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

enough that the trade is free, but you must take it up.

So all that is left for criticism to do is to prove that the acquisition of

these goods does not yet by any means make us men.

With the liberal commandment that every one is to make a man of himself, or

every one to make himself man, there was posited the necessity that every one

must gain time for this labor of humanization, i. e., that it should become

possible for every one to labor on himself.

The commonalty thought it had brought this about if it handed over everything

human to competition, but gave the individual a right to every human thing.

"Each may strive after everything!"

Social liberalism finds that the matter is not settled with the "may,"

because may means only "it is forbidden to none" but not "it is made possible

to every one." Hence it affirms that the commonalty is liberal only with the

mouth and in words, supremely illiberal in act. It on its part wants to give

all of us the means to be able to labor on ourselves.

By the principle of labor that of fortune or competition is certainly outdone.

But at the same time the laborer, in his consciousness that the essential

thing in him is "the laborer," holds himself aloof from egoism and subjects

himself to the supremacy of a society of laborers, as the commoner clung with

self-abandonment to the competition-State. The beautiful dream of a "social

duty" still continues to be dreamed. People think again that society gives

what we need, and we are under obligations to it on that account, owe it

everything.(75) They are still at the point of wanting to serve a "supreme

giver of all good." That society is no ego at all, which could give, bestow,

or grant, but an instrument or means, from which we may derive benefit; that

we have no social duties, but solely interests for the pursuance of which

society must serve us; that we owe society no sacrifice, but, if we sacrifice

anything, sacrifice it to ourselves -- of this the Socialists do not think,

because they -- as liberals -- are imprisoned in the religious principle, and

zealously aspire after -- a sacred society, e. g. the State was hitherto.

Society, from which we have everything, is a new master, a new spook, a new

"supreme being," which "takes us into its service and allegiance!"

The more precise appreciation of political as well as social liberalism must

wait to find its place further on. For the present we pass this over, in order

first to summon them before the tribunal of humane or critical liberalism.

§ 3. Humane Liberalism

As liberalism is completed in self-criticizing, "critical"(76) liberalism --

in which the critic remains a liberal and does not go beyond the principle of

liberalism, Man -- this may distinctively be named after Man and called the

"humane."

The laborer is counted as the most material and egoistical man. He does

nothing at all for humanity, does everything for himself, for his welfare.

The commonalty, because it proclaimed the freedom of Man only as to his

birth, had to leave him in the claws of the un-human man (the egoist) for the

rest of life. Hence under the regime of political liberalism egoism has an

immense field for free utilization.

The laborer will utilize society for his egoistic ends as the commoner

does the State. You have only an egoistic end after all, your welfare, is the

humane liberal's reproach to the Socialist; take up a purely human interest,

then I will be your companion. "But to this there belongs a consciousness

stronger, more comprehensive, than a laborer-consciousness". "The laborer

makes nothing, therefore he has nothing; but he makes nothing because his

labor is always a labor that remains individual, calculated strictly for his

own want, a labor day by day."(77) In opposition to this one might, e. g.,

consider the fact that Gutenberg's labor did not remain individual, but begot

innumerable children, and still lives today; it was calculated for the want of

humanity, and was an eternal, imperishable labor.

The humane consciousness despises the commoner-consciousness as well as the

laborer-consciousness: for the commoner is "indignant" only at vagabonds (at

all who have "no definite occupation") and their "immorality"; the laborer is

"disgusted" by the idler ("lazy-bones") and his "immoral," because parasitic

and unsocial, principles. To this the humane liberal retorts: The

unsettledness of many is only your product, Philistine! But that you,

proletarian, demand the grind of all, and want to make drudgery general,

is a part, still clinging to you, of your pack-mule life up to this time.

Certainly you want to lighten drudgery itself by all having to drudge

equally hard, yet only for this reason, that all may gain leisure to an

equal extent. But what are they to do with their leisure? What does your

"society" do, that this leisure may be passed humanly? It must leave the

gained leisure to egoistic preference again, and the very gain that your

society furthers falls to the egoist, as the gain of the commonalty, the

masterlessness of man, could not be filled with a human element by the

State, and therefore was left to arbitrary choice.

