Emma Goldman was born on the 27th June
1869. She belonged to a Jewish family in
the Russian Empire. Out of her siblings,
she was not the eldest or youngest: she was the middle child. Emma had two
older half-sisters and two younger brothers. The “middle-child” went to
elementary school in the city of Koenigsberg.
Her parents were extremely conservative. It was at the age of seven when
Emma Goldman was to live with her grandmother in Eastern Prussia.
Emma
Goldman’s life was tough from the outset.
She was born into a ghetto; her father would beat her into frenzy at an
early age, while her mother remained docile and passive. She describes her father in her own words as
“the nightmare of my childhood”. The man
even tried to marry her off at the age of fifteen but the young feisty and
rebellious Emma was having none of it.
She was determined she would carry on with her schooling. Poverty was rife everywhere; in Emma
Goldman’s lifetime the world was on fire.
To say her life was tough is a little unfair, we may say, when all
things are considered that her life was not tough at all; no, it was totally
barbaric, barbaric by the way she was treated by her father, authority and
other menacing figures. This is nothing to what Emma Goldman would endure later
in life. She would be hounded to the
degree that she would even struggle to find shelter, persistently be
incarcerated for no apparent reason but of course the state always find a way
to justify such things, they always have done, and is true to say, always will
do; she was to be persistently terrorised by the press, rather the capitalist
press. She would have breakdowns, bouts
of depression, there even came a time when she withdrew from public life
completely; she had to, she simply had no choice. Indeed, Emma Goldman was a marked woman.
What
a scandal; what an outrage; what an abomination that such a person, indeed any
person, should be treated like a savage animal in this diseased fashion. To treat an adult like this is shameful but
to treat a childlike that is inhumane, but such things happened. At the age of thirteen, she moved with her
family in St. Petersburg, another ghetto.
It was 1882. It was in this same
year that she was forced to take an utterly degrading factory job. Here, she
was treated like a virtual slave. It was horrendous but the young girl simply
had no choice in the matter. She was
first employed making corsets; she would later manufacture gloves. Ultimately,
it was poverty, the worst crime, as Bernard Shaw said, that forced Emma’s
family into this action. Inevitably, so, the young girl was forced to quit
school for a bit of sweatshop labour. This, it turned out, was to become Emma
Goldman’s real education. It was here
where she saw real torment; she saw suffering; she saw things she would never
forget. This is the real Emma Goldman:
Emma Goldman the humanitarian; the; sympathiser; a woman of noble intentions;
of charity; of everything that is good and decent in a human being.
It is true, Karl Marx’s nearest and
dearest friend and co-contributor to many of his works, Frederick Engels, was
happy to work in the office at the Ermen and Engels textile factory of
ill-repute, in Manchester, England,
which his father owned, for textile factories in the 19th century were
all of ill-repute, as they are today.
Marx would, as it is well known, often borrow money from his friend,
money coming from the expense of sweatshop labour.
Karl Marx, the saintly Karl Marx, the hero of
the oppressed, the conscience of the worker, the humanitarian. What rubbish;
what nonsense; what fictitious fantasy, that Karl Marx and his lesser-known friend
should be deemed heroes of the working classes.
Emma Goldman, I am sure, would be thanking such factory exploiters’ such
as Engels and son, for people as herself
to be treated like a non-person, as Orwell would have it, to be treated like a
mechanical machine; to be treated like a forgotten slave. The voices in those appalling sweatshops are
distant ones, or rather forgotten. While the two fine gentlemen-Marx and
Engels-spout their propaganda, these young, innocent voices are lost forever,
never to be returned. We shall never
know the truth of their lives.
