latter remained just as lean as before. According to the interpretation given to the pharaoh by Joseph, the dream meant that Egypt would have rich harvests for seven years to be followed by seven years of drought and famine.
↑ The Customs Union (Zollverein) of German states (initially they numbered 18), which established a common customs frontier, was set up in 1834 and headed by Prussia. By the 1840s the Union embraced most of the German states, with the exception of Austria, the Hanseatic cities (Bremen, Hamburg, Lübeck) and a few small states. Brought into being by the necessity to create an all-German market, the Customs Union became a factor conducive to the political unification of Germany.
↑ The Cyrenaic school — a school of ancient Greek philosophy founded at the beginning of the 4th century BC by Aristippus of Cyrene, a pupil of Socrates. The Cyrenaics were agnostics, adopted a critical attitude to religion and regarded pleasure (hedone) as the aim of life
↑ Kupfergraben — the name of a canal in Berlin. Hegel lived on the Kupfergraben embankment.

[1] Max Stimer’s book Der Einzige und sein Eigenthum, Leipzig, Wigand, 1845, was published in October-November 1844. Engels was one of the first readers of this book, for Wigand sent him the advance proofs. This is mentioned in the letter Engels wrote to Marx on November 19, 1844

[2] Part One of Stirner’s book, “Der Mensch” (“Man”), has the following structure: I. Ein Menschenleben (A Man’s Life); II. Menschen der alten und neuen Zeit (People of Ancient and Modern Times): 1. Die Alten (The Ancients); 2. Die Neuen (The Moderns) — § 1. Der Geist (The Spirit), § 2. Die Besessenen (The Possessed), § 3. Die Hierarchie (Hierarchy); 3. Die Frcien (The Free Ones) — § 1. Der politische Liberalismus (Political Liberalism), §2. Der sociale Liberalismus (Social Liberalism), § 3. Der humane Liberalismus (Humane Liberalism)

[3] The campaigns of Sesostris — according to the Greek historians Herodotus and Diodorus, campaigns by a legendary Egyptian pharaoh to conquer countries in Asia and Europe. napoleon’s expedition to Egypt — a reference to the landing of the French army, commanded by General Bonaparte, in Egypt in the summer of 1798 and to the subsequent campaigns of this army to subdue Egypt and Syria. Napoleon’s expedition to Egypt ended in failure in 1801

[4] The seven wise men — a term usually applied to seven eminent Greek philosophers and statesmen who lived in the 6th century BC: Bias, Chilon, Cleobulus, Periander, Pittacus, Solon and Thales. Neo-academists — philosophers belonging to the Athenian school of neo-Platonism

[5] Brahm (or Brahma, Brahman) — the basic category of ancient Hindu idealist philosophy denoting the essence of the universe, impersonal, immaterial, uncreated, illimitable, timeless. Om — ritualistic word invoking Brahma

[6] From 987, when Hugh Capet claimed the throne of France, until the French Revolution, the kings of France were in fact members of the Capet dynasty, for both the Valois, who ruled from 1328, and the Bourbons, who followed them in 1589, were branches of the Capet family. Louis XVI, a member of the Bourbon dynasty, was executed in January 1793 by order of the National Convention

[7] Until the revolution of 1848 smoking was prohibited in the streets of Berlin and in the Tiergarten (a park in the city) under penalty of a fine or corporal punishment

[8] The attempt which Enfantin made in 1832 to establish a labour commune in Ménilmonant, then a suburb of Paris, led to legal proceedings against the Saint-Simonists, who were accused of immorality and the spread of dangerous ideas. On August 28, 1832, Enfantin was sentenced to one year’s imprisonment but was released before serving the full term. Afterwards, Enfantin and several of his followers went to Egypt, where he worked as an engineer

[9] Wasserpolacken (literally water Poles) — nickname given to the Silesian Poles in Germany

[10] A reference to the bombardment of Chinese maritime towns and ports on the Yangtse and other rivers by the British naval and land forces during the First Opium War, Britain’s war of conquest against China waged from 1839 to 1842. With this war began the transformation of China into a semi-colony

[11] Deux amis de la liberté” (“Two friends of freedom”) — pseudonym used by Fr. Marie Kerverseau and G. Clavelin, authors of the Histoire de la Révolution de 1789, a work in twenty volumes published in Paris at the end of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th century

[12] Habits bleus” (“blue coats”) — a name given to the soldiers of the French Republic at the end of the 18th century because of the colour of their uniform. In a wider sense it was applied to the Republicans as distinct from the royalists, who were called Blancs (“Whites”)

[13] Cf. Romans 9:16: “So then it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that sheweth mercy.”

