EMMA GOLDMAN, MOTHER EARTH, — and the —
ANARCHIST AWAKENING
RACHEL HUI-C HI HSU
University of Notre Dame Press Notre Dame, Indiana
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contents
List of Maps vii List of Figures ix List of Appendixes xi Acknowledgments xiii
Introduction. An Anarchist Awakening Revealed
1
Part 1 PRACTICES one
Headquarters Stance
29
t wo
Propaganda Space
63
t h r e e National Movement f o u r Transnational Networks
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98 132
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vi Contents
Part 2 THEMES five
Sex Radicalism
165
six
Modern Drama
199
s e v e n Labor Activism
230
e i g h t Free Speech and Antimilitarism
264
Epilogue 297
Appendixes 307 Notes 335 Bibliography 407 Index 439
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introduction
An Anarchist Awakening Revealed There is no boundary of land or time to the resistance of the human mind to coercion; it is world-wide. —Emma Goldman, The Social Significance of Modern Drama
This book is a study of why, where, and how anarchism as a radical mode of living developed in Progressive America and beyond. The anarchist English-language monthly Mother Earth (1906–17), the focus of this book, epitomized the innovation, strengths, and limits of anarchist propaganda in inspiring self-expression and social change. Propaganda, for these anarchists, meant spreading their beliefs by manifesting their cause in a way to which people could respond.1 Emma Goldman, the publisher, highlighted anarchism as an inclusive ideology while also promoting a coalition between intellectuals and labor in revolutionizing society.2 Alexander Berkman, the magazine’s primary editor, advocated labor solidarity across ethnic and national boundaries. Ben Reitman, business manager of Mother Earth, pushed its production in a commercial style to maximize its radical effect. Other core members, consisting of multinational immigrants and native-born radicals, helped promote a spectrum of antiauthoritarian agendas. Together, they made Mother Earth the nexus of a hybrid counterculture, surpassing the immediate anarchist movement and making anarchism widely accessible. 1
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2 Introduction
Headquartered in New York City and circulated across the globe, Mother Earth created a comprehensive repertoire of anarchism through its multifarious forms of propaganda. Its core members embraced classical anarchist communism, which advocated a noncoercive, stateless, and classless society based on the voluntary cooperation of free individuals while promoting and practicing it as a philosophy of life.3 Unlike its precursors, which focused on agitating labor strikes, Mother Earth cultivated the native-born intelligent middle class—a new constituency for anarchist communism—for an extensive social reorganization. Blending politics and art to challenge authorities, Mother Earth promoted itself as “a revolutionary literary magazine devoted to Anarchist thought in sociology, economics, education, and life.”4 Goldman toured from coast to coast annually to support the magazine and promote anarchism. In 1907, she and Berkman founded the Mother Earth Publishing Association (MEPA) to bring out a selection of publications on or compatible with anarchism. Core members built up worldwide networks that involved Mother Earth in various libertarian campaigns and social movements. They propagated a wide range of themes, including free speech, syndicalism, modern school education, antimilitarism, prison reform, modern drama, free love, sexual liberation, birth control, and women’s emancipation. These agendas partially overlapped with those of other leftist and liberal groups. As a result, the anarchists collaborated but also competed with socialists, labor unionists, feminists, single taxers, bohemian rebels, muckrakers, freethinkers, antiwar activists, and birth control advocates. Mother Earth’s propaganda in speeches, texts, and activities embodied a combination of print activism, sex radicalism, and labor militancy that characterized the Progressive Era’s (1890s–1920s) radical politics. Though Mother Earth is recognized by its U.S. and foreign contemporaries and current scholars as the leading anarchist organ in Progressive America, its significance has not been fully understood.5 The nature and extent of the magazine’s influence require in-depth examination to illuminate the place of anarchism in early twentieth-century radicalism. Andrew Cornell, in his 2016 book, Unruly Equality: U.S. Anarchism in the Twentieth Century, remarks, “The Mother Earth Group’s multipronged strategy of building mass radical unions while boldly leading liberals on the issues of immigration, sexuality, and war remains, to my mind, a high-water mark of sophistication deserving
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Introduction 3
