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A Blast from the past: the life and writings of Alexander Berkman

category international | history of anarchism | opinion / analysis author Thursday September 07, 2006 04:21author by Bookunin Report this post to the editors

the life and writings of Alexander Berkman

This short essay was written to mark the 70th anniversary of Alexander Berkman's death. It looks at the life and writings of one anarchism's most important thinkers and activists.
"If another world is possible, Berkman deserves our attention for a life spent struggling to make it real."
Alexander Berkman
Alexander Berkman


A Blast from the past:

The life and writings of Alexander Berkman

"Alexander Berkman is one of the lost heroes of American radicalism" - Howard Zinn

Alexander Berkman (1870-1936) was an anarchist, writer and many things besides: assassin (unsuccessful), prisoner, agitator, editor, teacher, refugee. He wrote of class struggle and revolutionary upheavals not as a bystander or theorist but as an active participant in the movement for social change. Berkman is best known as the lover and comrade of Emma Goldman, and her "Living my Life" was long the best study of his life. While there is still no full-length biography of Berkman, in 1992 "Life of an Anarchist: The Alexander Berkman Reader" appeared. In 2006 a second edition will be published.

Berkman combined writing and radicalism from an early age: he was punished at school in Imperial Russia for an essay 'There is no God' he wrote when he was twelve. After he emigrated to America in 1888 he joined the anarchist movement, then expanding in the wake of the Haymarket Tragedy and the judicial killing of four Chicago anarchists.

Berkman himself nearly suffered the same fate. Following the Civil War, the United States was convulsed by a series of violent strikes and labour wars as wage slavery was enforced and contested. On 23 July 1892 Berkman attempted to assassinate Henry Clay Frick, manager of the Carnegie steel works in Homestead, Pennsylvania, in response to the earlier killing of striking workers. Fully prepared to sacrifice his own life (in the Russian populist tradition) he instead served fourteen years in prison.

Imprisoned from the age of 21 to 35, he lost neither his integrity nor his revolutionary beliefs. Though burdened with depression which he never completely escaped, he emerged with a more mature feeling for humanity and an appreciation of the scale of the revolutionary task. His "Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist" is a classic both of prison literature and brutally honest autobiography.

On his release, having honed his skills on letters and clandestine prison texts, Berkman continued to both write and edit. But this was not a retreat from rebellion. Berkman found most relief from despair in throwing himself back into the anarchist movement. Throughout his years in America Berkman was one of the driving forces of the anarchist movement there. In his biographical sketch Paul Avrich credits him with 'organizing abilities, clear-headedness, and self-sacrifice'. (1)

These abilities he deployed as editor of Goldman's famous anarchist journal "Mother Earth", followed by his own revolutionary newspaper the "Blast "(1916-17). The "Blast" encouraged both the labour struggle against capitalism and solidarity in the face of mounting repression. To Berkman and the "Blast" belongs most of the credit for preventing the execution of Tom Mooney and Warren Billings, labour activists framed for the San Francisco Preparedness Day bombing of 22 July 1916.

Opposition to the First World War cost both Goldman and Berkman eighteen months of imprisonment and deportation to Russia during the post war repression of the 'Palmer raids' and 'red scare'. Enthused by the revolution in his homeland, Berkman was originally prepared to accept the Bolshevik claim to represent the popular urge for liberation. He was eventually pushed into disagreement by the reality of increasing repression - both of non-Bolshevik revolutionaries like the anarchists and of popular participation, as the soviets were turned from organs of popular control into enforcers of Bolshevik rule. The final break came with the Bolshevik onslaught against the revolutionary sailors of the Kronstadt naval base, who mutinied against the one party state in March 1921.

After leaving Russia, both Berkman and Goldman found themselves not only exiled but isolated from the bulk of progressives and left-wingers who could not distinguish the Communist Party from the revolution. From Berlin in 1922 Berkman issued three pamphlets attacking the Bolshevik seizure of power and diversion of the revolution into shoring up their own rule. "The Russian Revolution and the Communist Party" (translated by Berkman), "The Kronstadt Rebellion" and "The Russian Tragedy" have been collected under the last title. In 1925 "The Bolshevik Myth", based on the diary of his two years in Russia, was published.

From 1925 Berkman lived in France. He was menaced by destitution, the threat of deportation and prey to depression. Under these circumstances, and barred from political activism, he began work on a popular explanation of the aims and principles of anarchism. He took up the challenge to revitalise the anarchist movement with new propaganda and refine its ideas in the light of the failure of the Russian revolution to create a free society. "Now and After: the ABC of Communist Anarchism" was first published in 1929 and has had a lively publishing history of reprintings, retitlings and abridgements until its return in full as "What is Anarchism?" in 2003. Rather like the work of Errico Malatesta at the same time it represents a determination to push anarchist theory away from easy answers towards a practical but principled engagement with the world as it is. It also represents an affirmation of the anarchist ideal of freedom just as the cult of the state was reaching its strongest point.

