The Individual, Society and the State
Emma Goldman
[1940]
The minds of men are in confusion, for the very foundations of our
civilization seem to be tottering. People are losing faith in the
existing institutions, and the more intelligent realize that
capitalist industrialism is defeating the very purpose it is
supposed to serve.
The world is at a loss for a way out. Parliamentarism and
democracy are on the decline. Salvation is being sought in Fascism
and other forms of "strong" government.
The struggle of opposing ideas now going on in the world involves
social problems urgently demanding a solution. The welfare of the
individual and the fate of human society depend on the right answer
to those questions The crisis, unemployment, war, disarmament,
international relations, etc., are among those problems.
The State, government with its functions and powers, is now the
subject of vital interest to every thinking man. Political
developments in all civilized countries have brought the questions
home. Shall we have a strong government? Are democracy and
parliamentary government to be preferred, or is Fascism of one kind
or another, dictatorship -- monarchical, bourgeois or proletarian --
the solution of the ills and difficulties that beset society today?
In other words, shall we cure the evils of democracy by more
democracy, or shall we cut the Gordian knot of popular government
with the sword of dictatorship?
My answer is neither the one nor the other. I am against
dictatorship and Fascism as I am opposed to parliamentary regimes
and so-called political democracy.
Nazism has been justly called an attack on civilization. This
characterization applies with equal force to every form of
dictatorship; indeed, to every kind of suppression and coercive
authority. For what is civilization in the true sense? All progress
has been essentially an enlargement of the liberties of the
individual with a corresponding decrease of the authority wielded
over him by external forces. This holds good in the realm of
physical as well as of political and economic existence. In the
physical world man has progressed to the extent in which he has
subdued the forces of nature and made them useful to himself.
Primitive man made a step on the road to progress when he first
produced fire and thus triumphed over darkness, when he chained the
wind or harnessed water.
What role did authority or government play in human endeavor for
betterment, in invention and discovery? None whatever, or at least
none that was helpful. It has always been the indivitual that has
accomplished every miracle in that sphere, usually in spite of the
prohibition, persecution and interference by authority, human and
divine.
Similarly, in the political sphere, the road of progress lay in
getting away more and more from the authority of the tribal chief or
of the clan, of prince and king, of government, of the State.
Economically, progress has meant greater well-being of ever larger
numbers. Culturally, it has signified the result of all the other
achievements -- greater independence, political, mental and psychic.
Regarded from this angle, the problems of man's relation to the
State assumes an entirely different significance. It is no more a
question of whether dictatorship is preferable to democracy, or
Italian Fascism superior to Hitlerism. A larger and far more vital
question poses itself: Is political goverment, is the State
beneficial to mankind, and how does it affect the individual in the
social scheme of things?
The individual is the true reality in life. A cosmos in himself,
he does not exist for the State, nor for that abstraction called "society,"
or the "nation," which is only a collection of
individuals. Man, the individual, has always been and, necessarily
is the sole source and motive power of evolution and progress.
Civilization has been a continuous struggle of the individual or of
groups of individuals against the State and even against "society,"
that is, against the majority subdued and hypnotized by the State
and State worship. Man's greatest battles have been waged against
man-made obstacles and artificial handicaps imposed upon him to
paralyze his growth and development. Human thought has always been
falsified by tradition and custom, and perverted false education in
the interests of those who held power and enjoyed privileges. In
other words, by the State and the ruling classes. This constant
incessant conflict has been the history of mankind.
Individuality may be described as the consciousness of the
individual as to what he is and how he lives. It is inherent in
every human being and is a thing of growth. The State and social
institutions come and go, but individuality remains and persists.
The very essence of individuality is expression; the sense of
dignity and independence is the soil wherein it thrives.
Individuality is not the impersonal and mechanistic thing that the
State treats as an "individual". The individual is not
merely the result of heredity and environment, of cause and effect.
He is that and a great deal more, a great deal else. The living man
cannot be defined; he is the fountain-head of all life and all
values; he is not a part of this or of that; he is a whole, an
individual whole, a growing, changing, yet always constant whole.
Individuality is not to be confused with the various ideas and
concepts of Individualism; much less with that "rugged
individualism" which is only a masked attempt to repress and
defeat the individual and his individuality So-called Individualism
is the social and economic laissez faire: the exploitation of the
masses by the classes by means of legal trickery, spiritual
debasement and systematic indoctrination of the servile spirit,
which process is known as "education." That corrupt and
perverse "individualism" is the strait-jacket of
individuality. It has converted life into a degrading race for
externals, for possession, for social prestige and supremacy. Its
highest wisdom is "the devil take the hindmost."
