Anarchism has been variously defined by sources. Most often, the term describes the political philosophy which considers the state undesirable, unnecessary, and harmful, and instead promotes a stateless society, or anarchy, while others have defined it as opposing authority in the conduct of human relations. Anarchists widely disagree on what additional criteria are essential to anarchism. According to ''The Oxford Companion to Philosophy'', "there is no single defining position that all anarchists hold, and those considered anarchists at best share a certain family resemblance."

Overview

There are many types and traditions of anarchism, not all of which are mutually exclusive. Anarchist schools of thought can differ fundamentally, supporting anything from extreme individualism to complete collectivism. Strains of anarchism have been divided into the categories of social and individualist anarchism or similar dual classifications. Anarchism is often considered to be a radical left-wing ideology, and much of anarchist economics and anarchist legal philosophy reflect anti-statist interpretations of communism, collectivism, syndicalism or participatory economics. However, anarchism has always included an individualist strain supporting a market economy and private property, or morally unrestrained egoism. Some individualist anarchists are also socialists or communists while some anarcho-communists are also individualists or egoists while some anarcho-communists are also individualists.

Anarchism as a social movement has regularly endured fluctuations in popularity. The central tendency of anarchism as a mass social movement has been represented by anarcho-communism and anarcho-syndicalism, with individualist anarchism being primarily a literary phenomenon which nevertheless did have an impact on the bigger currents and individualists also participated in large anarchist organizations. Most anarchists oppose all forms of aggression, supporting self-defense or non-violence (anarcho-pacifism), while others have supported the use of some coercive measures, including violent revolution and propaganda of the deed, on the path to an anarchist society.

Etymology and terminology

The term ''anarchism'' derives from the Greek ἄναρχος, ''anarchos'', meaning "without rulers", from the prefix ἀν- (''an-'', "without") + ἀρχή (''archê'', "sovereignty, realm, magistracy") + -ισμός (''-ismos'', from the suffix -ιζειν, ''-izein'' "-izing"). There is some ambiguity with the use of the terms "libertarianism" and "libertarian" in writings about anarchism. Since the 1890s from France, the term "libertarianism" has often been used as a synonym for anarchism and was used almost exclusively in this sense until the 1950s in the United States; its use as a synonym is still common outside the United States. Accordingly, "libertarian socialism" is sometimes used as a synonym for socialist anarchism, to distinguish it from "individualist libertarianism" (individualist anarchism). On the other hand, some use "libertarianism" to refer to individualistic free-market philosophy only, referring to free-market anarchism as "libertarian anarchism".

History

Origins

The earliest anarchist themes can be found in the 6th century BC, among the works of Taoist philosopher Laozi, and in later centuries by Zhuangzi and Bao Jingyan. Zhuangzi, specifically, was called by economist Ludwig von Mises as "the first anarchist in the history of human thought". According to Austrian School economists Murray Rothbard and Mises, Zhuangzi was the first to develop the idea of spontaneous order, independently discovered by Proudhon in the nineteenth century. Zhuangzi wrote, ''"A petty thief is put in jail. A great brigand becomes a ruler of a Nation,"'' while Bao Jingyan said that as soon as "the relationship between lord and subject is established, hearts become daily filled with evil designs, until the manacled criminals sullenly doing forced labour in the mud and the dust are full of mutinous thoughts." Diogenes of Sinope and the Cynics, their contemporary Zeno of Citium, the founder of Stoicism, also introduced similar topics.

The term "anarchist" first entered the English language in 1642, during the English Civil War, as a term of abuse, used by Royalists against their Roundhead opponents. By the time of the French Revolution some, such as the ''Enragés'', began to use the term positively, in opposition to Jacobin centralisation of power, seeing "revolutionary government" as oxymoronic. By the turn of the 19th century, the English word "anarchism" had lost its initial negative connotation.

Modern anarchism sprang from the secular or religious thought of the Enlightenment, particularly Jean-Jacques Rousseau's arguments for the moral centrality of freedom. From this climate William Godwin developed what many consider the first expression of modern anarchist thought. Godwin was, according to Peter Kropotkin, "the first to formulate the political and economical conceptions of anarchism, even though he did not give that name to the ideas developed in his work", while Godwin attached his anarchist ideas to an early Edmund Burke. Benjamin Tucker instead credits Josiah Warren, an American who promoted stateless and voluntary communities where all goods and services were private, with being "the first man to expound and formulate the doctrine now known as Anarchism." The first to describe himself as an anarchist was Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, a French philosopher and politician, which led some to call him the founder of modern anarchist theory.

The anarcho-communist Joseph Déjacque was the first person to describe himself as "libertarian". Unlike Proudhon, he argued that, "it is not the product of his or her labor that the worker has a right to, but to the satisfaction of his or her needs, whatever may be their nature."

The First International

In Europe, harsh reaction followed the revolutions of 1848, during which ten countries had experienced brief or long-term social upheaval as groups carried out nationalist uprisings. After most of these attempts at systematic change ended in failure, conservative elements took advantage of the divided groups of socialists, anarchists, liberals, and nationalists, to prevent further revolt. In 1864 the International Workingmen's Association (sometimes called the "First International") united diverse revolutionary currents including French followers of Proudhon, Blanquists, Philadelphes, English trade unionists, socialists and social democrats.

Due to its links to active workers' movements, the International became a significant organization. Karl Marx became a leading figure in the International and a member of its General Council. Proudhon's followers, the mutualists, opposed Marx's state socialism, advocating political abstentionism and small property holdings.

In 1868, following their unsuccessful participation in the League of Peace and Freedom (LPF), Russian revolutionary Mikhail Bakunin and his collectivist anarchist associates joined the First International (which had decided not to get involved with the LPF). They allied themselves with the federalist socialist sections of the International, who advocated the revolutionary overthrow of the state and the collectivization of property.

At first, the collectivists worked with the Marxists to push the First International in a more revolutionary socialist direction. Subsequently, the International became polarised into two camps, with Marx and Bakunin as their respective figureheads. Bakunin characterised Marx's ideas as centralist and predicted that, if a Marxist party came to power, its leaders would simply take the place of the ruling class they had fought against.

In 1872, the conflict climaxed with a final split between the two groups at the Hague Congress, where Bakunin and James Guillaume were expelled from the International and its headquarters were transferred to New York. In response, the federalist sections formed their own International at the St. Imier Congress, adopting a revolutionary anarchist program.

Organised labour

The anti-authoritarian sections of the First International were the precursors of the anarcho-syndicalists, seeking to "replace the privilege and authority of the State" with the "free and spontaneous organization of labor." In 1886, the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions (FOTLU) of the United States and Canada unanimously set 1 May 1886, as the date by which the eight-hour work day would become standard.

In response, unions across the United States prepared a general strike in support of the event. On 3 May, in Chicago, a fight broke out when strikebreakers attempted to cross the picket line, and two workers died when police opened fire upon the crowd. The next day, 4 May, anarchists staged a rally at Chicago's Haymarket Square. A bomb was thrown by an unknown party near the conclusion of the rally, killing an officer. In the ensuing panic, police opened fire on the crowd and each other. Seven police officers and at least four workers were killed. Eight anarchists directly and indirectly related to the organisers of the rally were arrested and charged with the murder of the deceased officer. The men became international political celebrities among the labour movement. Four of the men were executed and a fifth committed suicide prior to his own execution. The incident became known as the Haymarket affair, and was a setback for the labour movement and the struggle for the eight hour day. In 1890 a second attempt, this time international in scope, to organise for the eight hour day was made.The event also had the secondary purpose of memorializing workers killed as a result of the Haymarket affair. Although it had initially been conceived as a once-off event, by the following year the celebration of International Workers' Day on May Day had become firmly established as an international worker's holiday. In 1907, the International Anarchist Congress of Amsterdam gathered delegates from 14 different countries, among which important figures of the anarchist movement, including Errico Malatesta, Pierre Monatte, Luigi Fabbri, Benoît Broutchoux, Emma Goldman, Rudolf Rocker, and Christiaan Cornelissen. Various themes were treated during the Congress, in particular concerning the organisation of the anarchist movement, popular education issues, the general strike or antimilitarism. A central debate concerned the relation between anarchism and syndicalism (or trade unionism). Malatesta and Monatte were in particular disagreement themselves on this issue, as the latter thought that syndicalism was revolutionary and would create the conditions of a social revolution, while Malatesta did not consider syndicalism by itself sufficient. He thought that the trade-union movement was reformist and even conservative, citing as essentially bourgeois and anti-worker the phenomenon of professional union officials. Malatesta warned that the syndicalists aims were in perpetuating syndicalism itself, whereas anarchists must always have anarchy as their end and consequently refrain from committing to any particular method of achieving it.

The Spanish Workers Federation in 1881 was the first major anarcho-syndicalist movement; anarchist trade union federations were of special importance in Spain. The most successful was the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (National Confederation of Labour: CNT), founded in 1910. Before the 1940s, the CNT was the major force in Spanish working class politics, attracting 1.58 million members at one point and playing a major role in the Spanish Civil War. The CNT was affiliated with the International Workers Association, a federation of anarcho-syndicalist trade unions founded in 1922, with delegates representing two million workers from 15 countries in Europe and Latin America. In Latin America in particular "The anarchists quickly became active in organizing craft and industrial workers throughout South and Central America, and until the early 1920s most of the trade unions in Mexico, Brazil, Peru, Chile, and Argentina were anarcho-syndicalist in general outlook; the prestige of the Spanish C.N.T. as a revolutionary organization was undoubtedly to a great extent responsible for this situation. The largest and most militant of these organizations was the Federación Obrera Regional Argentina...it grew quickly to a membership of nearly a quarter of a million, which dwarfed the rival socialdemocratic unions."

Propaganda of the deed and illegalism

Some anarchists, such as Johann Most, advocated publicizing violent acts of retaliation against counter-revolutionaries because "we preach not only action in and for itself, but also action as propaganda." By the 1880s, the slogan "propaganda of the deed" had begun to be used both within and outside of the anarchist movement to refer to individual bombings, regicides and tyrannicides. From 1905 onwards, the Russian counterparts of these anti-syndicalist anarchist-communists become partisans of economic terrorism and illegal ‘expropriations’." Illegalism as a practice emerged and within it "The acts of the anarchist bombers and assassins ("propaganda by the deed") and the anarchist burglars ("individual reappropriation") expressed their desperation and their personal, violent rejection of an intolerable society. Moreover, they were clearly meant to be exemplary , invitations to revolt.". France's Bonnot Gang was the most famous group to embrace illegalism.

However, as soon as 1887, important figures in the anarchist movement distanced themselves from such individual acts. Peter Kropotkin thus wrote that year in ''Le Révolté'' that "a structure based on centuries of history cannot be destroyed with a few kilos of dynamite". A variety of anarchists advocated the abandonment of these sorts of tactics in favor of collective revolutionary action, for example through the trade union movement. The anarcho-syndicalist, Fernand Pelloutier, argued in 1895 for renewed anarchist involvement in the labor movement on the basis that anarchism could do very well without "the individual dynamiter."

State repression (including the infamous 1894 French ''lois scélérates'') of the anarchist and labor movements following the few successful bombings and assassinations may have contributed to the abandonment of these kinds of tactics, although reciprocally state repression, in the first place, may have played a role in these isolated acts. The dismemberment of the French socialist movement, into many groups and, following the suppression of the 1871 Paris Commune, the execution and exile of many ''communards'' to penal colonies, favored individualist political expression and acts.

Numerous heads of state were assassinated between 1881 and 1914 by members of the anarchist movement. For example, U.S. President McKinley's assassin Leon Czolgosz claimed to have been influenced by anarchist and feminist Emma Goldman. Bombings were associated in the media with anarchists because international terrorism arose during this time period with the widespread distribution of dynamite. This image remains to this day.

Propaganda of the deed was abandoned by the vast majority of the anarchist movement after World War I (1914–1918) and the 1917 October Revolution.

Russian Revolution and other uprisings of the 1910s

Anarchists participated alongside the Bolsheviks in both February and October revolutions, and were initially enthusiastic about the Bolshevik revolution. However, the Bolsheviks soon turned against the anarchists and other left-wing opposition, a conflict that culminated in the 1921 Kronstadt rebellion which the new government repressed. Anarchists in central Russia were either imprisoned, driven underground or joined the victorious Bolsheviks; the anarchists from Petrograd and Moscow fled to the Ukraine. There, in the Free Territory, they fought in the civil war against the Whites (a grouping of monarchists and other opponents of the October Revolution) and then the Bolsheviks as part of the Revolutionary Insurrectionary Army of Ukraine led by Nestor Makhno, who established an anarchist society in the region for a number of months.

Expelled American anarchists Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman were amongst those agitating in response to Bolshevik policy and the suppression of the Kronstadt uprising, before they left Russia. Both wrote accounts of their experiences in Russia, criticizing the amount of control the Bolsheviks exercised. For them, Bakunin's predictions about the consequences of Marxist rule that the rulers of the new "socialist" Marxist state would become a new elite had proved all too true.

The victory of the Bolsheviks in the October Revolution and the resulting Russian Civil War did serious damage to anarchist movements internationally. Many workers and activists saw Bolshevik success as setting an example; Communist parties grew at the expense of anarchism and other socialist movements. In France and the United States, for example, members of the major syndicalist movements of the CGT and IWW left the organizations and joined the Communist International.

The revolutionary wave of 1917–23 saw the active participation of anarchists in varying degrees of protagonism. In the German uprising known as the Bavarian Soviet Republic the anarchists Gustav Landauer, Silvio Gesell and Erich Mühsam had important leadership positions within the revolutionary councilist structures. In the Italian events known as the ''biennio rosso'' the anarcho-syndicalist trade union Unione Sindacale Italiana "grew to 800,000 members and the influence of the Italian Anarchist Union (20,000 members plus ''Umanita Nova'', its daily paper) grew accordingly...Anarchists were the first to suggest occupying workplaces. In the Mexican Revolution the Mexican Liberal Party was established and during the early 1910s it lead a series of military offensives leading to the conquest and occupation of certain towns and districts in Baja California with the leadership of anarcho-communist Ricardo Flores Magón.

In Paris, the Dielo Truda group of Russian anarchist exiles, which included Nestor Makhno, concluded that anarchists needed to develop new forms of organisation in response to the structures of Bolshevism. Their 1926 manifesto, called the ''Organizational Platform of the General Union of Anarchists (Draft)'', was supported. Platformist groups active today include the Workers Solidarity Movement in Ireland and the North Eastern Federation of Anarchist Communists of North America. Synthesis anarchism emerged as an organizational alternative to platformism which tries to join anarchists of different tendencies under the principles of anarchism without adjectives. In the 1920s this form found as its main proponents Volin and Sebastien Faure. It is the main principle behind the anarchist federations grouped around the contemporary global International of Anarchist Federations.

Fight against fascism, the Spanish revolution and World War II

In the 1920s and 1930s, the rise of fascism in Europe transformed anarchism's conflict with the state. Italy saw the first struggles between anarchists and fascists. Italian anarchists played a key role in the anti-fascist organisation ''Arditi del Popolo'', which was strongest in areas with anarchist traditions, and achieved some success in their activism, such as repelling Blackshirts in the anarchist stronghold of Parma in August 1922. The veteran Italian anarchist, Luigi Fabbri, was one of the first critical theorists of fascism, describing it as "the preventive counter-revolution." In France, where the far right leagues came close to insurrection in the February 1934 riots, anarchists divided over a united front policy.

In Spain, the CNT initially refused to join a popular front electoral alliance, and abstention by CNT supporters led to a right wing election victory. But in 1936, the CNT changed its policy and anarchist votes helped bring the popular front back to power. Months later, the former ruling class responded with an attempted coup causing the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939). In response to the army rebellion, an anarchist-inspired movement of peasants and workers, supported by armed militias, took control of Barcelona and of large areas of rural Spain where they collectivised the land. But even before the fascist victory in 1939, the anarchists were losing ground in a bitter struggle with the Stalinists, who controlled the distribution of military aid to the Republican cause from the Soviet Union. Stalinist-led troops suppressed the collectives and persecuted both dissident Marxists and anarchists.

Anarchists in France and Italy were active in the Resistance during World War II.

Post-war years

right|thumb|200px|[[Paul Goodman (writer)|Paul Goodman, influential American anarchist author of ''Growing Up Absurd: Problems of Youth in the Organized Society'' among other works critical of contemporary societies]]Anarchism sought to reorganize itself after the war. The Mexican Anarchist Federation was established on 1945 after the Anarchist Federation of the Center united with the Anarchist Federation of the Federal District. In the early 1940s Antifascist International Solidarity and Federation of Anarchist Groups of Cuba merge into the large national organization Asociación Libertaria de Cuba (Cuban Libertarian Association). From 1944 to 1947, the Bulgarian Anarchist Communist Federation reemerges as part of a factory and workplace committee movement, but is repressed by the new Communist regime. In 1945 in France the Fédération Anarchiste is established and the also synthesist Federazione Anarchica Italiana is founded in Italy. Korean anarchists form the League of Free Social Constructors in September 1945 and in 1946 the Japanese Anarchist Federation is founded. An International Anarchist Congress with delegates from across Europe is held in Paris in May 1948. In 1956 the Uruguayan Anarchist Federation is founded. In 1955 the Anarcho-Communist Federation of Argentina renames itself as the Argentine Libertarian Federation.

Anarchism continued to be influential in important literary and intellectual personalities of the time such as Albert Camus, Herbert Read, Paul Goodman, Dwight Macdonald, Allen Ginsberg, Julian Beck and the French Surrealist group led by André Breton which now openly embraced anarchism and collaborated in the Fédération Anarchiste.

Anarcho-pacifism became influential in the Anti-nuclear movement and anti war movements of the time as can be seen in the activism and writings of the English anarchist member of Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament Alex Comfort or the similar activism of the American catholic anarcho-pacifist Ammon Hennacy. Anarcho-pacifism became a "basis for a critique of militarism on both sides of the Cold War." The resurgence of anarchist ideas during this period is well documented in Robert Graham's Anarchism: A Documentary History of Libertarian Ideas, ''Volume Two: The Emergence of the New Anarchism (1939-1977)''.

Contemporary anarchism

thumb|left|The famous ''okupas'' [[squatting|squat near Parc Güell, overlooking Barcelona. Squatting was a prominent part of the emergence of renewed anarchist movement from the counterculture of the 1960s and 1970s.]] A surge of popular interest in anarchism occurred in western nations during the 1960s and 1970s. Anarchism was influential in the Counterculture of the 1960s and anarchists actively participated in the late sixties students and workers revolts. In 1968 in Carrara, Italy the International of Anarchist Federations was founded during an international anarchist conference held there in 1968 by the three existing European federations of France, the Italian and the Iberian Anarchist Federation as well as the Bulgarian federation in French exile.

In the United Kingdom in the 1970s this was associated with the punk rock movement, as exemplified by bands such as Crass and the Sex Pistols. The housing and employment crisis in most of Western Europe led to the formation of communes and squatter movements like that of Barcelona, Spain. In Denmark, squatters occupied a disused military base and declared the Freetown Christiania, an autonomous haven in central Copenhagen.

Since the revival of anarchism in the mid 20th century, a number of new movements and schools of thought emerged. Although feminist tendencies have always been a part of the anarchist movement in the form of anarcha-feminism, they returned with vigour during the second wave of feminism in the 1960s. The American Civil Rights Movement and the movement against the war in Vietnam also contributed to the revival of North American anarchism. European anarchism of the late 20th century drew much of its strength from the labour movement, and both have incorporated animal rights activism. Anarchist anthropologist David Graeber and anarchist historian Andrej Grubacic have posited a rupture between generations of anarchism, with those "who often still have not shaken the sectarian habits" of the 19th century contrasted with the younger activists who are "much more informed, among other elements, by indigenous, feminist, ecological and cultural-critical ideas", and who by the turn of the 21st century formed "by far the majority" of anarchists.

Around the turn of the 21st century, anarchism grew in popularity and influence as part of the anti-war, anti-capitalist, and anti-globalisation movements. Anarchists became known for their involvement in protests against the meetings of the World Trade Organization (WTO), Group of Eight, and the World Economic Forum. Some anarchist factions at these protests engaged in rioting, property destruction, and violent confrontations with police. These actions were precipitated by ad hoc, leaderless, anonymous cadres known as ''black blocs''; other organisational tactics pioneered in this time include security culture, affinity groups and the use of decentralised technologies such as the internet. A significant event of this period was the confrontations at WTO conference in Seattle in 1999.

International anarchist federations in existence include the International of Anarchist Federations, the International Workers' Association, and International Libertarian Solidarity. The largest organised anarchist movement today is in Spain, in the form of the Confederación General del Trabajo (CGT) and the CNT. CGT membership was estimated to be around 100,000 for 2003. Other active syndicalist movements include in Sweden the Central Organisation of the Workers of Sweden and the Swedish Anarcho-syndicalist Youth Federation; the CNT-AIT in France; the Union Sindicale Italiana in Italy; in the US Workers Solidarity Alliance and the UK Solidarity Federation. The revolutionary industrial unionist Industrial Workers of the World, claiming 2,000 paying members, and the International Workers Association, an anarcho-syndicalist successor to the First International, also remain active.

Anarchist schools of thought

Anarchist schools of thought had been generally grouped in two main historical traditions, individualist anarchism and social anarchism, which have some different origins, values and evolution. The individualist wing of anarchism emphasises negative liberty, i.e. opposition to state or social control over the individual, while those in the social wing emphasise positive liberty to achieve one's potential and argue that humans have needs that society ought to fulfill, "recognizing equality of entitlement". In chronological and theoretical sense there are classical — those created throughout the 19th century — and post-classical anarchist schools — those created since the mid-20th century and after.

Beyond the specific factions of anarchist thought is philosophical anarchism, which embodies the theoretical stance that the state lacks moral legitimacy without accepting the imperative of revolution to eliminate it. A component especially of individualist anarchism philosophical anarchism may accept the existence of a minimal state as unfortunate, and usually temporary, "necessary evil" but argue that citizens do not have a moral obligation to obey the state when its laws conflict with individual autonomy. One reaction against sectarianism within the anarchist milieu was "anarchism without adjectives", a call for toleration first adopted by Fernando Tarrida del Mármol in 1889 in response to the "bitter debates" of anarchist theory at the time. In abandoning the hyphenated anarchisms (i.e. collectivist-, communist-, mutualist- and individualist-anarchism), it sought to emphasise the anti-authoritarian beliefs common to all anarchist schools of thought.

Mutualism

Mutualism began in 18th century English and French labour movements before taking an anarchist form associated with Pierre-Joseph Proudhon in France and others in the United States. Proudhon proposed spontaneous order, whereby organization emerges without central authority, a "positive anarchy" where order arises when everybody does "what he wishes and only what he wishes" and where "business transactions alone produce the social order."

Mutualist anarchism is concerned with reciprocity, free association, voluntary contract, federation, and credit and currency reform. According to William Batchelder Greene, each worker in the mutualist system would receive "just and exact pay for his work; services equivalent in cost being exchangeable for services equivalent in cost, without profit or discount." Mutualism has been retrospectively characterised as ideologically situated between individualist and collectivist forms of anarchism. Proudhon first characterised his goal as a "third form of society, the synthesis of communism and property."

Individualist anarchism

Individualist anarchism refers to several traditions of thought within the anarchist movement that emphasize the individual and their will over any kinds of external determinants such as groups, society, traditions, and ideological systems. Individualist anarchism is not a single philosophy but refers to a group of individualistic philosophies that sometimes are in conflict.

In 1793, William Godwin, who has often been cited as the first anarchist, wrote ''Political Justice'', which some consider to be the first expression of anarchism. Godwin, a philosophical anarchist, from a rationalist and utilitarian basis opposed revolutionary action and saw a minimal state as a present "necessary evil" that would become increasingly irrelevant and powerless by the gradual spread of knowledge. Godwin advocated individualism, proposing that all cooperation in labour be eliminated on the premise that this would be most conducive with the general good.

An influential form of individualist anarchism, called "egoism," or egoist anarchism, was expounded by one of the earliest and best-known proponents of individualist anarchism, the German Max Stirner. Stirner's ''The Ego and Its Own'', published in 1844, is a founding text of the philosophy. According to Stirner, the only limitation on the rights of the individual is their power to obtain what they desire, without regard for God, state, or morality. To Stirner, rights were ''spooks'' in the mind, and he held that society does not exist but "the individuals are its reality". Stirner advocated self-assertion and foresaw unions of egoists, non-systematic associations continually renewed by all parties' support through an act of will, which Stirner proposed as a form of organization in place of the state. Egoist anarchists claim that egoism will foster genuine and spontaneous union between individuals. "Egoism" has inspired many interpretations of Stirner's philosophy. It was re-discovered and promoted by German philosophical anarchist and LGBT activist John Henry Mackay.

Josiah Warren is widely regarded as the first American anarchist, and the four-page weekly paper he edited during 1833, ''The Peaceful Revolutionist'', was the first anarchist periodical published,. For American anarchist historian Eunice Minette Schuster "It is apparent...that Proudhonian Anarchism was to be found in the United States at least as early as 1848 and that it was not conscious of its affinity to the Individualist Anarchism of Josiah Warren and Stephen Pearl Andrews...William B. Greene presented this Proudhonian Mutualism in its purest and most systematic form.". Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) was an important early influence in individualist anarchist thought in the United States and Europe. Thoreau was an American author, poet, naturalist, tax resister, development critic, surveyor, historian, philosopher, and leading transcendentalist. He is best known for his books ''Walden'', a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings, and his essay, ''Civil Disobedience'', an argument for individual resistance to civil government in moral opposition to an unjust state. Later Benjamin Tucker fused Stirner´s egoism with the economics of Warren and Proudhon in his eclectic influential publication ''Liberty''.

