Note on Stirner’s economic views

I cannot now remember and furnish the reference, but I have read somewhere that Stirner translated Adam Smith’s “Wealth of Nations” into German. There is little or no question that he realized that for a “free economy” to work satisfactorily, it was positively necessary that competition be given the largest scope of operation. Which means that opportunity to produce and exchange needed to be equitable. In other words, it demanded an equitable access to land. He certainly understood that opportunities to exchange products without being held up by financial monopolies was also an essential prerequisite.

That he did not make an elaborate economic analysis of economics in his “Ego and His Own” does not warrant the belief that he was unaware or ignorant of economics. The main purpose of his book was to show up the fatuousness of the self-styled revolutionaries of his time, when they thought, believed, or hoped that any sort of revolution or insurrection could be satisfactorily carried out by other than self-acknowledged egoists who understood what they were about. His target obviously was communists — whom he no doubt considered fools fighting for their own enslavement.