Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for the anarchist Emma Goldman


Sometimes in reviewing a political biography of some capitalist hanger-on such as Bill Clinton it is simply a matter of dismissing a known and deadly political opponent and so heaping scorn up that person is part of the territory. For others, allegedly in the socialist tradition, like the old theoretical leader of the pre-World War I German social democracy Karl Kautsky, who provide reformist rather than revolutionary solutions to the pressing issues of the day that also tends to be true. However, with an enigmatic figure like the anarcho-communist "Red" Emma Goldman it is harder to do the political savaging job that is necessary but distasteful.

Why? Ms. Goldman came out of that tradition of pre-World War I life-style anarchism (made fashionable in the New York Greenwich Village milieu of the time) where her politics, to the extent that political carping is politics, placed her somewhere on the side of the angels. However, the total effect of her career as an anarchist propagandist and sometime agitator shows very little as a contribution to radical history.

Obviously anyone associated with the fiery German anarchist Johann Most is by any measure going to have trouble with the government at some point in their lives. Most was Goldman's lover and first teacher of the principles of “propaganda by the deed” anarchism. For those readers not familiar with that tendency the core of the politics is that exemplary actions, not excluding martyrdom, by individual heroic revolutionaries are supposed to act as the catalyst to move the masses. In short, these are the politics of shoot first and ask questions later. As a tactic within a revolutionary period it may make some sense but as a strategy to put masses in motion, no. Empathically no.

Her own life provides the case for the negative aspects of this theory. At the time of the famous bloody Homestead Steel strike in the 1890's here in America Ms. Goldman's lifelong companion and fellow anarchist of the deed, Alexander Berkman, decided that to enhance the fierce class struggle the assassination of one Henry Frick, no innocent in the strike for the company side, would serve as a symbol in order to intensify the struggle of capital against labor. Needless to say, although Mr. Berkman was successful, in part, in his attempt both Mr. Frick and the Homestead plant were back in business forthwith. For his pains Berkman received a long jail sentence.

The most troubling aspect of Ms. Goldman's career is her relationship to the Bolshevik Revolution. Let us be clear, as readers of this space may be painfully aware, there were problems in that revolution from which, given the course of history in the 20th century, the Soviet Union was never able to recover. However, from Ms. Goldman's descriptions of the problems seen in her short stay in the Soviet Union just after the revolutionary takeover in 1917 one would have to assume that, like most aspects of her life, this was just one more issue to walk away from. She thereafter for the remainder of her life became an opponent of that regime. Some pre-World War I anarchists were able to see the important historic situation with the creation of the Soviet state and were drawn to the Communist International. Others used that flawed experiment as a reason to, in essence, reconcile themselves to the bourgeois order. This is patently Ms. Goldman's case. Nowhere is that position, and that tension, more blatantly spelled out that in Spain in 1936.

Spain, 1936 is the political cutting edge, the dividing line, for all kinds of political tendencies, right and left. While we will allow the rightists to stew in their own juices the various positions on the left in the cauldron of revolution graphically illustrate the roadblocks to revolution that allowed fascism, Spanish style, to gain an undeserved military victory and ruin the political perspectives for at least two generations of Spanish militants. The classic anarchist position is to deny the centrality of conquering the state (and the old ruling governmental, social, cultural and economic apparatuses). Somehow it is to be morphed away but who knows what. Yes, that is the theory but on the hard ground of Spain that was not the reality as the main anarchist federation FAI/CNT gave political support to the bourgeois republican government and accepted seats in that government. These same elements went on to play a part in disarming the 1937 Barcelona uprising that could have sparked a new revolutionary outburst on the disheartened workers and peasants. So much for anarchist practice in the clutch. Ms. Goldman spent no little ink defending the actions of her comrades in Spain. Wrong on the Soviet Union and Spain, on the side of the angels on women's issues and the need to fight capitalism. In short, all over the political map when it came to strategy. Yes, Ms. Goldman was, and her defenders today are, political opponents but this writer does not relish the fact.