From these early influences individualist anarchism in different countries attracted a small but diverse following of bohemian artists and intellectuals, free love and birth control advocates (see Anarchism and issues related to love and sex), individualist naturists nudists (see anarcho-naturism) , freethought and anti-clearical activists as well as young anarchist outlaws in what came to be known as illegalism and individual reclamation(see European individualist anarchism). These authors and activists included Oscar Wilde, Emile Armand, Han Ryner, Henri Zisly, Renzo Novatore, Miguel Gimenez Igualada, Adolf Brand and Lev Chernyi among others.

Social anarchism

Social anarchism calls for a system with public ownership of means of production and democratic control of all organizations, without any government authority or coercion. It is the largest school of thought in anarchism. Social anarchism rejects private property, seeing it as a source of social inequality, and emphasises cooperation and mutual aid. Collectivist anarchism, also referred to as "revolutionary socialism" or a form of such, is a revolutionary form of anarchism, commonly associated with Mikhail Bakunin and Johann Most. Collectivist anarchists oppose all private ownership of the means of production, instead advocating that ownership be collectivised. This was to be achieved through violent revolution, first starting with a small cohesive group through acts of violence, or "propaganda by the deed", which would inspire the workers as a whole to revolt and forcibly collectivise the means of production.

However, collectivization was not to be extended to the distribution of income, as workers would be paid according to time worked, rather than receiving goods being distributed "according to need" as in anarcho-communism. This position was criticised by anarchist communists as effectively "uphold[ing] the wages system". Collectivist anarchism arose contemporaneously with Marxism but opposed the Marxist dictatorship of the proletariat, despite the stated Marxist goal of a collectivist stateless society. Anarchist, communist and collectivist ideas are not mutually exclusive; although the collectivist anarchists advocated compensation for labour, some held out the possibility of a post-revolutionary transition to a communist system of distribution according to need.

Anarcho-communism developed out of radical socialist currents after the French revolution but was first formulated as such in the Italian section of the First International. The theoretical work of Peter Kropotkin and Errico Malatesta took importance later as it expanded and developed pro-organizationalist and insurrectionary anti-organizationalist sections.Anarchist communism proposes that the freest form of social organisation would be a society composed of self-managing communes with collective use of the means of production, organised democratically, and related to other communes through federation. While some anarchist communists favour direct democracy, others feel that its majoritarianism can impede individual liberty and favour consensus democracy instead. In anarchist communism, as money would be abolished, individuals would not receive direct compensation for labour (through sharing of profits or payment) but would have free access to the resources and surplus of the commune. Anarchist communism does not always have a communitarian philosophy. Some forms of anarchist communism such as insurrectionary anarchism are egoist and strongly influenced by radical individualism, believing anarcho-communism is the best social system for the realization of individual freedom. Most anarcho-communists view anarcho-communism as a way of reconciling the opposition between the individual and society.

In the early 20th century, anarcho-syndicalism arose as a distinct school of thought within anarchism. With greater focus on the labour movement than previous forms of anarchism, syndicalism posits radical trade unions as a potential force for revolutionary social change, replacing capitalism and the state with a new society, democratically self-managed by the workers. It is often combined with other branches of anarchism, and anarcho-syndicalists often subscribe to anarchist communist or collectivist anarchist economic systems. An early leading anarcho-syndicalist thinker was Rudolf Rocker, whose 1938 pamphlet ''Anarchosyndicalism'' outlined a view of the movement's origin, aims and importance to the future of labour.

Post-classical currents

Anarchism continues to generate many philosophies and movements, at times eclectic, drawing upon various sources, and syncretic, combining disparate and contrary concepts to create new philosophical approaches. Since the revival of anarchism in the United States in the 1960s, a number of new movements and schools have emerged. Anarcho-capitalism developed from radical anti-state libertarianism and individualist anarchism, drawing from Austrian School economics, study of law and economics and public choice theory, while the burgeoning feminist and environmentalist movements also produced anarchist offshoots.

Anarcha-feminism developed as a synthesis of radical feminism and anarchism that views patriarchy (male domination over women) as a fundamental manifestation of compulsory government. It was inspired by the late 19th century writings of early feminist anarchists such as Lucy Parsons, Emma Goldman, Voltairine de Cleyre, and Dora Marsden. Anarcha-feminists, like other radical feminists, criticise and advocate the abolition of traditional conceptions of family, education and gender roles. Green anarchism (or eco-anarchism) is a school of thought within anarchism which puts an emphasis on environmental issues, with an important precedent in anarcho-naturism and whose main contemporary currents are anarcho-primitivism and social ecology. Anarcho-pacifism is a tendency which rejects the use of violence in the struggle for social change. It developed "mostly in the Netherlands, Britain, and the United States, before and during the Second World War". Christian anarchism is a movement in political theology that combines anarchism and Christianity. Its main proponents included Leo Tolstoy, Dorothy Day, Ammon Hennacy, and Jacques Ellul.

Post-left anarchy is a tendency which seeks to distance itself from traditional left-wing politics and to escape the confines of ideology in general. Post-anarchism is a theoretical move towards a synthesis of classical anarchist theory and poststructuralist thought drawing from diverse ideas including post-modernism, autonomist marxism, post-left anarchy, situationism and postcolonialism.

Another recent form of anarchism critical of formal anarchist movements is insurrectionary anarchism, which advocates informal organization and active resistance to the state; its proponents include Wolfi Landstreicher and Alfredo M. Bonanno.

Topics of interest in anarchist theory

Intersecting and overlapping between various schools of thought, certain topics of interest and internal disputes have proven perennial within anarchist theory.

Free love

An important current within anarchism is free love. Free love advocates sometimes traced their roots back to Josiah Warren and to experimental communities, viewed sexual freedom as a clear, direct expression of an individual's self-ownership. Free love particularly stressed women's rights since most sexual laws discriminated against women: for example, marriage laws and anti-birth control measures. The most important American free love journal was ''Lucifer the Lightbearer'' (1883–1907) edited by Moses Harman and Lois Waisbrooker, but also there existed Ezra Heywood and Angela Heywood's ''''The Word'''' (1872–1890, 1892–1893). ''Free Society'' (1895-1897 as ''The Firebrand''; 1897-1904 as ''Free Society'') was a major anarchist newspaper in the United States at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries. The publication staunchly advocated free love and women's rights, and critiqued "Comstockery" -- censorship of sexual information.Also M. E. Lazarus was an important American individualist anarchist who promoted free love.

In New York City's Greenwich Village, bohemian feminists and socialists advocated self-realisation and pleasure for women (and also men) in the here and now. They encouraged playing with sexual roles and sexuality, and the openly bisexual radical Edna St. Vincent Millay and the lesbian anarchist Margaret Anderson were prominent among them. Discussion groups organised by the Villagers were frequented by Emma Goldman, among others. Magnus Hirschfeld noted in 1923 that Goldman "has campaigned boldly and steadfastly for individual rights, and especially for those deprived of their rights. Thus it came about that she was the first and only woman, indeed the first and only American, to take up the defense of homosexual love before the general public." In fact, before Goldman, heterosexual anarchist Robert Reitzel (1849–1898) spoke positively of homosexuality from the beginning of the 1890s in his Detroit-based German language journal ''Der arme Teufel''. In Argentina anarcha-feminist Virginia Bolten published the newspaper called '''' (), which was published nine times in Rosario between 8 January 1896 and 1 January 1897, and was revived, briefly, in 1901.

In Europe the main propagandist of free love within individualist anarchism was Emile Armand. He proposed the concept of ''la camaraderie amoureuse'' to speak of free love as the possibility of voluntary sexual encounter between consenting adults. He was also a consistent proponent of polyamory. In Germany the stirnerists Adolf Brand and John Henry Mackay were pioneering campaigners for the acceptance of male bisexuality and homosexuality.

More recently, the British anarcho-pacifist Alex Comfort gained notoriety during the sexual revolution for writing the bestseller sex manual ''The Joy of Sex''. The issue of free love has a dedicated treatment in the work of French anarcho-hedonist philosopher Michel Onfray in such works as ''Théorie du corps amoureux : pour une érotique solaire'' (2000) and ''L'invention du plaisir : fragments cyréaniques'' (2002).

Libertarian education and freethought

150px|left|thumb|Francesc Ferrer i Guàrdia, [[Catalan people|Catalan anarchist pedagogue and free-thinker]] For English anarchist William Godwin education was "the main means by which change would be achieved." Godwin saw that the main goal of education should be the promotion of happiness For Godwin education had to have "A respect for the child’s autonomy which precluded any form of coercion", "A pedagogy that respected this and sought to build on the child’s own motivation and initiatives" and "A concern about the child’s capacity to resist an ideology transmitted through the school." In his ''Political Justice'' he criticizes state sponsored schooling "on account of its obvious alliance with national government". Early American anarchist Josiah Warren advanced alternative education experiences in the libertarian communities he established. Max Stirner wrote in 1842 a long essay on education called ''The False Principle of our Education''. In it Stirner names his educational principle "personalist," explaining that self-understanding consists in hourly self-creation. Education for him is to create "free men, sovereign characters," by which he means "eternal characters...who are therefore eternal because they form themselves each moment".

In the United States "freethought was a basically anti-christian, anti-clerical movement, whose purpose was to make the individual politically and spiritually free to decide for himself on religious matters. A number of contributors to ''Liberty'' (anarchist publication) were prominent figures in both freethought and anarchism. The individualist anarchist George MacDonald was a co-editor of ''Freethought'' and, for a time, ''The Truth Seeker''. E.C. Walker was co-editor of the excellent free-thought / free love journal ''Lucifer, the Light-Bearer''". "Many of the anarchists were ardent freethinkers; reprints from freethought papers such as ''Lucifer, the Light-Bearer'', ''Freethought'' and ''The Truth Seeker'' appeared in ''Liberty''...The church was viewed as a common ally of the state and as a repressive force in and of itself".

In 1901, Catalan anarchist and free-thinker Francesc Ferrer i Guàrdia established "modern" or progressive schools in Barcelona in defiance of an educational system controlled by the Catholic Church. The schools' stated goal was to "educate the working class in a rational, secular and non-coercive setting". Fiercely anti-clerical, Ferrer believed in "freedom in education", education free from the authority of church and state. Murray Bookchin wrote: "This period [1890s] was the heyday of libertarian schools and pedagogical projects in all areas of the country where Anarchists exercised some degree of influence. Perhaps the best-known effort in this field was Francisco Ferrer's Modern School (Escuela Moderna), a project which exercised a considerable influence on Catalan education and on experimental techniques of teaching generally." La Escuela Moderna, and Ferrer's ideas generally, formed the inspiration for a series of ''Modern Schools'' in the United States, Cuba, South America and London. The first of these was started in New York City in 1911. It also inspired the Italian newspaper ''Università popolare'', founded in 1901. Russian christian anarchist Leo Tolstoy established a school for peasant children on his estate. Tolstoy's educational experiments were short-lived due to harassment by the Tsarist secret police. Tolstoy established a conceptual difference between education and culture. He thought that "Education is the tendency of one man to make another just like himself... Education is culture under restraint, culture is free. [Education is] when the teaching is forced upon the pupil, and when then instruction is exclusive, that is when only those subjects are taught which the educator regards as necessary". For him "without compulsion, education was transformed into culture".

A more recent libertarian tradition on education is that of unschooling and the free school in which child-led activity replaces pedagogic approaches. Experiments in Germany led to A. S. Neill founding what became Summerhill School in 1921. Summerhill is often cited as an example of anarchism in practice. However, although Summerhill and other free schools are radically libertarian, they differ in principle from those of Ferrer by not advocating an overtly political class struggle-approach. In addition to organizing schools according to libertarian principles, anarchists have also questioned the concept of schooling per se. The term deschooling was popularized by Ivan Illich, who argued that the school as an institution is dysfunctional for self-determined learning and serves the creation of a consumer society instead.

Internal issues and debates

thumb|The use of [[anarchism and violence|violence is a subject of much dispute in anarchism.]] Anarchism is a philosophy which embodies many diverse attitudes, tendencies and schools of thought; as such, disagreement over questions of values, ideology and tactics is common. The compatibility of capitalism, nationalism and religion with anarchism is widely disputed. Similarly, anarchism enjoys complex relationships with ideologies such as Marxism, communism and capitalism. Anarchists may be motivated by humanism, divine authority, enlightened self-interest, veganism or any number of alternative ethical doctrines.

Phenomena such as civilization, technology (e.g. within anarcho-primitivism and insurrectionary anarchism), and the democratic process may be sharply criticised within some anarchist tendencies and simultaneously lauded in others.

On a tactical level, while propaganda of the deed was a tactic used by anarchists in the 19th century (e.g. the Nihilist movement), some contemporary anarchists espouse alternative direct action methods such as nonviolence, counter-economics and anti-state cryptography to bring about an anarchist society. About the scope of an anarchist society, some anarchists advocate a global one, while others do so by local ones. The diversity in anarchism has led to widely different use of identical terms among different anarchist traditions, which has led to many definitional concerns in anarchist theory.

Criticisms

Criticisms of anarchism include moral criticisms and practical criticisms which claim that anarchism is unworkable in practice.

See also

Outline of anarchism

Anarchist symbolism

Lists of anarchism topics

List of anarchist communities

List of anarchist movements by region

References

Further reading

''Anarchism: A Documentary History of Libertarian Ideas.'' Robert Graham, editor.

* ''Volume One: From Anarchy to Anarchism (300CE to 1939)'' Black Rose Books, Montréal and London 2005. ISBN 1-55164-250-6.

* ''Volume Two: The Anarchist Current (1939–2006)'' Black Rose Books, Montréal 2007. ISBN 978-1-55164-311-3.

''Anarchism'', George Woodcock (Penguin Books, 1962). .

''Anarchy: A Graphic Guide'', Clifford Harper (Camden Press, 1987): An overview, updating Woodcock's classic, and illustrated throughout by Harper's woodcut-style artwork.

''The Anarchist Reader'', George Woodcock (ed.) (Fontana/Collins 1977; ISBN 0-00-634011-3): An anthology of writings from anarchist thinkers and activists including Proudhon, Kropotkin, Bakunin, Malatesta, Bookchin, Goldman, and many others.

''Anarchism: From Theory to Practice'' by Daniel Guerin. Monthly Review Press. 1970. ISBN 0-85345-175-3

''Anarchy through the times'' by Max Nettlau. Gordon Press. 1979. ISBN 0-8490-1397-6

''Demanding the Impossible: A History of Anarchism'' by Peter Marshall. PM Press. 2010. ISBN 1-60486-064-2

''People Without Government: An Anthropology of Anarchy'' (2nd ed.) by Harold Barclay, Left Bank Books, 1990 ISBN 1-871082-16-1

''The Political Theory of Anarchism'' by April Carter. Harper & Row. 1971. ISBN 978-0-0613-6050-3

External links

Infoshop.org - the largest online collection of news and information about anarchism.

"An Anarchist FAQ Webpage" –An Anarchist FAQ

Anarchist Theory FAQ –by Bryan Caplan

The Anarchist Library large online library with texts from anarchist authors

Anarchism: A Bibliography

Daily Bleed's Anarchist Encyclopedia –700+ entries, with short biographies, links and dedicated pages

Anarchy Archives – information relating to famous anarchists including their writings (see Anarchy Archives).

KateSharpleyLibrary.net –website of the Kate Sharpley Library, containing many historical documents pertaining to anarchism

They Lie We Die –anarchist virtual library containing 768 books, booklets and texts

Category:Political culture Category:Political ideologies Category:Social theories Category:Anti-fascism

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Coordinates	23°33′″N46°38′″N
Region	Western philosophy
Era	20th / 21st-century philosophy
Color	#B0C4DE
Name	Noam Chomsky
Other names	Avram Noam Chomsky
Birth date	December 07, 1928
Birth place	Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Alma mater	University of Pennsylvania (BA 1949, MA 1951, PhD 1955)
School tradition	Generative linguistics, Analytic philosophy
Main interests	Linguistics PsychologyPhilosophy of languagePhilosophy of mind Politics Ethics
Alma mater	University of Pennsylvania
Religion	Atheist
Notable ideas	Generative grammar, universal grammar, transformational grammar, government and binding, X-bar theory, Chomsky hierarchy, context-free grammar, principles and parameters, Minimalist program, language acquisition device, poverty of the stimulus, Chomsky–Schützenberger theorem, Chomsky Normal Form, propaganda model
Influences	Dwight Macdonald, Pāṇini, Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein, John Dewey, Mikhail Bakunin, Karl Marx, Wilhelm von Humboldt, Adam Smith, Zellig Harris, Rudolf Rocker, Immanuel Kant, René Descartes, George Orwell, C. West Churchman, Alan Turing, W. V. O. Quine
Influenced	Niall McLaren, Colin McGinn, Edward Said, Christopher Hitchens, Steven Pinker, Peter Ludlow, Tanya Reinhart, Morris Halle, Gilbert Harman, Jerry Fodor, Howard Lasnik, Robert Fisk, Neil Smith, Ray Jackendoff, Norbert Hornstein, Jean Bricmont, Marc Hauser, Norman Finkelstein, Robert Lees, Hugo Chavez, Mark Baker, Julian Boyd, Ray C. Dougherty, Derek Bickerton, Amy Goodman, Michael Albert }}

Avram Noam Chomsky (; born December 7, 1928) is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, historian, and activist. He is an Institute Professor and Professor (Emeritus) in the Department of Linguistics & Philosophy at MIT, where he has worked for over 50 years. Chomsky has been described as the "father of modern linguistics" and a major figure of analytic philosophy. His work has influenced fields such as computer science, mathematics, and psychology.

Chomsky is credited as the creator or co-creator of the Chomsky hierarchy, the universal grammar theory, and the Chomsky–Schützenberger theorem.

Ideologically identifying with anarchism and libertarian socialism, Chomsky is known for his critiques of U.S. foreign policy and contemporary capitalism, and he has been described as a prominent cultural figure. His media criticism has included ''Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media'' (1988), co-written with Edward S. Herman, an analysis articulating the propaganda model theory for examining the media.

According to the Arts and Humanities Citation Index in 1992, Chomsky was cited as a source more often than any other living scholar from 1980 to 1992, and was the eighth most cited source overall. Chomsky is the author of over 100 books.

Life and career

Chomsky was born on the morning of December 7, 1928, to Jewish parents in the affluent East Oak Lane neighborhood of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the son of noted professor of Hebrew at Gratz College and IWW (Industrial Workers of the World) member William Chomsky (1896–1977), a native of Ukraine. His mother, Elsie Chomsky (née Simonofsky)—a native of what is present-day Belarus—grew up in the United States and, unlike her husband, spoke "ordinary New York English". Chomsky's parents' first language was Yiddish, but Chomsky said it was "taboo" in his family to speak it. Although Chomsky's mother was part of the radical activism in the 1930s, he was influenced largely by his uncle who, having never passed 4th grade, owned a newsstand that acted as an "intellectual center [where] professors of this and that argu[ed] all night". Chomsky was influenced also by being a part of a Hebrew-based, Zionist organization, as well as by hanging around anarchist bookstores.

He describes his family as living in a sort of "Jewish ghetto", split into a "Yiddish side" and "Hebrew side", with his family aligning with the latter and bringing him up "immersed in Hebrew culture and literature", though he means more a "cultural ghetto than a physical one". Chomsky also describes tensions he experienced with Irish Catholics and German Catholics and anti-semitism in the mid-1930s. He recalls "beer parties" celebrating the fall of Paris to the Nazis. In a discussion of the irony of his staying in the 1980s in a Jesuit House in Central America, Chomsky explained that during his childhood, "We were the only Jewish family around. I grew up with a visceral fear of Catholics. They're the people who beat you up on your way to school. So I knew when they came out of that building down the street, which was the Jesuit school, they were raving anti-Semites. So childhood memories took a long time to overcome."

Chomsky remembers the first article he wrote was at age 10 while a student at Oak Lane Country Day School about the threat of the spread of fascism, following the fall of Barcelona in the Spanish Civil War. From the age of 12 or 13, he identified more fully with anarchist politics.

A graduate of Central High School of Philadelphia, Chomsky began studying philosophy and linguistics at the University of Pennsylvania in 1945, taking classes with philosophers such as C. West Churchman and Nelson Goodman and linguist Zellig Harris. Harris's teaching included his discovery of transformations as a mathematical analysis of language structure (mappings from one subset to another in the set of sentences). Chomsky referred to the morphophonemic rules in his 1951 master's thesis—''The Morphophonemics of Modern Hebrew''—as transformations in the sense of Carnap's 1938 notion of rules of transformation (vs. rules of formation), and subsequently reinterpreted the notion of grammatical transformations in a very different way from Harris, as operations on the productions of a context-free grammar (derived from Post production systems). Harris's political views were instrumental in shaping those of Chomsky. Chomsky earned a BA in 1949 and an MA in 1951.

In 1949, he married linguist Carol Schatz. They remained married for 59 years until her death from cancer in December 2008. The couple had two daughters, Aviva (b. 1957) and Diane (b. 1960), and a son, Harry (b. 1967). With his wife Carol, Chomsky spent time in 1953 living in HaZore'a, a kibbutz in Israel. Asked in an interview whether the stay was "a disappointment" Chomsky replied, "No, I loved it"; however, he "couldn't stand the ideological atmosphere" and "fervent nationalism" in the early 1950s at the kibbutz, with Stalin being defended by many of the left-leaning kibbutz members who chose to paint a rosy image of future possibilities and contemporary realities in the USSR. Chomsky notes seeing many positive elements in the commune-like living of the kibbutz, in which parents and children lived together in separate houses, and when asked whether there were "lessons that we have learned from the history of the kibbutz", responded, that in "some respects, the kibbutzim came closer to the anarchist ideal than any other attempt that lasted for more than a very brief moment before destruction, or that was on anything like a similar scale. In these respects, I think they were extremely attractive and successful; apart from personal accident, I probably would have lived there myself – for how long, it's hard to guess."

Chomsky received his PhD in linguistics from the University of Pennsylvania in 1955. He conducted part of his doctoral research during four years at Harvard University as a Harvard Junior Fellow. In his doctoral thesis, he began to develop some of his linguistic ideas, elaborating on them in his 1957 book ''Syntactic Structures'', one of his best-known works in linguistics.

Chomsky joined the staff of MIT in 1955 and in 1961 was appointed full professor in the Department of Modern Languages and Linguistics (now the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy). From 1966 to 1976 he held the Ferrari P. Ward Professorship of Modern Languages and Linguistics, and in 1976 he was appointed Institute Professor. As of 2010, Chomsky has taught at MIT continuously for 55 years.

In February 1967, Chomsky became one of the leading opponents of the Vietnam War with the publication of his essay, "The Responsibility of Intellectuals", in ''The New York Review of Books''. This was followed by his 1969 book, ''American Power and the New Mandarins,'' a collection of essays that established him at the forefront of American dissent. His far-reaching criticisms of U.S. foreign policy and the legitimacy of U.S. power have raised controversy he is frequently sought out for his views by publications and news outlets internationally. In 1977 he delivered the Huizinga Lecture in Leiden, the Netherlands, under the title: ''Intellectuals and the State''.

Chomsky has received death threats because of his criticisms of U.S. foreign policy. He was also on a list of planned targets created by Theodore Kaczynski, better known as the Unabomber; during the period that Kaczynski was at large, Chomsky had all of his mail checked for explosives. He states that he often receives undercover police protection, in particular while on the MIT campus, although he does not agree with the police protection.

Chomsky resides in Lexington, Massachusetts, and travels often, giving lectures on politics.

Contributions to linguistics

Chomskyan linguistics, beginning with his ''Syntactic Structures'', a distillation of his '' Logical Structure of Linguistic Theory'' (1955, 75), challenges structural linguistics and introduces transformational grammar. This approach takes utterances (sequences of words) to have a syntax characterized by a formal grammar; in particular, a context-free grammar extended with transformational rules.

Perhaps his most influential and time-tested contribution to the field, is the claim that modeling knowledge of language using a formal grammar accounts for the "productivity" or "creativity" of language. In other words, a formal grammar of a language can explain the ability of a hearer-speaker to produce and interpret an infinite number of utterances, including novel ones, with a limited set of grammatical rules and a finite set of terms. He has always acknowledged his debt to Pāṇini for his modern notion of an explicit generative grammar although it is also related to rationalist ideas of a priori knowledge.

It is a popular misconception that Chomsky proved that language is entirely innate and discovered a "universal grammar" (UG). In fact, Chomsky simply observed that while a human baby and a kitten are both capable of inductive reasoning, if they are exposed to exactly the same linguistic data, the human child will always acquire the ability to understand and produce language, while the kitten will never acquire either ability. Chomsky labeled whatever the relevant capacity the human has which the cat lacks the "language acquisition device" (LAD) and suggested that one of the tasks for linguistics should be to figure out what the LAD is and what constraints it puts on the range of possible human languages. The universal features that would result from these constraints are often termed "universal grammar" or UG.

The Principles and Parameters approach (P&P;)—developed in his Pisa 1979 Lectures, later published as ''Lectures on Government and Binding'' (LGB)—makes strong claims regarding universal grammar: that the grammatical principles underlying languages are innate and fixed, and the differences among the world's languages can be characterized in terms of parameter settings in the brain (such as the pro-drop parameter, which indicates whether an explicit subject is always required, as in English, or can be optionally dropped, as in Spanish), which are often likened to switches. (Hence the term principles and parameters, often given to this approach.) In this view, a child learning a language need only acquire the necessary lexical items (words, grammatical morphemes, and idioms), and determine the appropriate parameter settings, which can be done based on a few key examples.

Proponents of this view argue that the pace at which children learn languages is inexplicably rapid, unless children have an innate ability to learn languages. The similar steps followed by children all across the world when learning languages, and the fact that children make certain characteristic errors as they learn their first language, whereas other seemingly logical kinds of errors never occur (and, according to Chomsky, should be attested if a purely general, rather than language-specific, learning mechanism were being employed), are also pointed to as motivation for innateness.