[14] Kupfergraben — the name of a canal in Berlin. Hegel lived on the Kupfergraben embankment

[15] Hanseatic League (Hanse) — a league of German and other North-European merchant cities, situated on the Baltic and the North Sea and the rivers flowing into them. At one time it also included several Dutch cities. The heyday of the Hanseatic League was the second half of the 14th century. It began to decline and to disintegrate towards the end of the 15th century but continued to exist formally until 1669

[16] The Continental System, or the Continental Blockade, proclaimed by Napoleon I in 1806, after Prussia’s defeat, prohibited trade between the countries of the European Continent and Great Britain. This made the import into Europe of a number of products, including sugar and coffee, very difficult. Napoleon’s defeat in Russia in 1812 put an end to the Continental System.

[17] Tugendbund (League of Virtue) — secret political society which was founded in Prussia in 1808. Its principal aims were to foster patriotic feelings among the population and to organise the struggle for the liberation of Germany from the Napoleonic occupation and for the establishment of a constitutional system in the country. At Napoleon’s request the Tugendbund was formally dissolved in 1809 by the King of Prussia but it actually continued to exist until the end of the Napoleonic wars

[18] Cercle social — an organisation established by democratic intellectuals in Paris in the first years of the French Revolution. Its chief spokesman, Claude Fauchet, demanded an equalitarian division of the land, restrictions on large fortunes and employment for all able-bodied citizens. The criticism to which Fauchet and his supporters subjected the formal equality proclaimed in the documents of the French Revolution prepared the ground for bolder action in defence of the destitute by Jacques Roux, Théphile Leclerc and other members of the radical-plebeian “Enragés

[19] The end of this sentence from the words “the bourgeois ... express ... the rule of the proprietors ...” and the following five paragraphs up to and including the words “customs duties which hampered commerce at every rum, and they” are part of the manuscript discovered in the early 1960s and first published (in German) in the International Review of Social History, Vol. VII, 1962, Part 1. The text is written on two pages, the beginning of the first one is damaged

[20] The motion of the Bishop of Autun (Talleyrand) — one of the representatives of the clergy who supported the decision of the deputies of the Third Estate to transform the States-General (a consultative organ based on social estates) into a National Assembly(later, the Constituent Assembly) — was designed to extend the powers of the Assembly. It proposed that the deliberations of the Assembly should no longer be restricted to matters mentioned in the Cahiers de doléances — lists of grievances and instructions given by the constituents of each estate to their deputies in connection with the convocation of the States-General (États généraux) — and that the deputies should have the right to decide each question according to their own judgment. Bailliages — bailiwicks in pre-revolutionary France, also electoral districts during the elections to the States-General; divisions des ordres — each bailliage was divided into three social estates: the nobility, the clergy and the Third Estate. The figure 431 is apparently a slip of the pen, for there were 531 divisions des ordres

[21] Jeu de paume — a tennis-court in Versailles. On June 20, 1789, the deputies of the Third Estate, who on June 17 proclaimed themselves a National Assembly, met in this building (because their official meeting-place had been closed by order of the King) and took a solemn oath not to separate until they had given France a constitution. Lit de justice — sessions of the French parliaments (the supreme judicial bodies in pre-revolutionary France) in the presence of the King. Orders by the King issued at these sessions had the force of law. The reference here is to the meeting of the States-General on June 23, 1789. At this meeting the King declared the decisions adopted by the Third Estate on June 17 null and void and demanded the immediate dispersal of the Assembly, but the deputies of the Third Estate refused to obey and continued their deliberations

