By the way our society diminishes it, evades it, or mawkishly sentimentalizes it, the fear that International Women's Day plants in many hearts and minds, mostly male, is palpable. And yet, to the woman who did more to bring it into being than anyone else, today's version of her call would seem unutterably tame and bourgeois.
How does the women’s question shape up as far as the Upper Ten Thousand are concerned? The woman of the Upper Ten Thousand, thanks to her property, may freely develop her individuality and live as she pleases. In her role as wife, however, she is still dependent upon her husband. The guardianship of the weaker sex has survived in the family law which still states: And he shall be your master. And how is the family of the Upper Ten Thousand constituted in which the wife is legally subjugated by the husband? At its very founding, such a family lacks the moral prerequisites. Not individuality but money decides the matrimony. Its motto is: What capital joins, sentimental morality must not part. (Bravo!) Thus in this marriage, two prostitutions are taken for one virtue. The eventual family life develops accordingly. Wherever a woman is no longer forced to fulfill her duties, she devolves her duties as spouse, mother and housewife upon paid servants. If the women of these circles have the desire to give their lives a serious purpose, they must, first of all, raise the demand to dispose of their property in an independent and free manner. This demand, therefore, represents the core of the demands raised by the women’s movement of the Upper Ten Thousand. These women, in their fight for the realization of their demand vis-a-vis the masculine world of their class, fight exactly the same battle that the bourgeoisie fought against all of the privileged estates; i.e., a battle to remove all social differences based upon the possession of property.
As far as the proletarian woman is concerned, it is capitalism’s need to exploit and to search incessantly for a cheap labor force that has created the women’s question. It is for this reason, too, that the proletarian woman has become enmeshed in the mechanism of the economic life of our period and has been driven into the workshop and to the machines. She went out into the economic life in order to aid her husband in making a living, but the capitalist mode of production transformed her into on unfair competitor. She wanted to bring prosperity to her family, but instead misery descended upon it. The proletarian woman obtained her own employment because she wanted to create a more sunny and pleasant life for her children, but instead she became almost entirely separated from them. She became an equal of the man as a worker; the machine rendered muscular force superfluous and everywhere women’s work showed the same results in production as men’s work. And since women constitute a cheap labor force and above all a submissive one that only in the rarest of cases dares to kick against the thorns of capitalist exploitation, the capitalists multiply the possibilities of women’s work in industry.
Speech at the Party Congress of the Social Democratic Party of Germany, Gotha, October 16th, 1896.
For Clara Zetkin, the struggle for women's rights and the struggle for socialism, for worker's power, were equal and inseparable, neither could occur without the other also fully taking place.
She wrote in Gleichheit in 1893: "… the labour movement will surely commit suicide if, in the efforts to enroll the broad masses of the proletariat, it does not pay the same amount of attention to female workers as it does to male workers."
Her contributions on both fronts were of considerable dimension. She was one of only eight women out of the 400 delegates, from the Socialist parties of 19 countries, at the 1878 founding conference of the Second International. She was also only 21 years old.
Clara Zetkin didn't follow anybody's rules if they didn't make sense to her. She broke the laws restricting the rights of women by being a member of a political party, by being a member of a trade union, in two different unions. Soon enough being a member of the party she was a member of was itself illegal, under Bismarck's Anti-Socialist Laws. Yet like the other early giants of the German Social Democratic Party, like Wilhelm Liebknecht and August Bebel (always a key ally of Zetkin in her fights for women's rights within the party), she was a living reproach and a constant challenge to the authority of the state that they continued to be visibly publicly, politically active at a time when it was by no means "pragmatic" to do so. By their courageous persistance, Zetkin most notably in the years of illegality as the editor of socialist publications, including Die Gleichheit ("Equality"), the Social-Democratic women's journal, which she did for 25 years, Zetkin and the others reduced the Anti-Socialist Laws to an empty and unenforceable formality that the German regime eventually let lapse.
In 1907, at its inaugural conference, Zetkin was elected secretary of the International Women's Bureau. In her very first year as secretary, an event in New York caught Zetkin's notice:
In 1908 hundreds of women workers in the New York needle trades demonstrated in Rutgers Square in Manhattan's Lower East Side to form their own union and demand the vote.
This historic demonstration took place on March 8. It led in the following year to an "uprising" of 30,000 women shirtwaist-makers which resulted in the first permanent trade unions for U.S. women workers.
News of the heroic fight by U.S. women workers reached Europe. In particular it inspired European socialist women who had established the International Socialist Women's Conference on the initiative of German socialist feminist Clara Zetkin (1857-1933).
This met for the first time in 1907 in Stuttgart alongside one of the periodic conferences of the Second International (1889-1914). Three years later in 1910 Zetkin put forward a motion to the Copenhagen Conference of the Second International.
"The socialist women of all countries will hold each year a women's day, whose foremost purpose it must be to aid the attainment of women's suffrage. This demand must be handled in conjunction with the entire women's question according to socialist precepts. The women's day must have an international character and is to be prepared carefully."
Zetkin's motion was carried. March 8 was favored although no formal date was set.
