Read Emma Goldman’s “Minorities vs. Majorities” Preview the document then address the following:
Is Goldman correct in her assertion that “individualism” was a myth in the United States in light of the economic/industrial revolution of her day and all that it brought with it?
Is Goldman correct in claiming that an unrestrained majority is a danger to society and to the rights of everybody within society?
How applicable are Goldman’s words and conclusions to the United States today?
Emma Goldman, Anarchism and Other Essays
(Third revised edition, New York: Mother Earth Publishing Association, 1917)
MINORITIES VERSUS MAJORITIES
IF I WERE to give a summary of the tendency of our times, I would say, Quantity. The multitude, the
mass spirit, dominates everywhere, destroying quality. Our entire life–production, politics, and
education–rests on quantity, on numbers. The worker who once took pride in the thoroughness and
quality of his work, has been replaced by brainless, incompetent automatons, who turn out enormous
quantities of things, valueless to themselves, and generally injurious to the rest of mankind. Thus
quantity, instead of adding to life’s comforts and peace, has merely increased man’s burden.
In politics, naught but quantity counts. In proportion to its increase, however, principles, ideals, justice,
and uprightness are completely swamped by the array of numbers. In the struggle for supremacy the
various political parties outdo each other in trickery, deceit, cunning, and shady machinations, confident
that the one who succeeds is sure to be hailed by the majority as the victor. That is the only god,–
Success. As to what expense, what terrible cost to character, is of no moment. We have not far to go in
search of proof to verify this sad fact.
Never before did the corruption, the complete rottenness of our government stand so thoroughly
exposed; never before were the American people brought face to face with the Judas nature of that
political body, which has claimed for years to be absolutely beyond reproach, as the mainstay of our
institutions, the true protector of the rights and liberties of the people.
Yet when the crimes of that party became so brazen that even the blind could see them, it needed but
to muster up its minions, and its supremacy was assured. Thus the very victims, duped, betrayed,
outraged a hundred times, decided, not against, but in favor of the victor. Bewildered, the few asked
how could the majority betray the traditions of American liberty? Where was its judgment, its reasoning
capacity? That is just it, the majority cannot reason; it has no judgment. Lacking utterly in originality and
moral courage, the majority has always placed its destiny in the hands of others. Incapable of standing
responsibilities, it has followed its leaders even unto destruction. Dr. Stockman was right: “The most
dangerous enemies of truth and justice in our midst are the compact majorities, the damned compact
majority.” Without ambition or initiative, the compact mass hates nothing so much as innovation. It has
always opposed, condemned, and hounded the innovator, the pioneer of a new truth.
The oft repeated slogan of our time is, among all politicians, the Socialists included, that ours is an era of
individualism, of the minority. Only those who do not probe beneath the surface might be led to
entertain this view. Have not the few accumulated the wealth of the world? Are they not the masters,
the absolute kings of the situation? Their success, however, is due not to individualism, but to the
inertia, the cravenness, the utter submission of the mass. The latter wants but to be dominated, to be
led, to be coerced. As to individualism, at no time in human history did it have less chance of expression,
less opportunity to assert itself in a normal, healthy manner.
The individual educator imbued with honesty of purpose, the artist or writer of original ideas, the
independent scientist or explorer, the non-compromising pioneers of social changes are daily pushed to
the wall by men whose learning and creative ability have become decrepit with age.
Educators of Ferrer’s type are nowhere tolerated, while the dietitians of predigested food, la Professors
Eliot and Butler, are the successful perpetuators of an age of nonentities, of automatons. In the literary
and dramatic world, the Humphrey Wards and Clyde Fitches are the idols of the mass, while but few
know or appreciate the beauty and genius of an Emerson, Thoreau, Whitman; an Ibsen, a Hauptmann, a
Butler Yeats, or a Stephen Phillips. They are like solitary stars, far beyond the horizon of the multitude.
Publishers, theatrical managers, and critics ask not for the quality inherent in creative art, but will it
meet with a good sale, will it suit the palate of the people? Alas, this palate is like a dumping ground; it
relishes anything that needs no mental mastication. As a result, the mediocre, the ordinary, the
commonplace represents the chief literary output.
Need I say that in art we are confronted with the same sad facts? One has but to inspect our parks and
thoroughfares to realize the hideousness and vulgarity of the art manufacture. Certainly, none but a
majority taste would tolerate such an outrage on art. False in conception and barbarous in execution,
the statuary that infests American cities has as much relation to true art, as a totem to a Michael Angelo.
