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In its mad passion for power, the Communist State even sought to strengthen and deepen the very ideas and conceptions which the Revolution had come to destroy. It supported and encouraged all the worst antisocial qualities and systematically destroyed the already awakened conception of the new revolutionary values. The sense of justice and equality, the love of liberty and of human brotherhood - these fundamentals of the real regeneration of society - the Communist State suppressed to the point of extermination. Man's instinctive sense of equity was branded as weak sentimentality; human dignity and liberty became a bourgeois superstition; the sanctity of life, which is the very essence of social reconstruction, was condemned as unrevolutionary, almost counter-revolutionary. This fearful perversion of fundamental values bore within itself the seed of destruction.

Emma Goldman#26

FreedomRevolutionValuesOppressionCommunism

About this quote

What does it mean?
The Communist State suppressed core revolutionary values like liberty and equality, leading to its own destruction.
In plain terms
Communism destroyed freedom and equality, which ruined the revolution.
What can you take from it?
Revolutionary movements fail if they abandon their core values.

Where it applies

  • historical analysis
  • political critique
  • state evaluation

Putting it to work

  • critique authoritarianism
  • protect civil liberties
  • defend revolutionary ideals

Questions to consider

  • Do states betray their ideals?
  • What values should revolutions uphold?

Another view

It judges the Soviet Union harshly without acknowledging external pressures or complex realities.

More from Emma Goldman

  1. Our institutions and conditions rest upon deep-seated ideas. To change those conditions and at the same time leave the underlying ideas and values intact means…

    Permalink to quote #25
  2. With the conception that the Revolution was only a means of securing political power, it was inevitable that all revolutionary values should be subordinated to…

    Permalink to quote #27
  3. Revolution is indeed a violent process. But if it is to result only in a change of dictatorship, in a shifting of names and political personalities, then it is…

    Permalink to quote #24

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