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The development of Lucy Parsons’s political ideology was entwined with that of her husband, Albert Parsons. As a teenager, Albert served in the Confederate Army, but he lacked any principled commitment to the Southern cause. After the war, Albert returned to Waco, Texas, and became active in the Republican Party. He played a major role in helping freedmen register and vote, and urged them to seize their rights as free and equal citizens. It was during this period that Albert realized he possessed considerable talent as a powerful, even fearless, orator. Gradually, he developed political ambitions, as evidenced by his attempt to curry favor with prominent Republicans in Texas.

He and Lucy married in 1872, when Republicans controlled the state government and (at least in some areas) approved of interracial marriage. The Democrats regained control of the state the following year, prompting the couple to flee to Chicago, where they settled in a German immigrant community. He worked as a printer, and she set up shop as a seamstress.

Albert and Lucy partook of German immigrants’ radical sensibilities and embraced socialism. Just as Texas Republicans challenged the powerful Democratic Party and its commitment to slavery, so Chicago socialists challenged both major political parties and their commitment to capitalism.

Albert once again relished his role as an outsider and thorn in the side of the establishment. Several times in the late 1870s, he ran for local office on the socialist ticket but lost every time. He and Lucy became convinced that the franchise was a poor vehicle for class revolution. They pointed out that many workers could not afford to take time off from their jobs to vote, the two major parties had a tenacious hold on the loyalties of the white laboring classes, and the political process itself was corrupted by the influence of big money and greedy lawmakers.

In the early 1880s, the Parsonses abandoned the ballot box and turned to anarchism. They argued that partisan politics was a waste of time and that workers’ direct action against the capitalist system was the only true path to revolution. They noted that technological innovation in the workplace was eliminating jobs for not only factory workers but the middle classes as well. Soon, they claimed, few Americans would be able to afford to purchase the goods made in this country and, at that point, capitalism would collapse. Then workers would organize themselves into specialized trade unions, which would serve as the embryos of a new, egalitarian society — one driven by the welfare of the collective and not by the profit-seeking of a few. This new society would have no need for wages or for war.

Lucy Parsons remained committed to these ideas throughout her long life, even in the face of evidence that the capitalist system was flexible, able to accommodate many new workers, and to create many new kinds of jobs.