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Emma Goldman, in her essay “Anarchism: What It Really Stands For,” describes the social condition of her time in many similar ways to Marx, identifying exploitation and alienation, albeit in somewhat different terms. Also, like Marx, she articulates her political program in largely negative terms, describing Anarchism as a “spirit of revolt” aiming to liberate humanity from the oppressive institutions of religion, property, and the state. Further, again like Marx, she holds that“direct action” in opposition to those institutions must be governed by free choices, which makes it impossible to determine its proper methods ahead of time. Perhaps in opposition to Marx, however, Goldman seems to hold to a belief in “individual instinct” that is in some sense already inharmony with a “social instinct,” such that it may be hard to see how her approach to political action is not purely negative, purely a project of eliminating barriers to the fullest realization of what already obtains in human nature, rather than seeing revolutionary reconstruction as requiring positive developments as well. Is her faith in human nature, liberated from distorting and limiting institutions, in your view warranted? Are all forms of politics (that is, the operation of some form of a state) really unnecessary or, worse, a mechanism of slavery, no matter what its form?