- Voltairine de Cleyre
-
Voltairine de Cleyre 
Voltairine de Cleyre in Philadelphia, 1901 (age 35)Born November 17, 1866
Leslie, MichiganDied June 20, 1912 (aged 45)
St. Mary of Nazareth Hospital in Chicago, IllinoisVoltairine de Cleyre (November 17, 1866 – June 20, 1912) was an American anarchist writer and feminist. She was a prolific writer and speaker, opposing the state, marriage, and the domination of religion in sexuality and women's lives. A proponent of libertarian socialism and the freethought movement, de Cleyre was initially drawn to individualist anarchism. Near the end of her life she gravitated towards poetry and embraced ideals of stateless communism, while formally labelling herself only an anarchist and shunning doctrinal fractiousness.[1] She was a colleague of Emma Goldman, with whom she maintained a relationship of respectful disagreement on many issues.
Contents
Life
Born in the small town of Leslie, Michigan, she was placed as a teenager into a Catholic convent in Sarnia, Ontario by her father, because he thought it would give her a better education. This experience had the effect of moving her towards atheism rather than Christianity. Of her time spent there she said, "it had been like the Valley of the Shadow of Death, and there are white scars on my soul, where ignorance and superstition burnt me with their hell fire in those stifling days".[2] She attempted to run away by swimming to Port Huron, Michigan, and hiking 17 miles; but she met friends of her family who contacted her father and sent her back. She graduated and received a gold medal from the school, which she can be seen wearing in the picture.
Family ties to the Abolitionist movement and the Underground Railroad, the harsh and unrelenting poverty that she grew up in, and being named after the philosopher Voltaire all contributed to the radical rhetoric that she developed shortly after adolescence. After schooling in the convent, de Cleyre began her intellectual involvement in the strongly anti-clerical freethought movement by lecturing and contributing articles to freethought periodicals.
A flier advertising a memorial event held a few days after De Cleyre's death.
During her time in the freethought movement in the mid and late 1880s, de Cleyre was especially influenced by Thomas Paine, Mary Wollstonecraft, and Clarence Darrow. Other influences were Henry David Thoreau, Big Bill Haywood, and Eugene Debs. After the hanging of the Haymarket protesters in 1887, however, she became an anarchist. "Till then I believed in the essential justice of the American law of trial by jury," she wrote in an autobiographical essay, "After that I never could".[2]
She was known as an excellent speaker and writer – in the opinion of biographer Paul Avrich, she was "a greater literary talent than any other American anarchist"[3] – and as a tireless advocate for the anarchist cause, whose "religious zeal," according to Goldman, "stamped everything she did."[4]
She was close to and inspired by Dyer D. Lum, ("her teacher, her confidant, her comrade" in the words of Goldman[5]), although she gave birth to a son, Harry on June 12, 1890, fathered by freethinker James B. Elliot. The child was taken from her when she refused to live with Elliot, and Lum committed suicide in 1893.
De Cleyre based her operations from 1889 to 1910 in Philadelphia, where she lived among poor Jewish immigrants, and where sympathy for anarchist beliefs was common. There, she taught English and music, and she learned to speak and write in Yiddish.[6]
Throughout her life she was plagued by illness and depression, attempting suicide on at least two occasions and surviving an assassination attempt on December 19, 1902. Her assailant, Herman Helcher, was a former pupil who had earlier been rendered insane by a fever, and whom she immediately forgave. She wrote, "It would be an outrage against civilization if he were sent to jail for an act which was the product of a diseased brain".[7] The attack left her with chronic ear pain and a throat infection that often adversely affected her ability to speak or concentrate.
