Section 2: Two Letters

When in September 1901 a young man, Leon Czolgosz, assassinated President McKinley and Emma was accused of having been the mastermind behind the shooting, Berkman and Goldman again began to discuss the value of terrorist acts and their place in anarchist theory. Neither one was inclined to support assassination attempts with the fervor of their youth, Emma going as far as to say that “Acts of Violence . . . have proven utterly useless.” Their discussion of Czolgosz’s act began while Berkman was in prison (see the Memoirs, “The Shock at Buffalo,” pages 78-84) and continues in the following letters written some 27 years later. I have included them at this point because they reflect on the pivotal event in Alec and Emma’s lives, the attempt on Frick’s life, which is also the core event around which the Memoirs was written.

Emma Goldman to Alexander Berkman, November 23, 1928, ST. TROPEZ

Dear Sash,

You are right, my dear, it is very hard to understand human nature and certainly you are doubly right when you say it is hard to find understanding between friends. But since everything is relative in life, one does get at the soul of a friend, if one is observant and has the capacity for love. I don’t mean the physical love, I mean a great devotion strong enough to stand the test of time. Such capacity gives one a sixth sense and makes one see things in the friend which he either doesn’t see himself or seeing has not the strength to admit.

How can I forget your stand on Czolgosz’s act? It was a greater blow to me than anything that happened during that terrible period. It affected me more than [Johann] Most’s stand on your act. After all, Most had only talked about violence. You had used it and went to prison for it. You had known the agony of repudiation, condemnation, and isolation. That you could sit down and cold-bloodedly analyze an act of violence nine years after your own, actually implying that your act was more important, was the most terrible thing I had yet experienced. It merely showed me that you had not changed one inch, that you had remained the blind fanatic who could see only one angle of life and one angle of human action. That’s why I said the other day that the letter dated December as it appears in the book [Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist] is historically not correct. You were not capable at the time, 1901, to philosophize as you did in the letter of December 1901, especially the thoughts expressed on page 415. You did not even reason that way when you came out in 1906. I don’t mean that you were not intellectually capable, of course not. But you were still so steeped in the old revolutionary traditions and beliefs that you could not possibly have reasoned that way in 1901. And what is more, dear Sash, deep down in your soul you are still the old Adam. Didn’t I see it in Russia, where you fought me tooth and nail because I would not swallow everything as justification of the Revolution? How many times did you throw it into my teeth that I had only been a parlor revolutionist? That the end justifies the means, that the individual is of no account, etc., etc.? Believe me, dearest, I do not say this in anger; I am beyond that now, I hope; it is merely to get your reactions in their proper time and place, that’s all. As to your stand on Czolgosz, I find it just as absurd now as I did then. Acts of violence, except as demonstrations of a sensitive human soul, have proven utterly useless. From that point of view Czolgosz’s act was as futile as yours. It neither left the slightest effect; the price you have paid and that poor boy to me are far beyond the sin. But to say that a political act is less valuable was nonsense to me then and still is. In the McKinley case it is doubly so, because his policy of annexation marked the beginning of American imperialism and all the subsequent reaction. Of course Czolgosz could not forsee all of that. But in 1901 there were already great signs of imperialism, inaugurated by McKinley’s regime. You will say he was only a tool. Yes, and so was Frick. He was the mouthpiece of Carnegie; he represented his interest as much as McKinley represented Wall Street. You will say McKinley was an elected person, or at least that is the superstition. True, but then Czolgosz’s act was particularly valuable as a means to destroy the myth. But why argue now, dear heart? In the light of our experience we know that acts of violence are inevitable. But as to removing anything, or even showing up an evil, they are pathetically inadequate. Your act was noble and still more so your fortitude in prison, just as many other such acts and brave souls—let’s not take away from their luster by ridiculous utilitarian hairsplitting as to which is more important. It is as futile as the argument about mind and matter, at least to me.

Yes, it was my mistake about your date of my second visit. I first thought you wrote I had been to see you again after the act of Czolgosz.

“Personal example.” Whoever denied that? But what value can it have, when one does things utterly false to oneself, even if approved by comrades? Fess up kid, how much of your private life or acts would our comrades approve, if they knew about them? Or of mine? Yet I can honestly say that I have never committed anything which was false to my ideas, though heaven knows I cannot say that I have not been false to myself. Like you I once thought the cause everything and the comrades capable of appreciating example. I think, if you will search your heart, you will find that you have simply not entirely outgrown your old beliefs. Neither have I, for that matter, only that you cling to them more. Since the action of our comrades in your case, even more so in the case of Czolgosz, and since the petty cruel recriminations against the few, myself included, I no longer consider comrades capable of learning by good example. The choice few are all to me; their opinion everything; their respect and friendship my greatest support. For the rest, I have grown indifferent. The process isn’t since yesterday: it began with the attitude of many comrades to your act, made terrific strides in 1901, gained impetus during my work with Ben Reitman,²⁸ and reached the climax since I came out of Russia.

