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-The Project Gutenberg eBook of The place of the individual in society
-    
-This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
-most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
-whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
-of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online
-at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
-you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
-before using this eBook.
-
-Title: The place of the individual in society
-
-
-Author: Emma Goldman
-
-Release date: August 16, 2023 [eBook #71418]
-
-Language: English
-
-Original publication: Chicago: Free Society Forum, 1940
-
-Credits: Fritz Ohrenschall, Louise Pattison and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
-
-
-*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PLACE OF THE INDIVIDUAL IN SOCIETY ***
-
-
-
-
-
-                 _The_
-        PLACE OF THE INDIVIDUAL
-               IN SOCIETY
-
-    [Illustration: Author Photograph]
-
-            By EMMA GOLDMAN
-
-
-
-
-“NATIONALISM AND ITS RELATION TO CULTURE”
-
-_By_ RUDOLF ROCKER
-
-
-This profound work will revolutionize the intellectual world of thought
-by showing that the heretofore accepted notions as to the underlying
-causes of Social Phenomena are only partially true and therefore,
-inadequate to explain how social changes are affected.
-
-Many great thinkers have sought to formulate a “Philosophy of History”
-which would enable us to analyze and explain, as well as predict social
-and historical events. Buckle, Hegel, Marx and Spengler are just a few
-among the great thinkers who have contributed to this great task, but
-Rocker with his profound understanding and in his illuminating style
-shows why the “Hegelian Dialectics”, “Marx’s Economic Determinism” and
-“The Spenglerian Philosophy of Destiny” have failed.
-
-In this veritable encyclopedia of knowledge, we see before us, in a
-living procession, the great cultures of all ages. The thoughts and
-ideals of the Ancient Egyptians, Babylonians, Greeks and Romans become
-accessible to us with the same clarity and understanding as the thoughts
-and ideals of our contemporaries. No intelligent person regardless of
-his school of thought, can afford to miss reading this great work.
-
-“Nationalism and Its Relation to Culture” will be published in two
-volumes and sold at $7.50 for both volumes. We offer You this great work
-at a price of $5.00, if you SUBSCRIBE IN ADVANCE.
-
-This monumental work will soon be off the press. We urge you to send
-your subscriptions now--in advance. By so doing, you will help our
-committee complete the work and you will save $2.50.
-
-SUBSCRIBE TODAY.
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-Subscriptions can be mailed to the following committees:
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-    104 Fifth Avenue
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-    1038 S. Alvarado St.
-    Los Angeles, Calif.
-
-
-
-
-THE INDIVIDUAL, SOCIETY AND THE STATE
-
-By
-
-EMMA GOLDMAN
-
-
-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 =individual= 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 government, 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 “un-American” 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 consent
-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 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 government, 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 tolerate a similar authority or political power along-side of
-itself. The psychology of government 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 mast. 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 background 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 this 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
-“genius 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 co-operation 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 trans-valuation 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_, is 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.
-
-
-    This pamphlet is sponsored by the Free Society Forum
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-     “Bolshevism Promises and Reality”
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-     LIVING MY LIFE
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-Transcriber’s Note
-
-
-Obvious typographical errors corrected as follows:
-
-  On Page 3: ‘Is political goverment, is the State...’--corrected to
-      ‘government’.
-  On Page 10: ‘But for the “genuis of man,” that...’--corrected to
-      ‘genius’.
-  On Back Cover: ‘...most absorbing though.’--corrected to
-      ‘thought’.
-
-Punctuation errors corrected without note.
-
-Questionable spellings of ‘millenium’, ‘wilful’ and ‘wilfully’ retained.
-
-_Text_ denotes italic and =text= denotes bold in this e-text version.
-
-The title given on the cover of this Pamphlet and the title given on
-the first page are indeed different.
-
-
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