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EMMA GOLDMAN FEMINIST AND ANARCHIST (1869- 1940)
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EMMA GOLDMANFEMINIST AND ANARCHIST (1869- 1940)Life And WorkEmma Goldman, was a feminist and anarchist social critic who was born in Kovno, Russia, a city which is now Kaunas, Lithuania. Immediately after the assassination of Alexander II, Emma was 13, her family moved to St. Petersburg. The times were tough politically and economically, so young Emma had to leave school for work in a factory. Soon after, Emma obtained a copy of What Is To Be Done by Cherychevsky. This book made a strong impact on Goldman’s later passion for sexual equality and a cooperative culture where men and women shared labor. Her father was a notorious sexist who reportedly ‘could not forgive his daughter for her sex.” Arguing that girls “do not have to learn much,” her father tried to marry her off at the age of fifteen. Emma refused on two pounds that were to become seeds which would germinate into her feminism: she wanted to continue her education and travel, believing that women had as much right to these things as men. She also firmly believed in romantic love, declaring she would “never marry for anything but love.” This was the beginning of events which culminated in Goldman immigrating to the United States to live with her older sister Helena, in Rochester, New York. She worked as a seamstress, learning firsthand about the harsh working conditions and exploitation of labor she would later decry. Goldman, like many other burgeoning radicals, was drawn to anarchism by the Haymarket Square tragedy in 1886 in Chicago. During a workers’ rally for an 8-hour workday, a bomb was thrown into a crowd of police. For this crime, four anarchists were convicted on questionable evidence. The judge at the trial stated that, were they not anarchists, they would not have even been brought to trial. The four were eventually hanged. Goldman was, at this time, 20 years old. She had been married for just under a year to another native Russian, but the marriage ended in divorce. She decided on the day of the verdict to become a revolutionary. Goldman moved to New York, where she came into contact with Johann Most, who edited an anarchist newspaper. However, as Goldman’s anarchism developed, there emerged a difference between the two: Most argued that labor struggles such as the one which had culminated in Haymarket square were inadequate to the task of social transformation. For Goldman, though, reform efforts such as higher wages and shorter hours were steps on the road to social transformation. As she distanced herself from Most, she was drawn to another German anarchist journal called Die Autonomie, where she got her first exposure to the work of Peter Kropotkin. She agreed with Kropotkin that humans tend toward mutual aid, but added to his theories the essentiality of sexual liberation in the struggle. Kropotkin glossed over sexuality in his writings, believing gender issues, sexuality issues, and reproductive issues were incidental to anarchism. Goldman’s belief in personal freedom and the necessity of sexual liberation became the icons that distinguished her from Kropotkin. Her anarchist leanings were captured in her response to the argument that revolutionaries should not dance. Goldman was approached at a dance by a young revolutionary and told it was not appropriate for a revolutionary to dance. Goldman “insisted that our cause could not expect me to behave as a nun and that the movement should not be turned into a cloister. If it meant that, I did not want it. I want freedom, the right to self expression, everybody’s right to beautiful, radiant things.” Goldman believed that the end could always justify the means. In 1892, she and Alexander Berkinan planned the assassination of Henry Clay Frick. Frick had brutally suppressed strikes in the Homestead Pennsylvania factory with armed guards who killed ten of the striking workers. Goldman and Berkman considered Frick emblematic of a harsh and cruel system. They hoped that through his death, the revolutionary fires of the people would be fanned. However, Berkman only wounded Frick. After he was sentenced to 22 years in prison Goldman explained the failed attempt on his life by arguing that true morality deals with the motives, not the end-state of the actions. Ironically, it was not her uncontestable role in the attempt on Fricks life that drove Goldman underground. When Leon Czolgoz, a self-proclaimed anarchist who claimed to have met Goldman at one of her lectures, assassinated President William McKinley in 1901, she was arrested as an accomplice. This occurred despite the fact that Goldman had publicly condemned the assassination and even offered to nurse the dying McKinley. Unfortunately, she also expressed sympathy for the defenseless Czolgosz, which caused such a stir that she had to stay underground and operate under pseudonyms until 1906. Then, she began publishing the influential journal Mother Earth. One Of The Most Dangerous Women In AmericaGoldman was also imprisoned for distributing birth control literature, which she insisted on defending as a practice even though it was outlawed. Her longest sentence came after she helped organize the “No Conscription” leagues, which helped protest World War I and the draft Goldman and Berkman were sentenced to two years under these charges. 1. Edgar Hoover himself helped strip them of their citizenship and directed Goldman’s deportation hearing, calling her “one of the most dangerous women m America.” Goldman, for her part, considered it “an honor to be the first political agitator to be deported from the United States.” She was sent to Russia. Deportation found Goldman an eager observer of the Russian Revolution. To Goldman and Berkman’s dismay, though, Russia in 1919 was characterized by oppressive bureaucracy, political repression, and none of the liberatory struggle they hoped to find. In 1921, certain sailors and soldiers rebelled against the Bolsheviks, identifying themselves with labor in the struggle: these forces were beaten mercilessly by the Red Army under Leon Trotsky. Needless to say, the pro-labor, pro-freedom, anti-militarist Goldman was shocked and dismayed. Goldman wrote about her experiences in Russia in two books: My Disillusionment in Russia and My Further Disillusionment in Russia. This experience cemented for Goldman the notion that the state could never be a revolutionary force. Another conclusion Goldman arrived at after these experiences was that her earlier belief that the end justified the means was incorrect. Though she refused to reject violence as a necessary evil in the process of revolution, what she had seen from the Bolsheviks caused a reevaluation of when it was acceptable. Goldman mused that “it is one thing to employ violence in combat as a means of defense. It is quiet another thing to make a principle of terrorism, to institutionalize it to assign it the most vital place in the social struggle. Such terrorism begets counter-revolution and in turn itself becomes counter-revolutionary.” These views were unpopular among radicals as most still wanted to believe that the Russian Revolution was a success. When Goldman moved to Britain in 1921 she was virtually alone on the left in condemning the Bolsheviks and her lectures were poorly attended. On hearing that she might be deported in 1925, a Welsh miner offered to marry her in order to give her British Nationality. With a British passport, she was the able to travel to France and Canada. In 1934, she was even allowed to give a lecture tour in the States. Directory: uploads uploads -> 587 Return function, r i(X) r i(0) r i(1) r i(2) r i(3) 1 0 2 4 6 Thermal Station, I 2 0 1 5 6 3 0 3 5 6 10 uploads -> Department of science and humanities department of mathematics part-a questions and answers uploads -> The Case Against the nypd’s Quota-Driven ‘Broken Windows’ Policing What Is It? uploads -> For want of a nail uploads -> Ownership Models There are two different types of ownership models uploads -> Police Militarization uploads -> City of rising star regular meting thursday, july 14, 2016 uploads -> Township of winfield uploads -> Stop Militarizing Law Enforcement Act of 2014 uploads -> The Black Panther Party’s Ten-Point Program What We Want Now! Download 5.81 Mb. 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