Latest / The Philosophy Insights Collection / 28 - My Intercourse - part 5 - The Ego and His Own - Max Stirner
Transcript
- My Intercourse, Part five. Proudon Waiting two thinks he is telling the worst about property when he calls it theft, passing quite over the embarrassing question, what well founded objection can be made against theft? We only ask, is the concept of theft at all possible? Unless one allows validity to the concept of property? How can one steal? If property is not already extant? What belongs to no one cannot be stolen. The water that one draws out of the sea he does not steal. Accordingly, property is not theft, but a theft becomes possibly only through property. Weightling has to come to this too, as he does regard everything as the property of all. If something is the property of all, than indeed the individual who appropriates it to himself steals. Private property lives by grace of the law. Only in the law has it its warrant for possession. Is not yet property. It becomes mine only by a sense of the law. It is not a fact, not unfait, as proud hon thinks, but a fiction a thought. This is legal property, legitimate property, guaranteed property. It is mine not through me, but through the law. Nevertheless, property is the expression for unlimited dominion over somewhat thing beast man, which I can judge and dispose of as seems good to me according to Roman law. Indeed, just you tende a ad died resur quatterrus urus rascio patitur an exclusive and unlimited right. But property is conditioned by might. What I have in my power that is my own. So long as I assert myself as holder, I am the proprietor of the thing. If it gets away from me again, no matter by what power, e g. Through my recognition of a title of others to the thing, then the property is extinct. Thus property and possession coincide. It is not a right lying outside my might that legitimizes me, but solely my might. If I no longer have this, the thing vanishes away from me. When the Romans no longer had any might against the Germans, the world Empire of Rome belonged to the latter, and it would sound ridiculous to insist that the Romans have nevertheless remained properly the proprietors. Whoever knows how to take and to defend the thing to him it belongs, so it is again taken from him, as liberty belongs to heal them who takes it only might decide about property. And as the state, no matter whether state or well to do citizens, or of ragamuffins or of men, in the absolute, is the sole mighty one. It alone is proprietor. I the unique, have nothing, am only enfe You am the sole and as such servitor under the domain of the state, there is no property of mine. I want to raise the value of myself the value of ownness. And should I cheapen property? No, as I was not respected hitherto, because people, mankind, and a thousand other genialities were put higher. So property too has to this day not yet been recognized in its full value. Property too was only the property of a ghost e g. The people's property. My whole existence belonged to the fatherland. I belonged to the fatherland, the people at the stake, and therefore also everything that I called mine own. It is demanded of states that they make away with corporalism. It seems to me this is asking that the state should cut off its own head and lay it at its feet. For so long as the stake is the ego, the individual ego must remain a poor devil, a non ego. The state has an interest only in being itself rich. Whether Michael is rich and Peter Paul is alike to it, Peter might also be rich and Michael Paul. It looks on indifferently as one grows Paul and the other rich. Unruffled by this alternation as individuals, they are really equal before its face. In this it is just before it. Both of them are nothing, as we are altogether sinners before God. On the other hand, it has a very great interest in this that those individuals who make it their ego should have a part in its wealth. It makes them partakers in its property through property with which it rewards the individuals. It tames them. But this remains its property, and everyone has the us afflucted of it only so long as he bears in himself the ego of the state, or is a loyal member of society. In the opposite case, the property is confiscated or made to melt away by vexatious lawsuits. The property then is and remains state property, not property of the ego. That the state does not habituarily deprive the individual of what he has from the state means simply that the state does not rob itself. He who is state ego are a good citizen or subject, holds his fife undisturbed as such an ego, not as being an ego of his own. According to the code, property is what I call mine by virtue of God and law. But it is mine by virtue of God and law only so long as the state has nothing against it in expcreations, disarmaments, etc. As when the exchequer confiscates inheritances. If the errors do not put in an appearance early enough, how plainly the else failed principle that only the people the state is proprietor, while the individual is foffee strikes the eye. The state, I mean to say, cannot intend that anybody should, for its own sake have property or actually be rich, may even well to do it. Can acknowledge nothing, yield nothing, grant nothing to me as me. The state cannot check pauperism, because the poverty of possession is a poverty of me. He who is nothing but what chance or another to wit the state makes out of him, also has quite rightly nothing but what another gives him. And this other will give him only what he deserves, i e. What he is worth by service. It is not he that realizes a value from himself. The state realizes a value from him national economy busy as itself much of this subject. It lies far out beyond the national, however, and goes beyond the concepts and horizon of the state, which knows only state property and can distribute nothing else. For this reason, it binds on the possessions of property to conditions as it finds everything to them e g. Marriage, allowing validity only to the marriage sanctioned by it, and resting this out of my power. But property is my property only when I hold