Bio: (1869-1940) Russian-American political theorist. Emma Goldman was born in Russia, and in 1885 she emigrated to the United States. Although she had no formal education, Goldman became one of the most prominent proponents of anarchism in the United States. She spread her ideas through books and essays, many public lectures she gave, and Mother Earth magazine, the monthly journal she founded and edited. Goldman was arrested several times for her political engagement, and because of the anti-war protests she organized during the First World War, she was sentenced to two years in prison and her US citizenship was revoked. After her release from prison, he went to the Soviet Union in 1919, and after leaving the Soviet Union, he spent the rest of his life lecturing and agitating in France and Great Britain.

Goldman contributed to the philosophical and ideological spread of anarchism, primarily by linking the ideas of anarchism with feminist and pacifist ideas. Her approach to anarchism was aimed at defending the individuality of individuals, so she claimed that only liberated individuals could achieve a free society. She was skeptical of the masses and emphasized their tendency to become dependent on leaders and their authority. It was the masses who allowed the freedom to be suppressed through authority and coercion. However, she believed that all human beings are capable of rejecting relationships of authority and achieving freedom. The way to realize that freedom is "communal individuality" (based on personal autonomy and voluntary cooperation), which will ensure the sovereignty of the individual, but also social harmony.

In her essay What I Believe (1908), Goldman states that anarchism is a theory of the organic development of society. To achieve this organic development, it is necessary to reject both the relationships of authority and the concept of ownership. The free society will be based on the voluntary cooperation of groups of producers, communities, and societies connected through federations. She saw the ideas and actions of the French trade unionists as an excellent start towards the ultimate goal - building an anarcho-communist society. Goldman advocated for methods of political assassinations, direct action, industrial sabotage, and general strikes, as she saw them as legitimate activities in the fight for a free society.

The emphasis on the freedom of the individual, as a goal, but also a precondition for a free society, became especially visible in Emma Goldman's writings written after her stay in the Soviet Union. Such sentiments are visible in her books My Disillusionment in Russia (1923) and The Place of the Individual in Society (1940). In the first book, she expressed distrust in the possibility of "class consciousness" being realized independently in the political sphere. The communist state has much greater potential to use the political apparatus of force to achieve economic dictatorship over individuals. The Communist Party in Russia did just that. It nationalized the economy, introduced rigid central planning, established a huge bureaucratic system, abolished freedom of speech, and conducted political purges while securing a privileged status for itself. The "dictatorship of the proletariat" proved worse, in the conditions of Stalin’s dictatorship, than the tsarist regime ever had. In the second mentioned book, Goldman emphasizes that individuality is the most important, while forced social uniformity and identity is what oppresses individual the most.

Goldman was also a great opponent of patriotism and militarism because these values ​​are great opponents of universal solidarity among all people of the planet. She also viewed the church as an institution that is as oppressive as the state. She saw the origin of religion in the inability of people to understand natural phenomena. The church has always acted as the greatest opponent of progress, so Goldman advocated atheism as a rejection of that oppressive system. Apart from the state, property, and religion, laws are another way of restricting freedom. In her opinion, laws are unnecessary, because crime is just a misdirected negative energy, while prisons are a real social crime that only reproduces anti-social behavior. Goldman also criticized the existing school system, which forcibly strives to create complete uniformity among young people. On the other hand, she advocated education that would allow free expression and stimulate empathy, and that would have no rules and regulations, and she was also in favor of introducing sex education.

Goldman wrote and fought for feminist goals. She rejected double gender standards and puritanical control over natural impulses. She believed that in the existing system, women were treated only as sexual objects, a means of giving birth and raising children, and a source of cheap labor. She believed that prostitution was a special form of exploitation of women, but also that all women were forced to sell their bodies. She opposed the women's suffrage movement, which was widespread in the early twentieth century in the United States because she thought that it would not solve unequal, repressive, and exploitative relations between the two sexes.

The liberation of women must start from the emancipation of the individual, from the rejection of forced sexual and reproductive relations, and from the rejection of serving God, the state, the husband, and the family. She was a great critic of the institution of marriage and considered marriage and love to be in a hostile relationship. Marriage allows the church and the state to interfere in private relations between people, it serves as an economic relationship in which men become the owners of a woman's body and her ability to give birth to children, while women become dependent and helpless maids. She advocated free love and the right to choose concerning motherhood, so she also promoted the right to contraception and abortion.

Main works

What I Believe (1908);

Anarchism and Other Essays (1910);

The Social Significance of the Modern Drama (1914);

My Disillusionment in Russia (1923);

My Further Disillusionment in Russia (1924);

The Place of the Individual in Society (1940).