At
the age of fifteen, Emma Goldman’s father tried to force her into marriage,
when she refused he blew-up, grabbed her French grammar book and threw it into
the fire like a crazed madman. She only
had to endure her overbearing, grotesque father for another two years. A great opportunity had opened up for
her. It was her chance to get out of
Russia, to get away from the tyrannical Tsars, and move to a country full of
liberty and freedom like the United States, where she eventually went. Many years later Emma Goldman had this to say
about the North American country:
It
has been suggested to me that the constitution of the United States is a
sufficient safeguard for the freedom of its citizens. It is obvious that even the freedom it
pretends to guarantee is very limited. I
have not been impressed by the adequacy of this safeguard. The nations of the world, with centuries of
international law behind them, have never hesitated to engage in mass
destruction when solemnly pledged to keep the peace; and the legal documents in
America have not prevented the United States from doing the same. Those in authority have and always will abuse
their power. Moreover, the instances
when they do not are as rare as roses growing on icebergs. Far from the constitution playing any
liberating part in the lives of the American people, it has robbed them of the
capacity to rely on their own resources or do their own thinking. Americans are so easily hoodwinked by the
sanctity of law and authority. In fact,
the pattern of life has become standardised, routinised, and mechanised like
canned food and Sunday sermons. The hundred-percenter easily swallows
syndicated information and factory-made ideas and beliefs. He thrives on the wisdom given him over the
radio and cheap magazines by corporations whose misanthropic aims of selling
America out. He accepts the standards of
conduct and art in the same breath with the advertising of chewing gum,
toothpaste, and shoe polish. Even songs
are turned out like buttons-all cast from the same mould.
Her lucky break came when her
half-sister, Helene, decided to emigrate to America, Emma went along with her
and started a new life for herself.
Again, she obtained work in a factory; the name of the factory was
Garson Company. The wages paid to her
was a mere two-and-a-half dollars a week.
It was here that she worked very early in the morning and very late at
night. The exploitation of the girls in
the factory was not only economic but also sexual. If the young girls refused the advances of
the brutes in the factory, they often found themselves wandering the
streets. This was New York in the United
States: the land of the free; the land of opportunity; of miracles. It was not the case that America is a land of
opportunity was and is a complete fraud.
The girls in the factories fared worse here than they did in
Russia. What drudgery; what suffering;
what turmoil; what filth! Come to our
country, the United States, and we will beat you; we will torture your
soul. We will make you suffer; we will
force you to work until you can no longer stand; until you can no longer breathe. How free it is to be American, what
repression, oppression, and what total lunacy!
It is easy to exploit a 17-year-old girl from Russia; it is also easy to
enslave an entire nation. All this to
Emma Goldman who was still unfamiliar with the Russian language. Soon after the factory job, she married a
fellow compatriot. The marriage ended
before it began. Afterwards the divorced
Emma Goldman moved to New Haven.
In
the 19th century the United States called itself names like “free” and
democratic”. Was it “democratic” and “free” in these horror-show factories Emma
Goldman worked in? She was not yet give
the nickname “Red Emma” or labelled “the most dangerous woman in the world”,
because, thus far, she acted like the rest of us do, as a slave, watching
imperialism rip open people’s souls, doing nothing, saying nothing and
challenging nothing.
The
event that shook Emma Goldman’s heart to the very core had not yet
materialised. May 1886 had not yet
arrived, after this time Emma Goldman would become more than an exploited girl
in an awful factory in the land of the oppressed; she would become so much more
than that. She would meet the most
radical women and men of her age and she would become involved in revolutionary
activities in the next fifty-years or so.
Indeed, she was destined to become the most notorious anarchist in the
country, probably in the world. It is
the stuff of nightmares and Emma Goldman was the protagonist.
What
initially drew Emma Goldman to anarchism was the Haymarket Affair: workers in
the country had long been protesting about the atrocious working
conditions. People were in revolt about
the persistence of the eight-hour day movement. They were persistently working
for the eight-hour day. By this time,
1886, the movement of the knights of labour was really at its height. The crescendo ended when the great strike
against the Harvester Company of Chicago came about, strikers were bloody
massacred, as well as murders of labour leaders. Following this was the Haymarket bomb
explosion in Chicago. A bomb had been
thrown at a crowd of police officers.
