Emma Goldman

Ray Briggs

What does true liberation look like?

 

Josh Landy

Should freedom of speech be absolute?

 

Ray Briggs

How much difference does voting make?

 

Josh Landy

Welcome to Philosophy Talk, the program that questions everything…

 

Ray Briggs

…except your intelligence. I’m Ray Briggs.

 

Josh Landy

And I’m Josh Landy. We’re coming to you via the studios of KALW San Francisco Bay Area.

 

Ray Briggs

Continuing conversations that begin on Philosophers Corner at the Stanford campus, where Josh teaches philosophy.

 

Josh Landy

And at the University of Chicago where Ray teaches philosophy.

 

Ray Briggs

Today, it’s the next episode in our “Wise Women” series, generously sponsored by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. We’re questioning the life and thought of Emma Goldman.

 

Josh Landy

Emma Goldman is an intriguing figure and also pretty controversial. She lived all over the place, from Lithuania and Latvia to New York, London, Berlin, Spain, even the Soviet Union.

 

Ray Briggs

Well yeah, she lived in the Soviet Union because she got deported there. J Edgar Hoover called her one of the most dangerous anarchists in America.

 

Josh Landy

I gotta say, Ray. I personally think that was kind of a fair assessment. I mean, in 1892 she conspired in an attempted murder on a factory owner, and years later, when she wrote her autobiography, she doubled down, she said the end justified the means. Yeah, I think that’s pretty troubling,

 

Ray Briggs

Okay, but that’s not actually what she got deported for. She got deported because she was encouraging people not to sign up to fight in World War. One a minute ago, you said you were against murder, Josh, but Goldman would say, hey, war is just the state murdering a whole lot of people.

 

Josh Landy

But Goldman said murder is sometimes justified.

 

Ray Briggs

You’re focusing on one tiny aspect of what she said. She spent so much of her time campaigning against violence. She hated war. She hated the death penalty. She even criticized the Soviet Union at a time when a bunch of leftists were still defending it. She didn’t think it was okay for the government to kill people.

 

Josh Landy

Well, look, I’m totally on board with all of that stuff. Boo to the death penalty. Boo to Stalin, absolutely. But the thing that still bothers me about Goldman is her anarchism.

 

Ray Briggs

Hey, I thought you were just agreeing with me that it’s not okay for the government to kill people if you want to have a state, that means having a military and a judicial system that’s backed up by force. Read your Thomas Hobbes.

 

Josh Landy

Well look, I’m against rampant state violence, but that doesn’t make me an anarchist. How about you? Read your Hobbes, Ray: if we didn’t have a state, life would be nasty, brutish and short.

 

Ray Briggs

Well, as Emma Goldman would tell you, Hobbes is wrong in the perfect anarchist utopia, everyone’s going to have a chance to flourish. You’ve got to understand what anarchism actually means. It’s not just a bunch of randoms running around smashing things. Goldman actually says it’s a kind of order. It’s just a natural order emerging organically from our desire for community. She said, true social harmony grows naturally out of solidarity of interests.

 

Josh Landy

That’s a nice story. Ray, there’s just one tiny problem with it. It isn’t true. Haven’t you ever had roommates? It’s always Jimmy’s turn to do the dishes, and that slob never lifts a finger.

 

Ray Briggs

Oh, so you’re gonna threaten Jimmy with imprisonment if he doesn’t do the dishes? Maybe capital punishment, Josh?

 

Josh Landy

Not that kind of punishment. But you know, surely, we eventually decide to kick him out the house.

 

Ray Briggs

Look, even if anarchism isn’t perfect, it’s a lot better than the alternative. Look at the way we live right now, billionaires leave us with a lot worse than a sink full of dirty dishes. They leave a whole trail of environmental destruction, just so they can hoard more and more wealth.

 

Josh Landy

Well, I hate that just as much as you Ray, but the question is, how are we going to change it?

 

Ray Briggs

Well, you go on strike and support striking workers. You refuse to comply with people telling you to get drafted or trying to take away your birth control. If enough people just stood up and said, No, we could totally change the world.

 

Josh Landy

Well, sure, but you know, I don’t know about you, but I say no every four years at the ballot box, what on earth did Goldman have against voting? She said suffrage is an evil. It has only helped to enslave people.

 

Ray Briggs

She didn’t mean it was bad to vote. She meant it was bad to focus all your political energy on issues to do with voting, because voting without any other changes doesn’t do anything.

 

Josh Landy

Isn’t that just a straw man? I mean, people who vote often tend to do a bunch of other things too, like talk to friends and family, sign petitions, go on strike, even run for office.

