Have workers in the United States ever had any real security?

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This past week I viewed the massive demonstrations that expressed outrage at the murder of 17 people in a school in Parkland, Florida, as well as the mass murders in other schools. One of the speeches I listened to was by a student from Parkland, and a leader of the demonstration, Emma Gonzalez.

Gonzalez named all those who had been murdered in a little over six minutes in the school she attends. Her clear implication was that the lives of these students mattered and they deserved better than to have their lives snuffed out.

Gonzalez, as well as other student leaders, are demanding that the government adopt stricter gun control laws. Their belief is that with these kinds of laws, the likelihood of other mass shootings would diminish.

In order to place this issue in perspective, I believe we need to look at the facts of our present reality as well as the history of the United States.

What are the facts?

First I believe that it is useful to look at the taxes that the government withholds from our salaries, and then look at what that enormous amount of money is used for.

Let’s look at someone who has a relatively modest salary of $30,000 per year. That person has about $10,000 withheld from their yearly pay in federal, state, and city income tax. In a period of thirty years, this person will have had about $300,000 in withheld from their pay in taxes. In addition, there is the sales tax, real estate taxes, gasoline taxes, tobacco tax, and in Philadelphia there is a soda tax.

So, a legitimate question to ask is: Where does all this money go? Well, as we know, the largest part of the federal budget goes to the so-called defense department. The budget for this so-called defense department is in the range of hundreds of billions of dollars and increasing.

However, this huge payment isn’t the only money that the government claims is used for our protection. There is the city, state, and federal police. Then, there is the National Security Agency, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms. Then, there is the Secret Service that is allegedly used to protect the President. However, the government felt that all this so-called protection was not enough, so they created a new department and named it Homeland Security.     

So, we might ask another question: If so much money has been invested in our defense, how did a gunman walk into a school and murder 17 people? We can begin to answer this question by looking at the history of the United States.

United States history and the lack of security for working people

We can begin with the revolution that established the United States. Military officers from all over the world joined the revolutionary forces because they felt that this insurrection was justified against a tyrannical monarchy. French assistance in the revolution actually turned the tide of the war and was instrumental in the defeat of the British.

Yet democratic and republican Presidents have made it a top priority of deporting immigrants from this country. President Trump has made it clear that he felt that these measures were not sufficient and promised to escalate the number of deportations.

Yet, anyone who reads the Declaration of Independence will see that one of the grievances the colonists had against the British is that they did not allow enough immigration to the colonies. Another grievance the colonists had was that they didn’t think the British gave them enough support in their genocidal war against the first inhabitants of this part of the world.

After the revolution, the government wasn’t paying veterans for their service. Yet debt collectors demanded payments on debts. This state of affairs sparked Shays Rebellion. United States armed forces fired into a demonstration of about 1,500 citizens demanding relief. Four of the demonstrators lost their lives in this altercation.

Clearly this government had no concern for the security of slaves who worked to produce most of the income in this country for decades. Clearly the government wasn’t concerned with the security of Native Americans when they engaged in over 100 years of genocidal warfare.

After the Civil War the government declared slavery illegal, but then effectively gave power to terrorist organizations like the Ku Klux Klan. As a result, terrorists murdered thousands of Black people and the government made no attempt to prosecute the murderers.

When we think of the 17 people who were murdered in Parkland, Florida, we can also consider the fact that children routinely toiled under horrendous conditions in factories for decades. Mother Jones led a March of the Children 125 miles in protest against these conditions. During this march, a police officer asked if she wanted a police escort. She replied that these children never had protection by the police before, and they wouldn’t need protection during their march.

We might also consider the fact that today there are very strict regulations with respect to guns. When I was 18 years old, I was required to register for the draft. I never served in the military. However, at that time this country as in a war against the people of Vietnam.

In all, millions of people from Southeast Asia died as a result of the war against the people of that region. Had I been a soldier during that war and refused to use a weapon, I could have been placed in prison. These indeed are strict regulations.

Japan

I’ve read that in Japan the regulations on owning guns are much more restrictive. Some argue, that because of these regulations there are fewer murders because of gun violence. I believe we need to look at the history in order to place these facts in perspective.

Japan used to be an imperial power that dominated most of Asia. During their occupation of China, Korea, Vietnam, and other countries, the Japanese armed forces were responsible for literally tens of millions of deaths.

The war between Japan and the United States was about who would control the nations of Asia. The U.S. Air Force firebombed about 67 of the most populated Japanese cities targeting civilian areas. Then, the Air Force dropped atomic bombs on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

After the war the United States government controlled how Japan was reorganized. The U.S. government clearly didn’t want Japanese civilians to be armed and this might be why the laws against gun ownership are so restrictive. We can also say that there have been many demonstrations in Japan against the U.S. occupying forces that reside in their country.