Yet that is the only art that succeeds. The true artistic genius, who will not cater to accepted notions,
who exercises originality, and strives to be true to life, leads an obscure and wretched existence. His
work may some day become the fad of the mob, but not until his heart’s blood had been exhausted; not
until the pathfinder has ceased to be, and a throng of an idealles and visionless mob has done to death
the heritage of the master.
It is said that the artist of today cannot create because Prometheuslike he is bound to the rock of
economic necessity. This, however, is true of art in all ages. Michael Angelo was dependent on his
patron saint, no less than the sculptor or painter of today, except that the art connoisseurs of those days
were far away from the madding crowd. They felt honored to be permitted to worship at the shrine of
the master.
The art protector of our time knows but one criterion, one value,–the dollar. He is not concerned about
the quality of any great work, but in the quantity of dollars his purchase implies. Thus the financier in
Mirbeau’s Les Affaires sont les Affaires points to some blurred arrangement in colors, saying: “See how
great it is; it cost 50,000 francs.” Just like our own parvenus. The fabulous figures paid for their great art
discoveries must make up for the poverty of their taste.
The most unpardonable sin in society is independence of thought. That this should be so terribly
apparent in a country whose symbol is democracy, is very significant of the tremendous power of the
majority.
Wendell Phillips said fifty years ago: “In our country of absolute, democratic equality, public opinion is
not only omnipotent, it is omnipresent. There is no refuge from its tyranny, there is no hiding from its
reach, and the result is that if you take the old Greek lantern and go about to seek among a hundred,
you will not find a single American who has not, or who does not fancy at least he has, something to
gain or lose in his ambition, his social life, or business, from the good opinion and the votes of those
around him. And the consequence is that instead of being a mass of individuals, each one fearlessly
blurting out his own conviction, as a nation compared to other nations we are a mass of cowards. More
than any other people we are afraid of each other.” Evidently we have not advanced very far from the
condition that confronted Wendell Phillips.
Today, as then, public opinion is the omnipresent tyrant; today, as then, the majority represents a mass
of cowards, willing to accept him who mirrors its own soul and mind poverty. That accounts for the
unprecedented rise of a man like Roosevelt. He embodies the very worst element of mob psychology. A
politician, he knows that the majority cares little for ideals or integrity. What it craves is display. It
matters not whether that be a dog show, a prize fight, the lynching of a “nigger,” the rounding up of
some petty offender, the marriage exposition of an heiress, or the acrobatic stunts of an ex-president.
The more hideous the mental contortions, the greater the delight and bravos of the mass. Thus, poor in
ideals and vulgar of soul, Roosevelt continues to be the man of the hour.
On the other hand, men towering high above such political pygmies, men of refinement, of culture, of
ability, are jeered into silence as mollycoddles. It is absurd to claim that ours is the era of individualism.
Ours is merely a more poignant repetition of the phenomenon of all history: every effort for progress,
for enlightenment, for science, for religious, political, and economic liberty, emanates from the minority,
and not from the mass. Today, as ever, the few are misunderstood, hounded, imprisoned, tortured, and
killed.
The principle of brotherhood expounded by the agitator of Nazareth preserved the germ of life, of truth
and justice, so long as it was the beacon light of the few. The moment the majority seized upon it, that
great principle became a shibboleth and harbinger of blood and fire, spreading suffering and disaster.
The attack on the omnipotence of Rome, led by the colossal figures of Huss, Calvin, and Luther, was like
a sunrise amid the darkness of the night. But so soon as Luther and Calvin turned politicians and began
catering to the small potentates, the nobility, and the mob spirit, they jeopardized the great possibilities
of the Reformation. They won success and the majority, but that majority proved no less cruel and
bloodthirsty in the persecution of thought and reason than was the Catholic monster. Woe to the
heretics, to the minority, who would not bow to its dicta. After infinite zeal, endurance, and sacrifice,
the human mind is at last free from the religious phantom; the minority has gone on in pursuit of new
conquests, and the majority is lagging behind, handicapped by truth grown false with age.
Politically the human race would still be in the most absolute slavery, were it not for the John Balls, the
Wat Tylers, the Tells, the innumerable individual giants who fought inch by inch against the power of
kings and tyrants. But for individual pioneers the world would have never been shaken to its very roots
by that tremendous wave, the French Revolution. Great events are usually preceded by apparently small
things. Thus the eloquence and fire of Camille Desmoulins was like the trumpet before Jericho, razing to
the ground that emblem of torture, of abuse, of horror, the Bastille.
