[ B. My Intercourse]

[ I. Society]^[99]

[...] again he reveals only his credulity. The reactionaries knew already that by the constitution the bourgeoisie abolishes the naturally arisen state and establishes and makes its own state, that " le pouvoir constituant, qui était dans le temps" naturally "passa dans la volonté humaine",b that "this fabricated state was like a fabricated, painted tree",0 etc. See Fiévée's Correspondance politique et administrative, Paris, 1815, Appel à la France contre la division des opinions, Le drapeau blanc by Sarran ainé,d the Gazette de France of the Restoration period, and the earlier works of Bonald, de Maistre, etc. The liberal bourgeois, in turn, reproach the old republicans — about whom they obviously know as little as Saint Max knows about the bourgeois state — on the grounds that their patriotism is nothing but

"une passion factice envers un être abstrait, une idée générale"⁽¹⁾ (Benj. Constant, De l'esprit de conquête, Paris, 1814, p. 48), whereas the reactionaries accused the bourgeois on the grounds that their political ideology is nothing but "une mystification que la classe aisée fait subir à celles qui ne le sont pas" (Gazette de France, 1831, Février⁽²⁾).

On page 295, Saint Sancho declares that the state is "an institution for making the nation Christian", and all he can say about the basis of the state is that it "is held together" with the "cement" of "respect for the law", or that the holy "is held together" by respect (the holy as link) for the holy (p. 314).

Note 4.

"If the state is holy, there must be censorship" (p. 316). "The French Government does not contest freedom of the press as a right of man, but it demands a guarantee from the individual that he is really a human being." (Quel bonhomme!⁽³⁾ Jacques le bonhomme is "called upon" to study the September Laws ) (p. 380). Note 5, in which we find the most profound explanations about the various forms of the state, which Jacques le bonhomme makes independent and in which he sees only different attempts to realise the true state.

"The republic is nothing but absolute monarchy, for it makes no difference whether the monarch is called prince or people, since both are majesties" (the holy).... "Constitutionalism is a step further than the republic, for it is the state in the process of dissolution."

This dissolution is explained as follows: "In the constitutional state ... the government wants to be absolute, and the people wants to be absolute. These two absolutes" (i.e., holies) "will destroy one another" (p. 302). "I am not the state, I am the creative negation of the state"; "thereby all questions" (about the constitution, etc.) "sink into their true nothing" (p. 310).

He should have added that these propositions about forms of the state are merely a paraphrase of this "nothing", whose sole creation is the proposition given above: I am not the state. Saint Sancho, just like a German school-master, speaks here of "the republic," which is, of course, far older than constitutional monarchy, e.g., the Greek republics.

That in a democratic, representative state like North America class conflicts have already reached a form which the constitutional monarchies are only just being forced to approach — about this, of course, he knows nothing. His phrases about constitutional monarchy prove that since 1842 by the Berlin calendar^[101] he has learned nothing and forgotten nothing.⁽⁴⁾

Note 6.

"The state owes its existence only to the contempt which I have for myself", and "with the disappearance of this disdain it will fade away entirely" (it seems that it depends solely on Sancho how soon all the states on earth will "fade away". Repetition of Note 3 in the reversed equation, see "Logic") : "It exists only when it is superior to me, only as might [Macht] and the mighty [Mächtiger]. Or" (a remarkable or which proves just the opposite of what it is intended to prove) "can you imagine a state the inhabitants of which in all their entirety" (a jump from "I" to "we") "attach no importance to it [sich allesamt nichts aus ihm machen]?" (p. 377).

There is no need to dwell on the synonymy of the words "Macht", "Mächtig' and "machen".

From the fact that in any state there are people who attach importance to it, i.e., who, in the state and thanks to the state, themselves acquire importance, Sancho concludes that the state is a power standing above these people. Here again it is only a matter of getting the fixed idea about the state out of one's mind. Jacques le bonhomme continues to imagine that the state is a mere idea and he believes in the independent power of this idea of the state. He is the true "politician who believes in the state, is possessed by the state" (p. 309). Hegel idealises the conception of the state held by the political ideologists who still took separate individuals as their point of departure, even if it was merely the will of these individuals; Hegel transforms the common will of these individuals into the absolute will, and Jacques le bonhomme bona fide accepts this idealisation of ideology as the correct view of the state and, in this belief, criticises it by declaring the Absolute to be the Absolute.

5. Society as Bourgeois Society

Paraphrase of the French saying: "Ils n'ont rien appris ni rien oublié" ("They have learned nothing and forgotten nothing"); when it was first coined, shortly after the French Revolution, it was used in relation to the royalists.—Ed.

to the state. These explanations appear the newer because they give Saint Sancho the opportunity to put forward again his most favourite equations about right and the state and thus to give his "treatise" "more manifold transformations" and "refractions". We need, of course, only quote the last members of these equations since the reader will still have in mind their context from the chapter "My Power".

Private property or bourgeois

property = Not my property = Holy property = Property of others = Respected property or respect

for the property of others = Property of man (pp. 327, 369).

From these equations one obtains at once the following antitheses:

Property in the bourgeois I J Property in the egoistical sense sense / = \{p. 327). "Property of man" = "My property." ("Human belongings" = My belongings.) P. 324. Equations: Man = Right

= State power. Private property ori ( bourgeois property/ = \ R i g h t f u l property (p. 324),

= mine by virtue of right (p. 332), = guaranteed property, = property of others, = property belonging to another, = property belonging to right, = property by right (pp. 367, 332), = a concept of right, = something spiritual, = universal, = fiction, = pure thought, = fixed idea, = spectre, = property of the spectre

(pp. 368, 324, 332, 367, 369). Private property = Property of right. Right = Power of the state. Private property = Property in the power of the state = State property, or also Property = State property. State property = My non-property.

State = The sole owner (pp. 339, 334). We now come to the antitheses:

Private property — Egoistical property.

Authorised by right ) ( Empowered by me (by the state, by Man) 1—] to have property to have property J [ (p. 339).

Mine by virtue of right — Mine by virtue of my power or

force (p. 332). Property given by

another — Property taken by me (p. 339). Rightful property — Rightful property of another is

of others what I consider right (p. 339), which can be repeated in a hundred other formulas if, for example, one puts plenary powers instead of power, or uses formulas already given.

Private property = \ f My property = property alien relation to the | — ] relation to the property of all property of all others j ( others. Or also: Property comprising a few Property comprising every-• objects thing (p. 343).

Alienation [Entfremdung], as the relation or link in the above equations, can be expressed also in the following antitheses:

Private property — Egoistical property.

"To behave towards property as

towards something holy,

a spectre",
"to respect it",
"to have respect for

property" (p. 324).

"To renounce the holy relation towards property", no longer to regard it as alien, no longer to fear the spectre, to have no respect for property,

to have the property of lack of respect (pp. 368, 340, 343). The modes of appropriation contained in the above equations and antitheses will be dealt with when we come to the "union", but as for the time being we are still in the "holy society", we are here only concerned with canonisation.

Note. In the section "Hierarchy" we already dealt with the question why the ideologists can regard the property relation as a relation of "Man", the different forms of which in different epochs are determined by the individuals' conception of "Man". It suffices here to refer the reader to that analysis.

Treatise 1. On the parcellation of landed property, the redemption of feudal obligations and the swallowing-up of small landed property by large landed property.

All these things are deduced from holy property and the equation: bourgeois property = respect for the holy.

1) "Property in the bourgeois sense means holy property, in such a way that I must respect your property. 'Respect for property!' Hencethe politicians would like everyone to possess his little piece of property and by their endeavour have partly brought about an incredible parcellation" (pp. 327, 328).— 2) "The political liberals see to it that as far as possible all feudal obligations are redeemed and that everyone is a free master on his land, even though this land has only such a quantity of ground" (the land has a quantity of ground?) "that it can be adequately fertilised by the manure from one person.... No matter how small it is, so long as it is one's own, i.e., a respected property! The more such owners there are, the more free people and good patriots has the state" (p. 328).—3) "Political liberalism, like everything religious, counts on respect, humanity, the virtues of love. Therefore it experiences constant vexation. For in practice people respect nothing, and every day small properties are being bought up by large landowners, and the 'free people' are turned into day-labourers. If, on the other hand, the 'small owners' had borne in mind that large property also belongs to them, they would not have respectfully excluded themselves from it and would not have become excluded" (p. 328).

1) Here, therefore, first of all the whole development of parcellation, about which Saint Sancho knows only that it is the holy, is explained from a mere idea which "the politicians" "have got into their heads". Because "the politicians" demand "respect for property", hence they "would like" parcellation, which moreover was carried out everywhere by not respecting other people's property! "The politicians" actually have "partly brought about an incredible parcellation". It was therefore through the action of the "politicians" that in France even before the revolution, just as today in Ireland and partly in Wales, parcellation had long existed in agriculture, and that capital and all other conditions were lacking for large-scale cultivation. Incidentally, how much "politicians" nowadays "would like" to carry out parcellation, Saint Sancho could see from the fact that all the French bourgeois are dissatisfied with parcellation, both because it weakens competition among the workers and also for political reasons; further, from the fact that all reactionaries (as Sancho could see if only from the Erinnerungen of the old Arndt)

regarded parcellation simply as the conversion of landed property into modern, industrial, marketable, desanctified property. We shall not here set forth for our saint the economic reasons why the bourgeoisie, as soon as it has attained power, must carry out this conversion, which can come about both by the abolition of land rents that exceed profit and by parcellation. Nor shall we explain to him that the form in which this conversion takes place depends on the level of development of industry, trade, shipping, etc., in the country concerned. The propositions cited above about parcellation are nothing more than a bombastic circumlocution of the simple fact that in various places "here and there" considerable parcellation exists — expressed in our Sancho's canonising manner of speech, which suits everything and nothing. For the rest, Sancho's propositions given above contain merely the fantasies of the German petty bourgeois about parcellation which, of course, is for him the alien, "the holy". Cf. "Political Liberalism".

2) The redemption of feudal obligations, a misery which occurs only in Germany, where the governments were only compelled to carry it through by the more advanced conditions in neighbouring countries and by financial difficulties — this redemption is held by our saint to be something that "the political liberals" desire in order to produce "free people and good burghers". Sancho's horizon again does not go beyond the Pomeranian Landtag and the Saxon Chamber of Deputies. This German redemption of feudal obligations never led to any political or economic results and, being a half-measure, remained without any effect at all. Sancho knows nothing, of course, about the historically important redemption of feudal obligations in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, which was due to the commencing development of trade and industry and the landowners' need for money.

The very same people who, like Stein and Vincke, wanted the redemption of feudal obligations in Germany in order, as Sancho believes, to make good burghers and free people, found later on that in order to produce "good burghers and free people" feudal obligations ought to be restored, as is just now being attempted in Westphalia. From which it follows that "respect", like the fear of God, is useful for all purposes.

3) The "buying-up" of small landed property by the "large landowners" takes place, according to Sancho, because in practice "respect for property" does not occur. Two of the most common consequences of competition — concentration and buying-up — and competition as a whole, which does not exist without concentration, seem here to our Sancho to be violations of bourgeois property, which moves within the sphere of competition. Bourgeois property is already violated by the very fact of its existence. In Sancho's opinion, it is not possible to buy anything without attacking property.⁽¹⁾ How deeply Saint Sancho has penetrated into the concentration of landed property can already be deduced from the fact that he sees in it only the most obvious act of concentration, the mere "buying-up". Incidentally, from what Sancho says it is not possible to perceive to what extent small landowners cease to be owners by becoming day-labourers. Indeed, on the following page (p. 329) Sancho himself with great solemnity advances as an argument against Proudhon that they continue to be "owners of the share remaining to them in the utilisation of the land", namely owners of wages. "It can sometimes be observed in history" that large landed property swallows up small landed property, and then in turn the small swallows up the large, two phenomena which, in Saint Sancho's opinion, become peacefully resolved into the adequate reason that "in practice people respect nothing". The same thing holds good for the other manifold forms of landed property. And then the wise "if the small owners had", etc.! In the Old Testament we saw how Saint Sancho, in accordance with the speculative method, made earlier generations reflect on the experiences of later ones; now we see how, in accordance with his ranting method, he complains that the earlier generations have failed to bear in mind not only the thoughts of later generations about them, but also his own nonsense. What school-masterly "wisdom"a! If the terrorists had considered that they would bring Napoleon to the throne, if the English barons at the time of Runnymede and Magna Charta had considered that in 1849 the Corn Laws^[102] would be repealed, if Croesus had considered that Rothschild would surpass him in riches, if Alexander the Great had considered that Rotteckb would judge him and that his Empire would fall into the hands of the Turks, if Themistocles had considered that he would defeat the Persians in the interests of Otto the Child,^[103] if Hegel had considered that he would be exploited in such a "vulgar" way by Saint Sancho, if, if, if! About what kind of "small owners" does Saint Sancho fancy that he is talking? About the propertyless peasants who only became "small owners" as a result of the parcelling out of large landed property, or about those who are being ruined nowadays as a result of concentration? For Saint Sancho these two cases are as like as two drops of water. In the first case, the small owners did not by any means exclude themselves from "large property", but each took possession of it insofar as he was not excluded by others and had the power to do so. This power, however, was not Stirner's vaunted power, but was determined by quite empirical relations, e.g., their development and the whole preceding development of bourgeois society, the locality and its greater or lesser degree of connection with the neighbourhood, the size of the piece of land taken into possession, and the number of those who appropriated it, the relations of industry, of intercourse, means of communication, instruments of production, etc., etc. That they had no intention of excluding themselves from large landed property is evident even from the fact that many of them became large landed proprietors themselves. Sancho makes himself ridiculous even in Germany by his unreasonable demand that these peasants should have jumped the stage of panellation, which did not yet exist and was at that time the only revolutionary form for them, and that they should have thrown themselves at a bound into his egoism in agreement with itself. Disregarding this nonsense of his, it was not possible for these peasants to organise themselves com-munistically, since they lacked all the means necessary for bringing about the first condition of communist association, namely collective husbandry, and since, on the contrary, parcellation was only one of the conditions which subsequently evoked the need for such an association. In general, a communist movement can never originate from the countryside, but only from the towns.

In the second case, when Saint Sancho talks of the ruined small owners, these still have a common interest with the big landowners as against the wholly propertyless class and the industrial bourgeoisie. If this common interest is absent, they lack the power to appropriate large landed property, since they live scattered and their whole activity and way of life make association, the first condition for such appropriation, impossible for them, and such a movement, in its turn, presupposes a much more general movement which by no means depends on them

Finally, Sancho's whole tirade amounts to this: that they ought merely to get rid of their respect for the property of others. We shall hear a little more about this later on.

In conclusion, let us take one more proposition ad acta. "The point is that in practice people respect nothing," so, after all, it appears that it is not "just" a matter of "respect".

Treatise No. 2. Private property, state and right.

"If, if, if!" "If" Saint Sancho had for one moment set aside the current ideas of lawyers and politicians about private property, and also the polemic against it, if he had once looked at this private property in its empirical existence, in its connection with the productive forces of individuals, then all his Solomon's wisdom, with which he will now entertain us, would have been reduced to nothing. Then it would hardly have escaped him (although like Habakkuk he is capable de tout^[104]) that private property is a form of intercourse necessary for certain stages of development of the productive forces; a form of intercourse that cannot be abolished, and cannot be dispensed with in the production of actual material life, until productive forces have been created for which private property becomes a restricting fetter. In that case it could not have escaped the reader also that Sancho ought to have occupied himself with material relations, instead of dissolving the whole world in a system of theological morality in order to set against it a new system of would-be egoistical morality. It could not have escaped him that it was a question of things altogether different from "respect" or disrespect. "If, if, if!"

Incidentally, this "if" is only an echo of Sancho's proposition given above; for "if" Sancho had done all that, he obviously could not have written his book.

Since Saint Sancho accepts in good faith the illusion of politicians, lawyers and other ideologists which puts all empirical relations upside-down, and, in addition, in the German manner adds something of his own, private property for him becomes transformed into state property, or property by right, on which he can now make an experiment to justify his equations given above. Let us first of all look at the transformation of private property into state property.

"The question of property is decided only by force" (on the contrary, the question of force has so far been decided by property), "and since the state alone is the mighty one — irrespective of whether it is a state of burghers, a state of ragamuffins" (Stirner's "union") "or simply a state of human beings — it alone is the owner" (p. 333).

Side by side with the fact of the German "state of burghers" here again fantasies invented by Sancho and Bauer appear on an equal footing, whereas no mention is made anywhere of the historically important state formations. First of all he transforms the state into a person, into "the Mighty one". The fact that the ruling class establishes its joint domination as public power, as the state, Sancho interprets and distorts in the German petty-bourgeois manner as meaning that the "state" is established as a third force against this ruling class and absorbs all power in the face of it. He proceeds now to confirm this belief of his by means of a series of examples.

Because property under the rule of the bourgeoisie, as in all epochs, is bound up with definite conditions, first of all economic, which depend on the degree of development of the productive forces and intercourse — conditions which inevitably acquire a legal and political expression — Saint Sancho in his simplicity believes that

"the state links possession of property" (car tel est son bon plaisir⁽²⁾) "just as it links everything else, e.g., marriage, with certain conditions" (p. 335).

Because the bourgeois do not allow the state to interfere in their private interests and give it only as much power as is necessary for their own safety and the maintenance of competition and because the bourgeois in general act as citizens only to the extent that their private interests demand it, Jacques le bonhomme believes that they are "nothing" in face of the state.

"The state is only interested in being wealthy itself; whether Michael is rich and Peter poor is a matter of indifference to it ... in face of it both of them are nothing" (p. 334).

On page 345 he derives the same wisdom from the fact that competition is tolerated in the state.

Because the board of a railway is concerned about its shareholders only insofar as they make their payments and receive their dividends, the Berlin school-master in his innocence concludes that the shareholders are "nothing in face of the board just as we are all sinners in the face of God". On the basis of the impotence of the state in face of the activities of private property-owners Sancho proves the impotence of private property-owners in face of the state and his own impotence in face of both.

Further, since the bourgeois have organised the defence of their own property in the state, and the "ego" cannot, therefore, take away his factory "from such and such a manufacturer", except under the conditions of the bourgeoisie, i.e., under the conditions of competition, Jacques le bonhomme believes that

"the state has the factory as property, the manufacturer holds it only in fee, as possession" (p. 347).

In exactly the same way when a dog guards my house it "has" the house "as property", and I hold it only "in fee, as possession" from the dog.

Since the concealed material conditions of private property are often bound to come into contradiction with the juridical illusion about private property — as seen, for example, in expropria-tions — Jacques le bonhomme, concludes that

"here the otherwise concealed principle that only the state is the property-owner whereas the individual is a feudal tenant, strikes the eye" (p. 335).

