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

or the children as against the

parents: it abolishes the family. Nature gives parents, brothers, etc., no

right at all. Altogether, this entire revolutionary or Babouvist principle(17)

rests on a religious, i. e., false, view of things. Who can ask after

"right" if he does not occupy the religious standpoint himself? Is not "right"

a religious concept, i.e. something sacred? Why, "equality of rights", as

the Revolution propounded it, is only another name for "Christian equality,"

the "equality of the brethren," "of God's children," "of Christians"; in

short, fraternité. Each and every inquiry after right deserves to be lashed

with Schiller's words:

Many a year I've used my nose To smell the onion and the rose; Is there any proof which shows That I've a right to that same nose?

When the Revolution stamped equality as a "right," it took flight into the

religious domain, into the region of the sacred, of the ideal. Hence, since

then, the fight for the "sacred, inalienable rights of man." Against the

"eternal rights of man" the "well-earned rights of the established order" are

quite naturally, and with equal right, brought to bear: right against right,

where of course one is decried by the other as "wrong." This has been the

contest of rights(18) since the Revolution.

You want to be "in the right" as against the rest. That you cannot; as against

them you remain forever "in the wrong"; for they surely would not be your

opponents if they were not in "their right" too; they will always make you out

"in the wrong." But, as against the right of the rest, yours is a higher,

greater, more powerful right, is it not? No such thing! Your right is not

more powerful if you are not more powerful. Have Chinese subjects a right to

freedom? Just bestow it on them, and then look how far you have gone wrong in

your attempt: because they do not know how to use freedom they have no right

to it, or, in clearer terms, because they have not freedom they have not the

right to it. Children have no right to the condition of majority because they

are not of age, i.e. because they are children. Peoples that let themselves

be kept in nonage have no rights to the condition of majority; if they ceased

to be in nonage, then only would they have the right to be of age. This means

nothing else than "What you have the power to be you have the right to." I

derive all right and all warrant from me ; I am entitled to everything

that I have in my power. I am entitled to overthrow Zeus, Jehovah, God, etc.,

if I can ; if I cannot, then these gods will always remain in the right and

in power as against me, and what I do will be to fear their right and their

power in impotent "god-fearingness," to keep their commandments and believe

that I do right in everything that I do according to their right, about as

the Russian boundary-sentinels think themselves rightfully entitled to shoot

dead the suspicious persons who are escaping, since they murder "by superior

authority," i.e. "with right." But I am entitled by myself to murder if I

myself do not forbid it to myself, if I myself do not fear murder as a

"wrong." This view of things lies at the foundation of Chamisso's poem, "The

Valley of Murder," where the gray-haired Indian murderer compels reverence

from the white man whose brethren he has murdered. The only thing I am not

entitled to is what I do not do with a free cheer, i. e. what I do not

entitle myself to.

I decide whether it is the right thing in me; there is no right outside

me. If it is right for me,(19) it is right. Possibly this may not suffice to

make it right for the rest; i. e., their care, not mine: let them defend

themselves. And if for the whole world something were not right, but it were

right for me, i. e., I wanted it, then I would ask nothing about the whole

world. So every one does who knows how to value himself, every one in the

degree that he is an egoist; for might goes before right, and that -- with

perfect right.

Because I am "by nature" a man I have an equal right to the enjoyment of all

goods, says Babeuf. Must he not also say: because I am "by nature" a

first-born prince I have a right to the throne? The rights of man and the

"well-earned rights" come to the same thing in the end, i.e. to nature,

which gives me a right, i. e. to birth (and, further, inheritance,

etc.). "I am born as a man" is equal to "I am born as a king's son." The

natural man has only a natural right (because he has only a natural power) and

natural claims: he has right of birth and claims of birth. But nature cannot

entitle me, i.e. give me capacity or might, to that to which only my act

entitles me. That the king's child sets himself above other children, even

this is his act, which secures to him the precedence; and that the other

children approve and recognize this act is their act, which makes them worthy

to be -- subjects.

