Emma Goldman, Anarchism, and Mother Earth
I chose to write a blog about Emma Goldman because I have a lot of respect for how she used the press to criticize the powerful and give a voice to workers and women. I am majoring in political science and am interested in labor history in different eras of American history. Emma Goldman went against the conventions of most mainstream publishers and had the courage to speak out. Goldman’s advocacy for the struggle of the working class earned her nationwide notoriety and the nickname “Red Emma.” She was called “One of the most dangerous women in the United States” by J Edgar Hoover.
Despite the constant public attacks, Goldman was a popular and influential public speaker. One of the most interesting thing about Mother Earth was Emma Goldman’s refusal to condescend or pander to its readers, providing them with economic theories and reviews of literature instead. Peter Glassgold, the editor of an anthology of Mother Earth, wrote in his introduction:
“Among the hundreds of anarchist magazines and newspapers that have been published in the United States, Mother Earth ranks among the longer lived, best written, and best produced. This was due in large measure to Alexander Berkman, the editor from 1907 to 1915, who was an experienced professional typesetter, but also to Goldman’s resolve, expressed in a 1915 editorial, “to keep Mother Earth untrammeled by party policies, free from sectarian favoritism and from every outside influence, however well intentioned.” This allowed it to develop a broad readership beyond anarchist circles and appeal to socialists, single-taxers, militant Wobblies, social reformers, and even parlor liberals.”
Goldman was a unique and brilliant writer and thinker, and American free speech, labor rights, civil rights, womens’ rights, and the rise of birth control owe a lot to Emma Goldman and her journal.
Who was Emma Goldman?
Emma Goldman was an American anarchist, educator, activist, and feminist who lived from 1869 to 1940. She was born in what is now Lithuania, and she emigrated to New York City in 1885 with her sister. In 1886, the Haymarket Riot and subsequent execution of the anarchists on flimsy evidence radicalized Goldman. Shortly afterwards, she met the anarchists Alexander Berkman and Johann Most, and became involved in anarchist writing and organizing. In the 1890s, Goldman trained to be a nurse and studied Freud and European literature.
Goldman went into hiding following the 1901 assassination of William McKinley by an anarchist who claimed to have been inspired by Goldman though she had only met him once and was not involved in the planning of the assassination. Her name was used in the press in association with the incident and an era of extreme opposition to anarchism began.
In 1906, Emma Goldman began publication of Mother Earth, and begins lecturing on radical politics and birth control. From 1910 to 1917, she lectured all around the United States, speaking to workers about rejecting the authority of the state and the elites who governed it. In 1916, Goldman was sentenced to prison for spreading information about birth control. In 1917, Mother Earth had to cease publication, shut down by the state for advocating draft avoidance in the lead up to World War 1. Goldman and Berkman were arrested for two years, then deported to Russia in 1919. In 1922, Goldman wrote several articles for the New York World about her disappointment with the aftermath of the Russian Revolution, criticizing the authoritarian Soviet state.
In 1931, Goldman published her autobiography, Living My Life, about her experiences as an anarchist and labor organizer. She died in 1940, and was buried in Chicago, with the Haymarket martyrs.
Emma Goldman is remembered by many feminists and radicals for her tireless efforts to criticize capitalism and government despotism, and her record of being one of the first radicals to embrace women’s rights to exercise autonomy over their own reproductive health and the “free-love” movement.
The Haymarket Riot
The Haymarket Riot of 1886 was a turning point in the life of Emma Goldman and many other radicals in this era of American history. The giant riot resulted from workers struggling for an 8 hour workday, and although explosives were used, police were unable to produce material evidence of the anarchists’ involvement. Nevertheless, four anarchists were hanged, becoming martyrs for the labor movement. The lasting impact on Emma Goldman and radicals in the labor movement can be seen in her writing criticizing capitalism.
Anarchism as a Political Ideology
Emma Goldman wrote about anarchism at a time when industrialized capitalism was oppressing workers in new ways. Goldman used her writing to criticize the wretched labor conditions and inequality that she was exposed to at the turn of the century in New York. At the same time, Goldman opposed state authoritarianism, writing in favor of individualism and freedom from unjust hierarchies of gender and social class.
“Anarchism, then, really stands for 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 restraints 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.” -Emma Goldman, Anarchism: What it Really Stands For
Goldman defines anarchism in this essay as: “The philosophy of a new social order based on the liberty unrestricted by man-made law; the theory that all forms of government rest on violence and are therefore wrong and harmful, as well as unecessary.”
