About the Work
This text comprises two distinct elements. The first is promotional material for works by Emma Goldman, including her autobiography Living My Life and a two-volume work titled Nationalism and Its Relation to Culture by Rudolf Rocker. The second, and primary, element is the beginning of an essay titled “The Individual, Society and the State.” The essay is a philosophical and political treatise examining the relationship between the individual and systems of authority, particularly the State. The work argues for the primacy of the individual over abstract collectives and critiques various forms of government, including democracy, Fascism, Nazism, and Bolshevism. The essay is written in a polemical style, characteristic of Goldman’s anarchist convictions, and seeks to redefine civilization, liberty, and progress in terms of individual freedom rather than institutional power.
Context
The essay emerges from a period of profound political and social upheaval. The text explicitly references the decline of parliamentary democracy and the rise of authoritarian alternatives, noting that “salvation is sought in Fascism and ‘strong’ government.” The author positions herself against both the existing parliamentary regimes and the emerging dictatorships of the era, declaring opposition to Fascism, Nazism, and Bolshevism with equal fervor. The work also engages with contemporary intellectual currents, critiquing Hegelian Dialectics, Marx’s Economic Determinism, and the Spenglerian Philosophy of Destiny as failed attempts at a “Philosophy of History.” The promotional material for Rocker’s work suggests a broader intellectual project of challenging accepted notions of social phenomena. The essay reflects a moment when the world had become, in the author’s words, “a prison” and “life continual solitary confinement,” particularly with the advent of dictatorship on both the right and the left. The text also addresses the economic crisis of the era, citing overproduction and the world-wide economic depression as evidence that the brute struggle for physical existence has become unnecessary and self-destructive.
Structure of the Book
The text is structured as a continuous essay that progresses from a diagnosis of contemporary civilization’s crises to a philosophical argument for the individual’s supremacy over the State. The opening section establishes the problem: civilization’s foundations are tottering, and people are losing faith in institutions. The essay then develops a historical and philosophical argument about the nature of the State, describing it as an abstraction with no organic reality. This is followed by an examination of how the State maintains power through uniformity, education, and the suppression of individuality. The essay then critiques both “rugged individualism” and dictatorship as opposing zealotries that both enslave the individual. The argument culminates in a definition of true liberty as positive freedom—freedom to something rather than merely freedom from something—and concludes with the author’s vision of Anarchism as the philosophy that can release individual energies and establish a new social order based on free association.
Detailed Section-by-Section Summary
The text opens with promotional material for Goldman’s autobiography and Rocker’s two-volume work on nationalism and culture. The advertisement for Rocker’s work claims it will revolutionize thought by demonstrating that accepted notions of social phenomena are only partially true, and it criticizes Buckle, Hegel, Marx, and Spengler for their failed attempts at a “Philosophy of History.” The ad specifically cites the failures of “Hegelian Dialectics,” “Marx’s Economic Determinism,” and “The Spenglerian Philosophy of Destiny.” The work is said to cover ancient cultures including the Egyptians, Babylonians, Greeks, and Romans.
The essay proper begins by declaring that civilization’s foundations are tottering and that people have lost faith in institutions. Capitalist industrialism, the text argues, defeats its own purpose. Parliamentarism and democracy are in decline, and salvation is being sought in Fascism and “strong” government. The author poses the question of whether to cure democracy’s evils with more democracy or with dictatorship’s sword, and answers that she is against both. Nazism is characterized as an attack on civilization, a label applied to all dictatorship and coercive authority. Civilization itself is defined as the enlargement of individual liberties with a decrease of external authority, exemplified by man’s physical triumphs over nature—producing fire, chaining wind, and harnessing water. The text asserts that authority and government played no helpful role in invention; individuals accomplished miracles despite prohibition and persecution. Political progress meant moving away from tribal chief, clan, prince, king, government, and State authority. The vital question becomes whether the State is beneficial to mankind.