greater study and replication.”6 In this book I seek not only to illustrate the “multipronged strategy” and “sophistication” of the Mother Earth group but also to reveal its effects (intended and otherwise) on the anarchist movement. I do this by moving beyond earlier studies of Mother Earth to explicate how it propagated anarchism in a style distinct from its predecessors. A number of factors distinguish this work from earlier scholarship on the subject. First, this book captures a clearer picture of the magazine’s operation, discourses, and campaigns by examining the dynamic teamwork among its members rather than focusing solely on Goldman, as other studies have typically done.7 It brings out both Goldman’s narratives and propaganda techniques during the Mother Earth years, which remain underexplored, and other core members’ roles in setting the magazine and its nationwide activities in motion.8 As historians have shown, many anarchists saw anarchism as a living ideal that could be practiced here and now; the operation of Mother Earth provided vivid documentation of a nonfamilial anarchist commune active in urban (rather than suburban or rural) surroundings.9 Second, assessing Mother Earth’s impact only in America, as many previous studies have done, misses a rare opportunity to explore the transnational effect of U.S. anarchism. The subscriber list seized by the federal authorities when they raided Mother Earth’s office in June 1917 held subscriptions from five continents as the publication networked with international revolutionists.10 Furthermore, the link between Mother Earth and East Asian anarchists uncovered in this book points to the intriguing reception of anarchism by East Asians as one school of Western Progressive thought. Third, true to the magazine’s actual operation, this book highlights the synergy between Mother Earth, core members’ lectures, the MEPA publications, and its organized activities. While a few scholars have discussed parts of this synergy, its overall effect has remained opaque.11 It is crucial to identify the multiple, mutually reinforcing forms of productions by Goldman and other Mother Earth members in order to better gauge the magazine’s influence. Fourth, this book scrutinizes not only core members’ activities within anarchist circles, the usual focus of anarchist studies, but also their interactions with various elements outside anarchist ranks. These include new audiences (beyond labor and immigrants), nonanarchist
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4 Introduction
presses (mainstream and socialist), ideological competitors (socialists and labor unions), and suppressive local and federal authorities. Examining the diverse reception of Mother Earth’s propaganda by its contemporaries is critical to comprehending its sociointellectual significance. Fifth and finally, this book goes beyond the field of anarchist studies when considering Mother Earth’s productions in order to calibrate anarchism’s radical effect on U.S. society. Although Goldman upheld anarchist communism as the ideal for socioeconomic reorganization, her advocacy for free individuality and self-expression was not limited by that ideal. While she insisted that “only revolution can bring about anarchism,” most of her adherents practiced anarchism otherwise.12 The gamut of agendas pushed by Goldman in the name of anarchism was broader than the scope of the typical “Anarchist movement” at the time, which largely focused on socioeconomic issues and labor struggles. Thus, the influence of Goldman’s work during the Mother Earth years cannot be seen clearly through the lens of the anarchist movement alone. Transcending the previous research parameters, my book argues that Mother Earth’s multivalent productions stirred an unprecedented anarchist awakening, which inspired an antiauthoritarian spirit throughout America and imparted a lasting legacy to U.S. radicalism. No previous anarchist periodical published in the United States (either communist or individualist in orientation) was able to arouse such extensive interest in anarchism across social, ethnic, and cultural divides as did Mother Earth. A great mixture of audience members—from immigrant workers to the native-born cultural elite and professionals in various lines of work—were made to “think,” to reflect on society and their lives because of Goldman and her magazine. Primarily, Goldman’s influence was demonstrated through the productions of Mother Earth, which transcended denominational boundaries of anarchism by awakening people to resist suppression and injustice. But unlike the Great Awakening in earlier U.S. history, which helped create a common evangelical identity among Christians, Mother Earth’s anarchist awakening spread the gospel of anarchism while opening it to diversified interpretations and practices. To many Americans who were touched by Goldman and Mother Earth’s anarchism, accepting parts of its doctrine did not make them anarchists. Mother Earth’s
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Introduction 5
anarchist awakening did not create an army of anarchists committed to the Anarchist movement that the magazine earnestly sought. As I demonstrate, the anarchism popularized by Mother Earth’s core members became detachable from the anarchist movement. This anarchist awakening was more effective on the personal, intellectual level than on the collective, socioeconomic level. The fact that 1910s America did not experience a national or regional revolution, such as those that took place in Russia in 1917 and Spain in 1936, should not eclipse the significance of Mother Earth’s anarchist enlightenment. Emma Goldman, Mother Earth, and the Anarchist Awakening unveils the bifurcated effect of Mother Earth’s propaganda by examining what I call its dual approach to anarchism and the Anarchist movement. This approach featured Goldman’s recruitment of new adherents to her inclusive anarchism, in contrast to Berkman’s agitation of a labor- centric Anarchist movement. Ideologically, these two approaches were not in conflict, but their different focuses on propaganda agendas and tactics dispersed the movement’s momentum toward social revolution. This