All that "strikes the eye here" is the fact that worldly property relations are hidden from the eyes of our worthy burgher behind the mantle of "the holy", and that he has still to borrow a "heavenly ladder" from China in order to "climb" to the "rung of civilisation" attained even by school-masters in civilised countries. In the same way as Sancho here transforms the contradictions belonging to the existence of private property into the negation of private property, he dealt, as we saw above, with the contradictions within the bourgeois family.3

Since the bourgeois, and in general all the members of civil society, are forced to constitute themselves as "we", as a juridical person, as the state, in order to safeguard their common interests and — if only because of the division of labour — to delegate the collective power thus created to a few persons, Jacques le bonhomme imagines that

"each has the use of property only so long as he bears within himself the ego of the state or is a loyal member of society.... He who is a state-ego, i.e., a good burgher or subject, he, as suchan ego, not as his own, holds the fee undisturbed" (pp. 334, 335).

From this point of view, a person possesses a railway share only so long as he "bears within himself" the "ego" of the board; consequently it is only as a saint that one can possess a railway share.

Having in this way convinced himself of the identity of private and state property, Saint Sancho can continue:

"That the state does not arbitrarily take away from the individual that which he has from the state, only means that the state does not rob itself" (pp. 334, 335).

That Saint Sancho does not arbitrarily rob others of their property only means that Saint Sancho does not rob himself, for indeed he "regards" all property as his own.

One cannot demand of us that we should deal further with the rest of Saint Sancho's fantasies about the state and property, e.g., that the state "tames" and "rewards" individuals by means of property, that out of special malice it has invented high stamp duties in order to ruin the citizens if they are not loyal, etc., etc. and in general with the petty-bourgeois German idea of the omnipotence of the state, an idea which was already current among the old German lawyers and is here presented in the form of grandiloquent assertions.

Finally Saint Sancho also tries to confirm his adequately proved identity of state and private property by means of etymological synonymy; in doing which, however, he belabours his erudition en ambas posaderas.

"My private property is only that which the state allows me out of its property, by depriving [privieren] other state members of it: it is state property" (p. 339).

By chance this is just the reverse of what happened. Private property in Rome, to which alone this etymological witticism can relate, was in the most direct contradiction to state property. True, the state gave the plebeians private property; in doing so it did not, however, deprive "others" of their private property but deprived these plebeians themselves of their state property (ager publicum) and their political rights, and it was precisely on that account that they themselves were called privati, robbed ones, and not the fantastical 'other state members" of whom Saint Sancho dreams. Jacques le bonhomme covers himself with shame in all countries, all languages and all epochs as soon as he begins to talk about positive facts concerning which "the holy" cannot have any knowledge a priori.

Desperation because the state swallows up all property drives Sancho back to his innermost "indignant" self-consciousness, where he is surprised to discover that he is a man of letters. He expresses his astonishment in the following remarkable words:

"In opposition to the state I feel ever more clearly that I still retain one great power, power over myself." Further on this is developed thus:

"My thoughts constitute real property for me with which I can carry on trade" (p. 339).

Thus, Stirner the "ragamuffin", the "man of only ideal wealth", arrives at the desperate decision to carry on trade with the curdled, sour milk of his thoughts.^[100] But what cunning does he use if the state declares his thoughts to be contraband? Just listen to this:

"I renounce them" (which is undoubtedly very wise) "and exchange them for others" (that is, if anyone should be such a bad businessman as to accept his exchange1

of thoughts), " which then become my new, purchased property" (p. 339).

Our honourable burgher will not rest until he has it in black and white that he has bought his property honestly. Here one sees the consolation of the Berlin burgher in the face of all his political calamities and police tribulations: "Thoughts are free of customs duty!"0 The transformation of private property into state property reduces itself, in the final analysis, to the idea that the bourgeois has possessions only as a member of the bourgeois species, a species which as a whole is called the state and which invests individuals with the fief of property. Here again the matter is put upside-down. In the bourgeois class, as in every other, it is only personal conditions that are developed into common and universal conditions under which the separate members of the class possess and live. Although previously philosophical illusions of this kind could be current in Germany, they have now become completely ludicrous, since world trade has adequately proved that bourgeois gain is quite independent of politics, but that politics, on the other hand, is entirely dependent on bourgeois gain. Already in the eighteenth century, politics was so dependent on trade that when, for example, the French Government wanted to raise a loan, the Dutch demanded that a private individual should stand security for the state.

That "my worthlessness" or "pauperism" is the "realisation of the value" or the "existence" of the "state" (p. 336) is one of the thousand and one Stirnerian equations which we mention here only because in this connection we shall hear something new about pauperism.

"Pauperism is my worthlessness, the phenomenon that I cannot realise my value. Hence state and pauperism are one and the same.... The state is always trying to derive benefit from me, i.e., to exploit me, make use of me, to utilise me, even though this utilisation consists merely in my providing proles* (proletariat). It wants me to be its creature" (p. 336).

Apart from the fact that one sees here how little it depends on him to realise his value, although everywhere and at all times he can assert his peculiarity, and that here once again, in contradiction to former statements, essence and appearance are totally divorced from each other, we have again the above-mentioned petty-bourgeois view of our bonhomme that the "state" wants to exploit him. The only further point of interest to us is the ancient Roman etymological derivation of the word "proletariat", which is here naively smuggled into the modern state. Does Saint Sancho really not know that wherever the modern state has developed, "providing proles" is for the state, i.e., the official bourgeois, precisely the most unpleasant activity of the proletariat? Perhaps he ought to translate Malthus and Minister Duchâtel into German,b for his own benefit? Just now, Saint

Offspring.— Ed.

Sancho, as a German petty bourgeois, "felt" "ever more clearly" that "in opposition to the state he still retained one great power", namely — the power to think in defiance of the state. If he were an English proletarian he would have felt that he "retained the power" to produce children in defiance of the state.

Another jeremiad against the state! Another theory of pauperism! To start with he, as "ego", "creates" "flour, linen or iron and coal", thereby from the outset abolishing division of labour. Then he begins "to complain" "at length" that his work is not ^aid for at its value, and in the first instance he comes into conflict with those who pay for it. Then the state comes between them in the role of "conciliator".

"If I am not satisfied with the price it" (i.e., the state) "pays for my commodity and labour, if instead I mvself endeavour to fix the price of my commodity, i.e., try to see that it is lucrative for me, I come into conflict in the first instance" (a great "in the first instance"!—not with the state, but) "with the buyers of the commodity" (p. 337).

If then he wants to enter into "direct relation" with these buyers, i.e., "seize them by the throat", the state "intervenes", "tears man from man" (although it was not a matter of "man in general" but of worker and employer or, what he lumps together in confusion, of the seller and buyer of commodities); moreover, the state does this with the malicious intention "to put itself in the middle as spirit" (obviously the holy spirit).

"Workers who demand higher wages are treated as criminals as soon as they try to achieve this by force" (p. 337).

Once more we are presented with a bouquet of nonsense. Mr. Senior need never have written his letters on wages⁽³⁾ if he had first entered into "direct relation" with Stirner, especially as in that case the state would hardly have "torn man from man". Sancho here gives the state a triple function. It first acts as a "conciliator", then as price fixer, and finally as "spirit", as the holy. The fact that, after having gloriously identified private and state property, Saint Sancho also makes the state fix the level of wages, is testimony equally to his great consistency and his ignorance of the affairs of this world. The fact that in England, America and Belgium "workers who try to gain higher wages by force" are by no means immediately treated as "criminals", but on the contrary quite often actually succeed in obtaining higher wages, is also something of which our saint is ignorant, and which disposes of his whole legend about wages. The fact that, even if the state did not "put itself in the middle", the workers would gain nothing by "seizing" their employers "by the throat" or at any rate much less than through association and strikes, that is, so long as they remain workers and their opponents capitalists — this is also something that could be comprehended even in Berlin. There is likewise no need to demonstrate that bourgeois society, which is based on competition, and its bourgeois state, owing to their whole material basis, cannot permit any struggle among the citizens except the struggle of competition, and are bound to intervene not as "spirit", but with bayonets if people "seize each other by the throat".

Incidentally, Stirner's idea that only the state becomes richer when individuals become richer on the basis of bourgeois property, or that up to now all private property has been state property, is an idea that again puts historical relations upside-down. With the development and accumulation of bourgeois property, i.e., with the development of commerce and industry, individuals grew richer and richer while the state fell ever more deeply into debt. This phenomenon was evident already in the first Italian commercial republics; later, since the last century, it showed itself to a marked degree in Holland, where the stock exchange speculator Pinto drew attention to it as early as l750,a and now it is again occurring in England. It is therefore obvious that as soon as the bourgeoisie has accumulated money, the state has to beg from the bourgeoisie and in the end it is actually bought up by the latter. This takes place in a period in which the bourgeoisie is still confronted by another class, and consequently the state can retain some appearance of independence in relation to both of them. Even after the state has been bought up, it still needs money and, therefore, continues to be dependent on the bourgeoisie; nevertheless, when the interests of the bourgeoisie demand it, the state can have at its disposal more funds than states which are less developed and, therefore, less burdened with debts. However, even the least developed states of Europe, those of the Holy Alliance, are inexorably approaching this fate, for they will be bought up by the bourgeoisie; then Stirner will be able to console them with the identity of private and state property, especially his own sovereign, who is trying in vain to postpone the hour when political power will be sold to the "burghers" who have become "angry".

We come now to the relation between private property and right, where we have to listen to the same stuff in another form. The identity of state and private property is apparently given a new turn. Political recognition of private property in law is declared to be the basis of private property.

"Private property lives by grace of right. It is guaranteed only in right — for possession is not yet property — it becomes mine only with the consent of right; it is not a fact, but a fiction, a thought. That is property by right, rightful property, guaranteed property; it is mine not thanks to me, but thanks to right" (p. 332).

In this passage the previous nonsense about state property merely reaches still more comical heights. We shall, therefore, pass on at once to Sancho's exploitation of the fictitious jus utendi et abutendi.*

On page 332 we learn, besides the beautiful passage above, that property

"is unlimited power over something which I can dispose of as I please". But "power" is "not something existing of itself, but exists only in the powerful ego, in me, the possessor of power" (p. 366). Hence property is not a "thing", "what is mine is not this tree, but my power over it, my ability to dispose of it" (p. 366). He only knows "things" or "egos". "The power" which is "separated from the ego", given independent existence, transformed into a "spectre", is "right". "This perpetuated power" (treatise on right of inheritance) "is not extinguished even when I die, but is passed on or inherited. Things now really belong not to me, but to right. On the other hand, this is nothing but a delusion, for the power of the individual becomes permanent, and becomes a right, only because other individuals combine their power with his. The delusion consists in their belief that they cannot take back their power" (pp. 366, 367). "A dog who sees a bone in the power of another dog stands aside only if it feels it is too weak. Man, however, respects the right of the other man to his bone.... And as here, so in general, it is called 'human' when something spiritual, in this case right, is seen in everything, i.e., when everything is made into a spectre and treated as a spectre.... It is human to regard the individual phenomenon not as an individual, but as a universal phenomenon" (pp. 368, 369).

Thus once again the whole mischief arises from the faith of individuals in the conception of right, which they ought to get out of their heads. Saint Sancho only knows "things" and "egos", and as regards anything that does not come under these headings, as regards all relations, he knows only the abstract concepts of them, which for him, therefore, also become "spectres". "On the other hand", it does dawn on him at times that all this is "nothing but a delusion" and that the "power of the individual" very much depends on whether others combine their power with his. But in the final analysis everything is nevertheless reduced to the "illusion" that individuals "believe that they cannot take back their power". Once again the railways do not "actually" belong to the shareholders, but to the statutes. Sancho immediately puts forward the right of inheritance as a striking example. He explains it not from the necessity for accumulation and from the family which existed before right, but from the juridical fiction of the prolongation of power beyond death.⁽⁴⁾ However, the more feudal society passes into bourgeois society, the more is this juridical fiction itself abandoned by the legislation of all countries. (Cf., for example, the Code Napoleon.) There is no need to show here that absolute paternal power and primogeniture — both natural feudal primogeniture and the later form — were based on very definite material relations. The same thing is to be found among ancient peoples in the epoch of the disintegration of the community in consequence of the development of private life (the best proof of this is the history of the Roman right of inheritance). In general, Sancho could not have chosen a more unfortunate example than the right of inheritance, which in the clearest possible way shows the dependence of right on the relations of production. Compare, for example, Roman and German right of inheritance. Certainly, no dog has ever made phosphorus, bone-meal or lime out of a bone, any more than it has ever "got into its head" anything about its "right" to a bone; equally, it has never "entered the head" of Saint Sancho to reflect whether the right to a bone which people, but not dogs, claim for themselves, is not connected with the way in which people, but not dogs, utilise this bone in production. In general, in this one example we have before us Sancho's whole method of criticism and his unshakable faith in current illusions. The hitherto existing production relations of individuals are bound also to be expressed as political and legal relations. (See above.3) Within the division of labour these relations are bound to acquire an independent existence over against the individuals. All relations can be expressed in language only in the form of concepts. That these general ideas and concepts are looked upon as mysterious forces is the necessary result of the fact that the real relations, of which they are the expression, have acquired independent existence. Besides this meaning in everyday consciousness, these general ideas are further elaborated and given a special significance by politicians and lawyers, who, as a result of the division of labour, are dependent on the cult of these concepts, and who see in them, and not in the relations of production, the true basis of all real property relations. Saint Sancho, who takes over this illusion without examination, is thus enabled to declare that property by right is the basis of private property, and that the concept of right is the basis of property by right, after which he can restrict his whole criticism to declaring that the concept of right is a concept, a spectre. That is the end of the matter for Saint Sancho. To set his mind at rest, we can add that in all the early law books the behaviour of two dogs who have found a bone is regarded as right: vim vi repellere licere* say the Pandects ^[106]; idque jus natura comparatur,h by which is meant jus quod natura omnia animalia (people and dogs) docuitc; but that later it is "just" the organised repulsion of force by force that becomes right.

Saint Sancho, who is now well under way, proves his erudition in the field of the history of right by disputing a "bone" with Proudhon.

Proudhon, he says, "tries to humbug us into believing that society is the original possessor and sole owner of imprescriptible right; that the so-called owner has committed theft with regard to society; that if society takes from any present-day owner his property, it does not steal anything from him, for it is only asserting its imprescriptible right. That is where one can get with the spectre of society as a juridical person" (pp. 330, 331).

In contrast to this Stirner "tries to humbug us into believing" (pp. 340, 367, 420 and elsewhere) that we, viz., the propertyless, presented the owners with their property, out of ignorance, cowardice or good nature, etc., and he calls on us to take back our gift. The difference between these two "attempts at humbugging" is that Proudhon bases himself on a historical fact, while Saint Sancho has only "got something into his head" in order to give the matter a "new turn". For recent investigations into the history of right have established that both in Rome and among the German, Celtic and Slav peoples the development of property had as its starting-point communal or tribal property and that private property strictly speaking arose everywhere by usurpation; Saint Sancho could of course not extract this from the profound idea that the concept of right is a concept. In relation to the legal dogmatists, Proudhon was perfectly right when he stressed this fact and in general combated them by means of their own premises. "That is where one can get with the spectre" of the concept of right as a concept. Proudhon could only have been attacked on account of his proposition quoted above if he had defended the earlier and cruder form of property against the private property that had developed out of this primitive communal system. Sancho sums up his criticism of Proudhon in the arrogant question:

"Why such a sentimental appeal for sympathy as if he were a poor victim of robbery?" (p. 420).

Sentimentality, of which, incidentally, not a trace is to be found in Proudhon, is only permitted towards Maritornes. Sancho really imagines that he is a "whole fellow" compared with such a believer in apparitions as Proudhon. He considers his inflated bureaucratic style, of which even Frederick William IV would be ashamed, to be revolutionary. "Blessed are those that believe."3

On page 340 we learn:

"All the attempts to enact rational laws about property proceeded from the bay of love into a barren ocean of definitions."

A fitting companion to this is the equally bizarre statement: "Intercourse hitherto has been based on love, on considerate behaviour, on care for one another" (p. 385).

Saint Sancho here surprises himself with a striking paradox about right and intercourse. If, however, we recall that by "love" he understands love of "Man", love of something existing in and for itself, of the universal, that by love he understands the relation to an individual or thing regarded as essence, the holy, then this appearance of brilliance is dissipated. The oracular utterances quoted above are then reduced to the old trivialities which have bored us throughout the "book", i.e., that two things, about which Sancho knows nothing, viz., in this case hitherto existing right and hitherto existing intercourse, are "the holy", and that in general only "concepts have ruled the world" up to now. The relation to the holy, as a rule called "respect", can on occasion also be entitled "love". (See "Logic".)

Just one example of how Saint Sancho transforms legislation into a love relation, and trade into a love-affair:

"In a Registration Bill for Ireland, the government put forward the proposal to give the suffrage to those who pay a tax of £5 for the poor. Consequently one who gives alms acquires political rights or, elsewhere, becomes a Knight of the Swan" (p. 344).

It is to be noted here first of all that this "Registration Bill" granting "political rights" was a municipal or corporation Bill or, in more comprehensible language to Sancho, an "urban regulation", which was not designed to grant "political rights" but only urban rights, the right to elect local officials. Secondly, Sancho, who translates McCulloch, surely ought to know quite well the meaning of "to be assessed to the poor-rates at five pounds".3 This does not mean "to pay a tax of £5 for the poor", but means to be entered on the list of those who pay this tax as the tenants of a house the annual rent of which amounts to £5. Our Berlin bonhomme does not know that the poor-rate in England and Ireland is a local tax which varies in amount in different towns and different years, so that it would be a sheer impossibility to connect any sort of right with the payment of a particular amount of tax. Finally, Sancho believes that the English and Irish poor-rate is an "alms"; whereas it only provides funds for a direct and open offensive war of the ruling bourgeoisie against the proletariat. It pays the cost of work-houses which, as is well known, are a Malthusian deterrent against pauperism. We see how Sancho "proceeds from the bay of love into a barren ocean of definitions".

It may be remarked in passing that German philosophy, because it took consciousness alone as its point of departure, was bound to end in moral philosophy, where the various heroes squabble about true morals. Feuerbach loves man for the sake of man, Saint Bruno loves him because he "deserves" it (Wigand, p. 137b), while Saint Sancho loves "everyone", because he likes to do so, with the consciousness of egoism ("the book", p. 387).

We have already seen above — in the first treatise — how the small landed proprietors respectfully excluded themselves from large landed property. This self-exclusion from other people's property, out of respect, is depicted in general as the characteristic of bourgeois property. From this characteristic Stirner is able to explain to himself why it is that

"within the bourgeois system, in spite of its implication that everyone should be an owner, the majority have practically nothing" (p. 348). This "occurs because the majority are pleased if they are owners at all, even if they are merely owners of a few rags" (p. 349).

That the "majority" possess only "a few rags", Szeliga regards as a perfectly natural consequence of their love of rags.

Page 343: "Am I thus nothing but an owner? No, hitherto a person was merely an owner, secure in possession of a plot of land by allowing others also to possess their plot; now, however, everything belongs to me. I am the owner of everything that I need and can take possession of."

