|
MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 151 |
how with the proletarian? As he has nothing to lose, he does not
need the protection of the State for his "nothing."
He may gain, on the contrary, if that protection of the State
is withdrawn from the protégé.
Therefore the non-possessor will
regard the State as a power protecting the possessor, which privileges
the latter, but does nothing for him, the non-possessor, but to
-- suck his blood. The State is a -- commoners' State,
is the estate of the commonalty. It protects man not according
to his labor, but according to his tractableness ("loyalty")
-- to wit, according to whether the rights entrusted to him by
the State are enjoyed and managed in accordance with the will,
i. e., laws, of the State.
Under the regime of the
commonalty the laborers always fall into the hands of the possessors,
of those who have at their disposal some bit of the State domains
(and everything possessible in State domain, belongs to the State,
and is only a fief of the individual), especially money and land;
of the capitalists, therefore. The laborer cannot realize
on his labor to the extent of the value that it has for the consumer.
"Labor is badly paid!" The capitalist has the greatest
profit from it. -- Well paid, and more than well paid, are only
the labors of those who heighten the splendor and dominion
of the State, the labors of high State servants. The
State pays well that its "good citizens," the possessors,
may be able to pay badly without danger; it secures to itself
by good payment its servants, out of whom it forms a protecting
power, a "police" (to the police belong soldiers, officials
of all kinds, e. g. those of justice, education, etc.
-- in short, the whole "machinery of the State")
|
152 THE EGO AND HIS OWN |
for the "good citizens," and the "good citizens"
gladly pay high tax-rates to it in order to pay so much lower
rates to their laborers.
But the class of laborers, because
unprotected in what they essentially are (for they do not enjoy
the protection of the State as laborers, but as its subjects they
have a share in the enjoyment of the police, a so-called protection
of the law), remains a power hostile to this State, this State
of possessors, this "citizen kingship." Its principle,
labor, is not recognized as to its value; it is exploited,*
a spoil** of the possessors, the enemy.
The laborers have the most enormous
power in their hands, and, if they once became thoroughly conscious
of it and used it, nothing would withstand them; they would only
have to stop labor, regard the product of labor as theirs, and
enjoy it. This is the sense of the labor disturbances which show
themselves here and there.
The State rests on the -- slavery
of labor. If labor becomes free. the State
is lost.
We are freeborn men, and wherever
we look we see ourselves made servants of egoists! Are we therefore
to become egoists too! Heaven forbid! We want rather to make egoists
impossible! We want to make them all "ragamuffins";
all of us must have nothing, that "all may have."
So say the Socialists.
*[ausgebeutet]
**[Kriegsbeute]
|
MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 153 |
Who is this person that you call
"All"? -- It is "society"! -- But is it corporeal,
then? -- We are its body! -- You? Why, you are not a
body yourselves -- you, sir, are corporeal to be sure, you too,
and you, but you all together are only bodies, not a body. Accordingly
the united society may indeed have bodies at its service, but
no one body of its own. Like the "nation of the politicians,
it will turn out to be nothing but a "spirit," its body
only semblance.
The freedom of man is, in political
liberalism, freedom from persons, from personal dominion,
from the master; the securing of each individual person
against other persons, personal freedom.
No one has any orders to give; the
law alone gives orders.
But, even if the persons have become
equal, yet their possessions have not. And yet
the poor man needs the rich, the rich the poor, the former
the rich man's money, the latter the poor man's labor. So no one
needs another as a person, but needs him as a giver,
and thus as one who has something to give, as holder or possessor.
So what he has makes the man. And in having,
or in "possessions," people are unequal.
Consequently, social liberalism
concludes, no one must have, as according to political
liberalism no one was to give orders; i.e. as
in that case the State alone obtained the command, so
now society alone obtains the possessions.
For the State, protecting each one's
person and property against the other, separates them
from one another; each one is his special part and has
his
| 154 THE EGO AND HIS OWN |
special part. He who is satisfied with what he is and has finds
this state of things profitable; but he who would like to be and
have more looks around for this "more," and finds it
in the power of other persons. Here he comes upon a contradiction;
as a person no one is inferior to another, and yet one person
has what another has not but would like to have. So,
he concludes, the one person is more than the other, after all,
for the former has what he needs, the latter has not; the former
is a rich man, the latter a poor man.
