Review of "Lucy Parsons: An American Revolutionary"

This review first appeared in the May-June 2013 issue of the International Socialist Review.

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http://www.haymarketbooks.org/pb/Lucy-Parsons

Carolyn Ashbaugh
Lucy Parsons: An American Revolutionary
Haymarket Books, 2013 • 282 pages • $16

Review by Keith Rosenthal

With the republication of this long out-of-print 1976 work by Carolyn Asbaugh, Haymarket Books has provided a major boon for a new generation of radical and progressive activists. Lucy Parsons might very well be the most unsung of heroes among the pantheon of major American labor revolutionaries, such as Eugene Debs, William "Big Bill" Haywood, and Mother Jones.

As Ashbaugh informs us, Parsons was one of the first women to join the Knights of Labor in 1879 and the first woman of color to rise to prominence in the revolutionary left. She helped found the International Working People's Association, the U.S. Socialist Party, the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), and lent her efforts to the development of the U.S. Communist Party (CP). She also figured prominently in the events surrounding one of the most notorious episodes in the history of the American labor movement: the 1886-7 frame-up, trial, and execution of the Haymarket Martyrs, whose numbers included her husband, Albert Parsons.

Additionally, Parsons was one of the very first to seriously address the question of racism and the plight of Black people at the turn of the century in the pages of the socialist and anarchist press. And she was a pioneering advocate for women's rights, including unfettered access to abortion and birth control, the right to at-will divorce, to be free from rape -- marital and otherwise, and she organized domestic laborers and housewives into Working Women's Unions.

Famous architect Frank Lloyd Wright on the Soviet Union, Stalin, and "Trotskyites" | Daily Worker, 1937

August 12, 1937, Daily Worker

The Daily Worker, the WPA, and Disability in the 1930s

Protest outside of the Works Progress Administration (WPA) headquarters in New York City, circa 1936, Daily Worker. WPA federal regulations barred disabled people from securing employment, declaring them to be "unemployable."

Article attached to the above photograph.

Notice the section of the article highlighting the prominent role played by disabled workers and activists fighting against WPA discrimination and for good-paying jobs.

For months the Daily Worker had been criticizing the fact that hundreds of thousands of workers nationwide were being cut from the ranks of the WPA workforce. They demanded that all workers be reinstated. Instead, they declared a victory after FDR declared that no further workers' jobs would be cut from the WPA.

Helen Keller with Rabindranath Thakur at a meeting of the New History Society, c. 1930, U.S.

Helen Keller was a life-long socialist, activist for disability rights, prolific author and orator, and all-around bad-ass.

Rabindranath Thakur (anglicised to Tagore) was a Bengali polymath who reshaped his region's literature and music. He became the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913. He was a fierce anti-imperialist and an early advocate of Indian independence from British colonialism.

Description: Newspaper clipping. Helen Keller meets Indian poet and educationalist, Sir Rabindranath Tagore. Caption below photograph reads, "A sage from the Orient meets a famous woman of the Occident. Sir Rabindranath Tagore, eminent Indian poet and educationalist, conversing with Helen Keller, noted blind woman of America, on the problem of India. At the meeting of the New History Society in New York, at which Tagore gave his farewell message to American people, Miss Keller spoke in the interests of India."
Date: circa 1930
Format: newspaper clipping
Digital Identifier: AG62-3-002
Rights: Samuel P. Hayes Research Library, Perkins School for the Blind, Watertown, MA

Note: The New History Society was formed in New York City in 1929 as way of spreading the teachings of the Bahá'í Faith. It was primarily an educational movement, the chief activity of which was international correspondence. The Bahá'í Faith is a monotheistic religion emphasizing the spiritual unity of all humankind. It was founded by `Abdu'l-Bahá, a Persian man who spent much of his life living in Palestine. In the Bahá'í Faith, religious history is seen to have unfolded through a series of divine messengers, each of whom established a religion that was suited to the needs of the time and the capacity of the people. These messengers have included Abrahamic figures as well as Dharmic ones - Krishna, Moses, Buddha, Jesus, Muhammad, and others. Between 1911-13, `Abdu'l-Bahá traveled to Europe and North America to spread his faith. During his talks he proclaimed Bahá'í principles such as the unity of God, unity of the religions, oneness of humanity, equality of women and men, world peace and economic justice. He also insisted that all his meetings be open to all races.

Katkov, Germany money and Lenin, in Rabinowitch

Despite Rabinowitch's claim that "Lenin seems to have known of the German money [surreptitiously expended by the German government during WWI to foment internal instability within Russia by funding dissident groups, such as the Bolsheviks, among others]," there is absolutely zero evidence to substantiate this claim. Rabinowitch cites the work of Katkov on this score. Katkov presents zero evidence that Lenin was ever aware of money from the German government being funneled to the Bolsheviks, nor that he willingly accepted money from the German government. See comment from Alexander Dallin on Katkov piece, as well as links below. At most, the Bolsheviks openly accepted monetary donations from the German SPD, which was a part of the German government, but never from the Kaiser, the German secret police, or any other such nonsense. Also, while it is possible that the Bolsheviks may have received money from opaque sources that were in fact, unbeknownst to them, agents of the German government, there is no evidence documenting either (a) how much money this amounted to and whether it was a significant sum or not, or (b) that the Bolsheviks were aware of this source.   

http://books.google.com/books?id=HzRiDJnTTG4C&lpg=PP1&pg=PA14#v=onepage&q&f=false 
https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B2Zdv5hwi_o6b0h6UFUtekhUdFk
http://www.yamaguchy.com/library/pearson/katkov.html
http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/jul/11.htm
http://www.marxists.org/archive/cliff/works/1976/lenin2/ch15.htm#s4
https://www.solidarity-us.org/node/2360
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sisson_Documents
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Parvus
http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1930/hrr/ch27.htm
http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/7thconf/27b.htm
http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/jul/05b.htm
http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/jul/06a.htm
http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/jul/07c.htm
http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/jul/08a.htm#fwV25E076
http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/jul/19a.htm#bkV25E071
http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/aug/01.htm