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Grace in Anarchy

Emma Goldman

A Fragment of the Prison Experiences of ... (by Goldman, Emma)
Mother earth (by Berkman, Alexander)
A Fragment of the Prison Experiences of ... (by Goldman, Emma)
My Further Disillusionment in Russia (by Emma Goldman)
Emma Goldman (by Goldman, Emma)
Minorities Versus Majorities (by Goldman, Emma)
The Individual, Society and the State (by Emma Goldman)
The Tragedy of Woman's Emancipation (by Goldman, Emma)
Anarchism and Other Essays (by Emma Goldman)

She was once called "the most dangerous woman in America." Detractors claimed that she was strictly a proponent of politically-charged violence and revolution. Others might know her by her 1970's sloganized phrase, "If I can't dance, then I don't want this revolution." Still others know little more about her than vague, anarchist stereotypes or by her relationship with Alexander Berkman, a contemporary anarchist who attempted to assassinate President William McKinley.

These surface level descriptions fall short of the complexity of Emma Goldman, one of the great contemporary revolutionaries.

Today many of us still face the same issues that Goldman fought and was slandered for in the early Twentieth century. Women in particular still protest for equality across the board in a male-constructed and dominated system.

Goldman was the first to publicly advocate for birth control. She laid the groundwork for these issues through protests, speeches, critical writings and theories on political movements, revolutions, and throughout various imprisonments, a deportation, and encounters with violence. She outlined not only the necessity for protest and revolution, but also how to do it with a balance of grace, impetus, and force.

Anarchism’s reputation has plunged since Goldman's heyday. The word took on negative connotations in a similar way the concept of socialism was warped in the West. We think of it as rooted in violence, lawlessness, nihilism, and misanthropy. Goldman thought otherwise: "Anarchism stands for the liberation of the human mind from the dominion of religion and liberation of the human body from the coercion of property; liberation from the shackles and restraint of government. It stands for a social order based on the free grouping of individuals..." (Anarchism and Other Essays, p. 53)

Goldman’s anarchism wasn’t lawlessness, but a liberation from the—as she saw it—rigid and toxic structures of religion, capitalism, and the social framework engendered between the two. She stood for the freedom of human consciousness, that which could only be achieved outside the society’s suppression. This imbued self-reliance, as spoken to by great thinkers before her like Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Revolution was required as the first step to her dreams, and she noted that society would scorn the tools for that revolution: “No great idea in its beginning can ever be within the law. How can it be within the law? The law is stationary. The law is fixed. The law is a chariot wheel which binds us all regardless of conditions or place or time.”

Whatever your views on Goldman's legacy, she was indisputably the type of leader revolutions require. She was a great orator, a person of both actions and ideas, keen on change but never without style or humanity. Anyone who desires change should take a page from her book and realize that “people have only as much liberty as they have the intelligence to want and the courage to take.”

The Emma Goldman study goes deep. Here are a few highlights to get you started: The Tragedy of Woman’s Emancipation, The Individual and the State, Minorities Versus Majorities, Emma Goldman, My Further Disillusionment in Russia, The Social Significance of the Modern Drama.

By Thad Higa