Thoughts on Emma Goldman

The library in Gifu prefecture actually has a copy of Emma Goldman’s autobiography, which I’ve managed to get my grubby hands on. I’ve not finished it yet, but I can’t recommend it highly enough if any of you are near a library that holds a copy. (There's a free copy online here actually, if you like reading books on computer.)

When I finally finish the whole thing, I’ll probably write up another review for Media Mouse. In the meantime I’ll abuse the patience of my readers by just posting thoughts as they come to me.

In her book Goldman describes the attempted assassination of Henry Clay Frick in 1892 by her lover Alexander Berkman (for which Emma provided the money for the gun). Emma defends this with the following quotation, “…did not the end justify the means? Our end was the sacred cause of the oppressed and exploited people. It was for them that we were going to give our lives. What if a few should have to perish?—the many would be made free and could live in beauty and in comfort. Yes, the end in this case justified the means.” In fact the words “the end justifies the means” appear several times in Goldman’s book.

I, like most people, flinch whenever I see the phrase, “the end justifies the means.” But my first thought was that 1892 is different than 2005. Certainly the bloody history of the past 100 years, the holocaust, the gulags, the atomic bombs, and the terrorists attacks, have taught us that however noble you believe your cause to be, you have to be careful about the means you use to pursue it. In 1892, perhaps this was less clear.

My second thought is that most people actually do believe “the ends justify the means.” Of course we all recoil when we see it unapologetically in print, as it seems to recall Machiavelli, the Soviet 5 year plan, and all the worst aspects of Western philosophy. But if you closely examine the political philosophy of the average American, they believe very strongly that the ends justify the means. They just lack the intellectual honesty of Emma Goldman to state so directly.

For instance almost no one believes that war is inherently a good thing. Even Hitler declared that he wished nothing but peace. But many people are willing to support war to achieve what they believe is a greater good. Therefore the 75% of Americans who initially supported the Iraq War believe on some level that the ends do justify the means. Anyone who supported the carpet-bombing of North Vietnam, or the nuclear bombs dropped on Japan, believes the ends justify the means. Of course we all flinch when we see the phrase boldly and unapologetically stated, but for most people this belief underlies their philosophy.

But of course, anarchists make easy targets when they state so directly. When I was a Calvin student, “The Banner” ran an article criticizing Emma Goldman. The article seemed to come out of nowhere (Emma Goldman was not exactly a hot news topic at the time, and the quote was 70 years old) but anarchists made easy targets.

The article cited a anti-government quotation from Emma Goldman during the 1930s, and then said that Emma Goldman seemed like a spoiled child who only wanted the freedom to do what she wanted, and that she didn’t understand her responsibility to society went hand in hand with individual freedom.

I wrote a long letter to the editor saying that Emma Goldman was a social anarchist, and so to criticize her for excessive individualism showed an appalling lack of understanding about the difference between social anarchism and individual anarchism. Also the 1930s saw the rise of Fascism and Stalinism, so Emma Goldman’s fears about excessive government powers should be put in context.

The Banner actually printed a portion of my letter. It also printed a couple other letters arguing similar points. Buma, who worked as an intern for “The Banner” that summer, told me they were actually flooded with letters saying the author of the article didn’t know what she was talking about. Who knew so many anarchists read “The Banner”?

Anyway, the point is people like Emma Goldman seem to make easy targets whenever a magazine like “The Banner” is looking for a soft punching bag. Since “The Banner” seems to be in the habit of resurrecting obscure quotes from Emma Goldman and writing polemics against them, one can easily imagine, “the ends justify the means” being held up as an example of the violence of anarchism, without any corresponding reference made to state violence.

This is the way we are trained to think. In the recent documentary “The Weather Underground”, Mark Rudd says that the Weathermen failed to gain support because it is so strongly ingrained in the American psyche that institutional violence is acceptable, individual violence is not. That is why the massive bombing of civilians in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia did not disturb people as much as the Weather Underground’s symbolic bombing of the Pentagon (which killed no one).

Or in Japan, the anarchist movement was characterized as violent because of attempts to assassinate the emperor, and the actual assassination of a few government officials in the 1920s. But a few years later the US, in its war against Imperial Japan, would kill millions of men women and children, and this is thought to be the acceptable cost of war.

So which is really more violent, anarchism or bourgeois democracy? Anarchists have not dropped nuclear bombs, or carpet-bombed civilian populations. And yet the dominant perception of anarchism is one of violence.

This was true in Emma Goldman’s time as well. There was widespread repression of anarchists after the assassination of President McKinley by nominal anarchist Leon Czolgosz. (Although Czolgosz was only on the fringes of the anarchist movement. He had failed to integrate himself into any actual anarchist groups because they thought he was a police spy).

Emma Goldman was imprisoned and tried in connection with McKinley’s assassination. When reporters interviewed her about the death of McKinley, she replied “is it possible that in the entire United States only the President passed away on this day? Surely many others have also died at the same time, perhaps in poverty and destitution, leaving helpless dependents behind. Why do you expect me to feel more regret over the death of McKinley than of the rest?”

But given the way anarchism has been villianized in the mainstream press, both in Emma Goldman’s time and in ours, the attitude of the mainstream USA seems to be anyone who supports a philosophy that leads to the assassination of one man is inhuman, anyone who supports a philosophy that drops two nuclear bombs on civilian cities is a patriot.

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