Publisher's Synopsis
Ive heard from many people who are interested in reading books about anarchism (allthough i think the term anarchism is incorrect) that most books about anarchy are heavy and difficult to get through much less understand because they aim their content to readers that have a good backround of political understanding (its terminologies, its schools of thought, its currents and so forth..).
If this happens to be your problem then this book will be ideal if you want to discover what this political philosophy stands for and what its issues are and, indeed, have been for a long time.
Emma Goldman, a woman with as fiery a personality as they come, has put together here a number of essays about anarchy that are easy to comprehend and definately thought inspiring. Despite this book having been first published in 1917 it loses nothing of its importance in the current state affairs as all of the issues Goldman deals with not only remain unsolved but they have -in the meantime- become a social burden or a social disaster much worse than back in her time. Oh, and back in her time things a
lready looked bad enough. What you get here is, summarily, the following: -anarchy, what is it and what does it stand for? Beyond the mainstream media cliches anarchy stands for personal and societal freedom of the highest conceivable order. A freedom, anarchists insist, that is not a utopia. Its basically a hard lesson in crushing your illusions and opening unthought of doors of perception of what freedom really means. That would be then something other than being in a cage and having food thrown in. Even if the cage is invisible..
-Hard punching essays about the prison system and the everself-destructing notion of patriotism.. Funny how every line one reads in there couldve been written yesterday. Not much has changed. After decades and decades of the imprisonment system has society become more law-abiding? That would be a thundering no. Why is that? As for patriotism, the incredible notion of dying for your country the same one that might be killing you slowly while draining you of all your resources and enslaving you in a wage system and a daily mindless-toil called work . here, Emma has to say a lot. Theres always a reason to die if someone is going to make money out of it (that would be NOT you) and dress the whole cause up as patriotic..
-The hypocrisy of puritanism as well as the seemingly eternal joke of marriage and love are also given the treatment they deserve. In a society based on hypocrisy alltogether, you have to start on a personal level. You have to lose your personal chains before you attempt to free others. Your personal chains begin with the things youve been taught to hold most sacred (as is generally the case). The morals that are not yours. Whom do they really serve? The institutions that everyone notices they have fail and yet most continue to serve them. Why? How can this possibly be?
These are just some of the issues dealt with in Emmas essays. A classic book that will basically reprogram your brain if you honestly think about the issues in it. But reprogrammed into what? Well, it will only reprogram you into thinking for yourself. For once. If you do, youll find that the illusion youve been living in does indeed serve someone. Your long hard road to becoming an individual will thus commence.
