To come back to property, the lord is proprietor. Choose then whether you want to be lord, or whether society shall be! On this depends whether you are to be an owner or a ragamuffin! The egoist is owner, the Socialist a ragamuffin. But ragamuffinism or propertylessness is the sense of feudalism, of the feudal system, which since the last century has only changed its overlord, putting "Man" in the place of God, and accepting as a fief from Man what had before been a fief from the grace of God. That the ragamuffinism of Communism is carried out by the humane principle into the absolute or most ragamuffinly ragamuffinism has been shown above; but at the same time also, how ragamuffinism can only thus swing around into ownness. The old feudal system was so thoroughly trampled into the ground in the Revolution that since then all reactionary craft has remained fruitless, and will always remain fruitless, because the dead is—dead; but the resurrection too had to prove itself a truth in Christian history, and has so proved itself: for in another world feudalism is risen again with a glorified body, the new feudalism under the suzerainty of "Man."
Christianity is not annihilated, but the faithful are right in having hitherto trustfully assumed of every combat against it that this could serve only for the purgation and confirmation of Christianity; for it has really only been glorified, and "Christianity exposed" is the—human Christianity. We are still living entirely in the Christian age, and the very ones who feel worst about it are the most zealously contributing to "complete" it. The more human, the dearer has feudalism become to us; for we the less believe that it still is feudalism, we take it the more confidently for ownness and think we have found what is "most absolutely our own" when we discover "the human."
Liberalism wants to give me what is mine, but it thinks to procure it for me not under the title of mine, but under that of the "human." As if it were attainable under this mask! The rights of man, the precious work of the Revolution, have the meaning that the Man in me entitles[210] me to this and that; I as individual, i. e. as this man, am not entitled, but Man has the right and entitles me. Hence as man I may well be entitled; but, as I am more than man, to wit, a special man, it may be refused to this very me, the special one. If on the other hand you insist on the value of your gifts, keep up their price, do not let yourselves be forced to sell out below price, do not let yourselves be talked into the idea that your ware is not worth its price, do not make yourselves ridiculous by a "ridiculous price," but imitate the brave man who says, I will sell my life (property) dear, the enemy shall not have it at a cheap bargain; then you have recognized the reverse of Communism as the correct thing, and the word then is not "Give up your property!" but "Get the value out of your property!"
Over the portal of our time stands not that "Know thyself" of Apollo, but a "Get the value out of thyself!"
Proudhon calls property "robbery" (le vol). But alien property—and he is talking of this alone—is not less existent by renunciation, cession, and humility; it is a present. Why so sentimentally call for compassion as a poor victim of robbery, when one is just a foolish, cowardly giver of presents? Why here again put the fault on others as if they were robbing us, while we ourselves do bear the fault in leaving the others, unrobbed? The poor are to blame for there being rich men.
Universally, no one grows indignant at his, but at alien property. They do not in truth attack property, but the alienation of property. They want to be able to call more, not less, theirs; they want to call everything theirs. They are fighting, therefore, against alienness, or, to form a word similar to property, against alienty. And how do they help themselves therein? Instead of transforming the alien into own, they play impartial and ask only that all property be left to a third party (e. g. human society). They revendicate the alien not in their own name but in a third party's. Now the "egoistic" coloring is wiped off, and everything is so clean and—human!
Propertylessness or ragamuffinism, this then is the "essence of Christianity," as it is the essence of all religiousness (i. e. godliness, morality, humanity), and only announced itself most clearly, and, as glad tidings, became a gospel capable of development, in the "absolute religion." We have before us the most striking development in the present fight against property, a fight which is to bring "Man" to victory and make propertylessness complete: victorious humanity is the victory of—Christianity. But the "Christianity exposed" thus is feudalism completed, the most all-embracing feudal system, i. e. perfect ragamuffinism.
Once more then, doubtless, a "revolution" against the feudal system?—
Revolution and insurrection must not be looked upon as synonymous. The former consists in an overturning of conditions, of the established condition or status, the State or society, and is accordingly a political or social act; the latter has indeed for its unavoidable consequence a transformation of circumstances, yet does not start from it but from men's discontent with themselves, is not an armed rising, but a rising of individuals, a getting up, without regard to the arrangements that spring from it. The Revolution aimed at new arrangements; insurrection leads us no longer to let ourselves be arranged, but to arrange ourselves, and sets no glittering hopes on "institutions." It is not a fight against the established, since, if it prospers, the established collapses of itself; it is only a working forth of me out of the established. If I leave the established, it is dead and passes into decay. Now, as my object is not the overthrow of an established order but my elevation above it, my purpose and deed are not a political or social but (as directed toward myself and my ownness alone) an egoistic purpose and deed.
The revolution commands one to make arrangements, the insurrection[211] demands that he rise or exalt himself.[212] What constitution was to be chosen, this question busied the revolutionary heads, and the whole political period foams with constitutional fights and constitutional questions, as the social talents too were uncommonly inventive in societary arrangement (phalansteries and the like). The insurgent[213] strives to become constitutionless.