This "rugged individualism" has inevitably resulted in
the greatest modern slavery, the crassest class distinctions,
driving millions to the breadline. "Rugged individualism"
has meant all the "individualism" for the masters, while
the people are regimented into a slave caste to serve a handful of
self-seeking "supermen." America is perhaps the best
representative of this kind of individualism, in whose name
political tyranny and social oppression are defended and held up as
virtues; while every aspiration and attempt of man to gain freedom
and social opportunity to live is denounced as "unAmerican"
and evil in the name of that same individualism.
There was a time when the State was unknown. In his natural
condition man existed without any State or organized government.
People lived as families in small communities; They tilled the soil
and practiced the arts and crafts. The individual, and later the
family, was the unit of social life where each was free and the
equal of his neighbor. Human society then was not a State but an
association; a voluntary association for mutual protection and
benefit. The elders and more experienced members were the guides and
advisers of the people. They helped to manage the affairs of life,
not to rule and dominate the individual.
Political government and the State were a much later development,
growing out of the desire of the stronger to take advantage of the
weaker, of the few against the many. The State, ecclesiastical and
secular, served to give an appearance of legality and right to the
wrong done by the few to the many. That appearance of right was
necessary the easier to rule the people, because no government can
exist without the consent of the people, consent open, tacit or
assumed. Constitutionalism and democracy are the modern forms of
that alleged consent; the concent being inoculated and indoctrinated
by what is called "education," at home, in the church, and
in every other phase of life.
That consent is the belief in authority, in the necessity for it.
At its base is the doctrine that man is evil, vicious, and too
incompetent to know what is good for him. On this all government and
oppression is built. God and the State exist and are supported by
this dogma.
Yet the State is nothing but a name. It is an abstraction. Like
other similar conceptions--nation, race, humanity--it has no organic
reality. To call the State an organism shows a diseased tendency to
make a fetish of words.
The State is a term for the legislative and administrative
machinery whereby certain business of the people is transacted, and
badly so. There is nothing sacred, holy or mysterious about it. The
State has no more conscience or moral mission than a commercial
company for working a coal mine or running a railroad.
The State has no more existence than gods and devils have. They
are equally the reflex and creation of man, for man, the individual,
is the only reality. The State is but the shadow of man, the shadow
of his opaqueness of his ignorance and fear.
Life begins and ends with man, the individual. Without him there
is no race, no humanity, no State. No, not even "society"
is possible without man. It is the individual who lives, breathes
and suffers. His development, his advance, has been a continuous
struggle against the fetishes of his own creation and particularly
so against the "State."
In former days religious authority fashioned political life in the
image of the Church. The authority of the State, the "rights"
of rulers came from on high; power, like faith, was divine.
Philosophers have written thick volumes to prove the sanctity of the
State; some have even clad it with infallibility and with god-like
attributes Some have talked themselves into the insane notion that
the State is "superhuman," the supreme reality, "the
absolute."
Enquiry was condemned as blasphemy. Servitude was the highest
virtue. By such precepts and training certain things came to be
regarded as self-evident, as sacred of their truth ,but [sic]
because of constant and persistent repetition.
All progress has been essentially an unmasking of "divinity"
and "mystery," of alleged sacred, eternal "truth";
it has been a gradual elimination of the abstract and the
substitution in its place of the real, the concrete. In short, of
facts against fancy, of knowledge against ignorance, of light
against darkness.
That slow and arduous liberation of the individual was not
accomplished by the aid of the State. On the contrary, it was by
continuous conflict, by a life-and death struggle with the State,
that even the smallest vestige of independence and freedom has been
won. It has cost mankind much time and blood to secure what little
it has gained so far from kings, tsars and governments.
The great heroic figure of that long Golgotha has been Man. It has
always been the individual, often alone and singly, at other times
in unity and co-operation with others of his kind, who has fought
and bled in the age-long battle against suppression and oppression,
against the powers that enslave and degrade him.
More than that and more significant: It was man, the individual,
whose soul first rebelled against injustice and degradation; it was
the individual who first conceived the idea of resistance to the
conditions under which he chafed. In short, it is always the
individual who is the parent of the liberating thought as well as of
the deed.
This refers not only to political struggles, but to the entire
gamut of human life and effort, in all ages and climes. It has
always been the individual, the man of strong mind and will to
liberty, who paved the way for every human advance, for every step
toward a freer and better world; in science, philosophy and art, as
well as in industry, whose genius rose to the heights, conceiving
the "impossible," visualizing its realization and imbuing
others with his enthusiasm to work and strive for it. Socially
speaking, it was always the prophet, the seer, the idealist, who
dreamed of a world more to his heart's desire and who served as the
beacon light on the road to greater achievement.
