Communism -- Soviet Union; Goldman, Emma, 1869-1940; Soviet Union -- History -- Revolution, 1917-1921 -- Personal narratives, American
This perversion of the ethical values soon crystallized into the
all-dominating slogan of the Communist Party: THE END JUSTIFIES ALL
MEANS. Similarly in the past the Inquisition and the Jesuits adopted
this motto and subordinated to it all morality. It avenged itself upon
the Jesuits as it did upon the Russian Revolution. In the wake of this
slogan followed lying, deceit, hypocrisy and treachery, murder, open and
secret. It should be of utmost interest to students of social psychology
that two movements as widely separated in time and ideas as Jesuitism
and Bolshevism _reached exactly similar results_ in the evolution of the
principle that the end justifies all means. The historic parallel,
almost entirely ignored so far, contains a most important lesson for all
coming revolutions and for the whole future of mankind.
There is no greater fallacy than the belief that aims and purposes are
one thing, while methods and tactics are another. This conception is a
potent menace to social regeneration. All human experience teaches that
methods and means cannot be separated from the ultimate aim. The means
employed become, through individual habit and social practice, part and
parcel of the final purpose; they influence it, modify it, and presently
the aims and means become identical. From the day of my arrival in
Russia I felt it, at first vaguely, then ever more consciously and
clearly. The great and inspiring aims of the Revolution became so
clouded with and obscured by the methods used by the ruling political
power that it was hard to distinguish what was temporary means and what
final purpose. Psychologically and socially the means necessarily
influence and alter the aims. The whole history of man is continuous
proof of the maxim that to divest one’s methods of ethical concepts
means to sink into the depths of utter demoralization. In that lies the
real tragedy of the Bolshevik philosophy as applied to the Russian
Revolution. May this lesson not be in vain.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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