STIRNER ON PROPERTY RELATIONS
One must must consider Stirner's statements on property relations in the context of his whole analysis and audience. The word property can mean possession, belonging, or commodity, but it can also mean aspect, e.g. sweetness as a property of ripe apples. Stirner uses a lot of wordplay to show this complexity, and emphasizes the personability of "ownership", emphasizing how our relations to objects become aspects of us. In this explanation I'll focus on Stirner's understandings of "property" in the more traditional sense.
I. CONTEXT & AUDIENCE
Stirner wrote in the context of his rivalry against incipient Marxism. This explains such statements of his as:
"Egoism takes a different route for eradicating the propertyless rabble. It doesn’t say: Wait and see what the board of equity will—give you in the name of the collectivity (because such a gift has always taken place in “states,” each receiving “according to desert,” and so according to the measure to which each was able to deserve it, to earn it by service), but rather: Seize and take what you need! Thus, the war of all against all is declared. I alone decide what I will have." (The Unique and It's Property, 2.2.2 My Intercourse)
Stirner did not want the "non-possessing rabble" to replicate Statist oppression as they formed their new collectivities.
II. LEGITIMACY & SUBJECTIVITY
Stirner essentially saw all justifications of property as subjective: "Rightful, or legitimate, property of another will be only that which you are content to recognize as such. If your content ceases, then this property has lost legitimacy for you, and you will laugh at absolute right to it." Here he emphasizes the descriptive nature of his intent ("you will laugh").
Stirner attempted to dissolve the objective basis for the existing property regime. He elaborated that the sanctity of property works as a "spook" haunting the mind:
"Property in the bourgeois sense means sacred property, such that I have to respect your property. “Respect for property!” Therefore, the politicians would like everyone to possess their little piece of property, and have partly brought about an incredible parceling-out through this effort. Everyone must have their bone on which to find something to chew.
The matter goes differently in the egoist sense. I don’t shyly step back from your property, but see it always as my property in which I need to “respect” nothing. Just do the same with what you call my property!" (The Unique and It's Property, 2.2.2 My Intercourse)
III. DECONSTRUCTION & ANTI-CAPITALISM
This realization compels him to reject capitalism:
"If people reach the point where they lose respect for property, then everyone will have property, as all slaves become free people as soon as they no longer respect the master as master.
Associations will then, in this matter as well, multiply the individual’s means and secure his contested property." (The Unique and It's Property, 2.2.2 My Intercourse)
Stirner further proposed active non-compliance with the slave-like conditions of the dispossessed,
"To whoever knows how to take and hold the thing, it belongs, until someone takes it away from him, as freedom belongs to the one who takes it." (The Unique and It's Property, 2.2.2 My Intercourse)
He's using wordplay, mocking the notion of "right". Some people confuse Stirner for advocating a mentality of "might makes right", however, he meant this more descriptively:
"Enjoy, then you are entitled to enjoyment. If you have worked and let enjoyment be taken away from you, then—“it serves you right."
If you take enjoyment, it is your right; if, on the contrary, you only yearn for it without helping yourself to it, it still remains, as before, a “well-earned” right of those who are privileged for enjoyment. It is their right, as by helping yourself it would become your right." (The Unique and It's Property, 2.2.1 My Power)
As a sort of "moral nihilist", he essentially saw only might and respect as the two forces that shaped things, and emphasized subjectivity. In distinction to the present condition, Stirner advocated the "Union of Egoists" concept, predicated on voluntary and symbiotic relations as well as self-interest, parallel to the anarchist aims of autonomy and mutual aid.
IV. PLAY NOT WORK
To elaborate on that last point, on what he proposes instead of capitalism, in "Stirner's Critics" he proposes,
"Perhaps at this very moment, some children have come together just outside his [Hess’s] window in a friendly game. If he looks at them, he will see a playful egoistic union. Perhaps Hess has a friend or a beloved; then he knows how one heart finds another, as their two hearts unite egoistically to delight (enjoy) each other, and how no one “comes up short” in this. Perhaps he meets a few good friends on the street and they ask him to accompany them to a tavern for wine; does he go along as a favor to them, or does he “unite” with them because it promises pleasure? Should they thank him heartily for the “sacrifice,” or do they know that all together they form an “egoistic union” for a little while?" (Stirner's Critics, Hess)
V. SOLIDARITY, BUT FROM FELLOWSHIP, NOT OBLIGATION
Again as a sort of "idealist", he sought truth as his primary objective. His whole project was to expel reified values and promote the living of an authentic life based in real desire, not one serving imposed, alien constructs. For example, toward love he states,
"I also love human beings, not just a few individuals*, but every one. But I love them with the awareness of egoism; I love them because love makes me happy, I love because love is natural to me, it pleases me. I know no “commandment of love.” I have fellow-feeling with every feeling being, and their torment torments me, their refreshment refreshes me too;..." (The Unique and It's Property, 2.2.2 My Intercourse)
This further rebuts the common misconception that "Stirner espouses pure might makes right philosophy".