book shows that the inspiration of Goldman’s all-encompassing anarchism for native-born middle-class intellectuals overshadowed— and in a way diverged from—the movement impulse Berkman strove to energize among the working class. The anthropologist David Graeber’s distinction between the “small-a” anarchists and the “capital-A” anarchist groups is instrumental in making better sense of the heterogeneous elements in Mother Earth. Graeber identifies the “small-a” anarchists in current society as those who operated outside of anarchist-exclusive groups while embracing “anarchist principles of anti-sectarianism and open-endedness.” The “capital-A” anarchist groups, in contrast, refer to those that still clung to particular schools of classical anarchism, such as anarchist communism.13 Graeber uses the “small-a/capital-A” dualism to typify the new/old generation of anarchists, who seldom joined forces with one another owing to their different methods of resistance. Under this characterization, Goldman’s approach attracted devotees who were more in line with the “small-a” anarchists, whereas Berkman’s focus resembled more the “capital-A” anarchist groups (or movements). The uneasy coexistence of the distinct “small-a” and “capital-A” elements variously promoted by core members resulted in an intrinsic paradox in the manifold operation of Mother Earth. That is, a growing
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6 Introduction
number of anarchist adherents drawn by it did not join the Anarchist movement that it propagated. Goldman’s libertarian version of anarchism led to an open-ended reception by her followers, who inclined to adopt anarchism personally without committing to collective struggles against the Establishment. This “small-a” type, open-ended reception of anarchism, though did not lead to a formidable Anarchist movement, turned out to be Goldman’s most enduring influence beyond classical anarchism and anarchist circles. Thanks to the work of Mother Earth, Goldman’s ideas remained highly relevant among those in the twenty-first century U.S. radical culture. Crossing national borders, Mother Earth upheld transnationalism—another main point of my book—as it prefigured an egalitarian, non-nationalist world order based on universal solidarity. I borrow and revise the term “transnationalism” from the conception of Randolph Bourne, a progressive cultural critic and onetime contributor to Mother Earth, to historicize its manifold dimensions expressed in the magazine.14 Bourne resisted the pro-war sentiment and melting- pot theory of the American mainstream by proposing what he termed “trans-nationalism” in 1916.15 He argued that America should outdo European countries, which had engulfed themselves in unprecedented warfare, by creating a new kind of nationalism that made the best of what America already was, namely, “the world-federation in miniature.” In his opinion, America should celebrate its multiethnic heterogeneity as an elevated cosmopolitanism rather than force immigrants to assimilate into its predominant Anglo-Saxon culture. The “trans- nationalism” envisioned by Bourne for America was nationalism transfigured from its European variety. The transnationalism upheld by Mother Earth’s anarchists, however, was the opposite of nationalism.16 For Goldman and her comrades, transnationalism incorporated both “trans-national” (across country borders) and “intra-national” (similar to what Bourne proposed, “cross-fertilization of cultures” within a nation) elements for the sake of promoting individual liberty and social solidarity unshackled by national sovereignty.17 Mother Earth stood for its ideal of transnationalism—“the international republic of free spirits”—which not only broke the boundaries set by nations but also transcended all “otherness” intrinsic in nationalism.18 Mother Earth’s anarchists operated their transnationalism tactically to agitate social revolution both within and without America
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Introduction 7
under the principle of direct action. On the one hand, they extended transnational solidarity with worldwide social rebels beyond anarchist circles. Whereas some anarchist groups in the United States lent their support only to their anarchist comrades in other countries, Mother Earth’s anarchists defended all kinds of foreign revolutionaries who took up arms against the Establishment demanding socioeconomic equality. Their transnationalism tolerated the nationalist calls of these foreign revolutionaries in antiauthoritarian, anticolonial contexts. On the other hand, Goldman and her comrades refused to collaborate with members of the Socialist Party in the United States, not because they were ideological others, but because of their adherence to parliamentary means—“political action,” as Mother Earth branded it. Core members’ collaboration with labor and trade unions comprising various ethnicities or foreign socialists rested on the premise that they resorted to direct, not representative, action. Mother Earth made local economic struggles tokens of a universal claim for equality and liberty while calling for transnational labor solidarity and intranational support from all ranks of society. In sum, by presenting the panorama of Mother Earth’s productions and performance, this bookreveals an overlooked history of anarchist awakening in America. The discussion that follows presents the cast, scenes, target audience, and manifold operation of Mother Earth and concludes with an outline of the book.
