Emma Goldman was an anarchist political activist, writer, and
feminist icon. She played a pivotal role in the development of anarchist political philosophy in North America and
Europe in the first half of the 20th century. During her life, Goldman was lionized as a freethinking "
rebel woman" by admirers. Her writing and lectures spanned a wide variety of issues, including
prisons, atheism,
freedom of speech,
militarism, capitalism, marriage, free
love, and
feminism. Although she distanced herself from first-wave
feminism and its efforts toward women's suffrage, she developed new ways of incorporating gender politics into
anarchism. After decades of obscurity, Goldman gained iconic status
… Read more in the 1970s by a revival of interest in her life, when
feminist and anarchist scholars rekindled popular interest.
Anarchism was central to Goldman's view of the world and she is today considered one of the most important figures in the history of
anarchism. Goldman believed that the economic system of capitalism was incompatible with
human liberty and she also argued that capitalism dehumanized workers. Goldman viewed the state as essentially and inevitably a tool of control and domination, and as a result of her anti-state views, she believed that
voting was useless at best and dangerous at worst.
Voting, she wrote, provided an illusion of participation while masking the true structures of decision-making. Instead, Goldman advocated targeted
resistance in the form of strikes, protests, and "
direct action against the invasive, meddlesome authority of our moral code". Although she was hostile to the suffragist goals of first-wave
feminism, Goldman advocated passionately for the rights of women and is today heralded as a founder of anarcha-
feminism, which challenges
patriarchy as a
hierarchy to be resisted alongside state power and class divisions.
Anarcha-
feminism combines
anarchism with
feminism. Anarcha-
feminism generally posits that
patriarchy and traditional
gender roles as manifestations of involuntary coercive
hierarchy should be replaced by decentralized free association. Anarcha-feminists believe that the struggle against
patriarchy is an essential part of class
conflict and the anarchist struggle against the state and capitalism. In essence, the philosophy sees anarchist struggle as a necessary component of
feminist struggle and vice versa. L. Susan Brown claims that "as
anarchism is a political philosophy that opposes all relationships of power, it is inherently
feminist". Anarcha-
feminism is an anti-authoritarian,
… Read more anti-capitalist, anti-oppressive philosophy, with the goal of creating an "equal ground" between the genders. Anarcha-
feminism suggests the social
freedom and liberty of women without needed dependence upon other groups or parties. Anarcha-
feminism began with late 19th and early 20th century authors and theorists such as anarchist feminists
Emma Goldman,
Voltairine de Cleyre, Milly Witkop,
Lucía Sánchez Saornil, and Lucy Parsons. In the Spanish Civil
War, an anarcha-
feminist group,
Mujeres Libres ("Free Women"), linked to the Federación Anarquista Ibérica, organized to defend both anarchist and
feminist ideas.
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