12/1/2017

• Capitalism
  • As capital concentrated, it seized the means of productions from the hands of the artisans, forcing them into factories and shops owned and run by capitalists… They became utterly dependent upon the capitalists for a livelihood; they had to sell their labor from day to day to make a living.
  • Lucy condemned the system which permitted one person to profit from the work of another and contrasted capitalism with anarchism which meant “that the world and its wealth and its treasures and its happiness should, like the air and the sunshine, belong to all mankind, and not to the few.
• Government
  • She believed that no one needed a government to tell him when he was hungry, or a politician to decide when sewers, houses, railroads, canals, or steamboat lines were needed. The people could call meetings and canvass the population to decided when and where improvements were needed. Her theory of a free society was based upon the natural cooperativeness, rather than the competitiveness, of human beings. She argued that under anarchism 85% of criminal offenses would be eliminated, that is, crimes agains “private property.” “Anarchist have faith enough in the good judgement of the people, in a ‘free society’ to take care of the rest, and do it, too, without any intermingling of centralized authority, or political mongering.”
  • [Albert Parsons] charged, “The law — the statue law — is the coward’s weapon, the tool of the thief, and more — the shield and buckler of every gigantic villainy, and frightful parent of all crimes.”
  • Illegal interference with anarchist meetings was just the first step to illegal and arbitrary interference with any meeting.
• reforms
  • The Alarm on the 8 hour movement: “Either our position is position that capitalists have no right to the exclusive ownership of life is a true one, or it is not. If we are correct, then to conceded the point that the capitalists have the right to eight hours of our labor is more than a compromise; it is a virtual concession that the wage system is right. “
  • Lucy Parsons: “Strike not for a few cents more an hour, because the price of living will be raised faster still, but strike for all you earn, be content with nothing less.”
  • The political victories of the independent labor parties in 1887 were lost in collaboration with the Democrats across the country in 1888.
• Violence
  • [August Spies] pointed out that the violence of the capitalist class is greater than any violence he had ever advocated.
• Albert’s death
  • Albert Parsons parting message to his comrades: “And now to all I say: Falter not. Lay bare the iniquities of capitalism; expose the slavery of law; proclaim the tyranny of governments; denounce the greed, cruelty, abominations of the privileged class, who rot and revel on the labor of their wage-slaves. Farewell.”
  • Lucy would better have stepped defiantly onto the scaffold herself, than endure the death of her husband. She had the character of a martyr, not a widow. 
  • A quarter to a half million people lined the streets [at the haymarket martyrs funeral procession]
• Elections
  • In the Liberator, Lucy attacked the election process. “The fact is, MONEY and NOT votes is what rules the people.” She argued that abstention from voting would show “that we refused to endorse such frauds by voting for them. It would prick the bubble of suffrage by showing there are questions beyond the ballot… the workers will force economic questions to the front which are now obscured in the halls of legislation. To vote is to give our influence to postpone the day of emancipation.”
• No agency of the law even admitted it had Lucy Parsons’ books and papers. The Chicago Police, the Chicago Red Squad, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation feared even a dead Lucy Parsons.