More recently, in his Minimalist Program (1995), while retaining the core concept of "principles and parameters," Chomsky attempts a major overhaul of the linguistic machinery involved in the LGB model, stripping from it all but the barest necessary elements, while advocating a general approach to the architecture of the human language faculty that emphasizes principles of economy and optimal design, reverting to a derivational approach to generation, in contrast with the largely representational approach of classic P&P.;

Chomsky's ideas have had a strong influence on researchers of the language acquisition in children, though many researchers in this area such as Elizabeth Bates and Michael Tomasello argue very strongly against Chomsky's theories, and instead advocate emergentist or connectionist theories, explaining language with a number of general processing mechanisms in the brain that interact with the extensive and complex social environment in which language is used and learned.

His best-known work in phonology is ''The Sound Pattern of English'' (1968), written with Morris Halle (and often known as simply ''SPE''). This work has had a great significance for the development in the field. While phonological theory has since moved beyond "SPE phonology" in many important respects, the SPE system is considered the precursor of some of the most influential phonological theories today, including autosegmental phonology, lexical phonology and optimality theory. Chomsky no longer publishes on phonology.

Generative grammar

The Chomskyan approach towards syntax, often termed generative grammar, studies grammar as a body of knowledge possessed by language users. Since the 1960s, Chomsky has maintained that much of this knowledge is innate, implying that children need only learn certain parochial features of their native languages. The innate body of linguistic knowledge is often termed universal grammar. From Chomsky's perspective, the strongest evidence for the existence of Universal Grammar is simply the fact that children successfully acquire their native languages in so little time. Furthermore, he argues that there is an enormous gap between the linguistic stimuli to which children are exposed and the rich linguistic knowledge they attain (the "poverty of the stimulus" argument). The knowledge of Universal Grammar would serve to bridge that gap.

Chomsky's theories have been immensely influential within linguistics, but they have also received criticism. One recurring criticism of the Chomskyan variety of generative grammar is that it is Anglocentric and Eurocentric, and that often linguists working in this tradition have a tendency to base claims about Universal Grammar on a very small sample of languages, sometimes just one. Initially, the Eurocentrism was exhibited in an overemphasis on the study of English. However, hundreds of different languages have now received at least some attention within Chomskyan linguistic analyses. In spite of the diversity of languages that have been characterized by UG derivations, critics continue to argue that the formalisms within Chomskyan linguistics are Anglocentric and misrepresent the properties of languages that are different from English. Thus, Chomsky's approach has been criticized as a form of linguistic imperialism. In addition, Chomskyan linguists rely heavily on the intuitions of native speakers regarding which sentences of their languages are well-formed. This practice has been criticized on general methodological grounds. Some psychologists and psycholinguists, though sympathetic to Chomsky's overall program, have argued that Chomskyan linguists pay insufficient attention to experimental data from language processing, with the consequence that their theories are not psychologically plausible. Other critics (see language learning) have questioned whether it is necessary to posit Universal Grammar to explain child language acquisition, arguing that domain-general learning mechanisms are sufficient.

Today there are many different branches of generative grammar; one can view grammatical frameworks such as head-driven phrase structure grammar, lexical functional grammar and combinatory categorial grammar as broadly Chomskyan and generative in orientation, but with significant differences in execution.

Chomsky hierarchy

Chomsky is famous for investigating various kinds of formal languages and whether or not they might be capable of capturing key properties of human language. His Chomsky hierarchy partitions formal grammars into classes, or groups, with increasing expressive power, i.e., each successive class can generate a broader set of formal languages than the one before. Interestingly, Chomsky argues that modeling some aspects of human language requires a more complex formal grammar (as measured by the Chomsky hierarchy) than modeling others. For example, while a regular language is powerful enough to model English morphology, it is not powerful enough to model English syntax. In addition to being relevant in linguistics, the Chomsky hierarchy has also become important in computer science (especially in compiler construction and automata theory). Indeed, there is an equivalence between the Chomsky language hierarchy and the different kinds of automata. Thus theorems about languages are often dealt with as either languages (grammars) or automata.

An alternate method of dealing with languages is based upon Formal Power series. Formal Power series as well as the relationship between languages and semi-groups continued to occupy M. P. Schützenberger at the Sorbonne. Formal Power Series are similar to the Taylor Series one encounters in a course on Calculus, and is especially useful for languages where words (terminal symbols) are commutative.

Contributions to psychology

Chomsky's work in linguistics has had profound implications for modern psychology. For Chomsky, linguistics is a branch of cognitive psychology; genuine insights in linguistics imply concomitant understandings of aspects of mental processing and human nature. His theory of a universal grammar was seen by many as a direct challenge to the established behaviorist theories of the time and had major consequences for understanding how children learn language and what, exactly, the ability to use language is.

In 1959, Chomsky published an influential critique of B.F. Skinner's ''Verbal Behavior'', a book in which Skinner offered a theoretical account of language in functional, behavioral terms. He defined "Verbal Behavior" as learned behavior that has characteristic consequences delivered through the learned behavior of others. This makes for a view of communicative behaviors much larger than that usually addressed by linguists. Skinner's approach focused on the circumstances in which language was used; for example, asking for water was functionally a different response than labeling something as water, responding to someone asking for water, etc. These functionally different kinds of responses, which required in turn separate explanations, sharply contrasted both with traditional notions of language and Chomsky's psycholinguistic approach. Chomsky thought that a functionalist explanation restricting itself to questions of communicative performance ignored important questions. (Chomsky—Language and Mind, 1968). He focused on questions concerning the operation and development of innate structures for syntax capable of creatively organizing, cohering, adapting and combining words and phrases into intelligible utterances.

In the review Chomsky emphasized that the scientific application of behavioral principles from animal research is severely lacking in explanatory adequacy and is furthermore particularly superficial as an account of human verbal behavior because a theory restricting itself to external conditions, to "what is learned," cannot adequately account for generative grammar. Chomsky raised the examples of rapid language acquisition of children, including their quickly developing ability to form grammatical sentences, and the universally creative language use of competent native speakers to highlight the ways in which Skinner's view exemplified under-determination of theory by evidence. He argued that to understand human verbal behavior such as the creative aspects of language use and language development, one must first postulate a genetic linguistic endowment. The assumption that important aspects of language are the product of universal innate ability runs counter to Skinner's radical behaviorism.

Chomsky's 1959 review has drawn fire from a number of critics, the most famous criticism being that of Kenneth MacCorquodale's 1970 paper ''On Chomsky’s Review of Skinner’s Verbal Behavior'' (''Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior,'' volume 13, pages 83–99). MacCorquodale's argument was updated and expanded in important respects by Nathan Stemmer in a 1990 paper, ''Skinner's Verbal Behavior, Chomsky's review, and mentalism'' (''Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior,'' volume 54, pages 307–319). These and similar critiques have raised certain points not generally acknowledged outside of behavioral psychology, such as the claim that Chomsky did not possess an adequate understanding of either behavioral psychology in general, or the differences between Skinner's behaviorism and other varieties. Consequently, it is argued that he made several serious errors. On account of these perceived problems, the critics maintain that the review failed to demonstrate what it has often been cited as doing. As such, it is averred that those most influenced by Chomsky's paper probably either already substantially agreed with Chomsky or never actually read it. The review has been further critiqued for misrepresenting the work of Skinner and others, including by quoting out of context. Chomsky has maintained that the review was directed at the way Skinner's variant of behavioral psychology "was being used in Quinean empiricism and naturalization of philosophy."

It has been claimed that Chomsky's critique of Skinner's methodology and basic assumptions paved the way for the "cognitive revolution", the shift in American psychology between the 1950s through the 1970s from being primarily behavioral to being primarily cognitive. In his 1966 ''Cartesian Linguistics'' and subsequent works, Chomsky laid out an explanation of human language faculties that has become the model for investigation in some areas of psychology. Much of the present conception of how the mind works draws directly from ideas that found their first persuasive author of modern times in Chomsky.

There are three key ideas. First is that the mind is "cognitive", or that the mind actually contains mental states, beliefs, doubts, and so on. Second, he argued that most of the important properties of language and mind are innate. The acquisition and development of a language is a result of the unfolding of innate propensities triggered by the experiential input of the external environment. The link between human innate aptitude to language and heredity has been at the core of the debate opposing Noam Chomsky to Jean Piaget at the Abbaye de Royaumont in 1975 (''Language and Learning. The Debate between Jean Piaget and Noam Chomsky,'' Harvard University Press, 1980). Although links between the genetic setup of humans and aptitude to language have been suggested at that time and in later discussions, we are still far from understanding the genetic bases of human language. Work derived from the model of selective stabilization of synapses set up by Jean-Pierre Changeux, Philippe Courrège and Antoine Danchin, and more recently developed experimentally and theoretically by Jacques Mehler and Stanislas Dehaene in particular in the domain of numerical cognition lend support to the Chomskyan "nativism". It does not, however, provide clues about the type of rules that would organize neuronal connections to permit language competence. Subsequent psychologists have extended this general "nativist" thesis beyond language. Lastly, Chomsky made the concept of "modularity" a critical feature of the mind's cognitive architecture. The mind is composed of an array of interacting, specialized subsystems with limited flows of inter-communication. This model contrasts sharply with the old idea that any piece of information in the mind could be accessed by any other cognitive process (optical illusions, for example, cannot be "turned off" even when they are known to be illusions).

Approach to science

Chomsky sees science as a straightforward search for explanation, and rejects the views of it as a catalog of facts or mechanical explanations. In this light, the majority of his contributions to science have been frameworks and hypotheses, rather than "discoveries."

As such, he considers certain so-called post-structuralist or postmodern critiques of logic and reason to be nonsensical:

I have spent a lot of my life working on questions such as these, using the only methods I know of; those condemned here as "science", "rationality," "logic," and so on. I therefore read the papers with some hope that they would help me "transcend" these limitations, or perhaps suggest an entirely different course. I'm afraid I was disappointed. Admittedly, that may be my own limitation. Quite regularly, "my eyes glaze over" when I read polysyllabic discourse on the themes of poststructuralism and postmodernism; what I understand is largely truism or error, but that is only a fraction of the total word count. True, there are lots of other things I don't understand: the articles in the current issues of math and physics journals, for example. But there is a difference. In the latter case, I know how to get to understand them, and have done so, in cases of particular interest to me; and I also know that people in these fields can explain the contents to me at my level, so that I can gain what (partial) understanding I may want. In contrast, no one seems to be able to explain to me why the latest post-this-and-that is (for the most part) other than truism, error, or gibberish, and I do not know how to proceed.

Although Chomsky believes that a scientific background is important to teach proper reasoning, he holds that science in general is "inadequate" to understand complicated problems like human affairs:

Science talks about very simple things, and asks hard questions about them. As soon as things become too complex, science can’t deal with them... But it’s a complicated matter: Science studies what’s at the edge of understanding, and what’s at the edge of understanding is usually fairly simple. And it rarely reaches human affairs. Human affairs are way too complicated.

Debates

Chomsky has been known to vigorously defend and debate his views and opinions, in philosophy, linguistics, and politics. He has had notable debates with Jean Piaget, Michel Foucault, William F. Buckley, Jr., Christopher Hitchens, George Lakoff, Richard Perle, Hilary Putnam, Willard Quine, and Alan Dershowitz, to name a few. In response to his speaking style being criticized as boring, Chomsky said that "I'm a boring speaker and I like it that way.... I doubt that people are attracted to whatever the persona is.... People are interested in the issues, and they're interested in the issues because they are important." "We don't want to be swayed by superficial eloquence, by emotion and so on."

Political views

Chomsky has stated that his "personal visions are fairly traditional anarchist ones, with origins in the Enlightenment and classical liberalism" and he has praised libertarian socialism. Although Chomsky tries to avoid the ambiguity of labels, his political views are often characterized in news accounts as "leftist" or "left-wing," and he has described himself as an anarcho-syndicalist. He is a member of the Campaign for Peace and Democracy and the Industrial Workers of the World international union. He published a book on anarchism titled ''Chomsky on Anarchism'', published by the anarchist book collective AK Press in 2006.

Chomsky has engaged in political activism all of his adult life and expressed opinions on politics and world events, which are widely cited, publicized and discussed. Chomsky has in turn argued that his views are those the powerful do not want to hear and for this reason he is considered an American political dissident.

Chomsky asserts that authority, unless justified, is inherently illegitimate and that the burden of proof is on those in authority. If this burden can't be met, the authority in question should be dismantled. Authority for its own sake is inherently unjustified. An example given by Chomsky of a legitimate authority is that exerted by an adult to prevent a young child from wandering into traffic. He contends that there is little moral difference between chattel slavery and renting one's self to an owner or "wage slavery". He feels that it is an attack on personal integrity that undermines individual freedom. He holds that workers should own and control their workplace, a view held (as he notes) by the Lowell Mill Girls.

Chomsky has strongly criticized the foreign policy of the United States. He claims double standards in a foreign policy preaching democracy and freedom for all while allying itself with non-democratic and repressive organizations and states such as Chile under Augusto Pinochet and argues that this results in massive human rights violations. He often argues that America's intervention in foreign nations, including the secret aid given to the Contras in Nicaragua, an event of which he has been very critical, fits any standard description of terrorism, including "official definitions in the US Code and Army Manuals in the early 1980s." Before its collapse, Chomsky also condemned Soviet imperialism; for example in 1986 during a question/answer following a lecture he gave at Universidad Centroamericana in Nicaragua, when challenged about how he could "talk about North American imperialism and Russian imperialism in the same breath," Chomsky responded: "One of the truths about the world is that there are two superpowers, one a huge power which happens to have its boot on your neck; another, a smaller power which happens to have its boot on other people's necks. I think that anyone in the Third World would be making a grave error if they succumbed to illusions about these matters."

Regarding the death of Osama bin Laden, Chomsky stated: "We might ask ourselves how we would be reacting if Iraqi commandos landed at George W. Bush's compound, assassinated him, and dumped his body in the Atlantic. Uncontroversially, his crimes vastly exceed bin Laden’s, and he is not a 'suspect' but uncontroversially the 'decider' who gave the orders to commit the 'supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole' (quoting the Nuremberg Tribunal) for which Nazi criminals were hanged: the hundreds of thousands of deaths, millions of refugees, destruction of much of the country, [and] the bitter sectarian conflict that has now spread to the rest of the region."

He has argued that the mass media in the United States largely serve as a "bought priesthood" of the U.S. government and U.S.-based corporations, with the three intertwined through common interests. In a famous reference to Walter Lippmann, Chomsky along with his coauthor Edward S. Herman has written that the American media manufactures consent among the public. Chomsky has condemned the 2010 US Supreme Court ''Citizens United'' ruling revoking the limits on campaign finance, calling it a "corporate takeover of democracy."

Chomsky opposes the U.S. global "war on drugs", claiming its language is misleading, and refers to it as "the war on certain drugs." He favors drug policy reform, in education and prevention rather than military or police action as a means of reducing drug use. In an interview in 1999, Chomsky argued that, whereas crops such as tobacco receive no mention in governmental exposition, other non-profitable crops, such as marijuana are attacked because of the effect achieved by persecuting the poor. He has stated:

U.S. domestic drug policy does not carry out its stated goals, and policymakers are well aware of that. If it isn't about reducing substance abuse, what is it about? It is reasonably clear, both from current actions and the historical record, that substances tend to be criminalized when they are associated with the so-called dangerous classes, that the criminalization of certain substances is a technique of social control.

Chomsky is critical of the American "state capitalist" system and big business, he describes himself as a socialist, specifically an anarcho-syndicalist, and is critical of "authoritarian" communist branches of socialism. He also believes that socialist values exemplify the rational and morally consistent extension of original unreconstructed classical liberal and radical humanist ideas to an industrial context. He believes that society should be highly organized and based on democratic control of communities and work places. He believes that the radical humanist ideas of his two major influences, Bertrand Russell and John Dewey, were "rooted in the Enlightenment and classical liberalism, and retain their revolutionary character."

Chomsky has stated that he believes the United States remains the "greatest country in the world", a comment that he later clarified by saying, "Evaluating countries is senseless and I would never put things in those terms, but that some of America's advances, particularly in the area of free speech, that have been achieved by centuries of popular struggle, are to be admired." He has also said "In many respects, the United States is the freest country in the world. I don't just mean in terms of limits on state coercion, though that's true too, but also in terms of individual relations. The United States comes closer to classlessness in terms of interpersonal relations than virtually any society."

Chomsky objects to the criticism that anarchism is inconsistent with support for government welfare, stating in part:

One can, of course, take the position that we don't care about the problems people face today, and want to think about a possible tomorrow. OK, but then don't pretend to have any interest in human beings and their fate, and stay in the seminar room and intellectual coffee house with other privileged people. Or one can take a much more humane position: I want to work, today, to build a better society for tomorrow – the classical anarchist position, quite different from the slogans in the question. That's exactly right, and it leads directly to support for the people facing problems today: for enforcement of health and safety regulation, provision of national health insurance, support systems for people who need them, etc. That is not a sufficient condition for organizing for a different and better future, but it is a necessary condition. Anything else will receive the well-merited contempt of people who do not have the luxury to disregard the circumstances in which they live, and try to survive.

Chomsky holds views that can be summarized as anti-war but not strictly pacifist. He prominently opposed the Vietnam War and most other wars in his lifetime. He expressed these views with tax resistance and peace walks. In 1968, he signed the “Writers and Editors War Tax Protest” pledge, vowing to refuse tax payments in protest against the Vietnam War. He published a number of articles about the war in Vietnam, including "The Responsibility of Intellectuals". He maintains that U.S. involvement in World War II to defeat the Axis powers was probably justified, with the caveat that a preferable outcome would have been to end or prevent the war through earlier diplomacy. He believes that the dropping of nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were "among the most unspeakable crimes in history".

Chomsky has made many criticisms of the Israeli government, its supporters, the United States' support of the government and its treatment of the Palestinian people, arguing that " 'supporters of Israel' are in reality supporters of its moral degeneration and probable ultimate destruction" and that "Israel's very clear choice of expansion over security may well lead to that consequence." Chomsky disagreed with the founding of Israel as a Jewish state, saying, "I don't think a Jewish or Christian or Islamic state is a proper concept. I would object to the United States as a Christian state." Chomsky hesitated before publishing work critical of Israeli policies while his parents were alive, because he "knew it would hurt them" he says, "mostly because of their friends, who reacted hysterically to views like those expressed in my work." On May 16, 2010, Israeli authorities detained Chomsky and ultimately refused his entry to the West Bank via Jordan. A spokesman for the Israeli Prime Minister indicated that the refusal of entry was simply due to a border guard who "overstepped his authority" and a second attempt to enter would likely be allowed. Chomsky disagreed, saying that the Interior Ministry official who interviewed him was taking instructions from his superiors. Chomsky maintained that based on the several hours of interviewing, he was denied entry because of the things he says and because he was visiting a university in the West Bank but no Israeli universities.

Chomsky has a broad view of free-speech rights, especially in the mass media, and opposes censorship. He has stated that "with regard to freedom of speech there are basically two positions: you defend it vigorously for views you hate, or you reject it and prefer Stalinist/fascist standards". With reference to the United States diplomatic cables leak, Chomsky suggested that "perhaps the most dramatic revelation ... is the bitter hatred of democracy that is revealed both by the U.S. Government -- Hillary Clinton, others -- and also by the diplomatic service." Chomsky refuses to take legal action against those who may have libeled him and prefers to counter libels through open letters in newspapers. One notable example of this approach is his response to an article by Emma Brockes in ''The Guardian'' which alleged he denied the existence of the Srebrenica massacre. Chomsky's complaint prompted The Guardian to publish an apologetic correction and to withdraw the article from the paper's website.

Chomsky has frequently stated that there is no connection between his work in linguistics and his political views and is generally critical of the idea that competent discussion of political topics requires expert knowledge in academic fields. In a 1969 interview, he said regarding the connection between his politics and his work in linguistics:

I still feel myself that there is a kind of tenuous connection. I would not want to overstate it but I think it means something to me at least. I think that anyone's political ideas or their ideas of social organization must be rooted ultimately in some concept of human nature and human needs.

Some critics have accused Chomsky of hypocrisy when, in spite of his political criticism of American and European military imperialism, early research at the institution (MIT) where he did his linguistic research had been substantially funded by the American military. Chomsky makes the argument that because he has received funding from the U.S. military, he has an even greater responsibility to criticize and resist its immoral actions.

He is also an outspoken advocate against the use of the death penalty and has spoken against the execution of Steven Woods.

I think the death penalty is a crime no matter what the circumstances, and it is particularly awful in the Steven Woods case. I strongly oppose the execution of Steven Woods on September 13, 2011.

Influence in other fields

''Chomskyan'' models have been used as a theoretical basis in several other fields. The Chomsky hierarchy is often taught in fundamental computer science courses as it confers insight into the various types of formal languages. This hierarchy can also be discussed in mathematical terms and has generated interest among mathematicians, particularly combinatorialists. Some arguments in evolutionary psychology are derived from his research results.

The 1984 Nobel Prize laureate in Medicine and Physiology, Niels K. Jerne, used Chomsky's generative model to explain the human immune system, equating "components of a generative grammar ... with various features of protein structures". The title of Jerne's Stockholm Nobel lecture was "The Generative Grammar of the Immune System".

Nim Chimpsky, a chimpanzee who was the subject of a study in animal language acquisition at Columbia University, was named after Chomsky in reference to his view of language acquisition as a uniquely human ability.

Famous computer scientist Donald Knuth admits to reading Syntactic Structures during his honeymoon and being greatly influenced by it. "...I must admit to taking a copy of Noam Chomsky's Syntactic Structures along with me on my honeymoon in 1961 ... Here was a marvelous thing: a mathematical theory of language in which I could use a computer programmer's intuition!".

Another focus of Chomsky's political work has been an analysis of mainstream mass media (especially in the United States), its structures and constraints, and its perceived role in supporting big business and government interests.

Edward S. Herman and Chomsky's book ''Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media'' (1988) explores this topic in depth, presenting their "propaganda model" of the news media with numerous detailed case studies demonstrating it. According to this propaganda model, more democratic societies like the U.S. use subtle, non-violent means of control, unlike totalitarian systems, where physical force can readily be used to coerce the general population. In an often-quoted remark, Chomsky states that "propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state." (Media Control)

The model attempts to explain this perceived systemic bias of the mass media in terms of structural economic causes rather than a conspiracy of people. It argues the bias derives from five "filters" that all published news must "pass through," which combine to systematically distort news coverage.

In explaining the first filter, ownership, he notes that most major media outlets are owned by large corporations. The second, funding, notes that the outlets derive the majority of their funding from advertising, not readers. Thus, since they are profit-oriented businesses selling a product—readers and audiences—to other businesses (advertisers), the model expects them to publish news that reflects the desires and values of those businesses. In addition, the news media are dependent on government institutions and major businesses with strong biases as sources (the third filter) for much of their information. Flak, the fourth filter, refers to the various pressure groups that attack the media for supposed bias. Norms, the fifth filter, refer to the common conceptions shared by those in the profession of journalism. (Note: in the original text, published in 1988, the fifth filter was "anticommunism". However, with the fall of the Soviet Union, it has been broadened to allow for shifts in public opinion.) The model describes how the media form a decentralized and non-conspiratorial but nonetheless very powerful propaganda system, that is able to mobilize an elite consensus, frame public debate within elite perspectives and at the same time give the appearance of democratic consent.

Chomsky and Herman test their model empirically by picking "paired examples"—pairs of events that were objectively similar except for the alignment of domestic elite interests. They use a number of such examples to attempt to show that in cases where an "official enemy" does something (like murder of a religious official), the press investigates thoroughly and devotes a great amount of coverage to the matter, thus victims of "enemy" states are considered "worthy". But when the domestic government or an ally does the same thing (or worse), the press downplays the story, thus victims of US or US client states are considered "unworthy."

They also test their model against the case that is often held up as the best example of a free and aggressively independent press, the media coverage of the Tet Offensive during the Vietnam War. Even in this case, they argue that the press was behaving subserviently to elite interests.

Academic achievements, awards and honors

In early 1969, he delivered the John Locke Lectures at Oxford University; in January 1970, the Bertrand Russell Memorial Lecture at University of Cambridge; in 1972, the Nehru Memorial Lecture in New Delhi; in 1977, the Huizinga Lecture in Leiden; in 1988 the Massey Lectures at the University of Toronto, titled "Necessary Illusions: Thought Control in Democratic Societies"; in 1997, The Davie Memorial Lecture on Academic Freedom in Cape Town, and many others.

Chomsky has received many honorary degrees from universities around the world, including from the following:

University of London

University of Chicago

Loyola University of Chicago

Swarthmore College

University of Delhi

Bard College

University of Massachusetts

University of Pennsylvania

Georgetown University

Amherst College

University of Cambridge

University of Colorado

University of Buenos Aires

McGill University

Rovira i Virgili University

Columbia University

Villanova University

University of Connecticut

University of Maine

Scuola Normale Superiore

University of Western Ontario

University of Toronto

Harvard University

Universidad de Chile

University of Bologna

Universidad de La Frontera

University of Calcutta

Universidad Nacional de Colombia

Vrije Universiteit Brussel

Santo Domingo Institute of Technology

Uppsala University

University of Athens

University of Cyprus

Central Connecticut State University

National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM)

Peking University National Tsing Hua University He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Sciences, and the American Philosophical Society. In addition, he is a member of other professional and learned societies in the United States and abroad, and is a recipient of the Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award of the American Psychological Association, the Kyoto Prize in Basic Sciences, the Helmholtz Medal, the Dorothy Eldridge Peacemaker Award, the 1999 Benjamin Franklin Medal in Computer and Cognitive Science, and others. He is twice winner of The Orwell Award, granted by The National Council of Teachers of English for "Distinguished Contributions to Honesty and Clarity in Public Language" (in 1987 and 1989).

He is a member of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts in Department of Social Sciences.

In 2005, Chomsky received an honorary fellowship from the Literary and Historical Society. In 2007, Chomsky received The Uppsala University (Sweden) Honorary Doctor's degree in commemoration of Carolus Linnaeus. In February 2008, he received the President's Medal from the Literary and Debating Society of the National University of Ireland, Galway. Since 2009 he is an honorary member of IAPTI.

