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MlNORITIES 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 lifeHproduction, politics, and educationHrests 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and quality of his work, has been replaced by brainless, incompetent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,HSuccess. 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, 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
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,Hthe 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 politiclans
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 should 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 bv 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
sacriflce, of untold misery, still believes that the rope which strangles
"the man with the white hands"* brings luck. *(The intellectuals)
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 idealHwhy 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-comprolmising determination of intelligent minorities, and not through
the mass.