The following year there was a mock trial. At the trial, the judge said:
“not because you have you caused the Haymarket bomb, but because you are
Anarchists, you are on trial”.
Indeed. Eight anarchists were
placed on trial for conspiracy, they were eventually convicted on the flimsiest
of evidence; four were hanged. Emma
Goldman followed the trial with a great amount of intrigue; this grave
injustice changed her life forever. She
was converted to anarchism.
The
United States of bloodbaths; the United States of state murder; the United
States of doom. The savagery was almost
immediate. After the Haymarket affair,
that is, after the bomb was thrown in the throng of police officers the witch-hunt
against anarchists was immediate. They
were persecuted, hounded, and brutalised by the land of the free. It has been known for many years the United
States government despise workers, union members, anarchists, socialists,
nihilists, existentialists, atheists, feminists, ecologists and so on. Nevertheless, to execute the people you
dislike is the stuff of fascism. No doubt,
the United States would like to patent organised violence, for it is a state
that forever carries out acts of organised and premeditated murder.
Emma
Goldman now joined the radicals in the U.S. She attended public meetings on a
regular basis. The first socialist
speaker Emma Goldman heard speak was Johann Greie, a German lecturer. She was still working in a factory in New
Haven, making corsets. She met
anarchists, socialists, and all other types of radicals during this
period. She was reading newspapers,
magazines and pamphlets on anarchism. It
was through reading Freiheit that
converted her to anarchism even more so than the tragedy of the Haymarket
martyrs. The editor of Freiheit was Johann Most. The year was 1889, Emma Goldman was 20 and
full of fire, Most made her his protégé, and she started giving lectures and
addressing small migrant crowds. During
this time she became ill due to the factory work; she moved to Rochester, and
then to New York. At this time, Emma
Goldman and other anarchists were living in hellholes; in concentration-camp
conditions. Many anarchists living in
America came from countries such as Germany and Austria because they have
anti-socialist legislation, which drove thousands from their native land. In
New York, anarchist meetings for Emma Goldman were a regular occurrence. The
first anarchist lecturer she was to hear speak was Dr. H. Solotaroff. It was
around this time Emma Goldman met Alexander Berkman. She, in 1889, was a leading organiser in the
cloak-makers strike, led the anarchists into the 1891 May Day demonstrations
which the socialists tried to ban. With
Berkman, and an artist friend, Freyda, they formed a commune; the three of them
became lovers.
Emma
Goldman, in the years to come, was to become one of the greatest, prolific and
most eloquent speakers then U.S would ever see.
She had all the qualities the state despises in an individual. She had courage, determination, threw herself
into the anarchist cause, and worked harder than she had ever done in any
factory. It would be necessary, if
another Emma Goldman were to emerge, for the authorities to imprison her for an
indefinite period, for she would inspire and encourage the poor; the oppressed;
the unemployed; the workers; anybody to organise, to fight, fight, fight! That is why such people are deemed
dangerous. All it takes is a single
radical for thousands of more radicals to emerge. There are tens of thousands of radicals
walking the streets today, the only problem is they just do not realise it, and
sadly, never will. For all the
propaganda they are bombarded with controls people's behavioural patterns, and
brainwashes them to behave like the docile slaves of the state, of course,
there must be criticisms of a certain sort, but these criticisms fall within a
very structural constraint. Anything too
critical and your voice will be silenced entirely. This is how media groups deal with democracy
and freedom; in the Stalinist fashion but for the Emma Goldman’s of this world,
if there be any, it will be a long, gruelling, cold and dark journey indeed.
1892
had arrived; Emma Goldman was entering her 23rd year, Berkman his 22nd. The eight-hour-day struggle continued.
Homestead, in Pennsylvania, striking steel workers against the Carnegie Steel
Corporation were heavily suppressed.
