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Title: Writing on Fire Author: David Porter Date: 2007, Spring Language: en Topics: Emma Goldman, writing, analysis Source: Fifth Estate # 375, Spring 2007, accessed September 16, 2019 at https://www.fifthestate.org/archive/375-spring-2007/writing-on-fire/
Studying in Paris during the intense final year (1961 through 1962) of
the Algerian war for independence, I became hooked on Algeria and the
potentials of revolutionary politics. In 1965 through 1966, I pursued
on-site doctoral research on Algeria’s most radical political innovation
after independence–a large-scale realm of worked’ self-management in
farms, factories and shops throughout the country.
While compromised and sabotaged from the beginning, this form of deep
democracy and the grassroots enthusiasm and effort to make it happen
were for me major inspiring revelations. Gradually, I came to understand
that historical anarchism articulated the same principles, but more
consistently–with much deeper insight and without statist intervention.
Like millions of others in this period, over the next few years I
thrived in anarchistic dimensions of the antiwar movement,
counter-culture and campus revolts. I also read more about anarchism,
began to teach about it and, importantly, applied its principles to the
classrooms where I taught.
After my second academic firing, in 1975, for radical pedagogy and
leadership in campus upheavals, I ironically won a one-year fellowship
for college teachers, including time for my research on lessons of the
historical anarchist movement for contemporary education.
Gorging myself with anarchist reading, I also linked with anarchist
networks in NYC and shared in the excitement about the rapid growth of
the Spanish anarchist movement following Franco’s demise. Importantly, I
also discovered the largely untouched archive of Emma Goldman’s 1930s
correspondence at the New York Public Library.
Immersion in dozens of her personal letters, especially from the years
of the Spanish civil war and revolution, drew me compellingly closer to
this famous and inspiring anarchist. Her alternating exuberant and
pained writing also carried me deeply into the realities of Spain,
visited by Goldman three times during the late '30s. I saw through her
words how, despite a civil war far more intense than American struggles
in the '60s, the deep anarchist consciousness and creative efforts of
the massive Spanish movement began to transform society in anarchist
communitarian directions never before approached in the modern West.
Goldman’s writings from this context were a wealth of anarchist insight
into the political realities of anarchist revolutionary politics and
simultaneously a frank self-revealing record of a militant’s subjective
turmoil. Together, these dimensions had important implications well
beyond the Spanish experience.
In the midst of deadly conflict (the fascist military uprising and
Communist-led repression of anarchists within the anti-fascist
alliance), anarchists were forced to define a best path between
constructing new anti-hierarchical political and economic relations and
pragmatically collaborating with a coalition of hierarchical “allies”
against the Right. Goldman’s own writing thus revealed passionate
alternations of elation and despair, a combination common enough in past
and present radicals’ consciousness generally, but rarely exposed
publicly.
Goldman’s accounts provided rich detail about the nature of the Spanish
anarchist movement, its conflicts and compromises with allies, and its
effort to build a new society. While other anarchist accounts from that
period already existed, there were very few in English by the time of my
discovery in 1975. And most English-language accounts of the civil war
were emphatically biased against anarchists.
To make Goldman’s writings accessible and relevant for
anti-authoritarian activists was an opportunity I couldn’t resist. At
the same time, I saw the book as adding a third volume to Goldman’s
autobiography, a project she herself considered after her immersion in
Spain. Naively, I thought it might take me six months to complete. In
fact, it was eight years before the book was published.
I followed use of the NYPL archive with visits to six others in the
U.S., plus the International Institute of Social History (Amsterdam). I
also was soon introduced to Windsor-based Federico and Pura Arcos,
anarchist veterans of the Spanish revolution. Beyond their valued
constant encouragement, Federico offered me use of his own archives on
Spanish anarchism and sent a constant stream of invaluable letters over
the years assisting me with new details and corrections.
I selected the best Goldman material from each archive, wrote a book
introduction, subsequent chapter introductions and detailed footnotes.
My thematic chapter introductions highlighted the larger significance of
issues for anti-authoritarian activist politics generally, as well as
how Goldman addressed such issues before 1936 and in the ensuing
tumultuous context of the Spanish revolution. Sequentially, these
chapters focused on the Spanish anarchist movement; the new society;
collaboration with statist forces; Communist sabotage; the international
context; anarchists, violence and war; the role of women; overall
assessment of the revolution; and general reflections on anarchism and
the movement.
