In the 1890s and for years thereafter, America reverberated with the name of the notorious Anarchist, feminist, revolutionist, and agitator, Emma Goldman. A Russian Jewish immigrant at the age of 17, she moved by her own efforts from seamstress in a clothing factory to internationally known radical lecturer, writer, editor, and friend of the oppressed. This book is a collection of her remarkably penetrating essays, far in advance of their time, originally published by the Mother Earth press which she founded.
In the first of these essays, Anarchism: What It Really Stands For, she says, Direct action, having proven effective along economic lines, is equally potent in the environment of the individual. In Minorities Versus Majorities she holds that social and economic well-being will result only through the non-compromising determination of intelligent minorities, and not through the mass. Other pieces deal with The Hypocrisy of Puritanism; Prisons: A Social Crime and Failure; The Psychology of Political Violence; The Drama: A Powerful Disseminator of Radical Thought; Patriotism: A Menace to Liberty; and The Tragedy of Woman's Emancipation. A biographical sketch by Hippolyte Havel precedes the essays.
Anarchism and Other Essays provides a fascinating look into revolutionary issues at the turn of the century, a prophetic view of the social and economic future, much of which we have seen take place, and above all, a glimpse into the mind of an extraordinary woman: brilliant, provocative, dedicated, passionate, and what used to be called high-minded.

Anarchist, journalist, drama critic, advocate of birth control and free love, Emma Goldman was the most famous--and notorious--woman in the early twentieth century. This abridged version of her two-volume autobiography takes her from her birthplace in czarist Russia to the socialist enclaves of Manhattan's Lower East Side. Against a dramatic backdrop of political argument, show trials, imprisonment, and tempestuous romances, Goldman chronicles the epoch that she helped shape: the reform movements of the Progressive Era, the early years of and later disillusionment with Lenin's Bolshevik experiment, and more. Sounding a call still heard today, Living My Life is a riveting account of political ferment and ideological turbulence.

• First time in Penguin Classics

• Condensed to half the length of Goldman's original work, this edition is accessible to those interested in the activist and her extraordinary era

Emma Goldman, the anarchist feminist political philosopher, was known throughout her lifetime as the High Priestess of Anarchy. To the tabloids, she was Red Emma, Queen of the Anarchists. Today, she is heralded as a founder of anarcha-feminism and remembered for her feminist credo: If I can't dance, I don't want to be in your revolution.

Over the course of an extraordinary revolutionary lifetime, Emma Goldman challenged a long list of towering adversaries: the police, the U.S. prison system, Anthony Comstock (champion of the anti-birth control Comstock laws), J. Edgar Hoover, and Vladimir Lenin. She was an early and outspoken critic of homophobia at a time when such a position was rare, including among anarchists, and mentored Margaret Sanger in the fight for birth control access. Her legacy has continued to inspire radical thinkers for a century. Historian Howard Zinn wrote a play about her life; artist Jenny Holzer used her writings in a searing print series. Though we tend to think of the history of radical political thought as overwhelmingly male, Goldman offers a fierce feminist intervention. This anthology organizes her most relevant writings, speeches, and interviews according to her perennial concerns, including marriage, prostitution, prisons and political violence.

This new edition includes a foreword by Vivian Gornick, an interview of Goldman by pathbreaking journalist Nelly Bly, and a biographical timeline.

Emma Goldman, once considered the most dangerous woman in America, was a thinker so far ahead of her time that even to a modern reader, her views sound startlingly revolutionary. This collection of essays is an excellent introduction to her thoughts: ranging from her views on women's liberation, the role of theater, the prison system, and the tactics of dissent. All are filled with her fearless joyousness, her radical dedication to the idea that life is meant to be a source of delight--and that escaping the meaningless drudgery of daily life must be achieved by any means necessary.

A true classic of radical literature, in its first scholarly, annotated edition.

Emma Goldman, the notorious anarchist deported from the United States in 1919 for seditious activities, was a leading figure of American anarchism for almost thirty years. She continued to write and speak on anarchism for the rest of her life in exile, first in Soviet Russia and then in Europe--including Spain during the Spanish Revolution--and, finally, Canada.

Goldman played a pivotal role in the development of anarchism in America and Europe in the first half of the twentieth century. This collection, first published in 1910 by her press, Mother Earth Publishing Association, illustrates her wide-reaching mind and ability to bring together strands of American and European individualism, anarchist communism, and early feminist thinking to develop a body of work that continues to influence the theory and practice of anarchism today. Essays include Anarchism: What It Really Stands For, The Psychology of Political Violence, Prisons: A Social Crime and Failure, The Hypocrisy of Puritanism, The Tragedy of Woman's Emancipation, and Marriage and Love, among others.

A new introduction by Moran and Pateman situates Goldman's thinking in the movement of her day but also makes clear why her essays are still vital. Annotations throughout bring to light individuals and events that enrich our understanding of Goldman's writings.

The Working Classics Series revives lineages of radical thought from the history of the anarchist movement.