Nine members of the steel workers were murdered in cold blood and many
others injured. Emma Goldman was mortified. Henry Clay Frick, the corporation’s manager,
proposed a 22% wage cut, something the unions rejected. As retaliation, Frick closed down the Steel
plant and planned to re-open it with non-union workers. While this was going on, Emma, along with
Berkman, planned to go back to their native Russia but these events changed
their plans. Emma Goldman, here,
remembers the slaughter at Homestead, and Henry Clay Frick:
“LATEST
DEVELOPMENTS IN HOMESTEAD-FAMILIES OF STRIKERS EVICTED FROM THE COMPANY HOUSES-WOMAN
IN CONFINEMENT CARRIED OUT TO THE STREET BY SHERIFFS”. I read over the man’s shoulder Frick’s dictum
to the workers: he would rather see them dead than concede to their demands,
and he threatened to import Pinkerton detectives...a few days after our return
to New York the news was flashed across the country of the slaughter of steelworkers
by Pinkertons. Frick had fortified the
hometown mills, built a high fence around them.
Then, in the dead of the night, a barge stacked with strike-breakers, under
protection of heavily armed Pinkerton thugs, quietly stole up the Monongahela
River. The steel-men had learned of
Frick’s move. They stationed themselves
along the shore, determined to drive back Frick’s hirelings. When the barge got within range, the
Pinkerton’s had opened fire, without warning, killing a number of Homestead men
on the shoe, among them a little boy, and wounding scores of others.
Clay Anders Frick would long live in
Emma Goldman’s and especially Alexander Berkman’s memory. These were perverse times in America; it was
only six years previously in Chicago where anarchist scapegoats were convicted
on trumped-up charges. Now, the
bloodshed was worse, and the consequences would prove to be far heavier. Emma often directed her diatribes at
“philosophical anarchists”, rather than revolutionary figures, in other words
anarchists that theorise, write on the struggle but do not actively participate
in the struggle. It is true, if
anarchists must exist, the state would wish them to be “philosophical
anarchists”, rather than revolutionary figures.
For indeed, the books written by these radicals are not widely read at
all, if they were, the state would have to find some way to suppress the
material. Nevertheless, as it stands,
they have little to worry about. Emma
Goldman was deemed dangerous, as will be revealed, but for now, Emma was
debating with Alexander and Freyda what their plan of action would be
next. The choice they made would prove
to be catastrophic.
Henry
Clay Frick had blood on his hands, but he did not care about that, Emma Goldman
did, and the youthful, idealist twenty-three year-old, along with her two
friends, decided to employ Frick’s philosophy: violence. Alexander Berkman, at just twenty-one, had
the temerity to shoot Frick, murder him and Emma Goldman would be a willing
participant. It was her role to raise
the money in order to buy the gun. She
even tried, on Fourteenth Street, to make money as a prostitute, but failed in
her task, here she recounts the event:
Saturday
evening, July 16, 1892, I walked up and down Fourteenth Street, one of the long
procession of girls I had so often seen plying their trade. By eleven o’clock, I was exhausted. My feet hurt from the big heels, my head
throbbed. I was close to tears from
fatigue and disgust with my inability to carry out what I had come to do.
I
made another effort. I stood on the corner of Fourteenth Street and Fourth
Avenue, near the bank building. The
first man that invited me-I would go with him, I had decided. A tall distinguished-looking person, well
dressed, came close. “Let’s have a drink,
little girl”, he said...I was conscious of the man’s scrutiny of my face and
body. I felt myself growing
resentful. Presently he asked: you are a
novice in this business, aren’t you? “
“Yes, this is my first time-but how did you know?” “I watched as you passed me,” he replied.