Today’s reality

The Department of Agriculture estimates that one out of every six people in this country do not have enough food to eat. Yet anyone who has been to a supermarket can see that the shelves are overflowing with unused food items. Anyone who routinely experiences hunger or homelessness or unemployment clearly isn’t living a secure life.

Since the 1970s the standard of living has been deteriorating. Perhaps hundreds of millions of jobs have been eliminated. Most of the replacement jobs have lower pay with fewer benefits. The government has been dealing with this state of affairs by vastly increasing the prison population.

So what can we do to begin to establish security for all working people. For this we can gain some insight from the following passage in the Declaration of Independence:

“Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”

We live in a capitalist political economic system. As this paper points out, capitalism has been the cause for the wars of the world that caused tens of millions of deaths. In the year 1929 there was a stock market crash and tens of millions of people lost their life savings. Unemployment skyrocketed and most workers experienced a sharp cut in pay.

Sooner or later there will be another economic collapse. When we look at the history of this country, the time has come to stop asking the government to better regulate itself, and start thinking about establishing a new government altogether. When we have a government that values human needs more than profits, then we can talk about real and lasting security for all workers throughout the world.     

Ida Wells, Mother Jones, Lucy Parsons, & Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

By Steve Halpern

Most historians who write biographies center on one person. In this blog, I’m writing about three women who lived during the same years in the United States. I’m also writing about one man who lived in tsarist Russia during the same years. These women had different political orientations, and there was little or no contact between the women during their lives.

I found one outstanding characteristic that these three women had in common. All three experienced unimaginable and traumatic periods in their lives. Yet, all three women developed an iron willed tenacity to advance the cause of working people for many years.

There is a clearly outdated and absurd idea that women are the “weaker sex,” who need men to be their protectors. When we look at the lives of these three women, we see how they didn’t hesitate to challenge men who had power. They did this even when their actions led to threats on their lives, or resulted in a prison sentence.

The story of these three women outlines one chapter in the revolutionary heritage working people have in the world today.

I’ve included a summary of the life of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. His life and the world he lived in were different from the women in this blog. However, I believe that the life of Lenin gives us a perspective to have an even greater appreciation for these women.   

Ida Wells

(1862-1931)

Ida Wells was born a slave in Holly Springs, Mississippi in 1862. This was during the Civil War or the second revolution in the United States. Throughout the 1800s slave owners dominated the United States government. Conflicts erupted sparked by those who opposed the slave owners.

When Abraham Lincoln became President, this meant that slave owners would no longer control that branch of the government. They responded by seceding from the United States and attempted to form a slave owning nation.

About 350,000 union soldiers died in order to remove slave owners from their positions of power in this country. The United States adopted the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution that outlawed slavery. When the confederate armed forces surrendered to the Union, this meant that chattel slavery was no more in this country.  Ida Wells as well as everyone in her family were no longer slaves.

Ida Wells had seven brothers and sisters. Her father was a carpenter and her mother was a cook. When the yellow fever came to Holly Springs, Ida Wells’ mother, her father, and a sibling perished from the disease. As a young woman, she supported her family by working as a teacher at a segregated school.

After the Civil War, until the year of about 1877 federal troops occupied the former confederate states. Reconstruction governments instituted radical reforms and several Black people were elected to public office. Then, the administration of President Rutherford B. Hays made a deal to withdraw the federal troops. Supporters of terrorist white supremacist organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan then organized to militarily defeat the reconstruction governments.

In 1884 Ida Wells purchased a first class train ticket to go from Memphis to Nashville, Tennessee. The conductor of the train told her that she could not sit in the first class section and needed to go to the section of the train reserved for Black people. She refused and was forced to move. She later sued the railroad and won a $500 settlement. However, this decision was appealed and the Tennessee Supreme Court ruled against Wells. She had been offered a deal to keep the $500 if she dropped all charges against the railroad, but she refused on principal.

Then, in the year 1892 something happened that would change Ida Wells life. Ida had a friend named Thomas Moss who was a postal carrier and opened People’s Grocery store in Memphis. Calvin McDowell and Will Stewart also worked at the grocery.  Ida was the godmother to Moss’ daughter Maurine.

A white storeowner argued that People’s Grocery was taking business away from his store. A white mob organized to intimidate Moss, but he and his associates defended themselves. Thomas Moss, Calvin McDowell, and Will Stewart were then arrested, but were lynched before they ever stood trial.

Before this lynching Thomas Moss had this to say. “Tell my people to go west. There is no justice here.”