Just as Sancho previously made small landed proprietors respectfully exclude themselves from large landed property, and now makes the small landed proprietors exclude one another, so he could go into more detail and make respect responsible for the exclusion of commercial property from landed property, of industrial property from commercial property proper, etc., and thus arrive at a totally new political economy on the basis of the holy. He has only then to get respect out of his head in order to abolish at one stroke division of labour and the form of property that arises from it. Sancho gives an example of this new political economy on page 128 of "the book", where he buys a needle not from a shopkeeper,⁽⁵⁾ but from respect, and not with money paid to the shopkeeper, but with respect paid to the needle. Incidentally, the dogmatic self-exclusion of each individual from other people's property which Sancho attacks is a purely juridical illusion. Under the modern mode of production and intercourse each person delivers a blow at this illusion and directs his efforts precisely to excluding all others from the property that at present belongs to them. How the matter stands with regard to Sancho's "property in everything" is clear enough from the supplementary clause: "that I need and can take possession of". He explains this in more detail on page 353:

"If I say: the world belongs to me, then, properly speaking, this too is empty talk, which has meaning only insofar as I do not respect any property of others"; that is insofar as n o n-respect of the property of others constitutes his property.

What irks Sancho about the private property that is so dear to him is precisely its exclusiveness, without which it would be nonsense — the fact that besides him there are also other private owners. For the private property of others is something holy. We shall see how in his "union" he gets over this inconvenience. We shall find that his egoistical property, property in the extraordinary sense, is nothing but ordinary or bourgeois property transfigured by his sanctifying fantasy.

Let us conclude with the following wisdom of Solomon:

"If people reach a stage where they lose respect for property, then each will possess property ... then [in this matter, too, unions will augment the means of the individual and safeguard his contested property" (p. 342)].

[Treatise No. 3. On competition in the ordinary and extraordinary sense.]

One morning the writer of these lines, in suitable attire, went to see Herr Minister Eichhorn:

"Since things have come to nothing with the factory-owner" (for the Finance Minister had given him neither a site nor funds to build a factory of his own, and the Minister of Justice had not given him permission to take the factory away from the factory-owner — see above on bourgeois property3) "I will compete with this professor of law; the man is a blockhead, and I, who know a hundred times more than he does, will take his audience away from him."—"But, my friend, did you study at a university and get a degree?"—"No, but what of that? I fully understand all that is necessary for teaching."—"I'm sorry, but in this matter there is no free competition. I have nothing against you personally, but the essential thing is lacking — a doctor's diploma — and I, the state, demand it."—"So that is the freedom of competition," sighed the author. "Only the state, my master, gives me the possibility of competing." Whereupon he returned home downcast (p. 347).

In a more advanced country it would not have occurred to him to ask the state for permission to compete with a professor of law. But once he turns to the state as an employer and asks for remuneration, i.e., wages, thus entering the sphere of competition, then of course after his previous treatises about private property and privati, communal property, the proletariat, lettres patentes, the state and status, etc., one cannot suppose that his "solicitation will be successful". Judging by his past feats, the state can at best appoint him as custodian (custos) of "the holy" on some domanial estate in the backwoods of Pomerania.

By way of amusement we can "insert" here "episodically" Sancho's great discovery that there is no "other difference" between the "poor" and the "rich" "than that between the resourceful and the resourceless"c (p. 354).

Let us plunge once more into the "barren ocean" of Stirner's "definitions" of competition:

"Competition is connected less" (Oh, "less"!) "with the intention of doing a thing as well as possible, than with the intention of making it as profitable, lucrative, as possible. For that reason people study for the sake of a post (bread-and-butter study), cultivate obsequiousness and flattery, routine and knowledge of business; they work for appearance. Hence while apparently it is a matter of a good performance, in reality people aim only at a good stroke of business and monetary gain. Of course, no one wants to be a censor, but people want to get advancement... people are afraid of being transferred or even more of being dismissed" (pp. 354, 355).

Let our bonhomme discover a textbook on political economy where even theoreticians assert that in competition it is a matter of a "good performance" or "of doing a thing as well as possible" and not of making "it as profitable as possible". Incidentally, in any such book he will find it stated that under the system of private property highly developed competition, for example in England, certainly causes a "thing" to be "done as well as possible". Small-scale commercial and industrial swindling flourishes only in conditions of restricted competition, among the Chinese, Germans and Jews, and in general among hawkers and small shopkeepers. But even hawking is not mentioned by our saint; he only knows the competition of super-numerary officials and school-masters on probation, he reveals himself here as a downright royal-Prussian junior official. He might just as well have given as an example of competition the endeavour of courtiers in every age to win the favour of their sovereign, but that lay much too far beyond his petty-bourgeois field of vision.

After these tremendous adventures with super-numerary officials, salaried accountants and registrars, Saint Sancho experiences his great adventure with the famous horse Clavileno, of which the prophet Cervantes has already spoken in the New Testament, Chapter 41. For Sancho mounts the high horse of political economy and determines the minimum wage by means of "the holy". True, here once again he reveals his innate timidity and at first refuses to mount the flying steed that carries him far above the clouds into the region "where hail and snow, thunder, lightning and thunderbolts are engendered". But the "Duke", i.e., the "state", encourages him and as soon as the bolder and more experienced Szeliga-Don Quixote has swung himself into the saddle, our worthy Sancho climbs behind him on to the horse's crupper. And when Szeliga's hand had turned the peg on the horse's head, the horse soared high into the air and all the ladies — especially Maritornes — cried after them: "May egoism in agreement with itself guide you, valiant knight, and you, still more valiant armour-bearer, and may you succeed in liberating us from the spectre of Malambruno, of 'the holy'. Only keep your balance, valiant Sancho, so that you do not fall and suffer the same fate as Phaeton, when he wanted to drive the chariot of the sun."

"If we assume" (he is already wavering hypothetically) "that just as order belongs to the essence of the state, subordination too is based on its nature" (a pleasant modulation between "essence" and "nature"—the "goats" which Sancho observed during his flight), "then we observe that the underprivileged are excessively overcharged and defrauded by the inferior" (it should probably read superior) "or privileged" (p. 357).

"If we assume ... then we observe." It should read: then we assume. If we assume that "superior" and "inferior" exist in the state, then "we assume" likewise that the former are "privileged" compared with the latter. We can, however, ascribe the stylistic beauty of this sentence, as also the sudden recognition of the "essence" and "nature" of a thing, to the timidity and confusion of our Sancho while anxiously trying to retain his balance during his aerial flight, and to the rockets set alight under his nose. We are not even surprised that Saint Sancho derives the consequences of competition not from competition but from bureaucracy, and once again makes the state determine wages.⁽⁶⁾

He does not take into consideration that the continual fluctuations in wages explode the whole of his beautiful theory; a closer examination of industrial conditions would certainly have provided him with examples of a factory-owner being "overcharged" and "defrauded" by his workers according to the universal laws of competition, if these juridical and moral expressions had not lost all meaning within the framework of competition.

The dwarfish form to which competition has shrunk for Sancho once again demonstrates the naive and petty-bourgeois manner in which world-embracing relations are reflected inside his unique skull, and the extent to which he as a school-master is bound to extract moral applications from all these relations and to refute them with moral postulates. We must give this precious passage in extenso

"so that nothing should be lost".

"As regards competition again, it exists precisely because not all persons attend to their business and come to an understanding with one another about it. Thus, for example, bread is needed by all the inhabitants of a town; hence they could easily come to an agreement to establish a public bakery. Instead, they leave the supply of bread to competing bakers. Similarly, they leave the supply of meat to the butchers, of wine to the wine merchants, etc.... If / do not concern myself with my business, then I have to be content with what it suits others to offer me. To have bread is my business, my wish and desire, and yet people leave it to the bakers, and hope at most, thanks to their contention, rivalry and their attempts to outstrip one another, in a word, thanks to their competition, to get an advantage which people could not count on under the guild-system, when the right to bake bread belonged wholly and solely to the guilds-men" (p. 365).

It is characteristic of our petty bourgeois that he here recommends to his fellow-philistines, in place of competition, an institution like public bakeries, which existed in many places under the guild-system and which were put an end to by the cheaper competitive mode of production. That is to say, he recommends an institution of a local nature, which could only persist under narrowly restricted conditions and was inevitably bound to perish with the rise of competition, which abolished local narrowness. He has not even learned from competition that the "need" of bread, for example, differs from day to day, that it does not at all depend on him whether tomorrow bread will still be "his business" or whether others will still regard his need as their business, and that within the framework of competition the price of bread is determined by the costs of production and not by the whim of the bakers. He ignores all those relations which were brought about by competition: the abolition of local narrowness, the establishment of means of communication, highly developed division of labour, world intercourse, the proletariat, machinery, etc., and regretfully looks back to medieval philistinism. All he knows about competition is that it is "contention, rivalry and attempts to outstrip one another"; he is not concerned about its connection with division of labour, the relation between supply and demand, etc.⁽⁷⁾ That the bourgeois, whenever their interests demanded it (and they are better judges of this than Saint Sancho), always "came to an understanding" insofar as this was possible in the framework of competition and private property, is proved by the joint-stock companies, which came into being with the rise of sea-borne trade and manufacture and took possession of all the branches of industry and commerce accessible to them. Such "agreements", which led among other things to the conquest of an empire in the East Indies,^[10]' are of course a small matter compared with the well-meaning fantasy about public bakeries, which is worthy of being discussed in the Vossische Zeitung.

As for the proletarians, they — at any rate in the modern form — first arose out of competition; they have already repeatedly set up collective enterprises which, however, always perished because they were unable to compete with the "contending" private bakers, butchers, etc., and because for proletarians — owing to the frequent opposition of interests among them arising out of the division of labour — no other "agreement" is possible than a political one directed against the whole present system. Where the development of competition enables the proletarians to "come to an understanding", they reach an understanding not about public bakeries but about quite different matters.⁽⁸⁾ The lack of "agreement" between competing individuals that Sancho notes here entirely corresponds to and contradicts his further exposition of competition, which we can enjoy in the "Commentary" (Wigand, p. 173).

"Competition was introduced because it was looked upon as a blessing for all. People came to an agreement about it, attempts were made to approach it jointly ... people agreed about it in much the same way as on a hunting expedition all the hunters taking part ... may find it expedient for their purpose to scatter in the forest and to hunt 'singly'.... True, it now turns out ... that in the case of competition not everyone gets ... his advantage."

"It turns out" that Sancho knows as much about hunting as he knows about competition. He is not speaking about a battue nor about hunting with hounds, but about hunting in the extraordinary sense. It only remains for him to write a new history of industry and commerce according to the above principles, and to set up a "union" for this kind of extraordinary hunting.

In the same calm, comfortable style appropriate to a parish magazine he speaks of the relation of competition to morality.

"Those corporeal goods which man as such" (!) "cannot maintain, we have the right to take away from him: this is the meaning of competition, of freedom of industry. Any of the spiritual goods that he cannot maintain devolve likewise upon us. But sanctified goods are inviolable. Sanctified and guaranteed — by whom?... By man or the concept, the concept of the matter under consideration." As such sanctified goods he cites "life", "freedom of the person", "religion", "honour", "sense of decency", "sense of shame", etc. ([Stirner, Der Einzige und sein Eigenthum,] p. 325).

In the advanced countries, Stirner "has the right" to take all these "sanctified goods", although not from "man as such", but from actual men, of course, by means of and under the conditions of competition. The great revolution of society brought about by competition, which resolved the relations of the bourgeois to one another and to the proletarians into purely monetary relations, and converted all the above-named "sanctified goods" into articles of trade, and which destroyed for the proletarians all naturally derived and traditional relations, e.g., family and political relations, together with their entire ideological superstructure — this mighty revolution did not, of course, originate in Germany. Germany played only a passive role in it; she allowed her sanctified goods to be taken from her without even getting the current price for them. Hence our German petty bourgeois knows only the hypocritical assertions of the bourgeoisie about the moral limits of competition observed by the bourgeoisie, which every day tramples underfoot the "sanctified goods" of the proletarians, their "honour", "sense of shame" and "freedom of the person", and which even deprives them of religious instruction. These would-be "moral limits" are regarded by Sancho as the true "meaning" of competition, and its reality is excluded from its meaning.

Sancho sums up the results of his investigation of competition as follows:

"Is the competition free which the state, this ruler, according to bourgeois principles, cramps by a thousand barriers?" (p. 347).

Sancho's "bourgeois principles" of everywhere making the "state" the "ruler" and regarding the barriers of competition that arise from the mode of production and intercourse as barriers by which the "state" "cramps" competition, are here once more proclaimed with suitable "indignation".

"Recently" Saint Sancho has vaguely heard miscellaneous news "from France" (cf. Wigand, p. 190), inter alia, about the objectifica-tion of persons in competition and the difference between competition and emulation. But the "poor Berliner" has, "out of stupidity, spoilt these fine things" (Wigand, ibid., where it is his guilty conscience that speaks). "Thus, for example, he says" on page 346 of "the book":

"Is free competition actually free? Indeed, is it real competition, i.e., competition of persons, as it gives itself out to be, because it bases its right on this title?"

Madame Competition gives herself out to be something, because she (i.e., some lawyers, politicians and petty-bourgeois dreamers, trailing in the tail of her suite) bases her right on this title. With this allegory Sancho begins to adapt the "fine things" "from France" to suit the Berlin meridian. We shall skip the absurd assertion already dealt with above that "the state has no objection to make against me personally" and thus allows me to compete, but does not give me the "thing" (p. 347), and we shall pass straight on to his proof that competition is not at all a competition of persons.

power or can only be obtained by grace, as a gift, and moreover by the poorer, for instance, being forced to leave, i.e., to present, his wealth to the richer" (p. 348).

As for the gift theory, we shall "spare him"3 (Wigand, p. 190). Let him look up the chapter on "contract" in any textbook of law and find out whether a "gift" he is "forced to present" is still a gift. In this way, Stirner "presents" us with our criticism of his book, for he "is forced to leave, i.e., to present", it to us.

The fact that of two competitors whose "things" are equal one ruins the other, does not exist for Sancho. That workers compete among themselves, although they possess no "things" (in Stirner's sense) is also a fact that does not exist for him. By doing away with the competition of workers among themselves, he is fulfilling one of the most pious wishes of our "true socialists", whose deepest thanks he is sure to receive. So it is "only things" and not "persons" that compete. Only weapons fight, not the people who use them, and who have learned to wield them. The people are only there to be shot dead. This is how the competitive struggle is reflected in the minds of petty-bourgeois school-masters who, faced with modern stock exchange barons and cotton-lords,b console themselves with the thought that they only lack the "things" in order to bring their "personal power" to bear against them. This narrow-minded idea appears still more comic if one looks a little more closely at the "things", instead of restricting oneself to the commonest and most popular, e.g., "money" (which, however, is not so popular as it seems). These "things" include, among others: that the competitor lives in a country and town, where he enjoys the same advantages as the competitors whom he encounters; that relations between town and countryside have reached an advanced stage of development; that he is competing under favourable geographical, geological and hydrographical conditions; that as a silk manufacturer he carries on his business in Lyons, as a cotton manufacturer in Manchester, or, in an earlier period, as a shipper in Holland; that division of labour in his branch of industry — as in other branches totally independent of him — has become highly developed; that the means of communication ensure him the same cheap transport as his competitors; and that he finds in existence skilful workers and experienced overseers. All these "things", which are essential for competition, and in general the ability to compete on the world market (which he does not know and cannot know because of his theory of the state and public

In German, a pun on the word schenken, which means to give, to present, to make a gift of, but which in a certain context can also mean to spare, to let off.—Ed.

bakeries, but which, unfortunately, determines competition and the ability to compete), are "things" that he can neither gain by "personal power" nor "get presented" to him by "grace" of the "state" (cf. p. 348). The Prussian state, which attempted to "present" all this to the Seehandlung,^[10]* could give him the best instruction on that subject. Sancho appears here as the royal Prussian philosopher of the Seehandlung, by giving a detailed commentary on the illusion of the Prussian state about its omnipotence and the illusion of the

Seehandlung about its competitive capacity. Incidentally, competition certainly began as a "competition of persons" possessing "personal means". The liberation of the feudal serfs, the first condition of competition, and the first accumulation of "things" were purely "personal" acts. If, therefore, Sancho wishes to put the competition of persons in the place of competition of things, it means that he wishes to return to the beginning of competition, imagining in doing so that, by his good will and his extraordinary egoistical consciousness he can give a different direction to the development of competition.

This great man, for whom nothing is holy and who is not interested in the "nature of things" and the "concept of the relation", has nevertheless in the end to declare the "nature" of the difference between personal and material to be holy, as also the "concept of the relation" between these two qualities, and so renounce the role of "creator" in respect of them. The differ ence — regarded by him as holy — which he notes in the passage quoted, can nevertheless be abolished without therebv committing "the most unmitigated profanation". Firstly he abolishes it himself by causing material means to be acquired through personal power and thus converts personal power into material power. He can then calmly address others with the moral postulate that they should adopt a personal attitude to him. In just the same way the Mexicans could have demanded that the Spaniards should not shoot them with rifles but attack them with their fists or, according to Saint Sancho's proposal, "seize them by the throat" in order to adopt a "personal" attitude to them.

If one person, thanks to good food, careful education and physical exercise, has acquired well-developed bodily powers and skill, while another, owing to inadequate and unhealthy food and consequent poor digestion, and as the result of neglect in childhood and over-exertion, has never been able to acquire the "things" necessary for developing his muscles — not to mention acquiring mastery over them — then the "personal power" of the first in relation to the second is a purely material one. It was not "through personal power" that he gained the "means that were lacking"; on the contrary, he owes his "personal power" to the material means already existing. Incidentally, the transformation of personal means into material means and of material means into personal means is only an aspect of competition and quite inseparable from it. The demand that competition should be conducted not with material means but with personal means amounts to the moral postulate that competition and the relations on which it depends should have consequences other than those inevitablv arising from them.

Here is yet another, and this time the final summing-up of the philosophy of competition:

"Competition suffers from the drawback that not everyone has the means for competition, because these means are taken not from personality, but from chance. The majority are without means and therefore" (Oh, Therefore!) "impecunious" (p. 349).

It has already been pointed out to him that in competition personality itself is a matter of chance, while chance is personality.1

The "means" for competition which are independent of personality are the conditions of production and intercourse of the persons themselves, which within the framework of competition appear as an independent force in relation to these persons, as means which are accidental for them. The liberation of people from these forces comes about, according to Sancho, by people getting out of their heads the ideas about these forces, or rather the philosophical and religious distortions of these ideas — whether by etymological synonymy ("Vermögen" and "vermögen"), moral postulates (e.g., let each one be an all-powerful ego), or by making monkey faces and by sentimentally comic bragging against "the holy".

We have heard the complaint made before that in present-day bourgeois society the "ego", especially because of the state, cannot realise its value, i.e., cannot bring its "abilities" [Vermögen] into play. Now we learn in addition that "peculiarity" does not give the "ego" the means for competition, that "its might" is no might at all and that it remains "impecunious", although every object, "being iteobject, is also its property" .⁽⁹⁾ It is a complete denial of egoism in agreement with itself. But all these "drawbacks" of competition will disappear, once "the book" has become part of the general consciousness of people. Until then Sancho persists in his trade in thoughts, without however achieving a "good performance" or "doing things as well as possible".