 

Ray Briggs

Yeah, they have to understand her in context, she is basically discussing the debate about women’s suffrage.

 

Josh Landy

Exactly. She was against giving women the vote. How can you defend that?

 

Ray Briggs

Well, no, she thought women should have just as much of a right to vote as men. She just didn’t think voting was a significant way to change anything.

 

Josh Landy

You know, I’m still not sure I agree, but maybe our guest will convince me. It’s Candace Falk, founding director of the Emma Goldman papers research project at UC Berkeley.

 

Ray Briggs

But first, let’s hear more about Emma Goldman’s legacy today. We sent our Roving Philosophical Reporter Holly J McDeed to find out how the Emma Goldman clinic in Iowa city got its name. She files this report.

 

Deborah Nye

I remember literally jumping up and down for joy in the law school lounge.

 

Holly McDede

Deborah Nye was studying law in 1973 when she heard the US Supreme Court’s ruling on Roe v Wade.

 

Walter Cronkite

“Good evening. In a landmark ruling, the Supreme Court today legalized abortions. The majority in cases from Texas and Georgia said that the decision to end a pregnancy during the first three months belongs to the woman and her doctor, not the government.”

 

Deborah Nye

I remember being like, hooray with my hands in the air, and this law professor went by, and he said, oh, well, that’s not really a very important decision.

 

Holly McDede

But it was a momentous decision for her and so many others. In 1966 when Deborah was in high school, she became pregnant and didn’t know who to turn to. Her sisters brought up the possibility of an abortion, but that was illegal, difficult to access, and often unsafe.

 

Deborah Nye

In the end, I went to another state and got an abortion. I was safe, as it turned out. It all worked out fine for me, but it made me alert to the fact that there were many women getting abortions who it was not so safe.

 

Holly McDede

After the Roe ruling, she and other women founded the Emma Goldman clinic, which still exists today, for people of all gender and sexual identities to receive reproductive health care, including abortion services. As of October 2024, 21 states ban abortions, or they restrict the procedure earlier than the standard set by Roe v Wade. That’s according to tracking by the New York Times.

 

Deborah Nye

I look at it and how it’s dividing our nation to this very day, and it has everything to do with women’s economic ability to get on in the world, their choices around marriage, around having children, even being able to do anything to be able to support themselves.

 

Holly McDede

They named the clinic after the anarchist philosopher who understood that economic connection, Goldman was arrested twice and imprisoned for lecturing and distributing material in support of birth control, as Goldman wrote…

 

Emma Goldman

We do it because we know the desperate condition among the masses of workers and even professional people when they cannot meet the demands of numerous children.

 

Barbara Summerhawk

You know, she represents so many aspects of women’s struggles. And the activist who supported, you know, a new view of gender relations and society,

 

Holly McDede

That’s Barbara Summerhawk, who then went by Barbara Yates.

 

Barbara Summerhawk

I’m Barbara one way or the other. I’m talking to you from Japan, where I’ve lived for 46 years. I was a professor here in American Studies and Women’s Studies, and I live with my cat, Quarka.

 

Holly McDede

Barbara is another co-founder of the Emma Goldman clinic. She even suggested the name and remembers the weekly meetings to brainstorm.

 

Barbara Summerhawk

We decided that it couldn’t be at four o’clock because many of us watched Star Trek reruns at four, so we didn’t want to miss Star Trek.

 

Mr. Spock

Logical.

 

Holly McDede

Barbara had been reading Goldman’s autobiography, Living My Life.

 

Barbara Summerhawk

She was a great heroine to me. She was living in New York and involved with women who were working 12-hour shifts, 14 hour shifts, and then they would get pregnant, and they were desperate to not be pregnant

 

Holly McDede

After the 2022 Supreme Court Dobbs decision, Roe v Wade is no longer the law of the land. A law in Iowa now prohibits abortions after cardiac activity can be detected in. Around six weeks.

 

Barbara Summerhawk

There was never going to be this peaceful transfer into this society where, you know, we’d have diversity, inclusion and equanimity. You know, there just wasn’t.

 

Holly McDede

For Emma Goldman, the fight for what she believed in was not easy. She was a Lithuanian immigrant who actively spoke out against the draft during World War One, and in 1919 she was deported to Soviet Russia.

 

Barbara Summerhawk

That backlash has been there all along, waiting.

 

Holly McDede

There’s a lot to fear and to fight for, and at the Emma Goldman clinic, the push for reproductive freedom continues, but it’s still important to find joy even amid the struggle. As Goldman wrote…

 

Emma Goldman

I do not believe that a cause which stood for a beautiful ideal, for anarchism, for release and freedom from prejudice, should demand a denial of life.

