Prologue:
Reading an essay like Emma Goldman’s Minorities versus Majorities (1917) is a reminder that despite the techno leaps over the last hundred years we’re still dealing with many of the same socio-economic issues now as we were a century ago. A hundred years from now if we have not found a cure for this undignified and unsustainable way of life there will likely be no one left to frustratingly note how little has changed for the better in our society.
She doesn’t speak about minorities in the traditional sense, as she does not mean to say minorities based in identity or in a Randian sense of the ruling elites being minorities, but minorities in thought. Minorities who fall into the category of dissidents who offer alternatives to our present model of thinking and are sometimes labeled as unrealistic even when what is being proposed can be quite reasonable relative to the environmentally destructive and cruel ways we have adopted as a culture.
Goldman is critical of the unthinking majorities for stomping out individual creativity with the unending demands for conformity by the masses, or compact majorities as she labels them. The poorly reasoned majorities at times seem incapable of rational thought who start debate with arrogant ignorance and ends them with the intellectual cowardice of “agreeing to disagree.”
The masses today venerate the bread and circuses more than ever because it’s all they have left. The distraction engines must be revved up to full tilt to allay the suffering of the reality that they are wasting their lives staring at phones and puttering away at jobs which destroy our own habitat while providing little value to anyone. Our communities have degraded into stamped out cloned prefabricated corporate boredom. Alienation and isolation are rampant, shame is high, dignity low, and what is left is a cacophony of loneliness.
The majorities behave like children well into adulthood because they have been conditioned to behave as such and have never had a shot at true autonomy in their overly rushed lives and subsequently fall into a state of learned helplessness. They are kept by and reliant on a capitalist system comprised of banks, corporations, and government institutions that wield power over their daily existence which most are powerless to stand against due to the sense of helplessness they remain unable to change primarily because they don’t think it’s possible.
The mundane is the status quo while a hypnotic listlessness erodes our collective creativity. We have lost most of our inclinations to be artists and artisans who are coldly replaced by cloned replicated algorithms. The attention to detail and creative instincts sacrificed in the name of profit margins.
Our lives are planned before we are born as we spend our time conforming to societal norms that entrap us instead of providing what our well meaning yet myopic parental units intended, which was to give a “head start” to their children. A head start children have no say in, but serves the demands of the masses who are ever instant upon running off a cliff with great expediency doing what is expected of them. The American dream is nothing but an operating system for the status quo – The typical assumption of each of us is to go to public school, then off to college, and then to a job, marriage, mortgage, children, retirement, #WastedLife. The great irony is a large percentage of the masses are aware how unsatisfying their own lives are, but that doesn’t stop them for setting their own children in the same direction or suggesting others do the same. Misery does in fact love company.
Majorities are in desperate need of a triage of values. However when they’re fed a consistent diet of lies their opinions more often reflect the lies than underlying buried truth. The dense herd can only hear the echo-chamber, the reverberations of terrible ideas and misaligned values are endemic among the masses because they’ve long ago surrendered their intellectual autonomy, which has left them unable to objectively reflect on the culture put before them. Unique voices with reasonable innovative ideas go unheard, brushed aside in favor of tuning into the ceaseless babbling of the ruling corporatocracy bully pulpit who are guilty of being the projectionists in Plato’s cave.
There is nothing special about the cultural ideas the herd has accepted, but they assume they’re correct because so many think the same way that there must be wisdom in their beliefs. However succumbing to the will of the many has no direct correlation with truth, only with logical fallacy and on occasion being right by coincidence, as the majority outlook mostly represents the views of whoever is currently holding the largest megaphone.
Whomever has the most controlling influences has leverage and thus power. The game theory has already been played out before hand by the power hungry, monied elites are already aware of the dark abyss of lies they lead people down with intent to further exploit ignorance. A cycle of coercion is locked in where elites run their sophisticated manipulation tactics in a decision matrix of manufactured limited alternatives and box people in like they were securing a financial asset out of conscious beings. New ideas are the enemies of entrenched profit seekers, as a result dissidents are framed as extremists if their ideas run counter to enriching anything but the wealthy.
