Vision on Fire: Emma Goldman on the Spanish Revolution

by Emma Goldman, David Porter (Editor)

“Vision on Fire is a historical treasure.”—Howard Zinn

This carefully chosen collection features the most important writings from the turbulent last four years of Emma Goldman’s life. This incredible follow-up her popular autobiography, Living My Life, reveals her struggles with the contradictions of the Spanish Revolution and her efforts to maintain integrity and vision in the heat of political activism.

An influential and well-known anarchist, Emma Goldman was an early advocate of free speech, birth control, feminism, and workers’ rights.

David Porter received his PhD from Columbia University. He has taught for two decades at Empire State College.

Genres: Politics, History, Nonfiction, Spain, Spanish Civil War, Anarchism

347 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1983

About the author

Emma Goldman was a feminist anarchist known for her political activism, writing and speeches. She played a pivotal role in the development of anarchist political philosophy in North America and Europe in the first half of the twentieth century.

Born in Kovno in the Russian Empire (present-day Kaunas, Lithuania), Goldman emigrated to the US in 1885 and lived in New York City, where she joined the burgeoning anarchist movement.Attracted to anarchism after the Haymarket affair, Goldman became a writer and a renowned lecturer on anarchist philosophy, women's rights, and social issues, attracting crowds of thousands.

She and anarchist writer Alexander Berkman, her lover and lifelong friend, planned to assassinate Henry Clay Frick as an act of propaganda of the deed. Although Frick survived the attempt on his life, Berkman was sentenced to twenty-two years in prison. Goldman was imprisoned several times in the years that followed, for "inciting to riot" and illegally distributing information about birth control. In 1906, Goldman founded the anarchist journal Mother Earth.

In 1917, Goldman and Berkman were sentenced to two years in jail for conspiring to "induce persons not to register" for the newly instated draft. After their release from prison, they were arrested—along with hundreds of others—and deported to Russia.

Initially supportive of that country's Bolshevik revolution, Goldman quickly voiced her opposition to the Soviet use of violence and the repression of independent voices. In 1923, she wrote a book about her experiences, My Disillusionment in Russia. While living in England, Canada, and France, she wrote an autobiography called Living My Life. After the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, she traveled to Spain to support the anarchist revolution there. She died in Toronto on May 14, 1940, aged 70.

During her life, Goldman was lionized as a free-thinking "rebel woman" by admirers, and derided by critics as an advocate of politically motivated murder and violent revolution.Her writing and lectures spanned a wide variety of issues, including prisons, atheism, freedom of speech, militarism, capitalism, marriage, free love, and homosexuality. Although she distanced herself from first-wave feminism and its efforts toward women's suffrage, she developed new ways of incorporating gender politics into anarchism. After decades of obscurity, Goldman's iconic status was revived in the 1970s, when feminist and anarchist scholars rekindled popular interest in her life.

Reviews

[Doug Richman · Rating 4 out of 5]

When I first picked up this book (in the noted City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco) I hadn't read the by-line on the cover denoting David Porter's editing. Which is to say, I didn't know going in that this would be the text that finally made clear the writings of one who greatly influenced my formative years of political thought.

Vision On Fire consists of all of Emma Goldman's writings- speeches, publications, private letters, everything relating to her anarchism- from the last four years of her life, divided and explained in layman's terms by David Porter's analysis. It was a unique read: the woman who was quite possibly the founder of modern anarchism, both in the last years of her life and in the midst of the single largest anarchist society in modern times (the short-lived independent state of Catalonia, during the Spanish Civil War). The fiery writing style she'd become known for hadn't dimmed a shade by then; in essay after essay, she rails heatedly against fascism, against communism, against capitalism, against all that which, in her view, seeks to oppress. With Mr Porter's commentary bringing clarity to her early-century prose, the material, at least for me, shines through in a way it previously couldn't.

While it's not the easiest read, I can recommend it to anyone willing to commit the time it takes. I would particularly put this recommendation forth for political science students, anyone studying the Spanish Civil War, and/or anyone with even a passing interest in the ideological roots of modern anarchism. While, with it's commentary and annotations, it may be marketed to students or researchers, I found it to be a lovely insight into an activist, an ideology, and a war that all seem to go unrecognized and forgotten by today's scholars.

[Dave · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book. It is just a sum of goldman's writings and some analysis of the spanish revolution. Great insight over the debates that surronded this pivotal historical event. Easy to read, a very human rendering of revolution.

[Mirza Sultan-Galiev · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very interesting history, but Goldman's arid moral idealism is on full display throughout.
Whoever put this work together did an excellent job.

[Justin Stepney · Rating 3 out of 5]

Long. Not a bad thing. My first reading of her stuff. Inspiring. Good times.

[Micah · Rating 3 out of 5]

"When one is in a burning house one does not consider one's possessions, one tries to jump to safety even if it means death. The possessions of my comrades have been their sterling quality, their staunch adherence to fundamentals. But they are surrounded by consuming flames and they feel if they hold on to every part of their past they would lose everything."

Goldman was alienated from anarchist organizations because of the prevalence, then as now, of arrogant personalities, petty bickering and moral censure. Shattered by Berkman's death and feeling adrift, her energies revived when the Spanish Revolution broke out two months later. She visited the country three times during the war, became an official delegate of the CNT-FAI in London, and attended the Paris IWMA Congress where French anarchists berated the officials of the CNT. I could easily understand her dilemmas - disapproving of the collaborationist policy (especially after her Russian experience), she could also understand the reasons for it, and believe that the Revolution was making huge strides among the masses despite the fact that government continued to exist. She was therefore caught between her friends who would accept no criticism of the CNT leaders, and the other friends who considered her a traitor for even associating with the CNT.

Despite the fact that, as Goldman coldly points out at the IWMA conference, there really is no anarchist movement (she had almost no success getting support among the lethargic, indifferent English for the Spanish Revolution, in contrast to what occurred in 1917), the international comrades were very eager to denounce Spain as a huge mistake. She ends her life in a very depressed mood, feeling that anarchism might be several centuries premature. Nevertheless, anarchy must succeed "despite the anarchists."

[Alba · Rating 5 out of 5]

I thouroughly enjoyed this book. As a Spaniard that loves to read about the fascinating people of that movement in my country and as a fan of Emma's work, this was a fantastic and enjoyable read.