rty, when it comes to the question of obtaining for
the labourers a full reward of their labour. "They must rely upon
themselves and ask nothing from the State," he answers. Only to a
third very difficult question does this thoroughgoing theorist fail in
an answer. He declares pauperism to be "lack of value of myself, when
I cannot make my value felt; and, therefore, I can only get free from
pauperism if I make my value felt as an individual, if I give myself
value, and put my own price upon myself. All attempts at making the
masses happy, and philanthropic associations arising from the
principle of love, must come to grief, for help can only come to the
masses through egotism, and this help they must and will procure for
themselves. The question of property cannot be solved in such a legal
way as the Socialists, and even the Communists, imagine. It can only
be solved by the war of all against all. The poor will only become
free and be owners of property by revolting, rising, and raising
themselves. However much is given them, they will always wish to have
more; for they wish nothing less than that, at last, there shall
remain nothing more to give. It will be asked: But what will happen
then, when those who have nothing take courage and rise? What kind of
equalisation will be made? One might just as well ask me to determine
a child's nativity; what a slave will do when he has broken his chains
one can only wait and see."

Step by step Stirner departs from Proudhon; the latter demands, in
order to create his paradise, a balance, the former lays down the
principle of natural selection as the highest and only law in social
matters. The fight, the struggle for existence, which Proudhon strove
to recognise in economic life, here enters upon its rights in all its
brutality. The realisation of the self is, for Stirner, the key to the
solution of the problems of work, property, and pauperism. He will
have no division of goods, no organisation of labour. For Proudhon
every piece of work is the result of a collective force, for Stirner
the most valuable works are those of "individual" artists, savants,
and so on, and their value is always to be determined only from the
egoist standpoint.

To the question whether money should be maintained or done away with
among egoists, he answers: "If you know a better medium of exchange,
all right; but it will always be 'money.' It is not money that does
you harm, but your lack of power to t