Ida Wells had become a newspaper reporter and had this to say about the lynching. “A finer, cleaner man than he never walked the streets of Memphis. He was well liked, a favorite with everybody; yet he was murdered with no more consideration than if he had been a dog….The colored people feel that every white man in Memphis who consented in his death is as guilty as those who fired the guns which took his life.”

She also argued that: “a Winchester rifle should have a place of honor in every black home.” “for protection the law refuses to give.”     

Ida Wells then argued that Black people needed to take the advice of Thomas Moss and leave Memphis. Responding to Ida Wells advice, white mobs destroyed the newspaper she worked for while she was out of the city. These mobs threatened her life. Ida Wells would never return to Memphis.

Ida Wells became friends with Frederick Douglass who appreciated Wells work in exposing the hypocrisy of lynching. Prominent writers at that time argued that Black men routinely raped white women. Wells gave the evidence showing that in most cases, rape wasn’t even the issue. She also was vehemently criticized for giving the evidence showing that many of the Black men who were lynched had consensual relationships with white women.   

Frederick Douglass published his autobiography after he escaped from slavery before the Civil War. This act meant that Douglass acknowledged that he was a fugitive, since escaping from slavery was against the law. So, he left the United States and moved to Britain.

In Britain Douglass found that on the one hand there was support for slavery since a considerable amount of British manufacturing depended on the slave labor in the U.S. He also found that there was support for the abolitionist movement. Supporters of abolition purchased Douglass’ freedom and he then was able to return to the United States without the threat of returning to slavery. Later in his life he encouraged Ida Wells to visit Britain and campaign there in opposition to lynching.

Ida Wells acknowledged that she didn’t trust white people. She felt that she never experienced equality in the United States. However, she was surprised that in Britain, this was not the case and she won significant support for the campaign against lynching. Many supported her argument to boycott the purchase of cotton grown in the United States.

In 1913 there was a demonstration in Washington demanding that women have the right to vote. Ida Wells lived in Chicago at that time and led the Illinois delegation to this demonstration.

At this time racism had infected the ranks of those who favored women’s suffrage. The leaders of the march told the Black suffragettes that they should march at the end of the demonstration. Ida Wells refused to bow to that racism and marched at the head of the Illinois delegation.

Throughout her life Ida Wells organized to fight against the routine repression of Black people. When not organizing, she wrote about this repression that erupted throughout the country.

Her husband Ferdinand L. Barnett was a lawyer and elected official in Chicago. He understood the leadership role his wife Ida played in politics and took responsibility for raising their children and making sure all the day-to-day tasks were taken care of. This was so Ida Wells could carry on her political activity.

Of the three women in this blog, Ida Wells had the best understanding of the need to challenge all forms of discrimination against Black people.   

Mother Jones

(1837-1930)

Mary Harris was born in Cork, Ireland around the time of the Irish Potato Famine. As a child she witnessed Irish people who had starved to death being thrown into a wagon in order to dispose of their bodies. For the rest of her life, Mother Jones didn’t talk about her childhood in those horrendous conditions.

Her parents managed to move to Canada and she later married, had four children and settled in Memphis, Tennessee. This was in the vicinity of where Ida Wells lived and worked in the early years of her life. Just as Ida Wells lost her parents to an epidemic, Mary Jones lost her husband and four children to a similar epidemic in the same area.

Mary Jones then moved to Chicago and established a dressmaking business. At that time, Chicago was a center for the emerging labor movement. Mary Jones witnessed the immense disparity between those who had obscene amounts of wealth, and those who struggled every day in order to survive. She lost her business to the Chicago Fire of 1871  

For several years, Mary Jones supported various movements promoting the interests of labor. Then the United Mine Workers hired her as a labor organizer.

She learned how the miners lived from day-to-day, working twelve to fourteen hour days for a wage that barely allowed a family to survive. Parents routinely sent their children to work in the mines because this was an absolute necessity so families would have the food they needed. These children worked long hours knee-deep in mud or hunched over to separate the coal from the shale of the mine.

Here, Mary Jones became Mother Jones and talked to the miners as if she were their mother. She told them of the grim reality of the lives they lived. She told them that as things were, the only thing they had to look forward to was being crippled in old age. Then, she gave them the facts of how all their labors went to a class of people who broke the Commandment, “Thou shalt not steal.” The union was their only way to begin to escape from this reality.

In Arnot, Pennsylvania the mine owners made it dangerous for the men to walk the picket lines. So, Mother Jones organized an army of women with mops and brooms, and succeeded in intimidating the scabs who attempted to cross the picket lines.

In the anthracite strikes of the 1890s Mother Jones lived with the miners and experienced the same conditions of life without a living wage. She took a mule with a wagon and appealed to the neighboring farmers to contribute food for the strike. She would return late at night, under frigid cold and snowy conditions with the wagon filled with food.    

