Pre/ace

I n his obituary of his fri e n d a n d comrade, Voltairine d e Cleyre, pu blished i n the

August 1912 lon d on Freedom, Ha rry Kelly wrote that, "to her the Ana rchist
i d eal was s o m ethi n g m o re than a d ream of the future; it was a guide fo r
everyday life, a n d not to be compromised with. Most of us ca n fin d excu ses fo r
ourselves when we d eviate fro m the straight li ne; but Voltai ri n e kept h e rself to it
u nfli n chingly:' As we can i m agine, such vigorous and firm commitment to her ideal
led to tensi ons b etwee n h e r a n d oth er anarchist and radical conte m p o raries. She
was not spari n g in criti cis m both of h e rself and othe rs. Difficult, compl ex, and
d riven by a n unflinching i ntegrity grounded i n eve ryday exp e ri e nce, Voltairi n e de
Cley re wrote some of the m ost p resci ent and perce ptive essays on a n a rchism that
we could hope to read. Essa ys that refuse to li e dorma nt as comforta ble artifa cts,
but still challe n g e us today.
In many of her essays, de Cleyre consciously set out to create a specifically anarchist
history. Work on the Paris Commune, her series of talks and writings on Haymarket,
her attempt to articulate and evidence an innate and organic American anarchism,
all form part of a larger work that analyzes, memorializes and informs present
practice. Her historical pieces reflect her wide reading, her literary passionate nature
and a respect and admiration for those militants who died for their beliefs. Indeed,
the dead Haymarket men were a constant presence in her life providing strength and
inspiration.
Like her companion Dyer D. Lum, de Cleyre favored the idea of anarchism without
adjectives. Initially an individualist anarchist and supporter of the ideas reflected in
Benjamin Tucker's paper, Liberty, she stayed constant to the paper's initial
Proudhonist mutualism while gradually recognizing class as more and more of an
important aspect of her anarchism. Although she never adopted anarchist
communism, de Cleyre was influenced in the idea of a unifying anarchism by Lum
as well as the Spanish anarchists, Ricardo Mella and Fernando Tarrida del Marmol,
whom she met in London in 1897. As she wrote to Emma Goldman in 1907, "I am
an Anarchist Simply without economic labels attached." Such a position would later
be adapted in some form by Malatesta, Max Nettlau, Voline and Sebastien Faure. This
view of anarchism considerably affected de Cleyre's writing on anarchism. Her essays
i
T h e Voltairi n e d e []e y re R e a d e r
reflect a struggle with language, a tension i f you will, centered o n finding the right
word for the right feeling, the right action. Very rarely does she use hyperbolic
rhetoric. Her essays are precise explorations meant to clarify, guide or interrogate.
Her belief and work reflected a commitment both to education and action. At
various times in her life her work consisted of teaching young Jewish immigrants
English. (Jewish anarchists were for de Cleyre, "the most liberal minded and active
comrades in the moveme􀋷t as well as the most transcendental dreamers." ) She was a
regular contributor to anarchist newspapers such as Lucifer, Free Society, The Rebel
and Mother Earth, as well as to a whole series of freethought and radical journals and
papers, where her uncompromising atheism and feminism, bedrocks of her
anarchism, were regularly on show.
In 1892 she helped form the Philadelphia Ladies Liberal League. Belying its rather
genteel name it encouraged discussion on sex, anarchism and all kinds of
revolutionary and radical material ("we have done this" she wrote in The Rebel of
October 20, 1895 , "because we love liberty and hate authority") . The Ladies Liberal
League later merged with the Radical Library, another organization created by de
Cleyre and her comrades, whose aim was to provide radical mate.rial that workingmen
and women could read at their leisure.
Just who should be the focus of this education was startlingly obvious to de Cleyre.
Un undertaking a speaking tour in 1910, she was dismayed by ihe uaillIe uf 􀋷Ullle uf
her venues and audiences, arguing, "comrades, we have gone upon a wrong road. Let
us get back to the point that our work should be chiefly among the poor, the ignorant,
the brutal, the disinterested, the men and women who do the hard and brutalizing
work of the world." (Mother Earth, December 1 9 1 0) Her comments precipitated a
sharp response from Emma Goldman in the same issue of the magazine, who argued
in a rejoinder, "the men and women who first take up the banner of new liberating
ideas generally emanate from the so called respectable classes" and "Anarchism builds
not on classes, but on men and women."
We would be wrong however if we saw de Cleyre as a woman lost in books