II. Rebellion

The criticism of society brings to an end the criticism of the old, holy world. By means of rebellion we make a leap into the new, egoistical world.

We have already seen in "Logic"a what rebellion is in general; it is refusa1 to respect the holy. Here, however, rebellion acquires in addition a distinct practical character. Revolution = hoiy rebellion.

Rebellion = egoistical or wordly revolution. Revolution = transformation of existing conditions.

Rebellion = transformation of me. Revolution = a political or social act.

Rebellion = my egoistical act. Revolution = overthrow of the existing [state of affairs].

Rebellion = existence of overthrow. Etc., etc. Page 422 et seq. The method hitherto used by people to overthrow the world in which they found tnemselves had, of course, also to be declared holy, and a "peculiar' method of smashing the existing world had to be asserted against it.

Revolution "consists in a transformation of the existing conditions [Zustand*] or status, of the state or society; hence it is a political or social act". "Although the inevitable consequence" of rebellion "is a transformation of existing conditions, it is not this transformation that is its starting-point, but people's dissatisfaction with themselves". "It is an uprising of individuals, a rising without regard for the arrangements that develop out of it. Revolution aimed at new arrangements; rebellion leads to a position where we no longer allow others to arrange things for us, but arrange things for ourselves. It is not a struggle against what exists, for if it prospers what exists will collapse of itself; it is only the setting free of me from what exists. If I abandon what exists, then it is dead and putrefies. But since my aim is not to overthrow something that exists, but for me to rise above it, my aim and action are not political or social, but egoistical for they are directed solely towards me and my peculiarity" (pp. 421, 422).

Les beaux esprits se rencontrent.c That which was proclaimed by the voice crying in the wildernessd is now come about. The impious John the Baptist "Stirner" has found his holy Messiah in the shape of "Dr. Kuhlmann from Holstein'. Listen:

"You should not tear down or destroy what stands in your way, but avoid it and abandon it. And when you have avoided and abandoned it, it will disappear of itself, for it will no longer find sustenance" (Dos Reich des Geistes,' etc., Genf, 1845, p. 116).

The difference between revolution and Stirner's rebellion is not, as Stirner thinks, that the one is a political and social act whereas the other is an egoistical act, but that the former is an act whereas the latter is no act at all. The whole senselessness of the antithesis that Stirner puts forward is evident at once from the fact that he speaks of "the Revolution" as a juridical person, which has to fight against "what exists", another juridical person. If Saint Sancho had studied the various actual revolutions and revolutionary attempts perhaps he might even have found in them the forms of which he had a vague inkling when he created his ideological "rebellion"; he might have found them, for example, among the Corsicans, Irish, Russian serfs, and in general among uncivilised peoples. If, moreover, he had concerned himself with the actual individuals "existing" in every revolution, and with their relations, instead of being satisfied with the pure ego and "what exists", i.e., substance (a phrase the overthrow of which requires no revolution, but merely a knight-errant like Saint Bruno), then perhaps he would have come to understand that every revolution, and its results, was determined by these relations, by needs, and that the "political or social act" was in no way in contradiction to the "egoistical act".

The depth of Saint Sancho's insight into "revolution" is shown in his statement:

"Although the consequence of rebellion is a transformation of existing conditions, [...] this transformation is not its starting-point."

This implies, by way of antithesis, that the starting-point of the revolution is "a transformation of existing conditions", i.e., that revolution originates in revolution. "The starting-point" of rebellion, on the other hand, is "people's dissatisfaction with themselves". This "dissatisfaction with oneself" fits admirably with the earlier phrases about peculiarity and the "egoist in agreement with himself", who is always able to go "his own way", who is always delighted with himself and who at every instant is what he can be. Dissatisfaction with oneself is either dissatisfaction with oneself within the framework of a definite condition which determines the whole personality, e.g., dissatisfaction with oneself as a worker, or it is moral dissatisfaction. In the first case, therefore, it is simultaneously and mainly dissatisfaction with the existing relations; in the second case — an ideological expression of these relations themselves, which does not at all go beyond them, but belongs wholly to them. The first case, as Sancho believes, leads to revolution; for rebellion there remains, therefore, only the second case—moral dissatisfaction with oneself. "What exists" is, as we know, "the holy";

hence, "dissatisfaction with oneself" reduces itself to moral dissatisfaction with oneself as a holy one, i.e., one who believes in the holy, in what exists. It could only occur to a discontented school-master to base his arguments about revolution and rebellion on satisfaction and dissatisfaction, moods that belong wholly to the petty-bourgeois circle from which, as we continually find, Saint Sancho derives his inspiration.

We already know what meaning "going beyond the framework of what exists" has. It is the old fancy that the state collapses of itself as soon as all its members leave it and that money loses its validity if all the workers refuse to accept it. Even in a hypothetical form, this proposition reveals all the fantasy and impotence of pious desire. It is the old illusion that changing existing relations depends only on the good will of people, and that existing relations are ideas. The alteration of consciousness divorced from actual relations — a pursuit followed by philosophers as a profession, i.e., as a business—is itself a product of existing relations and inseparable from them. This imaginary rising above the world is the ideological expression of the impotence of philosophers in face of the world. Practical life every day gives the lie to their ideological bragging.

In any event, Sancho did not "rebel" against his own state of confusion when he wrote those lines. For him there is the "transformation of existing conditions" on one side, and "people"on the other side, and the two sides are entirely separate from each other. Sancho does not give the slightest thought to the fact that the "conditions" have always been the conditions of these people and it would never have been possible to transform them unless the people transformed themselves and, if it has to be expressed in this way, unless they became "dissatisfied with themselves" in the old conditions. He thinks he is dealing a mortal blow at revolution when he asserts that it aims at new arrangements, whereas rebellion leads to a position where we no longer allow others to arrange things for us, but arrange things for ourselves. But the very fact that "we" arrange things for "ourselves", that it is "we" who rebel, denotes Mat the individual, despite all Sancho's "repugnance", has to " illow" that "we" "arrange things" for him, and that therefore th< only difference between revolution and rebellion is that in the lormer this is known, whereas in the latter people harbour illusions about it. Next Sancho leaves it open whether the rebellion "prospers" or not. One cannot understand why it should not "prosper", and even less why it should prosper, since each rebel goes his own way. Worldly conditions would have to intervene to show the rebels the necessity of a joint act, one which would be "political or social", irrespective of whether it arises from egoistical motives or not. A further "trashy distinction", based again on confusion, is that drawn by Sancho between the "overthrow" of what exists and "rising" above it, as though in overthrowing what exists he does not rise above it, and in rising above it, he does not overthrow it, if only insofar as it exists in him himself. Incidentally, neither "overthrow" by itself nor "rising" by itself tells us anything; that "rising" also takes place in revolution Sancho could have seen from the fact that " Levons-nousZ"^[109] was a well-known slogan in the French Revolution.

"Revolution bids" (!) "us to create institutions, rebellion urges us to rise or rise up* Revolutionary minds were occupied with the choice of a constitution, and the entire political period teems with constitutional struggles and constitutional questions, just as socially-gifted persons revealed extraordinary inventiveness as regards social institutions (phalansteries and such-like). To be without a constitution is the endeavour of the rebel" (p. 422).

That the French Revolution brought institutions in its train is a fact; that Empörung is derived from the word emporb is also a fact; that during the revolution and after it people fought for constitutions is another fact, and equally so that various social systems were outlined; and it is no less a fact that Proudhon spoke about anarchy. From these five facts Sancho has concocted the above-quoted passage.

From the fact that the French Revolution led to "institutions", Sancho concludes that this is a "bidding" of revolution in general. From the fact that the political revolution was a political one in which the social transformation had also an official expression in the form of constitutional struggles, Sancho — faithfully following his history-broker0—deduces that in it people fought over the best constitution. To this discovery he links, by means of the words "just as", a mention of social systems. In the epoch of the bourgeoisie, people occupied themselves with constitutional questions, "just as" in recent times various social systems have been devised. This is the train of thought in the above-quoted passage.

It follows from what was said above against Feuerbach that previous revolutions within the framework of division of labour were bound to lead to new political institutions; it likewise follows that the communist revolution, which removes the division of labour, ultimately abolishes political institutions0; and, finally, it follows also that the communist revolution will be guided not by the "social institutions of inventive socially-gifted persons", but by the productive forces.

But "to be without a constitution is the endeavour of the rebel"! He who is "born free", who is from the outset rid of everything, endeavours at the end of time to get rid of the constitution.

It should be mentioned also that all sorts of earlier illusions of our bonhomme contributed to Sancho's concept of "rebellion". They include, among others, his belief that the individuals who make a revolution are linked by some ideal bond and that their "raising the standard of revolt" is limited to inscribing on it a new concept, fixed idea, spectre, or apparition — the holy. Sancho makes them get this ideal bond out of their heads, whereby in his imagination they become a disorderly mob which can now only "rebel". In addition, he has heard that competition is a war of all against all,⁽¹⁾ and this proposition, mixed with his desanctified revolution, constitutes the main factor of his "rebellion".

"When, for the sake of clarity, I try to think of a comparison, there comes to my mind, against my expectation, the foundation of Christianity" (p. 423). '"Christ", we learn here, "was not a revolutionary but a rebel who rose. Therefore, he was concerned about one thing alone: 'be ye wise as serpents'" (ibid.).

In order to suit the "expectation" and the "alone" of Sancho the second half of the biblical text quoted (Matthew 10:16) "and harmless as doves" ought not to exist. Christ has to figure here for the second time as a historical person in order to play the same role as the Mongols and Negroes played above. Whether Christ is meant to clarify the rebellion or the rebellion to clarify Christ is not known. The Christian-German gullibility of our saint is concentrated in the statement that Christ "drained the sources of life of the entire heathen world, and without them" (this ought to read: without him) "the existing state was anyway bound to wither" (p. 424). A withered flower of pulpit eloquence! See above on the "ancients". For the rest, credo ut intelligamf or, in order to find a "comparison for the sake of clarity".

Countless examples have already shown us that everywhere nothing but sacred history comes into our saint's mind and, indeed, in precisely those passages where the reader "has not expected" it. "Against expectation" it occurs to him again even in the "Commentary", where Sancho on page 154 makes the "Judaic reviewers" in ancient Jerusalem exclaim in opposition to the Christian definition "God is love": "Thus you see that it is heathen God that is proclaimed by the Christians; for if God is love, then he is the God Amor, the God of love!"—"Against expectation", however, the New Testament was written in Greek, and the "Christian definition" reads: 6 {kàç à^àiz^ kaxls ⁽²⁾ (1 John 4 : 16), whereas "the God Amor, the God of love" is called "Epooç. Sancho has, therefore, still to explain how it is that the "Judaic reviewers" were able to achieve the transformation of a-ydMcyj into spoDÇ. In this passage of the "Commentary", Christ — again "for the sake of clarity"—is compared with Sancho, and at any rate it must be admitted that they have a striking resemblance to each other, both are "corpulent beings" and the joyful heir at least believes in the existence, or the uniqueness, of both of them. Sancho is the modern Christ, at this "fixed idea" of his the whole historical construction is "aimed".

The philosophy of rebellion, which has just been presented to us in the form of bad antitheses and withered flowers of eloquence, is in the final analysis only a boastful apology for the parvenu system (parvenu, Emporkömmling, Emporgekommener, Empörer ). Every rebel in his "egoistical act" is faced by a particular existing realitv, over which he endeavours to rise, without regard to the general conditions. He strives to get rid of the existing world only insofar as it is a fetter, for the rest, he endeavours, on the contrary, to appropriate it. The weaver who "rises" to become a factory-owner thereby gets rid of his loom and abandons it; for the rest, the world goes on as before and our "prosperous" rebel offers to others only the hypocritical moral demand that they should become parvenus like himself.⁽³⁾ Thus, all Stirner's belligerent rodomontades end in moral deductions from Gellert's fables and speculative interpreta-tions of middle-class wretchedness.

So far we have seen that rebellion is anything you like, except action. On page 342 we learn that

"the procedure of seizure is not contemptible, but expresses the pure action of the egoist in agreement with himself".

This should surely read: of egoists in agreement with one another, since otherwise seizure amounts to the uncivilised "procedure" of thieves or to the civilised "procedure" of the bourgeois, and in the first case does not prosper, while in the second case it is not "rebellion". It is to be noted that corresponding to the egoist in agreement with himself, who does nothing, we have here the "pure" act, certainly the only act which could be expected from such an inactive individual.

We learn by the way what created the plebs, and we can be sure in advance that it was created by a "dogma", and faith in that dogma, in the holy, a faith which here for a change appears as consciousness of sin:

"Seizure is a sin, a crime — this is the dogma that alone creates a plebs ... the old consciousness of sin alone is to blame" (p. 342).

The belief that consciousness is to blame for everything is his dogma, which makes him a rebel and the plebs a sinner.

In contrast to this consciousness of sin, the egoist incites himself, respectively the plebs, to seizure as follows:

"I tell myself: where my power extends, that is my property, and I claim as my property everything that I feel strong enough to reach," etc. (p. 340).

Thus, Saint Sancho tells himself that he wants to tell himself something, calls on himself to have what he has, and formulates his real relation as a relation of power — a paraphrase which in general is the secret of all his rodomontades. (See "Logic".3) Then he — who at each instant is what he can be, and therefore has what he can have — distinguishes his realised, actual property, which he has in his capital account, from his possible property, his unrealised "feeling of strength", which he enters in his profit and loss account. This is a contribution to the science of book-keeping of property in the extraordinary sense.

The meaning of his solemn "telling" was revealed by Sancho in a passage already quoted:

"I tell myself ... then that is, properly speaking, empty talk."

Sancho continues:

"Egoism" says "to the propertyless plebs" in order to "exterminate" it: "Seize and take what you need!" (p. 341).

How "empty" this "talk" is can be seen at once from the following example:

How little Sancho has "divested" the wealth of the banker of its "alien character" he proves at once by his well-meaning advice to the plebs to "conquer" it by seizure. "Let him seize and see what is left in his hands!" Not the wealth of the banker but useless paper, the "corpse" of that wealth which is no more wealth than "a dead dog is a dog". The wealth of the banker is wealth only in the framework of the existing relations of production and intercourse and can be "conquered" only in the conditions of these relations and with the means which are valid for them. And if Sancho were to turn to some other wealth, he would find that the prospect was no better. Thus, the "pure act of the egoist in agreement with himself" amounts in the final analysis to an extremely impure misunderstanding. "That is where one can get with the spectre" of the holy.

Having told himself what he wanted to tell himself, Sancho makes the rebellious plebs say what he has prompted it to say. The fact is that in case of a rebellion he has drawn up a proclamation together with instructions as to its use, which should be posted up in all village ale-houses and distributed throughout the countryside. The proclamation claims a place in Der hinkende Botte^[110] and in the Duchy of Nassau's country almanac. For the time being Sancho's tendances incendiaires are limited to the countryside, to propaganda among agricultural labourers and dairy maids, not touching the towns, which is a further proof of the extent to which he has "divested" large-scale industry of its "alien character". Nevertheless we should like here to give as detailed an account as possible of this valuable document, which ought not to be lost, in order "to contribute to the spread of a well-deserved fame insofar as it lies in our power" (Wigand, p. 191).

The proclamation is printed on page 358 et seq. [of "the book"] and begins as follows:

"But what is it due to that your property is safe, you privileged ones?... It is due to the fact that we refrain from attacking, consequently, it is due to our protection.... It is due to the fact that you use force against us."

First it is due to the fact that we refrain from attacking, i.e., to the fact that we use force against ourselves, and then to the fact that you use force against us. Cela va à merveille! Let us continue.

"If you desire our respect, then buy it at a price acceptable to us.... We only want good value."

First the "rebels" want to sell their respect at an "acceptable price" and then they make "good value" the criterion of the price. First an arbitrary price, then a price determined independently of arbitrariness by commercial laws, by the costs of production and the relation between supply and demand.

"We agree to leave you your property provided you properly compensate this leaving.... You will shout about force if we help ourselves.... without force we shall not get them" (i.e., the oysters that the privileged enjoy).... "We intend taking nothing from you, nothing at all."

First we "leave" it to you, then we take it away from you and have to use "force", and finally we prefer taking nothing from you after all. We leave it to you in the event of your giving it up yourself; in a moment of enlightenment, the only one we have, we see that this "leaving" amounts to "helping oneself" and use of "force", but in the end we cannot be reproached with "taking" anything from you. And there the matter must rest.

"We toil for twelve hours in the sweat of our brows and you offer us a few pence for it. In that case you should take an equal amount for your work too.... No equality at all!"

The "rebellious" agricultural labourers reveal themselves as true Stirnerian ' ' creations ' '.

"You do not like that? You imagine that our work is more than adequately paid with those wages, but that yours, on the other hand, deserves a wage of several thousand. But if you did not put such a high value on your work and allowed us to realise a better value for ours, we would, if need be, achieve something more important than you do for many thousand taler, and if you received only such wages as ours, you would soon become more diligent in order to earn more. If you were to do something that appears to us to be ten and a hundred times more valuable than our own work, ah" (ah, you good and faithful servant!⁽⁴⁾) "then you should get a hundred times more for it; we, for our part, are also thinking of making you things for which you will pay us more than the usual daily wage."

First the rebels complain that they are paid too little for their work. At the end, however, they promise that only if they receive a higher daily wage, they will perform work for which it will be worth paying "more than the usual daily wage". Further, they believe they would achieve extraordinary things if only they were to receive better wages, although at the same time they expect extraordinary achievements from the capitalist only if his "wage" is reduced to the level of theirs. Finally, after having performed the economic feat of transforming profit — this necessary form of capital, without which they would perish together with the capitalist — into wages, they perform the miracle of paying "a hundred times more" than they receive for "their own work", i.e., a hundred times more than they earn. "This is the meaning" of the above phrase, if Stirner "means what he says". But if this is only a stylistic error on his part, if the rebels intend jointly to offer the capitalist a hundred times more than each of them earns, then Stirner is only making them offer the capitalist what each capitalist already has nowadays. For it is clear that the work of the capitalist, in combination with his capital, is worth ten or a hundred times more than that of a single person who is merely a worker. Hence in this case, as always, Sancho ieaves everything as it was before.

"We shall get on with one another if only we agree that no one any longer needs to present anything to someone else. Then we shall presumably go as far as to pay a decent price even to cripples, the sick and the aged, to prevent them from dying of hunger and want, for if we wish them to live it is fitting that we should pay for the fulfilment of our desire. Ï say pay for, hence I do not mean any miserable alms."

This sentimental episode about cripples, etc., is intended to prove that Sancho's rebellious agricultural labourers have already "risen" to those heights of middle-class consciousness where they do not wish to present anything or be presented with anything, and where they consider that the dignity and interests of the two parties in a relation are assured as soon as this relation is turned into a purchase.