”But thousands of girls are driven through economic necessity,” I blurted out
and he looked at me in surprise. “Where
did you get that stuff?” I wanted to
tell him about the social question, about my idea, who and what I was, but I
checked myself. I must not disclose my
identity: it would be too dreadful if he could learn that Emma Goldman, the
anarchist, had been soliciting on Fourteenth Street.
Emma ended up borrowing the money to
pay for the gun. Had the three youngsters
in the commune gone mad? It appeared so.
Emma Goldman, the would-be prostitute and Alexander Berkman, the
would-be murderer. All they were doing
was employing the terror Henry Clay Frick do in this world, albeit the terror
was not aimed at defenceless steelworkers, it was aimed at a brute of a man, a
tyrant no less. As the example has been
highlighted above, the young anarchists did not know what they were doing. To denounce a violent act by an anarchist is
well and good, but to justify state and corporate violence is
inconsistent. In fact it is more than
state and corporate violence, it is outright terror but the terrorist
aggression they use is against the poor, the needy, the helpless and no the
Fricks’ of this world. It is easy for
humanitarians to lose sight of things, and think it is justice to destroy the
aggressor or aggressors. Indeed, if the
state acted, as it should have, Frick would have been imprisoned for his
nefarious crimes he committed, but as is well known, such people are above the law.
On
July 23, 1892, Berkman entered Frick’s office in Pittsburgh, and shot him twice
before being thrown to the ground and before he knew it he had been escorted
off by the police. The act failed;
Berkman did not murder Frick. Henry Clay
Frick responded by crushing the union with the help of the National Guard. For his troubles, Berkman was sentenced to
twenty-two years imprisonment at Pennsylvania Penitentiary, which can only be
described as a hellhole, and indeed, it was.
The maximum sentence he could have received is seven years; such are the
wonders of the American imperial justice system! He would end up spending fourteen of those
years in prison.
Meanwhile
the police were pursuing Emma Goldman, in an attempt to prosecute her over the
attempted murder of Frick. The fact that
she happened to be in New York at the time and not in Pittsburgh was enough to
avoid being charged with any wrongdoing.
The authorities of all kinds, as well as the capitalist press persecuted
her. She was the target of abuse. She defended her act by the use of oratory
but everyone was against her, indeed, she was a marked woman. Even her anarchist comrades criticised her in
public, including Johann Most. For Emma
had counted on Johann the Most to come to her defence; she was wrong. Most, a man, in the past, had published
papers on bomb making. In an
unforgettable event, the hot-tempered Emma Goldman, sat next to Freyda,
watching, or rather listening to Johann Most speak, she asked him to withdraw
his attack on the actions of Berkman, when he responded by calling her an
“hysterical woman”, Emma leaped on the stage, produced a whip and whipped
Johann Most into a frenzy before walking from the hall.
In
the following year, 1893, Emma encountered more trouble of a different
kind. During this period in her life,
she was organising as well as being on the lecture circuit, getting involved in
all kinds of issues. It is true there
was nobody in the world like Emma Goldman.
Her energy and her attacks on the state, marriage, the church, on
everything. She was labelled as “the most dangerous woman”. Thousands in the city were living on the
streets, thousands were unemployed living in awful conditions, so for Emma, this
was no time to rest. A huge demonstration
was taking place at Union Square in New York, the protesters were cloak makers. She was one of their invited speakers. “Necessity knows no law”, she said “and the
starving man has a natural right to a share of his neighbour’s bread”, then she
uttered those fatal words: “Ask for work.
If they do not give you work or bread, then take bread”. The following day the capitalist press went
on the rampage once again over Emma Goldman’s comments. The Chief of police in New York obtained an
arrest warrant for the twenty-four year-old; she was incarcerated for several
days. She was being charged with
“inciting a riot”, although no riot took place.
During the trial, the assistant district Attorney addressed her:
“Do
you believe in the supreme being, Miss Goodman?
No, sir, I do not.
Is there any government or laws on
earth whose laws you approve of?
No, sir, for they are against the
people.
