Lucy E. Parsons

Just a Few Stray Observations

on “Political” Socialism, War, and the State

September 1915

Instead of a Magazine

Scientific socialism (so-called) has been taught in Germany for more than fifty years. The State scientists abjured the tenet “Father, Son and Holy Ghost” but took, in its stead the text: “Workers of all countries, unite!” This beautiful bit of phraseology “was glimmering” when the political representatives of “science” (backed by more than four million voters) helped their imperial master lay a war levy of a billion marks or more for the prosecution of a war on workers of other countries.

And each of the scientists was honored by a clasp of the imperial hand to the tune of “Deutschland Uber Alles!” German scientific Socialism has stifled the revolutionary tendency, once so promising.

***

Can governmentalists ever reach the limit in the matter of invasion? If so, this must be the limit: It seems that the Chicago women who apply for municipal employment are subjected to a physical examination as to their chastity, the results of these inquisitions being duly recorded by the attending clerk. The Chicago Herald makes editorial comment as follows:

Civil Service Indignities: The indignities to which young women seeking positions as nurses in the schools and at the municipal tuberculosis sanitarium were subject deserve condemnation in the highest degree. According to civilized law even a person accused of a crime is presumed to be innocent until proved guilty. The burden of proof is on the prosecution. The accused is not required to establish his innocence.

The nurses subjected to the physical examination prescribed by the city civil service commission’s medical examiner were called on to prove their innocence. The suggestion of such an examination was degrading; its infliction was a gross insult.

***

Could wars ever be carried on were it not for that institutionalized credulity which manifests in reliance upon “The State?” Our socialist friends often say: “We see Anarchism gets you nowhere.” Where did “scientific” political socialism get the millions of socialists in Europe? Frankly, could Europe be worse cursed than it is if there had never been a single speech delivered by a political socialist or a book written by one of them? Really, could it be worse?