It is assuredly necessary that man be masterless: but therefore the egoist is

not to become master over man again either, but man over the egoist. Man must

assuredly find leisure: but, if the egoist makes use of it, it will be lost

for man; therefore you ought to have given leisure a human significance. But

you laborers undertake even your labor from an egoistic impulse, because you

want to eat, drink, live; how should you be less egoists in leisure? You labor

only because having your time to yourselves (idling) goes well after work

done, and what you are to while away your leisure time with is left to

chance.

But, if every door is to be bolted against egoism, it would be necessary to

strive after completely "disinterested" action, total disinterestedness.

This alone is human, because only Man is disinterested, the egoist always

interested.

If we let disinterestedness pass unchallenged for a while, then we ask, do you

mean not to take an interest in anything, not to be enthusiastic for anything,

not for liberty, humanity, etc.? "Oh, yes, but that is not an egoistic

interest, not interestedness, but a human, i.e. a -- theoretical

interest, to wit, an interest not for an individual or individuals ('all'),

but for the idea, for Man!"

And you do not notice that you too are enthusiastic only for your idea,

your idea of liberty?

And, further, do you not notice that your disinterestedness is again, like

religious disinterestedness, a heavenly interestedness? Certainly benefit to

the individual leaves you cold, and abstractly you could cry *fiat libertas,

pereat mundus*. You do not take thought for the coming day either, and take no

serious care for the individual's wants anyhow, not for your own comfort nor

for that of the rest; but you make nothing of all this, because you are a --

dreamer.

Do you suppose the humane liberal will be so liberal as to aver that

everything possible to man is human? On the contrary! He does not, indeed,

share the Philistine's moral prejudice about the strumpet, but "that this

woman turns her body into a money-getting machine"(78) makes her despicable to

him as "human being." His judgment is, the strumpet is not a human being; or,

so far as a woman is a strumpet, so far is she unhuman, dehumanized. Further:

The Jew, the Christian, the privileged person, the theologian, etc., is not a

human being; so far as you are a Jew, etc., you are not a human being. Again

the imperious postulate: Cast from you everything peculiar, criticize it away!

Be not a Jew, not a Christian, but be a human being, nothing but a human

being. Assert your humanity against every restrictive specification; make

yourself, by means of it, a human being, and free from those limits; make

yourself a "free man" -- i.e. recognize humanity as your all-determining

essence.

I say: You are indeed more than a Jew, more than a Christian, etc., but you

are also more than a human being. Those are all ideas, but you are corporeal.

Do you suppose, then, that you can ever become a "human being as such?" Do you

suppose our posterity will find no prejudices and limits to clear away, for

which our powers were not sufficient? Or do you perhaps think that in your

fortieth or fiftieth year you have come so far that the following days have

nothing more to dissipate in you, and that you are a human being? The men of

the future will yet fight their way to many a liberty that we do not even

miss. What do you need that later liberty for? If you meant to esteem yourself

as nothing before you had become a human being, you would have to wait till

the "last judgment," till the day when man, or humanity, shall have attained

perfection. But, as you will surely die before that, what becomes of your

prize of victory?

Rather, therefore, invert the case, and say to yourself, I am a human being!

I do not need to begin by producing the human being in myself, for he belongs

to me already, like all my qualities.

But, asks the critic, how can one be a Jew and a man at once? In the first

place, I answer, one cannot be either a Jew or a man at all, if "one" and Jew

or man are to mean the same; "one" always reaches beyond those specifications,

and -- let Isaacs be ever so Jewish -- a Jew, nothing but a Jew, he cannot be,

just because he is this Jew. In the second place, as a Jew one assuredly

cannot be a man, if being a man means being nothing special. But in the third

place -- and this is the point -- I can, as a Jew, be entirely what I -- can

be. From Samuel or Moses, and others, you hardly expect that they should have

raised themselves above Judaism, although you must say that they were not yet

"men." They simply were what they could be. Is it otherwise with the Jews of

today? Because you have discovered the idea of humanity, does it follow from

this that every Jew can become a convert to it? If he can, he does not fail

to, and, if he fails to, he -- cannot. What does your demand concern him? What

the call to be a man, which you address to him?

As a universal principle, in the "human society" which the humane liberal

promises, nothing "special" which one or another has is to find recognition,

nothing which bears the character of "private" is to