it unconditionally. Only I an unconditional ego, have property enter a relation of love, carry on free trade. The state has no anxiety about me and mine, but about itself and its I count for something to it only as its child, as a son of the country. As ego, I am nothing at all for it. For the state's understanding. What befalls me as ego is something accidental, my wealth as well as my impoverishment. But if I, with all that is mine, am an accident in the state's eyes, this proves that it cannot comprehend me. I go beyond its concepts or its understanding is too limited to comprehend me. Therefore it cannot do anything for me either. Corpoism is the valuelessness of me, the phenomenon that I cannot realize value for myself. For this reason, state and corpoorism are one and the same. The state does not let me come to my value, and continues in existence only through my valuelessness. It is forever intent on getting benefit from me, i e. Exploiting me, turning me to account, using me up. Even if the use it gets from me consists only in my supplying a puress pollituate. It wants me to be its creature. Corpoorism can be removed only when I, as ego, realize value from myself. When I give my own self value and make my price myself, I must rise in revolt to rise in the world. What I produce flour, linen or iron and coal, which I toilsomely win from the earth is my work that I want to realize value from. But then I may long complain that I am not paid for my work according to its value. The payer will not listen to me, and the state, likewise will maintain an apathetic attitude so long as it does not think it must appease me that I may not break out with my dreaded might. But this appeasing will be all. And if it comes into my head to ask or more, the state turns against me with all the force of its lion cause and eagle clause. For it is the king of beasts, it is lion and eagle. If I refuse to be tent with the price that it fixes for my where and labor, is I rather aspire to determine the price of my where myself e g To pay myself in the first place, I come into a conflict with the buyers of the war. If this were stilled by a mutual understanding, the state would not readily make objections. For how individuals get along with each other troubles it little, so long as therein they do not get in its way. Its damage and its danger begin only when they do not agree, but in the absence of a settlement, take each other by the hair. The state cannot endure that man stands in a direct relation to man. It must step between us as mediator, must intervene. What Christ was, what the saints the Church were, The state has become to wit mediator. It tears man for man to put itself between them as spirit. The laborers who ask for higher pay are treated as criminals as soon as they want to compel it. What are they to do Without compulsion, they don't get it. And in compulsion a state sees a self help, a determination of price by the ego, a genuine, free realization of value from his property which it cannot admit of. What then are the laborers to do? Look to themselves and ask nothing about the state. But as is the situation with regard to my material work, so it is with my intellectual too. The state allows me to realize value from all my thoughts and to find customers for them. I do not realize value from them e g. In the very fact that they bring me honor from the listeners, etc. But only so long as my thoughts are its forts. If, on the other hand, I harbor thoughts that it cannot approve i e. Make its own, then it does not allow me at all to realize value from them, to bring them into exchange into commerce. My thoughts are free only if they are granted to me by the state's grace i e. If they are the state's forts, it lets me philosophize freely only so far as I approve myself a philosopher of state. It gives the state I must not feel ophicized gladly as it tolerates my helping it out of its deficiencies furthering it. Therefore, as I may behave only as an ego most gracefully permitted by the state, provided with its testimonial of legitimacy and police pass. So too, it is not granted me to realize value from what is mine unless this proves to be its, which I hold as he from it. My ways must be its ways, else it distrains me my thoughts its thoughts. Else it stops my mouth. The state has nothing to be more afraid of than the value of me, and nothing must it more carefully guard against than every occasion that offers itself to me for realizing value from myself. I am the deadly enemy of the state, which always hovers between the alternatives it or I. Therefore it strictly insists not only on not letting me have a standing, but also on keeping down what is mine. In the state. There is no property, i e. No property of the individual, but only state property. Only through the state have I what I have as I am only through it. What I am. My private property is only that which the state leaves to me of its cutting off others from it, depriving them, making it private. It is state property. But in opposition to the state, I feel more and more clearly that there is still left me a great might, the might over myself, i e. Over everything that detains only to me, and that exists only in being my own. What do I do if my ways are no longer its ways, my thoughts no longer its thoughts. I looked to myself and ask nothing about it. In my thoughts which I get sanctioned by no assent, grant, or grace, I have my real property, a property with which I can trade for as mine. They are my creators, and I am in a position to give them away in return for other thoughts. I give them up and take in exchange for them others, which then are my new purchased property. What then, is my property? Nothing but what is in my power to What property am I entitled to? Every property to which I empower myself? I give myself the right of property. In taking property to myself, or giving myself the proprietor's power, full power, empowerment. Everything over which I have my that cannot be torn from me remains my property. Well, then let might decide about property, and I will expect everything from my might alien might might that I leave to