Lucy Parsons Project - a new anarchist website!

Why no mention that Parsons became a Bolshevik at the end of her life?

Lucy Parsons was never a Bolshevik. She was, however, a member of the Communist party which she joined during the last 3 years of her life, only after the anarchist movement had declined significantly. She spent almost her entire life dedicated to anarcho-syndicalist and anarcho-communist struggles. All of this information is on the website, including her later involvement with the communist party, in fact the information is right on the surface. An anarchist, yes. A communist sympathizer, yes. But a Bolshevik? Hardly.

I realize Lucy Parsons was a comitted anarcho-communist (especially when she was with Albert) but by the time Parsons joined the Party it was under the ideological and military control of the Bolsheviks. And, worse still, the Party was being run under the iron fist of Stalin! I also disgaree with your assertion that she was a "sympathizer." She was a card-carrying member of the Party.

If you honestly believe that any "anarchist" could join the Party after Berkman's, Goldman's, Voline's, and Makhno's critqiues of soviet socialism, Kronstadt, the communist betrayal in Spain, etc. etc. etc. you need to seriously read what the anarchists at the time were saying. They were emphatic in their oppostion to Soviet Communism. I think by the time Lucy made the decision to join the Party she had bought into state-socialist ideology and abandoned anarchism as a utopian dream.

It's easy to look back and reclaim Lucy Parsons as an anarchist hero but her ideological legacy is somewhat more ambiguous. That does not mean she was a bad person, a "traitor" and so on but the sort of anarchist historiography that ignores facts is as bad as communist historiography that commits the same error.

Lucy Parsons was a member of the communist party of america, *not* the Bolshevik vanguard of Stalinist Russia - an important difference. She joined the communist party only after the anarchist movement had significantly declined. Her commitment to social justice prompted her to join the party, not because she had bought into Bolshevik propaganda (there is no evidence supporting this), but because the communists of america at the time were still actively fighting for real social justice causes, despite what had become of the communist movement in Russia, or what they had done in Spain. But even *if* she had fallen victim to Bolshevik propaganda, it would be a grave misfortune to dismiss the life-long influence, role and importance of Lucy Parsons within the anarchist movement simply due to her official affiliation with the communist party during the last 3 years of her life.

Lucy Parsons was a member of the communist party of america, *not* the Bolshevik vanguard of Stalinist Russia - an important difference. She joined the communist party only after the anarchist movement had significantly declined. Her commitment to social justice prompted her to join the party, not because she had bought into Bolshevik propaganda (there is no evidence supporting this), but because the communists of america at the time were still actively fighting for real social justice causes, despite what had become of the communist movement in Russia, or what they had done in Spain. But even *if* she had fallen victim to Bolshevik propaganda, it would be a grave misfortune to dismiss the life-long influence, role and importance of Lucy Parsons within the anarchist movement simply due to her official affiliation with the communist party during the last 3 years of her life.

"[I]t would be a grave misfortune to dismiss the life-long influence, role and importance of Lucy Parsons within the anarchist movement simply due to her official affiliation with the communist party during the last 3 years of her life."

I could not agree more. I would agree that she was influential in the anarchist movement with a caveat, while she was an anarchist. Once she became a member of the Party, she became a symbol for the international communist movement.

I would not she is unique in this regard. It's not the first time it happened or the last. There are more than a few anarchists who adopted state-socialism and even some who became fascists. Peoples ideas change, sometimes they become disllusioned, burned out. Lucy lost a husband to "the struggle" and no doubt did witness a major diminution in the strength of the anarchist movement.

But to leap from that undeniable fact to somehow reconciling a sincere belief in anarcho-communism
with membership in the Communist Party is sincerely misguided. While the anarchist movement was declining in the US, an anarchist movement did exist. Anarchists were critiquing what had happened in the USSR under Lenin and what was happening under Stalin. The anti-Stalinist struggle was not restricted to Spain. Anarchists around the world considered Stalinist totalitarianism as much of a danger as fascism.

"Lucy Parsons was a member of the communist party of america, *not* the Bolshevik vanguard of Stalinist Russia - an important difference."

I disagree. While this may have been true in the early years, by the late 1930s (when Lucy became a member of the CP) the Party was firmly under the control of Stalin and the Comintern whether you are talking about the US, Spain or wherever. Witness the complete about-face in the position of the US Party vis-a-vis war with Germany.

At the beginning of the conflict when Stalin and Hitler were parites to a non-agression pact, US Communists were saying that that WWII was a bourgie war, against the workers, etc. As soon as Stalin decided the Nazis constitued a threat, the US Party followed in lock-step and began to print propaganda calling for a "United Front" against fascism. And so it goes down the line. I seriously doubt there are more than a handful of positions where the US Party differed from the ideological line handed down from Moscow. Are you aware of (m)any?

I also don't think that the notion of the Party "doing good work" is enough to explain Lucy's ideological shift. I can understand that line from an avid Stalinist like Paul Robeson, or a rank-and-file community organizer who might be limited in their exposure to other strains of socialist thought but you are talking about Lucy Parsons! This woman understood the differences between state-socialism and anarcho-communism. She was part of a milieu where debates and discussions about the merits and faults of various socialist tendencies were common.

My point is that she made an ideological choice when she joined the Party. It wasn't due to some sappy belief in doing "good works." For committed socialists like Lucy Parsons "good works" are always attached to an ideological project whether "building an new world within the shell of the old" or organizing a vanguard party to establish a dictatorship of the proletariat. Sadly, she chose the latter.

Perhaps Lucy Parson's ideological shift in the last years of her life was the expression of a realization on her part that the CP was doing more to improve the situation of Black folks in the US than anything the anarchists were doing. If that is the case, a suitable tribute to her legacy would be for the anarchist movement to facilitate the devleopment of new revloutionary heroes, and not spend so much time digging up the old ones.

Once again, I understand the need for anarchists to reclaim their history and that the numbers of "people of color" in leadership roles has been historically quite small. This is the case today as well. So, the easy solution is to dig up someone from the past and say "Look, we're not a movement of white middle-class students. We had a black woman doin' shit back in the day!" Of course I' m kidding, but the point is that the real work of linking the relevence of anarchist ideology to the day-to-day struggles of Black people (or people of color if you prefer) is a much more difficult endeavor.

Lucy Parsons supported the supression of Kronstadt, and was a member of the counter-revolutionary "Communist" Party at the end of her life. She was a Stalinist stooge at the end of her life, and you cannot run away from that sad fact.