 

Holly McDede

So, no need to miss those Star Trek reruns.

 

Captain Kirk

“Isn’t that logical?”

 

Holly McDede

For Philosophy Talk I’m Holly J. McDede,

 

Josh Landy

Thanks for that really interesting report, Holly. It’s fascinating to see Goldman’s legacy still alive today. I’m Josh Landy, with me is my fellow philosopher Ray Briggs, and today we’re asking about the life and thoughts of Emma Goldman.

 

Ray Briggs

We’re joined now by Candice Falk. She’s founding director of the Emma Goldman papers research project at UC Berkeley, and author of Love, Anarchy, and Emma Goldman. Candace, welcome to Philosophy Talk.

 

Candace Falk

Thank you. I’m glad to be here.

 

Josh Landy

So, Candice, I know you once had a dog called Red Emma, which is totally fantastic, and this dog somehow led you to an important discovery. Can you tell us about that?

 

Candace Falk

I still find it mind blowing today. I this was in the 70s, and almost everyone named their pets and their children Emma, in the spirit of Emma Goldman. And so, I had an Irish golden retriever who I called Emma red. Emma Goldman. She was with me and my boyfriend, who’s now my husband, on a trip across the country. And I stopped by in Chicago because I was at University of Chicago, and I stopped by a guitar shop where I had a friend who worked there, and I asked my dog Emma to stay at the door. And instead, anarchist that she was, she bolted in after me and my friend, who was kind of a hippie. He said, Hey, what’s her name? She’s a lovely dog. And I said, Emma. Red Emma Goldman. And he scratched his head, and he said, that’s really funny, because five years ago, in the back of the shop, I swear I think I saw some letters of hers. He went to the back of the shop, and after a while, came out with the box full of letters. And I, who had really admired Emma Goldman for so long, couldn’t wait to just even see her handwriting. And he said, well, why don’t you take these letters and look at them, Xerox them. It was the time when Xerox machines really smelled horrible. As I was reading the letters, I had this terrible experience of reading a letter of hers that said, if anyone ever saw these letters, I’d feel naked before the world. And she said that because Emma, as somebody who believed in free love and multiple relationships and against jealousy, these letters were full of anguish about her lover, Ben Reitman, who was somewhat of a ladies’ man, and his escapades, shall we say, drove her crazy. And in her letter, she was it was almost like she was hectoring him, like, how could you do this? How could you do this to me? How could you do this to our vision, and mostly she expressed her anxiety and her unhappiness about their relationship. And when you think of the way Emma presented herself to the public, as a woman who was pure and optimistic and visionary to see that she really did, like the rest of us, have her own periods of depression and feelings that you know maybe things are not all as you wish them to be.

 

Ray Briggs

What a fantastic and compelling story. Candace. So, I wanted to ask you about something Josh and I were discussing earlier. We were talking about the women’s suffrage movement and how Goldman thought it was misguided. Why did she think that?

 

Candace Falk

Well, a little bit like what you said many people during her lifetime, before suffrage was on the ballot, was that women focused all their energy on suffrage and honestly believed that a vote would make a huge difference. And her opinion was that change only happens in terms of a whole lot of things, not just voting, and also some of the people who ran for office were supported by the most wealthy of the capitalists. And you know that there were so many ways that you could be fooled. You know, some people think that she didn’t agree with voting, and you shouldn’t vote. Actually, I think after all these years, she thought it was fine to vote as long as you weren’t, you didn’t have a false sense that that would make all the difference in the world.

 

Josh Landy

I mean, I agree with, I mean, you know, I like the kind of balanced view of vote. You know, do demand the vote for groups that don’t currently have it, but don’t think it’s the be all and end all. The thing that bothers me is when she says, this is a quote from her, “there is no reason whatever to assume that woman has been or will be helped by the ballot.” That seems a little strong. Do you feel like sometimes she was, you know, phrasing things deliberately in a rather strong way, so as to get people’s attention, so as to kind of whip up support for the movement.

 

Candace Falk

Yes, I do, actually, but she was also countering something that was real. And the other thing is, reform wasn’t the idea that she believed in. On the one hand, she definitely got many, many privileges and many good things through reform, but she felt like people also fooled themselves into thinking reform would make all the difference. And I think that was really the crux of her statements about suffrage.

 

Josh Landy

You’re listening to Philosophy Talk today. We’re talking about the life and thought of Emma Goldman with Candace Falk from UC Berkeley.

 

Ray Briggs

Would you still work if you didn’t have a boss? Does the State protect your freedoms or take them away? How can we achieve true sexual liberation?

