I Have a Crush on Emma Goldman

Personally, it’s really easy for me to get excited about the need for deliberation and expression in a free society. However, most writers render these goods as subservient to democracy. I don’t think I like that. Aren’t there other reasons and other contexts for which a faith in rhetoric and a focus on deliberation is important? Historically, rhetoric flourishes only in democratic societies. Therefore it is completely natural to associate the two and produce books such as Hauser & Grim’s. Such a book serves two functions. The most obvious function is that it provides means by which democracy can be encouraged and maintained. A less obvious, and more cynical function of this book is to gain respect and importance for our field by raising it to the level of our society’s most sacred and fundamental principle- democracy. Now we’re important. Now maybe we can get some grant dollars.

But does democracy really deserve the pedestal we’ve built for it? There are good reasons to believe that this form of government, particularly the way we institute it in America today, is not necessarily the best means by which individual freedom and growth can be encouraged. Specifically, I’m thinking of Emma Goldman’s straightforward, yet powerful assertions that all government is tyranny. Here’s what her definition of Anarchism looks like:

“The philosophy of a new social order based on liberty unrestricted by man-made
law; the theory that all forms of government rest on violence, and are therefore
wrong and harmful, as well as unnecessary.”

Not only can it be argued that it is unhealthy for a person to submit to the will of others (majority or otherwise) but one may also ask what gives any man or woman the right to order the lives of other men and women. I might argue that the person who spends a lifetime kissing babies, shaking hands, vilifying opponents, telling lies, etc. has no more right to power than the person who organizes a militia to take the government by violence.

I’m getting at two things here. First, I just wanted to be a pain and question the default toward democracy. Before we discuss ways to make democracy better, its worth investigating what, if anything, makes democracy better than other forms of government (or a lack of government). Second, I really enjoy the literature that praises deliberation and discussion, and I’m wondering if I can find a way to reconcile that sentiment with my sympathy for Goldman’s arguments. How would rhetoric function in an anarchist society? Would it be any more or less important to our everyday lives?