He now asks himself further, are
we to let what we rightly buried come to life again? Are we to
let this circuitously restored inequality of persons pass? No;
on the contrary, we must bring quite to an end what was only half
accomplished. Our freedom from another's person still lacks the
freedom from what the other's person can command, from what he
has in his personal power -- in short, from "personal property."
Let us then do away with personal property. Let no one
have anything any longer, let every one be a -- ragamuffin. Let
property be impersonal, let it belong to -- society.
Before the supreme ruler,
the sole commander, we had all become equal, equal persons,
i. e., nullities.
Before the supreme proprietor
we all become equal -- ragamuffins. For the present, one is still
in another's estimation a "ragamuffin," a "have-nothing";
but then this estimation ceases. We are all ragamuffins together,
and as the aggregate of Communistic society we might call ourselves
a "ragamuffin crew."
When the proletarian shall really
have founded his purposed "society" in which the interval
between rich
|
MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 155 |
and poor is to be removed, then he will be a ragamuffin,
for then he will feel that it amounts to something to be a ragamuffin,
and might lift "Ragamuffin" to be an honourable form
of address, just as the Revolution did with the word "Citizen."
Ragamuffin is his ideal; we are all to become ragamuffins.
This is the second robbery of the
"personal" in the interest of "humanity."
Neither command nor property is left to the individual; the State
took the former, society the latter.
Because in society the most oppressive
evils make themselves felt, therefore the oppressed especially,
and consequently the members of the lower regions of society,
think they found the fault in society, and make it their task
to discover the right society. This is only the old phenomenon
-- that one looks for the fault first in everything but himself,
and consequently in the State, in the self-seeking of the rich,
etc., which yet have precisely our fault to thank for their existence.
The reflections and conclusions
of Communism look very simple. As matters lie at this time --
in the present situation with regard to the State, therefore --
some, and they the majority, are at a disadvantage compared to
others, the minority. In this state of things the former
are in a state of prosperity, the latter in state
of need. Hence the present state of things, i.e.
the State itself, must be done away with. And what in its place?
Instead of the isolated state of prosperity -- a general state
of prosperity, a prosperity of all.
Through the Revolution the bourgeoisie
became
|
156 THE EGO AND HIS OWN |
omnipotent, and all inequality was abolished by every one's being
raised or degraded to the dignity of a citizen : the
common man -- raised, the aristocrat -- degraded; the third
estate became sole estate, viz., namely, the estate of
-- citizens of the State. Now Communism responds: Our
dignity and our essence consist not in our being all -- the equal
children of our mother, the State, all born with equal claim
to her love and her protection, but in our all existing for
each other. This is our equality, or herein we are equal,
in that we, I as well as you and you and all of you, are active
or "labor" each one for the rest; in that each of us
is a laborer, then. The point for us is not what we are
for the State (citizens), not our citizenship
therefore, but what we are for each other, that each
of us exists only through the other, who, caring for my wants,
at the same time sees his own satisfied by me. He labors e.
g. for my clothing (tailor), I for his need of amusement
(comedy-writer, rope-dancer), he for my food (farmer), I for his
instruction (scientist). It is labor that constitutes
our dignity and our -- equality.
What advantage does citizenship
bring us? Burdens! And how high is our labor appraised? As low
as possible! But labor is our sole value all the same: that we
are laborers is the best thing about us, this is our
significance in the world, and therefore it must be our consideration
too and must come to receive consideration. What can
you meet us with? Surely nothing but -- labor too. Only
for labor or services do we owe you a recompense, not for your
bare existence; not for what you are for yourselves
|
MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 157 |
either, but only for what you are for us. By what have
you claims on us? Perhaps by your high birth? No, only by what
you do for us that is desirable or useful. Be it thus then: we
are willing to be worth to you only so much as we do for you;
but you are to be held likewise by us. Services determine
value, -- i.e. those services that are worth something
to us, and consequently labors for each other, labors for
the common good. Let each one be in the other's eyes a laborer.