In the year 1900 one out of every six children worked for a wage. Before the 1890s only one percent of all children attended high school. Mother Jones was so incensed with the idea that very young children slaved away in factories, she worked at two factories in Alabama where she witnessed child labor for herself. She wrote about her experiences in these factories in the magazine International Socialist Review.

In the year 1903, Mother Jones came to Philadelphia to support 100,000 textile workers who were on strike. Their demand was for a reduction of hours they worked from 60 to 55 hours. 16,000 of these workers were children.

Mother Jones then organized her March of the Children where she led her army of child laborers from Philadelphia to the summer home of President Theodore Roosevelt in Long Island, New York.

In Princeton, New Jersey she gave some of the students of the University a lesson in economics. She pointed to the children who had gnarled hands and missing fingers. She pointed to a ten-year old soldier in her army, James Ashworth, who’s back was hunched over from carrying seventy-five pound loads for three dollars per week. She argued that these children worked so that many of the students at Princeton University had money for their tuition, so they might receive a higher education.

In the March of the Children, Mother Jones spoke of the fact that the revolutionary army under the command of General George Washington resided in this same area of New Jersey. She drew the parallel that the army of child laborers had the same goal outlined in the Declaration of Independence. This was the “pursuit of happiness.”

The U.S. oil companies had huge interests in the Mexican oil fields at the beginning of the 20^th century. They used the President of Mexico, Porfirio Díaz, to consolidate their interests. The Díaz regime was known for subjecting Mexico to abject poverty as well as ruthless punishments for those who questioned his authority. Many Mexican revolutionaries moved to the United States to escape this repression in their homeland.

In 1907 Manuel Sarabia a Mexican revolutionary was arrested in Douglass, Arizona and sent to Mexico where he was placed in prison. Mother Jones immediately went on a campaign to free Sarabia. While this campaign succeeded in freeing Sarabia, he and other Mexican revolutionaries were arrested in the United States. Mother Jones continued to work on their behalf.

By the year 1913, the miners of Colorado went on strike. The Rockefeller owned corporation attempted to import workers from Mexico to scab on the strike. Mother Jones went to Juarez, Mexico and became friends with the Mexican revolutionary Francisco “Poncho” Villa. She then spoke to Mexican workers through an interpreter and no Mexicans would cross the union picket lines in Colorado.

Mother Jones made three attempts to support the miners strike in Colorado by travelling to the center of the strike in Trinidad. Each time the armed forces of the state commanded by General John Chase intercepted her. The owner of the mines, John D. Rockefeller, paid the salaries of the forces under Chase’s command.

In her last attempt to join the strike, the military placed Mother Jones in an old prison that had been condemned. There she smuggled out a letter that was read on her behalf at a rally in New York City. She said that in this prison she battled sewer rats with a beer bottle. She said that if she were out of the prison she would be batting human sewer rats.

The socialist Eugene Debs asked people to compare Mother Jones in her dark cell to the Governor of Colorado Elias Ammons, who lived in the governor’s mansion. “Behold them both, the one inspired liberator of the masses, the other the servile lackey of the princes of plunder and assassination; the one as glorious in her guarded cell as the other is despicable in his guarded sanctum!”

The Denver Express wrote, “The fire of MERCY is in her eye, the love of HUMANITY in her heart, the TRUTH upon her tongue, FEAR of nothing this side of God within her soul.”

Two-hundred women marched in Trinidad demanding her release from prison. General Chase gave to order to charge this demonstration. The sabers they used injured several women and effectively tore through the Constitution of the United States.

Mother Jones had this to say about these experiences. “The miners lost because they only had the Constitution. The other side had the bayonets. In the end, bayonets always win.”

In the year 1930 Mother Jones passed away. In just a few years, millions of workers would join the unions that Mother Jones used her life to build.                 

Lucy Parsons

(1853-1942)

Lucy Parsons claimed that she had Mexican and Native American parents and was born in Texas. Jacqueline Jones wrote a recent biography of Parsons life. In her book, Jones argued that she found evidence stating that Parsons maiden name was Lucia Carter, and she lived as a slave for her first fourteen years. This evidence shows that Parsons was born in Virginia.

Thomas J. Taliaferro, the person who owned her was afraid that he might loose his slaves to the Civil War. During this war hundreds of thousands of Black people left the plantations where they were slaves to join with the Union forces.

So, Taliaferro moved his slaves about 1,200 miles to Texas. We don’t know the conditions twelve-year-old Lucia experienced on this forced march. However, we do know that these kinds of forced marches or coffles were a common way of transporting slaves long distances. The slaves were routinely chained at the neck and legs to prevent them from escaping. We also know that slave owners used various methods of torture to coerce slaves to do extraordinary amounts of work without being paid a wage.