"Now and After" was Berkman's last book and his political testament. Yet it was followed by a greater achievement. From 1928 Berkman aided and encouraged Emma Goldman to write "Living My Life". It's possibly not everyone who would relish editing the autobiography of an ex-lover, yet Berkman did so gladly, for Goldman was his closest comrade. Not that they held identical ideas and attitudes. He had none of her longing to return to America, nor so much faith in the intelligentsia in the struggle for freedom. Yet he had been alongside her for much of the story: from the early days in New York, via "Mother Earth", to deportation; from revolutionary Russia to exile in France. His friendship, experience and skills as an editor meant there was no-one better suited to the job. It was not an easy process, but as Richard Drinnon records in his "Rebel in Paradise" 'although the conflict was hard on them both at the time, the upshot was a meaningful collaboration.' (2)

After years of poverty, wracked with ill-health and unwilling to live on charity, Berkman committed suicide on 28 June 1936. He had previously written a just-in-case goodbye letter before an operation which sums up his attitude: 'I have lived my life and I am really of the opinion that when one has neither health nor means and cannot work for his ideas, it is time to clear out.' (3) Less than a month after his death, in response to a military coup, Spanish anarchists and workers unleashed a social revolution which remains one of the best examples of anarchism in action.

Berkman was a natural rebel and wanted nothing more than to be in the thick of the struggle. However, he often ended up in a position where the pen was the only weapon available. Out of his fourteen-year confinement came the "Prison memoirs of an anarchist". In the nineteen-twenties Berkman began a new battle of ideas against the supposed success of Bolshevism. Even before executions and repression became the rule inside the Party, the popular liberation movement of 1917 had been subordinated to the needs of the new ruling class by the very same methods. Berkman worked long and hard both to offer practical support to the anarchist and socialist victims of that repression, but also to destroy the myth that this subordination was revolutionary.

Berkman still awaits his biographer, but his writings abound with insights for those who want to change the world as well as those who want to understand it. They still have something to say on the nature of tyranny, opposition and revolution, and about the way in which principles and realities interact. If another world is possible, Berkman deserves our attention for a life spent struggling to make it real.


Notes
1 Paul Avrich, 'Alexander Berkman: A Biographical Sketch' in Anarchist Portraits p201
2 Richard Drinnon Rebel in Paradise p268
3 Richard Drinnon Rebel in Paradise p299

The Blast AK Press, 2005. ISBN 1904859089, £15.
Life of an Anarchist The Alexander Berkman Reader. Edited by Gene Fellner, new foreword by Howard Zinn.
Seven Stories Press, 2005. ISBN 1583226621, £10.99.
Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist The New York Review of Books, 2001. ISBN: 094032234X, £8.99.
What is Anarchism? AK Press, 2003. ISBN 1902593707, £10.

see also
Anarchy! An anthology of Emma Goldman's Mother Earth. Counterpoint, 2001. ISBN 1582430403
The Bolshevik myth. Pluto Press, 1989. ISBN 1853050326
Letters from Russian prisons. Boni, 1925.
Nowhere at home : letters from exile of Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman. Schocken Books, 1975. ISBN 080523537X
The Russian Tragedy. Phoenix Press, 1986. ISBN 0948984007

author by mitchpublication date Tue Jan 23, 2007 13:21author email wsany at hotmail dot comauthor address author phone Report this post to the editors

Excerpted from:
ALEXANDER BERKMAN
Rebel and Anarchist

Born November 18, 1870 Died June 28th 1936
Pub. by Alexander Berkman Memorial Committee and Jewish Anarchist Federation,
N.Y., July 1936. Price 5c.