Anarchists played a key role in the labor movement, along with socialists, trade unionists, feminists, and more radical liberals. The labor movement in the late 1800s and early 1900s fought for an 8 hour workday and regulations to protect them from the industrialists.
Mother Earth: A Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature
Mother Earth was the journal published by Emma Goldman, edited for the most part by Goldman’s colleague and lover Alexander Berkman (from 1907–1905). Its first editor, in 1906, was Max Baginski, who also edited the Yiddish Freiheit. It was in publication from 1906 to 1917, when it was shut down by the US government for criticizing the entry into World War 1.
Mother Earth featured writing from Emma Goldman, Alexander Berkman, and Max Baginski, Maxim Gorky, Peter Kropotkin, Voltairine de Cleyre, Francisco Ferrer, Leo Tolstoy, Rudolph Rocker, and Margaret Sanger, among others.
The majority of the writing in Mother Earth was anarchist or socialist theory, labor news, and feminist writing about birth control, but there was also fiction and poetry. Mother Earth was one of the most influential anti-war and feminist publications at the beginning of the 20th century.
Read Mother Earth Online
“Mother Earth will endeavor to attract and appeal to all those who oppose encroachment on public and individual life. It will appeal to those who strive for something higher, weary of the commonplace; to those who feel that stagnation is a deadweight on the firm and elastic step of progress; to those who breathe freely only in limitless space; to those who long for the tender shade of a new dawn for a humanity free from the dread of want, the dread of starvation in the face of mountains of riches. The Earth free for the free individual!” -Emma Goldman, “Mother Earth” 1906
Mother Earth and Free Speech
Emma Goldman was the target of a campaign by the US federal government to crack down on dissident and antiwar speech. On June 15th, 1917, the Espionage Act was signed into law, making it illegal to resist conscription, Goldman and Berkman were arrested at the offices of Mother Earth and the journal was shut down.
An article in Columbia Journalism Review called “How Anarchist Emma Goldman Energized the US Free Speech Debate” makes the argument that Goldman’s radical antiwar journalism had a transformative effect on the Supreme Court’s free speech rulings. The article describes the mainstream press’s unfair and sensationalist distortions of Goldman’s beliefs, creating a public villain out of her following the assassination of McKinley.
The Supreme Court heard 3 cases about the Sedition Act in 1919, upholding the suppression of free speech if it criticized the draft in all of them. The next case, Abrams vs. United States, used Emma Goldman’s court case as an example of free speech and ruled in favor of Abrams, who was charged with distributing anti-war pamphlets.
Goldman and Mother Earth were directly responsible for the shift in public and legal perceptions of free speech. Jared Schroeder, in this CJR article, writes, “until we credit Goldman with blazing a trail for the first precedent-setting decisions and encouraging a national discussion, via newspapers, about the meaning of free expression, our understanding of this crucial period in American history is incomplete.”
Bibliography
Green, David B. “1919: U.S. Deports Free-Love Anarchist ‘Red Emma’ to Russia.” Haaretz.com, 10 Apr. 2018, www.haaretz.com/jewish/.premium-1919-u-s-deports-red-emma-to-russia-1.5349831.
Kelly, Kim. “Happy Birthday, Comrade: Emma Goldman Turns 150.” Teen Vogue, Teen Vogue, 26 June 2019, www.teenvogue.com/story/emma-goldman-born-150-years-ago.
Schroeder, Jared. “How Anarchist Emma Goldman Energized the US Free-Press Debate.” Columbia Journalism Review, 10 Dec. 2018, www.cjr.org/analysis/emma-goldman-first-amendment.php.
Goldman, Emma, and Max Baginski. “Mother Earth .” Mother Earth, Mar. 1906, pp. 1–4, www.gutenberg.org/files/26600/26600-h/26600-h.htm.
Glassgold, Peter. Anarchy!: an Anthology of Emma Goldman’s Mother Earth. Counterpoint, 2012.
“Emma Goldman and Garment Workers in Union Square, New York, May 20, 1916.” Jewish Women’s Archive, jwa.org/media/goldman-speaking-to-crowd-of-garment-workers-about-birth-control-in-union-square-new-york.
Kreitner, Richard. “May 4, 1886: A Riot Erupts in Haymarket Square in Chicago.” The Nation, 29 June 2015, www.thenation.com/article/archive/may-4-1886-riot-erupts-haymarket-square-chicago/.
