Peter Glassgold
Review by
James Seckington
Peter Glassgold’s
collection, Anarchy! An Anthology of Emma Goldman’s Mother Earth, is not
only refreshing, but downright intoxicating.
Reading the
collection of pieces culled from the pages of Mother Earth, an anarchist
magazine of the early 20 century produced by Emma Goldman and company, one is
transported to a world in which people actually had faith in the power of
individual will. Writers like Alexander Berkman, Voltairine de Cleyre, Max Bag-
inski, Peter Kropotkin, and, of course, Emma Goldman did more than produce
flowery anarchist propaganda in the pages of Mother Earth; they affirmed
life with almost every sentence.
Writing in his
journal, Ralph Waldo Emerson confessed, “I love man, but hate men.” This feeling
permeates the writings of early 20th century anarchists; indeed, it is one of
the cornerstone principles of anarchist thought—the tap from which anarchists
draw their anger. Ugly material realities have produced a deformed malnourished
offspring. However, because anarchists assume, in Kropotkin’s words, an
“instinct for freedom” inherent within every human being, humanity, as a
species, has tremendous potential to make life—to put it bluntly—a helluva a lot
better.
Glassgold’s
anthology is brimming with tributes, memorials, and other celebrations of
existence. What some have referred to as a cult of martyrdom among the anarchist
movement is readily apparent in the pieces Glassgold has selected. This emphasis
on the creation of martyrs within the pages of Mother Earth is perfectly
consistent, however, with an anarchist philosophy of individual will.
Alexander
Berkman, for example, eulogizing Voltairine de Cleyre, writes, “She was too
strong in her humanity to be the plaything of Circumstance, that ‘inexorable’
master of all ye that are weak in spirit. She would not be dominated by the
Dominant Idea of the Age, nor yet by the power of her immediate environment. For
the really strong,” Berkman concludes, “even if they cannot change their
environment, do not suffer the environment to change them.”
Writing of
Mikhail Bakunin, Max Baginski stresses a similar theme. Contrasting Bakunin to
his great contemporary Karl Marx, Baginski says of Bakunin, “his lifework is not
an appeal to mere intellectuality; he speaks to the whole man, the most precious
part of whom is still his strong will, his instincts and passions.”
The unsigned
piece published in 1910 on Peter Kropotkin privileges his emphasis on the power
of human “energy.” “Be strong,” the piece quotes Kropotkin approvingly,
“overflow with the passion of thought and action; so shall your understanding,
your love, your energy, pour itself into others…. DARE to fight, to make a
rich and overflowing life possible to all.” Kropotkin, argues the author,
“exhausts language to convince his readers that ‘there is need of great events
which rudely break the thread of history and hurl mankind out if its ruts into
new roads.”
To read these
tributes to fallen friends today, at a time when history has become the Great
Excuse, and the bad behavior of the past and present is dismissed by many a well
known historian with, “Well, people are just products of their culture…what do
you expect?” is to be reminded of just how far many of today’s “great minds”
have strayed from their humanist origins. The writers for Mother Earth
paid homage to their friends, mentors, and teachers on a regular basis. By
focusing for a page or two on a single individual life, Mother Earth
reminded its readers that one life—including your own—could not only make a
difference and inspire others to action, but could actually be an end unto
itself—a self-contained source of meaning, beauty, and hope. As Berkman put it,
“Some die for their ideal; fewer live for it.”
For the
anarchists featured in Mother Earth, the “self,” or the individual, is
the foundation on which liberation shall be realized. Long derided as a
bourgeois fallacy by many a card carrying socialist, this assumption shines
forth in all its glory within the pages of Mother Earth. Whether
memorializing each other, discussing the “woman question,” literature or war,
each writer’s argument can almost always be traced back to this root.
Georg Brandes,
for example, in a piece on the dramatist Henrick Ibsen, concludes, “he has been
dubbed by turn Socialist and Anarchist, idealist and materialist, and so on. He
is all that, and he is nothing of all that; he is himself—that is, something as
immense and manifold as humanity itself.” Brandes saw in Ibsen a man whose only
master was his muse—a free individual who realizes his innate creative power
through his art.
Emma Goldman and
other anarchist writers viewed Art as the embodiment of transcendence. It was
through Art that humankind could catch a glimpse of its utopian promise. In Art
the material and the ideal are reconciled with one another. The artist uses the
very stuff of this world—oil and canvas, ink and paper, stage and actors—to give
form to an ideal. Art provided more than metaphor; it gave individuals a model
for social action. Art, literature, theater, were not so much disciplines to be
studied and appreciated, but rather, disciplines to be lived.
Hippolyte Havel,
in a 1913 piece on Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, offers a useful
definition of great literature and Art in general. “Does the book give one new
values, a new view of life,” Havel asks, “does it disturb one’s soul to the
utmost depth? If it succeed in accomplishing this, it is a great book.” That is
what the writers for Mother Earth were trying to accomplish —to literally
reach in and shake the very spirit of their readers.
The old school
anarchism of Mother Earth repeatedly stressed the creative life affirming
nature of the human condition. While at times the magazine flirted with, and
occasionally advocated, a course of destruction, it ultimately sided with the
forces of creation. Indeed, the words seem to skip with a childlike zest for
life through the pages of Glassgold’s collection. That joyous bounce Goldman and
friends displayed in their writings and in their lives is what makes this
anthology so valuable today. Mother Earth’s masthead proclaimed it was a
“Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature.” And while there are
plenty of articles infused with social science theory and methods within
Anarchy!, in the end it is the voice of the poet, the artist, which one
hears most clearly while flipping the pages. It is the voice of spirit, the
voice of will, the voice that ultimately beckons us toward a better tomorrow.