Why don’t you leave this country if
you do not like its laws?
Where
shall I go? Everywhere on earth, the
laws are against the poor, and they tell me I cannot go to heaven, nor do I
want to go there.
She was found guilty and sentenced to
a year in prison on Blackwell’s Island.
In the penitentiary she worked as a nurse in the hospital as well as
studying English Literature, it was in this environment that she matured. The
following year at the age of twenty-five, she was released.
When
she was released she became known as “Red Emma”, this was her first time in
prison but it certainly not her last. By
this time, she was now the most famous anarchist in America and she was only
twenty-five. Like today, the capitalist
press, remained as an extension of state power, she could not breathe without
them knowing about it first. Now she was
even more watched than ever before. She
even said the following: “For further information (about me) consult any police
department in America or Europe”.
Throughout
the 1890s, she toured and lectured extensively right across America and
Europe. The 1890s for Emma Goldman was
exciting enough.
1897
was the first year when she undertook her first lecture tour. After her two trips to Europe (1895 and
1898), she attended clandestine anarchist meetings, lectured and studied
nursing and midwifery. She showed no
sign of slowing down either; her energy was as fiery as ever. It is a queer thing to ponder if Emma Goldman
was alive today she would have spent more years in prison, undergone more
attacks by the capitalist press, be watched and monitored ever more
closely. For back in Emma Goldman’s
lifetime anarchism was a very strong movement, but today it is laughable to
even suggest such a thing. It is true
the more civilised people become the more autocratic government is. Ultimately, the aim of the government is to
control the people it laughably claims to represent. This means rooting out the radicals, by
monitoring them, shrivelling them, hounding, terrorising, threatening,
manipulating, bullying, condemning, imprisoning and even eliminating them.
Emma
Goldman was now in her thirties; Berkman was still languishing in prison and
the event of the year would prove to have Emma Goldman a marked woman once and
for all, she would be an outcast, she would suffer like she had never suffered
before because of one inopportune meeting with a young Polish immigrant. On the 6th September 1901 President William McKinley
was assassinated by Leon Czolgosz at Buffalo. Emma Goldman was immediately set
upon, hounded and persecuted, anarchists all over the world were arrested,
intimidated interrogated, it was a repression against a group of people that
had never even seen America before. She
was arrested and taken to Chicago where she was incarcerated for a number of
weeks. She was persistently interrogated
and cross-examined. When the Polish
immigrant, Leon Czolgosz assassinated the then American President, he claimed
it was Goldman who incited him into the act.
She denied the accusations for one simple reason: Czolgosz was
lying. He had met her during one of her
lectures. Emma Goldman recounts the story:
The
President had been shot at the exposition grounds in Buffalo by a young man by
the name of Leon Czolgosz. “I have never
heard the name”, Carl said, “have you?
“No, never”, I replied.
“It
is fortunate you are here and not in Buffalo,” he continued. “As usual the papers will connect you with
this act.”
“Nonsense”,
I said. “The American press is fantastic
enough, but it would hardly concoct such a crazy story”.
She was wrong. The headline on the
front page on one of the newspapers read: “ASSASSIN OF PRESIDENT MCKINLEY AN
ANARCHIST. CONFESSES TO HAVING BEEN
INCITED BY EMMA GOLDMAN. WOMAN
ANARCHIST WANTED”.
Emma
Goldman had seen a picture of McKinley’s assassin. “Why, that’s Nieman!” she gasped. The same man asked her for anarchistic
literature in Cleveland. Before she was
arrested police forces in the whole country were searching for her, thousands
of them. When the police arrested her,
they said: “You’re the shrewdest crook I ever met! Take her, quick!” After some weeks, the newspapers published a
few lines saying: “After a month’s detention Emma Goldman was found not to have
been in complicity with the assassin of President McKinley”.