[22] Jacquerie — French peasant revolt which took place in May and June 1358 and was supported by the poor in a number of cities. A peasant rebellion under the leadership of Wat Tyler flared up in England in the summer of 1381. It had the support of ‘ the lower strata of the London population, who opened the gates of the capital to the insurgents. Some demands of the latter, for example, the abolition of the Statute of Labourers, were also in the interest of the plebeian townsmen. Evil May Day — name given to the uprising of the poorer citizens of London on May 1, 1517. It was directed against the increasing power of foreign merchants and usurers. A peasant uprising under the leadership of Robert Kett (a local squire and owner of a tannery) took place between June and August 1549 in East Anglia. Among the insurgents were many unemployed weavers, ruined artisans and other destitute people. With the help of the town poor the insurgents seized Norwich

[23] This refers to events connected with the Chartist movement in England. When Parliament rejected their first Petition in July 1839, the Chartists attempted to call a general strike (a “sacred month”). At the beginning of November 1839 a rising of miners took place in South Wales, which was crushed by police and government troops. In July 1840, the National Charter Association was founded which united a considerable number of the country’s local Chartist organisations. In August 1842, after the second Petition had been rejected by Parliament, spontaneous action of the workers took place in many industrial regions of the country. In Lancashire and in a considerable part of Cheshire and Yorkshire the strikes were very widespread, and in a number of places they grew into spontaneous uprisings

[24] Free-thinkers (Freijeister — by spelling the word according to the Berlin dialect pronunciation the authors have given the name an ironical note) — an allusion to “The Free”, a group of Berlin Young Hegelians which came into being in the first half of 1842. Among its principal members were Bruno Bauer, Edgar Bauer, Eduard Meyen, Ludwig Buhl and Max Stirner. The existing system was criticised by “The Free” in an abstract way, their statements were devoid of real revolutionary content, their ultra-radical form often compromised the democratic movement. Many of “The Free” renounced radicalism in the following years. For the criticism of “The Free” in Marx’s early writings see MECW, Vol. 1, pp. 287, 390, 393-95

[25] Congregatio de propaganda fide (Congregation for Propagating the Faith) — an organisation founded by the Pope in 1622 in order to propagate Catholicism in all countries and to fight heretics

[26] This refers to the movement for a democratic electoral reform whose members — republican democrats and petty-bourgeois socialists — gathered round La Réforme, an opposition newspaper published in Paris from 1843. The supporters of La Réforme were also known as the socialistic democratic party

[27] Capitularies — legislative or administrative ordinances of the Frankish kings. Many of these enactments legalised serfdom and were designed to ensure stricter fulfilment by the peasants of the numerous obligations imposed on them (Charlemagne’s well-known capitulary referred to in the text is presumably the Capitulare de villis — Capitulary on Royal Estates — issued about A.D. 800). Some of these acts threatened peasants who were disobedient, took part in revolts and so on with severe punishment (for example, Charlemagne’s Capitulary on Saxony of 782 directed against the fight of the free Saxon peasants against the Frankish conquerors)

[28] An allusion to disturbances which took place in Catalonia at the beginning of July 1845 and were caused by the attempt of the government to introduce a law under which one man out of five was to serve in the army. The disturbances were brutally suppressed

[29] Barataria — the island of which Sancho Panza was made governor in Cervantes’ Don Quixote

[30] Dioscuri — Castor and Pollux (or in Greek Polydeuces), heroes of classical mythology, the twin sons of Zeus, by whom they were turned into the constellation Gemini (the Twins); as such they were considered to be the patrons of seamen

[31] Rumford broth — thin soup for the poor prepared from bones and cheap substitutes; the recipe for it was made up at the end of the 18th century by Count Rumford (alias Benjamin Thompson)

[32] Banquerouse cochonne(swinish bankruptcy) — the 32nd of the 36 types of bankruptcy described by Fourier in his work Des trois unités externes published in the journal La Phalange, 1845, Vol. 1. Excerpts from this work are given by Engels in his article “A Fragment of Fourier’s on Trade” (for the passage about “swinish bankruptcy” see MECW, Vol. 4, p. 638)

[33] Part Two of Stirner’s book Der Einzige und sein Eigenthum — “Ich” (“Ego”) — is subdivided as follows: I. Die Eigenheit (Peculiarity); II. Der Eigner (The Owner): 1. Meine Macht (My Power), 2. Mein Verkehr (My Intercourse), 3. Mein Selbstgenuss (My Self-Enjoyment); III. Der Einzige (The Unique).

