Emma Goldman
If I can't dance…
Anarchism, free love, and women's freedom.
Progressive Anarcho-CommunistOne of 729 ideologies · enter the Anarcho-Communist hall →- Role
- Activist & writer
- Era
- 1869–1940
- Region
- Russia / US
- Social band
- Progressive
- Placement
- −92 · −94 · +85
§ Where Emma Goldman stands
3 axesGoldman was an anarchist communist who wanted private ownership of land and industry abolished and production held in common by free associations of workers. Influenced by Peter Kropotkin, whose ideas she promoted in Mother Earth from 1906, she regarded wage labour as a form of slavery, and from 1936 she backed the collectivised farms and workshops of the anarchist revolution in Spain.
Goldman opposed every form of coercive authority, from the state, the police and the army to the church and conventional marriage. She went to prison in 1917 for organising resistance to the military draft, and after her deportation to Russia she condemned the Bolsheviks' one-party state, especially the crushing of the Kronstadt sailors in 1921, insisting that a revolution relying on dictatorship betrays its own aims.
Goldman was among the most radical social progressives of her era. She championed women's sexual and economic independence, attacked marriage as an economic arrangement in her essay Marriage and Love, was arrested in 1916 for distributing birth-control information and fought for free speech in campaigns across the country. She also spoke publicly in defence of homosexuality, then almost unheard of.
How close are you to Emma Goldman?
Three statements, one per axis. Answer them and we’ll drop you on the compass next to them.
§ The story
HistoricalEmma Goldman (1869–1940) was a Russian-born anarchist writer and orator who became the most famous radical in early twentieth-century America. Born in Kovno in the Russian Empire, she emigrated to the United States in 1885, worked in garment factories in Rochester, New York, and was radicalised by the execution of the Haymarket anarchists in 1887. In New York she joined the anarchist movement with Alexander Berkman, whose 1892 attempt to kill the industrialist Henry Clay Frick she helped plan, and she became a celebrated lecturer across the country.
From 1906 she published the monthly Mother Earth, and her lectures on anarchism, free speech, birth control, free love and women's emancipation led to repeated arrests. Imprisoned in 1917 for opposing military conscription, she was deported to Soviet Russia in 1919 with Berkman and more than 200 others during the Red Scare. She soon turned against the Bolshevik state and documented its repression in My Disillusionment in Russia (1923). In exile she published her autobiography Living My Life in 1931, supported the Spanish anarchists during the civil war and died in Toronto in 1940.
Notable for
- 01Pioneer of anarchist feminism
- 02Free-speech and birth-control advocacy
- 03Deported in the 1919 Red Scare
Key works & moments
- 1892Helps plan Alexander Berkman's failed attempt to assassinate Henry Clay Frick.
- 1906Founds the anarchist monthly Mother Earth in New York.
- 1917Imprisoned for conspiring to obstruct the military draft.
- 1919Deported to Soviet Russia aboard the Buford during the Red Scare.
- 1923Publishes My Disillusionment in Russia, condemning the Bolshevik dictatorship.
- 1931Publishes her autobiography, Living My Life.
In their own words
“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.”
§ Minds closest to Emma Goldman
All minds →
§ Also in the Anarcho-Communist hall
Enter the hall →§ Common questions
4 answersWhat was Emma Goldman's political ideology?
Emma Goldman was an anarchist communist who wanted to abolish the state, capitalism and every form of coercive authority: on the 99ideologies three-axis compass, a Progressive Anarcho-Communist. Economically she sat at the far left (−92), favouring common ownership by free associations of workers. On governance she was at the libertarian extreme (−94), rejecting the state in both its capitalist and Bolshevik forms, and socially she was strongly progressive (+85), championing women's freedom, birth control and free speech.
Was Emma Goldman left-wing or right-wing?
Left-wing, at the far edge of the spectrum. Goldman opposed capitalism, private property, militarism and organised religion, and her advocacy of birth control, free love and free speech made her a pioneer of radical feminism. But her anarchism also set her against the authoritarian left: after witnessing Bolshevik rule at first hand in 1920–21 she became one of the earliest critics of the Soviet state from the left, denouncing its dictatorship as a betrayal of the revolution.
Did Emma Goldman say 'If I can't dance, I don't want to be in your revolution'?
Not in those words. The line is a 1970s paraphrase, popularised on T-shirts and posters, of a passage in her autobiography Living My Life (1931). There she recalls a young comrade taking her aside at a dance to tell her that such frivolity did not suit an agitator; she replied that a cause standing for a beautiful ideal and for freedom from convention should not demand the denial of life and joy. The sentiment is genuinely hers, but the famous wording is not.
Which minds are closest to Emma Goldman?
On the 99ideologies three-axis compass, the minds closest to Emma Goldman are Federica Montseny (94% alike), Shevek (94% alike) and Élisée Reclus (92% alike). The furthest is Adam Sutler (0% alike).