Anarchism and Other Essays

I love emma goldman, i love anarchist theory. Its a golden book written without prose that is too embellishing and is piercingly direct and cuttingly witty and sharp. She does not spare the ego of any of her opponents. There were difficult essays for me to read and grasp her intent especially her essays on womens emancipation and sufferage. Though her views are so shatteringly radical that they seem oppositional to otherwise useful tenets such as emancipation and sufferage, i get the point that shes trying to ultimately make. The only reason that this book gets four instead of five stars is because it is undeniably an echo chamber with no significant basis of praxis, mobilization or instruction for direct action. As a piece of unbridled theory it is five out of five, as a practical manual it unfortunately let me down in some ways.
Easy to finish in a week of light reading.

To be fair, I'm prone to a biiiit of hyperbole when I write small reviews for books that I really enjoy. I love reading, I love being excited, 2+2=4 and I just go.

However, this book deserves all of the gushing praise I can give it and so much more. I came to Emma Goldman's writing very late, and while that's equal parts saddening and frustrating, I'm so so happy that I've finally read Anarchism and Other Essays. This book is a collection of short essays written by Goldman about democracy, capitalism, anarchism, voting, prisons, marriage, education, property, love, and drama, and all of the ways in which societies are built, structured, and reinforced to disenfranchise the working class, women, children, and people of color. Anarchism and Other Essays is as enlightening as it sobering, scathing as it is cathartic, and should be required reading.

I'm going to stop here because I could obviously keep going, but I truly and deeply love this book and admire Emma Goldman so much after reading it.

It took me a year or two of marching with a black bandanna on, going to Anarchist Black Cross meetings, sitting in with Food Not Bombs, going anti-commercial Christmas caroling, reading radical literature, talking to former squatters, and playing folk punk shows, but at a certain point I realized the "anarchist scene" wasn't for me. If I had read this book earlier, I feel like I may have saved myself some trouble.

I think many of Goldman's points, in many of her essays, raise valid concerns. I believe that, in some ways, her commentary on America's power structure remains true to this day (with an increasingly authoritarian government, it makes sense). But, unfortunately, many of her essays just aren't relevant anymore, and some of her concerns seem outdated to the point of being rightist/conservative.

Take for example, in her discussion of the military, she argues that one example of the evils it can cause is the "sex perversion" of "male prostitution". Putting aside any discussion about morality with respect to prostitution itself, it seems evident that her true concern is men bunking so close to one another. These pages in the essay entitled "Patriotism" might find renewed use in pro-Don't Ask Don't Tell pamphlets or the like.(Her Wikipedia claims that she was vehemently against discrimination targeting the GLBTQ community, as it were, during her time, but no supporting evidence is contained herein.)

Likewise, her discussions of sex and gender are frequently suspect, as she ascribes trait after trait to misrepresented groups of women's rights organizers, etc, and frequently attacks first wave feminists in the later essays.

In terms of dating herself, one has only to look at her essay on Puritanism, or on the current dramas of her time (which she feels the need to summarize for us, one after the other, only to reiterate her point that drama is a useful vehicle for political advocacy as her BIG CONCLUSION).

I can't really blame Emma Goldman for her missteps in these essays--they were written at the turn of the century. But I CAN blame contemporary anarchists for ruining any decent points Goldman makes by cherry-picking sentimentality from her meandering antique rhetorical arguments and subsequently wheat-pasting slogans all over campus. Regardless, "it was okay" is the best I can give this collection.