The State, every government whatever its form, character or
color--be it absolute or constitutional, monarchy or republic,
Fascist, Nazi or Bolshevik-- is by its very nature conservative,
static, intolerant of change and opposed to it. Whatever changes it
undergoes are always the result of pressure exerted upon it,
pressure strong enough to compel the ruling powers to submit
peaceably or otherwise, generally "otherwise"--that is, by
revolution. Moreover, the inherent conservatism of govemment, of
authority of any kind, unavoidably becomes reactionary. For two
reasons: first, because it is in the nature of government not only
to retain the power it has, but also to strengthen, widen and
perpetuate it, nationally as well as internationally. The stronger
authority grows, the greater the State and its power, the less it
can tolelate a similar authority or political power along side of
itself. The psychology of govemment demands that its influence and
prestige constantly grow, at home and abroad, and it exploits every
opportunity to increase it. This tendency is motivated by the
financial and commercial interests back of the government,
represented and served by it. The fundamental raison d'etre of every
government to which, incidentally, historians of former days
wilfully shut their eyes, has become too obvious now even for
professors to ignore.
The other factor which impels governments to become even more
conservative and reactionary is their inherent distrust of the
individual and fear of individuality. Our political and social
scheme cannot afford to tolerate the individual and his constant
quest for innovation. In "self-defense" the State
therefore suppresses, persecutes, punishes and even deprives the
individual of life. It is aided in this by every institution that
stands for the preservation of the existing order. It resorts to
every form of violence and force, and its efforts are supported by
the "moral indignation" of the majority against the
heretic, the social dissenter and the political rebel--the majority
for centuries drilled in State worship, trained in discipline and
obedience and subdued by the awe of authority in the home, the
school, the church and the press.
The strongest bulwark of authority is uniformity; the least
divergence from it is the greatest crime. The wholesale
mechanisation of modern life has increased uniformity a
thousandfold. It is everywhere present, in habits, tastes, dress,
thoughts and ideas. Its most concentrated dullness is "public
opinion." Few have the courage to stand out against it. He who
refuses to submit is at once labelled "queer," "different,"
and decried as a disturbing element in the comfortable stagnancy of
modern life.
Perhaps even more than constituted authority, it is social
uniformity and sameness that harass the individual most. His very "uniqueness,"
"separateness" and "differentiation" make him an
alien, not only in his native place, but even in his own home. Often
more so than the foreign born who generally falls in with the
established.
In the true sense one's native land, with its back ground of
tradition, early impressions, reminiscences and other things dear to
one, is not enough to make sensitive human beings feel at home. A
certain atmosphere of "belonging," the consciousness of
being "at one" with the people and environment, is more
essential to one's feeling of home. This holds good in relation to
one's family, the smaller local circle, as well as the larger phase
of the life and activities commonly called one's country. The
individual whose vision encompasses the whole world often feels
nowhere so hedged in and out of touch with his surroundings than in
his native land.
In pre-war time the individual could at least escape national and
family boredom. The whole world was open to his longings and his
quests. Now the world has become a prison, and life continual
solitary confinement. Especially is this true since the advent of
dictatorship, right and left.
Friedrich Nietzsche called the State a cold monster. What would he
have called the hideous beast in the garb of modern dictatorship?
Not that government had ever allowed much scope to the individual;
but the champions of the new State ideology do not grant even that
much. "The individual is nothing," they declare, "it
is the collectivity which counts." Nothing less than the
complete surrender of the individual will satisfy the insatiable
appetite of the new deity.
Strangely enough, the loudest advocates of thig new gospel are to
be found among the British and American intelligentsia. Just now
they are enamored with the "dictatorship of the proletariat."
In theory only, to be sure. In practice, they still prefer the few
liberties in their own respective countries. They go to Russia for a
short visit or as salesmen of the "revolution," but they
feel safer and more comfortable at home.
Perhaps it is not only lack of courage which keeps these good
Britishers and Americans in their native lands rather than in the
millenium come. Subconsciously there may lurk the feeling that
individuality remains the most fundamental fact of all human
association, suppressed and persecuted yet never defeated, and in
the long run the victor.
The "genius of man," which is but another name for
personality and individuality, bores its way through all the caverns
of dogma, through the thick walls of tradition and custom, defying
all taboos, setting authority at naught, facing contumely and the
scaffold -- ultimately to be blessed as prophet and martyr by
succeeding generations. But for the "genuis of man," that
inherent, persistent quality of individuality, we would be still
roaming the primeval forests.