Lucia Carter would eventually marry Albert Parsons who was caucasian. They married in Waco, Texas just a few weeks before the Texas state government declared mixed race marriages to be illegal. During the 19^th and early 20^th centuries the idea of mixed race marriages was highly controversial in every part of the United States.

So, we can only speculate as to why Lucy Parsons did not identify as a Black woman who had been a slave. However, just as Mother Jones didn’t speak about her horrendous experiences as a child, we can speculate that Lucy Parsons may have had similar reasons why she felt uncomfortable speaking about her childhood.

In Waco, Texas Lucia Carter was educated in a one-room schoolhouse. Teachers from the northern states came south because they felt it was important to educate the former slaves as well as their children. Ida Wells also received her preliminary education in this environment.

Lucia Carter married Albert Parsons, who had served in the confederate army. After the war, he transformed himself, became a Republican, and argued eloquently that the rights of Black people needed to be advanced. These arguments attracted Lucia and they had a loving marriage for as long as Albert lived.

With the defeat of the reconstruction governments the ideas of Albert and Lucy Parsons became intolerable to those who favored segregation. For these reasons, they moved to Chicago and started a family.

In Chicago Albert became a printer and Lucy worked as a dressmaker. They both gravitated to the German section of the city where radical ideas flourished. They learned of the socialist ideas of Karl Marx as well as the philosophy of anarchism.

When the Parsons arrived in Chicago in 1873, there was a depression and the city was recovering from the 1871 Chicago fire. They learned very quickly of the indifference of the people who had power to those who struggled to survive. Albert Parsons began to see that the power brokers of Chicago had similar interests as the former slave owners of Texas.

Then, the owners of the rail lines instituted a sharp wage cut. This sparked the rail strike of 1877 and Chicago was a center for the strike. In all about 100 workers lost their lives as a result of the strike. About 100,000 workers supported this strike across the country.

In the year 1871 the workers of Paris briefly took over their government in an event known as the Paris Commune. Capitalists in this country feared that the strike of 1877 might spark a similar takeover of the government here.

We might also consider that the United States became a nation because of a political revolution and that the Civil War was in effect the second revolution in this country. The segregationist forces supported by the Ku Klux Klan took power in the former Confederate states because of a military overthrow of the reconstruction governments.

So, when we see the violent nature of the events that transpired in these years, we can clearly understand why Ida Wells argued that, “a Winchester rifle should have a place of honor in every black home.” “for protection the law refuses to give.” Lucy Parsons was older than Ida Wells and was one of the first to advocate for Black people to arm themselves in self-defense.

Albert and Lucy Parsons both became advocates for working people and spoke eloquently on their behalf. However, like Ida Wells, they both believed that working people needed to be armed in order to defend their interests. They didn’t just think of arming people with Winchester rifles, but also with dynamite.

Then, on May 4, 1886 there was a demonstration in the Haymarket on Chicago’s West Side demanding an eight-hour workday. Towards the end of the event, the police mobilized to attack the demonstration. A bomb was thrown and several police officers lost their lives. The police retaliated by firing into the demonstration of workers. An unknown number of workers died as a result.

Although there were no witnesses or any evidence as to who threw the bomb. Albert Parsons and seven other workers were arrested and charged with murder. While they were in prison each of the eight defendants wrote their life’s story and explained why they supported the labor movement. Albert Parsons gave the following explanation as to why he was being victimized.

“Anarchists do not advocate or advise the use of force.  Anarchists disclaim and protest against its use, and the use of force is justifiable only when employed to repel force.  Who, then, are the aiders, abettors and users of force?  Who are the real revolutionists?  Are they not those who hold and exercise power over their fellows?  They who use clubs and bayonets, prisons and scaffolds?  The great class conflict now gathering throughout the world is created by our social system of industrial slavery.  Capitalists could not if they would, and would not if they could, change it.  This alone is to be the work of the proletariat, the disinherited, the wage slave, the sufferer.  Nor can the wage-class avoid this conflict.  Neither religion nor politics can solve it or prevent it.  It comes, as a human, an imperative necessity.  Anarchists do not make the social revolution; the prophesy its coming.  Shall we then stone the prophets?  Anarchists do not use or advise the use of force, but point out that force is ever employed to uphold despotism to despoil man’s natural rights.  Shall we therefore kill and destroy the Anarchists?  And capital shouts “yes, yes! exterminate them!”