He who accomplishes something useful is inferior to none, or --
all laborers (laborers, of course, in the sense of laborers "for
the common good," i. e., communistic laborers) are
equal. But, as the laborer is worth his wages,* let the wages
too be equal.
As long as faith sufficed for man's
honor and dignity, no labor, however harassing, could be objected
to if it only did not hinder a man in his faith. Now, on the contrary,
when every one is to cultivate himself into man, condemning a
man to machine-like labor amounts to the same thing as
slavery. If a factory worker must tire himself to death twelve
hours and more, he is cut off from becoming man. Every labor is
to have the intent that the man be satisfied. Therefore he must
become a master in it too, i.e. be able to perform
it as a totality. He who in a pin factory only puts on the heads,
only draws the wire, works, as it were, mechanically, like a machine;
he remains half-trained, does not become a master: his labor cannot
satisfy him, it can only fatigue him. His labor
is nothing by itself, has no object in
*[In German an exact quotation of Luke 10. 7.]
| 158 THE EGO AND HIS OWN |
itself, is nothing complete in itself; he labors only
into another's hands, and is used (exploited) by this
other. For this laborer in another's service there is no enjoyment
of a cultivated mind, at most, crude amusements: culture,
you see, is barred against him. To be a good Christian one needs
only to believe, and that can be done under the most
oppressive circumstances. Hence the Christian-minded take care
only of the oppressed laborers' piety, their patience, submission,
etc. Only so long as the downtrodden classes were Christians
could they bear all their misery: for Christianity does not let
their murmurings and exasperation rise. Now the hushing
of desires is no longer enough, but their sating is demanded.
The bourgeoisie has proclaimed the gospel of the enjoyment
of the world, of material enjoyment, and now wonders that
this doctrine finds adherents among us poor: it has shown that
not faith and poverty, but culture and possessions, make a man
blessed; we proletarians understand that too.
The commonalty freed us from the
orders and arbitrariness of individuals. But that arbitrariness
was left which springs from the conjuncture of situations, and
may be called the fortuity of circumstances; favoring .fortune.
and those "favored by fortune," still remain.
When, e. g., a branch of
industry is ruined and thousands of laborers become breadless,
people think reasonably enough to acknowledge that it is not the
individual who must bear the blame, but that "the evil lies
in the situation." Let us change the situation then, but
let us change it thoroughly, and so that its fortuity becomes
power-
|
MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 159 |
less. and a law! Let us no longer be slaves of chance!
Let us create a new order that makes an end of fluctuations.
Let this order then be sacred!
Formerly one had to suit the lords
to come to anything; after the Revolution the word was "Grasp
fortune!" Luck-hunting or hazard-playing, civil
life was absorbed in this. Then, alongside this, the demand that
he who has obtained something shall not frivolously stake it again.
Strange and yet supremely natural
contradiction. Competition, in which alone civil or political
life unrolls itself, is a game of luck through and through, from
the speculations of the exchange down to the solicitation of offices,
the hunt for customers, looking for work, aspiring to promotion
and decorations, the second-hand dealer's petty haggling, etc.
If one succeeds in supplanting and outbidding his rivals, then
the "lucky throw" is made; for it must be taken as a
piece of luck to begin with that the victor sees himself equipped
with an ability (even though it has been developed by the most
careful industry) against which the others do not know how to
rise, consequently that -- no abler ones are found. And now those
who ply their daily lives in the midst of these changes of fortune
without seeing any harm in it are seized with the most virtuous
indignation when their own principle appears in naked form and
"breeds misfortune" as -- hazard-playing. Hazard-playing,
you see, is too clear, too barefaced a competition, and, like
every decided nakedness, offends honourable modesty.
The Socialists want to put a stop
to this activity of chance, and to form a society in which men
are no
|
160 THE EGO AND HIS OWN |
longer dependent on fortune, but free.
In the most natural way in the world
this endeavor first utters itself as hatred of the "unfortunate"
against the "fortunate," i.e., of those for
whom fortune has done little or nothing, against those for whom
it has done everything. But properly the ill- feeling is not directed
against the fortunate, but against fortune, this rotten
spot of the commonalty.
As the Communists first declare
free activity to be man's essence, they, like all work-day dispositions,
need a Sunday; like all material endeavors, they need a God, an
uplifting and edification alongside their witless "labor."