In 2010, Chomsky received the Erich Fromm Prize in Stuttgart, Germany. In April 2010, Chomsky became the third scholar to receive the University of Wisconsin's A.E. Havens Center's Award for Lifetime Contribution to Critical Scholarship.

Chomsky has an Erdős number of four.

Chomsky was voted the leading living public intellectual in The 2005 Global Intellectuals Poll conducted by the British magazine ''Prospect''. He reacted, saying "I don't pay a lot of attention to polls". In a list compiled by the magazine ''New Statesman'' in 2006, he was voted seventh in the list of "Heroes of our time".

Actor Viggo Mortensen with avant-garde guitarist Buckethead dedicated their 2006 album, called ''Pandemoniumfromamerica'', to Chomsky.

On January 22, 2010, a special honorary concert for Chomsky was given at Kresge Auditorium at MIT. The concert, attended by Chomsky and dozens of his family and friends, featured music composed by Edward Manukyan and speeches by Chomsky's colleagues, including David Pesetsky of MIT and Gennaro Chierchia, head of the linguistics department at Harvard University.

In June 2011, Chomsky was awarded the Sydney Peace Prize, which cited his "unfailing courage, critical analysis of power and promotion of human rights".

In 2011, Chomsky was inducted into IEEE Intelligent Systems' AI's Hall of Fame for the "significant contributions to the field of AI and intelligent systems".

Bibliography

Filmography

''Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media'', Director: Mark Achbar and Peter Wintonick (1992)

''Last Party 2000'', Director: Rebecca Chaiklin and Donovan Leitch (2001)

''Power and Terror: Noam Chomsky in Our Times'', Director: John Junkerman (2002)

''Distorted Morality—America's War On Terror?'', Director: John Junkerman (2003)

''Noam Chomsky: Rebel Without a Pause'' (TV), Director: Will Pascoe (2003)

''The Corporation'', Directors: Mark Achbar and Jennifer Abbott; Writer: Joel Bakan (2003)

''Peace, Propaganda & the Promised Land'', Directors: Sut Jhally and Bathsheba Ratzkoff (2004)

''On Power, Dissent and Racism: A discussion with Noam Chomsky'', Journalist: Nicolas Rossier; Producers: Eli Choukri, Baraka Productions (2004)

''Lake of Fire'', Director: Tony Kaye (2006)

''American Feud: A History of Conservatives and Liberals'', Director: Richard Hall (2008)

''Chomsky & Cie'' Director: Olivier Azam (out in 2008)

''An Inconvenient Tax'', Director: Christopher P. Marshall (out in 2009)

''The Money Fix,'' Director: Alan Rosenblith (2009)

''Pax Americana and the Weaponization of Space'', Director: Denis Delestrac (2010)

''Article 12: Waking up in a surveillance society'', Director: Juan Manuel Biaiñ (2010)

See also

American philosophy

Axiom of categoricity

Chomskybot

"Colorless green ideas sleep furiously"

English studies

Knowledge worker

List of American philosophers

Important publications in computability

''The Anti-Chomsky Reader''

References

External links

chomsky.info official website

Noam Chomsky at MIT

Noam Chomsky articles on libcom.org

Noam Chomsky at ''Democracy Now!''

Column archive at ''The Guardian''

Articles and videos featuring Noam Chomsky at AnarchismToday.org

;Interviews and articles

Talks by Noam Chomsky at A-Infos Radio Project

Interview about Human Rights by scholars (English with French subtitles) – 2009

Chomsky media files at the Internet Archive

Noam Chomsky interviewed by Alyssa McDonald on ''New Statesman'', September 2010.

The Real News (TRNN) ">Noam Chomsky Interviews on The Real News (TRNN)

Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance – discussion on the "Bush doctrine" and its implications, C-SPAN, Feb 2004

Philosophies of Language & Politics – talk at The Commonwealth Club, October 2009

Thought Economics Interviews Noam Chomsky – Noam Chomsky interviewed on global democracy, April 2011

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Coordinates	23°33′″N46°38′″N
birth name	Alan Oswald Moore
pseudonym	Curt VileJill de RayTranslucia Baboon
birth date	November 18, 1953
birth place	Northampton, Northamptonshire, England, UK
occupation	Comics writer, novelist, short story writer, screenwriter, musician, cartoonist, magician
nationality	British
genre	Science fiction, fiction, non-fiction
notableworks	''Watchmen'', ''V for Vendetta'', ''From Hell'', ''The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen'', ''Batman: The Killing Joke'', ''Voice of the Fire'', ''Lost Girls''
spouse	Phyllis MooreMelinda Gebbie
children	Amber MooreLeah Moore
influences	William Blake, Angela Carter, William S. Burroughs, Thomas Pynchon, Robert Anton Wilson, Clive Barker, Bryan Talbot, Michael Moorcock, Bertold Brecht, H. P. Lovecraft, Iain Sinclair, Will Eisner, Steve Ditko, Jack Kirby, Edgar Allan Poe, Dave Sim
influenced	Neil Gaiman, Susanna Clarke, Joss Whedon, Kurt Busiek, Brian Azzarello, Brian K. Vaughan, Mark Millar Geoff Johns, Damon Lindelof, Dax Riggs, Tim Burton}}

Alan Oswald Moore (born 18 November 1953) is an English writer primarily known for his work in comic books, a medium where he has produced a number of critically acclaimed and popular series, including ''Watchmen'', ''V for Vendetta'', and ''From Hell''. Frequently described as the best comic writer in history, he has also been described as "one of the most important British writers of the last fifty years". He has occasionally used such pseudonyms as Curt Vile, Jill de Ray, and Translucia Baboon.

Moore started out writing for British underground and alternative fanzines in the late 1970s before achieving success publishing comic strips in such magazines as ''2000AD'' and ''Warrior''. He was subsequently picked up by the American DC Comics, and as "the first comics writer living in Britain to do prominent work in America", In the late 1980s and early 1990s he left the comic industry mainstream and went independent for a while, working on experimental work such as the epic ''From Hell'', pornographic ''Lost Girls'', and the prose novel ''Voice of the Fire''. He subsequently returned to the mainstream later in the 1990s, working for Image comics, before developing America's Best Comics, an imprint through which he published works such as ''The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen'' and the occult-based ''Promethea''.

Moore is also known as a Neopagan, occultist, ceremonial magician, vegetarian and anarchist and has featured such themes in works including ''Promethea'', ''From Hell'' and ''V for Vendetta'', as well as performing avant-garde spoken word occult "workings" with The Moon and Serpent Grand Egyptian Theatre of Marvels, some of which have been released on CD.

Despite his own personal objection to them, his books have provided the basis for a number of Hollywood films, including ''From Hell'' (2001), ''The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen'' (2003), ''V for Vendetta'' (2005) and ''Watchmen'' (2009). Moore has also been referenced in popular culture, and has been recognised as an influence on a variety of literary and television figures including Neil Gaiman, Joss Whedon, and Damon Lindelof.

Biography

Early life: 1953–1977

Moore was born on 18 November 1953, at St. Edmond’s Hospital in Northampton, Northamptonshire, England, to a working class family whom he believed had lived in the town for several generations. where he first came into contact with people who were middle class and better educated, and he was shocked at how he went from being one of the top pupils at his primary school to one of the lowest in the class at secondary. Subsequently disliking school and having "no interest in academic study", he believed that there was a "covert curriculum" being taught that was designed to indoctrinate children with "punctuality, obedience and the acceptance of monotony". The headmaster of the school subsequently "got in touch with various other academic establishments that I'd applied to and told them not to accept me because I was a danger to the moral well-being of the rest of the students there, which was possibly true." Meanwhile, Moore decided to focus more fully on writing comics rather than both writing and drawing them, stating that "After I'd been doing [it] for a couple of years, I realised that I would never be able to draw well enough and/or quickly enough to actually make any kind of decent living as an artist."

To learn more about how to write a successful comic book script, he asked advice from his friend, comic book writer Steve Moore, whom he had known since he was fourteen. – and instead asked him to write some short stories for the publication's ''Future Shocks'' series instead. While the first few were rejected, Grant advised Moore on improvements, and eventually accepted the first of many. Meanwhile, Moore had also begun writing minor stories for ''Doctor Who Weekly'', and later commented that "I really, really wanted a regular strip. I didn’t want to do short stories… But that wasn't what was being offered. I was being offered short four or five page stories where everything had to be done in those five pages. And, looking back, it was the best possible education that I could have had in how to construct a story." Another series he produced for ''2000AD'' was ''D.R. and Quinch'', which was illustrated by Alan Davis. The story, which Moore described as "continuing the tradition of Dennis the Menace, but giving him a thermonuclear capacity", He replaced the former writer Dave Thorpe, but maintained the original artist, Alan Davis, who Moore described as "an artist whose love for the medium and whose sheer exultation upon finding himself gainfully employed within it shine from every line, every new costume design, each nuance of expression." The third series that Moore produced for ''Warrior'' was ''The Bojeffries Saga'', a comedy about a working-class English family of vampires and werewolves, drawn by Steve Parkhouse. ''Warrior'' closed before these stories were completed, but under new publishers both ''Miracleman'' and ''V for Vendetta'' were resumed by Moore, who finished both stories by 1989. Moore's biographer Lance Parkin remarked that "reading them through together throws up some interesting contrasts – in one the hero fights a fascist dictatorship based in London, in the other an Aryan superman imposes one."

Meanwhile, during this same period, he – using the pseudonym of Translucia Baboon – became involved in the music scene, founding his own band, The Sinister Ducks, with David J (of goth band Bauhaus) and Alex Green, and in 1983 released a single, ''March of the Sinister Ducks'', with sleeve art by illustrator Kevin O'Neill. In 1984, Moore and David J also released a 12-inch single featuring a recording of "This Vicious Cabaret", a song featured in ''V for Vendetta'', which was released on the Glass Records label.

The American mainstream and DC Comics: 1983–1988

Moore's British work brought him to the attention of DC Comics editor Len Wein, who hired him in 1983 to write ''Swamp Thing'', then a formulaic and poor-selling monster comic. Moore, along with artists Stephen R. Bissette, Rick Veitch, and John Totleben, deconstructed and reimagined the character, writing a series of formally experimental stories that addressed environmental and social issues alongside the horror and fantasy, bolstered by research into the culture of Louisiana, where the series was set. For ''Swamp Thing'' he revived many of DC's neglected magical and supernatural characters, including the Spectre, the Demon, the Phantom Stranger, Deadman, and others, and introduced John Constantine, an English working-class magician based visually on the British musician Sting, which later became the protagonist of the series ''Hellblazer'', the longest continuously published comic of DC's Vertigo imprint. Moore would continue writing ''Swamp Thing'' for about three years, from issue No. 20 (January 1984) through to issue No. 64 (September 1987) with the exception of issues No. 59 and #62. These titles laid the foundation of what became the Vertigo line.

Moore began producing further stories for DC Comics, including a two-part story for ''Vigilante'', which dealt with domestic abuse. He was eventually given the chance to write a story for one of DC's best known superheroes, Superman, entitled ''For the Man Who Has Everything'', which was illustrated by Dave Gibbons and released in 1985. In this story, Wonder Woman, Batman, and Robin visit Superman on his birthday, only to find that he has been overcome by an alien organism and is hallucinating about his heart's desire. Indeed, it is widely seen as Moore's best work, and has been regularly described as the greatest comic book ever written.

In 1987 Moore submitted a proposal for a miniseries called ''Twilight of the Superheroes'', the title a twist on Richard Wagner's opera ''Götterdämmerung'' (meaning "Twilight of the Gods"). The series was set in the future of the DC Universe, where the world is ruled by superheroic dynasties, including the House of Steel (presided over by Superman and Wonder Woman) and the House of Thunder (led by the Captain Marvel family). These two houses are about to unite through a dynastic marriage, their combined power potentially threatening freedom, and several characters, including John Constantine, attempt to stop it and free humanity from the power of superheroes. The series would also have restored the DC Universe's multiple earths, which had been eliminated in the continuity-revising 1985 miniseries ''Crisis on Infinite Earths''. The series was never commissioned, but copies of Moore's detailed notes have appeared on the Internet and in print despite the efforts of DC, who consider the proposal their property. and according to certain reports, he and Gibbons gained only 2% of the profits earned by DC for ''Watchmen''. Moore followed this with a second political work, ''Shadowplay: The Secret Team'', a comic illustrated by Bill Sienkiewicz for Eclipse Comics and commissioned by the Christic Institute, which was included as a part of the anthology ''Brought to Light'', a description of the CIA's covert drug smuggling and arms dealing. Following this, in 1991 the company Victor Gollancz Ltd published Moore's ''A Small Killing'', a full length story illustrated by Oscar Zarate, about a once idealistic advertising executive haunted by his boyhood self. According to Lance Parkin, ''A Small Killing'' is "quite possibly Moore's most underrated work." Moore reasoned that to solve a crime holistically, one would need to solve the entire society it occurred in, and depicts the murders as a consequence of the politics and economics of the time. Just about every notable figure of the period is connected with the events in some way, including "Elephant Man" Joseph Merrick, Oscar Wilde, Native American writer Black Elk, William Morris, artist Walter Sickert, and Aleister Crowley, who makes a brief appearance as a young boy. Illustrated in a sooty pen and ink style by Eddie Campbell, ''From Hell'' took nearly ten years to complete, outlasting ''Taboo'' and going through two more publishers before being collected as a trade paperback by Eddie Campbell Comics. It was widely praised, with comics author Warren Ellis calling it "my all-time favourite graphic novel".

The other series that Moore began for ''Taboo'' was ''Lost Girls'', which he described as a work of intelligent "pornography". Illustrated by Melinda Gebbie, whom Moore subsequently entered into a relationship with, it was set in 1913, where Alice from ''Alice in Wonderland'', Dorothy from ''The Wizard of Oz'' and Wendy from ''Peter Pan'' – who are each of a different age and class – all meet in a European hotel and regale each other with tales of their sexual encounters. Moore decided that there were too many people involved to back out from the project, and so ABC was launched in early 1999. A ''Cobweb'' story Moore wrote for ''Tomorrow Stories'' No. 8 featuring references to L. Ron Hubbard, American occultist Jack Parsons, and the "Babalon Working", was blocked by DC Comics due to the subject matter. Ironically, it was later revealed that they had already published a version of the same event in their Paradox Press volume ''The Big Book of Conspiracies''.

In 2003, a documentary about him was made by Shadowsnake Films, titled ''The Mindscape of Alan Moore'', which was later released on DVD.

Return to independence: 2009–present

With many of the stories he had planned for America's Best Comics brought to an end, and with his increasing dissatisfaction with how DC Comics were interfering with his work, he decided to once more pull out of the comics mainstream. Speaking to Bill Baker in 2005, he remarked that "I love the comics medium. I pretty much detest the comics industry. Give it another 15 months, I'll probably be pulling out of mainstream, commercial comics." He expanded on this for a 2009 book-length essay entitled ''25,000 years of Erotic Freedom'', which was described by a reviewer as "a tremendously witty history lecture – a sort of Horrible Histories for grownups."

In 2007, Moore married Melinda Gebbie after a lengthy romance. The same year he also appeared in animated form in an episode of ''The Simpsons'' – a show he is a fan of – entitled "Husbands and Knives", which aired on his fifty-fourth birthday.

In 2010 Moore began what he described as "the 21st century's first underground magazine". Titled ''Dodgem Logic'', the bi-monthly publication consists of work by a number of Northampton-based authors and artists, as well as original contributions from Moore.

In January 2011, the fourth and final issue of Moore's ''Neonomicon'' was released by Avatar Press. This horror mini-series is set in the H. P. Lovecraft universe, and like its prequel ''The Courtyard'', is illustrated by Jacen Burrows. In summer 2011 the second instalment of ''The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Century'' will be released, set in 1969.

A planned future project is an occult textbook known as ''The Moon and Serpent Bumper Book of Magic'', written with Steve Moore. It will be published by Top Shelf in "the future". He is also currently working on a second novel, ''Jerusalem'', which will again be set in Northampton.

Recently Moore has appeared live at music events collaborating with a number of different musicians, with a forthcoming appearance with Stephen O'Malley confirmed for the ATP 'I'll Be Your Mirror' music festival in London.

Work

Themes

In a number of his comics, where he was taking over from earlier writers, including ''Marvelman'', ''Swamp Thing'', and ''Supreme'', he used the "familiar tactic of wiping out what had gone before, giving the hero amnesia and revealing that everything we'd learned to that point was a lie." Thomas Pynchon, Robert Anton Wilson and Iain Sinclair, New Wave science fiction writers like Michael Moorcock and horror writers like Clive Barker. Influences within comics include Will Eisner, Harvey Kurtzman, Jack Kirby and Bryan Talbot.

Recognition and awards

Moore's work in the comic book medium has been widely recognised by his peers and by critics. George Khoury asserted that "to call this free spirit the best writer in the history of comic books is an understatement" Douglas Wolk observed: "Moore has undisputably made it into the Hall of Fame: he's one of the pillars of English language comics, alongside Jack Kirby and Will Eisner and Harvey Kurtzman and not many others. He's also the grand exception in that hall, since the other pillars are artists – and more often than not, writer/artists. Moore is a writer almost exclusively, though his hyper detailed scripts always play to the strengths of the artists he works with. That makes him the chief monkey wrench in comics author theory. The main reason that almost nobody's willing to say that a single cartoonist is ''categorically'' superior to a writer/artist team is that such a rule would run smack into Moore's bibliography. In fact, a handful of cartoonists who almost always write the stories they draw have made exceptions for Moore – Jaime Hernandez, Mark Beyer and most memorably Eddie Campbell."

Moore has won numerous Jack Kirby Awards during his career, including for Best Single Issue for ''Swamp Thing Annual'' No. 2 in 1985 with John Totleben and Steve Bissette, for Best Continuing Series for ''Swamp Thing'' in 1985, 1986 and 1987 with Totleben and Bissette, Best Writer for ''Swamp Thing'' in 1985 and 1986 and for ''Watchmen'' in 1987, and with Dave Gibbons for Best Finite Series and Best Writer/Artist (Single or Team) for ''Watchmen'' in 1987.

Moore has won multiple Eagle Awards, including virtually a "clean sweep" in 1986 for his work on ''Watchmen'' and ''Swamp Thing''. Moore not only won "favourite writer in both the US and UK categories", but had his work win for favourite comic book, supporting character, and new title in the US; and character, continuing story and "character worthy of own title" in the UK (in which last category his works held all top three spots).

Moore has been nominated for the Comics Buyer's Guide Fan Awards several times, winning for Favorite Writer in 1985, 1986, 1987, 1999, and 2000. Also, he won the CBG Fan Award for Favorite Comic Book Story (''Watchmen'') in 1987 and Favorite Original Graphic Novel or Album (''Batman: The Killing Joke'' with Brian Bolland) in 1988.

He received the Harvey Award for Best Writer for 1988 (for ''Watchmen''), for 1995 and 1996 (for ''From Hell''), for 1999 (for his body of work, including ''From Hell'' and ''Supreme''), for 2000 (for ''The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen''), and for 2001 and 2003 (for ''Promethea'').

He has received the Eisner Award for Best Writer nine times since 1988, and among his numerous international prizes are the German Max & Moritz Prize for an exceptional oeuvre (2008) and the British National Comics Award for Best Comics Writer Ever (in 2001 and 2002). Hij also won French awards like the Angoulême International Comics Festival Prize for Best Album for ''Watchmen'' in 1989 and ''V for Vendetta'' in 1990, and the Prix de la critique for ''From Hell'' in 2001, the Swedish Urhunden Prize in 1992 for ''Watchmen'' and several Spanish Haxtur Awards, in 1988 for ''Watchmen'' and 1989 for ''Swamp Thing'' No. 5 (both for Best Writer).

Moore was also lauded outside the world of comics. In 1988, Moore and artist Dave Gibbons won a Hugo Award in the category Other Forms for ''Watchmen''. The category was created for that year only, via a rarely-used provision that allows the Committee of the Worldcon to create any temporary Additional Category it feels appropriate (no subsequent committee has repeated this category).

In 1988 he received a World Fantasy Award for Best Novella for ''A Hypothetical Lizard'', which Avatar Press published in 2004 as a comics adaption by Antony Johnston. Moore also won two International Horror Guild Awards in the category Graphic Story/Illustrated Narrative (in 1995 with Eddie Campbell for ''From Hell'' and in 2003 with Kevin O'Neill for ''The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen'') and in 2000 ''The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen'' landed a Bram Stoker Award in the category Best Illustrated Narrative.

In 2005, ''Watchmen'' was the only comic book to make it onto Time Magazine's "All-Time 100 Novels" list.

Selected bibliography

;Comics

''V for Vendetta'' (1982–1985)

''Watchmen'' (1986–1987)

''Batman: The Killing Joke'' (1988)

''Lost Girls'' (1991–1992, 2006)

''From Hell'' (1991–1996)

''The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen'' (1999–present)

;Novels

''Voice of the Fire'' (1996)

''Jerusalem'' (forthcoming)

;Non-fiction

''Alan Moore's Writing for Comics'' (2003)

Film adaptations

Due to the success of his comics, a number of filmmakers have expressed a desire to make film adaptations over the years. However, Moore himself has consistently opposed such ventures, stating that "I wanted to give comics a special place when I was writing things like ''Watchmen''. I wanted to show off just what the possibilities of the comic book medium were, and films are completely different." Expressing similar sentiments, he also remarked that "If we only see comics in relation to movies then the best that they will ever be is films that do not move. I found it, in the mid 80s, preferable to concentrate on those things that only comics could achieve. The way in which a tremendous amount of information could be included visually in every panel, the juxtapositions between what a character was saying, and what the image that the reader was looking at would be. So in a sense… most of my work from the 80s onwards was designed to be un-filmable."

The first film to be based upon Moore's work was ''From Hell'' in 2001, which was directed by the Hughes Brothers. The film made a number of radical differences from the original comic, altering the main character from an older, conservative detective to a young character played by Johnny Depp. This was followed in 2003 with ''The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen'', a film that departed radically from the books, changing the ending from a mob war over the skies of London to the infiltration of a secret base in Tibet. For these two works, Moore was content to allow the filmmakers to do whatever they wished and removed himself from the process entirely. "As long as I could distance myself by not seeing them," he said, he could profit from the films while leaving the original comics untouched, "assured no one would confuse the two. This was probably naïve on my part." His attitude changed after producer Martin Poll and screenwriter Larry Cohen filed a lawsuit against 20th Century Fox, alleging that the film ''The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen'' plagiarised an unproduced script they had written entitled ''Cast of Characters''. Although the two scripts bear many similarities, most of them are elements that were added for the film and do not originate in Moore's comics. According to Moore, "They seemed to believe that the head of 20th Century Fox called me up and persuaded me to steal this screenplay, turning it into a comic book they could then adapt back into a movie, to camouflage petty larceny." Moore testified in a deposition, a process he found so unpleasant that he surmised he would have been better treated had he "molested and murdered a busload of retarded children after giving them heroin". Fox's settlement of the case insulted Moore, who interpreted it as an admission of guilt.

In 2005, a film adaptation of Moore's ''V for Vendetta'' was released, produced by the Wachowski Brothers and directed by James McTeigue. Producer Joel Silver said at a press conference for the Warner Bros.' ''V for Vendetta'' that fellow producer Larry Wachowski had talked with Moore, and that "[Moore] was very excited about what Larry had to say." Moore disputed this, reporting that he told Wachowski "I didn't want anything to do with films... I wasn't interested in Hollywood," and demanded that DC Comics force Warner Bros to issue a public retraction and apology for Silver's "blatant lies". Although Silver called Moore directly to apologise, no public retraction appeared. Moore was quoted as saying that the comic book had been "specifically about things like fascism and anarchy. Those words, 'fascism' and 'anarchy,' occur nowhere in the film. It's been turned into a Bush-era parable by people too timid to set a political satire in their own country." This conflict between Moore and DC Comics was the subject of an article in ''The New York Times'' on 12 March 2006, five days before the USA release. In the ''New York Times'' article, Silver stated that about 20 years prior to the film's release, he met with Moore and Dave Gibbons when Silver acquired the film rights to ''V For Vendetta'' and ''Watchmen''. Silver stated, "Alan was odd, but he was enthusiastic and encouraging us to do this. I had foolishly thought that he would continue feeling that way today, not realising that he wouldn't." Moore did not deny this meeting or Silver's characterisation of Moore at that meeting, nor did Moore state that he advised Silver of his change of opinion in those approximately 20 years. The ''New York Times'' article also interviewed David Lloyd about Moore's reaction to the film's production, stating, "Mr. Lloyd, the illustrator of ''V for Vendetta'', also found it difficult to sympathise with Mr. Moore's protests. When he and Mr. Moore sold their film rights to the comic book, Mr. Lloyd said: "We didn't do it innocently. Neither myself nor Alan thought we were signing it over to a board of trustees who would look after it like it was the Dead Sea Scrolls."

Moore has subsequently stated that he wishes his name to be removed from all comic work that he does not own, including ''Watchmen'' and ''V for Vendetta'', much as unhappy film directors often choose to have their names removed and be credited as "Alan Smithee". He also announced that he would not allow his name to be used in any future film adaptations of works he does not own, nor would he accept any money from such adaptations. This request was respected by the producers of the subsequent adaptations of his work ''Constantine'' (2005) (based on a character created by Moore) and ''Watchmen'' (2009), and his name was removed from the ''V for Vendetta'' credits.

Personal life

Since his teenage years Moore has had long hair, and since early adulthood has also worn a beard. He has taken to wearing a number of large rings on his hands, leading him to be described as a "cross between Hagrid and Danny from ''Withnail And I''" who could be easily mistaken for "the village eccentric". On 12 May 2007, he married Melinda Gebbie, with whom he has worked on several comics, most notably ''Lost Girls''.

