solute monarchy
only changed its name, being known formerly as "king," now as
"people," "State," or "nation."

"Political freedom says that the _polis_, the State, is free; and
religious freedom says that religion is free, just as freedom of
conscience means that the conscience is free; but not that I am free
from the State, from religion, or from conscience. It does not mean my
freedom, but the freedom of some power which governs and compels me;
it means that one of my masters, such as State, religion, or
conscience, is free. State, religion, and conscience, these despots
make me a slave, and their freedom is my slavery." "If the principle
is that only facts shall rule mankind, namely, the fact of morality or
of legality, and so on, then no personal limitations of one individual
by the other can be authorised--that is, there must be free
competition. Only by actual fact can one person injure another, as the
rich may injure the poor by money--that is, by a fact, but not as a
person. There is henceforth only one authority, the authority of the
State; personally no one is any longer lord over another. But to the
State, all its children stand exactly in the same position; they
possess 'civic or political equality,' and how they get on one with
another is their own affair; they must compete. Free competition means
nothing else than that everyone may stand up against someone else,
make himself felt, and fight against him."

At this point (wherein Stirner by no means recognises immediate or
economic individualism) social Liberalism--that which we to-day call
social Democracy or communal Socialism--separates from the political.
With a cleverness which we cannot sufficiently admire, Stirner
proceeds to show that these directions which are so totally opposed
are essentially the same, and regards the latter merely as the logical
outcome from the former.

"The freedom of man is, in political Liberalism, the freedom from
persons, from personal rule, from masters; security of any individual
person, as regards other persons, is personal freedom. No one can
give any commands; the law alone commands. But if persons have become
equal, their positions certainly have not. And yet the poor man needs
the rich, and the rich man needs the poor; the former needs the money
of the rich, the latter the work of the poor. Thus no one needs anyone
else as a person; but he needs him as a giver, or as one who has
something to give, as a proprietor