Proudhon and the Communists Are Religious People Fighting Against Egoism

Proudhon, like the communists, fights against egoism. That is why they are continuations and consequences of the Christian principle, the principle of love, of sacrifice for something universal, something alien.... The king is the property owner, because he alone can dispose of and deal with "everything"; he has potestas [power] and imperium [command] over it. The communists make this clearer in that they transfer that imperium [command] to the "society of all." So: Since they're enemies of egoism, they are therefore Christians, or more generally, religious people, believers in ghosts, dependents, servants of whatever universal (God, society, etc.). Proudhon is also like the Christians in this, in that he attributes to God what he denies to human beings. He calls him the Propriétaire of the earth. With this he proves that he can't think away the property owner as such; he comes at last to a property owner, but transfers him to the other world.

--Max Stirner, The Unique and Its Property, trans. and ed. Wolfi Landstreicher (Baltimore: Underworld Amusements, 2017), 262.