“The abolition of the state has meaning with the Communists, only 
as the necessary consequence of the abolition of classes, with which 
the need for the organised might of one class to keep the others 
down automatically disappears. In bourgeois countries the abolition 
of the state means that the power of the state is reduced to the level 
found in North America. There, the class contradictions are but 
incompletely developed; every clash between the classes is concealed 
by the outflow of the surplus proletarian population to the west; 
intervention by the power of the state, reduced to a minimum in the 
east, does not exist at all in the west. In feudal countries the 
abolition of the state means the abolition of feudalism and the 
creation of an ordinary bourgeois state. In Germany it conceals 
either a cowardly flight from the struggles that lie immediately 
ahead, a spurious inflating of bourgeois freedom into absolute 
independence and autonomy of the individual, or, finally, the 
indifference of the bourgeois towards all forms of state, provided the 
development of bourgeois interests is not obstructed. It is of course 
not the fault of the Berliners Stirner and Faucher that this abolition 
of the state ‘in the higher sense’ is being preached in so fatuous a 
way. La plus belle fille de la France ne peut donner que ce qu'elle a.” * (Neue 
Rheinische Zeitung. Politisch-dkonomische Revue No. 4, p. 58.°) 

The abolition of the state, anarchy, has meanwhile become a 
universal catchword in Germany. The scattered German disciples of 
Proudhon, the “higher” democracy of Berlin and even the “noblest 
minds of the nation” of the Stuttgart parliament and the Imperial 

Regency,” now altogether vanished, have appropriated to them- 

selves, each in his own fashion, this savage-looking slogan. 

All of these factions agree in the maintenance of existing bourgeois 
society. Along with bourgeois society they therefore necessarily 
advocate the rule of the bourgeoisie and in Germany even the 
conquest of* power by the bourgeoisie; they are distinguished from 
the true representatives of the bourgeoisie only by the strange form 
which gives them the appearance of “going further’, of “going 
further than anybody”. In all practical collisions this appearance 
vanished; confronted by the real anarchy of revolutionary crises,” 
where the masses [and the state power] fought each other with 
‘brute force’, these representatives of anarchy on each occasion did 
their best to contro! the anarchy. In the end the content of this 
much-vaunted “anarchy” amounted to the same thing as is 
expressed by the word “order” in more developed countries. The 
“Friends of Anarchy” in Germany are in complete entente cordiale 
with the “Friends of Order” in France. 

Insofar as the friends of anarchy are independent of the 
Frenchmen Proudhon and Girardin, insofar as their way of viewing 
things is of German origin, they all have a common source: Stirner. 
The period of dissolution of German philosophy has in general 
supplied the democratic party in Germany with most of its rhetorical 
commonplaces. The notions and phrases of the last of the German 
scripturists, namely Feuerbach and Stirner, had already before 
February,’ in a somewhat dissolute form, passed into the general 
literary awareness and journalistic writing, and these again formed 
the principal source for the post-March democratic spokesmen. 
Surner’s sermon on statelessness in particular is excellently suited to 
give the ‘superior consecration’ of German philosophy to Proudhon’s 
anarchy and Girardin’s abolition of the state. Stirner’s book Der 
Einzige und sein Eigenthum is forgotten, it is true, but its manner of 
thinking, ‘especially its criticism of the state, appears again in the 
friends of anarchy. Although we have already investigated the 

sources of these gentlemen insofar as they are of French origin; we 
are once more constrained to descend into the depths of antedilu- 
vian German philosophy to examine their German sources. If one 
must, for one reason or another, concern oneself with day-to-day 
German polemics, it is always more pleasant to deal with the original 
inventor of a conception than with its second-hand pedlars. 

Saddle me my Hippogryph once more, O Muse, 
For a ride into th’ old, romantic land! ° 

Before we take up Stirner’s above-mentioned book we carry 
ourselves back into the “old, romantic land” and into the forgotten 
time in which this book appeared. The Prussian bourgeoisie, 
fastening upon the financial embarrassments of the government, 
began to conquer political power while simultaneously, alongside the 
bourgeois-constitutional movement, the communist movement of 
the proletariat was daily gaining ground. The bourgeois elements of 
society, still needing proletarian support to attain their own goals, 
had everywhere to affect a kind of socialism; the conservative and 
feudal party was similarly forced to make promises to the proletariat. 
Alongside the struggle of the bourgeois and the peasants against 
feudal aristocracy and bureaucracy, we had the struggle of the 
proletariat against the bourgeoisie, and in between these a series of 
intermediate stages of socialism, embracing all kinds of socialism, 
reactionary, petty-bourgeois and bourgeois socialism; all these 
struggles and endeavours held down. damped down in their 
expression by the pressure of the ruling power, by the censorship, by 
the prohibition of associations and assemblies—such was the 
situation of the parties in the period in which German philosophy 
celebrated its last meagre triumphs. 

Right from the start the censorship forced the most abstract mode 
of expression upon all more or less unpopular elements; the Ger- 
man philosophical tradition, which had just reached the complete 
dissolution of the Hegelian school, provided this expression. The 
struggle against religion was still being pursued. The more difficult 
the political struggle against established power became in the press, 
the more eagerly it was carried on in the form of the religious and 
philosophical struggle. German philosophy in its most dissolute form 
became the common property of the “educated”, and the more it 
became common property, the more dissolute, confused and stale 
the philosophers became, and this dissoluteness and _ staleness 

again gave it a so much higher reputation in the eyes of the 
“educated” public. 

The confusion in the heads of the “educated” was terrifying, and 
it increased with every moment. It was a real mongrelising of ideas of 
German, French, English, antique, medieval and modern origin. 
The confusion was so much the greater because all the ideas were 
only possessed at second, third and fourth hand, and thus circulated 
in a form distorted beyond recognition. This fate was not only 
shared by the thoughts of the French and English liberals and 
socialists, but also by the ideas of Germans, for instance of Hegel. 
The whole literature of this period, and especially, as we shall see, 
Stirner’s book, provides countless proofs of this, and present-day 
German literature is still labouring under the consequences. 

In this confusion, the philosophical shadow-boxing served as an 
image of the real struggles. Every “new turn” in philosophy excited. 
the general attention of the “educated”, who in Germany comprised 
a vast number of idle heads, articled clerks, aspirants to school posts, 
failed theologians, out-of-work medicos, literati, etc., etc. For these 
people a historical stage of development was superseded and done 
for for ever with every such “new turn”. Bourgeois liberalism, for 
instance, as soon as any philosopher had criticised it in any way, was 
dead, erased from historical development and also annihilated as far 
as practice was concerned. Likewise republicanism, socialism and 
so on. How far these stages of development were “annihilated”’, 
“dissolved” and “done for” was subsequently shown in the 
revolution, when they played the most important part and when 
there was suddenly no more talk of their philosophical annihilators. 

The slovenliness in form and content, the arrogant platitudes and 
inflated insipidity, the unfathomable triviality and dialectical poverty 
of these latest German philosophers exceed anything that has 
previously existed in this discipline. It is only equalled by the 
unbelievable gullibility of the public, which took all these things at 
face value, for brand new, for “never seen before”. The German 
nation, the “thorough” ...?