That the Communist sees in you the
man, the brother, is only the Sunday side of Communism. According
to the work-day side he does not by any means take you as man
simply, but as human laborer or laboring man. The first view has
in it the liberal principle; in the second, illiberality is concealed.
If you were a "lazy-bones," he would not indeed fail
to recognize the man in you, but would endeavor to cleanse him
as a "lazy man" from laziness and to convert you to
the faith that labor is man's "destiny and calling."
Therefore he shows a double face:
with the one he takes heed that the spiritual man be satisfied,
with the other he looks about him for means for the material or
corporeal man. He gives man a twofold post -- an office
of material acquisition and one of spiritual.
The commonalty had thrown open
spiritual and material goods, and left it with each one to reach
out
|
MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 161 |
for them if he liked.
Communism really procures them for
each one, presses them upon him, and compels him to acquire them.
It takes seriously the idea that, because only spiritual and material
goods make us men, we must unquestionably acquire these goods
in order to be man. The commonalty made acquisition free; Communism
compels to acquisition, and recognizes only the acquirer,
him who practices a trade. It is not enough that the trade is
free, but you must take it up.
So all that is left for criticism
to do is to prove that the acquisition of these goods does not
yet by any means make us men.
With the liberal commandment that
every one is to make a man of himself, or every one to make himself
man, there was posited the necessity that every one must gain
time for this labor of humanization, i. e., that it should
become possible for every one to labor on himself.
The commonalty thought it had brought
this about if it handed over everything human to competition,
but gave the individual a right to every human thing. "Each
may strive after everything!"
Social liberalism finds that the
matter is not settled with the "may," because may means
only "it is forbidden to none" but not "it is made
possible to every one." Hence it affirms that the commonalty
is liberal only with the mouth and in words, supremely illiberal
in act. It on its part wants to give all of us the means
to be able to labor on ourselves.
By the principle of labor that of
fortune or compe-
|
162 THE EGO AND HIS OWN |
tition is certainly outdone. But at the same time the laborer,
in his consciousness that the essential thing in him is "the
laborer," holds himself aloof from egoism and subjects himself
to the supremacy of a society of laborers, as the commoner clung
with self-abandonment to the competition-State. The beautiful
dream of a "social duty" still continues to be dreamed.
People think again that society gives what we need, and
we are under obligations to it on that account, owe it
everything.* They are still at the point of wanting to serve
a "supreme giver of all good." That society is no ego
at all, which could give, bestow, or grant, but an instrument
or means, from which we may derive benefit; that we have no social
duties, but solely interests for the pursuance of which society
must serve us; that we owe society no sacrifice, but, if we sacrifice
anything, sacrifice it to ourselves -- of this the Socialists
do not think, because they -- as liberals -- are imprisoned in
the religious principle, and zealously aspire after -- a sacred
society, e. g. the State was hitherto.
Society, from which we have everything,
is a new master, a new spook, a new "supreme being,"
which "takes us into its service and allegiance!"
The more precise appreciation of
political as well as social liberalism must wait to find its place
further on. For the present we pass this over, in order first
to summon them before the tribunal of humane or critical liberalism.
*Proudhon (Création de l'Ordre) cries out, p. 414, "In industry, as in science, the publication of an invention is the first and most sacred of duties!"
| MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 163 |
As liberalism is completed in self-criticizing,
"critical"* liberalism -- in which the critic remains
a liberal and does not go beyond the principle of liberalism,
Man -- this may distinctively be named after Man and called the
"humane."
The laborer is counted as the most
material and egoistical man. He does nothing at all for humanity,
does everything for himself, for his welfare.
The commonalty, because it proclaimed
the freedom of Man only as to his birth, had to leave
him in the claws of the un-human man (the egoist) for the rest
of life. Hence under the regime of political liberalism egoism
has an immense field for free utilization.
