Editing Max Stirner (section)

=== Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels ===
Friedrich Engels commented on Stirner in poetry at the time of ''Die Freien'':
{{poem quote|Look at Stirner, look at him, the peaceful enemy of all constraint.
For the moment, he is still drinking beer,
Soon he will be drinking blood as though it were water.
When others cry savagely "down with the kings"
Stirner immediately supplements "down with the laws also."
Stirner full of dignity proclaims;
You bend your willpower and you dare to call yourselves free.
You become accustomed to slavery
Down with dogmatism, down with law.<ref>Henri Arvon, Aux sources de 1'existentialisme Max Stirner (Paris, 1954), p. 14.</ref>}}

Engels once even recalled at how they were "great friends" (''Duzbrüder'').<ref name="autogenerated2" /> In November 1844, Engels wrote a letter to Karl Marx in which he first reported a visit to Moses Hess in [[Cologne]] and then went on to note that during this visit Hess had given him a press copy of a new book by Stirner, ''The Unique and Its Property''. In his letter to Marx, Engels promised to send a copy of the book to him, for it certainly deserved their attention as Stirner "had obviously, among the 'Free Ones', the most talent, independence and diligence."<ref name="autogenerated2"/> To begin with, Engels was enthusiastic about the book and expressed his opinions freely in letters to Marx:
{{blockquote|But what is true in his principle, we, too, must accept. And what is true is that before we can be active in any cause we must make it our own, egoistic cause—and that in this sense, quite aside from any material expectations, we are communists in virtue of our egoism, that out of egoism we want to be human beings and not merely individuals.<ref>Zwischen 18 and 25, pp. 237–238.</ref>}}

Later, Marx and Engels wrote a major criticism of Stirner's work. The number of pages Marx and Engels devote to attacking Stirner in the unexpurgated text of ''The German Ideology'' exceeds the total of Stirner's written works.<ref>[http://www.zeno.org/Philosophie/M/Marx,+Karl/Die+deutsche+Ideologie/I.+Band%3A+%5BKritik+der+neuesten+deutschen+Philosophie+in+ihren+Repr%C3%A4sentanten+Feuerbach,+B.+Bauer+und+Stirner%5D/III.+Sankt+Max "Chapter ''Sankt Max'' in ''Die deutsche Ideologie''] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110929113759/http://www.zeno.org/Philosophie/M/Marx,+Karl/Die+deutsche+Ideologie/I.+Band%3A+%5BKritik+der+neuesten+deutschen+Philosophie+in+ihren+Repr%C3%A4sentanten+Feuerbach,+B.+Bauer+und+Stirner%5D/III.+Sankt+Max |date=29 September 2011 }}.</ref> In the book Stirner is derided as ''Sankt Max'' (Saint Max) and as ''Sancho'' (a reference to Cervantes' [[Sancho Panza]]). As [[Isaiah Berlin]] has described it, Stirner "is pursued through five hundred pages of heavy-handed mockery and insult."<ref>I. Berlin, Karl Marx (New York, 1963), 143.</ref> The book was written in 1845–1846, but it was not published until 1932. Marx's lengthy ferocious [[polemic]] against Stirner has since been considered an important turning point in Marx's intellectual development from [[idealism]] to [[materialism]]. It has been argued that [[historical materialism]] was Marx's method of reconciling communism with a Stirnerite rejection of morality.<ref name="Lobkowicz 1970">{{cite book|last=Lobkowicz|first=Nicolas|year=1970|chapter=Karl Marx and Max Stirner|title=Demythologizing Marxism|pages=64–95|edition=illustrated|location=Heidelberg|publisher=Springer Netherlands|isbn=978-9024702121 |doi=10.1007/978-94-010-3185-1_3|doi-broken-date=1 November 2024 }}</ref><ref name="Stedman-Jones 2002">Stedman-Jones, Gareth (2002). "Introduction". In Engels, Friedrich; Marx, Karl. ''The Communist Manifesto'' (illustrated, reprinted, revised ed.). London: Penguin Adult. {{ISBN|978-0140447576}}.</ref><ref name="Alexander">{{cite journal|last=Alexander|first=Green|url=http://consciousegoism.6te.net/pdfs/nonserviam/23.pdf|title=Stirner & Marx – Max Stirner: A Biographical Sketch|journal=Non Serviam|volume=1|issue=23|pages=5–42|access-date=8 May 2020|archive-date=20 April 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200420153640/http://consciousegoism.6te.net/pdfs/nonserviam/23.pdf|url-status=live}}</ref>