"All swan-fraternities, and attempts at making the rabble happy, that spring from the principle of love, must miscarry. Only from egoism can the rabble get help, and this help it must give to itself and - will give to itself. If it does not let itself be coerced into fear, it is a power. 'People would lose all respect if one did not coerce them into fear', says bugbear Law in Der gestiefelte Kater.
Property, therefore, should not and cannot be abolished; it must rather be torn from ghostly hands and become my property; then the erroneous consciousness, that I cannot entitle myself to as much as I require, will vanish.
'But what cannot man require!' Well, whoever requires much, and understands how to get it, has at all times helped himself to it, as Napoleon did with the Continent and France with Algiers. Hence the exact point is that the respectful 'rabble' should learn at last to help itself to what it requires. If it reaches out too far for you, why, then defend yourselves. You have no need at all to good-heartedly bestow anything on it; and, when it learns to know itself, it - or rather: whoever of the rabble learns to know himself; he - casts off the rabble-quality in refusing your alms with thanks. But it remains ridiculous that you declare the rabble 'sinful and criminal' if it is not pleased to live from your favours because it can do something in its own favour. Your bestowals cheat it and put it off. Defend your property, then you will be strong; if, on the other hand, you want to retain your ability to bestow, and perhaps actually have the more political rights the more alms (poor-rates) you can give, this will work just as long as the recipients let you work it."
In short, the property question cannot be solved so amicably as the socialists, yes, even the communists, dream. It is solved only by the war of all against all. The poor become free and proprietors only when they - rebel, rise up. Bestow ever so much on them, they will still always want more; for they want nothing less than that at last nothing more be bestowed.
—Max Stirner, "The Owner," The Ego and Its Own (1844)
"In one respect I am not in emotional agreement with [Willy Schlamm]; namely, when he says that every individual is under the obligation to become a part of the whole in serving the objective spirit. Here I take Stirner's position, as I did during the discussion (although my attempt to express myself consisted of timid comments and incomplete sentences, for I was too overwrought), and must say: No, I do not want to serve; I want to establish the spirit within me. If I do this, and everyone else does the same, then the objective spirit (in Schlamm's sense) will be present. I do not wish to create a new god and then have my individuality grovel before him, no matter what his name. I call for opposition to everything which is over me. I do not want to serve the community above all else (as do Paul Stein and Willy Schlamm) and then try to be myself. I reject this different mode of coercion from without, for if I render service to myself, it is done for the good of the community. All acts undertaken for my self-realization will contain, in themselves, the service posulated by Schlamm. You can already see that I want to live from within! But you will also notice that in so doing I have drawn closer to your position: I also feel that a symposium (if it really merits the name!) might serve the spirit better than the most brilliant speech delivered to a blindly obedient mass by an enthusiastic revolutionary. For that mass would then be living from without and therefore resemble those individuals who have, for example, remained unresponsive to the inner urge to become human beings. This is the first type described by Schlamm: the petty bourgeois. There is no fundamental differentiation here: the next equally enthusiastic but more appealing reactionary will soon win such individuals for his cause (incidentally, this fact has been borne out by experience!).
May I, should I, therefore become a "hermit"? I say no! The hermit forfeits the possibility of the "influences from without," in whose absence "influence from within," the actual fortifier, soon become~ impossible. Living "from within" means forming the world, that which is "not me," the way my spirit (and the spirit of everyone else who has the same desires) demands."
—Wilhelm Reich, journal entry from June 22, 1920
"Communist gibberish and egotistical reality! Look at Russia! Max Stirner, the god who saw in 1844 what we do not see today in 1921! Somehow I am growing increasingly secure in my conviction that a system of economic communism which lacks a candid acknowledgment of egotism is an impossibility. Man is egotistical not only in [Alfred] Adler’s sense but also in matters of sex. Altruism is only a form of egotism, although it is of greater value than the purely subjective form of egotism. Can mankind be educated to this higher form? No! Man cannot be educated at all! All education is a matter of transference as ecphorizational element![...]
And I will tell you outright that all your lamenting the “injustice” of the world does not impress me; I ignore it completely, for it is false, a lie, if it is not followed by action and resolution. And I am one of you, and all of us are like the others, and they in turn are just like those who extort, manipulate, solicit, steal, smuggle, coerce—we will all be “one of them” as long as there is one last person searching for bread in the middens! Bear the consequences of your revolutionary spirit, if you can! Let someone stand up and say, “I will do it.” That person will only be speaking empty words, or—if he follows through with actions—he will become a martyr and be no different from a cloistered ascetic, his previous archenemy, except that he is aware of acting out of egotism."
—Wilhelm Reich, journal entry from March 12, 1921
