Quick thoughts on Goldman

Just some quick thoughts on Goldman, and what was discussed in class about "hitting the reset button".  After this reset button is hit, it seems to me that the new world order so to speak would naturally resemble the governments before it.  I mean, looking at it historically, peoples on the overwhelming majority have collectively, in one way or another, decided to have some sort of governing body.  This governing body ultimately has flaws, and has some people being oppressed, leading me to believe this is a natural and unavoidable byproduct of us simply being human.  

What's Young Up to Here?

So, i been thinking about Young's arguments against impartiality and i may have just been thinking about it too much, but it kinda seems like she's constructed straw man out of impartiality. She talks about impartiality as requiring that we exclude the particularities of life. Like on pg.111, "Precisely because the virtues of impartiality and universality define the civic public, that public must exclude human particularity." When i've been thinking about impartiality i've been thinking about taking all particularities into account, but ignoring one's own position in the affair. Less of a complete abstraction from life, but an abstraction from your position in it and an acknowledgment of all arguments, including your own. She talks about it denying feelings, but i always thought about it as putting your desires and feeling on equal footing with everyone else's. This is what i've been imagining Rawls is talking about with his veil of ignorance, as well. Either i'm confused about Rawls or im confused about Young or Young's confused about Rawls. Either way i could use some help sorting this out.

In response to Emma Goldman's essay, my main dispute is that it is simply incomplete as an argumentative essay. On the whole it lacks justification and she excludes voices of opposition. Furthermore she expounds on the theoretical and on that alone there is truth to what she says but she doesn't really even attempt to venture into the practical, other than to quarrel with Oscar Wilde's definition;

"...rather [it is] whether the scheme has vitality enough to leave the stagnant waters of the old, and build, as well as sustain, new life."

Not only is this unecessarily sensationalist but it fails to serve as a denotative description of what the word really means; she uses it to insinuate that 'existing conditions' are 'wrong or foolish', and that the new is the only acceptable conditions. This is logically absurd because under absolute anarchy or free communism, it would become the old at some point and become inherently 'wrong or foolish' or both. Practical is in reality a vague term that in any one person's mind is applied to something that is not overly tasking to bring about. In other words, it is both achievable and has an acceptable cost. But she wants to say that if it is something that aims to alter the existing conditions and is possible (at least theoretically) that irrespective of cost (seemingly) it is 'practical'.

Having understood her negative feelings about 'existing conditions' and utter faith in new ones, I find a contradiction in her thoughts on natural law:

"A natural law is that factor in man which asserts itself freely and spontaneously without any external force, in harmony with the requirements of nature."

and quoting Blackstone:

"Human laws are invalid, because they are contrary to the laws of nature."

She seems to be saying there is some kind of inherent truth or good or correctness in 'natural laws' which seem to be human impulses, drives, desires, etc. In other words biological forces are the only 'valid' ones, and 'external forces' are bad. But what are external forces but other humans or nature? Governments are still composed of individuals, who are driven by biological impulses. Where can she draw the line between action or thought that is the result of one's self, or society? Of course this brings up the nature/nurture debate but the question remains: how can one make a distinction between the forces of nature and the forces of the forces of nature? My main point though is to point out the lack of justification for this inherent correctness of nature and its expression in us, and our impulses. Just because unconscious forces of evolution made it, doesn't make it right. Mutations if you will, are mistakes. Most often they lead to the death of the organism or impairement, but they are absolutely necessary to survival. That means that our human form is only 'justified' temporarily, and as time changes, so must we. Change is good, but it is not true that the only good is change.

Human impulses can be incredibly destructive, the crusades as a case in point. The practice of rape and pillage in war and otherwise, greed, lust, other sins perhaps. Humans are not inherently evil, but they aren't inherently good either. We're a mix of both (if we wish to talk of good/evil).

My next question then is how do we protect ourselves from each other in a state of anarchy given these destructive qualities of humans? She seems to think they somehow disappear or are mitigated by anarchy:

"Freedom, expansion, opportunity, and, above all, peace and repose, alone can teach us the real dominant factors of human nature and all its wonderful possibilities."

She goes on to make a case that negative human behavior a result of govenments and that under the conditions of anarchy we simply won't have to worry much about them. Its interesting to note however, that she doubts our ability to confirm the inherent wickedness of human nature by not having any pure specimens to look at, and yet asserts the opposite claim (inherent goodness) in spite of the same lack of empirical data.

Without getting into the justification, I would simply assert that humans are a mix of qualities, and that they are expressed no matter what conditions they are in to varying degrees, and that we need a balance of liberty and control to maximize human growth. The question for her then is; given her strategy to protect humanity from institutions/groups, how does she plan on protecting us from individuals once they are gone?

Thoughts while reading Goldman..

Just some random thoughts I had while reading Goldman. This in particular struck a chord with me:
"The primitive man, unable to understand his being, much less the unity of all life, felt himself absolutely dependent on blind, hidden forces ever ready to mock and taunt him. Out of that attitude grew the religious concepts of man as a mere speck of dust dependent on superior powers on high, who can only be appeased by complete surrender...Man can have all the glories of the earth, but he must not become conscious of himself. The State, society, and moral laws all sing the same refrain: Man can have all the glories of the earth, but he must not become conscious of himself."

I think that society makes the individual utterly conscious of the self. It criticizes and ostracizes those who don't fall into the normal range of being. For example, children tease one another, peer pressure causes people to do things they normally wouldn't. This reminds me of the phrase "don't be so self-conscious," which does not imply that one should not be aware of one's surroundings, actions, or the actions of others -- it is to imply that the individual should not abstract an other within their own mind which holds them back. That other is often the individual's notion of what society wants. So, another way to say the same thing would be: "Don't care so much what other people think of you."

Yes, religion and society were first built upon the notion that the individual is nothing but society has progressed (a notion that Emma Goldman would appreciate) from that state to a state where individuals have the option to think freely and live as they please. This is a right which may be voluntarily given up, not an inexorable aspect of humanity.

It seems Emma Goldman was keen to highlight Anarchism's invitation to freely think, but hardly touches on the consequences when people fail to think, or worse, turn poor thoughts into action.

Emma Goldman: Quick Video History & Criticism

I searched through YouTube and found a pair of videos that go together giving some history of Emma Goldman and the anarchist movement in the United States, from her arrival in America as a teenage Russian immigrant, to her time as a villified figure in the American media after President McKinley's assassin named her as one of his inspirations, then on to her support of the Bolsheviks in the early days of the Soviet revolution and finishing with the reversal of her position of support after seeing the dark side of Lenin's new Russia.

Part 1


Part 2

Although I find Goldman's critical analysis of the oppressive factors present in religion, property and the state to be valid, I have a problem with the anarchist doctrine as a whole. What is the real plan here? Yes, we need something better than a dictatorship of the majority or of the proletariat, we need to address the inequalities and injustice that are reinforced by modern conceptions of property, and we need to be wary of metaphysical doctrines used as methods of control, but what is the plan once direct action is taken and a revolution takes place? What happens after Anarchism successfully overthrows these institutions? We need some concrete form of social organization to deal with real problems beyond the ones Anarchism identifies: problems like drought, famine, disease, wars and invasions initiated by foreign powers. How does a lawless, leaderless society deal with problems like these? I'm not saying it's impossible, but I see no clear plan for addressing these problems once Anarchism succeeds its basic goal of overthrowing these oppressive institutions.