2011 Reprint of 1911 Edition. Emma Goldman (1869 - 1940) was an anarchist known for her political activism, writing and speeches. She played a pivotal role in the development of anarchist political philosophy in North America and Europe in the first half of the twentieth century. Anarchism was central to Goldman's view of the world and she is today considered one of the most important figures in the history of anarchism. First drawn to it during the persecution of anarchists after the 1886 Haymarket affair, she wrote and spoke regularly on behalf of anarchism. In the title essay of her book Anarchism and Other Essays, she wrote: Anarchism, then, really stands for the liberation of the human mind from the dominion of religion; the liberation of the human body from the dominion of property; liberation from the shackles and restraint of government. Anarchism stands for a social order based on the free grouping of individuals for the purpose of producing real social wealth; an order that will guarantee to every human being free access to the earth and full enjoyment of the necessities of life, according to individual desires, tastes, and inclinations.

The world is at a loss for a way out. Parliamentarism and democracy are on the decline. Salvation is being sought in Fascism and other forms of strong government.

Accessible, humorous, impassioned, and strangely relevant to our present day: here are collected some of the best short pieces by Emma Goldman, once famously regarded as the most dangerous woman in America.

To a world grown weary of financial inequality, endless wars, rampant injustice, and atrocities committed in the name of profit and along our borders, Goldman still offers a very different vision for human societies, at once wildly idealistic, profoundly humane, and firmly rooted in the practical matters of daily life. Now is the perfect time to revisit this most radical of American dreamers.

Propagandism is not, as some suppose, a trade, because nobody will follow a trade at which you may work with the industry of a slave and die with the reputation of a mendicant. The motives of any persons to pursue such a profession must be different from those of trade, deeper than pride, and stronger than interest.

Anarchism and Other Essays By Emma Goldman

In the eighteen-nineties and for years thereafter, America reverberated with the name of the notorious Anarchist, feminist, revolutionist and agitator, Emma Goldman. A Russian Jewish immigrant at the age of 17, she moved by her own efforts from seamstress in a clothing factory to internationally known radical lecturer, writer, editor and friend of the oppressed.

I may be arrested, I may be tried and thrown into jail, but I never will be silent; I never will acquiesce or submit to authority, nor will I make peace with a system which degrades woman to a mere incubator and which fattens her on innocent victims. I now and here declare war upon this system...

Originally published in two volumes in 1931 and 1934, Living My Life is the autobiography of Lithuanian anarchist and political activist Emma Goldman. Written while she was living in France, the work covers her life from her poor and unhappy childhood in Lithuania and St. Petersburg, to her move to America in 1885 and settlement in New York as a young woman, and finally to her life as an anarchist and social activist over the next forty years. Famous for her public speaking and progressive ideas, Goldman was an important figure in the fight for equal rights for women, safe conditions and fair pay for workers, and the protection of free speech. She was often jailed in the United States for her open and unashamed promotion of birth control and vocal opposition to World War I. While Goldman was initially supportive of the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, she soon grew disillusioned with communism and frequently spoke out against the oppressive regime. Fascinating and deeply personal, Goldman recounts both her journey to become a prominent social activist as well as her unhappy marriage and dramatic relationships with fellow anarchists. Living My Life is a compelling portrait of a brilliant and fearless woman far ahead of her time. This edition is printed on premium acid-free paper.

You damn bitch of an anarchist, I wish I could get at you. I would tear your heart out and feed it to my dog. This was one of the less obscene messages received by Emma Goldman (1869-1940), while in jail on suspicion of complicity in the assassination of McKinley. The most notorious woman of her day, she was bitterly hated by millions and equally revered by millions.
The strong feelings she aroused are understandable. She was an alien, a practicing anarchist, a labor agitator, a pacifist in World War 1, an advocate of political violence, a feminist, a proponent of free love and birth control, a communist, a street-fighter for justice -- all of which she did with strong intellect and boundless passion. Today, of course, many of the issues that she fought over are just as vital as they were then.
Emma Goldman came from Russia at the age of 17. After an encounter with the sweatshop and an unfortunate marriage, she plunged into the bewildering intellectual and activist chaos that attended American social evolution around the turn of the twentieth century. She knew practically everyone of importance in radical circles. She dominated many areas of the radical movement, lecturing, writing, haranguing, and publishing to awaken the world to her ideas. After World War I she was deported to Russia, where she soon discovered that anarchists were no better liked than in America, despite Lenin's first gesture of welcome. She escaped with her life but never was allowed to return to the United States.
Emma Goldman was a devastatingly honest woman, who spared herself as little as she spared anyone else. From her account the reader can gain insight into a curious personality type of recurrent interest: a woman who devoted her life to eliminating suffering, yet could make a bomb or assist in staging an assassination. Equally interesting are her comments on other radicals of the period, such as Kropotkin, Berkman, Mooney, Lenin, Trotsky, Haywood, Most, the Haymarket martyrs, and many others. Her autobiography, written with vigor, ranks among the finest in the English language.