The individual is called “the true reality in life,” a cosmos, not existing for the State or for “society,” which is dismissed as an abstraction. Civilization is described as a struggle of individuals against the State and against “society,” which is the majority hypnotized by State worship. Human thought is falsified by tradition, custom, and false education by the State and ruling classes. Individuality is defined as the consciousness of what one is and how one lives; it is inherent, a thing of growth, and persists while States come and go. Its essence is expression, thriving on dignity and independence. The individual is not merely heredity and environment, but a whole, growing, changing, yet constant whole. Individuality is distinguished from “rugged individualism,” which is described as a masked attempt to repress the individual. So-called Individualism is laissez faire, the exploitation of masses by classes via legal trickery and “education.” This “rugged individualism” resulted in modern slavery and class distinctions, driving millions to the breadline; America is its best representative, where tyranny is defended as virtue and freedom aspirations are denounced as “un-American.”
The text then turns to a historical account, stating that there was a time without a State. People lived as families in small communities, tilling soil and practicing crafts, free and equal, in voluntary association for mutual protection, guided by elders rather than ruled. Political government and the State developed later, from the stronger taking advantage of the weaker. The State and ecclesiastics gave legality to wrongs done by the few. Government needs consent—open, tacit, or assumed—inoculated by “education” at home and church. This consent is belief in authority, based on the doctrine that man is evil and incompetent. On this dogma, God and the State are built.
The second section of the essay deepens the critique of the State. The State is described as “nothing but a name,” an abstraction with no organic reality, akin to nation, race, or humanity. Calling it an organism is a “diseased tendency to make a fetish of words.” The State is merely the legislative and administrative machinery for transacting certain people’s business, and badly so; it has no more conscience or moral mission than a commercial company running a coal mine or railroad. The State has no more existence than gods and devils; all are the reflex and creation of man, for the individual is the only reality. The State is but the shadow of man, the shadow of his opaqueness, ignorance, and fear. Life begins and ends with man, the individual; without him there is no race, humanity, State, or even society. The individual’s development has been a continuous struggle against fetishes of his own creation, particularly the “State.”
In former days, religious authority fashioned political life in the image of the Church; rulers’ “rights” came from on high, and power was divine. Philosophers wrote volumes to prove the State’s sanctity, some clothing it with infallibility and god-like attributes, even calling it “superhuman,” the supreme reality, “the absolute.” Enquiry was condemned as blasphemy; servitude was the highest virtue. Certain things came to be regarded as self-evident and sacred not because of their truth but because of constant, persistent repetition. All progress has been an unmasking of “divinity” and “mystery,” a gradual elimination of the abstract and substitution of the real, the concrete—facts against fancy, knowledge against ignorance, light against darkness. The liberation of the individual was not accomplished by the State; it was won by continuous conflict, a life-and-death struggle with the State. It has cost mankind much time and blood to secure what little it has gained from kings, tsars, and governments. The great heroic figure of that long Golgotha has been Man—the individual, often alone, at other times in unity with others, fighting against suppression and oppression. It was the individual whose soul first rebelled against injustice; the individual first conceived resistance; the individual is the parent of liberating thought and deed—in political struggles and the entire gamut of human life, in science, philosophy, art, and industry. Socially, it was the prophet, seer, and idealist who served as beacon light.
The State—every government, be it absolute or constitutional, monarchy or republic, Fascist, Nazi, or Bolshevik—is by nature conservative, static, intolerant of and opposed to change. Changes occur only under pressure, generally “otherwise”—by revolution. Government’s conservatism becomes reactionary for two reasons. First, it seeks to retain, strengthen, widen, and perpetuate power nationally and internationally; the stronger authority grows, the less it tolerates similar authority alongside itself. This is motivated by financial and commercial interests back of the government. Second, governments distrust the individual and fear individuality; in “self-defense” the State suppresses, persecutes, punishes, and deprives the individual of life, aided by institutions preserving the existing order, and supported by the “moral indignation” of the majority—drilled in State worship, discipline, obedience, and awe of authority in home, school, church, and press.
The strongest bulwark of authority is uniformity; the least divergence is the greatest crime. Mechanisation has increased uniformity a thousandfold—in habits, tastes, dress, thoughts, ideas. Its most concentrated dullness is “public opinion.” He who refuses to submit is labelled “queer,” “different,” a disturbing element. Social uniformity and sameness harass the individual more than constituted authority; his “uniqueness,” “separateness,” and “differentiation” make him an alien in his native place, often more so than the foreign born who falls in with the established. One’s native land with its traditions is not enough to make sensitive beings feel at home; a sense of “belonging” and being “at one” with people and environment is essential. The individual whose vision encompasses the whole world often feels nowhere so hedged in as in his native land. In pre-war time the individual could escape national and family boredom; now the world has become a prison, life continual solitary confinement, especially since the advent of dictatorship, right and left.