[34] Orphanage-Francke — the nickname stems from the fact that August Hermann Francke founded an orphanage and several other philanthropic institutions for children in Halle at the end of the 17th century

[35] The maxim “Know Thyself” was written over the entrance of Apollo’s temple at Delphi

[36] According to Bentham’s utilitarian ethics, actions were to be considered good if they produced a greater amount of pleasure than suffering. The compilation of long tedious lists cataloguing pleasure and suffering, and their subsequent balancing in order to determine the morality of an action, is here called by Marx and Engels “Bentham’s book-keeping

[37] In the middle of the 19th century Moabit was a north-western suburb of Berlin; Köpenick — a south-eastern suburb of Berlin, and the Hamburger Tor (Hamburg Gate) — a gate at the northern boundary of Berlin

[38] Nante the loafer (Eckensteher Nante) — a character in Karl von Holtei’s play Ein Trauerspiel in Berlin. On the basis of this prototype Fritz Beckmann, a well-known German comedian, produced a popular farce Der Eckensteher Nante im Verhör. The name Nante became a byword for a garrulous, philosophising wag, who seizes every opportunity to crack stale jokes in the Berlin dialect

[39] Emperor Sigismund handed over Jan Huss to the Council of Constance (1414-15) despite the safe conduct he had granted him. Francis I, who was defeated at Pavia (1525) and taken prisoner by Charles V, was released only after renouncing his claims to Milan and Burgundy (Madrid Treaty of 1526). But after his release he repudiated the treaty

[40] Blocksberg — popular name of several German mountains and in particular of the Brocken, the highest peak of the Harz Mountains. According to German folklore, the witches meet to celebrate their Sabbath on the Blocksberg

[41] According to legend, the early Christian Saint Ursula and “her eleven thousand virgins” were martyred in Cologne. The alleged number of virgins is probably due to the name of Ursula’s companion, Undecimilla, which in Latin means “eleven thousand

[42] Caius — a name adopted by many textbooks and other works on formal logic to denote a human being, especially in syllogisms

[43] Apparently a reference to Gottlieb Konrad Pfeffel’s book Biographie eines Pudels

[44] Spanso bocko — one of the most cruel forms of corporal punishment, which was used by the colonialists in Surinam (in the north-eastern part of South America)

[45] The uprising of Negro slaves which took place in Haiti in 1791 marked the beginning of a revolutionary movement against the colonial regime. Toussaint Louverture, the leader of the insurgents, played an outstanding part in the war of liberation which the Negroes waged against the French, English and Spanish colonialists. In the course of the struggle, which ended with the proclamation of Haiti’s independence in January 1804, slavery was abolished and subsequently the estates of the planters were divided among the former slaves

[46] The Historical School of Law — a trend in German historiography and jurisprudence in the late 18th century. The representatives of this school, Gustav Hugo, Friedrich Karl Savigny and others, sought to justify the privileges of the nobility and feudal institutions by referring to the inviolability of historical traditions. Romanticists — adherents of reactionary romanticism in the social sciences who tried to vindicate the Middle Ages and the feudal system and to oppose them to the ideas of bourgeois Enlightenment, democracy and liberalism. Among the prominent ideologists of romanticism were Louis Gabriel Bonald, Joseph de Maistre, Karl Ludwig Haller and Adam Müller. For a criticism of these two trends see Marx’s works: “The Philosophical Manifesto of the Historical School of Law” and “Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Law. Introduction” (MECW, Vols. 1 and 3)

