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2003-03-05 - 5:32 a.m. The Echoes of Emma Goldman in Today�s Gilded Age Before I first started reading selections from Emma Goldman, I had no idea who or what she did. My family and friends also seemed to have the same problem as I did. It just seemed like some random named author pulled out of the obscurity of printed academia. Needless to say, I was in for quite a shock. As I started reading her work, all I wanted to do was to tell somebody. I remember thinking while I took breaks between reading passages that I really wanted to get a good picture of her and put it on a t-shirt. I just envisioned walking down the street, speaking in front of crowds, having people come up to me and ask, �Who is that on your shirt?� �Why It�s Emma Goldman.� I would reply. �A feisty woman whose spit-fire wit and ideas rocked the very foundations of this country so bad in the early twentieth century, they had to kick her out.� Of course after the listener heard this, I would imagine their eyes lighting up and curiosity heightening to the point that they would have to sop up any and all of Goldman�s writings forthwith. It just got that serious to me. But Emma Goldman is far more then a conversation piece on a t-shirt. She was a woman first and foremost, a woman with compassion for the plight of her fellow women, but really a true champion of all humankind. She was a lover. Emma fought passionately for her beliefs and stood strong in the face of tremendous adversity. She was an intellectual. The very ideas she wrote and spoke about were far ahead of her time, a time where the word �Feminism� was alien to mainstream society. Emma�s ideas were considered so extreme amongst the backdrop of the gilded age it got her jailed, hounded, and ultimately exiled. Considering the span of a near century that her ideas came into fruition, you would seem to think they would have a less radical edge to them in today�s society but that�s just not the case. We�ve reached a new gilded age of industry. Yesterday�s monopolies are today�s conglomerates. We see Henry Clay Fricke�s and Andrew Carnegie�s reincarnated all over again in the likenesses of Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, and a host of oil barons; all of which have made what Fricke and Carnegie did look like child�s play. Emma Goldman knew all too well the evils of these big businesses. She voiced her opinion on the matter in her essay �What I Believe� when she spoke upon the idea of property. She believed that property was just a means of controlling goods and services over people; she inferred property in which that exceeded demand was being denied to those very people. Emma stated: It is the private dominion over things that condemns millions of people to be mere nonentities, living corpses without originality or power of initiative, human machines of flesh and blood who pile up mountains of wealth for others and pay for it with a gray, dull and wretched existence for themselves. That statement alone can be profoundly seen in today�s industries. We put less stock and pride into the hard working individual and have taken the assembly line to a whole new level of sophistication. What used to be craft is now segmented jobs simplified with automation that are chocked full of repetitiveness. Work is now where countless men and women toil over drab tasks for meager wage that provides little other benefit other then simple survival and small luxury. The almighty dollar is a need rarely satisfied, and for what it�s worth, it�s the only print that we take more seriously then the Bible, the Koran, the Dao de Ching and the Talmud combined. Our dollar driven society is a direct insult of the beauty and capability of the human mind and Emma knew that. Her very disapproval of this society made Emma embrace the philosophy of Anarchism. Anarchism at first glance, seems to bring ideas of chaos and calamity into many psyches, especially back in her time and even more so I believe in the world of today. Before I read Emma I always thought Anarchy as just some dumb patch on the back of some punk kid�s jacket, so you are not alone if you received the same messages. Anarchism however, just like Emma Goldman, cannot be treated just as an accessory in your fashion repertoire. The concept of anarchism, where people exist with �no rulers� seemed to sound a bit funny compared to the myriad of social systems we had in place in Emma�s time, so it�s no wonder that the idea is completely mind baffling to the general public now. Emma�s reasoning behind her support of anarchism was that: �It differs from all other theories inasmuch as it points out that man�s development, his physical well-being, his latent qualities and innate disposition alone must determine the character and conditions of his work.� We and we alone must determine our future and not be represented by government, enforced by laws, and judged by our stakes in capitalism. It seems very hard in today�s society considering we are so dependant on things beyond our control, things that are not human beings, but are capital, the official measuring system of our human worth. We put more hard work and dedication in our entertainment centers then we do in other people. Presently, we bicker over oil, a natural resource used to power our freight vehicles that haul our big screen TV�s and high-end stereo components for our entertainment centers coast to coast. The average American citizen at the present moment will bitch incessantly about the rising gas prices, sitting high atop their SUV and pretty much leave it at that. What most don�t realize is the bigger overall picture of greed, manipulation, and monopoly that�s rampant in today�s oil crisis. OPEC, the organization of Oil Producing Exporting Countries, has always been since their creation, the origin of most gas price increases. Due to the fact that 7 of the top 14 oil producing companies are in OPEC, they have the power to sway the market whichever way they choose. We Americans consume the most crude oil in the entire world, so much in fact you�d think we�d be drinking it. Our government, under the guise of terrorism and outright crusading has made it our business to intervene with an oil producing country, Iraq, and bomb the hell out of them to promote world peace through force. An act of Militarism in which Emma questioned, �How can we harmonize the principle of unquestioning obedience with the principle of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness?� According to the Washington Post, Iraq is a country that that has exported 62% of their daily production of oil to us in the recent months. Iraq is a country that supposedly supports terror, but since they stopped imposing surcharges and the recent strikes in Venezuela, a major OPEC country, we�ve invested new interest in a country we�re about to invade. Emma would probably think of this as a highly manipulative scheming of large financial interests orchestrated through the puppet of government. It�s no wonder that we worry so much about all this black gold when our own president, George W. Bush was a former oil man himself and his own appointed vice president Dick Cheney was the CEO of the largest oil field services company, Halliburton. Emma would of told us to do our research. It�s without a doubt that Emma Goldman would have a field day in these times. There�s almost too much bullshit around these days that even she would probably be overwhelmed by the sheer volume of economic inequalities that have been tacked onto the struggles of her day that still prevail amongst our present populace. Her words are more sooth saying then that of Nostradamus and are just as eerie, but I wouldn�t think if she was around today that she would say, �I told you so.� If she would say anything, it would be to fight the good fight by raising consciousness of the evil empire and not waste time and bicker over how right she was. Emma Goldman believed in herself and more importantly, people. Her words will continue to reverberate throughout my soul and be spit back out to all that choose to listen about my fly new T-shirt. It is just that serious people.
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