 

Josh Landy

Sex, money, and anarchism—along with your comments and questions, when Philosophy Talk continues.

 

Sole

From gulags to the prison industrial complex

 

Josh Landy

Is rapping for revolution enough to make you think you’re Emma Goldman? I’m Josh Landy, and this is Philosophy Talk, the program that questions everything…

 

Ray Briggs

…except your intelligence. I’m Ray Briggs, and we’re questioning the life and thought of Emma Goldman. Our guest is Candace Falk, author of Love, Anarchy, and Emma Goldman.

 

Josh Landy

It’s the latest episode in our “Wise Women” series, which is generously supported by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. You can listen to all the episodes in the series at our website, Philosophytalk.org/wisewomen. And while you’re there, you can also become a subscriber and go wild in our library of more than 600 episodes.

 

Ray Briggs

So, Candace, before the break, we were talking about voting, and we have a question about that from our good friend Daniel, who writes, “Tyrants can be overthrown, but a people’s choice which ratifies one’s oppressor can never be eradicated. The democratic state does not seize power by violence, but steals it by deception. It does this so that the people forced to hand over its license to tyrannize won’t understand that they’re being robbed.” What do you think Emma Goldman would have to say about that?

 

Candace Falk

Well, I do think Emma would have agreed with that, that she definitely thought people didn’t even realize that they were cheated of their power because they believed that their power came with the vote. And we all know that the vote was really an important change in our culture and in our environment, but it wasn’t everything. And so, if you voted and didn’t bring in Trump or brought in Kamala Harris. You know, you might find it all a victory or defeat of your own, and that was Emma’s way of saying, maybe it’s not.

 

Ray Briggs

So, that’s pretty radical so, and I know that she’s often described as an anarchist. Think many people would find that kind of alarming. Can you say a little bit to motivate why we should be interested in her anarchism or take her anarchism seriously?

 

Candace Falk

Anarchism is one of those words that brings out people’s anger, I think, or confusion, because the association with anarchism is violence. And actually, anarchism is a very interesting movement and has many, many interesting tributaries to it, and not at all, all violence. It is true that there are anarchists historically who assassinated leaders or who led violent missions in our culture, but the problem of anarchism was something that Emma herself had to face, which is almost all of her talks and her writings were about how anarchism is not all about violence. Anarchism is about having the belief that harmony is within in reach, and that you didn’t really need leaders to make that possible, that you needed to find that spirit in yourself and in Cooper and the vision of cooperation that would make all the difference in the world.

 

Josh Landy

I like that vision a lot. I mean, the violence part does disturb me quite a bit. You know, her involvement in an attempted murder, and also the praise that she had for the anarchist who assassinated William McKinley, but the theoretical anarchism that the idea that you could have, as she puts it, in order that doesn’t come from the state, I think that’s a beautiful vision. I want you to try to sell me on it. Though, why would we think that if we got rid of governments, we got rid of all hierarchical systems that are trying to, you know, sort out the necessary functions of society and make sure that I don’t know trash is being collected and things like that. Why would we think that good things will emerge, that people will actually cooperate. There won’t just be a bunch of freeloaders. There won’t be crime. You know, why should we think that? In fact, human beings are sort of fundamentally good, and things will go well in an anarchist utopia?

 

Candace Falk

I think she really believed that that would be an evolution of the human spirit. In other words, she felt that you had to have that vision of what was possible. You had to try that in small ways, in your own life, in your own workplace, in your own school, to see how it felt and not to get burnt out by the fact that it wasn’t happening. I think her vision was that underlying everything that there was more power that the people would feel if they were part of the solution genuinely, rather than at an arm’s distance. And Emma did not think this was going to happen overnight. She wasn’t that misguided, but there’s a way in which she advocated a lifestyle and a vision and a vision of society that was so much more appealing than the society that we had and that she had, that that was really what she stood for.

 

Ray Briggs

So, I kind of, I think that she had a real point when she criticizes the status quo in various spots. So, like, she’s very critical of factory conditions. She had to work in a factory for her living for chunks of her life. And she doesn’t like that. Bosses can exploit their workers and make their lives just these like dull miseries. And she doesn’t like that. Female factory workers get, like sexually exploited by their male supervisors. So, I feel like, if that’s the bar, maybe anarchism doesn’t have to do that great to be better than the status quo. She’s also really criticized, critical of when the government kills people, like, why is that not murder? She uses the phrase judicial murderer a lot. So, do you think? Like, what actually is the bar that anarchists have to clear to show that their way of thinking is a good way of thinking.