The text references Friedrich Nietzsche, who called the State a cold monster, and asks what he would call the hideous beast of modern dictatorship. Champions of the new State ideology declare “The individual is nothing, it is the collectivity which counts,” demanding complete surrender of the individual. The loudest advocates of this new gospel are among British and American intelligentsia, enamored with the “dictatorship of the proletariat” in theory only; in practice they prefer liberties in their own countries, visiting Russia or acting as salesmen of the “revolution” but feeling safer at home. Subconsciously, these Britishers and Americans may feel that individuality remains the most fundamental fact of all human association—suppressed yet never defeated, in the long run the victor. The “genius of man”—another name for personality and individuality—bores through dogma, tradition, custom, defying taboos and authority, facing contumely and the scaffold, ultimately blessed as prophet and martyr. Without it, we would still be roaming the primeval forests. The text cites Peter Kropotkin, who showed what individuality achieves when strengthened by co-operation with other individualities; his work Mutual Aid completed the Darwinian theory of the struggle for existence, showing that in the animal kingdom and human society, co-operation—opposed to internecine strife—worked for survival.
The third section of the essay argues that the individual is currently a pawn of two opposing zealotries: dictatorship and “rugged individualism.” The former excuses itself by claiming a new objective; the latter makes no pretense of novelty, having “learned nothing and forgotten nothing.” Under rugged individualism, the brute struggle for physical existence persists, though the necessity for it has disappeared—proven by overproduction and the world-wide economic crisis, which show the struggle is maintained by blindness at the risk of self-destruction. A key insanity of this struggle is the negation of the producer’s relation to his product. The average worker has no inner contact with his industry, is a stranger to the production process, and is a replaceable cog—like any other depersonalized human being. The intellectual proletarian, though thinking himself free, is little better off: material considerations, desire for social prestige, and family tradition (doctors, lawyers, teachers, engineers) decide his vocation. Thus nearly everybody is “out of place.” The masses plod on, dulled by routine and the need to eke out existence. The political fabric offers no place for free choice or independent thought—only “voting and tax-paying puppets.”
The State’s interests fundamentally antagonize the individual’s. The State exists by fashioning individuals to its purpose: training obedience, submission, faith in government, loyal service, and self-sacrifice in war. The State puts itself above religion and God, punishing conscientious scruples because liberty is the greatest menace to authority. The innovator’s persecution is inspired by authority’s fear of having its infallibility questioned. Man’s true liberation lies in emancipation from authority. Invention and mechanics are not development; traveling 100 miles an hour is no evidence of civilization. True civilization is measured by the individual’s freedom to grow unhindered by coercive authority. Socially, the criterion is liberty, economic opportunity, social unity, absence of privileged castes, and real liberty and dignity.
Political absolutism was abolished as evil, but all power—privilege, money, priest, politician, or democracy—corrupts. Whether coercion is black as Fascism, yellow as Nazism, or red as Bolshevism, power degrades master and slave alike, whether wielded by an autocrat, parliament, or Soviets. More pernicious than a dictator’s power is a class’s; the most terrible is the tyranny of a majority. History teaches that division means death, unity and cooperation advance welfare—but government spirit works against this lesson except for its own interests. Individuals are beginning to see beneath the surface. True liberty is not a “constitution,” “legal right,” or “law,” nor an abstraction from “the State,” nor merely freedom from something (which may mean starvation). Real freedom is positive: freedom to something, liberty to be and do—actual active opportunity. Such liberty is not a gift but the natural right of man; it cannot be conferred by law or government. Disobedience to coercion is its instinctive expression; rebellion and revolution are conscious attempts to achieve it. The community must realize its greatest asset is the individual.