Religion and magic

On his fortieth birthday in 1993, Moore openly declared his dedication to being a ceremonial magician, something he saw as "a logical end step to my career as a writer". According to a 2001 interview, his inspiration for doing this came when he was writing ''From Hell'' in the early 1990s, a book containing much Freemasonic and occult symbolism: "One word balloon in ''From Hell'' completely hijacked my life… A character says something like, 'The one place gods inarguably exist is in the human mind'. After I wrote that, I realised I'd accidentally made a true statement, and now I'd have to rearrange my entire life around it. The only thing that seemed to really be appropriate was to become a magician." but dismisses as irrelevant. According to Ethan Doyle-White, "The very fact that Glycon was probably one big hoax was enough to convince Moore to devote himself to the scaly lord, for, as Moore maintains, the imagination is just as real as reality."}}

Doing research into conspiracy theories for his work on ''Brought to Light'', he came to develop his own opinions on the subject of a global conspiracy, stating that "Yes, there is a conspiracy, indeed there are a great number of conspiracies, all tripping each other up… the main thing that I learned about conspiracy theories is that conspiracy theorists actually believe in the conspiracy because that is more comforting. The truth of the world is that it is chaotic. The truth is, that it is not the Jewish banking conspiracy, or the grey aliens, or the twelve-foot reptiloids from another dimension that are in control, the truth is far more frightening; no-one is in control, the world is rudderless."

See also

Notes

References

(The definitive behind-the-scenes story of the demise of Moore's magnum opus.)

External links

Dodgem Logic official website

Category:1953 births Category:Living people Category:Alternate history writers Category:Authors of books about writing fiction Category:Chaos magicians Category:Comic strip cartoonists Category:Cthulhu Mythos writers Category:English anarchists Category:English cartoonists Category:English comics writers Category:English novelists Category:English occultists Category:English science fiction writers Category:English vegetarians Category:Old Northamptonians Category:Hugo Award winning authors Category:People from Northampton Category:Prometheus Award winning authors Category:Eisner Award winners for Best Writer Category:Eisner Award winners for Best Writer/Artist Category:Harvey Award winners for Best Writer Category:Postmodern writers

ca:Alan Moore cs:Alan Moore da:Alan Moore de:Alan Moore et:Alan Moore el:Άλαν Μουρ es:Alan Moore fr:Alan Moore ga:Alan Moore gl:Alan Moore ko:앨런 무어 hr:Alan Moore id:Alan Moore (penulis) it:Alan Moore he:אלן מור hu:Alan Moore nl:Alan Moore ja:アラン・ムーア no:Alan Moore nn:Alan Moore pl:Alan Moore pt:Alan Moore ru:Мур, Алан sq:Alan Moore simple:Alan Moore sh:Alan Moore fi:Alan Moore sv:Alan Moore ta:ஆலன் மூர் tr:Alan Moore

Coordinates	23°33′″N46°38′″N
Conflict	Spanish Civil War
Date	17 July 1936  – 1 April 1939
Place	Continental Spain, Spanish Morocco, Spanish Sahara, Canary Islands, Balearic Islands, Spanish Guinea, Mediterranean, North Sea
Result	Nationalist (rebel) victory Dissolution of the Second Spanish Republic Beginning of Franco's dictatorship
Combatant1	Republican Popular Front CNT/FAI UGT ERC Basque Army (1936–1937) ---- Supported by: International Brigades (1936–1938)
Combatant2	National Falange Carlists (1936–1937) CEDA (1936–1937) Alfonsists (1936–1937) Army of Africa Supported by: (CTV) (Condor Legion) Portugal (Viriatos) Foreign volunteers
Commander1	Manuel Azaña Julián Besteiro Francisco Largo Caballero Juan Negrín Indalecio Prieto Vicente Rojo Lluch José Miaja Juan Modesto Juan Hernández Saravia Buenaventura Durruti Lluís Companys José Antonio Aguirre * Manfred Stern "Kléber"
Commander2	José Sanjurjo Emilio Mola Francisco Franco Miguel Cabanellas Manuel Goded Llopis Gonzalo Queipo de Llano Juan Yagüe Manuel Hedilla Manuel Fal Conde José María Gil-Robles y Quiñones
Strength1	450,000 infantry350 aircraft200 batteries(1938)
Strength2	600,000 infantry600 aircraft290 batteries(1938)
Casualties3	~500,000 killed :450,000 fled
Notes	}}

The Spanish Civil War was a major conflict fought in Spain from 17 July 1936 to 1 April 1939. The war began after a ''pronunciamiento'' (declaration of opposition) by a group of conservative generals under the leadership of José Sanjurjo against the Government of the Second Spanish Republic, at the time under the leadership of President Manuel Azaña. The rebel coup was supported by a number of conservative groups including the Spanish Confederation of the Autonomous Right, monarchists such as the Carlists, and the Fascist Falange.

Following the only partially successful coup, Spain was left militarily and politically divided. From that moment onwards Mola's successor, General Franco, began a protracted war with the established government, as loyalist supporters of the centre-left Republican Government fought the rebel forces for control of the country. The conservative generals (''nacionales'') received the support of Nazi Germany and the Kingdom of Italy, as well as neighbouring Portugal, while the Soviet Union and Mexico intervened in support of the Republican government.

Bloody purges occurred in pieces of territory conquered from the republic in order to consolidate Franco's future regime, while similar killings took place in areas taken by the Republicans. The Civil War became notable for the passion and political division it inspired. Many civilians on both sides were killed for their political or religious views, and after the War's conclusion in 1939, those associated with the losing Republicans were persecuted by the victorious Nationalists.

The war ended with the victory of the rebel Nationalists, the overthrow of the Republican Government, and the exile of thousands of Spanish Republicans, many of whom fled to refugee camps in Southern France. With the establishment of a conservative dictatorship led by General Francisco Franco in the aftermath of the Civil War, all right-wing parties were fused into the structure of the Franco regime.

Background

Constitutional monarchy

The century preceding Spain's Civil War was a turbulent time for the nation, which underwent several internal conflicts and revolts among the reformists and conservatives who jockeyed for control. A liberal tradition that first ascended politically with the Spanish Constitution of 1812 sought to abolish the monarchy of the old regime and to establish a more ideologically compatible state. Between 1812 and the Civil War more than a century later, Liberalism's reformists attempted to realign the political system in a way that would accurately reflect Spain's societal realities.

The increasing power of liberals was felt strongly between 1868 and 1874, when a popular uprising led to the overthrowing of Isabella II. Her replacement, King Amadeo I, met a similar fate when he abdicated in 1873 as the monarchy faced mounting political pressure. The First Spanish Republic was soon proclaimed, but the restoration of the Bourbons came in December 1874 while the military quelled demonstrations. While universal male suffrage was introduced in 1890, the resulting elections were dominated by ''caciques'', local political bosses. Carlists – supporters of Infante Carlos and his descendants – opposed all liberal measures, while Anarchism became popular among the Spanish working class to a degree not seen anywhere else in Europe.

In the first two decades of the twentieth century, the industrial working class grew in number. There was a growing discontent amongst Basque and Catalonian people, where much of Spain's industry was based, that the government failed to represent their interests. Spain's socialist party, the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE) and its associated trade union, the ''Unión General de Trabajadores'' (UGT), gained support. A related anti-clericalism arose that was influenced by men such as republican Reformist Party founder Alejandro Lerroux, who argued that the church was inseparable from the systematic oppression felt by Spaniards.

The military was keen to avoid the fracture of the state, and frowned upon regional nationalism. Resentment of the military and conscription grew with the disastrous Rif War, and culminated in the confrontations of Tragic Week that followed on Barcelona's streets. Animosity directed toward the military and government led to the establishment of the National Confederation of Labour (CNT), an anarchist-controlled trade union. After the formation of Comintern in 1919, a growing fear of Communism emerged, and the ideology was repressed by the government through military means. The Socialist PSOE split, with more radical members founding the Communist Party in 1921.

In 1923, Miguel Primo de Rivera seized power in a military coup, and governed Spain as a military dictatorship. He instituted new polices, including a sweeping programme of public works, and attempted to defend the agrarian-industrial monarchist coalition formed during the First World War. His support faded, but following Rivera's resignation in January 1930, there was little support for a return to the pre-1923 system, and the monarchy's backing of the military government caused it to forfeit democratic credibility.

The municipal elections of April 12, 1931 were supported little in major cities, and large numbers of people gathered in the streets of Madrid. King Alfonso XIII abdicated, lest he become then cause of an ensuing "fratricidal civil war." The Second Spanish Republic was formed.

Second Republic

The Second Republic had the broad support of all segments of society. Republican Niceto Alcalá-Zamora was made the Prime Minister of the republic. Elections to a constituent Cortes in June 1931 returned a large majority of Republicans and Socialists who formed a coalition of members with differing goals. The state's financial position was poor, and an opposition composed of Catholic movements such as the Asociación Católica de Propagandistas, catastrophic monarchists including Carlists and the Renovación Española, and Fascist organisations fought republican and socialist measures.

Those parts of the CNT willing to cooperate with the republic were forced out while it continued to mount opposition to the government. The opposition gained the support of the church and military, which felt alienated by increasing regional autonomy granted by the central government, and saw governmental reforms aimed at boosting army efficiency as a direct attack. The General Military Academy in Zaragoza, directed by Francisco Franco, was closed by Minister of War Manuel Azaña.

On December 9, 1931, a new constitution, the Spanish Constitution of 1931, was declared. The document was reformist, liberal and democratic in nature, and welcomed by the Republican-Socialist coalition. It appalled landowners, industrialists, the organised church, and army officers. The 1931 constitution removed any special Catholic rights, as the new government believed it was necessary to break the control the church had over Spanish affairs.

On 18 October 1931, Gil Robles the leading spokesman of the parliamentary opposition, called for a crusade against the republic. In October, both Alcalá Zamora and his interior minister, Miguel Maura, resigned, and Manuel Azaña became Prime Minister. Reformist Party founder Alejandro Lerroux, who had sought Azaña's position, felt alienated and led his Radicals to join the opposition, leaving the Prime Minister dependent only on the socialists.

By the end of 1931, King Alfonso, in exile, ceased attempting to prevent an armed insurrection of monarchists in Spain. Azaña declared that Spain had 'ceased to be Catholic'; although statistically justifiable, his remarks were politically unwise. Spanish Catholics enlisted in the opposition.

In August 1932, an unsuccessful uprising by General José Sanjurjo quickly disintegrated, and while Socialists stood by Azaña, the left as a whole fractured, while the right coalesced. Gil Robles set up a new party, the tacitly Fascist Spanish Confederation of the Autonomous Right (, CEDA) to contest the 1933 election. The poll resulted in an overwhelming victory for the right, with the CEDA and Radicals together winning 219 seats, and outspending the Socialists, who campaigned alone.

Between 1934 and 1936, Spain entered a period deemed the "black two years" due to the rising tension and violence before the start of the war. Radicals became more aggressive, and conservatives turned to paramilitary and vigilante actions. The Socialist opposition began to propagate a revolutionary ideal. President Niceto Alcalá-Zamora declined to invite the leader of the CEDA, Gil Robles, to form a government and instead invited the Radical Republican Party's Lerroux to do so. The government set about removing price controls, selling state favours and monopolies, and removing the land reforms, which resulted in growing malnourishment in the south of Spain. The agrarian reforms went largely unenforced.

The first anarchist protests came on 8 December 1933, and were crushed by force easily in most of Spain. Both Carlists and Alfonsist monarchists prepared for fighting, the former undergoing military drills in Navarre. Open violence occurred in the streets of Spanish cities. Lerroux resigned in April 1934. Parts of the Socialist Party attempted to prevent the move towards Bolshevism they saw in the movement, leading to ruptures within the party's structure.

In September, Gil Robles' CEDA announced it would no longer support the Radicals' minority government; it was replaced by a Radical Party cabinet that included three members of his CEDA. A mostly unsuccessful UGT Socialist worker strike was followed by months of retaliation, repression and torture of political prisoners. Robles once again prompted a cabinet collapse, and five members of Lerroux's new government were conceded to CEDA. Farm workers' wages were halved, and the military was purged of Republican members and reformed; those loyal to Robles were promoted – Francisco Franco was made Chief of Staff.

In 1935, Azaña and Indalecio Prieto started to unify the left,staging large, popular rallies, in what would become the Popular Front. Lerroux's Radical government collapsed after two large scandals, including the Straperlo affair. However, Zamora did not allow the CEDA to form a government, and called elections, which were narrowly won by the under-financed Popular Front. Figures on the right began planning to overthrow of the republic. The republicans were left to govern alone; Azaña led a minority government. Acts of violence and reprisals spiralled, and in April parliament replaced Zamora with Azaña by appealing to a constitutional technicality.

CEDA turned its campaign chest over to Emilio Mola, whose organizational skills made him a formidable planner. The Fascist Falange expanded massively. Prieto did his best to avoid revolution, but Communists quickly took over the ranks of socialist organisations, which scared the middle classes. Several generals determined that the government had to be replaced if the dissolution of Spain was to be prevented. Their actions would lead to the military coup that started the Spanish Civil War.

Military coup

Preparations

The republican government had been attempting to remove suspect generals from their posts, and so Franco was sacked as chief of staff and transferred to command of the Canary islands. Goded was sacked as Inspector General and made general of the Balearic islands; Emilio Mola was moved from head of the Army of Africa to be military commander of Pamplona in Navarre. However, this allowed Mola to direct the mainland uprising. General José Sanjurjo became the figurehead of the operation, and helped to come to an agreement with the Carlists. Mola was chief planner and second in command. José Antonio Primo de Rivera was put in prison in mid-March in order to restrict the Falange. However, government actions were not as thorough as they might have been: warnings by the Director of Security and other figures were not acted upon.

On 12 June, Prime Minister Casares Quiroga met General Juan Yagüe, but Yagüe managed to convince Casares of his loyalty to the Republic. Mola began serious planning in the spring. Franco was a key player because of his prestige as a former director of the military academy and as the man who suppressed the Socialist uprising of 1934. He was well respected in the Army of Africa, Spain's toughest military force. He wrote a cryptic letter to Casares on 23 June, suggesting that the military was disloyal, but could be restrained if he were put in charge; Casares did nothing, failing to arrest or buy off Franco. On July 5, an aircraft was chartered to take Franco from the Canary Islands to Morocco. It arrived on July 14.

On 12 July 1936, in Madrid, members of the Falange murdered Lieutenant José Castillo of the Assault Guards police force. Castillo was a member of the Socialist party. The next day, members of the Assault Guards arrested José Calvo Sotelo, a leading Spanish monarchist and a prominent parliamentary conservative. Calvo Sotelo was shot by the Guards without trial. The killing of Sotelo, a prominent member of Parliament, with involvement of the police, aroused suspicions and strong reactions among the government's opponents on the right. Massive reprisals followed. Although the conservative Nationalist generals were already in advanced stages of a planned uprising, the event provided a catalyst and convenient public justification for their coup. The Socialists and Communists (lead by Prieto) demanded that arms be distributed to the people, before the military took over. The Prime Minister was hesitant. Franco's plane landed in Gran Canaria on July 14.

Beginning of the coup

[[File:Guerra Civil Española.svg|thumb|350px|General map of the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939). 10px Main Nationalist centres 10px Main Republican centres 25px Land battles 25px Naval battles 25px Bombed cities 25px Concentration camps 25px Massacres 10px Refugee camps ]] The uprising's timing was fixed at 17 July, at 5:00 p.m.; this was agreed to by the leader of the Carlists, Manuel Fal Conde. However, the timing was changed: the men in Spanish Morocco were to rise up at 5:00 a.m. and those in Spain itself starting exactly a day later, so control of Spanish Morocco could be achieved and forces sent to Iberia from Morocco to coincide with the risings there. The rising was intended to be a swift coup d'état, but the government retained control of most of the country.

Control in Spanish Morocco was all but certain. The plan was discovered in Morocco during 17 July, which prompted it to be enacted immediately. Little resistance was encountered; in total, 189 people were shot by the rebels. Goded and Franco immediately took control of the islands to which they were assigned. On 18 July, Casares Quiroga refused an offer of help from the CNT and UGT, leading the groups to proclaim a general strike, in effect mobilising. They open weapons caches, some buried since the 1934 risings. The paramilitary forces often waited to see the outcome of militia action before either joining or suppressing the rebellion. Quick action by either the rebels or anarchist militias was often enough to decide the fate of a town. General Queipo de Llano managed to secure Seville for the rebels, arresting a number of other officers.

Outcome

The rebels failed to take any major cities with the critical exception of Seville which provided a landing point for Franco’s African troops. The primarily conservative and Catholic areas of Old Castile and León fell quickly. The government retained control of Málaga, Jaén and Almería. Cadiz was taken for the rebels with the help of the first troops from the Army of Africa. In Madrid they were hemmed into the Montaña barracks, with fell with much bloodshed. Republican leader Santiago Casares Quiroga was replaced by José Giral who ordered the distribution of weapons among the civilian population. This facilitated the defeat of the army insurrection in the main industrial centres, including Madrid, Barcelona, and Valencia, but it allowed the anarchists to take control of Barcelona and large swathes of Aragon and Catalonia. General Goded surrendered in Barcelona and was later condemned to death.

The Republican Government ended up with controlling almost all of the east coast and central area around Madrid, as well as Asturias, Cantabria and part of the Basque Country in the north. Mola was keen to create a sense of fear within Nationalist-controlled areas.The rebels termed themselves "Nacionales", normally translated as "Nationalists", although the former implies "true Spaniards" rather than a pure nationalistic cause.

The result of the coup was a nationalist area of control containing 11 million of Spain's population of 25 million. The Nationalists had secured the support of around half of Spain's territorial army, some 60,000 men, joined by the Army of Africa, made up of 35,000 men, and a little under half of Spain's militaristic police forces, the Assault Guards, the Civil Guards, and the Carabineers. Republicans controlled under half of rifles, and about a third of both machine guns and artillery pieces. The Spanish Army had just 18 tanks of a sufficiently modern design, and the Republicans retained 10. Naval capacity was fairly even, with the Republicans retaining a numerical advantage but with the Navy's top ships in Nationalist hands. The Republican navy suffered from the same problems as the army: many officers had defected or had been killed after trying to do so. Two-thirds of air capability was retained by the government – however, the whole of the air service was very outdated.

Combatants

The war was cast by Republican sympathizers as a struggle between "tyranny and democracy", and by Nationalist supporters as between communist and anarchist "red hordes" and "Christian civilization". Nationalists also claimed to be protecting the establishment and bringing security and direction to an ungoverned and lawless society.

Spanish politics, especially on the left, were quite fragmented, as socialists and radicals supported democracy, while communists and anarchists opposed the institution of the republic as much as monarchists. There were internal divisions even among the socialists: a group that adhered to classical Marxism, and a more progressive Marxist group. The Conservatives, by contrast, were united by their fervent opposition to the Republican government, and presented a more unified front.

Republicans

The Republicans (also known as Spanish loyalists) received weapons and volunteers from the Soviet Union, Mexico, the international Marxists movement and International Brigades. Their supporters ranged from centrists who supported a moderately capitalist liberal democracy to revolutionary anarchists; their base was primarily secular and urban, but also included landless peasants, and was particularly strong in industrial regions like Asturias and Catalonia.

This faction was called variously the "loyalists" by its supporters; the "Republicans", "the Popular Front" or "the Government" by all parties, while its enemies referred to Republicans as "the reds". Republicans were supported by most urban workers, a large share of peasants, and much of the educated middle class.

The conservative, strongly Catholic Basque country, along with Galicia and the more left-leaning Catalonia, sought autonomy or even independence from the central government of Madrid. The Republican government allowed for the possibility of self-government for the two regions, whose forces were gathered under the People's Republican Army (''Ejército Popular Republicano'', or EPR).

Nationalists

The Nationalists (''nacionales''), (also called "insurgents", "rebels" or by opponents "Francoists" or "Fascists") fearing national fragmentation, opposed the separatist movements, and were chiefly defined by their anti-communism, which galvanized diverse or opposed movements like falangists and monarchists. Their leaders had a generally wealthier, more conservative, monarchist, landowning background.

The Nationalist side included the Carlists and Alfonsist monarchists, Spanish nationalists, the fascist Falange, and most conservatives and monarchist liberals. Virtually all Nationalist groups had strong Catholic convictions and supported the native Spanish clergy. The Nationals included the majority of the Catholic clergy and practitioners (outside of the Basque region), important elements of the army, most large landowners, and many businessmen.

One of the rightists' principal stated motives was to confront the anti-clericalism of the Republican regime and to defend the Church, which had been the targeted by opponents, including Republicans who blamed the institution for the country's ills. Prior to the war, in the Asturias uprising of 1934, religious buildings were burnt and at least one hundred clergy, religious civilians, and police were killed by revolutionaries against whom the president and the radicals prevented the implementation of serious sanctions or punishment.

Articles 24 and 26 of the Constitution of Spain's Republic had banned the Jesuits, which deeply offended many within the conservative fold. The revolution in the Republican zone at the outset of the war, killing 7,000 clergy and thousands of lay people, drove many Catholics to the Nationalist faction.

Other factions

Catalan and Basque nationalists were not univocal. Left-wing Catalan nationalists sided with the Republicans, while Conservative Catalan nationalists were far less vocal supporting the government due to anti-clericalism and confiscations occurring in areas within its control. Basque nationalists, heralded by the conservative Basque Nationalist Party, were mildly supportive of the Republican government, even though some in Navarre sided with the uprising for the same reasons influencing conservative Catalans. Notwithstanding religious matters, Basque nationalists, who were for the most part Catholic, generally sided with the Republicans.

Foreign involvement

The Spanish Civil War involved large numbers of non-Spanish citizens who participated in combat and advisory positions. Germany and Italy contributed large amounts of financial assistance and military aid to forces led by Franco. Forces fighting on behalf of the Republican faction also received support, but the Republic's allies were seriously hampered by the non-intervention proclaimed by France and the United Kingdom. The attempted suppression of imported materials was largely ineffective, however, and France especially was accused of allowing large shipments to Republican troops. The clandestine actions of the various European powers were at the time considered to be risking another 'Great War'.

The League of Nations' reaction to the war was mostly neutral and insufficient to contain the massive importation by fighting factions of arms and other war resources. Although a Non-Intervention Committee was formed, its policies accomplished little, and its directives were dismantled due to the policies of appeasement practised by European states; the official Spanish government of Juan Negrín was gradually abandoned within the organization during this period.

Support for the Nationalists

Germany

Despite the German signing of a non-intervention agreement in September 1936, various forms of aid and military help from Germany found their way to both sides of the Spanish conflict, largely in support of the Nationalist faction. Nazi actions included the formation of the multitasking Condor Legion, while German efforts to move the Army of Africa to mainland Spain proved successful in the war's early stages. German operations slowly expanded to include strike targets, most notably —and controversially— the bombing of Guernica, which on 26 April 1937 killed 200 to 300 civilians.

German involvement was further manifested through undertakings such as Operation Ursula, a U-boat undertaking, and contributions from the Kriegsmarine. The Legion spearheaded many Nationalist victories, particularly in aerial combat, while Spain further provided a proving ground for German tank tactics. The training German units provided to Nationalist force would prove valuable; by the War's end, perhaps fifty-six thousand Nationalist soldiers encompassing infantry, artillery, aerial and naval forces had been trained by German detachments.

Probably a total of 16,000 German citizens fought in the War, including approximately 300 killed, though no more than ten thousand participated at any one time. German aid to the Nationalists amounted to approximately £43,000,000 ($215,000,000) in 1939 prices, 15.5% of which was used for salaries and expenses and 21.9% for direct delivery of supplies to Spain, while 62.6% was expended on the Condor Legion.

Italy

After Francisco Franco’s request and encouragement by Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini joined the war. While the conquest of Abyssinia had made Italy's delirious of power, a Spanish ally would help secure Italian control of the Mediterranean. The Royal Italian Navy (''Regia Marina Italiana'') played a substantial role in the Mediterranean blockade and ultimately Italy supplied machine guns, artillery, aircraft, tankettes, the Legionary Air Force (), and the Corps of Volunteer Troops (, or CTV) to the Nationalist cause. The Italian CTV would at its peak supply the Nationalists with 50,000 men.

Portugal

António de Oliveira Salazar's Estado Novo played an important role in supplying Franco’s forces with ammunition and logistical help. Despite its discreet direct military involvement — restrained to a somewhat "semi-official" endorsement, by its authoritarian regime, of a volunteer force of up to 20,000, so-called "Viriatos" — for the whole duration of the conflict, Portugal was instrumental in providing the Nationalists with a organizational skills and reassurance from the Spanish neighbor to Franco and his allies that no interference would hinder the supply traffic directed to the Nationalist cause.

Others

Despite the Irish government's prohibition against participating in the war, around six hundred Irishmen, followers of Eoin O'Duffy known as the "Irish Brigade", went to Spain to fight alongside Franco. Romanian volunteers were led by Ion I Moţa, deputy-leader of the Legion of the Archangel Michael (or Iron Guard), whose group of seven Legionaries visited Spain in December 1936 to ally their movement with the Nationalists.

Support for the Republicans

International Brigades

Many non-Spaniards, often affiliated with radical communist or socialist entities, joined the International Brigades, believing that the Spanish Republic was a front line in the war against fascism. The units' represented the largest foreign contingent of those fighting for the Republicans. Roughly forty thousand foreign nationals fought with the Brigades, though no more than 18,000 were entered into the conflict at any given time; they claimed to represent 53 states.

Significant numbers of volunteers originated in France (10,000), Germany and Austria (5,000) and Italy (3,350). More than 1,000 came from the USSR, United States, United Kingdom, Yugoslavia, Hungary and Canada. The Thälmann Battalion, a group of Germans, distinguished their unit during the Siege of Madrid. Americans fought in units such as the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, while Canadians joined the Mackenzie-Papineau Battalion.

Over five hundred Romanians fought on the Republican side, including Romanian Communist Party members Petre Borilă and Valter Roman. About 80 volunteers from Ireland formed the Connolly Column. Some Chinese joined the Brigades, the majority of which returned to China, while some went to prison or French refugee camps, and a handful remained in Spain.

