Emma Goldman

I’ve always had a soft spot for anarchists.  I mean the old-fashioned kind who believed that local communities could govern themselves without a central government to give them orders.  Anarchism of this kind actually works.  All you need is three prerequisites.  First, a group of people who share values.  Second, a fairly rural population. (If you have sewage or garbage problems, it won’t work.)  Third, you need a rather simple and localized economic system.  If you have those three, you don’t need a central government.  Think Amish.

Which brings us to Emma Goldman.  A new book on Goldman and her lover Alexander Berkman (the man who shot but didn’t kill Henry Clay Frick) has just been published entitled Sasha and Emma.  Goldman was an excellent public speaker and an opponent of the U.S. entry into World War I, for which she was deported to Russia.  She didn’t fit in any better there, and she died in Toronto in 1940.  

She was a woman who enjoyed life to the hilt.  Her best known slogan, and one which should be remembered in this era of the Arab Spring and the Occupy Wall Street movement, was this:  “If I can’t dance I don’t want to be in your revolution.”