The text then addresses the role of ideals and the limitations of economic determinism. People speak of abstractions in religion and politics, losing touch with the concrete; the Ideal fires imagination and turns the abject slave into an heroic figure. The Marxist objector, who has “outmarxed Marx,” sees man as a puppet of economic determinism or the class struggle, discounting will, psychic life, and mental orientation. No intelligent student denies the economic factor’s importance, but only dogmatism ignores the role of ideas conceived by individual imagination. It is vain to balance one factor against another; we know too little of human psychology to designate any single decisive factor. Such dogma is bigotry, yet the attempt proves the persistence of human will and confutes Marxists. Even some Marxists see the creed’s flaws—Marx was human, fallible. The practical application of economic determinism in Russia is clearing minds, seen in the “transvaluation of Marxian values” in Socialist and Communist ranks in some European countries. They realize their theory overlooked the human element, den Menschen, as a Socialist paper put it. The economic factor is not enough; rejuvenation needs an ideal.
That ideal the author sees in Anarchism—not popular misrepresentations, but a philosophy of a new social order based on released individual energies and free association of liberated individuals. Anarchism alone proclaims society exists for man, not man for society; society’s sole legitimate purpose is to serve individual needs and aspirations. Political parties scrambling for power will scorn the author as out of tune; the author cheerfully admits the charge, finding comfort that their hysteria lacks enduring quality—their hosanna is but of the hour.
Main Arguments
The central argument of the essay is that the individual is the only true reality, and that all abstract collectives—the State, society, nation, race, humanity—are fetishes created by man that have come to dominate him. The State is described as “nothing but a name,” an abstraction with no organic reality, no more conscience or moral mission than a commercial company. Civilization is redefined as the enlargement of individual liberties with a decrease of external authority, and progress is measured not by technological advancement but by the individual’s freedom to grow unhindered by coercive authority.
The essay argues that all forms of government—absolute or constitutional, monarchy or republic, Fascist, Nazi, or Bolshevik—are by nature conservative, static, and opposed to change. Governments seek to perpetuate their own power and fear individuality, suppressing it through uniformity, education, and coercion. The text distinguishes between “rugged individualism,” which is dismissed as laissez faire exploitation of the masses by classes, and true individuality, which is the consciousness of what one is and how one lives.
A key argument is that true liberty is positive, not negative. It is not freedom from something, which may mean starvation, but freedom to something—actual active opportunity to be and do. Such liberty cannot be conferred by law or government; it is the natural right of man, expressed instinctively through disobedience to coercion and consciously through rebellion and revolution.
The essay also argues against economic determinism, asserting that while the economic factor is important, only dogmatism ignores the role of ideas conceived by individual imagination. The author contends that the practical application of economic determinism in Russia has revealed its flaws, leading to a “transvaluation of Marxian values” among some Socialists and Communists who now recognize the importance of the human element.
The final argument is that Anarchism, properly understood, is the philosophy that can achieve true liberation. Anarchism alone proclaims that society exists for man, not man for society, and that society’s sole legitimate purpose is to serve individual needs and aspirations. It is a philosophy of a new social order based on released individual energies and free association of liberated individuals.
Key Concepts
The essay develops several key concepts. Individuality is defined as the consciousness of what one is and how one lives; it is inherent, a thing of growth, and persists while States come and go. Its essence is expression, thriving on dignity and independence. The individual is not merely heredity and environment, but a whole, growing, changing, yet constant whole.
The State is described as an abstraction with no organic reality, merely the legislative and administrative machinery for transacting certain people’s business. It is the shadow of man, the shadow of his opaqueness, ignorance, and fear. The State is by nature conservative, static, intolerant of and opposed to change.
Rugged individualism is distinguished from true individuality. It is a masked attempt to repress the individual, laissez faire exploitation of masses by classes via legal trickery and “education.” It resulted in modern slavery and class distinctions, driving millions to the breadline.
Uniformity is identified as the strongest bulwark of authority. Mechanisation has increased uniformity a thousandfold in habits, tastes, dress, thoughts, and ideas. Its most concentrated dullness is “public opinion.” He who refuses to submit is labelled “queer,” “different,” a disturbing element.
True liberty is defined as positive freedom—freedom to something, liberty to be and do, actual active opportunity. It is not a “constitution,” “legal right,” or “law,” nor an abstraction from “the State,” nor merely freedom from something. Such liberty is the natural right of man and cannot be conferred by law or government.
Anarchism is presented as a philosophy of a new social order based on released individual energies and free association of liberated individuals. It proclaims that society exists for man, not man for society, and that society’s sole legitimate purpose is to serve individual needs and aspirations.
Co-operation is another key concept, drawn from Kropotkin’s Mutual Aid, which completed the Darwinian theory of the struggle for existence by showing that co-operation, opposed to internecine strife, worked for survival in the animal kingdom and human society.