Parsons was also more specific about the actual issues that were involved in this quotation:

“Two hours, taken from the hours of labor, throughout the United States by the proposed eight-hour movement, would make a difference annually of hundreds of millions in values, both to the capital invested in industries and existing stocks.”

The state of Illinois executed Albert Parsons and three of his co-defendants. The other four defendants received long prison sentences.

In 1892 Illinois Governor John Peter Altgeld pardoned the four remaining prisoners who had been convicted in the frame-up trial that resulted in the execution of four workers. Altgeld argued that the state, “has never discovered who threw the bomb which killed the policeman, and evidence does not show any connection whatsoever between the defendants and the man who threw it.”

Years after these events the socialist leader Eugene V. Debs had this to say about the frame-up and execution of the Haymarket Martyrs:

“The sordid capitalism which preys upon the life-blood of labor, whose ethics are expressed in beastly gluttony and insatiable greed, and whose track of conquest is strewn with the bones of countless victims, pounced upon these men with the cruel malignity of fiends and strangled them to death.”

Workers from around the world celebrate May 1 as May Day. The original idea of May Day was to commemorate the Haymarket Martyrs who the state of Illinois executed for demanding an eight-hour day.  

So, at this point in her life, Lucy Parsons had experienced both the horrors of slavery and the frame-up and execution of her husband. She believed concretely that the government in this country needed to be replaced.

She also learned that in giving speeches defending her husband, that there were masses of people who enthusiastically supported her point of view. She also learned that the authorities would do everything in their power in preventing her from giving speeches many workers wanted to hear.

However, there was a problem with the message of Lucy Parsons. When she was about sixty years old she argued that her listeners should disrupt production at it’s source: “If this cannot be done by peaceful methods, use force, tear machines apart, destroy property, and force capitalists to listen to the demands of employees.” She gave this definition of what an anarchist is: “An anarchist is a man with a bomb in each hand and a knife between his teeth.”

Given the reality of her life we might understand why Lucy Parsons felt this way. However, this was the kind of rhetoric the government used to execute her husband. Mother Jones appealed to workers to organize themselves in unions in order to improve their lives and was critical of Lucy Parsons brand of anarchism. I believe that Mother Jones made a legitimate point.

We might think about the fact that advocating for individual acts of terrorism is completely different from advocating for masses of people to defend themselves. When revolutions erupt workers use all kinds of weapons to put in place a completely different government. However, advocating for individual acts of terrorism only gives the ruling powers an excuse to unleash repressive measures against the working class. This was the horrendous lesson of the Haymarket martyrs.

However, this aspect of Lucy Parsons was only one part of her overall political orientation. Jacqueline Jones gave the following summary of the politics of Lucy Parsons:

“She decried the profit making imperatives that made so many work places sites of soul deadening boredom, repetition, and physical danger. In the new consumer economy, ‘everything now has a price’: but in the future, ‘when labor is no longer for sale, society will produce free men and women who will think free, act free, and be free.’ She exposed the corrupting influence of corporate money on politics, and charged that authorities used prisons as a means of controlling their critics. She lamented the vulnerability of the elderly, ‘worn out working people’ reduced to penury after a long life of honest toil. She railed against employers who one day professed horror at workers defending themselves and the next day paid thugs to beat strikers nigh unto death. She exposed the hypocritical arrogance of reformers who chided the working man for spending 5 cents for a beer on Saturday afternoon. She excoriated a system that placed property rights above human rights. Even her Victorian-inflected defense of children—for example, comparing the little brother and sister on their way to the sweatshop with the vulgar, lavish wedding of a daughter of John Jacob Astor—had a universal, timeless quality.”

Towards the end of her life Lucy Parsons met James P. Cannon. Cannon, who had been a member of the International Workers of the World Party, and the Communist Party. On a visit to the Soviet Union Cannon discovered a document written by Leon Trotsky that was critical of the Soviet government of Joseph Stalin. This document convinced Cannon to break with his former comrades in the Communist Party and become a founding member of the Socialist Workers Party.

For many years Lucy Parsons had been distributing literature about the Haymarket Martyrs. Cannon understood the importance of this work and volunteered to help distribute that literature making sure that Lucy Parsons received her portion of the revenue.

Today the Socialist Workers Party organizes Pathfinder Press that publishes the autobiographies of the Haymarket Martyrs. Pathfinder also publishes the speeches of Mother Jones.

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

(1870-1924)

Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov’s young life was completely different from the women in this paper. While Ida Wells, Mother Jones, and Lucy Parsons either experienced slavery, hunger, or epidemics, young Vladimir’s father was an educator who lived in a relatively comfortable environment. Vladimir was a diligent student.

One big difference between in the experiences of young Vladimir and the women in this paper was in the difference between the reality of the United States compared to what existed in tsarist Russia.