another make me an owned slave. Then let my own might take me an owner. Let me then withdraw the might. But I have conceded to others out of ignorance regarding the strength of my own might. Let me say to myself what my might features to is my property. And let me claim as property everything that I feel myself strong enough to attain. And let me extend my actual property as far as I entitle. I e empower myself to take. Here, Egoism selfishness must decide not the principle of love. Not love motives like mercy, gentleness, good nature, or even justice and equity. For just THEA two is a phenomenon of love, a product of love. Love knows only sacrifices and demands self sacrifice. Egoism does not think of sacrificing anything, giving away anything that at once. It simply decides what I want I must have, and will procur all attempts to enact rational laws about property have put out from the bay of love into a desolatecy of regulations. Even socialism and communism cannot be expected from this. Every one is to be provided with adequate means for which it is literal to the point. Whether one socialistically finds them still in a personal property or communistically draws them from the community of goods, the individual's mind in this remains the same. It remains a mind of dependence. The disturbing board of equity lets me have only what the sense of equity, its loving care for all, prescribes for me the individual. There lies no less of a check in collective wealth than in that of the individual others. Neither that is mine, nor this Whether the wealth belongs to the captivity which confers part of it on me, or to individual processes, is for me the same constraint, as I cannot decide about either of the two. On the contrary, communism, by the abolition of all personal property, only plusses me back still more into dependence on another. Fears on the generality or collectivity, and loudly, as it always attacks the state, what it intends is itself a gain, a state, a status, a condition hindering my free movement a sovereign power over me. Communism rightly revolts against the pressure that I experienced from individual proprietors. But still more horrible is the might that it puts in the hands of their collectivity. Egoism takes another way to root out the non possessing Rabel. It does not say, wait for what the board of equity will bestow on you in the name of the collectivity. For search bestowal took place in states from the most ancient times, each receiving according to his dessert, and therefore according to the measure in which each was able to deserve it, to acquire it by service. But take hold and take what you require. With this, the war of all against all is declared. I alone decide what I will have now. That is truly no new wisdom, for self seekers have acted so at all times, not at all necessary thing that the thing be new, if only consciousness of its present. But this latter will not be able to claim great age, unless perhaps one pounce in the Egyptian and Spartan law, for how a little current it appears, even from the stricture above, which speaks with contempt of self seekers, one is to know just this, that the procedure of taking hold is not compatible, but manifests the pure deed of the egoist at one with himself. Only when I expect neither from individuals nor farm a collectivity what I can give to myself. Only then do I slip out of the snares of love. The rebel ceases to be rebeled only when it takes hold. Only. The dread of taking hold and the corresponding punishment thereof makes it a rabbel. Only that taking hold is sin crime. Only this dogma creates a rabble. For the fact that the rabble remains what it is, it because it allows validity to that dogma, is to blame as well as more especially those who self seekingly to give them back their favorite word, demand that the dogma be respected. In short, the lack of consciousness of that new wisdom, the old consciousness of sin, alone, bears the blame. If men reach the point of losing respect for property, everyone will have property as all slaves become free men as they no longer respect the master as master. Unions will then, in this matter too, multiply the individual's means and secure his assailed property according to the communist's opinion, the commune should be proprietor. On the contrary, I am proprietor, and I only come to an understanding with others about my property. If the commune does not do what suits me, I rise against it and defend my property. I am proprietor, but property is not sacred. I should be merely possessor. No. Hitherto one was only possessor, secured in the possession of a parcel by leaving others also in possession of pass on. But now everything belongs to me. I am proprietor of everything that I require and can get possession of. If it is said socialistically society gives me what I require, then the egoist says, I take what I require. If the communists conduct themselves as ragamuffins, the egoist behaves as proprietor all Swan fraternities and attempts at making the rabbel happy. That spring from the principle of love must miscarry. Only from egoism can the rabbel get help. And this help it must give to itself, and will give to itself if it does not let itself be ecoherst interfear it is a power people would lose all respect if one did not coherce, then interfere, says Bolbert and Law in the gastly felt Carter. Property therefore should not and cannot be abolished. It must rather be torn from ghostly hands and become my property. Then the ERUs consciousness that I cannot entitle myself to as much as I require, will vanish. But what cannot man require? Well, whoever required much and understands how to get it, has at all times helped itself to it, as Napoleon did with the Continent, and Fans with algis heaus. The exact point is that the respectful rabel should learn at last to help itself to what it requires. If it reaches out too far for you, why then defend yourselves. You have no need at all to good heartily bestow anything on it. And when it learns to know itself, it, or rather whoever of the rabble learns to know himself, he casts off the rabble. Quality in refusing your arms with