Primer 1 — Anarchism · Emma Goldman
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About the Author
Emma Goldman (1869-1940) was a leading figure in American radicalism. Her outspoken support of women’s rights, worker’s rights and free speech led her to be denounced and eventually deported.
About the Text
Anarchism: What it really stands for was originally included in the book, Anarchism and Other Essays, published by Mother Earth Association, New York, 1910. The text is taken from Project Gutenberg.
16 pages; 4×7; Saddle-stitched
Read excerpts
Anarchism, the great leaven of thought, is today permeating every phase of human endeavor. Science, art, literature, the drama, the effort for economic betterment, in fact every individual and social opposition to the existing disorder of things, is illumined by the spiritual light of Anarchism. It is the philosophy of the sovereignty of the individual. It is the theory of social harmony. It is the great, surging, living truth that is reconstructing the world, and that will usher in the Dawn.
Anarchism is the only philosophy which brings to man the consciousness of himself; which maintains that God, the State, and society are non-existent, that their promises are null and void, since they can be fulfilled only through man’s subordination. Anarchism is therefore the teacher of the unity of life; not merely in nature, but in man. There is no conflict between the individual and the social instincts, any more than there is between the heart and the lungs: the one the receptacle of a precious life essence, the other the repository of the element that keeps the essence pure and strong. The individual is the heart of society, conserving the essence of social life; society is the lungs which are distributing the element to keep the life essence – that is, the individual – pure and strong
Freedom, expansion, opportunity, and, above all, peace and repose, alone can teach us the real dominant factors of human nature and all its wonderful possibilities.
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