[47] The “Ten Tables” — the original version of the “Twelve Tables” (lex duoderim tabularum), the oldest legislative document of the Roman slave-owners’ state. These laws were enacted as a result of the struggle which the plebeians waged against the patricians during the republican period in the middle of the 5th century BC; they became the point of departure for the further development of Roman civil law

[48] For the Corn Laws The Anti-Corn Law League was founded in 1838 by the Manchester manufacturers Cobden and Bright. The English Corn Laws, first adopted in the 15th century, imposed high tariffs on imported cereals in order to maintain high prices for them in the home market. In the first third of the 19th century, in 1815, 1822 and later, several laws were passed changing the conditions for corn imports, and in 1828 a sliding scale was introduced which raised import tariffs on corn when prices in the home market declined and, on the other hand, lowered tariffs when prices rose in Britain.
The League widely exploited the popular discontent over the raising of corn prices. In its efforts to obtain the repeal of the Corn Laws and the establishment of complete freedom of trade, it aimed at weakening the economic and political positions of the landed aristocracy and lowering the cost of living thus making possible a lowering of the workers’ wages.
The struggle between the industrial bourgeoisie and the landed aristocracy over the Corn Laws ended with the repeal of these laws in 1846.

[49] This refers to the Law of 1844 which made it very difficult to obtain a divorce. The Bill was drafted in 1842 on the instructions of Frederick William IV by Savigny, one of the founders of the Historical School of Law (see Note 46), who was Prussian Minister for the Revision of Laws from 1842 to 1848

[50] Leges barbarorum (laws of the barbarians) — codes of law which originated between the 5th and the 9th centuries and were, in the main, a written record of the customary or prescriptive law of the various Germanic tribes. Consuetudines feudorum (feudal customs) — a compilation of medieval feudal laws which was made in Bologna in the last third of the 12th century. Jus talionis (right of retaliation) — the right of retaliation by inflicting a punishment of the same kind (“an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth”). The old German Gewere — the legitimate rule of a free man over a piece of land where he exercised sovereign authority and was responsible for the protection of every person and thing. Compensatio — the balancing of claim and counter-claim against each other. Satisfactio — reparation, or atonement, for an offence; it can also mean satisfying a creditor not by repaying the debt incurred but by some other service

[51] The Holy Hermandad (Holy Brotherhood) — league of Spanish towns set up at the end of the 15th century with the approbation of the king, who sought to make use of the bourgeoisie in the struggle between absolutism and the powerful feudal lords. From the middle of the 16th century the armed detachments of the Hermandad performed police duties. The term “Holy Hermandad” was later used ironically for the police

[52] Spandau — at that time a Prussian fortress west of Berlin with a jail for political prisoners

[53] Landwehrgraben — a canal in Berlin which extended up to Charlottenburg, then a Berlin suburb. It is possible that Marx and Engels are alluding to Egbert Bauer’s publishing house in Charlottenburg, where Szeliga’s works were published

[54] The following section is a critical analysis of the second section, “Mein Verkehr” (“My Intercourse”), Chapter Two, Part Two of Stirner’s book Der Einzige und sein Eigenthum. From the introductory remarks of Marx and Engels to this part of their work (see this volume, p. 240) it follows that they intended to use the heading “My Intercourse” and to mark it with the letter “B”, for the preceding section is called “A. Meine Macht” (“A. My Power”), and the following one “C. Mein Selbstgenuss” (“C. My Self-Enjoyment”). The section “B. My Intercourse” probably consisted of three subsections: “1. Society”, “If. Rebellion” and “III. Union.” The first three subdivisions and the beginning of the fourth subdivision of the section “1. Society” are missing. When Paul Weller was preparing The German Ideology for publication as Band 5, Erste Abteilung of Marx/Engels Gesamtausgabe (MEGA), he suggested that the subsection “I. Society” may have consisted of five parts. The heading of the first is unknown, but it might have been “1. Die verstirnerte Gesellschaft” (“1. Stirnerised Society”), or “1. Die Gesellschaft im allgemeinen"’ (“1. Society in General”), or “1. Die menschliche Gesellschaft” (“1. Human Society”). That of the second was probably “2. Die Gesellschaft als Gefängnisgesellschaft” (“2. Society as Prison Society”); of the third, “3. Die Gesellschaft als Familie” (“3. Society as a Family”); of the fourth, “4. Die Gesellschaft als Staat” (“Society as State”), of which only the last portion has been found. The fifth part has been preserved in its entirety and is called “5. Die Gesellschaft als bürgerliche Gesellschaft” (“5. Society as Bourgeois Society”).

