I searched through YouTube and found a pair of videos that go together giving some history of Emma Goldman and the anarchist movement in the United States, from her arrival in America as a teenage Russian immigrant, to her time as a villified figure in the American media after President McKinley's assassin named her as one of his inspirations, then on to her support of the Bolsheviks in the early days of the Soviet revolution and finishing with the reversal of her position of support after seeing the dark side of Lenin's new Russia.
Part 1
Part 2
Although I find Goldman's critical analysis of the oppressive factors present in religion, property and the state to be valid, I have a problem with the anarchist doctrine as a whole. What is the real plan here? Yes, we need something better than a dictatorship of the majority or of the proletariat, we need to address the inequalities and injustice that are reinforced by modern conceptions of property, and we need to be wary of metaphysical doctrines used as methods of control, but what is the plan once direct action is taken and a revolution takes place? What happens after Anarchism successfully overthrows these institutions? We need some concrete form of social organization to deal with real problems beyond the ones Anarchism identifies: problems like drought, famine, disease, wars and invasions initiated by foreign powers. How does a lawless, leaderless society deal with problems like these? I'm not saying it's impossible, but I see no clear plan for addressing these problems once Anarchism succeeds its basic goal of overthrowing these oppressive institutions.
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