Soviet Union

The Soviet Union primarily provided material assistance to the Republican forces. In total the USSR provided the leftists with 806 planes, 362 tanks, and 1,555 artillery pieces. The Soviet Union ignored the League of Nations embargo and sold arms to the Republic when few other nations would do so; it was therefore the Republic's only source of major weapons. Stalin had signed the Non-Intervention Agreement but decided to break the pact, though he tried doing so secretly, unlike Hitler and Mussolini.

The Soviet premier created a section X of the Soviet Union military to head the weapons shipment operation, coined Operation X. Despite Stalin's interest in aiding the Republicans, however, most of the weapons and artillery sent to Spain were relics, some captured from past conflicts. Occasionally, modern weapons such as BT-5 tanks were sent.

Many of the Soviet deliveries were lost, due to short notice on orders, or arrived only partially matching what Stalin had authorised. When the ships left with supplies for the Republican cause, their journeys were extremely slow. Stalin ordered the builders to include false decks in the original designs of boats. Furthermore, once the sea vessels left shore, the Soviets were required to change flags and boat colors to minimize capture by the Nationalists. Such manoeuvres become unnecessary in 1938, however, when Stalin withdrew his troops and tanks as government ranks floundered. The Republican-Soviet alliance was an uneasy affair, and had the Spanish leftists had the opportunity to buy transport and weapons from alternative sources, they may have cut ties with Moscow.

The Republic was obligated to pay for Soviet arms with official Bank of Spain gold reserves, in an affair that would become a frequent subject of Francoist propaganda, under the term "Moscow Gold". The cost to the Republic of Soviet arms was more than US $500 million (in 1936 prices); the entire of Spain's gold reserve, the fourth-largest in the world. 176 tonnes was transferred through France.

The USSR further sent a number of military advisers to Spain (2,000–3,000), and while Soviet troops amounted to no more than 500 men at a time, Soviet volunteers often operated Soviet-made Republican tanks and aircraft, particularly at the beginning of the war. In addition, the Soviet Union directed Communist parties around the world to organize and recruit the International Brigades. Another significant Soviet involvement were the pervasive activities of the NKVD spanning the Republican rearguard. Communist figures like Vittorio Vidali ("Comandante Contreras"), Iosif Grigulevich and, most prominently, Alexander Orlov led "secret" operations that included murders like those of Andreu Nin and José Robles.

Mexico

Unlike the United States and major Latin American governments such as the ABC Powers and Peru, the Mexican government supported the Republicans. Mexico refused to follow the French-British non-intervention proposals, furnishing $2,000,000 in aid and material assistance, which included 20,000 rifles and 20 million cartridges.

Mexico's most important contributions to the Spanish Republic were its diplomatic help, as well as the sanctuary the nation arranged for Republican refugees, including Spanish intellectuals and orphaned children from Republican families. Some 50,000 took refuge, primarily in Mexico City, accompanied by $300 million in various treasures still owned by the Left.

Course of the war

1936

[[File:Map of the Spanish Civil War in September 1936.png|right|thumb|Map showing Spain in September 1936: ]]

A large air and sea-lift of Nationalist troops in Spanish Morocco was organised to the south-west of Spain. Coup leader Sanjurjo was killed in a plane crash on 20 July, leaving an effective command split between Mola in the North and Franco in the South. This period also saw the worst actions of the so-called "Red" and "White" "Terrors" in Spain. On 21 July, the fifth day of the rebellion, the Nationalists captured the central Spanish naval base, located in Ferrol in north-western Spain.

A rebel force under Colonel Beorlegui Canet, sent by General Mola, undertook the Campaign of Guipúzcoa from July to September. The capture of Guipúzcoa isolated the Republican provinces in the north. On 5 September, after heavy fighting the force took Irún, closing the French border to the Republicans. On 15 September, San Sebastián, home to a divided Republican force of anarchists and Basque nationalists, was taken by Nationalist soldiers. The Nationalists then advanced toward their capital, Bilbao, but were halted by Republican militias on the border of Vizcaya at the end of September.

The Republican government under Giral resigned on 4 September, unable to cope with the situation in which it found itself, and was replaced by a mostly Socialist organization under Largo Caballero. The new leadership began to unify central command in the republican zone. On the Nationalist side, Franco was chosen as chief military commander at a meeting of ranking generals at Salamanca on 21 September, now called by the title ''Generalísimo''. Franco won another victory on 27 September when his troops relieved the Alcázar in Toledo that had been held by a Nationalist garrison under Colonel Moscardo since the beginning of the rebellion, resisting thousands of Republican troops who totally surrounded the isolated building. Two days after relieving the siege, Franco proclaimed himself ''Caudillo'' ("chieftain"), while forcibly unifying the various and diverse Falangist, Royalist and other elements within the Nationalist cause. The diversion to Toledo gave Madrid time to prepare a defense, but was hailed as a major propaganda victory and personal success for Franco.

In October, the Francoist troops launched a major offensive toward Madrid, reaching it in early November and launching a major assault on the city on 8 November. The Republican government was forced to shift from Madrid to Valencia, outside the combat zone, on 6 November. However, the Nationalists' attack on the capital was repulsed in fierce fighting between 8 November and 23 November. A contributory factor in the successful Republican defense was the arrival of the International Brigades, though only an approximate three thousand foreign volunteers participated in the battle. Having failed to take the capital, Franco bombarded it from the air and, in the following two years, mounted several offensives to try to encircle Madrid. The battle of the Corunna Road, a Nationalist offensive to the north-west, pushed Republican forces back, but failed to isolate Madrid. The city lasted into January.

1937

[[File:Map of the Spanish Civil War in October 1937.png|right|thumb|Map showing Spain in October 1937: ]]

With his ranks swelled by Italian troops and Spanish colonial soldiers from Morocco, Franco made another attempt to capture Madrid in January and February 1937, but was again unsuccessful. The Battle of Málaga started in mid-January; this Nationalist offensive in Spain's south-east would turn into a disaster for the Republicans, who were poorly organised and armed. The city was taken by Franco on 8 February. The consolidation of various militias into the Republican Army had started in December 1936. The main Nationalist advance, to cross the Jarama river and cut the supply of Madrid by the Valencia road, termed the Battle of Jarama, led to heavy casualties (6–20,000) on both sides. The operation's main objective was not met, though Nationalists gained a modest amount of territory. A similar Nationalist offensive, the Battle of Guadalajara, was a more significant defeat for Franco and his armies; it proved the only publicised Republican victory of the war. Italian troops and blitzkrieg tactics were used by Franco, and while many strategists blamed the latter for the rightists' defeat, the Germans believed it was the former at fault for the Nationalists' 5,000 casualties and loss of valuable equipment. The German strategists successfully argued that the Nationalists needed to concentrate on vulnerable areas first.

thumb|right|Ruins of [[Guernica (town)|Guernica ]] The "War in the North" began in mid-March, with Vizcaya as a first target. The Basques suffered most from the lack of a suitable air force; on 26 April, the Condor Legion bombed the town of Guernica, killing two to three hundred. The destruction had a significant effect on international opinion. The Basques retreated.

April and May saw infighting among Republican groups in Catalonia. The dispute was between an ultimately victorious government–Communist force and the anarchist CNT. The disturbance pleased Nationalist command, but little was done to exploit Republican divisions. After the fall of Guernica, the Republican government began to fight back with increasing effectiveness. In July, it made a move to recapture Segovia, forcing Franco to delay his advance on the Bilbao front, but for only two weeks. A similar Republican attack on Huesca failed similarly. Mola, Franco's second-in-command, was killed on 3 June. In early July, despite the earlier fall in June of Bilbao, the government launched a strong counter-offensive to the west of Madrid, focusing on Brunete. The Battle of Brunete, however, was a significant defeat for the Republic, which lost many of its most accomplished troops. The offensive had led to an advance of , and left 25,000 Republican casualties.

A Republican offensive against Zaragoza was also a failure. Despite having land and aerial advantages, the Battle of Belchite resulted in an advance of only ten kilometres and the loss of much equipment. Franco invaded Aragón in August and then took the city of Santander. With the surrender of the Republican army in the Basque territory came the Santoña Agreement; Gijón finally fell in late October. Franco had effectively won in the north. At November's end, with Franco's troops closing in on Valencia, the government had to move again, this time to Barcelona.

1938

[[File:Map of the Spanish Civil War in July 1938.png|thumb|right|Map showing Spain in July 1938: ]] The Battle of Teruel was an important confrontation. The city, which had formerly belonged to the Nationalists, was conquered by Republicans in January. The Francoist troops launched an offensive and recovered the city by 22 February, but Franco was forced to rely heavily on German and Italian air support.

On 7 March, Nationalists launched the Aragon Offensive, and by 14 April, they had pushed through to the Mediterranean, cutting the Republican-held portion of Spain in two. The Republican government attempted suing for peace in May, but Franco demanded unconditional surrender; the war raged on. In July, the Nationalist army pressed southward from Teruel and south along the coast toward the capital of the Republic at Valencia, but was halted in heavy fighting along the XYZ Line, a system of fortifications defending Valencia.

The Republican government then launched an all-out campaign to reconnect their territory in the Battle of the Ebro, from 24 July until 26 November. The campaign was unsuccessful, and was undermined by the Franco-British appeasement of Hitler in Munich. The agreement with Britain effectively destroyed Republican morale by ending hope of an anti-fascist alliance with Western powers. The retreat from the Ebro all but determined the final outcome of the war. Eight days before the new year, Franco threw massive forces into an invasion of Catalonia.

1939

[[File:Map of the Spanish Civil War in February 1939.png|thumb|right|Map showing Spain in February 1939: ]] Franco's troops conquered Catalonia in a whirlwind campaign during the first two months of 1939. Tarragona fell on 15 January, followed by Barcelona on 26 January and Gerona on 2 February. On 27 February, the United Kingdom and France recognized the Franco regime.

Only Madrid and a few other strongholds remained for the Republican forces. On 28 March, with the help of pro-Franco forces inside the city, Madrid fell to the Nationalists. The next day, Valencia, which had held out from Nationalists for close to two years, also surrendered. Franco proclaimed victory in a radio speech aired on 1 April, when the last of the Republican forces surrendered.

After the end of the War, there were harsh reprisals against Franco's former enemies; thousands of Republicans were imprisoned and at least 30,000 executed. Other calculations of these deaths range from 50,000 to 200,000 depending on which killings are included.Many others were put to forced labour, building railways, drying out swamps, and digging canals.

Hundreds of thousands of Republicans fled abroad, some 500,000 to France. Refugees were confined in internment camps of the French Third Republic, such as Camp Gurs or Camp Vernet, where twelve thousand Republicans were housed in squalid conditions. Of the 17,000 refugees housed in Gurs, farmers and others who could not find relations in France were encouraged by the Third Republic, in agreement with the Francoist government, to return to Spain. The great majority did so and were turned over to the Francoist authorities in Irún. From there they were transferred to the Miranda de Ebro camp for "purification" according to the Law of Political Responsibilities. After the proclamation by Marshal Philippe Pétain of the Vichy regime, the refugees became political prisoners, and the French police attempted to round up those who had been liberated from the camp. Along with other "undesirables", the Spaniards were sent to the Drancy internment camp before being deported to Nazi Germany. About 5,000 Spaniards thus died in the Mauthausen concentration camp.

After the official end of the war, guerrilla war was waged on an irregular basis by the Spanish Maquis well into the 1950s, being gradually reduced by military defeats and scant support from the exhausted population. In 1944, a group of republican veterans, who also fought in the French resistance against the Nazis, invaded the Val d'Aran in northwest Catalonia, but were defeated after ten days.

Evacuation of children

The Republicans oversaw the evacuation of 30–35,000 children from their zone. This started with Basque areas, from which 20,000 were evacuated. Their destinations included the United Kingdom and the USSR, and many other locations in Europe, along with Mexico. Around 4,000 were taken to the UK against initial opposition from both the government and charitable groups who saw the removal of children from their native country as potentially harmful. The upper age limit was initially set at 12 but raised to 15.

Atrocities

Death totals remain debated. Antony Beevor writes in his history of the Civil War that Franco's ensuing 'white terror' resulted in the deaths of 200,000 people and that the 'red terror' killed 38,000. Julius Ruiz contends that "although the figures remain disputed, a minimum of 37,843 executions were carried out in the Republican zone with a maximum of 150,000 executions (including 50,000 after the war) in Nationalist Spain". In 2008 a Spanish judge, Baltasar Garzón, opened an investigation into the executions and disappearances of 114,266 people between 17 July 1936 and December 1951 (Garzón has since been indicted for violating a 1977 amnesty law through his actions). Among the executions investigated was that of the poet and dramatist Federico García Lorca; mention of his death was forbidden during Franco's regime.

Nationalists

Atrocities of the Nationalists, frequently ordered by authorities in order to eradicate any trace of leftism in Spain, were common. According to historian Paul Preston, the minimum number of those executed by the rebels is 130,000, and is likely to have been far higher. The violence carried out in the rebel zone was carried out by the military, the Civil Guard and the Falange in the name of the regime and legitimized by the Catholic Church.

Many such acts were committed by reactionary groups during the first weeks of the war. This included the execution of school teachers, because the efforts of the Second Spanish Republic to promote laicism and displace the Church from schools by closing religious educational institutions were considered by the Nationalists as an attack on the Roman Catholic Church. Extensive killings of civilians were carried out in the cities Nationalists captured, along with the execution of unwanted individuals. These included non-combatants such as trade-unionists, Popular Front politicians, suspected Freemasons, Basque, Catalan, Andalusian and Galician Nationalists, Republican intellectuals, relatives of known Republicans and those suspected of voting for the Popular Front.

Nationalist forces massacred civilians in Seville, where some 8,000 people were shot; ten thousand were killed in Córdoba. 6–12,000 were killed in Badajoz. In Granada, at least 2000 people were murdered. In February 1937, over seven thousand were killed after the capture of Málaga. When Bilbao was conquered thousands of people were sent to prison; there were fewer executions than usual, however, because of the effect Guernica left on Nationalists' reputations internationally. The numbers killed as the successful columns of the Army of Africa devastated and pillaged their way between Seville and Madrid are particularly difficult to calculate.

Nationalists also murdered Catholic clerics. In one particular incident, following the capture of Bilbao, hundreds of people, including 16 priests who had served as chaplains for the Republican forces, were taken to the countryside or graveyards to be murdered.

Franco's forces also persecuted Protestants, including the murder of twenty Protestant ministers. Franco's forces were determined to remove the "Protestant heresy" from Spain. The Nationalists also persecuted Basques, as they strived to eradicate Basque culture. According to Basque sources, some 22,000 Basques were murdered by Nationalists immediately after the Civil War.

The Nationalist side also conducted aerial bombing of cities in Republican territory, carried out mainly by the ''Luftwaffe'' volunteers of the ''Condor Legion'' and the ''Italian air force'' volunteers of the ''Corpo Truppe Volontarie'', Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia, Guernica, Durango and other cities were targeted, the Bombing of Guernica was among the most controversial.

Republicans

According to the Nationalists, an estimated 55,000 civilians died in Republican-held territories. This is considered excessive by Antony Beevor; however, it was much less than the half a million claimed during the war. The deaths would form the prevailing outside opinion of the Republic up until the bombing of Guernica. The Republican government was anticlerical, and supporters attacked and murdered Roman Catholic clergy in reaction to news of military revolt. In Republican held territories, Roman Catholic churches were desecrated. Through the war, nearly all segments of the Republicans, Basques being a notable exception, took part in semi-organized anti-Roman Catholic killing of 6,832 members of Catholic clergy and religious orders (including 13 bishops, 4,184 priests, 2,365 monks and friars, and 283 nuns). The "Execution" of the Sacred Heart of Jesus by Communist militiamen at Cerro de los Ángeles near Madrid, on 7 August 1936, was the most infamous of widespread desecration of religious property. It was justified by reference to the Church's political role in the Civil War, which was considerable. By the conflict's end 20 percent of the nation's clergy had been killed, though some argue the totals were lower.

Like clergy, civilians were executed in Republican territories. Some civilians were executed as suspected Falangists. Others died in acts of revenge after Republicans heard of massacres carried out in the Nationalist zone. Air raids committed against Republican cities were another driving factor. Republican authorities did not order such measures to be taken. Shopkeepers and industrialists, if rightist collaborators, were shot; if they were well regarded for their attitude to the poor, they were usually spared. Fake justice was sought though commission, known by its name in Russia as ''checas''. As pressure mounted with increasing success of the Nationalists, many civilians were executed by councils and tribunals controlled by competing Communist and Anarchist groups. Some members of the latter were executed by Soviet-advised communist functionaries in Catalonia, as described by George Orwell's description of the purges in Barcelona in 1937 in ''Homage to Catalonia'', which followed a period of increasing tension between Competing elements of the Catalan political scene. Some individuals fled to friendly embassies, which would house up to 8,500 people during the war.

In the Andalusian town of Ronda, 512 alleged Nationalists were executed in the first month of the war. Communist Santiago Carrillo Solares has been accused of the killing of Nationalists in the Paracuellos massacre near Paracuellos del Jarama. Pro-Soviet Communists committed numerous atrocities against fellow Republicans, including other Marxists: André Marty, known as the Butcher of Albacete, was responsible for the deaths of some 500 members of the International Brigades. Andreu Nin, leader of the POUM (Workers' Party of Marxist Unification), and many other prominent POUM members, were murdered by the Communists, with the help of the USSR's NKVD.

Thirty eight thousand people were killed in the Republican zone during the war, 17,000 of whom were killed in Madrid or Catalonia within a month of the coup. Whilst the Communists were forthright in their support of extrajudicial killings, much of the Republican side was appalled by the murders. Azaña came close to resigning. He, alongside other members of parliament and a great number of other local officials, attempted to prevent Nationalist supporters being lynched. Some of those in positions of power intervened personally to stop the killings.

Social revolution

In the anarchist-controlled areas, Aragón and Catalonia, in addition to the temporary military success, there was a vast social revolution in which the workers and peasants collectivised land and industry, and set up councils parallel to the paralyzed Republican government. This revolution was opposed by both the Soviet-supported communists who, perhaps surprisingly, campaigned against the loss of civil property rights. The agrarian collectives had considerable success despite opposition and lack of resources.

As the war progressed, the government and the communists were able to leverage their access to Soviet arms to restore government control over the war effort, through both diplomacy and force. Anarchists and the Workers' Party of Marxist Unification (''Partido Obrero de Unificación Marxista'', POUM) were integrated into the regular army, albeit with resistance; the POUM was outlawed and falsely denounced as an instrument of the fascists. In the ''May Days'' of 1937, many thousands of anarchist and communist Republican soldiers fought for control of strategic points in Barcelona.

The pre-war Falange was a small party of some 30–40,000 members. It also called for a social revolution that would have seen Spanish society transformed by National Syndicalism. Following the execution of its leader, José Antonio Primo de Rivera, by the Republicans, the party swelled in size to several hundred thousand members. The leadership of the Falange suffered 60% casualties in the early days of the civil war and the party was transformed by new members and rising new leaders, called ''camisas nuevas'' ("new shirts"), who were less interested in the revolutionary aspects of National Syndicalism. Subsequently, Franco united all rightist parties into the Traditionalist Spanish Falange and the National Syndicalist Offensive Juntas (, FET y de las JONS).

The 1930s also saw Spain become a focus for pacifist organizations including the Fellowship of Reconciliation, the War Resisters League and the War Resisters' International. Many people including, as they are now called, the 'insumisos' ('defiant ones', conscientious objectors) argued and worked for non-violent strategies. Prominent Spanish pacifists such as Amparo Poch y Gascón and José Brocca supported the Republicans. Brocca argued that Spanish pacifists had no alternative but to make a stand against fascism. He put this stand into practice by various means including organizing agricultural workers to maintain food supplies and through humanitarian work with war refugees.

People

Figures identified with the Nationalist side :''Military''

Francisco Franco (Spain)

Miguel Cabanellas (Spain)

José Sanjurjo (Spain)

Emilio Mola (Spain)

Gonzalo Queipo de Llano (Spain)

Juan Yagüe (Spain)

Hugo Sperrle (Germany)

Wilhelm Ritter von Thoma (Germany)

Wolfram Freiherr von Richthofen (Germany)

Mario Roatta (Italy)

Ettore Bastico (Italy)

:''Non-military''

Salvador Dalí

Pedro Muñoz Seca (assassinated)

Ramón Serrano Súñer

Miguel Delibes

Figures identified with the Republican side :''Politicians or military''

Manuel Azaña (Republican)

Santiago Carrillo (Communist)

Valentin González (''"El Campesino"'') (Communist)

Dolores Ibarruri (''"La Pasionaria"'') (Communist)

Francisco Largo Caballero (Socialist)

Diego Martínez Barrio (Republican)

Juan Negrín (Socialist)

Andrés Nin (Communist)

Indalecio Prieto (Socialist)

:''Others (including volunteers)''

W. H. Auden

Federico García Lorca (assassinated)

Pablo Picasso

Ernest Hemingway

Laurie Lee

George Orwell

Political parties and organizations

See also

List of foreign ships wrecked or lost in the Spanish Civil War

Catholicism in the Second Spanish Republic

''Guernica'' (painting)

''The Falling Soldier''

List of war films and TV specials#Spanish Civil War (1936–1939)

List of foreign correspondents in the Spanish Civil War

Polish volunteers in the Spanish Civil War

Jewish volunteers in the Spanish Civil War

European Civil War

Spain in World War II

Surviving veterans of the Spanish Civil War

SS ''Cantabria''

Nationalist Foreign Volunteers

Pacifism in Spain

Spanish Republican Air Force

References

Notes

Citations

Bibliography and books by noted authors

First published as ''The Spanish Civil War''.

Further reading

External links

Primary documents

Magazines and journals published during the war, an online exhibit maintained by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (English, Spanish)

A collection of essays by Albert and Vera Weisbord with about a dozen essays written during and about the Spanish Civil War.

La Cucaracha, The Spanish Civil War Diary, a detailed chronicle of the events of the war

Ronald Hilton, ''Spain, 1931–36, From Monarchy to Civil War, An Eyewitness Account''

Mary Low and Juan Breá: ''Red Spanish Book''. A testimony by two surrealists and trotskytes

Spanish Civil War and Revolution text archive in the libcom.org library

Southworth Spanish Civil War Collection, books and other literature housed at Mandeville Special Collection Library, University of California, San Diego

Images and films

Spain in Revolt, newsreel documentary (Video Stream) (Part 1, 2)

Imperial War Museum Collection of Spanish Civil War Posters hosted online by Visual Arts Data Service (VADS)

Posters of the Spanish Civil War from UCSD's Southworth collection

Civil War Documentaries made by the CNT

Spanish Civil War and Revolution image gallery – photographs and posters from the conflict

Aircraft of the Spanish Civil War

Battle of Rio Segre Photographs Capa, Robert (1938) International Center of Photography.

Academics and governments

A History of the Spanish Civil War, excerpted from a U.S. government country study.

''Dutch Involvement in the Spanish Civil War''. Columbia Historical Review.

"The Spanish Civil War – causes and legacy" on BBC Radio 4's ''In Our Time'' featuring Paul Preston, Helen Graham and Dr Mary Vincent

Other

Original war reports from ''The Times''

The Anarcho-Statists of Spain, a different view of the anarchists in the Spanish Civil War, George Mason University

Spanish Civil War information from Spartacus Educational

American Jews in Spanish Civil War, by Martin Sugarman

The Spanish Revolution, 1936–39 articles and links, from Anarchy Now!

The Revolutionary Institutions: The Central Committee of Anti-Fascist Militias, by Juan García Oliver

Warships of the Spanish Civil War

¡No Pasarán! Speech Dolores Ibárruri's famous rousing address for the defense of the Second Republic

New Zealand and the Spanish Civil War

Category:Carlism Category:Civil wars involving the states and peoples of Europe Category:Civil wars post-1945 Category:1930s conflicts Category:1930s in Spain Category:Francoist Spain Category:Succession-based civil wars Category:Wars involving Spain Category:Wars involving the states and peoples of Europe

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Emma Goldman (May 14, 1940) was an anarchist known for her political activism, writing and speeches. She played a pivotal role in the development of anarchist political philosophy in North America and Europe in the first half of the twentieth century.

Born in Kovno in the Russian Empire (present-day Kaunas, Lithuania), Goldman emigrated to the US in 1885 and lived in New York City, where she joined the burgeoning anarchist movement. Attracted to anarchism after the Haymarket affair, Goldman became a writer and a renowned lecturer on anarchist philosophy, women's rights, and social issues, attracting crowds of thousands. She and anarchist writer Alexander Berkman, her lover and lifelong friend, planned to assassinate industrialist and financier Henry Clay Frick as an act of propaganda of the deed. Although Frick survived the attempt on his life, Berkman was sentenced to twenty-two years in prison. Goldman was imprisoned several times in the years that followed, for "inciting to riot" and illegally distributing information about birth control. In 1906, Goldman founded the anarchist journal ''Mother Earth''.

In 1917, Goldman and Berkman were sentenced to two years in jail for conspiring to "induce persons not to register" for the newly instated draft. After their release from prison, they were arrested—along with hundreds of others—and deported to Russia. Initially supportive of that country's Bolshevik revolution, Goldman quickly voiced her opposition to the Soviet use of violence and the repression of independent voices. In 1923, she wrote a book about her experiences, ''My Disillusionment in Russia''. While living in England, Canada, and France, she wrote an autobiography called ''Living My Life''. After the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, she traveled to Spain to support the anarchist revolution there. She died in Toronto on May 14, 1940, aged 70.

During her life, Goldman was lionized as a free-thinking "rebel woman" by admirers, and derided by critics as an advocate of politically motivated murder and violent revolution. Her writing and lectures spanned a wide variety of issues, including prisons, atheism, freedom of speech, militarism, capitalism, marriage, free love, and homosexuality. Although she distanced herself from first-wave feminism and its efforts toward women's suffrage, she developed new ways of incorporating gender politics into anarchism. After decades of obscurity, Goldman's iconic status was revived in the 1970s, when feminist and anarchist scholars rekindled popular interest in her life.