* Here Stirner uses the adjective form “einzelne.” As a noun, “Einzelne” is translated as “individual.” As an adjective, it can also be translated as “some” or “a few.” I decided to translate it as “a few individuals” in order to emphasize the distinction Stirner is making between loving only a few and loving every human being while also keeping the relationship of the adjective to the noun clear.
VI. INDIVIDUALISM BEYOND CONSUMERISM
Stirner criticized at length the "involuntary egoist" slaving away for the "fixed cause", including hoarding. I will demonstrate how Stirner differentiated between the "egoism" he espoused, which exorcized what he saw as the trappings of servitude to a mere concept, versus the traditional "involuntary egoism" of his day:
"Who then is self-sacrificing? In the full sense, certainly one who risks everything else for one thing, one goal, one desire, one passion. Isn’t the lover, who abandons father and mother, endures all dangers and hardships, to reach his goal, self-sacrificing? Or the ambitious person, who offers up all desires, wishes, and satisfactions to the single passion, or the miser who denies himself everything to gather treasures, or the pleasure-seeker, etc.? He is ruled by a passion to which he brings the others as sacrifices.
And are these self-sacrificing people perhaps not selfish, not egoists? Since they have only one ruling passion, they provide only for one satisfaction, but for this one all the more eagerly; they’re completely absorbed in it. All that they do is egoistic, but it is one-sided, close-minded, bigoted egoism; it is being possessed." (The Unique and It's Property, 1.2.3 The Hierarchy)
In these passages, Stirner clearly rejects the consumerist path to self-fullfilment, arguing that the treasure hoard owns the person more than the reverse: possession becomes possessedness, whereas moderation enables robust fulfillment.
VII. AGAINST BOTH LAW & CONTRACT
Another aspect of this comes from Stirner, in his deconstruction of democratic law, which, importantly, is also the critique of contract. For the ancoms that propose to maintain a sort of democratic, law-based order on communes, Stirner rebukes this:
"Every state is a despotism, whether the despot be one or many, or, as some like to imagine a republic, all be lords, i.e., play the despot over each other. This is the case every time when a given law, the will expressed perhaps in the opinion of a popular assembly, should be from then on law for the individual, to which he owes obedience, or towards which he has the duty of obedience. Even if one were to imagine the case where every individual in the people had expressed the same will, and through this a complete “collective will” came into being, the matter would still be the same. Wouldn’t I be bound today and henceforth by my will of yesterday? My will in this case would be frozen. Tiresome stability. My creation, namely a particular expression of will, would have become my commander. But I in my will, I the creator, would be hampered in my flow and my dissolution. Because I was a fool yesterday, I must remain one the rest of my life. So in state-life, I am in the best case—I might as well say the worst case—a slave to myself. Because I was a willer yesterday, today I am will-less, yesterday voluntary, today involuntary." (The Unique and It's Property, 2.2.1 My Power)
VIII. THE LABEL THAT FITS
Throughout this section, I have referred to Stirner as a "sort of" X. This is because any label placed upon him ultimately fails to capture the full essence of his thought. Even terms like "Anarchist," which many associate with him today, are insufficient to encompass his radically individualistic philosophy. Stirner resists categorization, for each label comes with assumptions, reifications, and expectations that he would have undoubtedly dismissed as "spooks."
The only label that properly describes him is "Stirner," and even that is not without its difficulties. To define Stirner is to impose a fixed identity, a "universal" that he himself warned against. His work stands as a challenge to the very notion of fixed ideas, urging readers to live authentically, free of imposed constructs. Perhaps, in his own words, we might call him a "unique one"—but even that is an interpretation, one to be taken up or discarded as you see fit. That, however, is a topic for another post.