Leon
Czolgosz and other men of his type far from being depraved creatures of low
instincts are in reality super sensitive beings unable to bear under too great
social stress. They are driven to some
violent expression, even at the sacrifice of their own lives, because they
cannot supinely witness the misery and suffering of their fellows. The blame of such an act must be laid at the
door of those who are responsible for the injustice and inhumanity which
dominate the world.
As
I write, my thoughts wander to the young man with the girlish face about to be
put to death, pacing his cell, followed by cruel eyes:
“Who watch him when he tries to weep
And when he tries to pray
And watch him lest himself should
robe
The prison of its prey”.
My
heart goes out to him in deep sympathy, as it goes to all the victims of
oppression and misery, to the martyrs past and present that die, the
forerunners of a better and nobler life.”
When asked if was not sorry the
President was dead, Emma Goldman replied:
Is
it possible in the entire United States only the President passed away on this
day? Surely many others have died at the
same time, perhaps in poverty and destitution, leaving helpless dependents
behind. Do you expect me to feel more
regret over the death of McKinley than the rest?
My
compassion has always been with the living.
The dead no longer need it. No doubt,
that is the reason why you all feel sympathetic to the dead. You know that you’ll never be called upon to
make good your protestations.”
“I think you’re crazy”, replied the
reporter.
For the next several years,
repression against anarchists in America was so unprecedented that Emma Goldman
had to retire from public life and change her name. From now on, she became known as Miss E.G
Smith. She lived by sewing, nursing and
managing a group of Russian actors.
In
1906, two events happened that changed Emma Goldman’s life: Alexander Berkman,
or Sasha, as she liked to call him, was finally released from prison, after
fourteen years of pure torment. That he
even survived is quite incredible. The
second event was the arrival of the English anarchist, John turner, he induced
her to come out of retirement and she did.
Berkman and herself started publishing Mother Earth which replaced Free
Society but this was forced to close after the murder of McKinley. Of the former publication Goldman and Sasha
were the co-editors, the first issue published in March 1906. It ran until 1918, when the pair found
themselves in prison yet again. Her
touring and lecturing during this time was prolific. In 1910, she spoke 120 times in 37 cities to
25,000 listeners. She kept on going;
despite the authorities doing everything, they could to stop her. It was unlike the aftermath of the McKinley
murder, where she was hounded out of every property; indeed, she could not even
find shelter, she found herself living with prostitutes. Now Emma Goldman had replaced Miss Smith.
In
February, 1916, Emma Goldman was arrested and imprisoned for disseminating
information on birth control; Goldman and Berkman’s trial over Woodrow Wilson’s
1917 draft bill...such was the life of Emma Goldman. Emma Goldman arrived in San Diego in 1912,
when she was in her 43rd year, to see the I.W.W (International Workers of the
World), as well as the Anarcho Syndicalist union. People were beaten jailed and even murdered
by vigilante groups. Over five years
later when President Wilson signed the Draft Bill for all twenty-one to
thirty-year-old men for compulsory conscription, Emma Goldman and Sasha came up
with their own “No-conscription manifesto”, of which they distributed 100,000
copies. In June 1917, the edition of Mother Earth, read:
We
oppose conscription because we are internationalists, anti-militarists, and
oppose all wars waged by capitalist governments. We will fight what we choose to fight
for. We will never fight simply because
we are ordered to fight.
We
believe that the militarisation of America is an evil that far outweighs, in
its antisocial and anti-libertarian affects, any good that may come from America’s
participation in the war.
We
will resist conscription by every means in our power, and we will sustain those
who, for similar reasons, refuse to be inscripted.
At one of Berkman’s rallies, a
supporter was arrested and sentenced to two years for conspiracy. Blast,
Sasha’s journal was raided by marshals, as was Mother Earth, the contents confiscated. Consequently, the two anarchists were
arrested and charged. The trial started
on 27th June 1917, on Emma Goldman’s 48th birthday. She addressed the jury; here are selected
passages from the speech:
The stage having been
appropriately for the three-act comedy, and the first act successfully played
out by carrying off the villains in a madly dashing automobile-which broke
every traffic regulation and barely escaped crushing everyone in its way-the
second act proved to be even more ludicrous.