This thunderous proclamation of the people who, in Sancho's imagination, are in rebellion, is followed by directions for its use in the form of a dialogue between a landowner and his labourers, the master this time behaving like Szeliga and the labourers like Stirner. In these directions the English strikes and the French workers' coalitions are interpreted a priori in the Berlin manner.

Spokesman of the labourers: "What have you got?"

Landowner: "1 have an estate of 1.000 morgen.'"⁽⁵⁾

Spokesman: "And I am your labourei, and henceforth I will only cultivate your land for a wage of a taler a day.".

Landowner: "In that case I shall hire someone else." Spokesman: "You won't find anyone, for we labourers will not work in future on any other conditions, and if you find anyone who agrees to take less, let him beware of us. Even a servant-girl now demands as much, and you will no longer find anyone for a lower wage."

Landowner: "Oh! Then I shall be ruined!" Labourers (in chorus): "Don't be in such a hurry! You are sure to get as much as we get. And if not, we'll deduct sufficient for you to live like us.—We are not talking of equality!"

Landowner: "But I am accustomed to better living!" Labourers: "We have nothing against that, but that's iiot our concern; if you can save more, all right. Do we have to hire ourselves out at a reduced price so that you can live well?"

Landowner: "But you uneducated people do not need so much!" Labourers: "Well, we shall take a little more so as to be able to get the education that we may, perhaps, need."

Landowner: "But if you ruin the rich, who will support the arts and sciences?"

Labourers: "Well, our numbers must see to that. We'll all contribute, it will make a good round sum. Anyway, you wealthy people now buy only the trashiest books and pictures of tearful madonnas or a pair of nimble dancer's legs."

Landowner: "Oh, miserable equality!" Labourers: "No, dear worthy master, we are not talking of equality! We only want to be appraised according to our worth, and if you are worth more, then after all you will also be appraised more highly. We only want good value and intend to show ourselves worth the price you will pay."

At the end of this dramatic masterpiece Sancho admits that, of course, "unanimity of the labourers" will be "required". How this will come about we are not told. What we do learn is that the agricultural labourers have no intention of changing in any way the existing relations of production and intercourse, but merely want to force the landowner to yield them the amount by which his expenditure exceeds theirs. It is a matter of indifference to our well-meaning bonhomme that this excess of expenditure, if distrib-uted over the mass of the proletarians, would give each of them a mere trifle and not improve his position in the slightest. The stage of development of agriculture to which these heroic labourers belong becomes evident immediately after the conclusion of the drama, when they are transformed into "domestic servants". They are living, therefore, under patriarchal conditions in which division of labour is still very little developed, and in which, incidentally, the whole conspiracy "will reach its final goal" by the landowner taking the spokesman into a barn and giving him a thrashing, whereas in more civilised countries the capitalist ends the matter by closing his enterprise for a time and letting his workers go and "play". Sancho's highly practical way of constructing his work of art, his strict adherence to the limits of probability, is evident not only from his peculiar idea of arranging a turn-out⁽⁶⁾ of agricultural labourers, but especially from his coalition of "servant-girls". And how complacent to imagine that the price of corn on the world market will depend on the wage demands of these agricultural labourers from Further Pomerania and not on the relation between supply and demand! A real sensation is caused by the surprising discourse of the labourers about literature, the latest art exhibition and the fashionable dancer of the day, surprising even after the unexpected question of the landowner about art and science. They become quite friendly as soon as they touch on this literary subject and for a moment the harassed landowner even forgets his threatened ruin in order to demonstrate his dévoûment to art and science. Finally the rebels give him an assurance of their upright character and make the reassuring statement that they are guided neither by vexatious interests nor subversive tendencies, but by the highest moral motives. All they ask is price according to worth and they promise on their honour and conscience to be worthy of the higher price. All this has the sole aim of ensuring for each his own, his honest and fair earnings, "honestly earned pleasure". That this price depends on the state of the labour-market, and not on the moral rebellion of a few literary-minded agricultural labourers, is, of course, a fact which our worthy folk could not be expected to know.

These rebels from Further Pomerania are so modest that despite their "unanimity", which gives them the power to do something very different, they prefer to remain servants with the "wage of a taler a day" as their highest desire. It is quite consistent, therefore, that they do not cross-examine the landowner, who is in their power, but he cross-examines them.

The "firm spirit" and "strong self-consciousness of the domestic servant" find expression also in the "firm", "strong" language in which he and his comrades speak. "Perhaps — well — our numbers must see to that — a good round sum — dear worthy master — after all." Previously we read in the proclamation: "If need be — ah — we are thinking of making — perhaps, maybe, etc." One would think that the agricultural labourers had also mounted the wonderful steed Clavileno.⁽⁷⁾

Our Sancho's whole noisy "rebellion", therefore, reduces itself in the final analysis to a turn-out, but a turn-out in the extraordinary sense, viz., a turn-out on Berlin lines. Whereas in civilised countries the real turn-out plays a smaller and smaller role in the labour movement, because the more widespread association of workers leads to other forms of action, Sancho tries to depict the petty-bourgeois caricature of a turn-out as the ultimate and highest form of the world-historic struggle.

The waves of rebellion now cast us on the shore of the promised land, flowing with milk and honey,⁽⁸⁾ where every true Israelite sits beneath his fig-tree and where the millennium of "agreement" has dawned.

III. Union

In the section on rebellion we first of all collected examples of Sancho's bragging, and then traced the practical course of the "pure act of the egoist in agreement with himself". With regard to "union", we shall do the opposite: we shall first of all examine the actual institutions and then compare them with the illusions of our saint about them.

1. Landed Property

"If we no longer wish to leave the land to the landed proprietors, but want to appropriate it for ourselves, then we unite to this end and form a union, société" (society), "which makes itself the owner; if we are successful, the landed proprietors cease to be such." The "land" will then be the "property of the conquerors.... And the attitude to the land of these individuals collectively will be no less arbitrary than that of an isolated individual or so-called propriétaire. Hence, in this case too, property continues to exist, and indeed even as 'exclusive' property, since mankind, that great society, excludes the individual from its property, leasing to him, perhaps, only a part of it, as a reward.... So it remains and so it will come to be. That in which all want to have a share will be taken away from the individual who wants to have it for himself alone and turned into common property. Since it is common property each has his share in it and this share is his property. Thus in our old conditions, a house belonging to five heirs is likewise their common property; one-fifth part of the income, however, is the property of each of them" (pp. 329, 330).

After our brave rebels have formed a union, a society, and in this form have won a portion of land for themselves, this "société", this juridical person, "makes itself" the "proprietor". To avoid any misunderstanding, he adds at once that "this society excludes the individual from the property, leasing to him, perhaps, only a part of it, as a reward". In this way Saint Sancho appropriates for himself and his "union" his notion of communism. The reader will recall that Sancho in his ignorance reproached the communists for wanting to make society the supreme owner that gives each individual his "property" in feudal tenure.

Further, Sancho offers his recruits the prospect of a "share in the common property". On a later occasion, this same Sancho says, again against the communists:

"Whether wealth belongs to the whole community, which allows me a portion of it, or to separate owners, for me the compulsion is the same, since in both cases I am powerless to decide about it"

(for this reason, too, his "collective" "takes away" from him what it does not want him to have in his exclusive possession, and so makes him feel the power of the collective will).

Thirdly, we here again encounter the "exclusiveness" with which he has often reproached bourgeois property, so that "even the miserable spot on which he stands does not belong to him". On the contrary, he has only the right and power to squat on it as a miserable and oppressed corvée peasant.

Fourthly, Sancho here appropriates the feudal system which, to his great annoyance, he has discovered in all hitherto existing or proposed forms of society. The "society" of conquerors behaves much as did the "unions" of semi-barbarian Germans who conquered the Roman provinces and introduced there a crude feudal system which was still strongly alloyed with the old tribal mode of life. It gives every individual a piece of land "as a reward". At the stage where Sancho and the sixth-century Germans are, the feudal system still coincides in many respects with the system of "reward".

It goes without saying, incidentally, that the tribal property which Sancho here restores afresh to honour would be bound before long to be dissolved again in the conditions now existing. Sancho feels this himself, for he exclaims: "So it remains and" (a beautiful "and"!) "so it will come to be", and finally, he proves — by his great example of the house belonging to five heirs — that he has not the slightest intention of going outside the framework of our old relations. His whole plan for the organisation of landed property has only the aim of leading us by a historical detour back to petty-bourgeois hereditary tenure and the family property of German imperial towns.

Of our old relations, i.e., those now existing, Sancho has appropriated only the legal nonsense that individuals, or propriétaires, behave "arbitrarily" in relation to landed property. In the "union", this imagined "arbitrariness" is to be continued by "society". To the "union" it is so much a matter of indifference what happens to the land that "perhaps" "society" leases plots of land to individuals, or perhaps not. All that is quite immaterial.

Sancho, of course, cannot know that a definite structure of agriculture is linked to a definite form of activity and determined by a definite stage of the division of labour. But anyone else can see how little the small corvee peasants, as proposed here by Sancho, are in a position where "each of them can become an omnipotent ego", and how little their ownership of a miserable plot of land resembles the greatly praised "ownership of everything". In the real world, the intercourse of individuals depends on their mode of production, and therefore Sancho's "perhaps" completely overthrows — perhaps — his whole union. But "perhaps", or rather undoubtedly, there emerges here Sancho's real view concerning intercourse in the union, namely, the view that the basis of egoistical intercourse is the holy.

Sancho brings to light here the first "institution" of his future union. The rebels who strove to be "without a constitution", "arrange things for themselves", by "choosing" for themselves a "constitution" of landed property. We see that Sancho was right in not placing any brilliant hopes in new "institutions". At the same time, however, we see that he ranks highly among the "socially-gifted persons" and is "extraordinarily inventive in regard to social institutions".

2. Organisation of Labour

' The organisation of labour concerns only such work as can be done for us by others, such as cattle-slaughtering, ploughing, etc.; other work remains egoistical because, for example, no one can compose your music for you, complete the sketches for your paintings, etc. No one can do Raphael's works for him. These are works ol a unique individual which only this unique person is capable of producing, whereas the former work deserves to be called human" (on page 356 this is made identical witl, "generally useful"), "since peculiarity is of little consequence here and almost every person can be trained to do it." (p. 355).

"It is always expedient lor us to come to an agreement about human labour, in order that it should not claim all our time and effort, as is the case under competition.... For whom, however, should time be gained? For what purpose does a human being need more time than is required to restore his exhausted labour-power?-' To this communism gives no reply. For what purpose? In order to enjoy himself as the unique, having done his share as a human being" (pp. 356, 357).

"Through work I can fulfil the official duties of a president, minister, etc.; these posts require onlv a general education, namely, the education that is generally accessible.... Although, however, anyone could occupy these posts, it is only the unique power of the individual, peculiar to him alone, that gives them, as it were, life and significance. For performing his duties not as an ordinary man would do, but by exerting the power of his uniqueness, he does not get paid, if he is paid only as an official or minister. If he has acted to your satisfaction and you wish for your benefit to retain this power of the unique person, which is worthy of gratitude, then you ought to pay hirn not simply as a man who performs a merely human task, but as one who accomplishes something unique" (pp. 362, 363).

"If you are in a position to afford joy to thousands of people, then thousands will remunerate you for it; for it is in your power not to do it and therefore they have to pay you for the fact that you do it" (p. 351).

"One cannot establish any general rate of payment for my uniqueness, as can be done for work I perform as a man. Only for the latter can a tariff be fixed. Therefore you may fix a general tariff for human work, but do not deprive your uniqueness of what is due to it" (p. 363).

As an example of the organisation of labour in the union, the public bakeries already mentioned are cited on page 365. Under the conditions of vandal parcellation presupposed above, these public institutions must be a real miracle.

First of all human labour must be organised and thereby shortened so that Brother Straubinger,^[111] having finished his work early, can "enjoy himself as the unique" (p. 357), but on page 363 the "enjoyment" of the unique one is reduced to his extra earnings. On page 363 it is stated that the vital activity of the unique person does not have to take place subsequently to human labour; the latter can be performed as unique labour, and in that case it requires an additional wage. Otherwise the unique one, who is interested not in his uniqueness but in a higher wage, could shelve his uniqueness and to spite society be satisfied with acting as an ordinary person, at the same time playing a trick on himself.

According to page 356, human labour coincides with generally useful labour, but according to pages 351 and 363 unique labour shows its worth by being paid for additionally as generally useful or, at least, useful to many people.

Thus, the organisation of labour in the union consists in the separation of human labour from unique labour, in the establishment of a tariff for the former and in haggling for an additional wage for the latter. This addition is again twofold, one part being for the unique performance of human labour and the other for the unique performance of unique labour. The resulting book-keeping is the more complicated because what was unique labour yesterday (e.g., spinning cotton thread No. 200) becomes human labour today, and because the unique performance of human labour requires a continual moucharderié* upon oneself in one's own interest and universal moucharderie in the public interest. Hence this whole great organisational plan amounts to a wholly petty-bourgeois appropriation of the law of supply and demand, which exists at present and has been expounded by all economists. The law which determines the price of those types of labour that Sancho declares unique (e.g., that of a dancer, a prominent physician or lawyer), he could have found already explained by Adam Smith,b and a tariff fixed for it by the American Cooper.c Modern economists explain on the basis of this law the high payment for what they call travail improductif and the low wages of the agricultural day-labourer, and in general all inequalities in wages. Thus, with God's help, we have again arrived at competition, but a competition which has so much come down in the world that Sancho can propose a fixed rate, the establishment of wages by law, as was the case of old in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.

It deserves mention also that the idea which Sancho puts forward here is also to be found as something completely new in the Herr Messiah — Dr. Georg Kuhlmann of Holstein.d

I Spying.—Ed. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations.— Ed.

What Sancho here calls human labour is, apart from his bureaucratic fantasies, the same thing as is usually meant by machine labour, labour which, as industry develops, devolves more and more on machines. True, because of the above-described organisation of landownership, machines are an impossibility in the "union" and therefore the corvee peasants in agreement with themselves prefer to reach an agreement with one another about this work. As regards "presidents" and "ministers", Sancho — this poor localised being,3 as Owen puts it — forms his opinion only by his immediate environment.

Here, as always, Sancho is again unlucky with his practical examples. He thinks that "no one can compose your music for vou, complete the sketches for your paintings. No one can do Raphael's works for him". Sancho could surely have known, however, that it was not Mozart himself, but someone else who composed the greater part of Mozart's Requiem and finished it,^[112] and that Raphael himself "completed" only an insignificant part of his own frescoes.

He imagines that the so-called organisers of labour^[113] wanted to organise the entire activity of each individual, and yet it is precisely they who distinguish between directly productive labour, which has to be organised, and labour which is not directly productive. In regard to the latter, however, it was not their view, as Sancho imagines, that each should do the work of Raphael, but that anyone in whom there is a potential Raphael should be able to develop without hindrance. Sancho imagines that Raphael produced his pictures independently of the division of labour that existed in Rome at the time. If he were to compare Raphael with Leonardo da Vinci and Titian, he would see how greatly Raphael's works of art depended on the flourishing of Rome at that time, which occurred under Florentine influence, while the works of Leonardo depended on the state of things in Florence, and the works of Titian, at a later period, depended on the totally different development of Venice. Raphael as much as any other artist was determined by the technical advances in art made before him, by the organisation of society and the division of labour in his locality, and, finally, by the division of labour in all the countries with which his locality had intercourse. Whether an individual like Raphael succeeds in developing his talent depends wholly on demand, which in turn depends on the division of labour and the conditions of human culture resulting from it.

In proclaiming the uniqueness of work in science and art, Stirner adopts a position far inferior to that of the bourgeoisie. At the present time it has already been found necessary to organise this "unique" activity. Horace Vernet would not have had time to paint even a tenth of his pictures if he regarded them as works which "only this unique person is capable of producing". In Paris, the great demand for vaudevilles and novels brought about the organisation of work for their production; this organisation at any rate yields something better than its "unique" competitors in Germany. In astronomy, people like Arago, Herschel, Encke and Bessel considered it necessary to organise joint observations and only after that obtained some moderately good results. In historical science, it is absolutely impossible for the "unique" to achieve anything at all, and in this field, too, the French long ago surpassed all other nations thanks to organisation of labour. Incidentally, it is self-evident that all these organisations based on modern division of labour still lead to extremely limited results, and they represent a step forward only compared with the previous narrow isolation.

Moreover, it must be specially emphasised that Sancho confuses the organisation of labour with communism and is even surprised that "communism" gives him no reply to his doubts about this organisation. Just like a Gascon village lad is surprised that Arago cannot tell him on which star God Almighty has built his throne.

The exclusive concentration of artistic talent in particular individuals, and its suppression in the broad mass which is bound up with this, is a consequence of division of labour. Even if in certain social conditions, everyone were an excellent painter, that would by no means exclude the possibility of each of them being also an original painter, so that here too the difference between "human" and "unique" labour amounts to sheer nonsense. In any case, with a communist organisation of society, there disappears the subordination of the artist to local and national narrowness, which arises entirely from division of labour, and also the subordination of the individual to some definite art, making him exclusively a painter, sculptor, etc.; the very name amply expresses the narrowness of his professional development and his dependence on division of labour. In a communist society there are no painters but only people who engage in painting among other activities.

Sancho's organisation of labour shows clearly how much all these philosophical knights of "substance" content themselves with mere phrases. The subordination of "substance" to the "subject" about which they all talk so grandiloquently, the reduction of "substance"

which governs the "subject" to a mere "accident" of this subject, is revealed to be mere "empty talk".⁽¹⁾ Hence they wisely refrain from examining division of labour, material production and material intercourse, which in fact make individuals subordinate to definite relations and modes of activity. For them it is in general only a matter of finding new phrases for interpreting the existing world-—phrases which are the more certain to consist only of comical boasting, the more these people imagine they have risen above the world and the more they put themselves in opposition to it. Sancho is a lamentable example of this.

3. Money "Money is a commodity and indeed an essential means or faculty, for it protects wealth against ossification, keeps it fluid and effects its circulation. If you know of a better means of exchange, all right; but it too will be a variety of money" (p. 364).

3. Money

Thus the "union" retains money, this purely social property which has been stripped of all individuality. The extent to which Sancho is in the grip of the bourgeois outlook is shown by his question about a better means of exchange. Consequently, he first of all assumes that a means of exchange is necessary, and moreover he knows of no other means of exchange except money. The fact that ships and railways, which serve to transport commodities, are also means of exchange does not concern him. Hence in order to speak not merely of means of exchange, but particularly of money, he has to include the other attributes of money; that it is a means of exchange that is universally marketable and in circulation, that it keeps all property fluid, etc. These bring in also economic aspects which Sancho does not know but which actually constitute money; and with them the whole present situation, class economy, domination of the bourgeoisie, etc.

First of all, however, we learn something about the — extremely odd — course of monetary crises in the union.

The question arises:

"Where is money to be obtained?... People pay not with money, of which there may be a shortage, but with their ability [Vermögen3], thanks to which alone we are wealthy [vermögend].... It is not money that harms you, but your inability [Unvermögen] to obtain it."