BERKMAN --- Revolutionist By ABE BLUESTEIN

This letter, received in this country just three days before his death,
furnishes the most startling and most convincing evidence of our comrade's devotion
to the Cause. Written in a personal letter, not intended for publication, we
find a keen and active interest in the labor movement and its revolutionary
development.
________________________________________
A QUOTATION FROM SASHA'S LAST LETTER
Nice, June 18, 1936.
"I hardly need to tell you of what is going on in this country. I am sure
you are informed. Yet I cannot help saying that the present labor situation
here fills one with joy. For years and years we had propagated the strike on
the job, and now for the FIRST time in labor history that idea is being applied
in the proper manner and spirit. I say for the first time, because similar
action in Italy in the days of Malatesta was, in my opinion, of a different
character than the strikes on the job now going in France. These strikes come
directly from the masses and have been organized by the workers themselves. They
have assumed a nationwide character (which was not the case in Italy) and they
are being continued IN SPITE of the labor leaders. In fact, even the Communists
are frightened by the extent and determination of those strikes, and both the
labor and Socialist-Communist politicians fear that they are losing control
of the present situation in the labor ranks. The solidarity and self discipline
of the strikers are beautiful to behold. Leon Blum has already threatened to
stop the spread of these strikes, and the other day the police (for the first
time since Blum became the government) filled the streets of Paris with secret
orders to prevent another demonstration --- like the one that took place last
week, with red flags, the singing of the International, etc. But so far there
has been no interference by the strong hand of the 'law', and the strikes go
right on and are multiplying.
"I do not believe this movement is the prelude to the 'barricades', as
some of the conservative and reactionary papers assert. But they are splendid,
anyhow, a thoroughly revolutionary and anti-respect-for-private-property
movement, even if only for temporary economic improvement of the workers' position.
At the same time they are a GREAT MORAL LESSON and an EXAMPLE for other
countries. And that is perhaps the most valuable feature of this movement."
--SASHA (Alexander Berkman)
________________________________________
This interest, this devotion to the working class, is the dominating
leitmotif of Berkman's life. If we keep this ever in mind, if we remember that
Berkman was first a revolutionist and always a revolutionist, then we cannot
marvel at the steadfast courage which he displayed. It was the result of his
adoption of the cause of the social revolution, whose first precept is steadfast
courage and honesty.
He came to the United States at the tender age of 17 and immediately
joined the revolutionary movement here. Hardly more than an adolescent, he
entered into the work with all the energy and enthusiasm of which he displayed such
an abundance in later life. From the very beginning, he immersed himself in
the cause of the revolution; to the very end he continued to submerge his
personal life in the larger currents of the labor and revolutionary movement.
Prepared to give his life for the steel strikers, at that time engaged
in heroic struggle against Andrew Carnegie and his lieutenant, Frick, Berkman
actually paid with 14 years of his life for his attempt to help the steel
strikers. Those 14 years in one of the worst prisons in this country, plus the
discriminatory persecution that he suffered for his defiant attitude, might have
broken ordinary men. But revolutionists rise above all trials and all
misfortunes. Berkman came out of jail a more mature and not less ardent fighter than he
entered. Taking out sufficient time to recuperate from the terrible life he
had suffered in Western Penitentiary, during which time he wrote his classic
"Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist," Berkman soon jumped into the struggle as
though he had never been inside of a prison in his life.
His activities were varied, as the very cross currents of the pre-war
American scene. Agitating up and down the land, he got to know the true life of
America as few "real" Americans ever know it. He knew it from the inside,
rather than through the garbled pictures painted by the newspapers and publicists
of American capitalism. He knew the poverty, the tyranny, and the exploitation
that filled the land. He knew the machine guns that greeted strikers and
"convinced" them not to strike. He knew the slaughtered and their closest kin left
behind. He knew the false hypocrisy that lurks behind our much vaunted
liberties of speech, press, assembly, etc. He knew from personal experience and
direct contact the mockery of capitalist justice -- he knew all the victims of
that justice. Probably more than any other single individual in the entire
history of this country, he devoted his life and his energies to the defense of the
working class victims of our sordidly vicious courts and prisons.
But that was only one phase of Berkman's life and activities. He
participated directly in labor struggles, worked for the building of unions,
supported strikes. When unemployment became widespread, and loomed as one of the most
important phenomena on the national scene, Berkman threw himself into the work
of organizing the unemployed. His courage was such, his confidence in the
class struggle was such, that he could not be deterred merely by the fact that
other parties and movements did not know what to do with the unemployed. He knew
that the unemployed had to help themselves, or threaten to help themselves.
He knew that, divided and alone, there was no hope for the unemployed. He knew
that begging for charity, or meek dependence upon the government for a meager
handout, would never get the unemployed anywhere. So he proceeded to organize
a series of spectacular unemployed demonstrations. They were of such character
that the plight of the unemployed was dramatised for the entire nation.
When Hearst started to work up a campaign for a war with Mexico, Berkman was
one of the first to hurl himself into the struggle against him. The anti-war
campaign which they conducted at that time, plus the anti-war league which they
organized, was destined to live to fight another war, a war against the
greatest and most destructive war mankind has ever witnessed. Nor did it matter that an
