5. Emma Goldman

About this Lecture

Lecture

In this module, we introduce the figure of Emma Goldman (1869-1940), focusing in particular on: (i) her status as an anarchist-feminist, and her interest in the social status of women, the inequality of marriage and work, and the availability of birth control and contraception; (ii) her work as a writer and orator; (iii) her pacifism; (iv) her exile to Russia and her initial enthusiasm for, and later disillusionment with, the Bolshevik Revolution there; and (v) her continued support of anarchist causes, including the Spanish Anarchists in the late 1930s.

Course

In this course, Professor Ruth Kinna (Loughborough University) explores the idea of anarchism. In the first five modules, we introduce five key figures in anarchist thinking: Max Stirner (1806-65), Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (1809-65), Mikhail Bakunin (1814-1876), Peter Kropotkin (1842-1921), and Emma Goldman (1869-1940). After that, we spend five modules exploring four key principles in anarchism: rejection of the state, liberty, economic freedom and utopianism. In the eleventh, twelfth and thirteen modules, we think about six different types of anarchism – individualism, collectivism, communism, egoism, social anarchism and syndicalism – before turning in the final four modules to explore seven key concepts in anarchism: power, authority, government, the state, altruism, autonomy and direct action.

Lecturer

Ruth Kinna is Professor of Political Theory in the Department of Politics and International Studies at Loughborough University. She is a political theorist and historian of ideas with research interests in anarchism, nineteenth and early twentieth-century socialist thought, utopianism and contemporary radicalism. Her book William Morris: The Art of Socialism was published in 2000. She has since published The Beginner's Guide to Anarchism (Oneworld, 2005/2009), Kropotkin: Reviewing the Classical Anarchist Tradition (University of Edinburgh, 2016) and The Government of No One (Pelican, 2019).