The laborer will utilize
society for his egoistic ends as the commoner does the
State. You have only an egoistic end after all, your welfare,
is the humane liberal's reproach to the Socialist; take up a purely
human interest, then I will be your companion. "But
to this there belongs a consciousness stronger, more comprehensive,
than a laborer-consciousness". "The laborer
makes nothing, therefore he has nothing; but he makes nothing
because his labor is always a labor that remains individual, calculated
strictly for
*[In his strictures on "criticism" Stirner refers to a special movement known by that name in the early forties of the last century, of which Bruno Bauer was the principal exponent. After his official separation from the faculty of the university of Bonn on account of his views in regard to the Bible, Bruno Bauer in 1843 settled near Berlin and founded the Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung, in which he and his friends, at war with their surroundings, championed the "absolute emancipation" of the individual within the limits of "pure humanity" and fought as their foe "the mass," comprehending in that term the radical aspirations of political liberalism and the communistic demands of the rising Socialist movement of that time. For a brief account of Bruno Bauer's movement of criticism, see John Henry Mackay, Max Stirner. Sein Leben und sein Werk.]
|
164 THE EGO AND HIS OWN |
his own want, a labor day by day."* In opposition to this
one might, e. g., consider the fact that Gutenberg's
labor did not remain individual, but begot innumerable children,
and still lives today; it was calculated for the want of humanity,
and was an eternal, imperishable labor.
The humane consciousness despises
the commoner-consciousness as well as the laborer-consciousness:
for the commoner is "indignant" only at vagabonds (at
all who have "no definite occupation") and their "immorality";
the laborer is "disgusted" by the idler ("lazy-bones")
and his "immoral," because parasitic and unsocial, principles.
To this the humane liberal retorts: The unsettledness of many
is only your product, Philistine! But that you, proletarian, demand
the grind of all, and want to make drudgery
general, is a part, still clinging to you, of your pack-mule life
up to this time. Certainly you want to lighten drudgery itself
by all having to drudge equally hard, yet only for this
reason, that all may gain leisure to an equal extent.
But what are they to do with their leisure? What does your "society"
do, that this leisure may be passed humanly? It must
leave the gained leisure to egoistic preference again, and the
very gain that your society furthers falls to the egoist,
as the gain of the commonalty, the masterlessness of man,
could not be filled with a human element by the State, and therefore
was left to arbitrary choice.
It is assuredly necessary that man
be masterless: but
|
MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 165 |
therefore the egoist is not to become master over man again either,
but man over the egoist. Man must assuredly find leisure: but,
if the egoist makes use of it, it will be lost for man; therefore
you ought to have given leisure a human significance. But you
laborers undertake even your labor from an egoistic impulse, because
you want to eat, drink, live; how should you be less egoists in
leisure? You labor only because having your time to yourselves
(idling) goes well after work done, and what you are to while
away your leisure time with is left to chance.
But, if every door is to be bolted
against egoism, it would be necessary to strive after completely
"disinterested" action, total disinterestedness.
This alone is human, because only Man is disinterested, the egoist
always interested.
If we let disinterestedness pass
unchallenged for a while, then we ask, do you mean not to take
an interest in anything, not to be enthusiastic for anything,
not for liberty, humanity, etc.? "Oh, yes, but that is not
an egoistic interest, not interestedness, but a human,
i.e. a -- theoretical interest, to wit, an interest
not for an individual or individuals ('all'), but for the idea,
for Man!"
And you do not notice that you too
are enthusiastic only for your idea, your idea
of liberty?
And, further, do you not notice
that your disinterestedness is again, like religious disinterestedness,
a heavenly interestedness? Certainly benefit to the individual
leaves you cold, and abstractly you could cry fiat libertas,
pereat mundus. You do not take
|
166 THE EGO AND HIS OWN |
thought for the coming day either, and take no serious care for
the individual's wants anyhow, not for your own comfort nor for
that of the rest; but you make nothing of all this, because you
are a -- dreamer.
Do you suppose the humane liberal
will be so liberal as to aver that everything possible to man
is human? On the contrary! He does not, indeed, share
the Philistine's moral prejudice about the strumpet, but "that
this woman turns her body into a money-getting machine"*
makes her despicable to him as "human being." His judgment
is, the strumpet is not a human being; or, so far as a woman is
a strumpet, so far is she unhuman, dehumanized. Further: The Jew,
the Christian, the privileged person, the theologian, etc., is
not a human being; so far as you are a Jew, etc., you are not
a human being. Again the imperious postulate: Cast from you everything
peculiar, criticize it away! Be not a Jew, not a Christian, but
be a human being, nothing but a human being. Assert your humanity
against every restrictive specification; make yourself, by means
of it, a human being, and free from those limits; make yourself
a "free man" -- i.e. recognize humanity as
your all-determining essence.
