The Ego and His Own

by Max Stirner

Hence I can also say that the ultimate basis of their actions is—love. Not a voluntary love however, not their own, but a tributary love, or the higher being's own (i. e. God's, who himself is love); in short, not the egoistic, but the religious; a love that springs from their fancy that they must discharge a tribute of love, i. e. that they must not be "egoists."

If we want to deliver the world from many kinds of unfreedom, we want this not on its account but on ours; for, as we are not world-liberators by profession and out of "love," we only want to win it away from others. We want to make it our own; it is not to be any longer owned as serf by God (the church) nor by the law (State), but to be our own; therefore we seek to "win" it, to "captivate" it, and, by meeting it half-way and "devoting" ourselves to it as to ourselves as soon as it belongs to us, to complete and make superfluous the force that it turns against us. If the world is ours, it no longer attempts any force against us, but only with us. My selfishness has an interest in the liberation of the world, that it may become—my property.

Not isolation or being alone, but society, is man's original state. Our existence begins with the most intimate conjunction, as we are already living with our mother before we breathe; when we see the light of the world, we at once lie on a human being's breast again, her love cradles us in the lap, leads us in the go-cart, and chains us to her person with a thousand ties. Society is our state of nature. And this is why, the more we learn to feel ourselves, the connection that was formerly most intimate becomes ever looser and the dissolution of the original society more unmistakable. To have once again for herself the child that once lay under her heart, the mother must fetch it from the street and from the midst of its playmates. The child prefers the intercourse that it enters into with its fellows to the society that it has not entered into, but only been born in.

But the dissolution of society is intercourse or union. A society does assuredly arise by union too, but only as a fixed idea arises by a thought,—to wit, by the vanishing of the energy of the thought (the thinking itself, this restless taking back all thoughts that make themselves fast) from the thought. If a union[203] has crystallized into a society, it has ceased to be a coalition;[204] for coalition is an incessant self-uniting; it has become a unitedness, come to a standstill, degenerated into a fixity; it is—dead as a union, it is the corpse of the union or the coalition, i. e. it is—society, community. A striking example of this kind is furnished by the party.

That a society (e. g. the society of the State) diminishes my liberty offends me little. Why, I have to let my liberty be limited by all sorts of powers and by every one who is stronger; nay, by every fellow-man; and, were I the autocrat of all the R......, I yet should not enjoy absolute liberty. But ownness I will not have taken from me. And ownness is precisely what every society has designs on, precisely what is to succumb to its power.

A society which I join does indeed take from me many liberties, but in return it affords me other liberties; neither does it matter if I myself deprive myself of this and that liberty (e. g. by any contract). On the other hand, I want to hold jealously to my ownness. Every community has the propensity, stronger or weaker according to the fulness of its power, to become an authority to its members and to set limits for them: it asks, and must ask, for a "subject's limited understanding"; it asks that those who belong to it be subject to it, be its "subjects"; it exists only by subjection. In this a certain tolerance need by no means be excluded; on the contrary, the society will welcome improvements, corrections, and blame, so far as such are calculated for its gain: but the blame must be "well-meaning," it may not be "insolent and disrespectful,"—in other words, one must leave uninjured, and hold sacred, the substance of the society. The society demands that those who belong to it shall not go beyond it and exalt themselves, but remain "within the bounds of legality," i. e. allow themselves only so much as the society and its law allow them.

There is a difference whether my liberty or my ownness is limited by a society. If the former only is the case, it is a coalition, an agreement, a union; but, if ruin is threatened to ownness, it is a power of itself, a power above me, a thing unattainable by me, which I can indeed admire, adore, reverence, respect, but cannot subdue and consume, and that for the reason that I am resigned. It exists by my resignation, my self-renunciation, my spiritlessness,[205] called—HUMILITY.[206] My humility makes its courage,[207] my submissiveness gives it its dominion.