Never mind about Michael [Cohn].²⁹ He evidently does not want to have anything to do with my book. I wrote him from Toronto and at my request you wrote him last spring. He has not answered. It is not important. I know that before I left for Europe [in 1895] I approached [S.] Yanofsky [editor of the Freie Arbeiter Stimme] to raise money for the tunnel [for AB’s attempt to escape from prison]. I am not certain whether I told him the purpose or not. I am going to write him; he may remember. I am only sure that I had approached him and that he had promised to do his utmost. I remember how surprised I was then because Yanofsky was a fanatical Mostianer [i.e., follower of Johann Most] and had treated me shabbily when we first met. Later, when more money was needed, you wrote direct to Yanofsky. I was already in Europe then. I don’t know whether he ever told you that Eric B. Morton’s expenses and [Anthony] Kincella’s to come to Pittsburgh and their first months [there working on the tunnel] were paid with $200 Carl Schmidt [Carl Stone in Living My Life, p. 268] had given me toward my European trip. I wrote about the whole thing this week. You can imagine how surprised that Philistine will be when he reads that. He was only interested in EG the woman, he wrote me in Paris, not her ideas or her lovers. . . .

Devotedly,

E

Alexander Berkman to Emma Goldman, Monday [late November 1928], ST. CLOUD

Dear,

Am glad to get your long letter. I cannot say that I agree with some of your points, but what is the use of discussing them? Each will remain with his old opinion, anyhow. I have come to think that views, opinions, etc. are less a matter of thinking than of temperament. So the more useless is discussion.

I hold, however, that what I wrote in the Memoirs is entirely correct in every particular, historically and psychologically. As to Leon, I know very well that in my prison letter I told you that I understood the reasons that compelled him to the act, but that the usefulness, socially, of the act is quite another matter. I hold the same opinion now. That is why we do not condemn any such acts, because we understand the reasons. But that does not mean that we cannot form our opinion about its social effects and usefulness. Of course no one can really foresee “usefulness,” but that is already a philosophic consideration, not to the point here. And again, I still hold the opinion, as I did formerly, that a terroristic act should take in consideration the effect on the public mind—not on comrades, as you say. (The same refers to my remark [about the effectiveness] of [personal] example.) There were in Russia those “bezmotivniki,” who believed in terror “without motives,” on general principles. I never had any sympathy with such an attitude, though even that I could not condemn. So I think that my act, not because it was mine, but because it was one easy to understand by most people, was more useful than Leon’s. I still hold that in the U.S., especially, economic acts could be understood by the masses better than political ones. Though I am in general now not in favor of terroristic tactics, except under very exceptional conditions.

You say my opinion was a terrible blow to you. That’s too sentimental for me. It merely means to say that one should not analyze things, not think over them, and have no critical opinion. You’d hardly admit it in this formulation. Yet it is the same. Just what you say in your letter: “That you could sit down and cold-bloodedly analyze such an act nine years after your own.” Nine years is certainly time to think such things over, and prison, away from the impressions of the moment, the best place. That you THEN felt shocked, I can understand. But that even now you are shocked, that is too much.

That acts of violence accomplish nothing, I do not agree at all. The terrorism of the Russian revolutionists aroused the whole world to the despotism of the Czars. [George] Kennan’s book [Siberia and the Exile System (1891)] merely culminated the matter. Kennan [the American journalist] could not have written about them had they not committed their acts, been sent to Siberia, etc. As to what you say of comrades and their approval, that is indifferent to me. My attitude always was and still is that anyone preaching an idea, particularly a high ideal, must try to live, so far at least as possible, in consonance with it, for his own sake as well as for the furtherance of his ideal in the minds of those to whom he is preaching it. That is, the people at large. Voltairine³⁰ [De Cleyre] was right in this, except that she went to extremes. The life, works, and death of certain persons have always exerted a much greater effect than their preaching. That is historic.

Not that I mean to say that my own life has always been in consonance with this. Of course not. I am speaking of what I believe in this matter. For the rest, one makes mistakes, of course. But the question here is of the right attitude.

The question of whether the comrades can “appreciate” is neither here nor there. One should act and live according to his OWN attitude in the matter. But what his attitude is, that is important.

By the way, the Freie Arbeiter Stimme has been publishing excerpts from Yanofsky’s memoirs. In the last two issues, November 16 and the preceeding one, there is the story of the tunnel and Yan’s part of it. When he first published a notice in the first number of the FAS, which he then began to edit, he says, he “saved my life,” because I had despaired then. I can’t say that I remember it. He says he received a letter then from me. Further he speaks of meeting Tony [Kincella], who impressed him favorably, and his visits to Pittsburgh, etc. I’ll keep the numbers for you.

I am glad you are doing well with your writing. And maybe Alsberg being with you will be an inspiration. I hope so. Well, enough for today.

Affectionately,

S