by Emma Goldman
[Published in The Vanguard (New York), Aug.-Sept. 1936.]
St. Tropez July 12th, 1936
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Tag Archives: Alexander Berkman
The Bolshevik Myth (Diary 1920–22)
Preface
Revolution breaks the social forms grown too narrow for man. It bursts the molds which constrict him the more solidified they become, and the more Life ever striving forward leaves them. In this dynamic process the Russian Revolution has gone further than any previous revolution
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Prisons and Crime
Alexander Berkman
Modern philanthropy has added a new role to the repertoire of penal institutions. While, formerly, the alleged necessity of prisons rested, solely, upon their penal and protective character, to-day a new function, claiming primary importance, has become embodied in these institutions — that of reformation.
Hence, three objects — reformative, penal, and protective — are now sought to be accomplished by means of enforced physical restraint, by incarceration of a more or less solitary character, for a specific, or more or less indefinite period.
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La rebelión de Kronstadt
Alexander Berkman’s Last Days
by Emma Goldman
St. Tropez July 12th, 1936
It is only two weeks since our beloved comrade Alexander Berkman passed away. Yet it seems an eternity to me. The blow his untimely death has struck me has left me completely shattered. I find it difficult to collect my thoughts. But I feel sure you will want to know all about Sasha’s end. For have you not loved him all through the years?
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A Sketch of Alexander Berkman
by Emma Goldman
Taken from The Russian Tragedy (A Review and An Outlook) (Berlin: Der Syndikalist, 1922).
To write a biographic sketch of even an ordinary man within the limited space at my disposal would be difficult. But to write about one whose personality is so complex and whose life so replete with events as that of Alexander Berkman, is almost an insurmountable task. To do justice to such a rich and colorful subject one must not be so limited by space as I am. Above all, one should be removed, in point of time and distance, from the life to be portrayed. Which is not the case in the present instance.
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On the shooting of Henry Clay Frick
by Alexander Berkman
From ‘Living My Life’
by Emma Goldman
“It was May 1892. News from Pittsburg announced that trouble had broken out between the Carnegie Steel Company and its employees organized in the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers. It was one of the biggest and most efficient labour bodies of the country, consisting mostly of Americans, men of decision and grit, who would assert their rights. The Carnegie Company, on the other hand, was a powerful corporation, known as a hard master. It was particularly significant that Andrew Carnegie, its president, had temporarily turned over the entire management to the company chairman, Henry Clay Frick, a man known for his enmity to labour. Frick was also the owner of extensive coke fields, where unions were prohibited and the workers were ruled with an iron hand.”
“The high tariff on imported steel had greatly boomed the American steel industry. The Carnegie Company had practically a monopoly of it, and enjoyed unprecedented prosperity. Its largest mills were in Homestead, near Pittsburgh, where thousands of workers were employed, their tasks requiring long training and skill. Wages were arranged between the company and the union, according to a sliding scale based in the prevailing market price of steel products. The current agreement was about to expire, and the workers presented a new wage schedule, calling for an increase because of the higher market prices and enlarged output of the mills.”
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The Blast
Partial online archive of The Blast, an anarchist newspaper published by Alex Berkman for 29 issues 1916-1917, when it was shut down for encouraging resistance to the draft.
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A Sketch of Alexander Berkman
by Emma Goldman
Taken from The Russian Tragedy (A Review and An Outlook) (Berlin: Der Syndikalist, 1922).
To write a biographic sketch of even an ordinary man within the limited space at my disposal would be difficult. But to write about one whose personality is so complex and whose life so replete with events as that of Alexander Berkman, is almost an insurmountable task. To do justice to such a rich and colorful subject one must not be so limited by space as I am. Above all, one should be removed, in point of time and distance, from the life to be portrayed. Which is not the case in the present instance.
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El ABC del comunismo libertario
Alexander Berkman
Prefacio a la edición de 1937
La calidad superior de la literatura anarquista, comparada con los escritos de otras escuelas sociales, consiste en su simplicidad de estilo. Mijail Bakunin, Elisee Réclus, Errico Malatesta y otros escribieron de un modo que sus ideas pudieron ser entendidas fácilmente por los trabajadores. Esto es particularmente verdad de Kropotkin y Malatesta. Sin embargo, sería verdad de que incluso ellos, apenas pensaban en el hombre medio, el hombre medio de mentalidad anglosajona. No se puede eludir el hecho de que existe una considerable diferencia entre la mentalidad del trabajador latina y la de su hermano en los Estados Unidos y en Inglaterra: el primero se ha empapado en las tradiciones y luchas revolucionarias por la libertad y otras causas, mientras que el último ha sido educado en las «bendiciones» del parlamentarismo. Por consiguiente, era esencial un tratamiento diferente, si se quería llegar de algún modo a la mentalidad anglosajona.
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