ON BEING “RED” EMMA”-The Emma Goldman Story

 

"Red" Emma Goldman-The Fate of An Anarchist Woman

DVD REVIEW

EMMA GOLDMAN: AN EXCEEDINGLY DANGEROUS WOMAN, PBS, 2004

Sometimes in reviewing a political biography or autobiography of some capitalist hanger-on such as George Bush, Tony Blair or Jacques Chirac it is simply a matter of dismissing a known and deadly political opponent and so heaping scorn up that person is part of the territory of being a leftist militant. For others who allegedly stand in the socialist tradition, like the old theoretical leader of the pre-World War I German social democracy Karl Kautsky,  but who provide reformist rather than revolutionary solutions to the pressing issues of the day that also tends to be true. However, with an enigmatic figure like the anarcho-communist and modern day feminist heroine  "Red" Emma Goldman it is harder to do the political savaging job that is necessary. Why? Ms. Goldman came out of that tradition of pre-World War I life-style anarchism (made fashionable in the Greenwich Village of the time) where her politics, to the extent that political carping is politics, placed her somewhere on the side of the angels. However, the total effect of her career as an anarchist propagandist, sometime agitator and proponent of women’s rights  shows very little as a contribution to radical history.

Obviously someone associated with the fiery German anarchist Johann Most is by any measure going to have trouble with the government at some point in their lives. Most was Goldman's lover and first teacher of the principles of ' propaganda by the deed' anarchism. For those readers not familiar with that tendency the core of the politics is that exemplary actions, not excluding martyrdom, by individual heroic revolutionaries are supposed to act as the catalyst to move the masses. In short, these are the politics of shoot first and ask questions later. As a tactic within a revolutionary period it may prove necessary and make some sense but as a strategy to put masses in motion, no. Empathically, no.

Her own life provides the case study  for the negative aspects of this theory. At the time of the famous bloody Homestead Steel strike in the 1890's here in America Ms. Goldman's lifelong companion and fellow anarchist of the deed, Alexander Berkman, decided that the assassination of one Henry Frick, bloody symbol of capitalist greed in the strike, would serve  in order to intensify the struggle of capital against labor. Needless to say, although Mr. Berkman was successful, in part, in his attempt both Mr. Frick and the Homestead plant were back in business forthwith. For his pains Berkman received a long jail sentence.

However, the most troubling aspect of Ms. Goldman's career is her relationship to the Bolshevik Revolution. Let us be clear, as readers of this space may  I have not tried to hide the problems in that revolution from which, given the course of history in the 20^th century, the Soviet Union was never able to recover. However, from Ms. Goldman's descriptions of the problems seen in her short stay in the Soviet Union just after the revolutionary takeover one would have to assume that, like most aspects of her life this was just one more issue to walk away from. She, moreover,  became a life-long opponent of that regime. Some pre-World War I anarchists were able to see the historic importance  of  the creation of the Soviet state and were drawn to the Communist International. Others, like Emma,  used that flawed experiment as a reason to, in essence, reconcile themselves to the bourgeois order.  Nowhere is that position, and that tension, more blatantly spelled out that in Spain in 1936.

Spain, 1936 was the political dividing point for all kinds of political tendencies, right and left. While we will allow the rightists to stew in their own juices the various positions on the left in the cauldron of revolution graphically illustrate the roadblocks to revolution that allowed fascism, Spanish style, to gain an undeserved military victory and ruin the political perspectives of at least two generations of Spanish militants. The classic anarchist position is to deny the centrality of conquering  and transformation of the capitalist state power (and the old ruling governmental, social, cultural and economic apparatuses).  To the anarchist this necessity is somehow to be morphed away but who knows what. Yes, that is the theory but on the hard ground of Spain that was not the reality as the main anarchist federation FAI/CNT gave political support to the bourgeois republican government and accepted seats in that government. These same elements went on to play a part in disarming the 1937 Barcelona uprising that could have sparked a new revolutionary outburst on the disheartened workers and peasants. So much for anarchist practice in the clutch. Ms. Goldman spent no little ink defending the actions of her comrades in Spain. Wrong on Russia and Spain, on the side of the angels on women's issues and the need to fight capitalism. In short, all over the political map on strategic issues. Still, although Emma was, and her defenders today are, political opponents  this writer does not relish that fact.