[55] The September Laws — reactionary laws promulgated by the French Government in September 1835. They restricted the rights of juries and introduced severe measures against the press. The clauses directed against the latter provided for higher amounts to be deposited as security by periodical publications, and made the people responsible for publications directed against private property and the existing political regime liable to imprisonment and heavy fines

[56] The reference is apparently to the Commissions of the Estates in the Landtags (provincial diets), which were instituted in Prussia in June 1842. Elected by the Landtags from their deputies according to the estates principle, they formed a single advisory body known as the “United Commissions”. With the help of this body, which was a mockery of representative institution, Frederick William IV hoped to enforce new taxes and obtain a loan

[57] When the Corn Laws were repealed in 1846, a small, temporary tariff on the import of corn was retained until 1849. Magna Charta Libertatum — the charter which the insurgent barons, who were supported by knights and townsmen, forced King John of England to sign at Runnymede on June 15, 1215. Magna Charta limited the powers of the king, mainly in the interests of the feudal lords, and also contained some concessions to the knights and the towns

[58] Under the leadership of Themistocles the Greeks defeated the Persians in the naval battle of Salamis in 480 BC After the Greek War of Independence (1821-29) against Turkish rule, Britain, Russia and France compelled the new Greek state to adopt a monarchical form of government, and placed the 17-year-old prince Otto of Bavaria on the Greek throne

[59] Marx and Engels are alluding to Voltaire’s description of Habakkuk. There is a direct reference to it in their article “Konflikte zwischen Polizei und Volk. — Über die Ereignisse auf der Krim” published on July 9, 1855. The expression “capable de tout” (capable of anything) is used here ironically, i.e., “capable of nothing

[60] An allusion to the fact that in the summer of 1845 Stirner attempted to earn his living by selling milk since he could not exist on the proceeds from his literary work. But the undertaking proved a complete failure, and the curdled milk had to be poured down the drain

[61] The Pandects are part of a compendium of Roman civil law (Corpus juris civilis) made by order of the Byzantine Emperor Justinian I in the 6th century. They contained extracts from the works of prominent Roman jurists

[62] A reference to the British and Dutch East India Companies which were founded at the beginning of the 17th century. They had the monopoly, of trade with the East Indies and played a decisive part in the establishment of the British and Dutch colonial empires

[63] The Preussische Seehandlungsgesellschaft (Prussian Maritime Trading Company) was founded as a commercial and banking company in 1772 and granted a number of important privileges by the state. It advanced big loans to the government and in fact became its banker and broker

[64] Levons-nous! (Let us rise up!) — part of the motto of the Révolutions de Paris, a revolutionary-democratic weekly which was published in Paris from July 1789 to February 1794 (until September 1790 its editor was Elisée Lousatalot). The entire motto was: “Les grands ne nous paraissent grands que parce que nous sommes à genoux: levons-nous!” (“The great only seem great to us because we are on our knees: Let us rise up!”)

[65] Der hinkende Botte, also called Der hinkende Bote (The Lame Messenger) — a name given to a sort of popular almanac which contained rather stale news relating to events of the preceding year

[66] Straubinger — a name for Gerinan travelling journeymen. In their works and letters Marx and Engels frequently applied it ironically to artisans who remained under the influence of backward guild notions and believed that society could abandon large-scale capitalist industry and return to the petty handicraft stage of production

[67] Mozart’s Requiem was completed, on the basis of his manuscript notes, by Franz Xaver Süssmayer