Peter Kropotkin has shown what wonderful results this unique
force of man's individuality has achieved when strengthened by
co-operation with other individualities. The one-sided and entirely
inadequate Darwinian theory of the struggle for existence received
its biological and sociological completion from the great Anarchist
scientist and thinker. In his profound work, Mutual Aid
Kropotkin shows that in the animal kingdom, as well as in human
society, co-operation--as opposed to internecine strife and
struggle-- has worked for the survival and evolution of the species.
He demonstrated that only mutual aid and voluntary co-operation--
not the omnipotent, all-devastating State--can create the basis for
a free individual and associational life.
At present the individual is the pawn of the zealots of
dictatorship and the equally obsessed zealots of "rugged
individualism." The excuse of the former is its claim of a new
objective. The latter does not even make a pretense of anything new.
As a matter of fact "rugged individualism'' has learned nothing
and forgotten nothing. Under its guidance the brute struggle for
physical existence is still kept up. Strange as it may seem, and
utterly absurd as it is, the struggle for physical survival goes
merrily on though the necessity for it has entirely disappeared.
Indeed, the struggle is being continued apparently because there is
no necessity for it. Does not so-called overproduction prove it? Is
not the world-wide economic crisis an eloquent demonstration that
the struggle for existence is being maintained by the blindness of "rugged
individualism" at the risk of its own destruction?
One of the insane characteristics of this struggle is the complete
negation of the relation of the producer to the things he produces.
The average worker has no inner point of contact with the industry
he is employed in, and he is a stranger to the process of production
of which he is a mechanical part. Like any other cog of the machine,
he is replaceable at any time by other similar depersonalized human
beings.
The intellectual proletarian, though he foolishly thinks himself a
free agent, is not much better off. He, too, has a little choice or
self-direction, in his particular metier as his brother who works
with his hands. Material considerations and desire for greater
social prestige are usually the deciding factors in the vocation of
the intellectual. Added to it is the tendency to follow in the
footsteps of family tradition, and become doctors, lawyers,
teachers, engineers, etc. The groove requires less effort and
personality. In consequence nearly everybody is out of place in our
present scheme of things. The masses plod on, partly because their
senses have been dulled by the deadly routine of work and because
they must eke out an existence. This applies with even greater force
to the political fabric of today. There is no place in its texture
for free choice of independent thought and activity. There is a
place only for voting and tax-paying puppets.
The interests of the State and those of the individual differ
fundamentally and are antagonistic. The State and the political and
economic institutions it supports can exist only by fashioning the
individual to their particular purpose; training him to respect
''law and order;" teaching him obedience, submission and
unquestioning faith in the wisdom and justice of government; above
all, loyal service and complete self-sacrifice when the State
commands it, as in war. The State puts itself and its interests even
above the claims of religion and of God. It punishes religious or
conscientious scruples against individuality because there is no
individuality without liberty, and liberty is the greatest menace to
authority.
The struggle of the individual against these tremendous odds is
the more difficult--too often dangerous to life and limb--because it
is not truth or falsehood which serves as the criterion of the
opposition he meets. It is not the validity or usefulness of his
thought or activity which rouses against him the forces of the State
and of "public opinion.'' The persecution of the innovator and
protestant has always been inspired by fear on the part of
constituted authority of having its infallibility questioned and its
power undermined.
Man's true liberation, individual and collective, lies in his
emancipation from authority and from the belief in it. All human
evolution has been a struggle in that direction and for that object.
It is not invention and mechanics which constitute development. The
ability to travel at the rate of 100 miles an hour is no evidence of
being civilized. True civilization is to be measured by the
individual, the unit of all social life; by his individuality and
the extent to which it is free to have its being to grow and expand
unhindered by invasive and coercive authority.
Socially speaking, the criterion of civilization and culture is
the degree of liberty and economic opportunity which the individual
enjoys; of social and international unity and co-operation
unrestricted by man-made laws and other artificial obstacles; by the
absence of privileged castes and by the reality of liberty and human
dignity; in short, by the true emancipation of the individual.
Political absolutism has been abolished because men have realized
in the course of time that absolute power is evil and destructive.
But the same thing is true of all power, whether it be the power of
privilege, of money, of the priest, of the politician or of
so-called democracy. In its effect on individuality it matters
little what the particular character of coercion is--whether it be
as black as Fascism, as yellow as Nazism or as pretentiously red as
Bolshevism. It is power that corrupts and degrades both master and
slave and it makes no difference whether the power is wielded by an
autocrat, by parliament or Soviets. More pernicious than the power
of a dictator is that of a class; the most terrible--the tyranny of
a majority.