The United States was born as a result of a revolution against a feudal power. In feudalism a person’s stature in life was determined by their birth. The nobility claimed that it’s power was ordained by God, and that power lasted throughout their lives. The majority, who were not part of the nobility, had no rights and lived at the mercy of their masters.

The first revolution in the Americas changed that reality. While the wars against Native Americans as well as chattel slavery continued, for the first time people considered the idea that workers and small farmers had certain rights. However, those rights did not include the right for women or those without property to vote.

Then the Civil War was, in effect, the second revolution in the United States. As a result, the horrors of chattel slavery were abolished and slave owners lost the power they had in this country. However, after the defeat of reconstruction, Jim Crow segregation emerged and Black people effectively lost citizenship rights in this country.

Russia, in the time before the revolution, was run by a feudal monarch known as the tsar. There was a parliament known as the Duma, but the tsar had the power to dissolve the Duma at any time.

Most of tsarist Russia consisted of farmland that was made productive by peasants. These peasants had lives that were similar to the slaves on plantations. The owners to the vast estates had the power to dictate their own laws that included executing peasants when they chose to. Corporal punishment was routine, and the wives of peasants were routinely beaten by their husbands. Peasants also needed an official pass just to travel in the nation of their birth.

During Lenin’s life, millions of peasants left the countryside and came to the cities. Many worked 11 hour days and lived in dormitories. The police in the cities had absolute power and had the right to inflict beatings whenever they wanted. The factories of Russia were largely owned by French capitalists.

So, while there was a significant middle class in the United States, the tsar as well as French capital were the power brokers in tsarist Russia.

Young Vladimir was very close to his brother Alexander Ulyanov. Both Vladimir and Alexander were aware of the horrors of their homeland and both wanted to make a change. Alexander felt that the only way to change things would be to murder the tsar and organized an assassination attempt that failed. As a result, the authorities executed Alexander Ulyanov.      

Lenin learned two important things from his brother. He learned to have the courage to stand up for a point of view that many would not support. He also learned that his brother’s actions had no chance of making things better for anyone. For the rest of his life, Lenin would be obsessed with advancing a political course that he felt had a chance of success.

Lenin initially attended meetings with workers where they discussed Marxist politics. The secret police of the tsar known as the Okrana routinely attended these kinds of meetings. The participants in these gatherings needed to talk in a code language so they wouldn’t appear to be disloyal to the regime.

These tactics were only partially successful. The authorities arrested Lenin and many of his comrades. Lenin was exiled to Siberia. He escaped and lived in Europe until the revolution.

Under these conditions Lenin advocated for a centralized political party. He argued that when revolutionaries operated on their own, it was easier for them to be victimized. With a centralized party, democracy existed at national meetings, but once decisions were made, all members were obligated to carry out the line of the party. This political orientation split the social democrats into the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks.

In 1905 there were massive demonstrations in Russia. Workers councils, known as Soviets organized the rebellion. One demonstration appealed to the tsar to make desperately needed reforms. The armed forces of Russia attacked this demonstration and murdered about 1,000 protesters.

After this defeat many leaders were exiled from the country. When we look at the history of the U.S. labor movement, we see that many activists also served time in prison. However, these were usually short sentences and they were able to return to political activity. In tsarist Russia leaders not only experienced exile, but spies from the tsar kept track of them while they lived outside the country. Only with the Revolution were they allowed to return to their homeland.

Then in 1917 another revolution erupted. At that time the tsar was effectively forced to join in the international holocaust known as the First World War. Literally millions of Russian soldiers lost their lives in a war Russia was not going to win. This war brought with it famine in a nation that had been a breadbasket to the entire region.

Under these conditions workers organized to remove the tsar from power. At this time even the armed forces understood the profound crisis that Russia experienced and refused to put down the revolution. A provisional government took power.

Within a short period of time the Russian people discovered that the new Provisional Government had no intention of making any meaningful changes. Lenin returned to Russia and demanded All Power to the Soviets and for Peace, Bread, and Land.

At this time, the most of the other leading Bolsheviks didn’t think it was possible to place a workers government in power. They felt that since Russia was a feudal power, the nation first needed to experience capitalism. Lenin turned the party around and argued that if workers failed to take power at that time, this would signal a disaster and everything working people had been demanding would be lost.

In order to make this revolution possible, Lenin understood that the Bolsheviks needed to oppose all forms of national oppression. The nations that made up Russia, that included Ukraine, Georgia, Chechnya, and Armenia. Three of my grandparents were Russian Jews who came to this country before the revolution. In all, there were about 160 different nationalities in tsarist Russia.

