This paper seeks at clarify some of the main misunderstandings of Max Stirner’s political philosophy, namely its supposed commitment with a possessive (neo)liberalist individualism. Stirner’s social model, in particular, has been seen as an anticipation of the most extreme forms of (neo)liberal anti-egalitarianism and social conflict. Focusing on Stirner’s peculiar social theory I will demonstrate, on the contrary, that Stirner is a harsh critic of liberal model. I will claim, on the one hand, that Stirner’s social antagonism should not be seen as an advocacy for actual war, but rather as an ontological impossibility of any order or fixed meaning that encompasses society and ties the individual to social obligations; on the other, that Stirner’s anti-egalitarianism, far from being a justification of social differences, denounces equality as new, and most precise, technique of governmentality based on the negation of Uniqueness. I will finally sketch Stirner’s proposal of a Union of Egoists as an ethical as well as political way of giving account of being-with finally freed from any form of essentialism.

Stirner; liberalism; antagonism; equality; uniqueness; Union of Egoists.