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Title: Intellectual Proletarians Author: Emma Goldman Date: February 1914 Language: en Topics: academy, intellectuals Source: Retrieved on December 22, 2011 from http://libertarian-labyrinth.org/archive/Intellectual_Proletarians][libertarian-labyrinth.org]]. Proofread online source [[http://www.revoltlib.com/?id=3291, retrieved on July 3, 2020. Notes: Mother Earth 8, no. 12 (February 1914): 363–370.
The proletarization of our time reaches far beyond the field of manual
labor; indeed, in the larger sense all those who work for their living,
whether with hand or brain, all those who must sell their skill,
knowledge, experience and ability, are proletarians. From this point of
view, our entire system, excepting a very limited class, has been
proletarianized.
Our whole social fabric is maintained by the efforts of mental and
physical labor. In return for that, the intellectual proletarians, even
as the workers in shop and mine, eke out an insecure and pitiful
existence, and are more dependent upon the masters than those who work
with their hands.
No doubt there is a difference between the yearly income of a Brisbane
and a Pennsylvania mine worker. The former, with his colleagues in the
newspaper office, in the theater, college and university, may enjoy
material comfort and social position, but with it all they are
proletarians, inasmuch as they are slavishly dependent upon the Hearsts,
the Pulitzers, the Theater Trusts, the publishers and, above all, upon a
stupid and vulgar public opinion. This terrible dependence upon those
who can make the price and dictate the terms of intellectual activities,
is more degrading than the position of the worker in any trade. The
pathos of it is that those who are engaged in intellectual occupations,
no matter how sensitive they might have been in the beginning, grow
callous, cynical and indifferent to their degradation. That has
certainly happened to Brisbane, whose parents were idealists working
with Fourier in the early cooperative ventures. Brisbane, who himself
began as a man of ideals, but who has become so enmeshed by material
success that he has forsworn and betrayed every principle of his youth.
Naturally so. Success achieved by the most contemptible means cannot but
destroy the soul. Yet that is the goal of our day. It helps to cover up
the inner corruption and gradually dulls one’s scruples, so that those
who begin with some high ambition cannot, even if they would, create
anything out of themselves.
In other words, those who are placed in positions which demand the
surrender of personality, which insist on strict conformity to definite
political policies and opinions, must deteriorate, must become
mechanical, must lose all capacity to give anything really vital. The
world is full of such unfortunate cripples. Their dream is to “arrive,”
no matter at what cost. If only we would stop to consider what it means
to “arrive,” we would pity the unfortunate victim. Instead of that, we
look to the artist, the poet, the writer, the dramatist and thinker who
have “arrived,” as the final authority on all matters, whereas in
reality their “arrival” is synonymous with mediocrity, with the denial
and betrayal of what might in the beginning have meant something real
and ideal. The “arrived” artists are dead souls upon the intellectual
horizon. The uncompromising and daring spirits never “arrive.” Their
life represents an endless battle with the stupidity and the dullness of
their time. They must remain what Nietzsche calls “untimely,” because
everything that strives for new form, new expression or new values, is
always doomed to be untimely.
The real pioneers in ideas, in art and in literature have remained
aliens to their time, misunderstood and repudiated. And if, as in the
case of Zola, Ibsen and Tolstoy, they compelled their time to accept
them, it was due to their extraordinary genius and even more so to the
awakening and seeking of a small minority for new truths, to whom these
men were the inspiration and intellectual support. Yet even to this day
Ibsen is unpopular, while Poe, Whitman and Strindberg have never
“arrived.”
The logical conclusion is this: those who will not worship at the shrine
of money, need not hope for recognition. On the other hand, they will
also not have to think other people’s thoughts or wear other people’s
political clothes. They will not have to proclaim as true that which is
false, nor praise that as humanitarian which is brutal. I realize that
those who have the courage to defy the economic and social whip are
among the few, and we have to deal with the many.
Now, it is a fact that the majority of the intellectual proletarians are
in the economic treadmill and have less freedom than those who work in
the shops or mines. Unlike the latter, they cannot put on overalls, and
ride the bumpers to the next town in search of a job. In the first
place, they have spent a lifetime on a profession, at the expense of all
their other faculties. They are therefore unfitted for any other work
except the one thing which, parrot-like, they have learned to repeat. We
all know how cruelly difficult it is to find a job in any given trade.
But to come to a new town without connections and find a position as
teacher, writer, musician, bookkeeper, actress or nurse, is almost
impossible. If, however, the intellectual proletarian has connections,
he must come to them in a presentable shape; he must keep up
appearances. And that requires means, of which most professional people
have as little as the workers, because even in their “good times” they
rarely earn enough to make ends meet.