Themes
A central theme is the struggle between the individual and authority. The essay frames the individual’s development as a continuous struggle against fetishes of his own creation, particularly the “State.” The liberation of the individual was not accomplished by the State but won by continuous conflict, a life-and-death struggle. The great heroic figure of that long Golgotha has been Man—the individual, often alone, at other times in unity with others.
Another theme is the critique of modernity and mechanisation. The text argues that invention and mechanics are not development; traveling 100 miles an hour is no evidence of civilization. Mechanisation has increased uniformity a thousandfold, and the average worker is a replaceable cog, depersonalized and a stranger to the production process. The intellectual proletarian is little better off, with material considerations and family tradition deciding his vocation, so that nearly everybody is “out of place.”
The theme of false consciousness and education runs throughout. Human thought is falsified by tradition, custom, and false education by the State and ruling classes. Government needs consent—open, tacit, or assumed—inoculated by “education” at home and church. This consent is belief in authority, based on the doctrine that man is evil and incompetent. Certain things come to be regarded as self-evident and sacred not because of their truth but because of constant, persistent repetition.
The theme of power and corruption is also prominent. Political absolutism was abolished as evil, but all power corrupts. Whether coercion is black as Fascism, yellow as Nazism, or red as Bolshevism, power degrades master and slave alike. More pernicious than a dictator’s power is a class’s; the most terrible is the tyranny of a majority.
A theme of alienation and belonging emerges in the discussion of how social uniformity harasses the individual. His “uniqueness,” “separateness,” and “differentiation” make him an alien in his native place. The individual whose vision encompasses the whole world often feels nowhere so hedged in as in his native land. In pre-war time the individual could escape national and family boredom; now the world has become a prison.
The theme of ideals versus dogma is developed in the critique of economic determinism. The Ideal fires imagination and turns the abject slave into an heroic figure. Only dogmatism ignores the role of ideas conceived by individual imagination. The economic factor is not enough; rejuvenation needs an ideal.
The Author’s Conclusions
The author concludes that the individual is the only reality and the greatest asset of any community. True civilization is measured by the individual’s freedom to grow unhindered by coercive authority. All forms of government, whether democratic, Fascist, Nazi, or Bolshevik, are inherently opposed to this freedom and must be resisted. The author rejects both dictatorship and “rugged individualism” as opposing zealotries that enslave the individual, and she dismisses economic determinism as a dogmatic creed that overlooks the human element.
The author’s ultimate conclusion is that Anarchism offers the only viable path forward. It is not the popular misrepresentation of chaos and violence, but a philosophy of a new social order based on released individual energies and free association of liberated individuals. Anarchism alone proclaims that society exists for man, not man for society, and that society’s sole legitimate purpose is to serve individual needs and aspirations. The author acknowledges that political parties will scorn her as out of tune, but she finds comfort in the belief that their hysteria lacks enduring quality—their hosanna is but of the hour. The essay ends on this note of defiant conviction, affirming that individuality, though suppressed, is never defeated and will in the long run be the victor.
Significance
The essay is significant as a statement of anarchist philosophy from one of its most prominent advocates, articulated during a period of rising totalitarianism. It offers a comprehensive critique of the State that encompasses not only authoritarian regimes but also democratic and parliamentary systems, arguing that all forms of government are inherently conservative and opposed to individual freedom. The work is notable for its distinction between “rugged individualism” and true individuality, rejecting the former as a form of exploitation while championing the latter as the foundation of civilization.
The essay also engages with and critiques Marxist theory, specifically economic determinism, arguing that it overlooks the role of ideas and the human element. The reference to the “transvaluation of Marxian values” in European Socialist and Communist ranks suggests the author saw her critique as being vindicated by contemporary events, particularly the practical application of economic determinism in Russia.
The work’s significance also lies in its definition of positive liberty—freedom to something rather than merely freedom from something—which anticipates later developments in political philosophy. The essay’s conclusion, which presents Anarchism as a philosophy of a new social order based on released individual energies and free association, positions it within the broader anarchist tradition while offering a distinctive emphasis on the individual as the sole reality. The text stands as a passionate defense of the individual against all forms of collective coercion, a theme that resonates beyond its immediate historical context.