I say: You are indeed more than
a Jew, more than a Christian, etc., but you are also more than
a human being. Those are all ideas, but you are corporeal. Do
you suppose, then, that you can ever become a "human being
as such?" Do you suppose our posterity will find no prejudices
and limits to clear away, for
| MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 167 |
which our powers were not sufficient? Or do you perhaps think
that in your fortieth or fiftieth year you have come so far that
the following days have nothing more to dissipate in you, and
that you are a human being? The men of the future will yet fight
their way to many a liberty that we do not even miss. What do
you need that later liberty for? If you meant to esteem yourself
as nothing before you had become a human being, you would have
to wait till the "last judgment," till the day when
man, or humanity, shall have attained perfection. But, as you
will surely die before that, what becomes of your prize of victory?
Rather, therefore, invert the case,
and say to yourself, I am a human being! I do not need
to begin by producing the human being in myself, for he belongs
to me already, like all my qualities.
But, asks the critic, how can one
be a Jew and a man at once? In the first place, I answer, one
cannot be either a Jew or a man at all, if "one" and
Jew or man are to mean the same; "one" always reaches
beyond those specifications, and -- let Isaacs be ever so Jewish
-- a Jew, nothing but a Jew, he cannot be, just because he is
this Jew. In the second place, as a Jew one assuredly
cannot be a man, if being a man means being nothing special. But
in the third place -- and this is the point -- I can, as a Jew,
be entirely what I -- can be. From Samuel or Moses, and
others, you hardly expect that they should have raised themselves
above Judaism, although you must say that they were not yet "men."
They simply were what they could be. Is it otherwise with the
Jews of today? Because you have discovered the idea of humanity,
does it fol-
|
168 THE EGO AND HIS OWN |
low from this that every Jew can become a convert to it? If he
can, he does not fail to, and, if he fails to, he -- cannot. What
does your demand concern him? What the call to be a man,
which you address to him?
As a universal principle, in the
"human society" which the humane liberal promises, nothing
"special" which one or another has is to find recognition,
nothing which bears the character of "private" is to
have value. In this way the circle of liberalism, which has its
good principle in man and human liberty, its bad in the, egoist
and everything private, its God in the former, its devil in the
latter, rounds itself off completely; and, if the special or private
person lost his value in the State (no personal prerogative),
if in the "laborers' or ragamuffins' society" special
(private) property is no longer recognized, so in "human
society" everything special or private will be left out of
account; and, when "pure criticism" shall have accomplished
its arduous task, then it will be known just what we must look
upon as private, and what, "penetrated with a sense of our
nothingness," we must -- let stand.
Because State and Society do not
suffice for humane liberalism, it negates both, and at the same
time retains them. So at one time the cry is that the task of
the day is "not a political, but a social, one," and
then again the "free State" is promised for the future.
In truth, "human society" is both -- the most general
State and the most general society. Only against the limited State
is it asserted that it makes too much stir about spiritual private
interests (e. g. people's religious
|
MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 169 |
belief), and against limited society that it makes too much of
material private interests. Both are to leave private interests
to private people, and, as human society, concern themselves solely
about general human interests.
The politicians, thinking to abolish
personal will, self-will or arbitrariness, did not observe
that through property* our self-will** gained
a secure place of refuge.
The Socialists, taking away property
too, do not notice that this secures itself a continued existence
in self-ownership. Is it only money and goods, then,
that are a property. or is every opinion something of mine, something
of my own?
So every opinion must be
abolished or made impersonal. The person is entitled to no opinion,
but, as self-will was transferred to the State, property to society,
so opinion too must be transferred to something general,
"Man," and thereby become a general human opinion.
If opinion persists, then I have
my God (why, God exists only as "my God," he is an opinion
or my "faith"), and consequently my faith,
my religion, my thoughts, my ideals. Therefore a general human
faith must come into existence, the "fanaticism of liberty."
