Emma Goldman: “The Psychology of Political Violence”

Explanation and Analysis of the Document

In this essay Goldman expands upon her analysis of the role violence should play in bringing about an anarchist social order. Her arguments regarding violence are somewhat ambiguous and, her critics might say, disingenuous. She fails to address the ideas of her mentor Johann Most, who believed that the “propaganda of the deed,” such as the political assassination of a tyrant, might spark the masses to undertake revolutionary action. Instead, Goldman discounts any connection between anarchism and political violence, arguing that capitalist authorities make false accusations and use anarchists as scapegoats to conceal their own destructive deeds.

Goldman commences her psychology of violence essay with the assertion that the Attentäter, a revolutionary committing an act of political violence, is not the lunatic or destructive monster constructed by the capitalist press. Instead, the revolutionary who takes up the gun or tosses a bomb is driven to such drastic means by watching the suffering of humanity under capitalist oppression. She concludes that anarchists display such love and affection for their fellow man that they are willing to surrender their lives if such action will redeem humanity. Furthermore, the real perpetrators of violence are the many who silently witness exploitation and are unwilling to take any action to alter the economic suffering and oppression. Confronted with this conspiracy of silence, anarchists who love humanity are goaded into action by the capitalist system.

After celebrating those martyrs whose conscience propelled them to fight for humanity, Goldman then backs away from any association between violence and anarchism. She observes that many anarchists are blamed by the capitalist press for bombings and shootings initiated by the police. In support of her argument, she cites the Haymarket riot in Chicago on May 4, 1886. Following a day of labor agitation, someone tossed a bomb, resulting in the death of a policeman, Mathias J. Degan. A riot ensued, resulting in the deaths of seven more policemen and several civilians. In response, eight anarchists were arrested for murder. Following a trial appealing to the political and ethnic prejudices of the jury, the anarchists were convicted. Four were executed before Illinois Governor John Peter Altgeld pardoned the Haymarket defendants. The origins of the actual bombing remain the subject of controversy, but Goldman makes it clear that she perceives the Haymarket affair as an example of police provocation.

Goldman next turns her attention to the assassination of President McKinley. She defends the assassin Leon Czolgosz by observing that the young man was driven to violence by a conscience that could no longer tolerate the republic of economic exploitation over which McKinley presided. Although many anarchist colleagues feared that her defense of Czolgosz would bring government repression, Goldman insisted upon holding the capitalist industrial order responsible for the assassination. She also defends the 1893 attempted assassination of Henry Clay Frick by her friend Alexander Berkman, asserting that the brutal murder of eleven steel workers at Homestead had motivated Berkman, rather than the philosophy of anarchism.

Goldman concludes her argument by examining European political acts of violence attributed to anarchists. Focusing on the 1894 bombing of the Paris Chamber of Deputies by Auguste Vaillant, the murder of the Spanish prime minister Canovas del Castillo by Michele Angiolillo, and Gaetano Bresci's assassination of the Italian king Umberto I, Goldman proclaims that these acts were the result of economic and political oppression that flamed the conscience of the perpetrators.

In a somewhat ambiguous conclusion to the essay, Goldman proclaims that anarchism is a philosophy that considers human life to be sacred, yet anarchism does not believe in submission of the human spirit. Compared with the tyranny of capitalism, the political violence of individuals motivated by conscience are minuscule. Thus, Goldman concludes that it is man's greatest obligation to resist tyranny. In “The Psychology of Violence,” Goldman reveals the ambiguity of her thoughts on the relationship between violence and anarchy—a subject that produced controversy throughout her life.