Family

Emma Goldman's Orthodox Jewish family lived in the Lithuanian city of Kaunas (called Kovno at the time, part of the Russian Empire). Goldman's mother Taube Bienowitch had been married before, to a man with whom she had two daughters—Helena in 1860 and Lena in 1862. When her first husband died of tuberculosis, Taube was devastated. Goldman later wrote: "Whatever love she had had died with the young man to whom she had been married at the age of fifteen."

Taube's second marriage was arranged by her family and, as Goldman puts it, "mismated from the first". Her second husband, Abraham Goldman, invested Taube's inheritance in a business that quickly failed. The ensuing hardship combined with the emotional distance of husband and wife to make the household a tense place for the children. When Taube became pregnant, Abraham hoped desperately for a son; a daughter, he believed, would serve as one more sign of failure. They eventually had three sons, but their first child was Emma.

Emma Goldman was born on June 27, 1869. Her father used violence to punish his children, beating them when they disobeyed him. He used a whip only on Emma, the most rebellious of them. Her mother provided scarce comfort, calling only rarely on Abraham to tone down his beatings. Goldman later speculated that her father's furious temper was at least partly a result of sexual frustration.

Goldman's relationships with her elder half-sisters, Helena and Lena, were a study in contrasts. Helena, the oldest, provided the comfort they lacked from their mother; she filled Goldman's childhood with "whatever joy it had". Lena, however, was distant and uncharitable. The three sisters were joined by brothers Louis (who died at the age of six), Herman (born in 1872), and Moishe (born in 1879).

Adolescence

When Emma was a young girl, the Goldman family moved to the village of Papilė, where her father ran an inn. While her sisters worked, she became friends with a servant named Petrushka, who excited her "first erotic sensations". Later in Papilė she witnessed a peasant being whipped with a knout in the street. This event traumatized her and contributed to her lifelong distaste for violent authority.

At the age of seven, Goldman moved with her family to the Prussian city of Königsberg (then part of the German Empire), and she enrolled in a Realschule. One teacher punished disobedient students—targeting Goldman in particular—by beating their hands with a ruler. Another teacher tried to molest his female students and was fired when Goldman fought back. She found a sympathetic mentor in her German teacher, who loaned her books and even took her to an opera. A passionate student, Goldman passed the exam for admission into a gymnasium, but her religion teacher refused to provide a certificate of good behavior and she was unable to attend.

The family moved to the Russian city of Saint Petersburg, where her father opened one unsuccessful store after another. Their poverty forced the children to work, and Goldman took an assortment of jobs including one in a corset shop. As a teenager Goldman begged her father to allow her to return to school, but instead he threw her French book into the fire and shouted: "Girls do not have to learn much! All a Jewish daughter needs to know is how to prepare gefilte fish, cut noodles fine, and give the man plenty of children."

Goldman pursued an independent education on her own, however, and soon began to study the political turmoil around her, particularly the Nihilists responsible for assassinating Alexander II of Russia. The ensuing turmoil intrigued Goldman, even though she did not fully understand it at the time. When she read Chernyshevsky's novel, ''What Is to Be Done?'' (1863), she found a role model in the protagonist Vera, who adopts a Nihilist philosophy and escapes her repressive family to live freely and organize a sewing cooperative. The book enthralled Goldman and remained a source of inspiration throughout her life.

Her father, meanwhile, continued to insist on a domestic future for her, and he tried to arrange for her to be married at the age of fifteen. They fought about the issue constantly; he complained that she was becoming a "loose" woman, and she insisted that she would marry for love alone. At the corset shop, she was forced to fend off unwelcome advances from Russian officers and other men. One persistent suitor took her into a hotel room and committed what Goldman called "violent contact"; two biographers call it rape. She was stunned by the experience, overcome by "shock at the discovery that the contact between man and woman could be so brutal and painful." Goldman felt that the encounter forever soured her interactions with men.

Rochester, New York

In 1885, Helena made plans to move to New York to join her sister Lena and her husband. Goldman wanted to join her sister, but their father refused to allow it. Despite Helena's offer to pay for the trip, Abraham turned a deaf ear to their pleas. Desperate, Goldman threatened to throw herself into the Neva River if she could not go. He finally agreed, and on December 29, 1885, Helena and Emma arrived at New York's Castle Garden. They moved into the Rochester home Lena had made with her husband Samuel. Fleeing the rising antisemitism of Saint Petersburg, their parents and brothers joined them a year later. Goldman began working as a seamstress, sewing overcoats for more than ten hours a day, earning two and a half dollars a week. She asked for a raise and was denied; she quit and took work at a smaller shop nearby.

At her new job, Goldman met a fellow worker named Jacob Kershner, who shared her love for books, dancing, and traveling, as well as her frustration with the monotony of factory work. After four months they married in February 1887. Once he moved in with Goldman's family, however, their relationship faltered. On their wedding night she discovered that he was impotent; they became emotionally and physically distant. Before long he became jealous and suspicious. She, meanwhile, was becoming more engaged with the political turmoil around her—particularly the fallout of the 1886 Haymarket affair in Chicago and the anti-authoritarian political philosophy of anarchism. Less than a year after the wedding, they were divorced; he begged her to return and threatened to poison himself if she did not. They reunited, but after three months she left once again. Her parents considered her behavior "loose" and refused to allow Goldman into their home. Carrying her sewing machine in one hand and a bag with five dollars in the other, she left Rochester and headed southeast to New York City.

Most and Berkman

On her first day in the city, Goldman met two men who would forever change her life. At Sachs's Café, a gathering place for radicals, she was introduced to Alexander Berkman, an anarchist who invited her to a public speech that evening. They went to hear Johann Most, editor of a radical publication called ''Freiheit'' and an advocate of "propaganda of the deed"—the use of violence to instigate change. She was impressed by his fiery oration, and he took her under his wing, training her in methods of public speaking. He encouraged her vigorously, telling her that she was "to take my place when I am gone." One of her first public talks in support of "the Cause" was in Rochester. After convincing Helena not to tell their parents of her speech, Goldman found her mind a blank once on stage. Suddenly,

Enchanted by the experience, she refined her public persona during subsequent engagements. Quickly, however, she found herself arguing with Most over her independence. After a momentous speech in Cleveland, she felt as though she had become "a parrot repeating Most's views" and resolved to express herself on the stage. Upon her return in New York, Most became furious and told her: "Who is not with me is against me!" She left ''Freiheit'' and joined with another publication, ''Die Autonomie''.

Meanwhile, she had begun a friendship with Berkman, whom she affectionately called Sasha. Before long they became lovers and moved into a communal apartment with his cousin Modest "Fedya" Stein and Goldman's friend, Helen Minkin, in rural Woodstock, Illinois. Although their relationship had numerous difficulties, Goldman and Berkman would share a close bond for decades, united by their anarchist principles and commitment to personal equality.

Homestead plot

One of the first political moments that brought Berkman and Goldman together was the Homestead Strike. In June 1892, a steel plant in Homestead, Pennsylvania owned by Andrew Carnegie became the focus of national attention when talks between the Carnegie Steel Company and the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers (AA) broke down. The factory's manager was Henry Clay Frick, a fierce opponent of the union. When a final round of talks failed at the end of June, management closed the plant and locked out the workers, who immediately went on strike. Strikebreakers were brought in and the company hired Pinkerton guards to protect them. On July 6, a fight broke out between three hundred Pinkerton guards and a crowd of armed union workers. During the twelve-hour gunfight, seven guards and nine strikers were killed.

When a majority of the nation's newspapers came out in support of the strikers, Goldman and Berkman resolved to assassinate Frick, an action they expected would inspire the workers to revolt against the capitalist system. Berkman chose to carry out the assassination, and ordered Goldman to stay behind in order to explain his motives after he went to jail. He would be in charge of the deed; she of the word. Berkman tried and failed to make a bomb, then set off for Pittsburgh to buy a gun and a suit of decent clothes. Goldman, meanwhile, decided to help fund the scheme through prostitution. Remembering the character of Sonya in Fyodor Dostoevsky's novel ''Crime and Punishment'' (1866), she mused: "She had become a prostitute in order to support her little brothers and sisters.... Sensitive Sonya could sell her body; why not I?" Once on the street, she caught the eye of a man who took her into a saloon, bought her a beer, gave her ten dollars, informed her she did not have "the knack", and told her to quit the business. She was "too astounded for speech". She wrote to Helena, claiming illness, and asked her for fifteen dollars.

On July 23, Berkman gained access to Frick's office with a concealed handgun and shot Frick three times, then stabbed him in the leg. A group of workers—far from joining in his ''attentat''—beat Berkman unconscious, and he was carried away by the police. Berkman was convicted of attempted murder and sentenced to twenty-two years in prison; his absence from her life was very difficult for Goldman. Convinced Goldman was involved in the plot, police raided her apartment and—finding no evidence—pressured her landlord into evicting her. Worse, the ''attentat'' had failed to rouse the masses: workers and anarchists alike condemned Berkman's action. Johann Most, their former mentor, lashed out at Berkman and the assassination attempt. Furious at these attacks, Goldman brought a toy horsewhip to a public lecture and demanded, onstage, that Most explain his betrayal. He dismissed her, whereupon she struck him with the whip, broke it on her knee, and hurled the pieces at him. She later regretted her assault, confiding to a friend: "At the age of twenty-three, one does not reason."

"Inciting to riot"

When the Panic of 1893 struck in the following year, the United States suffered one of its worst economic crises ever. By year's end, the unemployment rate was higher than twenty percent, and "hunger demonstrations" sometimes gave way to riots. Goldman began speaking to crowds of frustrated men and women in New York. On August 21, she spoke to a crowd of nearly 3,000 people in Union Square, where she encouraged unemployed workers to take immediate action. Her exact words are unclear: undercover agents insist she ordered the crowd to "take everything ... by force", while Goldman later recounted this message: "Well then, demonstrate before the palaces of the rich; demand work. If they do not give you work, demand bread. If they deny you both, take bread." Later in court, Detective-Sergeant Charles Jacobs offered yet another version of her speech.

A week later she was arrested in Philadelphia and returned to New York City for trial, charged with "inciting to riot". During the train ride, Jacobs offered to drop the charges against her if she would inform on other radicals in the area. She responded by throwing a glass of ice water in his face. As she awaited trial, Goldman was visited by Nellie Bly, a reporter for the ''New York World''. She spent two hours talking to Goldman, and wrote a positive article about the woman she described as a "modern Joan of Arc".

Despite this positive publicity, the jury was persuaded by Jacobs' testimony and scared by Goldman's politics. The assistant District Attorney questioned Goldman about her anarchism, as well as her atheism; the judge spoke of her as "a dangerous woman". She was sentenced to one year in the Blackwell's Island Penitentiary. Once inside she suffered an attack of rheumatism and was sent to the infirmary; there she befriended a visiting doctor and began studying medicine. She also read dozens of books, including works by the American activist-writers Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau; novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne; poet Walt Whitman, and philosopher John Stuart Mill. When she was released after ten months, a raucous crowd of nearly three thousand people greeted her at the Thalia Theater in New York City. She soon became swamped with requests for interviews and lectures.

To make money, Goldman decided to pursue the medical work she had studied in prison. However, her preferred fields of specialization—midwifery and massage—were not available to nursing students in the USA. Thus, she sailed to Europe, lecturing in London, Glasgow, and Edinburgh. She met with renowned anarchists like Errico Malatesta, Louise Michel, and Peter Kropotkin. In Vienna, she received two diplomas and put them immediately to use back in the US. Alternating between lectures and midwifery, she conducted the first cross-country tour by an anarchist speaker. In November 1899 she returned to Europe, where she met the anarchist Hippolyte Havel, with whom she went to France and helped organize the International Anarchist Congress on the outskirts of Paris.

McKinley assassination

On September 6, 1901, Leon Czolgosz, an unemployed factory worker and registered Republican with a history of mental illness, shot US President William McKinley twice during a public speaking event in Buffalo, New York. McKinley was hit in the breastbone and stomach; eight days later, McKinley died. Czolgosz was arrested and interrogated around the clock. During interrogation he claimed to be an Anarchist and said he had been inspired to his action after attending a speech by Goldman. The authorities used this pretext to charge that she had planned the action. They tracked her to a residence in Chicago she shared with Havel and Abe and Mary Isaak, an anarchist couple. Goldman was arrested, along with Abe Isaak, Havel, and ten other anarchists.

Earlier, Czolgosz had tried but failed to become friends with Goldman and her companions. During a talk in Cleveland, Czolgosz had approached Goldman and asked her advice on which books he should read. In July 1901, he had appeared at the Isaak house, asking a series of unusual questions. They assumed he was an infiltrator, like a number of police agents sent to spy on radical groups. They had remained distant from him, and Abe Isaak sent a notice to associates warning of "another spy".

Although Czolgosz repeatedly denied Goldman's involvement, the police held her in close custody, subjecting her to what she called the "third degree". She explained their distrust of him, and it was clear she had not had any significant contact with Czolgosz. No evidence was found linking Goldman to the attack, and she was eventually released after two weeks of detention. Before McKinley died, Goldman offered to provide nursing care, referring to him as "merely a human being". Czolgosz, despite considerable evidence of mental illness, was convicted of murder and executed.

Throughout her detention and after her release, Goldman steadfastly refused to condemn Czolgosz's actions, standing virtually alone in doing so. Friends and supporters—including Berkman—urged her to quit his cause. But Goldman defended Czolgosz as a "supersensitive being" and chastised other anarchists for abandoning him. She was vilified in the press as the "high priestess of anarchy", while many newspapers declared the anarchist movement responsible for the murder. In the wake of these events, socialism gained support over anarchism among US radicals. McKinley's successor, Theodore Roosevelt, declared his intent to crack down "not only against anarchists, but against all active and passive sympathizers with anarchists".

''Mother Earth'' and Berkman's release

After Czolgosz's execution, Goldman withdrew from the world. Scorned by her fellow anarchists, vilified by the press, and separated from her love, she retreated into anonymity and nursing. "It was bitter and hard to face life anew," she wrote later. Using the name E. G. Smith, she vanished from public life and took on a series of private nursing jobs. When the US Congress passed the Anarchist Exclusion Act, however, a new wave of activism rose to oppose it, carrying Goldman back into the movement. A coalition of people and organizations across the left end of the political spectrum opposed the law on grounds that it violated freedom of speech, and she had the nation's ear once again.

When an English anarchist named John Turner was arrested under the Anarchist Exclusion Act and threatened with deportation, Goldman joined forces with the Free Speech League to champion his cause. The league enlisted the aid of Clarence Darrow and Edgar Lee Masters, who took Turner's case to the US Supreme Court. Although Turner and the League lost, Goldman considered it a victory of propaganda. She had returned to anarchist activism, but it was taking its toll on her. "I never felt so weighed down," she wrote to Berkman. "I fear I am forever doomed to remain public property and to have my life worn out through the care for the lives of others."

In 1906, Goldman decided to start a publication of her own, "a place of expression for the young idealists in arts and letters". ''Mother Earth'' was staffed by a cadre of radical activists, including Hippolyte Havel, Max Baginski, and Leonard Abbott. In addition to publishing original works by its editors and anarchists around the world, ''Mother Earth'' reprinted selections from a variety of writers. These included the French philosopher Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Russian anarchist Peter Kropotkin, German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, and British writer Mary Wollstonecraft. Goldman wrote frequently about anarchism, politics, labor issues, atheism, sexuality, and feminism.

On May 18 of the same year, Alexander Berkman was released from prison. Carrying a bouquet of roses, she met him on the platform and found herself "seized by terror and pity" as she beheld his gaunt, pale form. Neither was able to speak; they returned to her home in silence. For weeks, he struggled to readjust to life on the outside; an abortive speaking tour ended in failure, and in Cleveland he purchased a revolver with the intent of killing himself. He returned to New York, however, and learned that Goldman had been arrested with a group of activists meeting to reflect on Czolgosz. Invigorated anew by this violation of freedom of assembly, he declared "My resurrection has come!" and set about securing their release.

Berkman took the helm of ''Mother Earth'' in 1907, while Goldman toured the country to raise funds to keep it functional. Editing the magazine was a revitalizing experience for Berkman; his relationship with Goldman faltered, however, and he had an affair with a fifteen-year-old anarchist named Becky Edelsohn. Goldman was pained by his rejection of her, but considered it a consequence of his prison experience. Later that year she served as a delegate from the US to the International Anarchist Congress of Amsterdam. Anarchists and syndicalists from around the world gathered to sort out the tension between the two ideologies, but no decisive agreement was reached. Goldman returned to the US and continued speaking to large audiences.

Reitman, essays, and birth control

For the next ten years, Goldman traveled around the country nonstop, delivering lectures and agitating for anarchism. The coalitions formed in opposition to the Anarchist Exclusion Act had given her an appreciation for reaching out to those of other political persuasions. When the US Justice Department sent spies to observe, they reported the meetings as "packed". Writers, journalists, artists, judges, and workers from across the spectrum spoke of her "magnetic power", her "convincing presence", her "force, eloquence, and fire".

In the spring of 1908, Goldman met and fell in love with Ben Reitman, the so-called "Hobo doctor". Having grown up in Chicago's tenderloin district, Reitman spent several years as a drifter before attaining a medical degree from the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Chicago. As a doctor, he attended to people suffering from poverty and illness, particularly venereal diseases. He and Goldman began an affair; they shared a commitment to free love, but whereas Reitman took a variety of lovers, Goldman did not. She tried to reconcile her feelings of jealousy with a belief in freedom of the heart, but found it difficult.

Two years later, Goldman began feeling frustrated with lecture audiences. She yearned to "reach the few who really want to learn, rather than the many who come to be amused". Thus she collected a series of speeches and items she had written for ''Mother Earth'' and published a book called ''Anarchism and Other Essays''. Covering a wide variety of topics, Goldman tries to represent "the mental and soul struggles of twenty-one years". In addition to a comprehensive look at anarchism and its criticisms, the book includes essays on patriotism, women's suffrage, marriage, and prisons.

When Margaret Sanger, an advocate of access to contraception, coined the term "birth control" and disseminated information about various methods in the June 1914 issue of her magazine ''The Woman Rebel'', she received aggressive support from Goldman. Sanger was arrested in August under the Comstock Law, which prohibited the dissemination of "obscene, lewd, or lascivious articles"—including information relating to birth control. Although they later split from Sanger over charges of insufficient support, Goldman and Reitman distributed copies of Sanger's pamphlet ''Family Limitation'' (along with a similar essay of Reitman's). In 1915 Goldman conducted a nationwide speaking tour in part to raise awareness about contraception options. Although the nation's attitude toward the topic seemed to be liberalizing, Goldman was arrested in February 1916 and charged with violation of the Comstock Law. Refusing to pay a $100 fine, she spent two weeks in a prison workhouse, which she saw as an "opportunity" to reconnect with those rejected by society.

World War I

Although US President Woodrow Wilson was re-elected in 1916 under the slogan "He kept us out of the war", at the start of his second term he decided that Germany's continued deployment of unrestricted submarine warfare was sufficient cause for the US to enter World War I. Shortly afterward, Congress passed the Selective Service Act of 1917, which required all males aged 21–30 to register for military conscription. Goldman saw the decision as an exercise in militarist aggression, driven by capitalism. She declared in ''Mother Earth'' her intent to resist conscription, and to oppose US involvement in the war.

To this end, she and Berkman organized the No Conscription League of New York, which proclaimed: "We oppose conscription because we are internationalists, antimilitarists, and opposed to all wars waged by capitalistic governments." The group became a vanguard for anti-draft activism, and chapters began to appear in other cities. When police began raiding the group's public events to find young men who had not registered for the draft, however, Goldman and others focused their efforts on spreading pamphlets and other written work. In the midst of the nation's patriotic fervor, many elements of the political left refused to support the League's efforts. The Women's Peace Party, for example, ceased its opposition to the war once the US entered it. The Socialist Party of America took an official stance against US involvement, but supported Wilson in most of his activities.

On June 15, 1917, Goldman and Berkman were arrested during a raid of their offices which yielded "a wagon load of anarchist records and propaganda" for the authorities. ''The New York Times'' reported that Goldman asked to change into a more appropriate outfit, and emerged in a gown of "royal purple". The pair were charged with conspiracy to "induce persons not to register" under the newly enacted Espionage Act, and were held on US$25,000 bail each. Defending herself and Berkman during their trial, Goldman invoked the First Amendment, asking how the government could claim to fight for democracy abroad while suppressing free speech at home:

We say that if America has entered the war to make the world safe for democracy, she must first make democracy safe in America. How else is the world to take America seriously, when democracy at home is daily being outraged, free speech suppressed, peaceable assemblies broken up by overbearing and brutal gangsters in uniform; when free press is curtailed and every independent opinion gagged? Verily, poor as we are in democracy, how can we give of it to the world?

The jury saw it differently, and found them guilty; Judge Julius Marshuetz Mayer imposed the maximum sentence two years' imprisonment, a $10,000 fine each, and the possibility of deportation after their release from prison. As she was transported to Missouri State Penitentiary (now Jefferson City Correctional Center), Goldman wrote to a friend: "Two years imprisonment for having made an uncompromising stand for one's ideal. Why that is a small price."

In prison she was assigned once again to work as a seamstress, under the eye of a "miserable gutter-snipe of a twenty-one-year-old boy paid to get results". She met the socialist Kate Richards O'Hare, who had also been imprisoned under the Espionage Act. Although they differed on political strategy—Kate O'Hare believed in voting to achieve state power—the two women came together to agitate for better conditions among prisoners. Goldman also met and became friends with Gabriella Segata Antolini, an anarchist and follower of Luigi Galleani. Antolini had been arrested transporting a satchel filled with dynamite on a Chicago-bound train. She had refused to cooperate with authorities, and was sent to prison for fourteen months. Working together to make life better for the other inmates, the three women became known as "The Trinity". Goldman was released on September 27, 1919.

Deportation

Goldman and Berkman were released during America's Red Scare of 1919–20 when public anxiety about wartime pro-German activities had morphed into an exaggerated fear of Bolshevism and the prospect of an imminent radical revolution. Attorney General Alexander Mitchell Palmer and J. Edgar Hoover, head of the U.S. Department of Justice's General Intelligence Division, were intent on using the Anarchist Exclusion Act of 1918 to deport any non-citizens they could identify as advocates of anarchy or revolution. "Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman," Hoover wrote while they were in prison, "are, beyond doubt, two of the most dangerous anarchists in this country and return to the community will result in undue harm."

At her deportation hearing on October 27, she refused to answer questions about her beliefs on the grounds that her American citizenship invalidated any attempt to deport her under the Anarchist Exclusion Act, which could be enforced only against non-citizens of the U.S. She presented a written statement instead: "Today so-called aliens are deported. Tomorrow native Americans will be banished. Already some patrioteers are suggesting that native American sons to whom democracy is a sacred ideal should be exiled." Louis Post at the Department of Labor, which had ultimately authority over deportation decisions, determined that the revocation of her husband's American citizenship in 1908 had revoked hers as well. After initially promising a court fight, she decided not appeal his ruling.

The Labor Department included Goldman and Berkman among 249 aliens it deported en masse, mostly people with only vague associations with radical groups who had been swept up in government raids in November. ''Buford'', a ship the press nicknamed the "Soviet Ark," sailed from New York on December 21. Some 58 enlisted men and four officers provided security on the journey and pistols were distributed to the crew. Most of the press approved enthusiastically. The Cleveland ''Plain Dealer'' wrote: "It is hoped and expected that other vessels, larger, more commodious, carrying similar cargoes, will follow in her wake." The ship landed her charges in Hanko, Finland on Saturday, January 17, 1920. Upon arrival in Finland, authorities there conducted the deportees to the Russian frontier under a flag of truce.

Russia

Goldman initially viewed the Bolshevik revolution in a positive light. She wrote in ''Mother Earth'' that despite its dependence on Communist government, it represented "the most fundamental, far-reaching and all-embracing principles of human freedom and of economic well-being". By the time she neared Europe, however, she expressed fears about what was to come. She was worried about the ongoing Russian Civil War and the possibility of being seized by anti-Bolshevik forces. The state, anti-capitalist though it was, also posed a threat. "I could never in my life work within the confines of the State," she wrote to her niece, "Bolshevist or otherwise."

She quickly discovered that her fears were justified. Days after returning to Petrograd (Saint Petersburg), she was shocked to hear a party official refer to free speech as a "bourgeois superstition". As she and Berkman traveled around the country, they found repression, mismanagement, and corruption instead of the equality and worker empowerment they had dreamed of. Those who questioned the government were demonized as counter-revolutionaries, and workers labored under severe conditions. They met with Vladimir Lenin, who assured them that government suppression of press liberties was justified. He told them: "There can be no free speech in a revolutionary period." Berkman was more willing to forgive the government's actions in the name of "historical necessity", but he eventually joined Goldman in opposing the Soviet state's authority.

In March 1921, strikes erupted in Petrograd when workers took to the streets demanding better food rations and more union autonomy. Goldman and Berkman felt a responsibility to support the strikers, stating: "To remain silent now is impossible, even criminal." The unrest spread to the port town of Kronstadt, where a military response was ordered. In the fighting that ensued, approximately 1,000 rebelling sailors and soldiers were killed and two thousand more were arrested. In the wake of these events, Goldman and Berkman decided there was no future in the country for them. "More and more", she wrote, "we have come to the conclusion that we can do nothing here. And as we can not keep up a life of inactivity much longer we have decided to leave."

In December 1921, they left the country and went to the Latvian capital city of Riga. The US commissioner in that city wired officials in Washington DC, who began requesting information from other governments about the couple's activities. After a short trip to Stockholm, they moved to Berlin for several years; during this time she agreed to write a series of articles about her time in Russia for Joseph Pulitzer's newspaper, the ''New York World''. These were later collected and published in book form as ''My Disillusionment in Russia'' (1923) and ''My Further Disillusionment in Russia'' (1924). The titles of these books were added by the publishers to be scintillating and Goldman protested, albeit in vain.

