Max Stirner, answered from the texts and cited to the page.
What I called Eigentum — ownness, property — is nothing other than might; and the legal instrument you name is precisely the point where that truth becomes visible, and is then immediately buried again. When a man grants power of attorney, he lends his might to another. That is the plain fact of it. But watch what the lawyers do with this plain fact: they transform the lent might into a right, something that now exists independently of the one who lent it and independently of the one who received it.
The might has been separated from the mighty ego and exalted into a ghost.1 Here is the delusion in its clearest form. The individual who granted this power believes he cannot withdraw it — or rather, he forgets that he can.2 The might he handed over continues to operate as though it were a self-subsisting thing, a right that walks about on its own legs long after it has ceased to be his might in any living sense.
This is what I mean when I say that might, eternalized, becomes right — and right is a spook.3 But consider what follows from this. The proprietor can relinquish his might over a thing by giving the thing away entirely. Why then should the one who lent his might to another be unable to withdraw it?4 The power of attorney is simply the formalized pretense that the withdrawal is impossible, or at least that it requires the permission of judges, courts, the State — all the machinery of Man sitting in judgment over what belongs to whom.
And there is the deeper fraud. In neither the divine-right tradition nor the human-rights tradition does the individual do the entitling himself.5 The power of attorney merely makes this dependence explicit: your might over another's affairs is real only so long as others — courts, witnesses, the State's apparatus — join their might to yours and sustain the fiction.
The moment they withdraw it, the document is worthless paper. So: power of attorney is might lent, formalized as right, sustained by collective acquiescence, and mistaken for something that exists independently of all three. The egoist sees through it clearly enough.
Might, like other of my qualities (e. g. humanity, majesty, etc.), is exalted to something existing of itself, so that it still exists long after it has ceased to be my might. Thus transformed into a ghost, might is—right.The Ego and His Own
The delusion consists in their believing that they cannot withdraw their might.The Ego and His Own
This eternalized might is not extinguished even with my death, but is transferred or 'bequeathed.' Things now really belong not to me, but to right.The Ego and His Own
The proprietor can give up his might and his right to a thing by giving the thing away, squandering it, and the like. And we should not be able likewise to let go the might that we lend to him?The Ego and His Own
So much is clear, that in neither case does the individual do the entitling himself.The Ego and His Own