 

Candace Falk

Well, one of the things is that anarchists, there are so many different kinds of anarchists, I think what brings them together is the belief that an overseeing structure that has power over them is not valid. That’s really, I think that’s it. You know, Tolstoy was an anarchist of sorts. There are many, many people you would not think of as anarchists, but they are and they were, so that is what unifies anarchists, even those who participated in violence.

 

Josh Landy

You’re listening to Philosophy Talk today. We’re asking about the life and thought of Emma Goldman with Candace Falk, founding director of the Emma Goldman papers project at UC Berkeley. So, Candace, one of the things that Emma Goldman was advocating for was gay rights, and this was at the turn of the 20th century, decades before it became a popular cause. How did Emma Goldman get there? Why was she so ahead of her time on these issues?

 

Candace Falk

First of all, Emma really believed in freedom in every element of your life, and sexuality was something that was so taboo about talking, you know, there was the Comstock Act during her time, where you couldn’t even write about sexuality. And so, she believed in freedom and freedom in sexuality. And she was very close to many people who were homosexuals or lesbians or even bi, and she was a voice to express what was behind that and to encourage people to be accepting, and also to encourage people who were part of any of those groups to believe in themselves.

 

Ray Briggs

Candace, you mentioned the Comstock Act, and this was a law that basically outlawed the distribution of obscene materials where this included information about how to use birth control or birth control itself. And Goldman actually got arrested at least once for distributing birth control and information about how to use it. Why was it so important to her to be able to talk about birth control?

 

Candace Falk

Well, it was important to talk about birth control because she knew that poor women, especially because she had been a midwife for some time, were absolutely devastated, politically and economically, by having children that they could not afford, and also she felt just like now people women had to have a choice, and at that time, having a Choice, even finding out how to have a choice was considered very dangerous. And it’s interesting, because when I first started this, I thought, oh, well, that was a long time ago. And look at where we are now—horrible.

 

Ray Briggs

And she really wanted women to have kind of sexual freedom, as you say, which was pretty hard to reach in some ways. Uh, during her time, what did she think we should change about society, to give people the kind of sexual freedom they deserve.

 

Candace Falk

Well, to get the people the sexual freedom they deserved meant to change the power relationship between men and women, meant to change the general vision of sexuality and birth. She didn’t think it would happen overnight, but it was a critical issue that in her mind, and as we feel now, had an impact on every woman.

 

Josh Landy

So, we’ve got her action in relation to a reproductive choice. We’ve got her speeches on behalf of sexual freedom, of the equality of for sexual orientation. Can you also say a little bit about her thought about prisons? Because I know that she was pretty concerned about what was happening within prisons, and, in fact, more generally, what the whole prison system was doing to society.

 

Candace Falk

Yes, and in fact, she knew a lot about prison because she kept being arrested and being sent to prison, sometimes for short periods, other times for longer periods, especially 1917, to 1919, and what she saw was poverty, racism. Horrible oversight and literally violence of the overseers over the prisoners. She felt that this was not the way to change people’s lives or to make them better citizens. In fact, she felt like it was exactly the opposite. And, you know, in many ways, she felt like when she got out of prison, she said that she was leaving to go into a larger prison, i.e., the world that she lived in. So, prison was something that she was not afraid of.

 

Josh Landy

That’s interesting, that, you know, there’s something that I find incredibly appealing and something I find less appealing. So, the thing I find appealing is the way in which she was able to see through the Soviet Union so quickly, long before a lot of her fellow radicals were able to see through it. I mean, she sort of shared Simone Veil’s understanding that there’s no point in revolution if it’s only what Emma Goldman called political scene shifting, where, all you know, you have a bunch of violence, bunch of people die, and all that happens is that, you know, it’s just new bosses, right? It’s just a change of dictatorship, as she says. So, I think that’s really impressive, that she’s able, and of course, she was in the Soviet Union. She got to see it up close, but it’s still really impressive on the other side. The thing that I’m not as necessarily a sanguine about is what she said, sort of in the run up to World War Two, she said, look, much as I loathe Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin and Franco, I would not support a war against them and for the democracies which, in the last analysis, are only fascist in disguise. So, she’s kind of making an equivalence, which I would think of as kind of a false equivalence, between, you know, the United States, Britain, France and so on, and something like Nazi Germany. How do you feel about that? I you know, for me, that seems kind of both sides in World War Two in advance, so to speak. But do you think there’s some kind of a logic there? Do you think that this way of characterizing you said a moment ago, leaving one prison for a bigger prison? Do you think that’s fair, or do you think she was just maybe a little bit too strong in her condemnation of what she was seeing in countries like the United States,

 

