“I do not believe in God, because I believe in man. Whatever his mistakes, man has for thousands of years past been working to undo the botched job your God has made.”

—    Emma Goldman
        Living My Life


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Emma Goldman
A couple of weekends ago, we were out and about on a Saturday and I asked Thomai and the girls if I could stop into Half Price Books for a second since we were in the neighborhood.  They’re all well aware that it’s a “given” for me to do a quick run through to HPB any time that we’re in the general area, so there were no objections.  Now, I was really looking for a couple of minutes worth of browsing and I wasn’t intending to pick anything up that day, but it’s pretty tough for me to leave any second-hand bookstore empty-handed.  And, sure enough, after a couple of minutes I emerged from the store with some great finds.  One of my acquisitions was a two-volume set of Ernst Mandel’s Marxist Economic Theory (the 1968 Merlin Press ed.), which is something you kind of don’t expect to find sitting on the shelves of a Dayton, Ohio book store.  But I was even more excited to find a brand-new unread copy of Emma Goldman’s autobiography Living My Life (The Penguin Classics edition) for only $5.  It was really a steal, because the retail price is $18.  After checking out,  I happily returned to the girls who were waiting patiently in the car, set my new books on my lap and told Thomai I was ready to go.  She looked at the Goldman volume on the top of my stack and said, “Wow.”  The woman knows me all to well and she knows how much I love Emma, so she was very happy for me.  I am so lucky, for sure.

One of the first works by Goldman that I ever read was My Disillusionment Russia.  It’s probably been about seven years now since I read it, but I remember being impressed with at her insight and detail, even though I didn’t necessarily agree with all of her conclusions.  Emma wrote from an unmistakable perspective of one who was personally invested in the struggle of the oppressed without allowing her emotions to blunt or otherwise compromise her message.  While she was not always committed to the attentat, she was relentless and uncompromising in her work and she was always certain to remind people that the oppressed must work to free themselves while learning from the inspirational examples and sacrifices of the vanguard.

Living My Life is a formidable tome and these days I don’t have as much down time to read as I would like.  So it will be a while before I can get through all 56 chapters, but with only a few chapters under my belt right now, I can already tell what a great read this will be.  The book opens in turn-of-the century New York, set against the backdrop of a political diversity that is unknown in today’s America.  Emma’s vivid and detailed writing conveys every bit of the enthusiasm and passion that fueled her revolutionary work from her early days all the way through to her final years.  Consider, for example, the following excerpt in which Emma reflects upon the day she learned of the eviction of striking steel workers and their families from the Homestead mill-towns:

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      Far away from the scene of the impending struggle, in our little ice-cream parlour in the city of Worcester, we eagerly followed developments. To us it sounded the awakening of the American worker, the long-awaited day of his resurrection. The native toiler had risen, he was beginning to feel his mighty strength, he was determined to break the chains that had held him in bondage so long, we thought. Our hearts were fired with admiration for the men of Homestead.

    We continued our daily work, waiting on customers, frying pancakes, serving tea and ice-cream; but our thoughts were in Homestead, with the brave steel-workers. We became so absorbed in the news that we would not permit ourselves enough time even for sleep. At daybreak one of the boys would be off to get the first editions of the papers. We saturated ourselves with the events in Homestead to the exclusion of everything else. Entire nights we would sit up discussing the various phases of the situation, almost engulfed by the possibilities of the gigantic struggle.

    One afternoon a customer came in for an ice-cream, while I was alone in the store. As I set the dish down before him, I caught the large headlines of his paper: "LATEST DEVELOPMENTS IN HOMESTEAD -- FAMILIES OF STRIKERS EVICTED FROM THE COMPANY HOUSES -- WOMAN IN CONFINEMENT CARRIED OUT INTO 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. The brutal bluntness of the account, the inhumanity of Frick towards the evicted mother, inflamed my mind. Indignation swept my whole being. I heard the man at the table ask: "Are you sick, young lady? Can I do anything for you?" "Yes, you can let me have your paper," I blurted out. "You won't have to pay me for the ice-cream. But I must ask you to leave. I must close the store." The man looked at me as if I had gone crazy.

    I locked up the store and ran full speed the three blocks to our little flat. It was Homestead, not Russia; I knew it now. We belonged in Homestead. The boys, resting for the evening shift, sat up as I rushed into the room, newspaper clutched in my hand. "What has happened, Emma? You look terrible!" I could not speak. I handed them the paper.

    Sasha was the first on his feet. "Homestead!" he exclaimed. "I must go to Homestead!" I flung my arms around him, crying out his name. I, too, would go. "We must go tonight," he said; "the great moment has come at last!" Being internationalists, he added, it mattered not to us where the blow was struck by the workers; we must be with them. We must bring them our great message and help them see that it was not only for the moment that they must strike, but for all time, for a free life, for anarchism. Russia had many heroic men and women, but who was there in America? Yes, we must go to Homestead, tonight!

from Living My Life, Chapter 8 (Penguin Classics ed., pp. 58-59)


I’m sure that if Emma had her life to live over again, she would -- in Trotsky’s words -- “try to avoid this or that mistake.”  But what a legacy Emma left to those who truly desire and struggle to change the world for the better.  She once said:

“I want freedom, the right to self-expression, everybody’s right to beautiful, radiant things.”

What a world it would be if we there were more people like Emma Goldman.
Recommended Reading
Living My Life  full text online from Anarchy Archives