Now comes the moral exhortation:

"Let your ability [Vermögen] have its effect, brace yourself, and you will not lack money [Geld], your money, money of your coining.... Know then that you have as much money as you have power; for the extent to which you can assert yourself

'Dir Geltung verschaffst] determines how much you are worth [giltst] " (pp. 353, 364).

The power of money, the fact that the universal means of exchange becomes independent in relation both to society and to individuals, reveals most clearly that the relations of production and intercourse as a whole assume an independent existence. Consequently, Sancho as usual knows nothing about the connection of money relations with production in general and intercourse. As a good citizen, he unhesitatingly keeps money in force; indeed it could not be otherwise with his view of division of labour and the organisation of landed ownership. The material power of money, which is strikingly revealed in monetary crises and which, in the form of a permanent scarcity of money, oppresses the petty bourgeois who is "inclined to make purchases", is likewise a highly unpleasant fact for the egoist in agreement with himself. He gets rid of the difficulty by reversing the ordinary idea of the petty bourgeois, thus making it appear that the attitude of individuals to the power of money is something that depends solely on their personal willing or running."4 This fortunate turn of thought then gives him the chance of reading a moral lecture, buttressed by synonymy, etymology and vowel mutation, to the astounded petty bourgeois already disheart-ened by lack of money, thus debarring in advance all inconvenient questions about the causes of the pecuniary embarrassment.

The monetary crisis consists primarily in the fact that all "wealth" [ Vermögen] suddenly becomes depreciated in relation to the means of exchange and loses its "power" [ Vermögen] over money. A crisis is in existence precisely when one can no longer pay with one's "wealth"

[Vermögen], but must pay with money. And this again does not happen because of a shortage of money, as is imagined by the petty bourgeois who judges the crisis by his personal difficulties, but because the specific difference becomes fixed between money as the universal commodity, the "marketable property and property in circulation", and all the other, particular commodities, which suddenly cease to be marketable property. It cannot be expected that, to please Sancho, we shall analyse here the causes of this phenomenon. Sancho first of all consoles the moneyless and hopeless small shopkeepers by saying that it is not money that causes the scarcity of money and the whole crisis, but their inability to obtain it. It is not arsenic that is to blame for someone dying who takes it, it is the inability of his organism to digest it.

After first defining money as an essential and indeed specific form of wealth [Vermögen], as the universal means of exchange, money in the ordinary sense, Sancho suddenly turns the thing round when he sees the difficulties this would lead to and declares all ability [Vermögen] to be money, in order to create the appearance of personal power. The difficulty during a crisis is precisely that "all wealth" [Vermögen] has ceased to be "money". Incidentally, this amounts to the practice of the bourgeois who accepts "all wealth" as means of payment so long as it is money, and who only begins to raise difficulties when it becomes difficult to turn this "wealth" into money, in which case he also ceases to regard it as "wealth". Further, the difficulty in time of crisis is precisely that you, petty bourgeois, whom Sancho addresses here, can no longer put into circulation the raonev of your coining, your bills of exchange; but you are expected to pay with money not coined by you and which shows no evidence that it has passed through your hands.

Finally, Stirner distorts the bourgeois motto "You are worth as much as the money you possess" into "You have as much money as you are worth", which alters nothing, but only introduces an appearance of personal power and thus expresses the trivial bourgeois illusion that everyone is himself to blame if he has no money. Thus Sancho disposes of the classic bourgeois saying: L'argent n'a pas de maître? and can now mount the pulpit and exclaim: "Let your ability have its effect, brace yourself, and you will not lack money." Je ne connais pas de lieu à la bourse où se fasse le transfert des bonnes intentions!3 He had but to add: Obtain credit; knowledge is powerc; it is harder to earn the first taler than the last million; be moderate and save your money and, most important of all, do not multiply overmuch, etc.—to reveal not one ass's ear, but both at once.

In general, the man for whom everyone is what he can be and does what he can do, ends all chapters with moral exhortations.

The monetary system in Stirner's union is, therefore, the existing monetary system expressed in the euphemistic and gushingly-sentimental manner of the German petty bourgeois.

After Sancho has paraded in this way with the ears of his ass, Don Quixote-Szeliga draws himself up to his full height and delivers a solemn speech about the modern knight-errant, in the course of which money is transformed into Dulcineadel Toboso and the manufacturers and commerçants en masse into knights, namely, into chevaliers d'industrie. The speech has also the subsidiary aim of proving that because money is an "essential means", it is also "essentially a daughter".⁽¹⁾ And he stretched out his right hand and said:

"On money depends fortune and misfortune. In the bourgeois period it is a force because like a maiden" (a dairymaid; per appositionem Dulcinea) "it is only wooed but is not indissolubly joined in marriage to anyone. All the romance and chivalry of wooing a dear object is revived in competition. Money, an object of ardent desire, is abducted by the bold chevaliers d'industrie" (p. 364).

Sancho has now arrived at a profound explanation why money in the bourgeois epoch is a power, namely, because in the first place fortune and misfortune depends on it and, secondly, because it is a maiden. He has further learned why he can lose his money, namely, because a maiden is not indissolubly joined in marriage to anyone. Now the poor wretch knows where he stands.

Szeliga, who has thus made the burgher into a knight, now in the following way makes the communist into a burgher and indeed into a burgher husband.

"He on whom fortune smiles leads the bride home. The ragamuffin is fortunate, he takes her into his household, society, and destroys the maiden. In his home she is no longer a bride, but a wife, and her maiden name disappears with her maidenhood. As a housewife, the money-maiden is called labour, for labour is the name of the husband. She is the property of the husband.

"To complete the picture, the child of labour and money is again a girl" ("essentially a daughter"), "an unmarried girl" (has Szeliga ever known of a girl coming "married" out of the maternal womb?) "and therefore money" (according to the above proof that all money is an "unmarried girl", it is self-evident that "all unmarried girls" are "money")—"therefore money, but having its definite descent from labour, its father" (toute recherche de la paternité est interdite^). "The shape of the face, the image, bears a different stamp" (pp. 364, 365).

This story of marriage, burial and baptism is surely of itself sufficient proof that it is "essentially a daughter" of Szeliga, and indeed a daughter of "definite descent". Its ultimate basis, however, lies in the ignorance of his former stableman, Sancho. This is clearly seen at the end, when the orator is again anxiously concerned about the "coining" of money, thereby betraying that he still considers that coins are the most important medium of circulation. If he had taken the trouble to examine a little more closely the economic relations of money, instead of weaving a beautiful, leafy bridal wreath for it,a he would have known that— without mentioning state securities, shares, etc.—the major part of the medium of circulation consists of bills of exchange, whereas paper money forms a comparatively small part, and coin a still smaller part. In England, for example, fifteen times as much money circulates in the form of bills of exchange and bank-notes as in the form of coin. And even as regards coin, it is determined exclusively by the costs of production, i.e., labour. Hence Stirner's elaborate process of procreation was superfluous here.

Szeiiga's solemn reflections about a means of exchange based on labour but, nevertheless, different from the money of today, which he claims to have discovered among certain communists, only prove once again the simplicity with which our noble couple believe everything they read without even examining it.

When the two heroes ride homewards after this "knightly and romantic" campaign of "wooing", they are bringing back no "fortune", still less the "bride", and least of all "money", but at best one "ragamuffin" is bringing home the other.

4. State

We have seen that Sancho retains in his "union" the existing form of landownership, division of labour and money, in the way in which a petty bourgeois conceives these relations in his imagination. It is clear at a glance that with such premises Sancho cannot do without the state.

First of all his newly acquired property will have to assume the form of guaranteed, legal property. We have already heard his words:

Here, therefore, the will of the whole community is enforced against the will of the separate individual. Since each of the egoists in agreement with themselves may turn out to be not in agreement with the other egoists and thus become involved in this contradiction, the collective will must also find some means of expression in relation to the separate individuals—

"and this will is called the will of the state" (p. 257).

Its decisions are then legal decisions. The enforcement of this collective will in its turn requires repressive measures and public power.

"In this matter also" (in the matter of property) "the unions will multiply the means of the individual and safeguard his disputed property" (they guarantee, therefore, guaranteed property, i.e., legal property, i.e., property that Sancho possesses not "unconditionally", but "holds on feudal tenure" from the "union") (p. 342).

Obviously, the whole of civil law is re-established along with the relations of property, and Sancho himself, for example, sets forth the theory of contract fully in the spirit of the lawyers, as follows:

"It is of no importance, too, that I deprive myself of one or other freedom, for example, through any contract" (p. 409).

And in order to "safeguard" "disputed" contracts, it will also "be of no importance" if he has again to submit himself to a court and to all the actual consequences of a civil court case.

Thus, "little by little out of the twilight and the night" we come closer again to the existing relations, but only as these relations exist in the dwarfish imagination of the German petty bourgeois.

Sancho admits:

"In relation to freedom there is no essential difference between state and union The latter cannot arise and exist without restricting freedom in various ways just as the state is incompatible with boundless freedom. Restriction of freedom is always unavoidable, for it is impossible to get rid o/everything; one cannot fly like a bird just because one would like to fly, etc.... In the union there will still be a fair amount of compulsion and lack of freedom, for its aim is not freedom which, on the contrary, it sacrifices for the sake of peculiarity, but only for the sake of peculiarity" (pp. 410, 411).

Leaving aside for the time being the strange distinction between freedom and peculiarity, it should be noted that Sancho, without intending to do so, has already sacrificed his "peculiarity" in his union owing to its economic institutions. As a true "believer in the state", he sees a restriction only where political institutions begin. He lets the old society continue in existence and with it also the subordination of individuals to division of labour; in which case he cannot escape the fate of having a special "peculiarity" prescribed for him by the division of labour and the occupation and position in life that falls to his lot as a result of it. If, for example, it fell to his lot to work as an apprentice fitter in Willenhall,^[115] then the "peculiarity" imposed on him would consist in a twisted hip-bone resulting in a "game leg"; if the "title spectre⁽¹⁾ of his book"^[116] has to exist as a female throstle spinner, then her "peculiarity" would consist in stiff knees. Even if our Sancho continues his old vocation of a corvée peasant, already assigned to him by Cervantes, and which he now declares to be his own vocation, which he calls upon himself to fulfil, then, owing to division of labour and the separation of town and countryside, he will have the "peculiarity" of being a purely local animal cut off from all world intercourse and, consequently, from all culture.

Thus, in the union, owing to its sociai organisation, Sancho malgré lui loses his peculiarity if, by way of exception, we take peculiarity in the sense of individuality. That owing to its political organisation, he then surrenders his freedom as well is quite consistent and only shows still more clearly how much he strives to retain the present state of affairs in his union.

Thus, the essential distinction between freedom and peculiarity constitutes the difference between the present state of affairs and the "union". We have already seen how essential this distinction is. The majority of the members of the union, too, will possibly not be particularly embarrassed by this distinction and will hasten to decree their "riddance" from it, and if Sancho is not satisfied with that, they will show him on the basis of his own "book" that, firstly, there are no essences, but that essences and essential differences are "the holy"; secondly, that the union does not have to trouble about the "nature of the matter" and the 'concept of the relation"; and, thirdly, that they in no way encroach on his peculiarity but only on his freedom to express it. They will perhaps prove to him, if it is his "endeavour to be without a constitution", that they restrict only his freedom by putting him in prison, striking blows at him, or tearing off his leg, and that he remains partout et toujours "peculiar", so long as he is still able to show the signs of life of a polyp, an oyster or even a galvanised dead frog. They will "set a definite price" on his work, as we have already heard, and "will not allow a truly free" (!) "realisation of his property", for thereby they restrict only his freedom, not his peculiarity. These are things for which Sancho, on page 338, reproaches the state. "What then should" our corvée peasant Sancho "do? He should be firm and pay no attention" to the union (ibid.). Finally whenever he begins to grumble about the restrictions imposed on him, the majority will suggest that so long as he has the peculiarity of declaring that freedoms are peculiarities, they can take the liberty of regarding his peculiarities as freedoms. Just as the difference mentioned above between human and unique labour was only a miserable appropriation of the law of supply and demand, so now the difference between freedom and peculiarity is a miserable appropriation of the relation between the state and civil society or, as Monsieur Guizot says, between liberté individuelle and pouvoir public. This is so much the case that in what follows he can copy Rousseau3 almost word for word.

"The agreement [...] according to which everyone must sacrifice a part of his freedom" occurs "riot at a'i ior the sake of something universal or even for the sake of another person", on the contrary, "I only concluded it out of self-interest. As far as sacrificing is concerned, alter all 1 merely sacrifice what is not in my power, i. e., I sacrifice nothing at all" (p. 418).

Our corvée peasant in agreement with himself shares this quality with all other corvée peasants and, in general, with every individual who has ever lived on the earth. Compare also Godwin, Politica! Justice.

Incidentally, Sancho appears to possess the peculiarity of imagining that according to Rousseau individuals concluded the contract for the sake of the universal, which never entered Rousseau's head.

One consolation, however, remains for him.

"The state is holy ... the union, however, is .. not holy." And herein lies the "great difference between the state and the union" (p. 411).

The whole difference, therefore, amounts to this, that the "union" is the actual modern state, and the "state" is Stirner's illusion about the Prussian state, which he confuses with the state in general.

5. Rebellion

Sancho quite rightly has so little faith in his subtle distinctions between state and union, holy and not holy, human and unique, peculiarity and freedom, etc., that in the end he takes refuge in the ultima ratio of the egoist in agreement with himself — in rebellion. This time, however, he rebels not against himself, as he earlier asserted, but against the union. Just as earlier Sancho sought to achieve clarity on all points in the union, so he does here, too, as regards rebellion.

"If the community treats me unjustly, I rebel against it and defend my property" (p. 343).

If the rebellion does not "prosper", the union will "expel (imprison, exile, etc.) him" (pp. 256, 257).

Sancho here tries to appropriate the droits de l'homme of 1793, which included the right of insurrection^[117]—a human right that, of course, bears bitter fruits for him who tries to make use of it at his "own" discretion.

Thus Sancho's whole union amounts to the following. Whereas in his previous criticism he regarded existing relations only from the aspect of illusion, when speaking of the union he tries to get to know the actual content of these relations and to oppose this content to the former illusions. In this attempt, our ignorant school-master was of course bound to fail ignominiously. By way of exception, he did once endeavour to appropriate the "nature of the matter" and the "concept of the relation", but he failed to "divest" any matter or any relation of its "alien character".

Now that we have become acquainted with the union in its real form, it only remains for us to examine Sancho's enthusiastic ideas about it, i.e., the religion and philosophy of the union.

6. Religion and Philosophy of the Union

Here we again start from the point at which, above, we began the description of the union. Sancho employs two categories: property and wealth; the illusions about property correspond mainly to the positive data given on landed property, the illusions about wealth to the data on the organisation of labour and the monetary system in the union.

A. Property

Page 331: "The world belongs to me."

Interpretation of his hereditary tenure of a plot of land.

Page 343: "I am the owner of everything that I need",

a euphemistic way of saying that his needs are his possession and that what he needs as a corvée peasant is determined by his circumstances. In the same way the economists maintain that the worker is the owner of everything that he needs as a worker. See the discourse on the minimum wage in Ricardo.⁽¹⁾ Page 343: "Now, however, everything belongs to me."

A musical flourish in honour of his rate of wages, his plot of land, his permanent lack of money, and his expulsion from everything that the "society" does not want him to have in exclusive possession. The same idea occurs on page 327, expressed thus:

"His" (i. e., of another person) "possessions are mine and I dispose of them as the owner to the extent of my power."

This pompous allegro marciale passes in the following way into a gentle cadence, in which it gradually collapses on its backside— Sancho's usual fate:

Page 331: "The world belongs to me. Do you" (communists) "say anything different with your opposite thesis: the world belongs to all? All are I, and once more I, etc." (for example, "Robespierre, for example, Saint-Just, and so on").

Page 415: "I am I and you are I, but ... this I, in which we are all equal, is only my thought [...] a generality" (the holy).

The practical variation on this theme occurs on page 330, where the "individuals collectively" (i.e., all) are counterposed as a regulating force to the "isolated individual" (i.e., the I as distinct from all).

These dissonances are at last resolved in the soothing final chord, to the effect that what I do not possess is at any rate the property of another "ego". Thus, "ownership of everything" is only an interpretation of the statement that each person possesses exclusive property.

Page 336: "But property is only my property if I have unconditional possession of it. As the unconditional ego, I have property, I carry on free trade."

We already know that only freedom, and not peculiarity, is affected if freedom of trade and unconditionality are not respected in the union. "Unconditional property" is a fitting supplement to the "secure", guaranteed property in the union.

Page 342: "In the opinion of the communists, the community should be the owner. On the contrary, 1 am the owner and only come to an agreement with others about my property."

On page 329 we saw how "the société makes itself the owner" and on page 330 how it "excludes individuals from its property". In general, we saw that the tribal system of feudal tenure, the crudest beginnings of the system of feudal tenure, was introduced. According to page 416, the "feudal system = absence of property"; hence, according to the same page, "property is recognised in the union, and only in the union", and moreover for a conclusive reason: "because no one any longer holds his possession in feudal tenure from any being [Wesen]" (ibid.). That is to say, under the hitherto existing feudal system, the feudal lord was this "being", in the union it is the société. From this one may at least conclude that Sancho possesses an "exclusive" but by no means "secure" property in the "essence" [Wesen3] of past history.

In connection with page 330, according to which each individual is excluded from that which society does not consider it right for him to hold in his sole possession, and in connection with the state and legai system of the union, it is stated:

Page 369: "The rightful and legitimate property of another will only be that which you consider it right to recognise as his property. If you no longer consider it right, it loses its rightfulness for you and you will deride any claim to absolute right in it."

He thus proves the astounding fact that what is right in the union does not have to be right for him — an indisputable right of man. If there exists in the union the institution of the old French parliaments, which Sancho loves so much, then he can even have his dislike recorded and deposit the document in the office of the law courts, consoling himself with the thought that "one cannot get rid of everything".

These various statements appear to contradict themselves, one another and the actual state of things in the union. But the key to this riddle is to be found in the juridical fiction, already mentioned, that when Sancho is excluded from the property of others, he is merely coming to an agreement with these others. This fiction is expounded in more detail in the following statements:

Page 369: "This" (i. e., respect for the property of others) "comes to an end when I can leave the tree in question to another, just as I leave my stick, etc., to another, but do not from the outset regard it as something alien, i. e., holy. Rather ... it remains my property, no matter for what period I cede it to another; it is mine and remains mine. I see nothing alien in the wealth belonging to the banker."

Page 328: "I do not retreat timidly before thv and your property, but always regard it as my property, which I do not need to respect at all. Just do the same with what you call my property. With this point of view we shall most easily reach agreement with one another."

If, according to the rules of the union, Sancho is "given a drubbing" as soon as he tries to seize another's property, he will, of course, maintain that pilfering is a "peculiarity" of his; nevertheless, the union will decide that Sancho has merely taken a "liberty". And if Sancho takes the "liberty" of attempting to seize another's possessions, the union has the "peculiarity" of sentencing him to a flogging for it.

