Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 Page 5 Page 6 Page 7 Page 8 Page 9 Page 10 Page 11 Page 12 Page 13 Page 14 Page 15 Page 16carriage and horses, since that would damage our credit. So we can only impose restrictions in the daily life of our immediate family circle. To the outside world, we must lie – that is, we must feign wealth.” Similarly, when we go through a city we see elegantly dressed people in fine boots and expensive clothes; often these same persons live in run-down apartments or attics. Further examples are unnecessary to show how such dishonesties feed off private property; without it, they would be rendered quite harmless. Max Stirner’s book The Individual and His Property may well be intended as an ironic statement, though we cannot now explore to what extent this is so. * Be that as it may, in this book Stirner had the audacity to present the whole of modern life as consisting of nothing more than naked egoism: “Everything that I do, I do for myself.” For Stirner, this principle of egoism applies even to the love between husband and wife: such “love,” he contends, is nothing more than the possessive grasping of another’s body. Likewise, the friendly gestures that we offer here and there to our fellow human beings are merely the result of egoism: we are friendly to others only in order to gain possible advantages for ourselves or to extend our sphere of influence. All my acts of altruism are done only to increase my own prestige. The logical consequence of Stirner’s claim – which he openly states – is that we must recognize property as the visible extension of egoism in the material world. Thus, according to Stirner, if we want to give our children an education that will enable them to come up in the world, the central lesson we must impress on them is respect for property. Egoism and property are so completely identical that property is nothing other than the outward manifestation of egoism. Here some will object: “Human beings, like all other living things, have received from nature, indeed from God, the instinct of self-preservation. This has been an essential force for human existence, as far back into history as we can see. If one has reverence for creation, one must recognize the instinct of self- preservation and foster it. This instinct strives after property, and rightly seeks to acquire and hold on to it. Man must live; that is his moral obligation.” This argument bears exploring. The instinct of self-preservation takes a number of forms. Biologically, it is connected to the sexual instinct: hunger and love! In politics, it comes to expression as the urge for power. In economic life, it takes form as the profit motive. Our entire economy, in fact, is based on greed for profit: it speculates on the egoism of self-preservation and on the desire for increased power in the life of the individual. In this it has been successful. Jesus said: “If the kingdom of Satan were divided against itself, it would have long ago come to ruin.” That is why, because of the unspoken agreement of all who are involved (and of all those who would like to be involved, if only they could), our highly capitalistic *. Max Stirner (1806–1856) published Der Einzige und sein Eigentum in 1844; it advocated an amoral anarchism. Matt. 12:25–26 From property comes war, competition, and the mutual injuriousness of business life.