For this would be a faith that agreed with the "essence of
man," and, because only "man" is reasonable (you
and I might be very unreasonable!), a reasonable faith.
As self-will and property become
powerless, so must
*[Eigentum,
"owndom"]
**[Eigenwille
"own-will"]
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170 THE EGO AND HIS OWN |
self-ownership or egoism in general.
In this supreme development of "free
man" egoism, self-ownership, is combated on principle, and
such subordinate ends as the social "welfare" of the
Socialists, etc., vanish before the lofty "idea of humanity."
Everything that is not a "general human" entity is something
separate, satisfies only some or one; or, if it satisfies all,
it does this to them only as individuals, not as men, and is therefore
called "egoistic."
To the Socialists welfare
is still the supreme aim, as free rivalry was the approved
thing to the political liberals; now welfare is free too, and
we are free to achieve welfare, just as he who wanted to enter
into rivalry (competition) was free to do so.
But to take part in the rivalry
you need only to be commoners; to take part in the welfare,
only to be laborers. Neither reaches the point of being
synonymous with "man." It is "truly well"
with man only when he is also "intellectually free!"
For man is mind: therefore all powers that are alien to him, the
mind -- all superhuman, heavenly, unhuman powers -- must be overthrown
and the name "man" must be above every name.
So in this end of the modern age
(age of the moderns) there returns again, as the main point, what
had been the main point at its beginning: "intellectual liberty."
To the Communist in particular the
humane liberal says: If society prescribes to you your activity,
then this is indeed free from the influence of the individual,
i.e. the egoist, but it still does not on that account
need to be a purely human activity, nor you to be a
| MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 171 |
complete organ of humanity. What kind of activity society demands
of you remains accidental, you know; it might give you
a place in building a temple or something of that sort, or, even
if not that, you might yet on your own impulse be active for something
foolish, therefore unhuman; yes, more yet, you really labor only
to nourish yourself, in general to live, for dear life's sake,
not for the glorification of humanity. Consequently free activity
is not attained till you make yourself free from all stupidities,
from everything non-human, i.e., egoistic (pertaining
only to the individual, not to the Man in the individual), dissipate
all untrue thoughts that obscure man or the idea of humanity:
in short, when you are not merely unhampered in your activity,
but the substance too of your activity is only what is human,
and you live and work only for humanity. But this is not the case
so long as the aim of your effort is only your welfare
and that of all; what you do for the society of ragamuffins is
not yet anything done for "human society."
Laboring does not alone make you
a man, because it is something formal and its object accidental;
the question is who you that labor are. As far as laboring goes,
you might do it from an egoistic (material) impulse, merely to
procure nourishment and the like; it must be a labor furthering
humanity, calculated for the good of humanity, serving historical
(i.e. human) evolution -- in short, a human
labor. This implies two things: one, that it be useful to humanity;
next, that it be the work of a "man." The first alone
may be the case with every labor, as even the labors of nature,
e. g. of animals, are utilized by humanity for
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172 THE EGO AND HIS OWN |
the furthering of science, etc.; the second requires that he who
labors should know the human object of his labor; and, as he can
have this consciousness only when he knows himself as man,
the crucial condition is -- self-consciousness.
Unquestionably much is already
attained when you cease to be a "fragment-laborer,"*
yet therewith you only get a view of the whole of your labor,
and acquire a consciousness about it, which is still far removed
from a self-consciousness, a consciousness about your true "self"
or "essence," Man. The laborer has still remaining the
desire for a "higher consciousness," which, because
the activity of labor is unable to quiet it, he satisfies in a
leisure hour. Hence leisure stands by the side of his labor, and
he sees himself compelled to proclaim labor and idling human in
one breath, yes, to attribute the true elevation to the idler,
the leisure-enjoyer. He labors only to get rid of labor; he wants
to make labor free, only that he may be free from labor.
In fine, his work has no satisfying
substance, because it is only imposed by society, only a stint,
a task, a calling; and, conversely, his society does not satisfy,
because it gives only work.
His labor ought to satisfy him as
a man; instead of that, it satisfies society; society ought to
treat him as a man, and it treats him as -- a rag-tag laborer,
or a laboring ragamuffin.
