The German Ideology/Section 16/Chapter III 44
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[edit] 4. State
We have seen that Sancho retains in his “union” the existing form of landownership, division of labour and money, in the way in which a petty bourgeois conceives these relations in his imagination. It is clear at a glance that with such premises Sancho cannot do without the state.
First of all his newly acquired property will have to assume the form of guaranteed, legal property. We have already heard his words:
“That in which all want to have a share will be taken away from the individual who wants to have it for himself alone” (p. 330).
Here, therefore, the will of the whole community is enforced against the will of the separate individual. Since each of the egoists in agreement with themselves may turn out to be not in agreement with the other egoists and thus become involved in this contradiction, the collective will must also find some means of expression in relation to the separate individuals —
“and this will is called the will of the state” (p. 257).
Its decisions are then legal decisions. The enforcement of this collective will in its turn requires repressive measures and public power.
“In this matter also” (in the matter of property) “the unions will multiply the means of the individual and safeguard his disputed property” (they guarantee, therefore, guaranteed property, i.e., legal property, i.e., property that Sancho possesses not “unconditionally”, but “holds on feudal tenure” from the “union”) (p. 342).
Obviously, the whole of civil law is re-established along with the relations of property, and Sancho himself, for example, sets forth the theory of contract fully in the spirit of the lawyers, as follows:
“It is of no importance, too, that I deprive myself of one or other freedom, for example, through any contract” (p. 409).
And in order to “safeguard” “disputed” contracts, it will also “be of no importance” if he has again to submit himself to a court and to all the actual consequences of a civil court case.
Thus, “little by little out of the twilight and the night” we come closer again to the existing relations, but only as these relations exist in the dwarfish imagination of the German petty bourgeois.
Sancho admits:
“In relation to freedom there is no essential difference between state and union. The latter cannot arise and exist without restricting freedom in various ways just as the state is incompatible with boundless freedom. Restriction of freedom is always unavoidable, for it is impossible to get rid of everything; one cannot fly like a bird just because one would like to fly, etc.... In the union there will still be a fair amount of compulsion and lack of freedom, for its aim is not freedom which, on the contrary, it sacrifices for the sake of peculiarity, but only for the sake of peculiarity” (pp. 410, 411).
Leaving aside for the time being the strange distinction between freedom and peculiarity, it should be noted that Sancho, without intending to do so, has already sacrificed his “peculiarity” in his union owing to its economic institutions. As a true “believer in the state”, he sees a restriction only where political institutions begin. He lets the old society continue in existence and with it also the subordination of individuals to division of labour; in which case he cannot escape the fate of having a special “peculiarity” prescribed for him by the division of labour and the occupation and position in life that falls to his lot as a result of it. If, for example, it fell to his lot to work as an apprentice fitter in Willenhall, [115] then the “peculiarly” imposed on him would consist in a twisted hip-bone resulting in a “game leg”; if the “title spectre [Marie Dähnhardt, Stirner’s wife] of his book” [116] has to exist as a female throstle spinner, then her “peculiarity” would consist in stiff knees. Even if our Sancho continues his old vocation of a corvée peasant, already assigned to him by Cervantes, and which he now declares to be his own vocation, which he calls upon himself to fulfil, then, owing to division of labour and the separation of town and countryside, he will have the “peculiarity” of being a purely local animal cut off from all world intercourse and, consequently, from all culture.
Thus, in the union, owing to its social organisation, Sancho malgré lui loses his peculiarity if, by way of exception, we take peculiarity in the sense of individuality. That owing to its political organisation, he then surrenders his freedom as well is quite consistent and only shows still more clearly how much he strives to retain the present state of affairs in his union.
Thus, the essential distinction between freedom and peculiarity constitutes the difference between the present state of affairs and the “union”. We have already seen how essential this distinction is. The majority of the members of the union, too, will possibly not be particularly embarrassed by this distinction and will hasten to decree their “riddance” from it, and if Sancho is not satisfied with that, they will show him on the basis of his own “book” that, firstly, there are no essences, but that essences and essential differences are “the holy”; secondly, that the union does not have to trouble about the “nature of the matter” and the “concept of the relation”; and, thirdly, that they in no way encroach on his peculiarity but only on his freedom to express it. They will perhaps prove to him, if it is his “endeavour to be without a constitution”, that they restrict only his freedom by putting him in prison, striking blows at him, or tearing off his leg, and that he remains partout et toujours “peculiar”, so long as he is still able to show the signs of life of a polyp, an oyster or even a galvanised dead frog. They will “set a definite price” on his work, as we have already heard, and “will not allow a truly free” (!) “realisation of his property”, for thereby they restrict only his freedom, not h . is peculiarity. These are things for which Sancho, on page 338, reproaches the state. “What then should” our corvée peasant Sancho “do? He should be firm and pay no attention” to the union (ibid.). Finally whenever he begins to grumble about the restrictions imposed on him, the majority will suggest that so long as he has the peculiarity of declaring that freedoms are peculiarities, they can take the liberty of regarding his peculiarities as freedoms.
Just as the difference mentioned above between human and unique labour was only a miserable appropriation of the law of supply and demand, so now the difference between freedom and peculiarity is a miserable appropriation of the relation between the state and civil society or, as Monsieur Guizot says, between liberté individuelle and pouvoir public. This is so much the case that in what follows he can copy Rousseau’ almost word for word.
“The agreement [...] according to which everyone must sacrifice a part of his freedom” occurs “not at all the sake of something universal or even for the sake of another person”, on the contrary, “I only concluded it out of self-interest. As far as sacrificing is concerned, after all I merely sacrifice what is not in power, i. e. I sacrifice nothing at all” (p. 418).
Our corvée peasant in agreement with himself shares this quality with all other corvée peasants and, in general, with every individual, who has ever lived on the earth. Compare also Godwin, Politica; Justice.
Incidentally, Sancho appears to possess the peculiarity, of imagining that according to Rousseau individuals concluded the contract for the sake of the universal, which never entered Rousseau’s head.
One consolation, however, remains for him.
“The state is holy ... the union, however, is ... not holy.” And herein lies the “great difference between the state and the union” p. 411).
The whole difference, therefore, amounts to this, that the union is the actual modern state, and the “state” is Stirner’s illusion about the Prussian state, which he confuses with the state in general
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