Core Members of the Mother Earth Family Mother Earth was as much the centerpiece of Goldman’s propagandistic achievement as the manifestation of core members’ teamwork. Goldman was no doubt the soul but not the only voice of the magazine. The name Mother Earth, while not the first one chosen, symbolized Goldman’s glorification of humanity and the natural world over the mandates of heaven and man-made governments.19 It also disclosed her motherly personality and matriarchal position.20 Three front cover images of Mother Earth indicated Goldman’s self-projection of her claim to and protection of her magazine (figs. 1–3). Both in public and in private, Goldman affectionately called Mother Earth her “baby” or “child.” Inventively, she fostered a family for those who associated
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8 Introduction
Figure 1. Front cover of Mother Earth 1, no. 1–1, no. 6 (August 1906)
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Introduction 9
with her “baby” and nurtured it. Although these anarchists generally repudiated the man-made system of family and marriage, they developed alternative kin networks, based on voluntary fellowship and mutual aid. Over the years, Goldman conjured up a vision of the Mother Earth family, consisting of the Mother (her), the Daughter (the magazine), and the Anarchist Spirit (shared by the members). Her intention was to supplant the paternal Holy Trinity of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit in Christianity with a maternal, earthly alternative that defied everything inhuman. Goldman and Berkman stressed that it was the anarchist spirit of “true love”—for human liberty, fraternity, and solidarity—that gave birth to and sustained Mother Earth.21 The Mother Earth family was characterized by two distinct phenomena. One was material, referring to the headquarters and the members living and working there. The other was rhetorical, comprising the publisher, editors, staffs, contributors, subscribers, readers, and supporters of Mother Earth all over the world. Goldman purposely declared the status of her “baby” as “illegitimate,” because it lacked both recognition of the social mainstream and a lawful father.22 As a working-class Jewish immigrant woman, Goldman constantly broke social barriers and combated prejudice as she became the notorious “red queen” of the U.S. anarchist movement. Having emigrated from Russia in 1885 to escape the domestic tyranny of her father, Goldman worked as a seamstress in Rochester, New York, where she had a short, failed marriage.23 She found her anarchist calling in the aftermath of the Chicago Haymarket affair of 1886, a peaceful labor protest turned bloody by police brutality, during which a bomb of unknown origin killed policemen and civilians.24 The trial and execution of four (allegedly) involved anarchists in 1887 turned Goldman into an anarchist, committed to fighting the authorities for justice, equality, and freedom. Arriving in New York City in 1889, Goldman transformed herself from a Lower East Side factory girl into a rising anarchist leader, mainly with the help of three émigré anarchists, all of whom were her onetime lovers. Alexander Berkman, her compatriot, became her closest lifelong comrade. Johann Most, from Germany, discovered Goldman’s talent in oratory; she began to lecture, in German and Yiddish, among working-class people and soon established herself as an anarchist speaker. Most and Edward Brady, from
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Figure 2. Front cover of Mother Earth 1, no. 7 (September 1906)–2, no. 5 (July 1907)
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Figure 3. Front cover of Mother Earth 10, no. 1 (March 1913)
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12 Introduction
Austria, tutored Goldman in anarchist classics, literature, drama, and philosophy.25 Goldman was a secret accomplice in Berkman’s attempt on the life of Henry Frick, chairman of the Carnegie Steel Company, for his union-breaking tactics that had led to the bloody suppression of striking steelworkers in Homestead, Pennsylvania, in 1892.26 The attempt failed, and Berkman served fourteen years of a twenty-two-year prison term between 1892 and 1906. Goldman met her first judicial punishment in New York in 1893 on charges of inciting to riot. Studying English literature and acquiring basic nursing skills in prison, she came out in 1894 with a better command of English, which served her well in both reading and oratory. Two trips to Europe in 1895 and 1900 expanded Goldman’s intellectual horizons, her interest in the psychology of sexuality, and her transnational networks.27 The birth of Mother Earth was Goldman’s attempt to kindle a new generation of social rebels after the anarchist movement had ebbed at the dawn of the twentieth century. In 1901, a self-professed anarchist named Leon Czolgosz, who claimed to be inspired by one of Goldman’s lectures, shot and killed U.S. president William McKinley. The assassination triggered an anarchist scare among the general public and the mainstream press.28 The 1902 New York Criminal Anarchy Act and the 1903 Federal Immigration Act reified the official suppression of anarchism and its alleged acts of terrorism. After keeping a low profile for years by using the alias “E. G. Smith,” Goldman launched Mother