In this book you will find the following essays by anarchist Emma Goldman * Anarchism: What It Really Stands For * Minorities Versus Majorities * The Psychology of Political Violence * Prisons: A Social Crime and Failure * Patriotism: A Menace to Liberty * Francisco Ferrer and The Modern School * The Hypocrisy of Puritanism

Emma Goldman (June 27 O.S. June 15], 1869 - May 14, 1940) was an anarchist political activist and writer. She played a pivotal role in the development of anarchist political philosophy in North America and Europe in the first half of the 20th century. Born in Kovno, Russian Empire (now Kaunas, Lithuania) to a Jewish family, Goldman emigrated to the United States in 1885. Attracted to anarchism after the Haymarket affair, Goldman became a writer and a renowned lecturer on anarchist philosophy, women's rights, and social issues, attracting crowds of thousands.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 in 1892 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. In 1906, Goldman founded the anarchist journal Mother Earth. In 1917, Goldman and Berkman were sentenced to two years in jail for conspiring to induce persons not to register for the newly-instated draft. After their release from prison, they were arrested-along with hundreds of others-and deported to Russia. Initially supportive of that country's October Revolution which brought the Bolsheviks to power, Goldman reversed her opinion in the wake of the Kronstadt rebellion and denounced the Soviet Union for its violent repression of independent voices. In 1923, she published a book about her experiences, My Disillusionment in Russia. While living in England, Canada, and France, she wrote an autobiography called Living My Life. After the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, she traveled to Spain to support the anarchist revolution there. She died in Toronto on May 14, 1940, aged 70. During her life, Goldman was lionized as a freethinking rebel woman by admirers, and denounced by detractors as an advocate of politically motivated murder and violent revolution. Her writing and lectures spanned a wide variety of issues, including prisons, atheism, freedom of speech, militarism, capitalism, marriage, free love, and homosexuality. Although she distanced herself from first-wave feminism and its efforts toward women's suffrage, she developed new ways of incorporating gender politics into anarchism. After decades of obscurity, Goldman gained iconic status by a revival of interest in her life in the 1970s, when feminist and anarchist scholars rekindled popular interest...............

One of the towering figures in global radicalism of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Emma Goldman (1869-1940) was an anarchist, a feminist, a pacifist, a communist, a unionist, and a proponent of birth control and free love. Her extreme notions made her as much an object of outrage as one of reverence in the tumultuous years of the Gilded Age, World War I, and the Roaring Twenties, and her name remains, to this day, synonymous with ideas of sweeping cultural revolution. Here, in the first of her two-volume memories, first published in 1931, she tells her life story. From her arrival in New York as a 20-year-old seamstress, when she immediately launched into a life of activism and public agitation, she recalls her childhood in Lithuania, her immigration to the U.S. as a teenager, and her wild adventures as an independent and intelligent woman: baptizing babies on a beer barrel, supporting workingmen's strikes, traveling in Europe... An important and influential figure in such far-flung geopolitical events as the Russian Revolution and the Spanish Civil War, Goldman is one of the most storied people of the 20th century. And her story, in her own inimitable words, is one of the great biographies, and one of the great personal histories of a turbulent era.

After being deported from the United States to Russia in 1920, Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman witnessed first-hand the contradictions of Lenin's so-called dictatorship of the proletariat, the murder and imprisonment of Russian anarchists, and Trotsky's lethal suppression of the 1921 Kronstadt Uprising. While the two revolutionaries had initially offered critical support to the Bolshevik regime, the tyranny they witnessed in the so-called worker's state reaffirmed their belief that true social revolution can never be managed or manipulated by political parties seeking state power.

When they escaped Russia in 1922, Goldman and Berkman authored numerous pamphlets and articles about what they had seen, and each published a diary of their experiences. Their work in this period had international impact among anarchists and other revolutionaries who were beginning to view Lenin's Russia more critically.

To Remain Silent is Impossible collects many of these anarchists' most important essays, pamphlets, and diary entries related to the Russian Revolution.

Vision on Fire is a historical treasure.--Howard Zinn

This carefully chosen collection features the most important writings from the turbulent last four years of Emma Goldman's life. This incredible follow-up her popular autobiography, Living My Life, reveals her struggles with the contradictions of the Spanish Revolution and her efforts to maintain integrity and vision in the heat of political activism.

An influential and well-known anarchist, Emma Goldman was an early advocate of free speech, birth control, feminism, and workers' rights.

David Porter received his PhD from Columbia University. He has taught for two decades at Empire State College.

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Lithuanian born anarchist Emma Goldman emigrated to the United States at the age of sixteen. She first became attracted to anarchism following the Haymarket affair of 1886, a massacre in which seven police officers and an unknown number of civilians were killed during a march of striking Chicago workers. Eight anarchists were subsequently tried for murder. In the early part of the 20th century Emma Goldman would become one the most ardent supporters of the anarchist philosophy, advocating it through lectures and writings, and even in helping to plan, with her lover Alexander Berkman, a failed assassination of wealthy financier Henry Clay Frick. In 1906 Goldman founded the anarchist journal Mother Earth. Anarchism and Other Essays is a collection of essays first published in that journal and later published together as a book in 1911. In these twelve essays we find a representative collection of Goldman's political philosophy, including her view of what anarchism stands for, the psychology of political violence, feminism and women's rights, the injustice of the prison system, and other opinions on art, education, sexuality, religion, and patriotism. This edition is printed on premium acid-free paper.