entire nation was overcome with an insane hysteria. Berkman saw his duty as a
revolutionist and fought with all the resources at his command against the
overwhelming odds of a powerful government, a well organized press, and every
agency for propaganda a wealthy capitalist society could muster. His own fate did
not count in the balance, nor did that of his closest comrade, Emma Goldman.
Both were prepared to give their own lives in the greater struggle to save their
fellow man from a hideous and unnecessary slaughter.
And when they were deported they did not regard it as a personal
misfortune. They welcomed the opportunity to go to Russia and join in the great work
of reconstructing a new society on the ruins of the old. They rejoiced that
at last their great objective had been achieved, at least in one country. With
open hearts and open minds, they greeted the victory of the Revolution and the
Bolsheviki, the most dominant party of the time. Gladly they went there to
work with them.
But their trials as revolutionists and as Anarchists were not to end so
smoothly. A period of observation to place. Little by little they began to
notice things that made them uneasy. But it took them two years (a long time in
such a period of storm and stress, with major developments occurring over
night and history proceeding by leaps and bounds) to become convinced that the
Bolsheviks had perpetrated a ghastly crime upon the Revolution and was making
shambles of all its aspirations. It took so clear-cut and harsh a blow as the
Kronstadt massacre to finally convince them that they could no longer identify
themselves with the Bolsheviks.
This was probably the most trying period of Berkman's life. To have
striven all his life for the Social Revolution, to have taken that broad
non-partisan attitude of welcoming the Revolution no matter what party "lead" it, to
have gone there prepared to work for the new society and live in a truly free
society, to be welcomed for the intrepid revolutionist that he was by the
leaders of the Russian Revolution, to be offered an honored place in the new
revolutionary system--and to have to turn one's back upon all this. To be forced to
leave this sanctuary for revolutionists and wander back to the tender mercies
of capitalist governments, -- what more trying moment could there be in the
life of a revolutionist.
Many failed at this crisis, forgot some of their principles and
overlooked their scruples. But they were just men, men of opportunistic clay.
Revolutionists have their principles and cannot consider such a choice as private
fortunes versus revolutionary principles. They must remain true to their colors.
They cannot do otherwise. So Alexander Berkman and Emma Goldman left Russia
and took up a life of exile in hostile countries. Deprived of the right to have
a home, they have existed during these long and trying post-war decades
without being able to strike root in their new surroundings and joining in the
struggles of the proletariat against their new conditions of slavery. This enforced
inactivity, arbitrary compulsion to remain silent when they would have liked
to speak out, probably hurt far more than any personal privations they had to
undergo. For we must remember and burn it into our memories with letters of
unquenchable fire, that our comrade was before all things a revolutionist.
This steady vision, this unfailing devotion to the Cause of the Social
Revolution, does not hold us in awe. His ability to become so enthusiastic
over the recent strikes of the French workers, under the conditions of his life
in those last months of tragic illness, divorced as he was from direct contact
with the workers despite the fact that he resided in France, furnishes us with
the final proof of his great courage and intense and eager interest in the
revolutionary movement.
His enforced isolation did not separate him from the working class. He
followed the fortunes and struggles of the workers of the world closely and
shared intensely their every experience. If governments can prevent his taking
an active role in the life and battles of the working class, they could not
prevent him from associating himself with the workers in all his thoughts and
hopes. Nor was he, as the bourgeois press intimated, forgotten by his comrades
all over the world. He has earned an immortal niche for himself in the hearts of
his fellow workers, a niche of love, of respect, of intimate comradeship with
thousands of men and women all over the world. Even those who have never had
the good fortune to meet him personally, know him and love him through his
books and his life. His life is one of the finest chapters in the Lives of
Proletarian Revolutionists that has ever been written. And we are grateful to the
author.
The fact that he did not live to see a truly a Libertarian Revolution
carry the workers to their emancipation does not make his life a failure.
Revolutions are too big to be made by single men and in a single generation .
Revolutions come into life long after the seed has been planted by countless
numbers of heroic men and women. Therefore no one considers the efforts, the
sacrifices and the lives of these generations of Russian Revolutionists, who gave
their all for the overthrow of czarism, a failure because czarism did not fall in
their day. Certainly no one can not deny that their work contributed to the
downfall of czarsim.
The history of revolution is the same all over the world. Countless
lives must be consecrated to the Cause before the Stream of the Revolution can be
transformed into a raging and all powerful torrent, sweeping everything
before it and carrying the working class to victory. Berkman's contribution to that
stream was a great one. His name and his work will live long after him. Long
after all of us have left this world behind, the name of Berkman and the work
of Berkman will live in the minds and hearts of the working class.
Just as the earlier revolutionists served as the inspiration and source
of strength for Berkman in his youth, so today we draw our strength, our
courage, and our faith in our ideal from the life of our dear comrade, Alexander
Berkman. And we say of him as we said of those earlier rebels: " Whatever the
misery and torture of their daily existence, the politicals -- even in Siberia
-- drew courage and strength from the inspiration of a common cause . . . I
shall not disgrace the Cause!"

This pamphlet is part of the International Institute for Social History's
Alexander Berkman archive and appears in Anarchy Archives with ISSH's
permission.

 
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