Earth in 1906 with the help of friends and comrades. She set two aims for her magazine, to “voice untrammeled and unafraid every unpopular cause” and to “establish a unity between revolutionary thought and artistic expression.”29 The magazine represented Goldman’s effort to change the stigmatized image of anarchism while increasing its appeal to both cultural avant-gardes and social dissidents. A dozen core members collaborated in the multifarious operations of Mother Earth despite their varied interests and differing tactics in propagating anarchism. Kathy Ferguson’s book Emma Goldman: Political Thinking in the Streets (2011) provides a roll call of the inner circle. The Mother Earth family, as Goldman called it, included Goldman herself (nicknamed The Red Queen), Max Baginski (German journalist and the first editor), Alexander Berkman (the second editor, nicknamed The Pope), and others who published the
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journal for over a decade. The inner circle of Mother Earth also included colorful Czech anarchist Hippolyte Havel (often described as charming when sober); soulful American freethinker Leonard Abbott (nicknamed Sister Abbott); well-known art critic Sadakichi Hartmann; printer and trade unionist Harry Kelly, and Goldman’s flamboyant manager and lover, Dr. Ben Reitman.30 At least four other members, in my view, should be added to this list in light of their discursive contributions, editorial assistance, event organizing, or office work for Mother Earth. They are the American anarchist Voltairine de Cleyre, the novelist John Russell Coryell (active in the earlier period), the native-born Eleanor Fitzgerald (active in the later period), and the Russian immigrant anarchist Rebecca Edelsohn. The Mother Earth family had a cosmopolitan outlook, thanks to the multinational origins of its inner circle and the remarkably diverse membership. Goldman’s depiction of Mother Earth as “a universal baby” highlighted the international nature of its conception and growth.31 The core members’ connections and joint efforts made Mother Earth an epicenter of the worldwide anarchist network. Beyond the inner circle, over 370 writers from the United States and abroad contributed to the magazine. They collectively built the textual world of Mother Earth as a transnational voice for radicalism in Progressive Era America. The rest of the “family” members identified by Goldman were subscribers, staffers, volunteers, donors, organizers, correspondents, local agents, readers, and endorsers of its campaigns. Ideologically, this large, extended family incorporated anarchists of all sorts (veteran and novice, communist and individualist, philosophical and militant) and socialist-or liberal-minded individuals from varied ethnocultural and social backgrounds. The unusual complexity of Mother Earth’s membership displayed an extraordinary range of receptivity to anarchism unseen in American society.
Contexts and Texts Mother Earth’s core members witnessed the “global turn” of the anarchist movement while also contributing to it. The magazine was a major vehicle for anarchism when the parameters of anarchist
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14 Introduction
activities expanded beyond the transatlantic world. By 1900, anarchism had spearheaded the international dissemination of radicalism, championing the causes of social revolution and sexual liberation to a global audience.32 Anarchists attracted not only press headlines because of assassinations some carried out but also the hearts of many thinking people with their idea(l)s. As an antiauthoritarian philosophy, anarchism greatly inspired young intellectuals in such East Asian countries as China, Japan, and Korea.33 Goldman successfully established a transpacific network to spread Mother Earth and its anarchist messages. The magazine’s international news coverage and campaigns defending foreign revolutionists attested to its solidarity with rebels worldwide. Meanwhile, Mother Earth emerged at a time when America was growing into a new global power; in the process, the U.S. government became the primary adversary of core members’ transnationalism. The huge influx of immigrants and business capital to the United States, corporate investments overseas, frequent transatlantic exchanges of knowledge and technology, and U.S. imperialist actions in East Asia and elsewhere built up America’s growing global influence at the turn of the century. Mother Earth’s anarchists condemned the U.S. government for suppressing international revolutions, domestic labor strikes, and political dissidents. Defying the hegemonic influence of the U.S. government, the multilingual Goldman chose English as her magazine’s language, in order to propagate anarchism among readers of English worldwide. America’s development as a world power—coupled with the British Empire’s influence in India, Africa, and elsewhere—established English as a major international language. Studying in the United States and translating English texts into their mother languages were two means used by non-Westerners to absorb American radicalism, which had already integrated European philosophies with its native liberal, utopian, and progressive beliefs.34 The historian John Crump described how English (and America) mediated the reception of Western socialism in Japan: “When socialists in Japan knew a language other than Japanese it was generally English, and, if an opportunity to travel abroad presented itself, it was usually to the USA. This meant that European (primarily German) social-democratic ideas had to find their way to Japan through what can best be described as an English-language filter. This reliance on
