The Ego and his Own by Max Stirner (best memoirs of all time TXT) 📖

concept of freedom (as in general with regard to so

many other things whose anticipatory introduction cannot be avoided) refer to

what comes later.

§1. Political Liberalism

After the chalice of so-called absolute monarchy had been drained down to the

dregs, in the eighteenth century people became aware that their drink did not

taste human -- too clearly aware not to begin to crave a different cup. Since

our fathers were "human beings" after all, they at last desired also to be

regarded as such.

Whoever sees in us something else than human beings, in him we likewise will

not see a human being, but an inhuman being, and will meet him as an unhuman

being; on the other hand, whoever recognizes us as human beings and protects

us against the danger of being treated inhumanly, him we will honor as our

true protector and guardian.

Let us then hold together and protect the man in each other; then we find the

necessary protection in our holding together, and in ourselves, *those who

hold together*, a fellowship of those who know their human dignity and hold

together as "human beings." Our holding together is the State; we who hold

together are the nation.

In our being together as nation or State we are only human beings. How we

deport ourselves in other respects as individuals, and what self-seeking

impulses we may there succumb to, belongs solely to our private life; our

public or State life is a purely human one. Everything un-human or

"egoistic" that clings to us is degraded to a "private matter" and we

distinguish the State definitely from "civil society," which is the sphere of

"egoism's" activity.

The true man is the nation, but the individual is always an egoist. Therefore

strip off your individuality or isolation wherein dwells discord and egoistic

inequality, and consecrate yourselves wholly to the true man -- the nation or

the State. Then you will rank as men, and have all that is man's; the State,

the true man, will entitle you to what belongs to it, and give you the "rights

of man"; Man gives you his rights!

So runs the speech of the commonalty.

The commonalty(59) is nothing else than the thought that the State is all in

all, the true man, and that the individual's human value consists in being a

citizen of the State. In being a good citizen he seeks his highest honor;

beyond that he knows nothing higher than at most the antiquated -- "being a

good Christian."

The commonalty developed itself in the struggle against the privileged

classes, by whom it was cavalierly treated as "third estate" and confounded

with the canaille. In other words, up to this time the State had recognized

caste.(60) The son of a nobleman was selected for posts to which the most

distinguished commoners aspired in vain. The civic feeling revolted against

this. No more distinction, no giving preference to persons, no difference of

classes! Let all be alike! No separate interest is to be pursued longer, but

the general interest of all. The State is to be a fellowship of free and

equal men, and every one is to devote himself to the "welfare of the whole,"

to be dissolved in the State, to make the State his end and ideal. State!

State! so ran the general cry, and thenceforth people sought for the "right

form of State," the best constitution, and so the State in its best

conception. The thought of the State passed into all hearts and awakened

enthusiasm; to serve it, this mundane god, became the new divine service and

worship. The properly political epoch had dawned. To serve the State or the

nation became the highest ideal, the State's interest the highest interest,

State service (for which one does not by any means need to be an official) the

highest honor.

So then the separate interests and personalities had been scared away, and

sacrifice for the State had become the shibboleth. One must give up himself,

and live only for the State. One must act "disinterestedly," not want to

benefit himself, but the State. Hereby the latter has become the true

person. before whom the individual personality vanishes; not I live, but it

lives in me. Therefore, in comparison with the former self-seeking, this was

unselfishness and impersonality itself. Before this god -- State -- all

egoism vanished, and before it all were equal; they were without any other

distinction -- men, nothing but men.

The Revolution took fire from the inflammable material of property. The

government needed money. Now it must prove the proposition that it *is

absolute, and so master of all property, sole proprietor; it must take* to

itself its money, which was only in the possession of the subjects, not

their property. Instead of this, it calls States-general, to have this money

granted to it. The shrinking from strictly logical action destroyed the

illusion of an absolute government; he who must have something "granted" to

him cannot be regarded as absolute. The subjects recognized that they were

real proprietors, and that it was their money that was demanded. Those who

had hitherto been subjects attained the consciousness that they were

proprietors. Bailly depicts this in a few words: "If you cannot dispose of

my property without my assent, how much less can you of my person, of all that

concerns my mental and social position? All this is my property, like the

piece of land that I till; and I have a right, an interest, to make the laws

myself." Bailly's words sound, certainly, as if every one was a proprietor

now. However, instead of the government, instead of the prince, *the --

nation* now became proprietor and master. From this time on the ideal is

spoken of as -- "popular liberty" -- "a free people," etc.