Then there are the traditions, the habits of the intellectual
proletarians, the fact that they must live in a certain district, that
they must have certain comforts, that they must buy clothes of a certain
quality. All that has emasculated them, has made them unfit for the
stress and strain of the life of the bohemian. If he or she drink coffee
at night, they cannot sleep. If they stay up a little later than usual,
they are unfitted for the next day’s work. In short, they have no
vitality and cannot, like the manual worker, meet the hardships of the
road. Therefore they are tied in a thousand ways to the most galling,
humiliating conditions. But so blind are they to their own lot that they
consider themselves superior, better, and more fortunate than their
fellow-comrades in the ranks of labor.
Then, too, there are the women who boast of their wonderful economic
achievements, and that they can now be self-supporting. Every year our
schools and colleges turn out thousands of competitors in the
intellectual market, and everywhere the supply is greater than the
demand. In order to exist, they must cringe and crawl and beg for a
position. Professional women crowd the offices, sit around for hours,
grow weary and faint with the search for employment, and yet deceive
themselves with the delusion that they are superior to the working girl,
or that they are economically independent.
The years of their youth are swallowed up in the acquisition of a
profession, in the end to be dependent upon the board of education, the
city editor, the publisher or the theatrical manager. The emancipated
woman runs away from a stifling home atmosphere, only to rush from
employment bureau to the literary broker, and back again. She points
with moral disgust to the girl of the redlight district, and is not
aware that she too must sing, dance, write or play, and otherwise sell
herself a thousand times in return for her living. Indeed, the only
difference be- tween the working girl and the intellectual female or
male proletarian is a matter of four hours. At 5 a. m. the former stands
in line waiting to be called to the job and often face to face with a
sign, “No hands wanted.” At 9 a. m. the professional woman must face the
sign, “No brains wanted.”
Under such a state of affairs, what becomes of the high mission of the
intellectuals, the poets, the writers, the composers and what not? What
are they doing to cut loose from their chains, and how dare they boast
that they are helping the masses? Yet you know that they are engaged in
uplift work. What a farce! They, so pitiful and low in their slavery
themselves, so dependent and helpless! The truth is, the people have
nothing to learn from this class of intellectuals, while they have
everything to give to them. If only the intellectuals would come down
from their lofty pedestal and realize how closely related they are to
the people! But they will not do that, not even the radical and liberal
intellectuals.
Within the last ten years the intellectual proletarians of advanced
tendencies have entered every radical movement. They could, if they
would, be of tremendous importance to the workers. But so far they have
remained without clarity of vision, without depth of conviction, and
without real daring to face the world. It is not because they do not
feel deeply the mind- and soul-destroying effects of compromise, or that
they do not know the corruption, the degradation in our social,
political, business, and family life. Talk to them in private
gatherings, or when you get them alone, and they will admit that there
isn’t a single institution worth preserving. But only privately.
Publicly they continue in the same rut as their conservative colleagues.
They write the stuff that will sell, and do not go an inch farther than
public taste will permit. They speak their thoughts, careful not to
offend anyone, and live according to the most stupid conventions of the
day. Thus we find men in the legal profession, intellectually
emancipated from the belief in government, yet looking to the fleshpots
of a judgeship; men who know the corruption of politics, yet belonging
to political parties and championing Mr. Roosevelt. Men who realize the
prostitution of mind in the newspaper profession, yet holding
responsible positions therein. Women who deeply feel the fetters of the
marital institution and the indignity of our moral precepts, who yet
submit to both; who either stifle their nature or have clandestine
relations — but God forbid they should face the world and say, “Mind
your own damned business!”
Even in their sympathies for labor — and some of them have genuine
sympathies — the intellectual proletarians do not cease to be
middle-class, respectable and aloof. This may seem sweeping and unfair,
but those who know the various groups will understand that I am not
exaggerating. Women of every profession have flocked to Lawrence, to
Little Falls, of Paterson, and to the strike districts in this city.
Partly out of curiosity, often out of interest. But always they have
remained rooted to their middle-class traditions. Always they have
deceived themselves and the workers with the notion that they must give
the strike respectable prestige, to help the cause.
In the shirtwaistmakers’ strike professional women were told to rig
themselves out in their best furs and most expensive jewelry, if they
wanted to help the girls. Is it necessary to say that while scores of
girls were man- handled and brutally hustled into the patrol wagons, the
well-dressed pickets were treated with deference and allowed to go home?
Thus they had their excitement, and only hurt the cause of labor.
The police are indeed stupid, but not so stupid as not to know the
difference in the danger to themselves and their masters from those who
are driven to strike by necessity, and those who go into the strike for
pastime or “copy.” This difference doesn’t come from the degree of
feeling, nor even the cut of clothes, but from the degree of incentive
and courage; and those who still com- promise with appearances have no
courage.
The police, the courts, the prison authorities and the newspaper owners
know perfectly well that the liberal intellectuals, even as the
conservatives, are slaves to appearances. That is why their muckraking,
their investigations, their sympathies with the workers are never taken
seriously. Indeed, they are welcomed by the press, because the reading
public loves sensation, hence the muckraker represents a good investment
for the concern and for himself. But as far as danger to the ruling
class is concerned, it is like the babbling of an infant.