A pun on the word Wesen, which can mean "being" or "essence".—Ed.

The essence of the matter is this. Bourgeois and, particularly, petty-bourgeois and small-peasant property is, as we have seen, retained in the union. Merely the interpretation, the "point of view", is different, for which reason Sancho always lays stress on the way of "regarding". "Agreement" is reached when this new philosophy of regarding enjoys the regard of the whole union. This philosophy consists of the following. Firstly, every relation, whether caused by economic conditions or direct compulsion, is regarded as a relation of "agreement". Secondly, it is imagined that all property belonging to others is relinquished to them by us and remains with them only until we have the power to take it from them; and if we never get the power, tant mieux. Thirdly, Sancho and his union in theory guarantee each other absence of respect, whereas in practice the union "reaches agreement" with Sancho with the aid of a stick. Finally, this "agreement" is a mere phrase, since everyone knows that the others enter into it only with the secret reservation that they will reject it on the first convenient occasion. I see in your property something that is not yours but mine; since every ego does likewise, they see in it the universal, by which we arrive at the modern-German philosophical interpretation of ordinary, special and exclusive private property.

The union's philosophy of property includes, inter alia, the following fancies derived from Sancho's system:

On page 342, that property can be acquired in the union through absence of respect; on page 351, that "we are all in the midst of abundance", and I "have only to help myself to as much as I can", whereas in actual fact the whole union belongs to Pharaoh's seven

^[118] lean kine ; and finally that Sancho "cherishes thoughts" which are "written in his book" and which are sung on page 374 in the incomparable ode addressed to himself imitating Heine's three odes to Schlegel3: " You, who cherishes such thoughts as are written in your book ... you cherish nonsense!" Such is the hymn which for the time being Sancho addresses to himself, and about which the union will later "reach agreement" with him.

Finally, it is obvious even without reaching "agreement" that property in the extraordinary sense, about which we already spoke in the "Phenomenology",b is accepted in the union in lieu of payment, as "marketable" property and "property in circulation". Concerning simple facts, e.g., that I feel sympathy, that I talk to others, that my

Heine's "Sonettenkranz an A. W. von Schlegel" in his Buch der Lieder.—Ed. See this volume, pp. 259-60.—Ed.

leg is amputated (or torn off), the union will reach agreement that "the feeling experienced by sentient beings is also mine, my property" (p. 387); that other people's ears and tongues are likewise my property, and that mechanical relations too are my property. Thus, appropriation in the union will consist chiefly in all relations being transformed into property relations by means of a facile paraphrase. This new mode of expressing "evils" that are already now rife is an "essential means or faculty" in the union and will successfully make up for the deficit in the means of existence that is inevitable in view of Sancho's "social gifts".

B. Wealth

Page 216: "Let each of you become an omnipotent egol" Page 353: "Think about increasing your wealth!" Page 420: "Keep up the value of your gifts; "Keep up their price, "Do not allow yourself to be compelled to sell below the price, "Do not allow yourself to be persuaded that your commodity is not worth the price, "Do not make yourself ridiculous by a ridiculously low price,

"Follow the example of the courageous man',' etc.!

Page 420: "Increase the value of your property!" "Increase your value!"

These moral sayings, which Sancho learned from an Andalusian Jewish huckster who drew up rules of life and trade for his son, and which Sancho now pulls out of his knapsack, form the main wealth of the union. The basis of all these statements is the great proposition on page 351:

"Everything that you are able to do [vermagst—inflected form of vermögen] is your wealth [Vermögen]."

This proposition is either meaningless, i. e., mere tautology, or is nonsense. It is tautology if it means: what you are able to do, you are able to do. It is nonsense if Vermögen No. 2 is meant to denote wealth "in the ordinary sense", commercial wealth, and if the proposition is based, therefore, on the etymological similarity. The collision consists precisely in the fact that what is expected of my ability [Vermögen] is different from what it is capable of doing, e. g., it is demanded of my ability to write verses that it should make money out of these verses. My ability is expected to produce something quite different from the specific product of this special ability, viz., a product depending on extraneous conditions which are not subject to my ability. This difficulty is supposed to be resolved in the union by means of etymological synonymy. We see that our egoistical school-master hopes to occupy an important post in the

I '1 — 2086 union. Incidentally, this difficulty is only an apparant one. The usual pithy moral saying of the bourgeois: "Anything is good to make money of"a is here expounded at length in Sancho's solemn manner.

C. Morality, Intercourse, Theory of Exploitation

Page 352: "You behave egoistically when you regard one another neither as owners nor as ragamuffins or workers, but as part of your wealth, as useful creatures. Then you will not give anything either to the owner, the proprietor, for his property, or to the one who works, but only to him whom you can make use of. Do we need a king? the North Americans ask themselves, and they reply: 'He and his work are not worth a farthing to us'."

On the other hand, on page 229, he reproaches the "bourgeois period" for the following:

"Instead of taking me as I am, attention is paid only to my property, my qualities, and a marriage allianceb is concluded with me only for the sake of what I possess. The marriage is concluded, so to speak, with what I have and not with what I am."

That is to say, attention is paid solely to what I am for others, to my usefulness, I am dealt with as a useful creature. Sancho spits into the "bourgeois period's" soup, so that in the union he alone can devour it.

If the individuals of modern society regard one another as owners, as workers and, if Sancho wishes, as ragamuffins, this only means that they treat one another as useful creatures, a fact which can only be doubted by such a useless individual as Sancho. The capitalist, who "regards" the worker "as a worker", shows consideration for him only because he needs workers; the worker treats the capitalist in the same way, and the Americans too, in Sancho's opinion (we would like him to point out the source from which he took this historic fact), have no use for a king, because he is useless to them as a worker. Sancho has chosen his example with his usual clumsiness, for it is supposed to prove exactly the opposite of what it actually proves.

Page 395: "For me, you are nothing but food, just as I am eaten up and consumed by you. We stand in only one relation to one another: that of usefulness, utility, use."

Page 416: "No one is to me a person to be held in respect, not even my fellow-man; but, like other beings" (!), "he is solely an object, for which I may or may not have sympathy, an interesting or uninteresting object, a useful or useless creature."

The relation of "usefulness", which is supposed to be the sole relation of the individuals to one another in the union, is at once paraphrased as "eating" one another. The "perfect Christians" of

The words in quotes are in English in the manuscript.—Ed. In the manuscript: ehelicher Bund, that is, "marriage alliance"; in Stirner's book: ehrlicher Bund, i.e., "honest alliance".—Ed.

the union, of course, also celebrate holy communion, only not by eating together but by eating one another.

The extent to which this theory of mutual exploitation, which Bentham expounded ad nauseam, could already at the beginning of the present century be regarded as a phase of the previous one is shown by Hegel in his Phänomenologie. See there the chapter "The Struggle of Enlightenment with Superstition", where the theory of usefulness is depicted as the final result of enlightenment. The apparent absurdity of merging all the manifold relationships of people in the one relation of usefulness, this apparently metaphysical abstraction arises from the fact that in modern bourgeois society all relations are subordinated in practice to the one abstract monetary-commercial relation. This theory came to the fore with Hobbes and Locke, at the same time as the first and second English revolutions, those first battles by which the bourgeoisie won political power. It is to be found even earlier, of course, among writers on political economy, as a tacit presupposition. Political economy is the real science of this theory of utility; it acquires its true content among the Physiocrats, since they were the first to treat political economy systematically. In Helvétius and Holbach one can already find an idealisation of this doctrine, which fully corresponds to the attitude of opposition adopted by the French bourgeoisie before the revolution. Holbach depicts the entire activity of individuals in their mutual intercourse, e. g., speech, love, etc., as a relation of utility and utilisation. Hence the actual relations that are presupposed here are speech, love, definite manifestations of definite qualities of individuals. Now these relations are supposed not to have the meaning peculiar to them but to be the expression and manifestation of some third relation attributed to them, the relation of utility or utilisation. This paraphrasing ceases to be meaningless and arbitrary only when these relations have validity for the individual not on their own account, not as spontaneous activity, but rather as disguises, though by no means disguises of the category of utilisation, but of an actual third aim and relation which is called the relation of utility.

The verbal masquerade only has meaning when it is the unconscious or deliberate expression of an actual masquerade. In this case, the utility relation has a quite definite meaning, namely, that I derive benefit for myself by doing harm to someone else (exploitation de l'homme par l'homme*); in this case moreover the use that

Exploitation of man by man." See Doctrine de Saint-Simon. Exposition. Première année.—Ed.

15* I derive from some relation is entirely extraneous to this relation, as we saw above in connection with ability [Vermögen] that from each ability a product alien to it was demanded, a relation determined by social relations3—and this is precisely the relation of utility. All this is actually the case with the bourgeois. For him only one relation is valid on its own account — the relation of exploitation; all other relations have validity for him only insofar as he can include them under this one relation; and even where he encounters relations which cannot be directly subordinated to the relation of exploitation, he subordinates them to it at least in his imagination. The material expression of this use is money which represents the value of all things, people and social relations. Incidentally, one sees at a glance that the category of "utilisation" is first abstracted from the actual relations of intercourse which I have with other people (but by no means from reflection and mere will) and then these relations are made out to be the reality of the category that has been abstracted from them themselves, a wholly metaphysical method of procedure. In exactly the same way and with the same justification, Hegel depicts all relations as relations of the objective spirit. Hence Holbach's theory is the historically justified philosophical illusion about the bourgeoisie just then developing in France, whose thirst for exploitation could still be regarded as a thirst for the full development of individuals in conditions of intercourse freed from the old feudal fetters. Liberation from the standpoint of the bourgeoisie, i. e., competition, was, of course, for the eighteenth century the only possible way of offering the individuals a new career for freer development. The theoretical proclamation of the consciousness corresponding to this bourgeois practice, of the consciousness of mutual exploitation as the universal mutual relation of all individuals, was also a bold and open step forward. It was a kind of enlightenment which interpreted the political, patriarchal, religious and sentimental embellishment of exploitation under feudalism in a secular way; the embellishment corresponded to the form of exploitation existing at that time and it had been systematised especially by the theoretical writers of the absolute monarchy.

Even if Sancho had done the same thing in his "book" as Helvétius and Holbach did in the last century, the anachronism would still have made it ridiculous. But we have seen that in the place of active bourgeois egoism he put a bragging egoism in agreement with itself

See this volume, pp. 407-08.—Ed.

His sole service — rendered against his will and without realising it — was that he expressed the aspirations of the German petty bourgeois of today whose aim it is to become bourgeois. It was quite fitting that the petty, shy and timid behaviour of these petty bourgeois should have as its counterpart the noisy, blustering and impertinent public boasting of "the unique" among their philosophical representatives. It is quite in accordance with the situation of these petty bourgeois that they do not want to know about their theoretical loud-mouthed champion, and that he knows nothing about them; that they are at variance with one another, and he is forced to preach egoism in agreement with itself. Now, perhaps, Sancho will realise the sort of umbilical cord that connects his "union" with the Customs Union.^[119]

The advances made by the theory of utility and exploitation, its various phases are closely connected with the various periods of development of the bourgeoisie. In the case of Helvétius and Holbach, the actual content of the theory never went much beyond paraphrasing the mode of expression of writers belonging to the period of the absolute monarchy. It was a different method of expression which reflected the desire to reduce all relations to the relation of exploitation and to explain the intercourse of people from their material needs and the ways of satisfying them, rather than the actual realisation of this desire. The problem was set. Hobbes and Locke had before their eyes not only the earlier development of the Dutch bourgeoisie (both of them had lived for some time in Holland) but also the first political actions by which the English bourgeoisie emerged from local and provincial limitations, as well as a comparatively highly developed stage of manufacture, overseas trade and colonisation. This particularly applies to Locke, who wrote during the first period of the English economy, at the time of the rise of joint-stock companies, the Bank of England and England's mastery of the seas. In their case, and particularly in that of Locke, the theory of exploitation was still directly connected with the economic content.

Helvétius and Holbach had before them, besides English theory and the preceding development of the Dutch and English bourgeoisie, also the French bourgeoisie which was still struggling for its free development. The commercial spirit, universal in the eighteenth century, had especially in France taken possession of all classes in the form of speculation. The financial difficulties of the government and the resulting disputes over taxation occupied the attention of all France even at that time. In addition, Paris in the eighteenth century was the only world city, the only city where there was personal intercourse among individuals of all nations. These premises, combined with the more universal character typical of the French in general, gave the theory of Kelvétius and Holbach its peculiar universal colouring, but at the same time deprived it of the positive economic content that was still to be found among the English. The theory which for the English was still simply the registration of facts becomes for the French a philosophical system. This generality devoid of positive content, such as we find it in

Helvétius and Holbach, is essentially different from the substantial comprehensive view which is first found in Bentham and Mill. The former corresponds to the struggling, still undeveloped bourgeoisie, the latter to the ruling, developed bourgeoisie.

The content of the theory of exploitation that was neglected by Helvétius and Holbach was developed and systematised by the Physiocrats — who worked at the same time as Holbach — but because their basis was the undeveloped economic relations of France where feudalism, under which landownership plays the chief role, was still unshaken, they remained in thrall to the feudal outlook insofar as they declared landownership and land cultivation to be that [productive force] which determines the whole structure of society.

The theory of exploitation owes its further development in England to Godwin, and especially to Bentham. As the bourgeoisie succeeded in asserting itself more and more both in England and in France, the economic content, which the French had neglected, was gradually re-introduced by Bentham. Godwin's Political Justice was written during the terror, and Bentham's chief works during and after the French Revolution and the development of large-scale industry in England. The complete union of the theory of utility with political economy is to be found, finally, in Mill.

At an earlier period political economy had been the subject of inquiry either by financiers, bankers and merchants, i.e., in general by persons directly concerned with economic relations, or by persons with an all-round education like Hobbes, Locke and Hume, for whom it was of importance as a branch of encyclopaedic knowledge. Thanks to the Physiocrats, political economy for the first time was raised to the rank of a special science and has been treated as such ever since. As a special branch of science it absorbed the other relations — political, juridical, etc.—to such an extent that it reduced them to economic relations. But it regarded this subordination of all relations to itself as only one aspect of these relations, and thereby allowed them for the rest an independent significance outside political economy. The complete subordination of all existing relations to the relation of utility, and its unconditional elevation to the sole content of all other relations, occurs for the first time in Bentham's works, where, after the French Revolution and the development of large-scale industry, the bourgeoisie is no longer presented as a special class, but as the class whose conditions of existence are those of the whole society.

When the sentimental and moral paraphrases, which for the French were the entire content of the utility theory, had been exhausted, all that remained for its further development was the question how individuals and relations were to be used, to be exploited. Political economy had meanwhile already provided the answer to this question; the only possible advance consisted in the inclusion of the economic content. Bentham achieved this advance. Political economy, however, had already given expression to the fact that the chief relations of exploitation are determined by production in general, independently of the will of individuals, who find them already in existence. Hence, no other field of speculative thought remained for the utility theory than the attitude of individuals to these important relations, the private exploitation of an already existing world by individuals. On this subject Bentham and his school indulged in lengthy moral reflections. The whole criticism of the existing world by the utility theory was consequently restricted within a narrow range. Remaining within the confines of bourgeois conditions, it could criticise only those relations which had been handed down from a past epoch and were an obstacle to the development of the bourgeoisie. Hence, although the utility theory does expound the connection of all existing relations with economic relations, it does so only in a restricted way.

From the outset the utility theory had the aspect of a theory of general utility, yet this aspect only became fraught with meaning when economic relations, especially division of labour and exchange, were included. With division of labour, the private activity of the individual becomes generally useful; Bentham's general utility becomes reduced to the same general utility which is asserted in competition as a whole. By taking into account the economic relations of rent, profit and wages, the definite relations of exploitation of the various classes were introduced, since the manner of exploitation depends on the social position of the exploiter. Up to this point the theory of utility was able to base itself on definite social facts; its further account of the manner of exploitation amounts to a mere recital of catechism phrases.

The economic content gradually turned the utility theory into a mere apologia for the existing state of affairs, an attempt to prove that under existing conditions the mutual relations of people today are the most advantageous and generally useful. It has this character among all modern economists.

But whereas the utility theory had thus at least the advantage of indicating the connection of all existing relations with the economic foundations of society, in Sancho the theory has lost all positive content; it is divorced from all actual relations and is restricted to the mere illusion cherished by the isolated bourgeois about his "cleverness", by means of which he reckons to exploit the world. Incidentally, it is only in a few passages that Sancho deals with the theory of utility even in this diluted form; almost the entire "book" is taken up, as we have seen, with egoism in agreement with itself, i.e., with an illusion about this illusion of the petty bourgeois. Even these few passages are finally reduced by Sancho to mere vapour, as we shall see.

D. Religion

"In this community" (namely with other people) "I perceive nothing at all but a multiplication of my power, and I retain it only for so long as it is my multiplied power" (p. 416).

"I no longer abase myself before any power, and recognise that all powers are only my power, which I have immediately to subdue if they threaten to become a power against me or over me; each of them is permitted to be only one of my means for achieving my purpose."

I "perceive", I "recognise", I "have to subdue", power "is permitted to be only one of my means". We have already been shown in connection with the "union" what these moral demands mean and how far they correspond to reality. This illusion about his power is closely connected with the other illusion: that in the union "substance" is abolished (see "Humane Liberalism"3), and that the relations of the union members never assume a rigid form in respect to separate individuals.

"The union, the association, this eternally fluid association of everything that exists.... Of course, society can arise also from union, but only as a fixed idea arises out of a thought.... If a union has crystallised into a society, ithasceasedtobean association, for association is the unceasing process of associating with one another; it has reached the state of being associated, it has become society, the corpse of the union or association.... Neither a natural nor a spiritual bond holds the union together" (pp. 294, 408, 416).

As regards the "natural bond", it exists, despite Sancho's "ill will", in the form of corvée peasant economy and organisation of labour, etc., in the union; likewise the "spiritual bond'"3 in Sancho's philosophy. For the rest we need only refer to what we have already

See this volume, p. 235.—Ed. h

Goethe, Faust, I. Teil, 2. "Studierzimmerszene".—Ed.

said several times, and repeated in connection with the union, about division of labour causing the relations to confront individuals as something existing independently of them.

"In short, society is holy, the union is your own; society uses you, you use the union", etc. [p. 418].

E. Supplement to the Union

Whereas hitherto we were shown no other possibility of reaching the "union" than through rebellion, now we learn from the "Commentary" that the "union of egoists" already exists in "hundreds of thousands" of cases as one of the aspects of existing bourgeois society and that it is accessible to us even without any rebellion and any "Stirner". Then Sancho shows us

"such unions in actual life. Faust is within such unions when he exclaims: Here I am a human being' (!), "here I dare to be one,a here Goethe states it even in black and white" ("but the holy person is called Humanus, see Goethe", cf. "the book").... "If Hess were to look attentively at real life, he would see hundreds of thousands of such egoistical unions — some of short duration, some enduring."

