WHAT I BELIEVE

Written in 1906 for the New York World, this essay is Emma Goldman in her own voice not the caricature conjured by a hostile press, but the thinker herself, setting out with clarity and conviction exactly what she stands for. Goldman takes on each pillar of her ANARCHIST PHILOSOPHY in turn. The coercion she sees built into property and the state; the moral bankruptcy of militarism; the case for free speech as an absolute; and her RADICAL RETHINKING of marriage, religion, and political violence. Above all, she makes the argument that anarchism is a philosophy of peace not the bomb throwing nihilism of popular myth, but a vision of human beings freed from oppressive institutions and capable of genuine solidarity.