Voltairine de Cleyre died on June 20, 1912, at St. Mary of Nazareth Hospital in Chicago, Illinois from septic meningitis. She was buried near Emma Goldman, the Haymarket defendants, and other social activists at the Waldheim Cemetery (now Forest Home Cemetery), in Forest Park, a suburb west of Chicago.[8]
Political beliefs
Voltairine de Cleyre's political perspective shifted throughout her life, eventually leading her to become an outspoken proponent of "anarchism without adjectives," a doctrine, according to historian George Richard Esenwein, "without any qualifying labels such as communist, collectivist, mutualist, or individualist. For others, … [it] was simply understood as an attitude that tolerated the coexistence of different anarchist schools."[9]
For several years de Cleyre associated primarily with the American individualist anarchist milieu. Her early allegiance to individualism can be seen in the way she differentiated herself from Emma Goldman: "Miss Goldman is a communist; I am an individualist. She wishes to destroy the right of property, I wish to assert it. I make my war upon privilege and authority, whereby the right of property, the true right in that which is proper to the individual, is annihilated. She believes that co-operation would entirely supplant competition; I hold that competition in one form or another will always exist, and that it is highly desirable it should."[10]
Despite their early dislike for one another, Goldman and de Cleyre came to respect each other intellectually. In her 1894 essay "In Defense of Emma Goldman and the Right of Expropriation", de Cleyre wrote in support of the right of expropriation while remaining neutral on its advocacy: "I do not think one little bit of sensitive human flesh is worth all the property rights in N. Y. city … I say it is your business to decide whether you will starve and freeze in sight of food and clothing, outside of jail, or commit some overt act against the institution of property and take your place beside Timmermann and Goldmann."[10]
Eventually, however, de Cleyre was moved to reject individualism. In 1908 she argued "that the best thing ordinary workingmen or women could do was to organise their industry to get rid of money altogether" and "produce together, co-operatively rather than as employer and employed."[11] In 1912 she argued that the Paris Commune's failure was due to its having "respected [private] property." In her essay, "The Commune Is Risen", she states that "In short, though there were other reasons why the Commune fell, the chief one was that in the hour of necessity, the Communards were not Communists. They attempted to break political chains without breaking economic ones…".[12]
"Socialism and Communism both demand a degree of joint effort and administration which would beget more regulation than is wholly consistent with ideal Anarchism; Individualism and Mutualism, resting upon property, involve a development of the private policeman not at all compatible with my notion of freedom."[13] Instead, she became one of the most prominent advocates of anarchism without adjectives. In The Making of an Anarchist, she wrote, "I no longer label myself otherwise than as 'Anarchist' simply".[14]
Some disagreement exists as to whether or not de Cleyre's rejection of individualism constituted an embrace of pure communism. Rudolf Rocker and Emma Goldman made such an assertion, but others, including biographer Paul Avrich, have taken exception.[15] Cleyre, herself, in response to claims that she had been an anarchist communist, asserted in 1907 that "I am not now, and have never been at any time, a communist."[16] Anarchist author Iain McKay argues that de Cleyre's subsequent 1908 advocacy of a money-less economy was communism.[17]
"Direct Action", her 1912 essay in defense of direct action, is widely cited today. In this essay, de Cleyre points to examples such as the Boston Tea Party, noting that "direct action has always been used, and has the historical sanction of the very people now reprobating it."[18]
In her 1895 lecture entitled Sex Slavery, de Cleyre condemns ideals of beauty that encourage women to distort their bodies and child socialization practices that create unnatural gender roles. The title of the essay refers not to traffic in women for purposes of prostitution, although that is also mentioned, but rather to marriage laws that allow men to rape their wives without consequences. Such laws make "every married woman what she is, a bonded slave, who takes her master's name, her master's bread, her master's commands, and serves her master's passions."[19]
She also adamantly opposed the standing army, arguing that its existence made wars more likely. In her 1909 essay, Anarchism and American Traditions, she argued that in order to achieve peace, "all peaceful persons should withdraw their support from the army, and require that all who wish to make war do so at their own cost and risk; that neither pay nor pensions are to be provided for those who choose to make man-killing a trade."[20]
Legacy
