What is the union of egoists?

Max Stirner, answered from the texts and cited to the page.

Max Stirner answers

The State and the Church are societies — they exist prior to you, above you, and they will outlast you if they can manage it; they lay claim to you for themselves.1 The union of egoists is the opposite of this. It exists for you and through you; the moment it ceases to serve your ownness, it dissolves, because it was never anything more than your instrument — the sword with which you sharpen and increase your natural force.2

The confusion my critics make is predictable. Hess, for instance, substituted "egoistic union" for my "union of egoists" and then pointed at the whole of human history — slavery, serfdom, modern wage-servitude — as if these were what I had in mind.3 But a society in which most of those involved are hoodwinked about their most natural interests, in which one is the slave or serf of another, is not a union of egoists — it is a religious society, held together by sacred rights, laws, and the formalities of justice.4

The slaves did not seek their chains from egoism; their egoistic hearts were against the arrangement from the start. What distinguishes the union from every political form is precisely its non-sacred character. The State is the lord of my spirit — it demands faith, prescribes articles of belief, drives my ego out to install itself as "my true ego." The union is my own creation, my creature; it is not sacred, not a spiritual power hovering above my spirit.56

I do not pledge my soul to it as one does to the devil, or to the State, or to God; I remain more to myself than any of these, and consequently more than the union too.7 When someone objects that even a freely-concluded agreement becomes burdensome and limits freedom — that I must "sacrifice a part of my freedom for the sake of the generality" — the answer is that I sacrifice nothing for the generality's sake at all.8

I entered the agreement for my own benefit, from selfishness; and what I "sacrifice" is only what was not in my power to begin with, which is to say I sacrifice nothing. The alternative is stark: either you are lord, or society is.9 The egoist is owner; the one who submits to a society that precedes and supersedes him is a ragamuffin — a serf holding his own existence as a fief from some abstraction, whether that abstraction is called God, Mankind, the State, or the Proletariat.10

Communism merely completes this ragamuffinry by universalizing it under the suzerainty of "Man." So the union of egoists is not an institution, not a political form, not a constitution waiting to be written.11 It is the contingent association of Uniques who use one another consciously and without pretense, and who dissolve the arrangement the moment it becomes a fixed power over them — the moment, that is, it begins to look like a society.

Sources

  1. the society conversely lays claim to you for itself and exists even without you; in short, the society is sacred, the union your own; the society consumes you, you consume the union.
    The Ego and His Own
  2. the union is only your instrument, or the sword with which you sharpen and increase your natural force; the union exists for you and through you
    The Ego and His Own
  3. he goes further and shows that 'all our history up to now has been nothing but the history of egoistic unions, whose fruit — ancient slavery, medieval bondage and modern, fundamental, universal servitude — are known to us all.' First of all, here Hess puts 'egoistic union' — because he needs to take it in precisely this way! — in place of Stirner's 'union of egoists.'
    Stirner's Critics, p. 8
  4. what Hess called by this name is rather a religious society, a community held in sacred respect through rights, laws and all the formalities or ceremonies of justice.
    Stirner's Critics, p. 8
  5. the State is the lord of my spirit, who demands faith and prescribes to me articles of faith, the creed of legality; it exerts moral influence, dominates my spirit, drives away my ego to put itself in its place as 'my true ego'
    The Ego and His Own
  6. the union is my own creation, my creature, not sacred, not a spiritual power above my spirit, as little as any association of whatever sort.
    The Ego and His Own
  7. I am and remain more to myself than State, Church, God, and the like; consequently infinitely more than the union too.
    The Ego and His Own
  8. the sacrifice would not be made for the 'generality's' sake a bit, as little as I concluded the agreement for the 'generality's' or even, for any other man's sake; rather I came into it only for the sake of my own benefit, from selfishness.
    The Ego and His Own
  9. To come back to property, the lord is proprietor. Choose then whether you want to be lord, or whether society shall be!
    The Ego and His Own
  10. The egoist is owner, the Socialist a ragamuffin. But ragamuffinism or propertylessness is the sense of feudalism, of the feudal system, which since the last century has only changed its overlord, putting 'Man' in the place of God
    The Ego and His Own
  11. how ragamuffinism can only thus swing around into ownness... the new feudalism under the suzerainty of 'Man.'
    The Ego and His Own