Sancho then makes some "children" meet for a game in front of Hess' window, and makes "a few friends" take Hess to a tavern and lets him associate with his "beloved".

"Of course, Hess does not notice how full of significance these trivial examples are and how infinitely different they are from the holy societies and indeed from the fraternal, human society of holy socialists" (Sancho contra Hess, Wigand, pp. 193, 194).

In just the same way, on page 305 of "the book", "association for material aims and interests" is graciously accepted as a voluntary union of egoists.

Thus the union here is reduced, on the one hand, to bourgeois associations and joint-stock companies and, on the other hand, to bourgeois clubs, picnics, etc. That the former belong wholly to the present epoch is well known, and that this equally applies to the latter is also well known. Let Sancho look at the "unions" of an earlier epoch, e.g., of feudal times, or those of other nations, e.g., of the Italians, English, etc., right down to the "unions" of children, in order to realise what the difference is. By this new interpretation of the union he confirms only his obdurate conservatism. Sancho, who incorporated the whole of bourgeois society, insofar as he liked it, into his allegedly new institution, here by way of supplement only assures us that in his union people will also enjoy themselves and indeed in quite the traditional way. Our bonhomme, of course, does not consider the question: what relations existing independently of him enable — or do not enable — him to "accompany a few friends to a tavern".

The idea of resolving the whole of society into voluntary groups— which is here, on the basis of hearsay accounts current in Berlin, turned into a Stirnerian idea — belongs to Fourier.3 But with Fourier this view presupposes a complete transformation of society and is based on a criticism of the existing "unions", so much admired by Sancho, and of their infinite tedium. Fourier describes these present-day attempts at amusement in their connection with the existing relations of production and intercourse, and wages a polemic against them; Sancho, far from criticising them, wants on the contrary to transplant them in their entirety into his new "mutual agreement" institution for promoting happiness; he thereby only proves once again how strongly he is held in thrall to existing bourgeois society.

Finally, Sancho delivers the following oratio pro domo, i.e., in defence of the "union".

"Is a union in which the majority allow themselves to be cheated in regard to their most natural and obvious interests, a union of egoists? Have egoists united where one is the slave or serf of another?... Societies in which the needs of some are satisfied at the expense of others, in which, for example, some can satisfy the need for rest by others having to work to the point of exhaustion ... Hess... identifies... these'egoistical unions' of his with Stirner's union of egoists" ([Wigand,] pp. 192, 193).

Sancho, therefore, expresses the pious wish that in his union, based on mutual exploitation, all the members will be equally powerful, cunning, etc., etc., so that each can exploit the others to exactly the same extent as they exploit him, and so that no one will be "cheated" in regard to his "most natural and obvious interests" or be able to "satisfy his needs at the expense of others". We note here that Sancho recognises "natural and obvious interests" and "needs" of all — consequently, equal interests and needs. Further, we recall at once page 456 of the book, according to which "overreaching" is a "moral idea inculcated by the guild spirit", and for a man who has had a "wise education", it remains a "fixed idea from which no freedom of thought can give protection". Sancho "gets his thoughts from above and adheres to them" (ibid.). This equal power of all consists, according to his demand, in that everyone should become "omnipotent", i.e., all should become impotent in relation to one another, a perfectly consistent postulate that coincides with the sentimental desire of the petty bourgeois for a world of hucksters, in which everyone gets his advantage. Or, on the other hand, our saint quite suddenly presupposes a society in which each can satisfy his needs unhampered, without doing so "at the expense of others", and in that case the theory of exploitation again becomes a meaningless paraphrase for the actual relations of individuals to one another.

After Sancho in his "union" has "devoured" and consumed the others, thereby transforming intercourse with the world into intercourse with himself, he passes from this indirect self-enjoyment to direct self-enjoyment, by consuming himself.

---

Endnotes

[99] The following section is a critical analysis of the second section, "Mein Verkehr" ("My Intercourse"), Chapter Two, Part Two of Stirner's book Der Einzige und sein Eigenthum. From the introductory remarks of Marx and Engels to this part of their work (see this volume, p. 240) it follows that they intended to use the heading "My Intercourse" and to mark it with the letter "B", for the preceding section is called "A. Meine Macht" ("A. My Power"), and the following one "C. Mein Selbstgenuss" ("C. My Self-Enjoyment"). The section "B. My Intercourse" probably consisted of three subsections: "I. Society", "II. Rebellion" and "III. Union." The first three subdivisions and the beginning of the fourth subdivision of the section "I. Society" are missing. When Paul Weller was preparing The German Ideology for publication as Band 5, Erste Abteilung of Marx/Engels Gesamtausgabe (MEGA), he suggested that the subsection "I. Society" may have consisted of five parts. The heading of the first is unknown, but it might have been " 1 . Die verstirnerte Gesellschaft" ("1. Stirnerised Society"), or " 1 . Die Gesellschaft im allgemeinen" ("1. Society in General"), or " 1 . Die menschliche Gesellschaft" ("1. Human Society"). That of the second was probably "2. Die Gesellschaft als Gefängnisgesellschaft" ("2. Society as Prison Society"); of the third, "3. Die Gesellschaft als Familie" ("3. Society as a Family"); of the fourth, "4. Die Gesellschaft als Staat" ("Society as State"), of which only the last portion has been found. The fifth part has been preserved in its entirety and is called "5. Die Gesellschaft als bürgerliche Gesellschaft" ("5. Society as Bourgeois Society").

a Twelve pages of the manuscript are missing here.— Ed. "The constitutional power which had been shaped in the course of time had permeated the human will." Lourdoueix, "Appel à la France contre la division des opinions" (quoted from Karl Wilhelm Lancizolle's book Ueber Ursachen, Character und Folgen der Julitage).—Ed. Karl Wilhelm Lancizolle, op. cit.—Ed. Sarran the elder.—Ed.

[101] The reference is apparently to the Commissions of the Estates in the Landtags (provincial diets), which were instituted in Prussia in June 1842. Elected by the Landtags from their deputies according to the estates principle, they formed a single advisory body known as the "United Commissions". With the help of this body, which was a mockery of representative institution, Frederick William IV hoped to enforce new taxes and obtain a loan.

(1) "An artificial passion directed towards something abstract, a general idea."—Ed.

(2) "A deception with which the wealthy class deludes those that are not wealthy." Quoted from Karl Wilhelm Lancizolle, op. cit.—Ed.

(3) What a simpleton.—Ed.

(4) This volume, pp. 280-81.—Ed.

a See this volume, pp. 183-84.—Ed.

[102] When the Corn Laws (see Note 29) were repealed in 1846, a small, temporary tariff on the import of corn was retained until 1849. Magna Charta Libertatum—the charter which the insurgent barons, who were supported by knights and townsmen, forced King John of England to sign at Runnvmede on June 15, 1215. Magna Charta limited the powers of the king, mainly in the interests of the feudal lords, and also contained some concessions to the knights and the towns.

[103] Under the leadership of Themistocles the Greeks defeated the Persians in the naval battle of Salamis in 480 B.C. After the Greek War of Independence (1821-29) against Turkish rule, Britain, Russia and France compelled the new Greek state to adopt a monarchical form of government, and placed the 17-year-old prince Otto of Bavaria on the Greek throne.

(1) [The following passage is crossed out in the manuscript:] Saint Sancho arrives at this nonsense because he mistakes the juridical, ideological expression of bourgeois property for actual bourgeois property, and he cannot understand why the reality will not correspond to this illusion of his. In the manuscript the Berlin dialect form Jescheitheit is used.—Ed. Karl Rotteck, Allgemeine Weltgeschichte für alle Stände.— Ed.

[104] Marx and Engels are alluding to Voltaire's description of Habakkuk. There is a direct reference to it in their article "Konflikte zwischen Polizei und Volk.— Über die Ereignisse auf der Krim" published on July 9, 1855. The expression "capable de tout" (capable of anything) is used here ironically, i.e., "capable of nothing'.

(2) Because it chooses to do so — a paraphrase of the concluding words of French royal edicts.—Ed.

Sic this volume, pp. 180-81.—Ed.

[100] The September Laws—reactionary laws promulgated by the French Government in September 1835. They restricted the rights of juries and introduced severe measures against the press. The clauses directed against the latter provided for higher amounts to be deposited as security by periodical publications, and made the people responsible for publications directed against private property and the existing political regime liable to imprisonment and heavy fines.

a Common land.— Ed. In the original a pun, for the German word Wechsel, used here, can mean either "change", "alteration", "exchange" or "bill of exchange".— Ed. Martin Luther, Von weltlicher Obrigkeit.— Ed.

Thomas Robert Malthus, An Essay on the Principle of Population; Charles Marie Duchâtel, De la Charité.—Ed.

(3) Nassau William Senior, Three Lectures on the Rate of Wages.— Ed.

Isaac Pinto, Lettre sur la Jalousie du Commerce in Traité de la Circulation et du Crédit.—Ed.

[106] The Pandects are part of a compendium of Roman civil law (Corpus juris civilis) made by order of the Byzantine Emperor Justinian I in the 6th century. They contained extracts from the works of prominent Roman jurists.

a The right of using and consuming (also: abusing), i.e., of disposing of a thing at will.— Ed.

(4) [The following passage is crossed out in the manuscript:] He could have learned from more advanced legal systems which adequately express modern property relations, e.g., from the Code civil, that... "The perpetuated power" which "is not extinguished even when I die" is, in the Code civil, reduced to a minimum, and the legal portion of children is a recognition of the material basis of the law and particularly of the law under bourgeois rule. This volume, p. 36.— Ed.

It is permissible to repel force by force.—Ed. And this right is fixed by nature.—Ed. A right which nature has taught all living beings.—Ed.

Luke 1 : 45 (paraphrased).—Ed.

McCulloch, Statistical Account of the British Empire. The quotation is in English in the manuscript.—Ed. Bruno Bauer, "Charakteristic Ludwig Feuerbachs".—Ed.

(5) Here and below the word is in English in the original.— Ed. Four pages of the manuscript are missing here.—Ed.

See this volume, p. 356.—Ed. In the original der Vermögende, a capable, resourceful, powerful or wealthy person.—Ed. In the original der Unvermögende, an incapable, resourceless, powerless or destitute person.—Ed.

(6) [The following passage is crossed out in the manuscript:] Here again he does not take into consideration that the "overcharging" and "defrauding" of the workers in the modern world is due to their lack of property and that the lack of property directly contradicts the assertions which Sancho attributes to the liberal bourgeoisie [...] the liberal bourgeoisie who claim to give property to everyone by parcelling out landed property.

(7) [The following passage is crossed out in the manuscript:] At the outset they could have "come to an understanding". That an "understanding" (to use this word with its moral connotations) is only made possible by competition and that because of the antagonistic class interests there can be no question of all people "coming to an understanding", as Sancho suggests, hardly troubles our sage. These German philosophers generally believe that their own petty parochial misery is of world-historical importance, while as regards the most far-reaching historical relations they imagine it was only for want of their wisdom that matters were not settled by "agreement" and everything cleared up. Sancho's example shows how far one can get with such fantasies.

(8) [The following passage is crossed out in the manuscript:] "They" should "come to an understanding" about a public bakery. It dues not, of course, concern our Sancho that in each epoch those whom he calls "they" and "all" are themselves diverse individuals with diverse interests, living under diverse conditions. During the whole course of history until now individuals have always made the mistake that, from the very outset, they did not adopt the overwise "cleverness" with which, after the events, our German philosophers are expatiating about them.

"But is it persons who actually compete? No, it is again only things! In the first place — money, etc. There is always one who lags behind the other in the contest. But it makes a difference whether the means that are lacking can be gained through personal

b This word is in English in the manuscript.—Ed.

14 — 2086

(9) [The following passage is crossed out in the manuscript:] The difference between essence and appearance asserts itself here in spite of Sancho. See this volume, pp. 78-79.—Ed.

See this volume, p. 300.—Ed. Zustand — state of affairs, conditions.—Ed. c Noble minds think alike.—Ed. d Mark 1:3.—Ed. e Georg Kuhlmann. Die Neue Welt oder das Reich des Geistes auf Erden.—Ed. 14*

[109] Levons-nous! (Let us rise up!)—part of the motto of the Révolutions de Paris, a revolutionary-democratic weekly which was published in Paris from July 1789 to February 1794 (until September 1790 its editor was Elisée Loustalot). The entire motto was: "Les grands ne nous paraissent grands que *""~ ~~^ .«ris sommes à genoux: levons-nous!" ("The great only seem great to us because we are on our knees: Let us rise up!").

a Stirner uses three words which have a common root: Einrichtung — arrange-ment, institution — and the synonyms sich aufrichten and emporrichten — to stand up, to raise oneself, to rise.—Ed. Empörung — rising, rebellion; empor — up, upwards.—Ed. c An allusion to Bruno Bauer.—Ed. à See this volume, p. 53.—Ed.

(1) Thomas Hobbes, Elementa philosophica. De cive [Praefatio ad lectores].— Ed. I believe in order to understand. The expression belongs to the medieval scholastic Anselm of Canterbury.—Ed.

(2) [The following passage is crossed out in the manuscript:] These are the traditional moral principles of the petty bourgeois, who believes that the world will be set to rights, if everyone by himself tries to get as far as possible and for the rest does not trouble his head about the course of the world.

(3) God is love.— Ed. A pun on Stirner's synonymy: Emporkömmling (upstart), Emporgekommener (one who has raised himself up), and Empörer (rebel).—Ed.

"1 as little regard the wealth of the banker as something alien, as Napoleon did the lands of the kings. We" ("I" is suddenly transformed into "we") "are not at all afraid to conquer this wealth, and we also seek the means to do so. Thus, we divest it of its alien character which we were afraid of" (p. 369). This volume, p. 300.—Ed.

[110] Der hinkende Botte, also called Der hinkende Bote (The Lame Messenger) — a name given to a sort of popular almanac which contained rather stale news relating to events of the preceding year.

(4) Matthew 25:21.— Ed.

(5) An old Germanic land measure of varying size in different parts of the country. The Prussian morgen for example was 0.63 acre.— Ed.

(6) Here and below the word is in English in the manuscript.— Ed.

(7) [The following passage is crossed out in the manuscript:] France produces relatively more than Further Pomerania. According to Michel Chevalier [Cours d'Economie politique fait au Collège de France], the entire annual product of France uniformly distributed among its population amounts to 97 francs a head, this means per family....

(8) Exodus 3:8.— Ed.

[111] Straubinger—a name for German travelling journeymen. In their works and letters Marx and Engels frequently applied it ironically to artisans who remained under the influence of backward guild notions and believed that society could abandon large-scale capitalist industry and return to the petty handicraft stage of production.

c Thomas Cooper, Lectures on the Elements of Political Economy.—Ed. Georg Kuhlmann, Die Neue Welt oder das Reich des Geistes auf Erden.—Ed.

[112] Mozart's Requiem was completed, on the basis of his manuscript notes, by Franz Xaver Süssmayer.

[113] Organisers of labour — an allusion to the Utopian socialists (in particular Fourier and his followers) who put forward a plan for the peaceful transformation of society by means of associations, that is, by "organisation of labour", which they opposed to the anarchy of production under capitalism. Some of these ideas were used by the French petty-bourgeois socialist Louis Blanc in his book Organisation du travail (Paris, 1839) in which he proposed that the bourgeois state should transform contemporary society into a socialist society.

This phrase is in English in the manuscript.—Ed.

(1) [The following passage is crossed out in the manuscript:] If Sancho had taken his phrases seriously he would have had to analyse the division of labour. But he wisely refrained from doing this and unhesitatingly accepted the existing division of labour in order to exploit it for his "union". A closer examination of the subject would, of course, have shown him that the division of labour is not abolished by "getting it out of one's head". The fight of the philosophers against "substance" and their utter disregard of the division of labour, the material basis which has given rise to the phantom of substance, merely prove that for these heroes it is a matter only of abolishing phrases and by no means of changing the conditions from which these phrases were bound to arise.

A play on the word Vermögen — ability, faculty, power, wealth, means, property — and its derivatives.—Ed. A play on the words Geld — money; sich Geltung verschaffen — to assert oneself; and gelten — to be worth.—Ed.

a Money has no master.— Ed. I do not know a place at the stock exchange where people trade in good intentions.— Ed. This phrase is in English in the manuscript.—Ed.

(1) Cf. Die heilige Familie, p. 266.a See present edition, Vol. 4, p. 167.—Ed. Any investigation regarding paternity is forbidden — the formula used in article 340 of the Code Napoleon (the French civil code).—Ed.

"That in which all want to have a share will be taken away from the individual who wants to have it for himself alone" (p. 330). Carl Maria von Weber, Der Freischütz (Libretto by Friedrich Kind), Act III, Scene 4, "Wedding Song".—Ed.

[115] Willenhall, a town in Staffordshire, England, with a considerable iron industry.

[116] An allusion to the fact that Max Stirner dedicated his book to his wife Marie Dähnhardt. The phrase "the title spectre of his book" was derived from Stirner's phrase "the title spectre of her book". In his book Der Einzige und sein Eigenthum he used it in relation to Bettina von Arnim's work, Dies Buch gehört dem König.

(1) Marie Dähnhardt, Stirner's wife.— Ed.

Du Contrat social; ou, Principes du droit politique.—Ed. William Godwin, Enquiry Concerning Political Justice, and Its Influence on Morals and Happiness.—Ed.

[117] This refers to one of the main principles of the "Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen" (Déclaration des droits de l'homme et du citoyen), a preamble to the Constitution adopted by the French Convention in 1793 during the revolutionary dictatorship of the Jacobins. The last article, the 35th, of the Declaration reads: "When the government violates the rights of the people, insurrection is the imprescriptible right and the irrémissible duty of the people as a whole and of each of its sections."

(1) David Ricardo, On the Principles of Political Economy and Taxation.— Ed.

[118] According to the Bible (Genesis 41 : 18-20), the Egyptian pharaoh dreamed that seven fat cows were eaten by seven lean cows but the latter remained just as lean as before. According to the interpretation given to the pharaoh by Joseph, the dream meant that Egypt would have rich harvests for seven years to be followed by seven vears of drought and famine.

[119] The Customs Union (Zollverein) of German states (initially they numbered 18), which established a common customs frontier, was set up in 1834 and headed by Prussia. By the 1840s the Union embraced most of the German states, with the exception of Austria, the Hanseatic cities (Bremen, Hamburg, Lübeck) and a few small states. Brought into being by the necessity to create an all-German market, the Customs Union became a factor conducive to the political unification of Germany.

a Goethe, Faust, I. Teil, "Osterspaziergang".—Ed. b From Goethe's unfinished poem "Die Geheimnisse" (Humanus — a character in this poem).—Ed.

Charles Fourier, Theorie de l'unité universelle.—Ed.

[10] Diadochi — the generals of Alexander the Great who, after his death, fought one another in a fierce struggle for power. In the course of this struggle (end of the 4th and the beginning of the 3rd century B.C.) Alexander's Empire, an unstable military and administrative union, disintegrated into several independent states.