Given the compelling subject matter and the prominence of Emma Goldman,
I was certain I’d find a publisher without undue delay. Naive again.
Dozens of mainstream and academic publishers responded with the usual
“not our line of subject matter” or “no funding for it at present,” as
well as “too scholarly” or “not scholarly enough.”
Most frustrating were the initially interested publishers who sat on it
for months with no response, who said that Goldman lost out to Bukharin
in their anthology competition or who gave it to an outside reader who
disliked its activist orientation and thus nit-picked spelling or
alleged factual issues in the rough draft. All of this as if Goldman
herself was now simply an intellectual commodity to measure and dissect
for the market.
Worse yet was the response of the Montreal anarchist publisher who not
only failed to respond for months but finally rejected it in part
because of his distaste for Goldman’s “individualism” and his claim that
English-speaking anarchists were not yet mature enough to deal with the
issues she raised. I was astounded at this patronizing claim to know the
“maturity level” of the movement, and his wish to censor the writings of
Emma Goldman.
While reeling from that blow, I received an attempted knockout punch
from the Amsterdam IISH archive in early 1982. Typically all manuscript
archives, including the IISH, wanted advance publishing notice (and to
give official permission) for any directly quoted material from their
collections. Quotations from Goldman letters at the IISH made up about
1/3 of the book since they drew from extensive collections on the
Spanish revolution and correspondence of movement figures such as Rudolf
Rocker and Max Nettlau as well as Goldman herself. The IISH curator of
the anarchist and Spanish revolution archives was anarchist Rudolf de
Jong, son of well-known Dutch anarchist Albert de Jong and himself
author of a Dutch-language book on the Spanish civil war.
I’d met de Jong in Amsterdam earlier and also wrote several times at
some length about the project. He was quite cooperative and photocopied
and mailed to me about a thousand photocopied pages important for my
research. Responding to my submitted draft, however, de Jong refused to
grant permission to use the IISH letters. Mainly, it seemed, because the
IISH claimed the right to determine whether a book would have a properly
“scientific” (as opposed to an activist) approach to history as well as
a format meeting “responsible” standards. Another anarchist censor?! I
couldn’t believe the message, an arrogant assertion of proprietorial and
elitist “scientistic” control over the writings of one of the great
proponents of free speech and anarchism. Federico and others, including
anarchist historian Paul Avrich, were equally shocked. Sam Dolgoff said
that he’d “go to the barricades” in my defense.
Stunned and angry and determined to proceed with the least delay, I
removed some IISH material entirely and reduced other quotations to an
automatically-permitted six lines and additional paraphrasing. I also
decided to publish the work myself.
So began another stage of learning, but one encouraged by friends and
comrades. Importantly, I was now freed from others’ agendas and
institutional controls. At this critical moment, Federico also linked me
with Attilio Bortolotti, the anarchist whose deportation to Mussolini’s
Italy Goldman had helped fight against in her last year of life. As he
had done so generously for various anarchist publications throughout the
years, Bortolotti now offered funds to publish the book. After working
closely over many months with a Long Island IWW printing collective to
design the format and proof each page, I then sent galleys to Noam
Chomsky, Howard Zinn, Alix Kates Shulman, and Ursula K. Le Guin), all
who agreed to write brief endorsements.
After eight years, in 1983, the book finally appeared, titled Vision on
Fire: Emma Goldman on the Spanish Revolution, although my distribution
work only began. For me, the real vitality of the project was not the
final printed object, but the process itself. Despite disillusionments
and barriers, I experienced a strongly supportive community, local and
elsewhere, of individuals inspired by the power of the manuscript and
ready to assist in careful readings and numerous discussions about the
book. And the vitality of the process continued, I knew, with each new
reader’s engagement with the published work.
Vision on Fire sold about 3,000 copies in North America and abroad. Down
to my final two dozen copies by late 2005, I unexpectedly got a call
from AK Press expressing interest in putting out a new edition. Et
voilĂ ! With their quality editing and production, a new cover, a new
introduction and slight revisions, the book is now available to a new
generation of readers with, I think, all the same relevance as before.