But in reference to liberty State and union are subject to no essential difference. The latter can just as little come into existence, or continue in existence, without liberty's being limited in all sorts of ways, as the State is compatible with unmeasured liberty. Limitation of liberty is inevitable everywhere, for one cannot get rid of everything; one cannot fly like a bird merely because one would like to fly so, for one does not get free from his own weight; one cannot live under water as long as he likes, like a fish, because one cannot do without air and cannot get free from this indispensable necessity; and the like. As religion, and most decidedly Christianity, tormented man with the demand to realize the unnatural and self-contradictory, so it is to be looked upon only as the true logical outcome of that religious overstraining and overwroughtness that finally liberty itself, absolute liberty, was exalted into an ideal, and thus the nonsense of the impossible had to come glaringly to the light.—The union will assuredly offer a greater measure of liberty, as well as (and especially because by it one escapes all the coercion peculiar to State and society life) admit of being considered as "a new liberty"; but nevertheless it will still contain enough of unfreedom and involuntariness. For its object is not this—liberty (which on the contrary it sacrifices to ownness), but only ownness. Referred to this, the difference between State and union is great enough. The former is an enemy and murderer of ownness, the latter a son and co-worker of it; the former a spirit that would be adored in spirit and in truth, the latter my work, my product; the State is the lord of my spirit, who demands faith and prescribes to me articles of faith, the creed of legality; it exerts moral influence, dominates my spirit, drives away my ego to put itself in its place as "my true ego,"—in short, the State is sacred, and as against me, the individual man, it is the true man, the spirit, the ghost; but the union is my own creation, my creature, not sacred, not a spiritual power above my spirit, as little as any association of whatever sort. As I am not willing to be a slave of my maxims, but lay them bare to my continual criticism without any warrant, and admit no bail at all for their persistence, so still less do I obligate myself to the union for my future and pledge my soul to it, as is said to be done with the devil and is really the case with the State and all spiritual authority; but I am and remain more to myself than State, Church, God, and the like; consequently infinitely more than the union too.

That society which Communism wants to found seems to stand nearest to coalition. For it is to aim at the "welfare of all," oh, yes, of all, cries Weitling innumerable times, of all! That does really look as if in it no one needed to take a back seat. But what then will this welfare be? Have all one and the same welfare, are all equally well off with one and the same thing? If that be so, the question is of the "true welfare." Do we not with this come right to the point where religion begins its dominion of violence? Christianity says, Look not on earthly toys, but seek your true welfare, become—pious Christians; being Christians is the true welfare. It is the true welfare of "all," because it is the welfare of Man as such (this spook). Now, the welfare of all is surely to be your and my welfare too? But, if you and I do not look upon that welfare as our welfare, will care then be taken for that in which we feel well? On the contrary, society has decreed a welfare as the "true welfare"; and, if this welfare were called e. g. "enjoyment honestly worked for," but you preferred enjoyable laziness, enjoyment without work, then society, which cares for the "welfare of all," would wisely avoid caring for that in which you are well off. Communism, in proclaiming the welfare of all, annuls outright the well-being of those who hitherto lived on their income from investments and apparently felt better in that than in the prospect of Weitling's strict hours of labor. Hence the latter asserts that with the welfare of thousands the welfare of millions cannot exist, and the former must give up their special welfare "for the sake of the general welfare." No, let people not be summoned to sacrifice their special welfare for the general, for this Christian admonition will not carry you through; they will better understand the opposite admonition, not to let their own welfare be snatched from them by anybody, but to put it on a permanent foundation. Then they are of themselves led to the point that they care best for their welfare if they unite with others for this purpose, i. e. "sacrifice a part of their liberty," yet not to the welfare of others, but to their own. An appeal to men's self-sacrificing disposition and self-renouncing love ought at last to have lost its seductive plausibility when, after an activity of thousands of years, it has left nothing behind but the—misère of to-day. Why then still fruitlessly expect self-sacrifice to bring us better times? why not rather hope for them from usurpation? Salvation comes no longer from the giver, the bestower, the loving one, but from the taker, the appropriater (usurper), the owner. Communism, and, consciously or unconsciously, egoism-reviling humanism, still count on love.

If community is once a need of man, and he finds himself furthered by it in his aims, then very soon, because it has become his principle, it prescribes to him its laws too, the laws of—society. The principle of men exalts itself into a sovereign power over them, becomes their supreme essence, their God, and, as such,—lawgiver. Communism gives this principle the strictest effect, and Christianity is the religion of society, for, as Feuerbach rightly says although he does not mean it rightly, love is the essence of man; i. e. the essence of society or of societary (Communistic) man. All religion is a cult of society, this principle by which societary (cultivated) man is dominated; neither is any god an ego's exclusive god, but always a society's or community's, be it of the society "family" (Lar, Penates) or of a "people" ("national god") or of "all men" ("he is a Father of all men").