Candace Falk

I definitely think that she was a little too strong in her condemnation. Yes, I would not, I would not disagree with that, although you know that many of Emma’s talks and visions, you know it had to do with nudging people out of their normal vision, like surprising them, getting them to pay attention. But I need to go back to what you said about the Soviet Union, because Emma in the beginning, when the Russian Revolution began, in her sense, she was a great supporter of early Bolshevism, and she felt that its basic message was still about sharing production and offering safety and food to those who didn’t have it. So, she actually was very entranced with that. However, what is the one thing more than anything else that Emma stood for, it was really about free expression. Free Expression everywhere. And she confronted Lenin with that idea, and Lennon said to her, Emma, freedom of expression is a bourgeois vision, or Bucha. Vision, or Bucha statement. So, it took a lot of courage, actually, for her to leave Russia and to talk to people in Europe and all over the world, well, most of the world, about what was wrong with the way in which Russia had changed? And interestingly enough, that was exactly the period when communism was so strong in America that she seemed like she was an incredible turncoat and that she was, you know, duped by this situation. There so poor Emma had nowhere she could go where she wasn’t treated like a pariah. She It took courage to stand against the tide when no one was there with you.

 

Josh Landy

You’re listening to Philosophy Talk today. We’re thinking about Emma Goldman with Candace Falk from UC Berkeley, author of Love, Anarchy, and Emma Goldman.

 

Ray Briggs

Should there be any limits to free speech? Is it more important to safeguard intellectual freedom or protect people from disinformation? What would Emma Goldman say about social media?

 

Josh Landy

Bots, billionaires and online bullying—plus commentary from Ian Shoales the Sixty-Second Philosopher, when Philosophy Talk continues.

 

Sex Pistols

“I wanna to be anarchist, get pissed, destroy.”

 

Josh Landy

Anarchy in the UK? Emma Goldman would have loved it. I’m Josh Landy, and this is Philosophy Talk, the program that questions everything…

 

Ray Briggs

…except your intelligence. I’m Ray Briggs. Our guest is Candace Falk from UC Berkeley, and we’re questioning the life and thought of Emma Goldman. It’s part of our “Wise Women” series, generously supported by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

 

Josh Landy

So Candace, we’ve talked quite a bit about Goldman’s general theories and her response to issues of her own time, but how about issues of our time? So for example, what would Goldman have had to say about free speech in the age of the internet?

 

Candace Falk

It’s very interesting. Of course, she didn’t have that issue, but in every situation, she believed that there was no limit to free speech at all, and that people could make their own judgment. And frankly, I’m not sure if there was an end point to that, but I know she felt that any restriction on free speech was not okay.

 

Ray Briggs

I wonder if this is because of the use cases that she was most familiar with. Her experiences of free speech being suppressed had a lot to do with her trying to give a talk and the police coming in and saying, oh, you’re too dangerous. You can’t give this talk. Do you think that that shaped her view significantly?

 

Candace Falk

Yes, experiencing that kind of repression or suppression was horrible for her, especially since she felt there was nothing that she was saying that was particularly dangerous except to encourage people to think for themselves. And if she encouraged people to think for themselves when there was a draft that may not have been very good on the part of the government.

 

Josh Landy

There’s another thing that I’m thinking about in relation to the contemporary period, and that’s the spectacle of people being interested in anarchism or something like it, something like libertarianism, something like essentially a demolition of institutions and governments on the part of very rich people. So, right? So, you know, Emma Goldman, someone who is pushing for a kind of demolition of the state, at a demolition of, you know, of marriage and certainly, a demolition of the prison system and so on and so on, on behalf of the poor, on behalf of ordinary folks, working people. But these days we see quite a few ultra wealthy people who seem to be interested in doing something very similar, as, apparently, a way to stop their money from, you know, helping other people, or something like that. What would Emma Goldman have to say to today’s version of this kind of, you know, libertarian thinking.

 

Candace Falk

Well, during her time, it was a very big issue that she spoke to people of the middle class and also to the more wealthy, and she did not cross them off her list of people who needed to hear the message that she had to say about harmony and freedom, and so she kind of crossed over the class lines. On the one hand, she wasn’t in favor of those whose wealth came from taking incredible advantage of the poor and their workers. On the other hand, she did not discount people who in their life had money and if they wanted to help, that was good. And in fact, a lot of the people who gave money to help pay the fines of people who were in jail because of their ideas, she praised them to the sky. And I have to say, in some ways, because she was incredibly articulate, and there was a way in which the middle class adored hearing her, and actually, most people were entranced by hearing her, and coming back to her eloquence in many situations, government. Uh, representatives feared her eloquence, and in fact, that was part of the reason that J Edgar Hoover thought she was so dangerous. So, they saw that her appeal crossed classes.