Labor and society are of use to
him not as he needs them as a man, but only as he needs them as
an
*[Referring to minute subdivision of labor, whereby the single workman produces, not a whole, but a part.]
|
MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 173 |
"egoist."
Such is the attitude of criticism
toward labor. It points to "mind," wages the war "of
mind with the masses,"* and pronounces communistic labor
unintellectual mass-labor. Averse to labor as they are, the masses
love to make labor easy for themselves. In literature, which is
today furnished in mass, this aversion to labor begets the universally-known
superficiality, which puts from it "the toil of
research."**
Therefore humane liberalism says:
You want labor; all right, we want it likewise, but we want it
in the fullest measure. We want it, not that we may gain spare
time, but that we may find all satisfaction in it itself. We want
labor because it is our self-development.
But then the labor too must be adapted
to that end! Man is honored only by human, self-conscious labor,
only by the labor that has for its end no "egoistic"
purpose, but Man, and is Man's self-revelation; so that the saying
should be laboro, ergo sum, I labor, therefore I am a
man. The humane liberal wants that labor of the mind
which works up all material; he wants the mind, that
leaves no thing quiet or in its existing condition, that acquiesces
in nothing, analyzes everything, criticises anew every result
that has been gained. This restless mind is the true laborer,
it obliterates prejudices, shatters limits and narrownesses, and
raises man above everything that would like to dominate over him,
while the Communist labors only for himself, and not even freely,
but from necessity, --
*"Lit. Ztg."
V, 34.
**"Lit. Ztg."
ibid.
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174 THE EGO AND HIS OWN |
in short, represents a man condemned to hard labor.
The laborer of such a type is not
"egoistic," because he does not labor for individuals,
neither for himself nor for other individuals, not for private
men therefore, but for humanity and its progress: he does not
ease individual pains, does not care for individual wants, but
removes limits within which humanity is pressed, dispels prejudices
which dominate an entire time, vanquishes hindrances that obstruct
the path of all, clears away errors in which men entangle themselves,
discovers truths which are found through him for all and for all
time; in short -- he lives and labors for humanity.
Now, in the first place, the discoverer
of a great truth doubtless knows that it can be useful to the
rest of men, and, as a jealous withholding furnishes him no enjoyment,
he communicates it; but, even though he has the consciousness
that his communication is highly valuable to the rest, yet he
has in no wise sought and found his truth for the sake of the
rest, but for his own sake, because he himself desired it, because
darkness and fancies left him no rest till he had procured for
himself light and enlightenment to the best of his powers.
He labors, therefore, for his own
sake and for the satisfaction of his want. That along with this
he was also useful to others, yes, to posterity, does not take
from his labor the egoistic character.
In the next place, if he did labor
only on his own account, like the rest, why should his act be
human, those of the rest unhuman, i. e., egoistic? Perhaps
because this book, painting, symphony, etc., is the
| MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 175 |
labor of his whole being, because he has done his best in it,
has spread himself out wholly and is wholly to be known from it,
while the work of a handicraftsman mirrors only the handicraftsman,
i.e. the skill in handicraft, not "the man?"
In his poems we have the whole Schiller; in so many hundred stoves,
on the other hand, we have before us only the stove-maker, not
"the man."
But does this mean more than "in
the one work you see me as completely as possible, in
the other only my skill?" Is it not me again that the act
expresses? And is it not more egoistic to offer oneself
to the world in a work, to work out and shape oneself,
than to remain concealed behind one's labor? You say, to be sure,
that you are revealing Man. But the Man that you reveal is you;
you reveal only yourself, yet with this distinction from the handicraftsman
-- that he does not understand how to compress himself into one
labor, but, in order to be known as himself, must be searched
out in his other relations of life, and that your want, through
whose satisfaction that work came into being, was a -- theoretical
want.
But you will reply that you reveal
quite another man, a worthier, higher, greater, a man that is
more man than that other. I will assume that you accomplish all
that is possible to man, that you bring to pass what no other
succeeds in. Wherein, then, does your greatness consist? Precisely
in this, that you are more than other men (the "masses"),
more than men ordinarily are, more than "ordinary
men"; precisely in your elevation above men. You are distinguished
beyond other men not by being man, but be-