As early as July 8, 1789, the declaration of the bishop of Autun and Barrere

took away all semblance of the importance of each and every individual in

legislation; it showed the complete powerlessness of the constituents; the

majority of the representatives has become master. When on July 9 the plan

for division of the work on the constitution is proposed, Mirabeau remarks

that "the government has only power, no rights; only in the people is the

source of all right to be found." On July 16 this same Mirabeau exclaims:

"Is not the people the source of all power?" The source, therefore, of all

right, and the source of all -- power!(61) By the way, here the substance of

"right" becomes visible; it is -- power. "He who has power has right."

The commonalty is the heir of the privileged classes. In fact, the rights of

the barons, which were taken from them as "usurpations," only passed over to

the commonalty. For the commonalty was now called the "nation." "Into the

hands of the nation" all prerogatives were given back. Thereby they ceased

to be "prerogatives":(62) they became "rights."(63) From this time on the

nation demands tithes, compulsory services; it has inherited the lord's court,

the rights of vert and venison, the -- serfs. The night of August 4 was the

death-night of privileges or "prerogatives" (cities, communes, boards of

magistrates, were also privileged, furnished with prerogatives and seigniorial

rights), and ended with the new morning of "right," the "rights of the State,"

the "rights of the nation."

The monarch in the person of the "royal master" had been a paltry monarch

compared with this new monarch, the "sovereign nation." This monarchy was a

thousand times severer, stricter, and more consistent. Against the new monarch

there was no longer any right, any privilege at all; how limited the "absolute

king" of the ancien regime looks in comparison! The Revolution effected the

transformation of limited monarchy into absolute monarchy. From this time

on every right that is not conferred by this monarch is an "assumption"; but

every prerogative that he bestows, a "right." The times demanded *absolute

royalty*, absolute monarchy; therefore down fell that so-called absolute

royalty which had so little understood how to become absolute that it remained

limited by a thousand little lords.

What was longed for and striven for through thousands of years -- to wit, to

find that absolute lord beside whom no other lords and lordlings any longer

exist to clip his power -- the bourgeoisie has brought to pass. It has

revealed the Lord who alone confers "rightful titles," and without whose

warrant nothing is justified. "So now we know that an idol is nothing in the

world, and that there is no other god save the one."(64)

Against right one can no longer, as against a right, come forward with the

assertion that it is "a wrong." One can say now only that it is a piece of

nonsense, an illusion. If one called it wrong, one would have to set up

another right in opposition to it, and measure it by this. If, on the

contrary, one rejects right as such, right in and of itself, altogether, then

one also rejects the concept of wrong, and dissolves the whole concept of

right (to which the concept of wrong belongs).

What is the meaning of the doctrine that we all enjoy "equality of political

rights"? Only this -- that the State has no regard for my person, that to it

I, like every other, am only a man, without having another significance that

commands its deference. I do not command its deference as an aristocrat, a

nobleman's son, or even as heir of an official whose office belongs to me by

inheritance (as in the Middle Ages countships, etc., and later under absolute

royalty, where hereditary offices occur). Now the State has an innumerable

multitude of rights to give away, e. g. the right to lead a battalion, a

company, etc.; the right to lecture at a university, and so forth; it has them

to give away because they are its own, i.e., State rights or "political"

rights. Withal, it makes no difference to it to whom it gives them, if the

receiver only fulfills the duties that spring from the delegated rights. To it

we are all of us all right, and -- equal -- one worth no more and no less

than another. It is indifferent to me who receives the command of the army,

says the sovereign State, provided the grantee understands the matter

properly. "Equality of political rights" has, consequently, the meaning that

every one may acquire every right that the State has to give away, if only he

fulfills the conditions annexed thereto -- conditions which are to be sought

only in the nature of the particular right, not in a predilection for the

person (persona grata): the nature of the right to become an officer brings

with it, e. g. the necessity that one possess sound limbs and a suitable

measure of knowledge, but it