[68] Organisers of labour — an allusion to the utopian socialists (in particular Fourier and his followers) who put forward a plan for the peaceful transformation of society by means of associations, that is, by “organisation of labour”, which they opposed to the anarchy of production under capitalism. Some of these ideas were used by the French petty-bourgeois socialist Louis Blanc in his book Organisation du travail (Paris, 1839) in which he proposed that the bourgeois state should transform contemporary society into a socialist society

[69] Willenhall, a town in Staffordshire, England, with a considerable iron industry

[70] An allusion to the fact that Max Stirner dedicated his book to his wife Marie Dähnhardt. The phrase “the title spectre of his book” was derived from Stirner’s phrase “the title spectre of her book”. In his book Der Einzige und sein Eigenthum he used it in relation to Bettina von Arnim’s work, Dies Buch gehört dem König

[71] This refers to one of the main principles of the “Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen” (Déclaration des droits de 1'homme et du citoyen), a preamble to the Constitution adopted by the French Convention in 1793 during the revolutionary dictatorship of the Jacobins. The last article, the 35th, of the Declaration reads: “When the government violates the rights of the people, insurrection is the imprescriptible right and the irremissible duty of the people as a whole and of each of its sections

[72] According to the Bible (Genesis 41:18-20), the Egyptian pharaoh dreamed that seven fat cows were eaten by seven lean cows but the latter remained just as lean as before. According to the interpretation given to the pharaoh by Joseph, the dream meant that Egypt would have rich harvests for seven years to be followed by seven years of drought and famine.

[73] The Customs Union (Zollverein) of German states (initially they numbered 18), which established a common customs frontier, was set up in 1834 and headed by Prussia. By the 1840s the Union embraced most of the German states, with the exception of Austria, the Hanseatic cities (Bremen, Hamburg, Lübeck) and a few small states. Brought into being by the necessity to create an all-German market, the Customs Union became a factor conducive to the political unification of Germany.

[74] The Cyrenaic school — a school of ancient Greek philosophy founded at the beginning of the 4th century BC by Aristippus of Cyrene, a pupil of Socrates. The Cyrenaics were agnostics, adopted a critical attitude to religion and regarded pleasure (hedone) as the aim of life

[75] Kupfergraben — the name of a canal in Berlin. Hegel lived on the Kupfergraben embankment.

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III. Saint Max

The Leipzig Council : III. Saint Max[edit source]

1. The Unique and His Property[edit source]

The Old Testament: Man [2][edit source]

1. The Book of Genesis, i.e., A Man’s Life[edit source]

2. The Economy of the Old Testament[edit source]

3. The Ancients[edit source]

4. The Moderns[edit source]

A. The Spirit (Pure History of Spirits)[edit source]

B. The Possessed (Impure History of Spirits)[edit source]

a) The Apparition[edit source]

b) Whimsy[edit source]

C. The Impurely Impure History of Spirits[edit source]

a) Negroes and Mongols[edit source]

b) Catholicism and Protestantism (Cf. “The Economy of the Old Testament”)[edit source]

D. Hierarchy[edit source]

5. “Stirner” Delighted in His Construction[edit source]

6. The Free Ones[edit source]

A. Political Liberalism[edit source]

B. Communism[edit source]

C. Humane Liberalism[edit source]

The New Testament: “Ego”[33][edit source]

1. The Economy of the New Testament[edit source]

2. The Phenomenology of the Egoist in Agreement with Himself, or the Theory of Justification[edit source]

3. The Revelation of John the Divine, or “The Logic of the New Wisdom”[edit source]

4. Peculiarity[edit source]

5. The Owner[edit source]

A. My Power[edit source]

I. Right[edit source]

II. Law[edit source]

III. Crime[edit source]

[B. My Intercourse][edit source]

[I. Society][54][edit source]

II. Rebellion[edit source]

III. Union[edit source]

C. My Self-Enjoyment[edit source]

6. Solomon’s Song of Songs or The Unique[edit source]

Conclusion to “The Unique”[edit source]

2. Apologetical Commentary[edit source]

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The Old Testament: Man ^[2][edit source]

The New Testament: “Ego”^[33][edit source]

[I. Society]^[54][edit source]