 

Ray Briggs

I want to push on Josh’s question and maybe also offer a little bit of a reply on behalf of Emma Goldman. I certainly I take your point that middle class and rich people can advocate for the freedom of everybody and can like contribute to bail funds to get people out of jail who are in jail for political reasons. But I think there is a worry about like, well, if people have freedom, some of them are gonna misuse it. So, in particular if you deregulate the factories without making any other changes, then giving the factory owners freedom kind of takes away from everybody else’s freedom. I don’t think Emma Goldman liked factories, so I think that she probably wouldn’t be in favor of the kind of state deregulation where all the power just goes to the factories. So, like when one possible thing I’m envisioning for her to say is maybe the problem is not just the institutions, whatever they are, but the unfair concentration of power in the hands of a few people, and if that’s by some mechanism other than the state, that’s still bad. What do you think Emma would say to my response?

 

Candace Falk

She would say bravo!

 

Ray Briggs

Hear that, Josh?

 

Josh Landy

But see, Ray, I don’t know that sounds, you know, it sounds like you’re proposing meliorism. That is to say, it sounds like you’re proposing something somewhat similar to what you have now, but just better. And I feel like Emma Goldman, at least in what I’ve read of her. I mean, really curious Candace to hear what your take is. She seems to be kind of impatient with it. So, she has this very interesting line. She says, look, I know that the oppressed and the disinherited masses are, you know, are suffering. But I refuse to prescribe the usual ridiculous palliatives. One cannot be too extreme in dealing with social ills. The extreme thing is generally the true thing. So, I feel like, you know, I like your proposal Ray, which is, well, just, you know, make sure it isn’t the factory owners who are sort of controlling everything, but that sounds like the kind of meliorism, the kind of, you know, steady, slow progress view that Emma Goldman opposed. What do you think Candace?

 

Candace Falk

Well, I would say that Emma would be more interested in unionization and in ways in which workers could take control of their own workplace. It’s important to know that she may have been in favor of unions and supported them, but there are many unions who didn’t want her help. They didn’t want to be associated with an anarchist. So even though her vision was a much more equitable one, she was aware of the fact that that wasn’t always the case.

 

Josh Landy

Sounds like it’s complicated.

 

Candace Falk

It is complicated. I think you could say that about everything connected to Emma Goldman, it’s complicated. And it’s really good to know that it’s complicated and not just one thing or the other. And that, I think you know, in many ways, that’s what people have a problem with about anarchism and many other things in our society.

 

Ray Briggs

So Candace, one fact about Emma Goldman that we haven’t touched on yet was her love of the theater and her involvement in putting on a lot of plays. What would you say her ideas were about how we can sort of use creativity and art to inspire political change.

 

Candace Falk

Well, Emma was a great lover of the drama, for example, and she believed that sometimes you could get more information and inspiration from a play or from seeing how an individual could handle difficult situations and come out on top. She was a great admirer of many, many authors. In fact, Emma was the one who brought much of European theater to America. So interestingly enough, her statements about theater had more to do with telling the story that was behind a play or a book than a more technical one about, you know, we all know what technical means. So, she wanted people to know those stories. And in fact, she believed that often that was much more powerful than somebody on the stage saying things that may have seemed too abstract to the general public.

 

Josh Landy

Well, Candace, thank you so much for joining us today. It’s been a really fascinating conversation.

 

Candace Falk

Thank you. It’s very interesting to have a conversation with people who know so much and haven’t spent their entire life on Emma Goldman as I have.

 

Josh Landy

Well, we have been the beneficiaries of your amazing knowledge and understanding of Goldman. Our guest has been Candace Falk, founding director of the Emma Goldman papers research project at UC Berkeley, and author of Love, Anarchy, and Emma Goldman. So, Ray, what are you thinking now?

 

Ray Briggs

I’m thinking I really love Emma Goldman. She is one of the wise women I feel most excited about, and I love her anarchist commitment to sort of seeing the things that are unsatisfactory about the actual world, even if, like, it’s not totally clear to me how we get to a better world. Like, I want people who really advocate for something better and care. And I think, I think Emma Goldman has that going for her.

 

Josh Landy

I think I may be a little less sanguine than you given all the you know, violent stuff. But something I love about her is what she says about literature, that it cultivates a spirit of growing unrest. And I think that is really beautiful. We’re gonna put links to everything we’ve mentioned today on our website, philosophytalk.org where you can also become a subscriber and question everything in our library of more than 600 episodes.

 

Ray Briggs

And don’t forget, you can also listen to all the episodes in our wise women series atphilosophytalk.org/wisewomen.