Fifty thousand dollars bail was demanded, and the real estate was
refused when offered by a man whose property is rated at three-hundred thousand
dollars, and after that, the District Attorney had considered and, in fact,
promised to accept the property for one of the defendants, Alexander Berkman,
thus breaking every right guaranteed by even the most heinous criminal. Finally the third act, played by the
Government in this court during the last week.
The pity of it is that the prosecution knows so little of dramatic reconstruction;
else, it would have equipped itself with better dramatic material to sustain
the continuity of the play. As is was,
the third act fell flat, utterly, and presents the question, why such a tempest
in a teapot?
...It
is organised violence on top which creates individual violence at the
bottom. It is the accumulated
indignation against organised wrong, organised crime, injustice which cause the
political offender to his act. To
condemn him means to be blind to the cause which make him.
...To
say that America has entered the war to make the world safe for democracy, she
must first make democracy safe for America.
How else is the world supposed to take America seriously, when democracy
at home is being outraged, free speech suppressed, peaceable assemblies broken
up by overbearing and brutal gangsters in uniform; when free press is curtailed
and every independent opinion gagged.
Despite the speech or indeed because
of it, the pair were sentenced to two years in prison, and upon release they
were to be deported back to Russia. It
was the judge who recommended they be deported, when he said “we have no place
in our country”.
After the pair were released in 1919 they were deported to Russia. Even Lenin told Emma Goldman free speech did not exist in Russia. It was not the utopian paradise she expected it to be, far from it. She and Berkman travelled the country looking at the archives at “revolutionary Russia”, and were completely mortified by their findings. It was in these archives where they found widespread repression and forced labour camps. She writes about her thoughts on Leninist Russia:
All
the succeeding acts of the Bolsheviki, all their following policies, changing
of policies, their compromises and retreats, their methods of suppression and
persecution, their terrorism and extermination of all other political views-all
were the means to an end: the retaining of state power in the hands of the
communist Party...once in possession of the state the communists began their
process of elimination. All the
political parties and groups which refused to submit to the new dictatorship
had to go. First the Anarchists and Left
Social Revolutionists, then the Mensheviki and other opponents from the Right,
and finally everybody who dared aspire to an opinion of his own. Similar was
the fate of all independent organisations. They were either subordinated to the
needs of the new state, or destroyed altogether, as were the Soviets, the trade
unions and the cooperatives...while the workers continued to starve, engineers,
industrial experts and technicians received high salaries, special privileges,
and the best rations. They became the
pampered employees of the state and the new slave drivers of the masses.
Two years later, in 1921, the pair
left on temporary voluntary exile, being so outraged at the extent of Lenin’s
state terror. What provoked them to
leave their homeland was the treatment of the sailors of Kronstadt. When these sailors, and other groups went on
a series of marches in March 1921, appealing directly to Lenin and Trotsky,
asking for basic things like free elections, freedom of speech, the Government
responded by massacring the workers in their thousands. It was time for Emma to leave and settle in
Western Europe. In 1925, she became a
British subject, and in desperate need of a valid passport, she married an
English anarchist. She left with her new
passport for Canada. In the 1930s, she
denounced Hitler regularly, during this time, in her sixties, she was not quite
the Emma Goldman she used to be, she had, in her own words, “moved to the
centre”. She was allowed back in America
because she was no longer a danger; she was tame, her views moderate. Emma Goldman’s time had been and gone. Sasha had committed suicide, and in early
1940, Emma Goldman suffered a stroke, three months later, on May 14th, she
died. The U.S authorities were generous
and allowed her body to be shipped to Chicago so she could be buried among the
Haymarket martyrs, she was seventy.
November 2012
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