Graham R (Ed.) - Anarchism - A Documentary History of Libertarian Ideas Volume One - From Anarchy to Anarchism (300 CE to 1939)

Revolutionary Ideas And Action / 45
11. Max Stirner: The Ego and Its Own (1844)
Max Stirner Uohann Caspar Schmidt, 1806-1856) was part of a group of Young Hegelians who
called themselves "The Free Ones. " Bakunin later described them as far surpassing "the most frenzied
Russian nihilists with their cynical logic" (Statism and Anarchy, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1990, originally published 1873, page 142). Stirner's major philosophical work,
The Ego and Its Own, was very much a critique not only of Hegelian orthodoxy but also the humanitarian,
liberal presuppositions of the Young Hegelians themselves. Not even Proudhon escaped
Stirner's criticism. Stirner's argument in favour of a kind of nihilistic egoism became an
inspiration for later anarchist individualists, and provoked Marx and Engels into writing a
lengthy retort of their own, forming a significant part of The German Ideology (1845, unpublished
until 1932). The following excerpts are taken ji"Om the 1907 translation by Steven Tracy
Byington, with some minor modifications.
THE SAME PEOPLE WHO OPPOSE Christianity as the basis of the State, i.e., oppose
the so-called Christian State, do not tire of repeating that morality is "the fundamental
pillar of social life and of the State." As if the dominion of morality were not a complete
dominion of the sacred, a "hierarchy."
...[Ojne must carry in himself the law, the statute; and he who is most legally
disposed is the most moral. Even the last vestige of cheerfulness in Catholic life must
perish in this Protestant legality. Here at last the domination of the law is for the first
time complete. "Not I live, but the law lives in me." Thus I have really come so fa r to
be only the "vessel of its glory." "Every Prussian carries his gendarme in his breast,"
says a high Prussian officer.
Protestantism has actually put a man in the position of a country governed by secret
police. The spy and eavesdropper, "conscience," watches over every motion of the
mind, and all thought and action is for it a "matter of conscience," i.e., police business ...
Political liberty means that the polis, the State, is free; freedom of religion that
religion is free, as freedom of conscience signifies that conscience is free; not, therefo
re, that I am free from the State, from religion, from conscience, or that I am rid of
them. It does not mean my liberty, but the liberty of a power that rules and subjugates
me; it means that one of my despots, like State, religion, conscience, is free.
State, religion, conscience, these despots, make me a slave, and their liberty is my
slavery. That in this they necessarily follow the principle, "the end hallows the
means," is self-evident. If the welfare of the State is the end, war is a hallowed means;
if justice is the State's end, homicide is a hallowed means, and is called by its sacred
name, "execution"; the sacred State hallows everything that is serviceable to it. ..