me content." Alas! The first
Nominalist he came across could have demonstrated to our author by the
completest evidence, that his "Ego" is as much an "Idea" as any other,
and that it is as little real as a mathematical unit.

Tom, Dick and Harry have relations with one another that do not depend
upon the will of their "Ego," but are imposed upon them by the structure
of the society in which they live. To criticise social institutions in
the name of the "Ego," is therefore to abandon the only profitable
point of view in the case, _i.e._, that of society, of the laws of its
existence and evolution, and to lose oneself in the mists of
abstraction. But it is just in these mists that the "Nominalist" Stirner
delights. I am I--that is his starting-point; not I is not I--that is
his result. I+I+I+etc.--is his social Utopia. It is subjective Idealism,
pure and simple applied to social and political criticism. It is the
suicide of idealist speculation.

But in the same year (1845) in which "Der Einzige" of Stirner appeared,
there appeared also, at Frankfort-on-Maine the work of Marx and Engels,
"Die heilige Familie, oder Kritik der Kritischen Kritik, gegen Bruno
Bauer und Consorten."[13] In it Idealist speculation was attacked and
beaten by Materialist dialectic, the theoretical basis of modern
Socialism. "Der Einzige" came too late.

We have just said that I+I+I+etc. represents the social Utopia of
Stirner. His League of Egoists is, in fact, nothing but a mass of
abstract quantities. What are, what can be the basis of their union?
Their interests, answers Stirner. But what will, what can be the true
basis of any given combination of their interests? Stirner says nothing
about it, and he can say nothing definite since from the abstract
heights on which he stands, one cannot see clearly economic reality, the
mother and nurse of all the "Egos," egoistic or altruistic. Nor is it
surprising that he is not able to explain clearly even this idea of the
class struggle, of which he nevertheless had a happy inkling. The "poor"
must combat the "rich." And after, when they have conquered these? Then
every one of the former "poor," like every one of the former "rich,"
will combat every one of the former poor, and against every one of the
former rich. There will be the war of all against all. (These are
Stirner's own words.) And the rules of the "Leagues of Egoists" will be
so many partial truces in this colossal and universal warfare. The