Mr. Sinclair would have died in obscurity but for “The Jungle,” which
didn’t move a hair upon the heads of the Armours, but netted the author
a large sum and a reputation. He may now write the most stupid stuff,
sure of finding a market. Yet there is not a workingman anywhere so
cringing before respectability as Mr. Sinclair.
Mr. Kibbe Turner would have remained a penny-a-liner but for our
political mudslingers, who used him to make capital against Tammany
Hall. Yet the poorest-paid laborer is more independent than Mr Turner,
and certainly more honest than he.
Mr. Hillquit would have remained the struggling revolutionist I knew him
twenty-four years ago, but for the workers who helped him to his legal
success. Yet there is not a single Russian worker on the East Side so
thoroughly bound to respectability and public opinion as Mr. Hillquit.
I could go on indefinitely proving that, though the intellectuals are
really proletarians, they are so steeped in middle-class traditions and
conventions, so tied and gagged by them, that they dare not move a step.
The cause of it is, I believe, to be sought in the fact that the
intellectuals of America have not yet discovered their relation to the
workers, to the revolutionary elements which at all times and in every
country have been the inspiration of men and women who worked with their
brains. They seem to think that they and not the workers represent the
creators of culture. But that is a disastrous mistake, as proved in all
countries. Only when the intellectual forces of Europe had made common
cause with the struggling masses, when they came close to the depths of
society, did they give to the world a real culture.
With us, this depth in the minds of our intellectuals is only a place
for slumming, for newspaper copy, or on a very rare occasion for a
little theoretic sympathy. Never was the latter strong or deep enough to
pull them out of themselves, or make them break with their traditions
and surroundings. Strikes, conflicts, the use of dynamite, or the
efforts of the I. W. W. are exciting to our intellectual proletarians,
but after all very foolish when considered in the light of the logical,
cool-headed observer. Of course they feel with the I. W. W. when he is
beaten and brutally treated, or with the MacNamaras, who cleared the
horizon from the foggy belief that in America no one needed use
violence. The intellectuals gall too much under their own dependence not
to sympathize in such a case. But the sympathy is never strong enough to
establish a bond, a solidarity between him and the disinherited. It is
the sympathy of aloofness, of experiment.
In other words, it is a theoretic sympathy which all those have who
still enjoy a certain amount of comfort and therefore do not see why
anyone should break into a fashionable restaurant. It is the kind of
sympathy Mrs. Belmont has when she goes to night courts. Or the sympathy
of the Osbornes, Dottys and Watsons when they had themselves locked up
in prison for a few days. The sympathy of the millionaire Socialist who
speaks of “economic determinism.”
The intellectual proletarians who are radical and liberal are still so
much of the bourgeois regime that their sympathy with the workers is
dilettante and does not go farther than the parlor, the so-called salon,
or Greenwich village. It may in a measure be compared to the early
period of the awakening of the Russian intellectuals described by
Turgenev in “Fathers and Sons.”
The intellectuals of that time, while never so superficial as those I am
talking about, indulged in revolutionary ideas, split hairs through the
early morning hours, philosophized about all sorts of questions and
carried their superior wisdom to the people with their feet deeply
rooted in the old. Of course they failed. They were indignant with
Turgenev and considered him a traitor to Russia. But he was right. Only
when the Russian intellectuals completely broke with their traditions;
only when they fully realized that society rests upon a lie, and that
they must give themselves to the new completely and unreservedly, did
they become a forceful factor in the life of the people. The Kropotkins,
the Perovskayas, the Breshkovskayas, and hosts of others repudiated
wealth and station and refused to serve King Mammon. They went among the
people, not to lift them up but themselves to be lifted up, to be
instructed, and in return to give themselves wholly to the people. That
accounts for the heroism, the art, the literature of Russia, the unity
between the people, the mujik and the intellectual. That to some extent
explains the literature of all European countries, the fact that the
Strindbergs, the Hauptmanns, the Wedekinds, the Brieux, the Mirbeaus,
the Steinlins and Rodins have never dissociated themselves from the
people.
Will that ever come to pass in America? Will the American intellectual
proletarians ever love the ideal more than their comforts, ever be
willing to give up external success for the sake of the vital issues of
life? I think so, and that for two reasons. First, the proletarization
of the intellectuals will compel them to come closer to labor. Secondly,
because of the rigid regime of puritanism, which is causing a tremendous
reaction against conventions and narrow moral ties. Struggling artists,
writers and dramatists who strive to create something worth while, aid
in breaking down dominant conventions; scores of women who wish to live
their lives are helping to undermine our morality of to-day in their
proud defiance of the rules of Mrs. Grundy. Alone they cannot accomplish
much. They need the bold indifference and courage of the revolutionary
workers, who have broken with all the old rubbish. It is therefore
through the cooperation of the intellectual proletarians, who try to
find expression, and the revolutionary proletarians who seek to remold
life, that we in America will establish a real unity and by means of it
wage a successful war against present society.