Always, at every period, the few were the banner bearers of a great idea, of liberating effort. Not so the
mass, the leaden weight of which does not let it move. The truth of this is borne out in Russia with
greater force than elsewhere. Thousands of lives have already been consumed by that bloody regime,
yet the monster on the throne is not appeased. How is such a thing possible when ideas, culture,
literature, when the deepest and finest emotions groan under the iron yoke? The majority, that
compact, immobile, drowsy mass, the Russian peasant, after a century of struggle, of sacrifice, of untold
misery, still believes that the rope which strangles “the man with the white hands” * brings luck.
In the American struggle for liberty, the majority was no less of a stumbling block. Until this very day the
ideas of Jefferson, of Patrick Henry, of Thomas Paine, are denied and sold by their posterity. The mass
wants none of them. The greatness and courage worshipped in Lincoln have been forgotten in the men
who created the background for the panorama of that time. The true patron saints of the black men
were represented in that handful of fighters in Boston, Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips, Thoreau,
Margaret Fuller, and Theodore Parker, whose great courage and sturdiness culminated in that somber
giant John Brown. Their untiring zeal, their eloquence and perseverance undermined the stronghold of
the Southern lords. Lincoln and his minions followed only when abolition had become a practical issue,
recognized as such by all.
About fifty years ago, a meteorlike idea made its appearance on the social horizon of the world, an idea
so far-reaching, so revolutionary, so all-embracing as to spread terror in the hearts of tyrants
everywhere. On the other hand, that idea was a harbinger of joy, of cheer, of hope to the millions. The
pioneers knew the difficulties in their way, they knew the opposition, the persecution, the hardships
that would meet them, but proud and unafraid they started on their march onward, ever onward. Now
that idea has become a popular slogan. Almost everyone is a Socialist today: the rich man, as well as his
poor victim; the upholders of law and authority, as well as their unfortunate culprits; the freethinker, as
well as the perpetuator of religious falsehoods; the fashionable lady, as well as the shirtwaist girl. Why
not? Now that the truth of fifty years ago has become a lie, now that it has been clipped of all its
youthful imagination, and been robbed of its vigor, its strength, its revolutionary ideal–why not? Now
that it is no longer a beautiful vision, but a “practical, workable scheme,” resting on the will of the
majority, why not? Political cunning ever sings the praise of the mass: the poor majority, the outraged,
the abused, the giant majority, if only it would follow us.
Who has not heard this litany before? Who does not know this never-varying refrain of all politicians?
That the mass bleeds, that it is being robbed and exploited, I know as well as our vote-baiters. But I insist
that not the handful of parasites, but the mass itself is responsible for this horrible state of affairs. It
clings to its masters, loves the whip, and is the first to cry Crucify! the moment a protesting voice is
raised against the sacredness of capitalistic authority or any other decayed institution. Yet how long
would authority and private property exist, if not for the willingness of the mass to become soldiers,
policemen, jailers, and hangmen. The Socialist demagogues know that as well as I, but they maintain the
myth of the virtues of the majority, because their very scheme of life means the perpetuation of power.
And how could the latter be acquired without numbers? Yes, authority, coercion, and dependence rest
on the mass, but never freedom or the free unfoldment of the individual, never the birth of a free
society.
Not because I do not feel with the oppressed, the disinherited of the earth; not because I do not know
the shame, the horror, the indignity of the lives the people lead, do I repudiate the majority as a creative
force for good. Oh, no, no! But because I know so well that as a compact mass it has never stood for
justice or equality. It has suppressed the human voice, subdued the human spirit, chained the human
body. As a mass its aim has always been to make life uniform, gray, and monotonous as the desert. As a
mass it will always be the annihilator of individuality, of free initiative, of originality. I therefore believe
with Emerson that “the masses are crude, lame, pernicious in their demands and influence, and need
not to be flattered, but to be schooled. I wish not to concede anything to them, but to drill, divide, and
break them up, and draw individuals out of them. Masses! The calamity are the masses. I do not wish
any mass at all, but honest men only, lovely, sweet, accomplished women only.”
In other words, the living, vital truth of social and economic well-being will become a reality only
through the zeal, courage, the non-compromising determination of intelligent minorities, and not
through the mass.
Sample Solution
