When I was a teenager, my mother told me that her father had been a philosophical anarchist who wrote articles about anarchism for a Yiddish-language newspaper in the early 20th century. He died when I was a little girl, so I never had an opportunity to discuss his political beliefs with him.
Wondering what philosophical anarchism was, I did some research and decided that I was an anarchist, too. The “philosophical” part meant that my grandfather didn’t believe in using violence to reach the utopian goal of a stateless world. As a pacifist I agreed. For me anarchism was a benign, unachievable substitute for religion that I sentimentally clung to for many years.
One of my literary heroes was George Orwell, who fought alongside anarchists in the Spanish Civil War (1936-39) and wrote about his experiences there in “Homage to Catalonia.” I was also thrilled by “Living My Life,” the autobiography of Emma Goldman, the anarchist propagandist who once was known as the most dangerous woman in America.