With the revolution, tsarist Russia became the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. For the first time in their history, the cultures of each republic flowered in the first years after the revolution. This included the use of their distinct languages. These republics were socialist and worked in a union with each other.

Workers began to see real measures that began to relieve the crisis they faced. The Bolsheviks organized extraordinary measures to insure that everyone had access to bread. The Bolsheviks also exposed the fact that massive amounts of wealth had been going to those who found ways to gouge out profits from the horrendous war. The Bolsheviks ended this practice.

Lenin wrote his pamphlet The State and Revolution. Here he explained how the state was created with the capitalist system as an instrument of repression that is used against workers. When the Bolsheviks came to power the state was then used to advance the interests of the overwhelming majority of the population and repress the tiny minority that controlled the wealth in the past. As a result, workers replaced corporate managers and became genuine leaders of the working class.

In a nation that had extreme repression against women, The Soviet Union immediately gave women the right to vote in 1917. Women in the United States needed to wait until 1921 before they received the right to vote.

The betrayal of the revolution

We might recall that in the United States about 350,000 union soldiers died in the Civil War that abolished chattel slavery in this country. The Republican Party of Abraham Lincoln was the party that was in the leadership of this historic transformation.

However, it was also the Republican Party headed by President Rutherford B. Hayes that ordered the federal troops to leave the former confederate states. This action effectively allowed terrorist organizations like the Ku Klux Klan to militarily take power in those states.

As a result of those actions, the former slaves who lived in those states lost citizenship rights in this country. Thousands would be murdered in lynchings, and the federal government would do nothing to prosecute the murderers. Ida Wells dedicated her life to putting an end to the practice of lynching in this country.

A few years after the Russian Revolution an assassin attempted to murder Lenin. He never fully recovered from his injuries.

Joseph Stalin then organized to betray the revolution. The Bolsheviks had been victorious in a civil war where 14 nations joined in an attempt to overthrow the revolutionary government.

Because of the fact that Russia had experienced the horrors of war, the destruction of their economy, as well as international isolation, there was a desire in the country for some stability. Therefore the movement to prevent Stalin from betraying the revolution was weak.

However, Stalin was not able to reverse all the gains made by the revolution. While Germany was able to militarily defeat Russia in the First World War, the German Fascist military of Adolf Hitler was decisively defeated by the Red Army in the Second World War. This was in spite of the horrendous military leadership of Joseph Stalin that cost the Soviet Union about 27 million deaths.

Conclusion

Ida Wells dedicated her life, not just to the practice of ending lynching, but to the full liberation of Black people in the United States. Vladimir Ilyich Lenin showed how the liberation of oppressed nationalities is possible with a revolution led by working people in alliance with farmers.

Mother Jones dedicated her life to advancing the cause of workers in this part of the world. Lenin demonstrated how it is possible for workers to not only bargain for better conditions, but to actually take control of the government and run it in the interests of all workers. Mother Jones recognized this and stated that she was an ardent supporter of the Russian Revolution.

Lucy Parsons became a champion of those who were unjustly incarcerated in this country. She also imagined a future world where workers would be fully liberated.

This past year, I was a member of an international brigade that lived and worked for two weeks in Cuba. Clearly Cuba is an underdeveloped country. Yet they have their own way of organizing their country.

However, given the limitations they live with, Cuba has given working people an example of how it is indeed possible for working people to become fully liberated. We can see this clearly when we look at the education and health care systems on the island.

After the revolution of 1959, Cuba mobilized hundreds of thousands of young people, mostly women, to teach everyone on the island to read. Our tour guide told us that in other countries working people become desperate when they lack the necessities of life. In Cuba, because of the educational system the people find ingenious ways of dealing with difficult situations that include the United States embargo against the country.

This literacy drive was the foundation of the health care system on the island. Today Cuba has twice the number of doctors, per capita, as the United States. Infant mortality is lower in Cuba than in this country. Cuba has not only trained doctors, free of charge from around the world, many Cuban doctors have spent years treating patients in some of the poorest places on the planet.

We can contrast this to the United States where there have been consistent cutbacks in medical care, in spite of the fact that this country spends much more for health care then Cuba.

I wrote this paper to demonstrate that history teaches us that women have the real potential to become genuine leaders of the working class. This is completely different from the women who today are corporate officers, politicians, or media moguls.

The lives of Ida Wells, Mother Jones, and Lucy Parsons illustrate that workers will welcome women who dedicate themselves to our cause. Yes, women have been and will continue to be leaders of working people.            

Looking at the unspeakable horrors of the past, we can say that while the tasks of working people are clearly difficult, our tasks are easier than the tasks of workers in the past.

Understanding all of this, there is good reason to be optimistic that working people have the potential to deal with the enormous problems that face us today.