cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/32103393

Emma Goldman (1869 - 1940)

Sun Jun 27, 1869

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Emma Goldman, born on this day in 1869, was an anarchist writer and activist in the United States whose works, including “My Disillusionment in Russia” and her journal Mother Earth, influenced anarchist movements all over the world.

Attracted to anarchism after the Haymarket affair, Goldman became a renowned writer and lecturer. She and anarchist writer Alexander Berkman, her lover and lifelong friend, planned to assassinate industrialist and financier Henry Clay Frick as an act of “propaganda of the deed”.

Frick survived the attempt on his life, and Berkman was sentenced to 22 years in prison. Goldman was imprisoned several times in the years that followed for “inciting to riot” and illegally distributing information about birth control.

After their release from prison, Goldman and Berkman were again arrested and deported to Russia. Initially supportive of the October Revolution that brought the Bolsheviks to power, Goldman changed her opinion in the wake of the Kronstadt rebellion, denouncing the Soviet Union for its repression of political dissent. She left the Soviet Union and, in 1923, published a book about her experiences, “My Disillusionment in Russia”.

Goldman was an extremely well-known anarchist in her lifetime, with a reputation as a powerful orator. Her writing and lectures spanned a wide variety of issues, including prisons, atheism, freedom of speech, militarism, capitalism, free love, and homosexuality.

“If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be part of your revolution.”

- Emma Goldman

  • masquenox@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    2·
    2 days ago

    The attempted assassination of Frick by Berkman was probably one of the biggest self-owns an anarchist has ever managed, and should serve as a cautionary tale to every radical about the dangers not just of unilateral action but also of the kind of unilateral thinking that can lead a radical into convincing themselves that they know “better” than the working class they are (supposedly) acting in solidarity with.

    When “propaganda of the deed” works, it really works - but when it doesn’t it has a tendency to blow up in everyone’s faces.

  • jwiggler@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    6·
    4 days ago

    I read all of almost all of David Graeber’s books, The Conquest of Bread and Mutual Aid by Pyotr Kropotkin, and Anarchism Works and The Solutions are Already Here by Peter Gelderloos.

    But when I got to Anarchism and Other Essays by Emma Goldman, it really moved me in a different way. Totally worth checking out.

    (It also led me to read Civil Disobedience by Thoreau and Self-Reliance by Emerson – both worth reading before Goldman because she references them a few times)

  • b34n5 [comrade/them, he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
    4·
    4 days ago

    I love Emma Goldman. I’ve noticed that she was influenced by Max Stirner and Kropotkin, two authors I love as well. I think she is a great representative of anarchism.