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Introduction 15
English as the language for most of their international contacts exposed the Japanese socialists to a variety of supposedly socialist doctrines popular in one or other of the world’s English-speaking countries.”35 Crump’s account points to the importance of the “English-language filter” and to America as the major exporter of Western radical thought to non-English-speaking countries. Goldman gave Mother Earth a lingual edge by taking advantage of the global reach of English while undermining U.S. imperialism with its antistate anarchism. In the domestic context of Progressive Era America, Mother Earth rose as one of the initiatives to remedy the socioeconomic consequences of industrialization, urbanization, and immigration. Goldman and her comrades demanded the total eradication of existing institutions, which they believed were the cause of oppression, inequality, and injustice in society. The rise of Progressivism was another initiative. Progressives heralded extensive programs of social reform driven by the middle class while upholding state interventionism, efficient government, regulation of trusts, and social justice.36 Muckraking journalism, from the 1890s on, was an expression of the liberal conscience of Progressive elites dedicated to exposing industrial monopolies and political corruption to the public.37 Another critical initiative was the Socialist Party of America (SPA), formed in 1901, which endeavored to democratize and socialize the American economy through parliamentary politics.38 Progressive liberals, socialists, and anarchists demanded various degrees of socioeconomic and political change. In principle, progressive liberals were antimonopoly, socialists were anticapitalism, and anarchists were antistate. Anarchists’ antistate stance entailed objections to any kind of government or system of authority. Socialists intended to overthrow capitalism and supplant the current plutocracy with a socialist government and cooperative commonwealth. Progressive liberals, appalled by the socioeconomic chaos and political corruption, set forth various government-based reforms that would impose order on society. Through Mother Earth’s production, Goldman and her comrades tried to radicalize the reform mind-sets of liberals into a willingness to question the basic legitimacy of the governing system. Chiefly, the Mother Earth anarchists strove to appeal to Progressive liberals’ antiauthoritarian impulses. To paraphrase the Russian anarchist Mikhail Bakunin, Goldman sought to arouse among Progressive liberals “the power to think and the desire to rebel.”39
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16 Introduction
Mother Earth was distinct from previous English anarcho- communist papers in several aspects. Goldman published the magazine as an 8-by-5-inch pamphlet of 64 (later 32) pages that differed from the 4-to 8-page broadsides used by most of its predecessors.40 A subscription was ten cents a copy or one dollar for a year. About 3,000 copies were sold within the first week of its initial publication, and another printing of 1,000 copies followed. The magazine’s circulation peaked at 10,000 copies around the mid-1910s, exceeding the circulation of its U.S. precursors.41 The historian Laurence Veysey, whose estimate is higher than that of other scholars, wrote that Mother Earth’s “distributed subscribers appear to have totaled more than 40,000 as of March 1911.”42 In addition to editorials, reports, essays, and international notes, Mother Earth published poetry, fiction, and short drama pieces. From 1907, new genres, such as travelogue and review essays about Goldman’s (later, also Berkman’s) lecture tours, appeared. A range of open letters, public manifestos, and fund-raising solicitations carried by the magazine indicated its members’ associations with international revolutionists and labor activists. Advertisements informed readers of assorted events, organizations, and publications in anarchist and radical circles. Occasional editorial announcements directed readers’ attention to the magazine’s financial condition, current campaigns, and future prospects. Cover illustrations contributed by vanguard artists infused a sense of revolutionary modernism into the aesthetics of the magazine. The texts of Mother Earth presented a polyphonic ensemble that expressed the central principle of anarchist communism without subordinating its writers’ various concerns. European anarchist classics by Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Michael Bakunin, and Peter Kropotkin became the core members’ scriptures for anarchist activism. From Proudhon, they acquired a theoretical basis for anarchism, which targeted the state, capitalism, the church, and laws as enemies of individual liberty. Bakunin inspired them to imagine organized labor as the means to launch social revolution. Bakunin’s appeal to people’s “impulse to liberty, passion for equality, [and] the holy instinct of revolt” particularly drew Goldman, who carried it forward to highlight the inner strength of individuals for attaining anarchy.43 Kropotkin’s theory of “mutual aid” and his vision of a free communist society shaped the Mother Earth anarchists’ outlook on socioeconomic issues. These anarchist classics
