Emma Goldman

Emma Goldman (1869 – 1940) was an anarchist, political activist, writer, and speecher. She played a pivotal role in the development of anarchist political philosophy in the first half of the 20th century.

Born in Kovno in what is now Lithuania, Goldman emigrated to the U.S. in 1885 and lived in New York City, and joined the anarchist movement in 1889.

With an authoritarian father who beat her with a whip and a failed marriage within the first year to an impotent husband she seemed to be both bitter and influenced by those men who who offered her acceptance. She was a powerful speaker and received the adulation of crowds and the criticism of the establishment.

A committed atheist, Goldman viewed religion as another instrument of control and domination. Her essay "The Philosophy of Atheism" quoted Bakunin at length on the subject and added:

Consciously or unconsciously, most theists see in gods and devils, heaven and hell, reward and punishment, a whip to lash the people into obedience, meekness and contentment.... The philosophy of Atheism expresses the expansion and growth of the human mind. The philosophy of theism, if we can call it a philosophy, is static and fixed.

Goldman was described as "the most dangerous woman in America". Although she was hostile to the suffragist goals she advocated passionately for what she thought was the rights of women, and is today heralded as a founder of anarcha-feminism, which challenges patriarchy as a hierarchy to be resisted alongside state power and class divisions.

In 1897, she wrote: "I demand the independence of woman, her right to support herself; to live for herself; to love whomever she pleases, or as many as she pleases. I demand freedom for both sexes, freedom of action, freedom in love and freedom in motherhood."

Goldman was also an outspoken critic of prejudice against homosexuals. Her belief that social liberation should extend to gay men and lesbians was virtually unheard of at the time, even among anarchists.

Because of her anger and resentments she did much to undermine the true nature of society based on solid families from which society is produced. This anger blinded her to a righteous approach to family and the office of Husband and Wife so critical in a society that did not depend on the state. Her form of anarchism would only lead to chaos and violence which it did.

Anarchism was central to Goldman's view of the world. First drawn to it during the persecution of anarchists after the 1886 violent Haymarket affair, she wrote and spoke regularly on behalf of anarchism. In the title essay of her book Anarchism and Other Essays, she wrote:

Anarchism, then, really stands for the liberation of the human mind from the dominion of religion; the liberation of the human body from the dominion of property; liberation from the shackles and restraint of government. Anarchism stands for a social order based on the free grouping of individuals for the purpose of producing real social wealth; an order that will guarantee to every human being free access to the earth and full enjoyment of the necessities of life, according to individual desires, tastes, and inclinations.

Goldman did not understand the economic system of capitalism and thought it was incompatible with human liberty.

"The only demand that property recognizes, is its own gluttonous appetite for greater wealth, because wealth means power; the power to subdue, to crush, to exploit, the power to enslave, to outrage, to degrade." Anarchism and Other Essays

Capitalism only advocates property rights, it was corporatism and specifically selfish corporatism that was the threat to liberty. Selfishness of the working class or the selfish social justice of progressive socialism that will produce the same result.

Goldman viewed the state as essentially a tool of control and domination and voting was useless at best and dangerous at worst. Voting, she wrote, provided an illusion of participation while masking the true structures of decision-making. Instead, Goldman advocated resistance in the form of strikes, protests, and "direct action against the invasive, meddlesome authority of our moral code".

This is the opposite of Christ who was the ultimate revolutionary, the beloved Anarchist who offered the only true alternative to the authoritarian state.

She disagreed with the movement for women's suffrage and ridiculed the idea that women's involvement would infuse the democratic state with a more just orientation: "As if women have not sold their votes, as if women politicians cannot be bought!"

Goldman was also a passionate critic of the prison system having been under its power for a time.

Goldman was a prolific writer of countless pamphlets and articles on a diverse range of subjects. She authored six books:

• Anarchism and Other Essays. New York: Mother Earth Publishing Association, 1910.
• The Social Significance of the Modern Drama. Boston: Gorham Press, 1914.
• My Disillusionment in Russia. Garden City, New York: Doubleday, Page and Co., 1923.
• My Further Disillusionment in Russia. Garden City, New York: Doubleday, Page and Co., 1924.
• Living My Life. New York: Knopf, 1931.
• Voltairine de Cleyre. Berkeley Heights, New Jersey: Oriole Press, 1932.

She died of a series of strokes unable to speak at the last.