2. Stirner depicts for us a single event in this violent transformation of conditions. He assumes that certain men come to realize that they occupy a disproportionately unfavorable position in the State as compared with others who receive the preference.
"Those who are in the unfavorable position take courage to ask the question, 'By what, then, is your property secure, you favored ones?' and give themselves the answer, 'By our refraining from interference! By our protection, therefore! And what do you give us for it? Kicks and contempt you give the "common people"; police oversight, and a catechism with the chief sentence "Respect what is not yours, what belongs to others! respect others, and especially superiors!" But we reply, "If you want our respect, buy it for a price that shall be acceptable to us." We will leave you your property, if you pay duly for this leaving. With what, indeed, does the general in time of peace pay for the many thousands of his yearly income? or Another for the sheer hundred-thousands and millions? With what do you pay us for chewing potatoes and looking quietly on while you swallow oysters? Only buy the oysters from us as dear as we have to buy the potatoes from you, and you may go on eating them. Or do you suppose the oysters do not belong to us as much as to you? You will make an outcry about violence if we take hold and help eat them, and you are right. Without violence we do not get them, as you no less have them by doing violence to us.
"'But take the oysters and done with it, and let us come to what is in a closer way our property (for this other is only possession)—to labor. We toil twelve hours in the sweat of our foreheads, and you offer us a few groschen for it. Then take the like for your labor too. We will come to terms all right if only we have first agreed on the point that neither any longer needs to—donate anything to the other. For centuries we have offered you alms in our kindly—stupidity, have given the mite of the poor and rendered to the masters what is—not the masters'; now just open your bags, for henceforth there is a tremendous rise in the price of our ware. We will take nothing away from you, nothing at all, only you shall pay better for what you want to have. What have you then? "I have an estate of a thousand acres." And I am your plowman, and will hereafter do your plowing only for a thaler a day wages. "Then I'll get another." You will not find one, for we plowmen are no longer doing anything different, and if one presents himself who takes less, let him beware of us.'"[316]
FOOTNOTES:
[209] Stirner p. 439. [The page-numbers of Stirner's first edition, here cited, agree almost exactly with those of the English translation under the title "The Ego and His Own." Any passage quoted here will in general be found in the English translation either on the page whose number is given or on the preceding page; for the early pages, subtract two or three from the number.]
[210] Ib. pp. 435-6.
[211] Ib. p. 465.
[212] Ib. p. 464.
[213] Ib. p. 466.
[214] Stirner p. 473.