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Introduction 17
appeared as guidelines of anarchism in Mother Earth; however, the authors’ targeted themes and proposed solutions varied. Goldman, for one, never allowed her communist goal to overshadow her emphasis on individual freedom and inner regeneration. Her discourses encouraged personal resistance to both institutional domination and conventional tyrannies. The writings of other comrades, such as Berkman, de Cleyre, and Kelly, drew readers’ attention to labor grievances, anarchist tradition, and collective protests. Mother Earth crystallized its core concepts—anarchism, free communism, and direct action—in several slogans that repeatedly appeared in the magazine. Its editorial in November 1906 summed up core members’ beliefs: “The hopes of the Anarchists for a grand future are based upon the exercise of the feeling of solidarity of free individuals. . . . Anarchism recognizes the diversity of life, the differentiation of individuality in its fullest sense. It finds in voluntary communism—free enjoyment of commodities—the safest material basis for the highest development of diversity, which after all is the only creative source of life.”44 This statement also clarified the essence of Goldman’s anarchism: individual freedom and creativity would only find their true meaning through voluntary communism. The core members’ ideal of anarchy, to quote Berkman, “expressed the highest conception of individual liberty and social solidarity.”45 Their support for not only personal freedom but also collective unity in social life distinguished them from individualist anarchists. This distinction explained the ultimate collective activism that Mother Earth’s inner circle deemed necessary to create social revolution. Although Goldman sought to propagate anarchism in a peaceful manner through Mother Earth, core members could not escape their association with violence by the police and the public. Acts of violence as a justified “defense armed with a right”—embodied in “propaganda by the deed”—against oppressive authorities had long been entangled with anarchist theory.46 Originally conceived by Bakunin and carried out by Italian anarchists in the 1870s, “propaganda by the deed” emphasized the potency of anarchists’ individual violence against the organized violence of the state and corporations to inspire the masses to rise up for the social revolution. Over the next two decades, Kropotkin adjusted his earlier open advocacy of all rebellious acts to express more sympathy than overt encouragement for those who committed
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18 Introduction
political violence.47 In the Mother Earth years, Goldman and Berkman—at least publicly—aligned themselves with the attitude of Kropotkin. While believing in individual action as (in Goldman’s words) “the forerunner of collective insurrection,” they refrained from openly promoting—though they continued to defend—individual acts of violence.48 Rather, Goldman and her comrades encouraged all kinds of nonviolent personal defiance of authorities. Their self-restraint from pro-violent narratives and the orderly nature of their meetings, however, did not prevent them from suffering the violence imposed by the police and patriotic citizens. Moreover, despite Goldman’s reluctance, the rhetoric of violence in defense of oppressed labor and anarchists remained common in the pages of Mother Earth, particularly during Berkman’s editorship.
A New Audience with an Inclusive Approach While seeking to distance her magazine from the rhetoric of violence, Goldman aimed to spread her gospel beyond anarchism’s traditional labor, immigrant, and radical constituencies. In essence, Goldman’s anarchism was a fusion of the classical anarcho-communist thought, her individualist propensity, her sexological approach, and her female consciousness.49 She highlighted the philosophical underpinnings and cultural practices of anarchism as the cornerstone of a self-emancipated life. For her, the anarchist revolution would begin when people came to oppose all forms of authorities. This “individual awakening” to social solidarity became the core tenet of Goldman’s anarchism. Both to popularize her anarchism and to satisfy her own tastes, she incorporated literary and artistic elements in the magazine at its onset. The first co-signed open letter by Goldman and editor Max Baginski on behalf of Mother Earth promised a political and aesthetic regeneration.50 Characteristically, Goldman’s anarchist propaganda focused more on raising audiences’ social awareness across class lines than concentrating on labor agitation, as Berkman and many other comrades tended to do. Not only the ways she interpreted anarchism—and the emphasis she put on it—but also the ways she propagated it reflected her intention for Mother Earth to reach “outsiders” of anarchist communism: native-born middle-class intellectuals. While Mother Earth drew
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