1906

The Sex Question

Emma Goldman, “To the Readers of Mother Earth” (1906)

June 27, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur
TO THE READERS OF MOTHER EARTH. Those of you who have been startled by the rumor of Comrade Alexander Berkman’s disappearance and his supposed kidnapping I want to inform that there was little truth in the story. People never realize that there are worse things in human life than merely external forces. But what made it impossible for our friend to continue his tour lies in the terrible contrast of solitary confinement, enforced silence and monotony and the rush and hurry of our daily lives. Few have stood the years of hell as bravely as Comrade Berkman, but the lack […]
Anarchist Beginnings

Max Baginski, “Without Government” (1906)

June 27, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur
WITHOUT GOVERNMENT By Max Baginski THE gist of the anarchistic idea is this, that there are qualities present in man, which permit the possibilities of social life, organization, and co-operative work without the application of force. Such qualities are solidarity, common action, and love of justice. To-day they are either crippled or made ineffective through the influence of compulsion; they can hardly be fully unfolded in a society in which groups, classes, and individuals are placed in hostile, irreconcilable opposition to one another. In human nature to-day such traits are fostered and developed which separate instead of combining, call forth […]
The Sex Question

Emma Goldman and Max Baginski, “Mother Earth” (1906)

June 8, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur
MOTHER EARTH THERE was a time when men imagined the Earth as the center of the universe. The stars, large and small, they believed were created merely for their delectation. It was their vain conception that a supreme being, weary of solitude, had manufactured a giant toy and put them into possession of it. When, however, the human mind was illumined by the torch-light of science, it came to understand that the Earth was but one of a myriad of stars floating in infinite space, a mere speck of dust. Man issued from the womb of Mother Earth, but he […]
biography

Lois Waisbrooker: Eighty Years Young

June 10, 2016
LOIS WAISBROOKER. ANTIOCH, CAL. Eighty Years Young and a Human Dynamo. In reply to your request I would say that I was born in the lower strata of life. My father worked by the day or by the job to support his family. My mother was a quiet retiring woman who died at the age of thirty-six. I have no noted ancestry. I have worked in people’s kitchens year in and year out when I never knew what it was to be rested. Finally I added enough to the little schooling I received in childhood to enable me to meet […]
The Sex Question

Nelly Roussel, “What is ‘Feminism’?” (1906)

January 1, 2015 anarchisms_w4l2ii
WHAT IS “FEMINISM”? No French word is more often badly understood and falsely interpreted than the one that designates the ensemble of our demands. And I do not fear to affirm that some men, and men women, are “feminists” without knowing it, all while rejecting the title. Some—despite the evidence—persist in seeing in “feminism” only a masculinization of woman, a servile and grotesque copy of the male by his envious companion. Others believe they have discovered there a disturbing tendency to invert the roles, to replace masculine domination with an equally unjust, equally abusive feminine domination, and to reduce the […]