England, Canada, and France

Goldman found it difficult to acclimate to the German leftist community. Communists despised her outspokenness about Soviet repression; liberals derided her radicalism. While Berkman remained in Berlin helping Russian exiles, she moved to London in September 1924. Upon her arrival, the novelist Rebecca West arranged a reception dinner for her, attended by philosopher Bertrand Russell, novelist H. G. Wells, and more than two hundred others. When she spoke of her dissatisfaction with the Soviet government, the audience was shocked. Some left the gathering; others berated her for prematurely criticizing the Communist experiment. Later, in a letter, Russell declined to support her efforts at systemic change in the Soviet Union and ridiculed her anarchist idealism.

In 1925, the spectre of deportation loomed again, but a Scottish anarchist named James Colton offered to marry her and provide British citizenship. Although they were only distant acquaintances, she accepted and they were married on June 27, 1925. Her new status gave her peace of mind, and allowed her to travel to France and Canada. Life in London was stressful for Goldman; she wrote to Berkman: "I am awfully tired and so lonely and heartsick. It is a dreadful feeling to come back here from lectures and find not a kindred soul, no one who cares whether one is dead or alive." She worked on analytical studies of drama, expanding on the work she had published in 1914. But the audiences were "awful" and she never finished her second book on the subject.

Goldman traveled to Canada in 1927, just in time to receive news of the impending executions of Italian anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti in Boston. Angered by the many irregularities of the case, she saw it as another travesty of justice in the US. She longed to join the mass demonstrations in Boston; memories of the Haymarket affair overwhelmed her, compounded by her isolation. "Then," she wrote, "I had my life before me to take up the cause for those killed. Now I have nothing."

In 1928, she began writing her autobiography, with the support of a group of admirers, including journalist H. L. Mencken, poet Edna St. Vincent Millay, novelist Theodore Dreiser and art collector Peggy Guggenheim, who raised $4,000 for her. She secured a cottage in the French coastal city of Saint-Tropez and spent two years recounting her life. Berkman offered sharply critical feedback, which she eventually incorporated at the price of a strain on their relationship. Goldman intended the book, ''Living My Life'', as a single volume for a price the working class could afford (she urged no more than $5.00); her publisher Alfred A. Knopf, however, released it as two volumes sold together for $7.50. Goldman was furious, but unable to force a change. Due in large part to the Great Depression, sales were sluggish despite keen interest from libraries around the US. Critical reviews were generally enthusiastic; ''The New York Times'', ''The New Yorker'', and ''Saturday Review of Literature'' all listed it as one of the year's top non-fiction books.

In 1933, Goldman received permission to lecture in the United States under the condition that she speak only about drama and her autobiography—but not current political events. She returned to New York on February 2, 1934 to generally positive press coverage—except from Communist publications. Soon she was surrounded by admirers and friends, besieged with invitations to talks and interviews. Her visa expired in May, and she went to Toronto in order to file another request to visit the US. However, this second attempt was denied. She stayed in Canada, writing articles for US publications.

In February and March 1936, Berkman underwent a pair of prostate gland operations. Recuperating in Nice and cared for by his companion, Emmy Eckstein, he missed Goldman's sixty-seventh birthday in Saint-Tropez in June. She wrote in sadness, but he never read the letter; she received a call in the middle of the night that Berkman was in great distress. She left for Nice immediately but when she arrived that morning, Goldman found that he had shot himself and was in a nearly comatose paralysis. He died the next day.

Spanish Civil War

In July 1936, the Spanish Civil War started after an attempted ''coup d'état'' by parts of the Spanish Army against the government of the Second Spanish Republic. At the same time, the Spanish anarchists, fighting against the Nationalist forces, started an anarchist revolution. Goldman was invited to Barcelona and in an instant, as she wrote to her niece, "the crushing weight that was pressing down on my heart since Sasha's death left me as by magic". She was welcomed by the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT) and Federación Anarquista Ibérica (FAI) organizations, and for the first time in her life lived in a community run by and for anarchists, according to true anarchist principles. "In all my life", she wrote later, "I have not met with such warm hospitality, comradeship and solidarity." After touring a series of collectives in the province of Huesca, she told a group of workers: "Your revolution will destroy forever [the notion] that anarchism stands for chaos." She began editing the weekly ''CNT-FAI Information Bulletin'' and responded to English-language mail.

Goldman began to worry about the future of Spain's anarchism when the CNT-FAI joined a coalition government in 1937—against the core anarchist principle of abstaining from state structures—and, more distressingly, made repeated concessions to Communist forces in the name of uniting against fascism. She wrote that cooperating with Communists in Spain was "a denial of our comrades in Stalin's concentration camps". Russia, meanwhile, refused to send weapons to anarchist forces, and disinformation campaigns were being waged against the anarchists across Europe and the US. Her faith in the movement unshaken, Goldman returned to London as an official representative of the CNT-FAI.

Delivering lectures and giving interviews, Goldman enthusiastically supported the Spanish anarcho-syndicalists. She wrote regularly for ''Spain and the World'', a biweekly newspaper focusing on the civil war. In May 1937, however, Communist-led forces attacked anarchist strongholds and broke up agrarian collectives. Newspapers in England and elsewhere accepted the timeline of events offered by the Second Spanish Republic at face value. British journalist George Orwell, present for the crackdown, wrote: "[T]he accounts of the Barcelona riots in May ... beat everything I have ever seen for lying."

Goldman returned to Spain in September, but the CNT-FAI appeared to her like people "in a burning house". Worse, anarchists and other radicals around the world refused to support their cause. The Nationalist forces declared victory in Spain just before she returned to London. Frustrated by England's repressive atmosphere—which she called "more fascist than the fascists"—she returned to Canada in 1939. Her service to the anarchist cause in Spain was not forgotten, however. On her seventieth birthday, the former Secretary-General of the CNT-FAI, Mariano Vázquez, sent a message to her from Paris, praising her for her contributions and naming her as "our spiritual mother". She called it "the most beautiful tribute I have ever received".

Final years

As the events preceding World War II began to unfold in Europe, Goldman reiterated her opposition to wars waged by governments. "[M]uch as I loathe Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin and Franco," she wrote to a friend, "I would not support a war against them and for the democracies which, in the last analysis, are only Fascist in disguise." She felt that England and France had missed their opportunity to oppose fascism, and that the coming war would only result in "a new form of madness in the world". This position was vastly unpopular, as Hitler's attacks on Jewish communities reverberated throughout the Jewish diaspora.

Death

On Saturday, February 17, 1940, Goldman suffered a debilitating stroke. She became paralyzed on her right side, and although her hearing was unaffected, she could not speak. As one friend described it: "Just to think that here was Emma, the greatest orator in America, unable to utter one word." For three months she improved slightly, receiving visitors and on one occasion gesturing to her address book to signal that a friend might find friendly contacts during a trip to Mexico. She suffered another stroke on May 8, however, and on May 14 she died in Toronto, Canada, aged 70. The US Immigration and Naturalization Service allowed her body to be brought back to the United States. She was buried in German Waldheim Cemetery (now named Forest Home Cemetery) in Forest Park, Illinois, a western suburb of Chicago, among the graves of other labor and social activists including those executed after the Haymarket affair. The bas relief on her grave marker was created by sculptor Jo Davidson.

Philosophy

Goldman spoke and wrote extensively on a wide variety of issues. While she rejected orthodoxy and fundamentalist thinking, she was an important contributor to several fields of modern political philosophy. She was influenced by many diverse thinkers and writers, including Mikhail Bakunin, Henry David Thoreau, Peter Kropotkin, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nikolai Chernyshevsky, and Mary Wollstonecraft. Another philosopher who influenced Goldman was Friedrich Nietzsche. In her autobiography, she wrote: "Nietzsche was not a social theorist, but a poet, a rebel, and innovator. His aristocracy was neither of birth nor of purse; it was the spirit. In that respect Nietzsche was an anarchist, and all true anarchists were aristocrats."

Anarchism

Anarchism was central to Goldman's view of the world and she is today considered one of the most important figures in the history of anarchism. First drawn to it during the persecution of anarchists after the 1886 Haymarket affair, she wrote and spoke regularly on behalf of anarchism. In the title essay of her book ''Anarchism and Other Essays'', she wrote:

Anarchism, then, really stands for the liberation of the human mind from the dominion of religion; the liberation of the human body from the dominion of property; liberation from the shackles and restraint of government. Anarchism stands for a social order based on the free grouping of individuals for the purpose of producing real social wealth; an order that will guarantee to every human being free access to the earth and full enjoyment of the necessities of life, according to individual desires, tastes, and inclinations.

Goldman's anarchism was intensely personal. She believed it was necessary for anarchist thinkers to live their beliefs, demonstrating their convictions with every action and word. "I don't care if a man's theory for tomorrow is correct," she once wrote. "I care if his spirit of today is correct." Anarchism and free association were to her logical responses to the confines of government control and capitalism. "It seems to me that ''these'' are the new forms of life," she wrote, "and that they will take the place of the old, not by preaching or voting, but by living them."

At the same time, she believed that the movement on behalf of human liberty must be staffed by liberated humans. While dancing among fellow anarchists one evening, she was chided by an associate for her carefree demeanor. In her autobiography, Goldman wrote:

I told him to mind his own business, I was tired of having the Cause constantly thrown in my face. I did not believe that a Cause which stood for a beautiful ideal, for anarchism, for release and freedom from conventions and prejudice, should demand denial of life and joy. I insisted that our Cause could not expect me to behave as a nun and that the movement should not be turned into a cloister. If it meant that, I did not want it. "I want freedom, the right to self-expression, everybody's right to beautiful, radiant things."

Capitalism

Goldman believed that the economic system of capitalism was inimical to human liberty. "The only demand that property recognizes," she wrote in ''Anarchism and Other Essays'', "is its own gluttonous appetite for greater wealth, because wealth means power; the power to subdue, to crush, to exploit, the power to enslave, to outrage, to degrade." She also argued that capitalism dehumanized workers, "turning the producer into a mere particle of a machine, with less will and decision than his master of steel and iron."

Tactics

Among the tactics that Goldman endorsed was targeted violence. Early in her career Goldman believed that the use of violence, while distasteful, could be effective in achieving a greater good. She advocated propaganda of the deed—''attentat'', or violence carried out to encourage the masses to revolt. She supported her partner Alexander Berkman's attempt to kill industrialist Henry Clay Frick, and even begged him to allow her to participate. She believed that Frick's actions during the Homestead strike were reprehensible and that his murder would produce a positive result for working people. "Yes," she wrote later in her autobiography, "the end in this case justified the means." While she never gave explicit approval of Leon Czolgosz's assassination of U.S. President William McKinley, she defended his ideals and believed actions like his were a natural consequence of repressive institutions. As she wrote in "The Psychology of Political Violence": "the accumulated forces in our social and economic life, culminating in an act of violence, are similar to the terrors of the atmosphere, manifested in storm and lightning."

Her experiences in Russia led her to reassess her earlier belief that revolutionary ends justified violent means. The repression and authoritarian control of the Soviet Union caused a radical shift in her perspective. Indeed, by 1923 she had nearly reversed her position. In the afterword to ''My Disillusionment in Russia'', she wrote: "There is no greater fallacy than the belief that aims and purposes are one thing, while methods and tactics are another.... The means employed become, through individual habit and social practice, part and parcel of the final purpose...."

Nevertheless, she viewed the state as essentially and inevitably a tool of control and domination. As a result, Goldman believed that voting was useless at best and dangerous at worst. Voting, she wrote, provided an illusion of participation while masking the true structures of decision-making. Instead, Goldman advocated targeted resistance in the form of strikes, protests, and "direct action against the invasive, meddlesome authority of our moral code". She maintained an anti-voting position even when many anarcho-syndicalists in 1930s Spain voted for the formation of a liberal republic. Goldman wrote that any power anarchists wielded as a voting bloc should instead be used to strike across the country. She disagreed with the movement for women's suffrage, which demanded the right of women to vote. In her essay "Woman Suffrage", she ridicules the idea that women's involvement would infuse the democratic state with a more just orientation: "As if women have not sold their votes, as if women politicians cannot be bought!" She agreed with the suffragists' assertion that women are equal to men, but disagreed that their participation alone would make the state more just. "To assume, therefore, that she would succeed in purifying something which is not susceptible of purification, is to credit her with supernatural powers."

Feminism

Although she was hostile to the suffragist goals of first-wave feminism, Goldman advocated passionately for the rights of women, and is today heralded as a founder of anarcha-feminism, which challenges patriarchy as a hierarchy to be resisted alongside state power and class divisions. In 1897, she wrote: "I demand the independence of woman, her right to support herself; to live for herself; to love whomever she pleases, or as many as she pleases. I demand freedom for both sexes, freedom of action, freedom in love and freedom in motherhood."

A nurse by training, she was an early advocate for educating women concerning contraception. Like many contemporary feminists, she saw abortion as a tragic consequence of social conditions, and birth control as a positive alternative. Goldman was also an advocate of free love, and a strong critic of marriage. She saw early feminists as confined in their scope and bounded by social forces of Puritanism and capitalism. She wrote: "We are in need of unhampered growth out of old traditions and habits. The movement for women's emancipation has so far made but the first step in that direction."

Free speech

As an anarchist, Goldman championed numerous human rights causes, particularly the issue of free speech. Widely persecuted for her advocacy of anarchism and opposition to World War I, Goldman was active in the early 20th century free speech movement, seeing freedom of expression as a fundamental necessity for achieving social change. Her outspoken championship of her ideals, in the face of persistent arrests, inspired Roger Baldwin, one of the founders of the American Civil Liberties Union.

Prisons

Another issue that Goldman frequently addressed was criminal justice. She was a passionate critic of the prison system and viewed crime as a natural outgrowth of an unjust economic system. In her essay "Prisons: A Social Crime and Failure", she quoted liberally from the nineteenth-century authors Fyodor Dostoevsky and Oscar Wilde, and wrote: "Year after year the gates of prison hells return to the world an emaciated, deformed, will-less, shipwrecked crew of humanity, with the Cain mark on their foreheads, their hopes crushed, all their natural inclinations thwarted. With nothing but hunger and inhumanity to greet them, these victims soon sink back into crime as the only possibility of existence."

Homosexuality

Goldman was also an outspoken critic of prejudice against homosexuals. Her belief that social liberation should extend to gay men and lesbians was virtually unheard of at the time, even among anarchists. As Magnus Hirschfeld wrote, "she was the first and only woman, indeed the first and only American, to take up the defense of homosexual love before the general public." In numerous speeches and letters, she defended the right of gay men and lesbians to love as they pleased and condemned the fear and stigma associated with homosexuality. As Goldman wrote in a letter to Hirschfeld, "It is a tragedy, I feel, that people of a different sexual type are caught in a world which shows so little understanding for homosexuals and is so crassly indifferent to the various gradations and variations of gender and their great significance in life."

Atheism

A committed atheist, Goldman viewed religion as another instrument of control and domination. Her essay "The Philosophy of Atheism" quoted Bakunin at length on the subject and added:

Consciously or unconsciously, most theists see in gods and devils, heaven and hell, reward and punishment, a whip to lash the people into obedience, meekness and contentment.... The philosophy of Atheism expresses the expansion and growth of the human mind. The philosophy of theism, if we can call it a philosophy, is static and fixed.

In essays like "The Hypocrisy of Puritanism" and a speech entitled "The Failure of Christianity", Goldman made more than a few enemies among religious communities by attacking their moralistic attitudes and efforts to control human behavior. She blamed Christianity for "the perpetuation of a slave society", arguing that it dictated individuals' actions on Earth and offered poor people a false promise of a plentiful future in heaven. She was also critical of Zionism, which she saw as another failed experiment in state control.

Legacy

Goldman was well-known during her life, described as—among other things—"the most dangerous woman in America". After her death and through the middle part of the 20th century, her fame faded. Scholars and historians of anarchism viewed her as a great speaker and activist, but did not regard her as a philosophical or theoretical thinker on par with, for instance, Kropotkin.

In 1970, Dover Press reissued Goldman's biography, ''Living My Life'', and in 1972, feminist writer Alix Kates Shulman issued a collection of Goldman's writing and speeches, ''Red Emma Speaks''. These works brought Goldman's life and writings to a larger audience, and she was in particular lionized by the women's movement of the late twentieth century. In 1973, Shulman was asked by a printer friend for a quotation by Goldman for use on a t-shirt. She sent him the selection from ''Living My Life'' about "the right to self-expression, everybody's right to beautiful, radiant things"; the printer created a paraphrase that has become one of Goldman's most famous quotations, even though she herself probably never said or wrote it: "If I can't dance I don't want to be in your revolution." Variations of this saying have appeared on thousands of t-shirts, buttons, posters, bumper stickers, coffee mugs, hats, and other items. In ''Living My Life'', Goldman recounts being admonished for dancing, "that it did not behoove an agitator to dance." She further wrote "I did not believe that a Cause which stood for a beautiful ideal, for anarchism, for release and freedom from conventions and prejudice, should demand the denial of life and joy. I insisted that our Cause could not expect me to become a nun and that the movement should not be turned into a cloister. If it meant that, I did not want it."

The women's movement of the 1970s that "rediscovered" Goldman was accompanied by a resurgent anarchist movement, beginning in the late 1960s, which also reinvigorated scholarly attention to earlier anarchists. The growth of feminism also initiated some reevaluation of Goldman's philosophical work, with scholars pointing out the significance of Goldman's contributions to anarchist thought in her time. Goldman's belief in the value of aesthetics, for example, can be seen in the later influences of anarchism and the arts. Similarly, Goldman is now given credit for significantly influencing and broadening the scope of activism on issues of sexual liberty, reproductive rights, and freedom of expression.

Goldman has been depicted in numerous works of fiction over the years, perhaps most notably by Maureen Stapleton, who won an Academy Award for her role as Goldman in Warren Beatty's 1981 film ''Reds''. Goldman has also been a character in two Broadway musicals, ''Ragtime'' and ''Assassins''. Plays depicting Goldman's life include Howard Zinn's play, ''Emma''; Martin Duberman's ''Mother Earth'' (1991); Jessica Litwak's ''Emma Goldman: Love, Anarchy, and Other Affairs'' (Goldman's relationship with Berkman and her arrest in connection with McKinley's assassination); Lynn Rogoff's ''Love Ben, Love Emma'' (Goldman's relationship with Reitman); and Carol Bolt's ''Red Emma''. Ethel Mannin's 1941 novel ''Red Rose'' is also based on Goldman's Life.

Goldman has been honored by a number of organizations named in her memory. The Emma Goldman Clinic, a women's health center located in Iowa City, Iowa selected Goldman as a namesake "in recognition of her challenging spirit." Red Emma's Bookstore Coffeehouse, an infoshop in Baltimore, Maryland adopted her name out of their belief "in the ideas and ideals that she fought for her entire life: free speech, sexual and racial equality and independence, the right to organize in our jobs and in our own lives, ideas and ideals that we continue to fight for, even today".

Works

Goldman was a prolific writer, penning countless pamphlets and articles on a diverse range of subjects. She authored six books, including an autobiography, ''Living My Life'', and a biography of fellow anarchist Voltairine de Cleyre.

Books written by Emma Goldman

''Anarchism and Other Essays''. New York: Mother Earth Publishing Association, 1910.

''The Social Significance of the Modern Drama''. Boston: Gorham Press, 1914.

''My Disillusionment in Russia''. Garden City, New York: Doubleday, Page and Co., 1923.

''My Further Disillusionment in Russia''. Garden City, New York: Doubleday, Page and Co., 1924.

''Living My Life''. New York: Knopf, 1931.

Edited collections

''Red Emma Speaks: Selected Writings and Speeches''. New York: Random House, 1972. ISBN 0-394-47095-8

''Emma Goldman: A Documentary History Of The American Years, Volume 1 – Made for America, 1890–1901''. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003. ISBN 0-520-08670-8.

''Emma Goldman: A Documentary History Of The American Years, Volume 2 – Making Speech Free, 1902–1909''. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004. ISBN 0-520-22569-4.

Related topics

List of people from Rochester, New York

List of political theorists

List of Lithuanians

List of feminists

List of North European Jews

List of organizers

List of people from Toronto

List of people from Saint Petersburg

List of female philosophers

List of women writers

List of Jewish American activists

Notes

Sources

Avrich, Paul. ''The Haymarket Tragedy''. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984. ISBN 0-691-04711-1.

Berkman, Alexander. ''Life of an Anarchist: The Alexander Berkman Reader''. New York: Four Walls Eight Windows Press, 1992. ISBN 1-888363-17-7.

Chalberg, John. ''Emma Goldman: American Individualist''. New York: HarperCollins Publishers Inc., 1991. ISBN 0-673-52102-8.

Drinnon, Richard. ''Rebel in Paradise: A Biography of Emma Goldman''. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961. . Drinnon, Richard and Anna Maria, eds. ''Nowhere At Home: Letters from Exile of Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman''. New York: Schocken Books, 1975. .

Falk, Candace, et al. ''Emma Goldman: A Documentary History Of The American Years, Volume 1 – Made for America, 1890–1901''. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003. ISBN 0-520-08670-8.

Falk, Candace, et al. ''Emma Goldman: A Documentary History Of The American Years, Volume 2 – Making Speech Free, 1902–1909''. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004. ISBN 0-520-22569-4.

Falk, Candace Serena. ''Love, Anarchy, and Emma Goldman''. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1990. ISBN 0-8135-1512-2.

Glassgold, Peter, ed. ''Anarchy! An Anthology of Emma Goldman's Mother Earth''. Washington, D.C.: Counterpoint, 2001. ISBN 1-58243-040-3.

Goldman, Emma. ''Anarchism and Other Essays''. 3rd ed. 1917. New York: Dover Publications Inc., 1969. ISBN 0-486-22484-8.

Goldman, Emma. ''Living My Life''. 1931. New York: Dover Publications Inc., 1970. ISBN 0-486-22543-7.

Goldman, Emma. ''My Disillusionment in Russia''. 1923. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1970. .

Goldman, Emma. ''Red Emma Speaks''. ed. Alix Kates Shulman. New York: Random House, 1972. ISBN 0-394-47095-8.

Goldman, Emma. ''The Social Significance of Modern Drama''. 1914. New York: Applause Theatre Book Publishers, 1987. ISBN 0-936839-61-9.

Goldman, Emma. ''The Traffic in Women, and Other Essays on Feminism''. Albion, CA: Times Change Press, 1970. ISBN 0-87810-001-6.

Goldman, Emma. ''The Tragedy of Woman's Emancipation''. New York: Mother Earth Publishing Association, 1906.

Goldman, Emma. ''Vision on Fire: Emma Goldman on the Spanish Revolution''. ed. David Porter. New Paltz, NY: Commonground Press, 1983. ISBN 0-9610348-2-3.

Haaland, Bonnie. ''Emma Goldman: Sexuality and the Impurity of the State''. Montréal, New York, London: Black Rose Books, 1993. ISBN 1-895431-64-6.

Marsh, Margaret S. ''Anarchist Women 1870–1920''. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1981. ISBN 0-87722-202-9.

Marshall, Peter. ''Demanding the Impossible: A History of Anarchism''. London: HarperCollins, 1992. ISBN 0-00-217855-9.

McCormick, Charles H. ''Seeing Reds: Federal Surveillance of Radicals in the Pittsburgh Mill District, 1917–1921''. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1997.

Moritz, Theresa. ''The World's Most Dangerous Woman: A New Biography of Emma Goldman''. Vancouver: Subway Books, 2001. ISBN 0-9681660-7-5.

Murray, Robert K. ''Red Scare: A Study in National Hysteria, 1919–1920''. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1955. ISBN 0-313-22673-3

Post, Louis F. ''The Deportations Delirium of Nineteen-twenty: A Personal Narrative of an Historic Official Experience''. NY, 1923.

Solomon, Martha. ''Emma Goldman''. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1987. ISBN 0-8057-7494-7.

Weiss, Penny A. and Loretta Kensinger, eds. ''Feminist Interpretations of Emma Goldman''. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2007. ISBN 0-271-02976-5.

Wexler, Alice. ''Emma Goldman: An Intimate Life''. New York: Pantheon Books, 1984. ISBN 0-394-52975-8. Republished as ''Emma Goldman in America''. Boston: Beacon Press, 1984. ISBN 0-8070-7003-3.

Wexler, Alice. ''Emma Goldman in Exile: From the Russian Revolution to the Spanish Civil War''. Boston: Beacon Press, 1989. ISBN 0-8070-7004-1.

External links

Emma Goldman Papers Project at UC Berkeley

''Anarchism and Other Essays'' from American Studies at the University of Virginia

''My Disillusionment in Russia'' by Emma Goldman

Extracts from ''My Further Disillusionment with Russia'' (1924)

Emma Goldman Papers. Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University.

Emma Goldman "Women of Valor" exhibit at the Jewish Women's Archive

"Emma Goldman". ''Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia''. Jewish Women's Archive.

Category:1869 births Category:1940 deaths Category:American anarchists Category:American essayists Category:American feminists Category:American people of Lithuanian-Jewish descent Category:American people of the Spanish Civil War Category:American political writers Category:American women's rights activists Category:American women writers Category:American anti-war activists Category:Anarcha-feminists Category:Anarchism theorists Category:Anarchist communists Category:Burials at Forest Home Cemetery, Chicago Category:Deaths from stroke Category:Disease-related deaths in Ontario Category:Free love advocates Category:Free speech activists Category:Imperial Russian emigrants to the United States Category:Jewish anarchists Category:Jewish atheists Category:Jewish feminists Category:Jewish women writers Category:LGBT rights activists from the United States Category:Lithuanian Jews Category:People associated with the Dil Pickle Club Category:People deported from the United States Category:People from Kaunas Category:People from New York City Category:Russian people of the Spanish Civil War Category:Russian revolutionaries

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