July 19: “What I Believe”

“The history of progress is written in the blood of men and women who have dared to espouse an unpopular cause, as, for instance, the black man’s right to his body, or woman’s right to her soul,” wrote Emma Goldman in “What I Believe,” a defense of anarchism published in the New York World on this date in 1908. Among the visions she put forth were of “a society based on voluntary co-operation of productive groups, communities and societies loosely federated together, eventually developing into a free communism” . . . “the absence of government” to “insure the widest and greatest scope for unhampered human development, the cornerstone of true social progress and harmony” . . . “the absolute right to free motherhood” (without marriage) . . . and “a halt to the growing tendency of militarism, which is fast making of this erstwhile free country an imperialistic and despotic power.” Goldman was 39 when her manifesto was published and had been recently denounced the Washington Post as “a menace” with “enormous powers of hate . . . set against law and order and government.”
“ ‘What I believe’ is a process rather than a finality. Finalities are for gods and governments, not for the human intellect.” —Emma Goldman