 

Josh Landy

Now, scoffing at every law—especially the speed limit—it’s Ian Shoales, the Sixty-Second Philosopher.

 

Ian Shoales

Ian Shoales… As a girl in Lithuania, Emma Goldman read  Nikolai Chernyshevsky’s 1863 novel, What Is to Be Done? about a girl who adopts a nihilist philosophy, and escapes her repressive family to live freely and organize a sewing cooperative.  How ironic!  She didn’t try to assassinate the czar, but not that many years later, in America, Emma herself fled an abusive stepfather and bad family situation.   With a sewing machine in one hand, and a bag with five bucks in another, she left Rochester New York for the bright lights and slums of New York City!  The sewing cooperative remained a dream.  But she went on to help invent anarchy as we know it, at that time, which included a little lite terrorism, sure, but also free love.  A relationship with fellow Russian immigrant Alexander Berkman, who planned, with her compliance, a little propaganda of the deed, that is countering capitalist oppression with action, in this case the assassination of Henry Clay Frick, then chairman of the Carnegie Steel Company, currently busy employing Pinkertons to thump and shoot workers in He and Emma tried to resume their relationship but Berkman was too damaged.  They remained friends for life however. In 1917 the two were jailed for two years under the new Espionage Act for their protest of the draft, which had been instated just in time for World War I.  Two years after that came America’s first Red Scare, a young pre–FBI J. Edgar Hoover made his bones, under the direction of attorney general Mitchell Palmer, busting lefties right and left so to speak, deporting Berkman and Emma Goldman to Russia.  There she became alarmed and appalled by Lenin’s oppressive handling of the fledgling communist state, the final straw being Trotsky’s strike busting in Kronstadt, 1,000 strikers killed, two thousand arrested; many later executed.  Her essays about her experience were published in the New York World, and later became a book, My Disillusionment with Russia, which is kind of on the nose.  But then she was never afraid to speak her mind.  Thereafter she had a wider audience for her speech, in general, but lost a great deal of cred in the commie world, which seemed to be putting all its eggs in the Russian basket even though it kept catching fire.  She wound up throwing herself into the Spanish Civil War, which proved to be the last gasp for her beloved anarchy.  When World War II came along, she could barely bestir herself, believing that the West had already dropped the ball fascism-wise, and were one step away from fascism anyway.  But amidst all her globe-trotting and jail time and exiles and affairs, she was making the legacy for which she is best remembered. She was way into personal freedom, free love, for example, which she wasn’t much good at, is anybody? She had picked up nursing skills during one of her prison stints, she got to know Margaret Sanger, and through her relationship with Ben Reitman, the so-called hobo doctor, began touting birth control, and was an advocate for gay rights.  In general, famously, she was an advocate for “the right to self-expression, everybody’s right to beautiful, radiant things.” A sentiment still to be found on coffee cups and tee shirts in college towns everywhere.  The women’s clinic in Iowa City, where I went to grad school, is named the Emma Goldman Clinic.  Founded in 1973, according to the Iowa City Press Citizen, in its fifty years “…the clinic has faced challenges, including firebombing, bomb threats, vandalism and the regular presence of picketers and protesters outside its front door”. So, who’s the anarchist now, America?  Well, maybe it’s just more of the ongoing mere anarchy that William Butler Yeats was yammering on about.  What do you think? I gotta go.

 

Ray Briggs

Philosophy Talk is a presentation of KAL, local public radio San Francisco Bay area and the trustees of Leland, Stanford Junior University, copyright 2024.

 

Josh Landy

Our executive producer is James Kess.

 

Ray Briggs

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Josh Landy

Thanks also to Pedro Jimenez, Merle Kessler and Angela Johnston.

 

Ray Briggs

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Josh Landy

And from the members of KLW, local public radio San Francisco, where our program originals. Support for this episode and all the episodes in our wise women series comes from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

 

Ray Briggs

The views expressed (or mis-expressed on this program do not necessarily represent the opinions of Stanford University or of our other funders.

 

Josh Landy

Not even when they’re true and reasonable. That conversation continues on our website, philosophytalk.org where you can become a subscriber and explore our library of more than 600 episodes. I’m Josh Landy.

 

Ray Briggs

And I’m Ray Briggs. Thank you for listening.

 

Josh Landy

And thank you for thinking.

 

Reporter

“What do you think about Russia, Miss Goldman?”

 

Emma Goldman

“I consider Russia and America the most interesting countries in the world today.”

 

Reporter

“How about Hitler?”

 

Emma Goldman

“I don’t know him, and don’t want to.”