Whether nature gives me a right, or whether God, the people's choice, etc.,

does so, all of i. e., the same foreign right, a right that I do not give

or take to myself.

Thus the Communists say, equal labor entitles man to equal enjoyment. Formerly

the question was raised whether the "virtuous" man must not be "happy" on

earth. The Jews actually drew this inference: "That it may go well with thee

on earth." No, equal labor does not entitle you to it, but equal enjoyment

alone entitles you to equal enjoyment. Enjoy, then you are entitled to

enjoyment. But, if you have labored and let the enjoyment be taken from you,

then -- "it serves you right."

If you take the enjoyment, it is your right; if, on the contrary, you only

pine for it without laying hands on it, it remains as before, a, "well-earned

right" of those who are privileged for enjoyment. It is their right, as by

laying hands on it would become your right.

The conflict over the "right of property" wavers in vehement commotion. The

Communists affirm(20) that "the earth belongs rightfully to him who tills it,

and its products to those who bring them out." I think it belongs to him who

knows how to take it, or who does not let it be taken from him, does not let

himself be deprived of it. If he appropriates it, then not only the earth, but

the right to it too, belongs to him. This is egoistic right: i.e. it is

right for me, therefore it is right.

Aside from this, right does have "a wax nose." The tiger that assails me is in

the right, and I who strike him down am also in the right. I defend against

him not my right, but myself.

As human right is always something given, it always in reality reduces to the

right which men give, i.e. "concede," to each other. If the right to

existence is conceded to new-born children, then they have the right; if it is

not conceded to them, as was the case among the Spartans and ancient Romans,

then they do not have it. For only society can give or concede it to them;

they themselves cannot take it, or give it to themselves. It will be objected,

the children had nevertheless "by nature" the right to exist; only the

Spartans refused recognition to this right. But then they simply had no

right to this recognition -- no more than they had to recognition of their

life by the wild beasts to which they were thrown.

People talk so much about birthright and complain:

There is alas! -- no mention of the rights That were born with us.(21)

What sort of right, then, is there that was born with me? The right to receive

an entailed estate, to inherit a throne, to enjoy a princely or noble

education; or, again, because poor parents begot me, to -- get free schooling,

be clothed out of contributions of alms, and at last earn my bread and my

herring in the coal-mines or at the loom? Are these not birthrights, rights

that have come down to me from my parents through birth? You think -- no;

you think these are only rights improperly so called, it is just these rights

that you aim to abolish through the real birthright. To give a basis for

this you go back to the simplest thing and affirm that every one is by birth

equal to another -- to wit, a man. I will grant you that every one is born

as man, hence the new-born are therein equal to each other. Why are they?

Only because they do not yet show and exert themselves as anything but bare --

children of men, naked little human beings. But thereby they are at once

different from those who have already made something out of themselves, who

thus are no longer bare "children of man," but -- children of their own

creation. The latter possesses more than bare birthrights: they have earned

rights. What an antithesis, what a field of combat! The old combat of the

birthrights of man and well-earned rights. Go right on appealing to your

birthrights; people will not fail to oppose to you the well-earned. Both stand

on the "ground of right"; for each of the two has a "right" against the other,

the one the birthright of natural right, the other the earned or "well-earned"

right.

If you remain on the ground of right, you remain in -- Rechthaberei.(22) The

other cannot give you your right; he cannot "mete out right" to you. He who

has might has -- right; if you have not the former, neither have you the

latter. Is this wisdom so hard to attain? Just look at the mighty and their

doings! We are talking here only of China and Japan, of course. Just try it

once, you Chinese and Japanese, to make them out in the wrong, and learn by

experience how they throw you into jail. (Only do not confuse with this the

"well-meaning counsels" which -- in China and Japan -- are permitted, because

they do not hinder the mighty one, but possibly help him on.) For him who

should want to make them out in the wrong there would stand open only one way

thereto, that of might. If he deprives them of their might, then he has

really made them out in