Voltairine de Cleyre, Philadelphia, Christmas 1891Voltairine de Cleyre was a prominent American anarchist, and as one of the few women of stature in the anarchist movement she was acclaimed by Emma Goldman as "the most gifted and brilliant anarchist woman America ever produced".[15][21] Today she is not widely known, something biographer Sharon Presley attributes to the shortness of her life.[15] Her life was chronicled in the book An American Anarchist, written by Paul Avrich and published by the Princeton University Press in 1978. A collection of her speeches, The First Mayday: The Haymarket Speeches, 1895–1910, was published by the Libertarian Book Club in 1980 and in 2004, AK Press released The Voltairine de Cleyre Reader.[22] In 2005, two more collections of her speeches and article were published – Exquisite Rebel: The Essays of Voltairine De Cleyre – Anarchist, Feminist, Genius, edited by Presley and Crispin Sartwell and published by SUNY Press,[23] and the other, Gates of Freedom: Voltairine De Cleyre and the Revolution of the Mind, from University of Michigan Press.[24]
See also
- Individualist anarchism in the United States
- Eugene Debs
- Emma Goldman
- Haymarket affair
- Bill Haywood
- The writing on the wall -- her last poem "Written in Red"
- Thomas Paine
- Henry David Thoreau
Citations
- ^ http://www.panarchy.org/voltairine/anarchism.html
- ^ a b De Cleyre 2004, p. 106
- ^ De Cleyre 2005, p. 20
- ^ De Cleyre 2005, p. 331
- ^ De Cleyre 2004, p. iv
- ^ http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/goldman/peopleevents/p_decleyre.html
- ^ De Cleyre 2004, p. ix
- ^ De Cleyre 2004, p. x
- ^ Esenwein 1989, p. 135
- ^ a b De Cleyre 2005, p. 156
- ^ De Cleyre 2005, p. 62
- ^ DeLamotte 2005, p. 206
- ^ De Cleyre 1914, p. 107
- ^ De Cleyre 2004, p. 108
- ^ a b c Presley 1979
- ^ De Cleyre 2005, p. 22
- ^ McKay 2006
- ^ De Cleyre 2004, p. 50
- ^ De Cleyre 2005, p. 228
- ^ De Cleyre 2005, p. 101
- ^ Falk 2003, p. 195
- ^ De Cleyre 2004
- ^ De Cleyre 2005
- ^ DeLamotte 2005
References
- Avrich, Paul (1978), An American Anarchist: the life of Voltairine de Cleyre, Princeton: Princeton University Press, ISBN 0691046573
- De Cleyre, Voltairine; Alexander Berkman and Hippolyte Havel (1914), Selected Works of Voltairine de Cleyre, New York: Mother Earth Publishing Association, OCLC 170244, http://openlibrary.org/details/selectedworksofv00declrich
- De Cleyre, Voltairine (2004), A. J. Brigati, ed., The Voltairine De Cleyre Reader, Oakland, California: AK Press, ISBN 1902593871
- De Cleyre, Voltairine (2005), Sharon Presley and Crispin Sartwell, ed., Exquisite Rebel: The Essays of Voltairine De Cleyre – Anarchist, Feminist, Genius, Albany: State University of New York Press, ISBN 0791460940
- De Cleyre, Voltairine (2008), Normand Bailargeon and Chantal Santerre, ed., D'espoir et de raison: Écrits d'une insoumise, Montréal: Lux, ISBN 978-2-89596-066-9
- DeLamotte, Eugenia C. (2004), Gates of Freedom : Voltairine de Cleyre and the Revolution of the Mind, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, ISBN 0472098675
- Esenwein, George (1989), Anarchist Ideology and the Working-Class Movement in Spain, 1868–1898, Berkeley: University of California Press, ISBN 0520063988
- Falk, Candace (2003), A Documentary of the American Years: Made for America 1890–1901 v. 1, Berkeley: University of California Press, ISBN 0520086708
- Goldman, Emma (1932), Voltairine de Cleyre, Berkeley Heights, New Jersey: The Oriole Press, OCLC 12414567, http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/Goldman/Writings/Essays/voltairine.html, retrieved 2008-12-14
- Marsh, Margaret S. (1981), Anarchist Women, 1870–1920, Philadelphia: Temple University Press, ISBN 0877222029
- McKay, Iain (Summer 2006), "Voltairine De Cleyre: Her revolutionary ideas and legacy", Anarcho-Syndicalist Review (44), http://anarchism.pageabode.com/anarcho/Voltairine-De-Cleyre, retrieved 2008-12-14
- Presley, Sharon (Winter 1979), "Voltairine de Cleyre", The Storm! (8), http://voltairine.org/bio.html, retrieved 2008-12-14
- Presley, Sharon (Fall/Winter 2000), "No Authority But Oneself: The Anarchist Feminist Philosophy of Autonomy and Freedom", Social Anarchism (27), http://library.nothingness.org/articles/SA/en/display/338, retrieved 2008-12-14
- Riggenbach, Jeff (May 14, 2006), "New & Recent Books: The Ecumenical Spirit and the Libertarian Movement", Rational Review, http://www.rationalreview.com/content/12006, retrieved 2008-12-14
External links
Free audiobooks of Voltairine de Cleyre at LibriVox- Voltairine.org – Web site about Voltairine de Cleyre, including articles and biography
- Works by or about Voltairine de Cleyre in libraries (WorldCat catalog)[dead link]
- Voltairine de Cleyre entry at the Anarchy Archives
- Poems by Voltairine De Cleyre from the Daily Bleed
- In Defense of Emma Goldman and the Right of Expropriation by Voltairine de Cleyre
- At the Molinari Institute - (near the bottom of the page)
- Voltairine de Cleyre: Penitent Priestess of Anarchism by Jeff Riggenbach
Anarchists without adjectives Voltairine de Cleyre · Sébastien Faure · Fernando Tarrida del Mármol · Max Nettlau · Élisée Reclus · Rudolf Rocker · Volin · Fred WoodworthNew York Metro Alliance of Anarchists · Synthesis anarchism Categories:- 1866 births
- 1912 deaths
- American anarchists
- American anti-war activists
- American atheists
- American feminists
- Anarcha-feminists
- Anarchism theorists
- Anarchist poets
- Anarchists without adjectives
- Burials at Forest Home Cemetery, Chicago
- Free love advocates
- Deaths from meningitis
- Libertarian socialists
- People from Leslie, Michigan
- People from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
- People from Chicago, Illinois
- Writers from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
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