Snowed on Snowden

[struggle4progress]

26. Let's listen to Emma Goldman for a moment:

... 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 ... 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 ...

To-day is the parent of to-morrow. The present casts its shadow far into the future ...

Emma Goldman
My Further Disillusionment with Russia (1924)
http://www.panarchy.org/goldman/russia.1924.html