It’s disheartening to see intellectual writing from the past and realize what people knew then was as good if not better than ideas we have now. They had an outspoken recognition of the flaws of our society yet the corrupt power structure endured despite the pleas for change. This perhaps should clue us into the notion that power has no interest in doing what is right, only in ruling. Oligarchs will manipulate from here to eternity if given the chance and should they somehow manage to avoid a functional apocalypse, which now seems more likely than ever, they will only see fit to further seed terrible ideas to mislead public opinion. We must realize a different set of actions must be employed to overcome the herd thinking mentality of the masses who adopt ideas that run counter to their own contentment, and Americans have to find answers sooner rather than later because time is running low, the doomsday clock inches closer, climate scientists issue more dire warnings, but the herd thinking still persists.
Minorities versus Majorities by Emma Goldman
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 [1] type are nowhere tolerated, while the dietitians of predigested food, a 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 idealless and visionless mob has done to death the heritage of the master.
It is said that the artist of today cannot create because Prometheus like 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 [2] 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 [3]. 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 [4], the Wat Tylers [5], the Tells [6], 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 [7] 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” [8] 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 [9], Wendell Phillips, Thoreau, Margaret Fuller [10], and Theodore Parker [11], whose great courage and sturdiness culminated in that somber giant John Brown [12]. 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.
Notes
[1] Francisco Ferrer (1859-1909), educationalist who founded a school (La “Escuela Moderna” – the Modern School) in Barcelona. He was sentenced to death by the Spanish government which considered him responsible of anarchist propaganda behind a violent protest against military conscription. Following international outrage for his assassination by the state in the prison of Montjuich, in 1911 the process was reopen and in 1912 Ferrer was posthumously rehabilitated.
[2] Wendell Phillips (1811-1884), abolitionist who spoke vigorously and with eloquence against slavery. He graduated in law at the Harvard Law School and soon joined the anti-slavery movement after opening a law office in Boston. In 1865 he became president of the American Anti-Slavery Society.
[3] Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919) the 26th President of the U.S.A. He was elected vice-president under McKinley in 1900 and succeeded him the following year when the president was assassinated. He was reconfirmed president in the 1904 election. Theodore Roosevelt expanded the power of the Federal State over social and economic life and interfered in the affairs of small Latin-American nations.
[4] John Ball was a priest who became one of the main figures of the Peasant Revolt in England. Excommunicated in 1366 he continued to preach for equality and was frequently put in prison. Liberated by Kentish peasants before the outbreak of the rebellion (June 1381) he went with them to London where he made the popular statement: “When Adam dalf [dug] and Eve span [spun], Wo was thanne a gentilman?” When the rebellion ended he was tried and hang at St. Albans on July, 15, 1381.
[5] Wat Tyler, leader of the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381 in England protesting against the harsh taxation of the rural workers. Tyler was attacked and fatally wounded during a parley with the forces of King Richard II. He was then beheaded the 15 of June 1831 by order of the Lord mayor of London.
[6] Wilhelm Tell, a figure celebrated in Swiss history as the champion of freedom and independence for his refusal of Austrian rule. There are no documents attesting his existence, however, according to popular legend, he was a peasant from Bürglen in the Uri Canton, living towards the end of the 13th and the beginning of the 14th century.
[7] Camille Desmoulins (1760-1794) an influential exponent in the French Revolution, famous for his ability to arouse the crowd and for his journalistic articles and pamphlets. He was arrested as part of the Danton’s faction by order of Robespierre and guillotined on April the 5th, 1794.
[8] The reference is to the “intellectuals”.
[9] Lloyd Garrison (1805-1879) A journalist who run a newspaper, The Liberator, campaigning successfully for the abolition of slavery.
[10] Margaret Fuller (1810-1850) a literary critic, teacher and woman of letters.
[11] Theodore Parker (1810-1860) a religious pastor and social reformer, active in the anti-slavery movement.
[12] John Brown (1800-1859) leader of the fight against slavery. For his raids against pro-slavery people he was tried for murder, slave insurrection and treason against the state. He was hanged, on December the 2nd, 1859.