The long process of history has taught man that division and
strife mean death, and that unity and cooperation advance his cause,
multiply his strength and further his welfare. The spirit of
government has always worked against the social application of this
vital lesson, except where it served the State and aided its own
particular interests. It is this anti-progressive and anti-social
spirit of the State and of the privileged castes back of it which
has been responsible for the bitter struggle between man and man.
The individual and ever larger groups of individuals are beginning
to see beneath the surface of the established order of things. No
longer are they so blinded as in the past by the glare and tinsel of
the State idea, and of the ''blessings'' of ''rugged individualism."
Man is reaching out for the wider scope of human relations which
liberty alone can give. For true liberty is not a mere scrap of
paper called ''constitution,'' "legal right'' or "law."
It is not an abstraction derived from the non-reality known as "the
State." It is not the negative thing of being free from
something, because with such freedom you may starve to death. Real
freedom, true liberty is positive: it is freedom to something; it is
the liberty to be, to do; in short, the liberty of actual and active
opportunity.
That sort of liberty is not a gift: it is the natural right of
man, of every human being. It cannot be given: it cannot be
conferred by any law or government. The need of it, the longing for
it, is inherent in the individual. Disobedience to every form of
coercion is the instinctive expression of it. Rebellion and
revolution are the more or less conscious attempt to achieve it.
Those manifestations, individual and social, are fundamentally
expressions of the values of man. That those values may be nurtured,
the community must realize that its greatest and most lasting asset
is the unit -- the individual.
In religion, as in politics, people speak of abstractions and
believe they are dealing with realities. But when it does come to
the real and the concrete, most people seem to lose vital touch with
it. It may well be because reality alone is too matter-of-fact, too
cold to enthuse the human soul. It can be aroused to enthusiasm only
by things out of the commonplace, out of the ordinary. In other
words, the Ideal is the spark that fires the imagination and hearts
of men. Some ideal is needed to rouse man out of the inertia and
humdrum of his existence and turn the abject slave into an heroic
figure.
Right here, of course, comes the Marxist objector who has
outmarxed Marx himself. To such a one, man is a mere puppet in the
hands of that metaphysical Almighty called economic determinism or,
more vulgarly, the class struggle. Man's will, individual and
collective, his psychic life and mental orientation count for almost
nothing with our Marxist and do not affect his conception of human
history.
No intelligent student will deny the importance of the economic
factor in the social growth and development of mankind. But only
narrow and wilful dogmatism can persist in remaining blind to the
important role played by an idea as conceived by the imagination and
aspirations of the individual.
It were vain and unprofitable to attempt to balance one factor as
against another in human experience. No one single factor in the
complex of individual or social behavior can be designated as the
factor of decisive quality. We know too little, and may never know
enough, of human psychology to weigh and measure the relative values
of this or that factor in determining man's conduct. To form such
dogmas in their social connotation is nothing short of bigotry; yet,
perhaps, it has its uses, for the very attempt to do so proved the
persistence of the human will and confutes the Marxists.
Fortunately even some Marxists are beginning to see that all is
not well with the Marxian creed. After all, Marx was but human --
all too human -- hence by no means infallible. The practical
application of economic determinism in Russia is helping to clear
the minds of the more intelligent Marxists. This can be seen in the
transvaluation of Marxian values going on in Socialist and even
Communist ranks in some European countries. They are slowly
realising that their theory has overlooked the human element, den
Menschen, as a Socialist paper put it. Important as the economic
factor is, it is not enough. The rejuvenation of mankind needs the
inspiration and energising force of an ideal.
Such an ideal I see in Anarchism. To be sure, not in the popular
misrepresentations of Anarchism spread by the worshippers of the
State and authority. I mean the philosophy of a new social order
based on the released energies of the individual and the free
association of liberated individuals.
Of all social theories Anarchism alone steadfastly proclaims that
society exists for man, not man for society. The sole legitimate
purpose of society is to serve the needs and advance the aspiration
of the individual. Only by doing so can it justify its existence and
be an aid to progress and culture.
The political parties and men savagely scrambling for power will
scorn me as hopelessly out of tune with our time. I cheerfully admit
the charge. I find comfort in the assurance that their hysteria
lacks enduring quality. Their hosanna is but of the hour.
Man's yearning for liberation from all authority and power will
never be soothed by their cracked song. Man's quest for freedom from
every shackle is eternal. It must and will go on.