I rarely am the sort to be moved by "American pride", but the fact that both International Women's Day and International Workers Day have their origins in the struggles and courageous idealism of American working people does give me a sense that what we do in our struggles here really can change the world, or at least the way the world sees things.
[There are elements of myth surrounding the origins of International Women's Day, some of which I have almost inevitably repeated here. For a fuller discussion of the origins and its mythic character, see ny brit expat's International Women's Day diary from earlier today.]
Clara Zetkin's story continues below, after a brief digression.
Intermezzo
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The Cradle Goes to its Grave
The Copenhagen Conference where Zetkin's International Women's Day resolution was adopted was held in the Folkets Hus, the building at Jagtvej 69 in Copenhagen built in the 1890s and owned by the Danish Socialist Party together with its typical Second International array of affiliated unions and social clubs and societies. In its final incarnation, it was known as Ungdomhuset, one of the largest, most enduring and most successful "squat"-social centers of the whole Euro autonomen/punk movement. After 25 years as Ungdomshuset, and a long-term informal agreement that the city would tolerate Ungdomshuset if the punks refrained from other squatting, the fate of the building was suddenly sealed when the city sold it to a right-wing religious sect who made it clear they wanted that property specifically to destroy the little society that had grown up within it.
All efforts made by Ungdomshuset and its large base of support in the Copenhagen community fell on deaf ears, as the city's Social-Democratic government pushed forward with the sale of Jagtvej 69, to Ruth Evenson's cult group. On March 1, 2007, the forcible eviction of the building began by a combination of police forces and wrecking crews. Fierce street battles raged throughout the Norrebro neighborhood for three days as the youth of the city rose in large-scale resistance in defense of Ungdomshuset in scenes of burning street barricades that would have been very familiar to a socialist of Clara Zetkin's generation. Over 800 arrests took place over those three days. Almost immediately upon the successful eviction of the last resisters, the demolition of the building began. The job was completed on March 8, 2007. That's right, March 8. One of those little things you just can't make up.
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By the end of 1910, the level of international tension in Europe had begun to mount. With the unfolding of the Balkan Wars, all the major powers in Europe were creating alliances and proxy relationships with parties in various states of conflict. What soon followed was the great critical failure of the Second International, a failure decisive in the unfolding of so many of the 20th century's horrors. In pursuit of their era's conception of "political pragmatism", in most of the major powers the Socialist Parties abandoned the supposedly unifying principle of "proletarian internationalism" and voted for arms build-ups and military credits. Zetkin describes the events:
It was the active and passive connivance of the Social-Democratic group of the Reichstag, and through them the connivance of the Social-Democracy as a whole, that made it possible in 1913 for the tremendous bluff of the “Jubilee gift for the Peace Emperor, Wilhelm II” to go across the political stage successfully, that enabled the Government to prepare unhindered the imperialistic war stroke of 1914, with the army bill – the most gigantic increase of the army which up to that time had ever been demanded and granted – and the defense contribution of billions – the first war credit for the intended marauding expedition across the Balkans to Bagdad and other “places in the sun.” The Party group in the Reichstag had made it easier for the bourgeois “opposition parties” to nod assent to the army bill, by having itself agreed to the separation of that bill from the general budget. It had given its blessing to the defense contribution and income tax bills as presumptive burdens upon the possessing classes. It had run after the delusive spectre of “modified finance” policies and had skipped the fight against the robust armored fellow called imperialism.
But the sins of commission and omission of the Party faction in the Reichstag had begun to determine the attitude of the entire Party, a few small, criticizing and dickering groups excepted. The Social-Democracy had not collected its forces for a stand against the brazen advance of imperialism greedy for power. Thus it created on the one hand the confident assurance of militarism and imperialism that there was no fear of opposition to their plans on the part of the proletarian masses, and on the other hand a paralyzing dullness in the masses themselves, even a slackening up in the face of danger. In short, the Social-Democracy allowed that atmosphere of war illusion to gather which in the summer of 1914 broke down all the political and moral opposition of the working classes against the crime of the war. Let us not forget that in the attitude of the Social-Democracy at that time, the policy of the “Marxist center” dominated, the policy which Karl Kautsky in our times praises up to the proletariat eagerly as the prerequisite for its victory. Let us not forget, moreover, that it was this high priest of “pure Marxism” who with his extremely un-Marxian tax theory built the ass’s bridge over which the Reichstag faction had proceeded to accepting the defense contribution and income tax measures. Under the given conditions the Social-Democratic Party Executive would have had to jump over its own shadow, if it desired to brace up and make use of the mass sentiment created by the Frankfort decision for a serious fight against militarism and imperialism. In the events which forced Rose Luxemburg into prison during the latter half of February, 1914, the disgraceful bankruptcy of the German Social-Democracy on August 4, 1914, had cast its shadow before, but there was forshadowed in them as well, the loyal, self-sacrificing fight of this inspired pioneer of Socialism against its internal decay.
Hardly had the acceptance of the war credit measure by the Social-Democratic faction in the Reichstag become known, than Rosa Luxemburg together with a few friends raised the flag of rebellion against this treason to the International, to Socialism. Two circumstances prevented this rebellion from at once becoming widely known. The fight was to begin with a protest against the vote in favor of the war credits by the Social-Democratic representatives, which would have to be so managed, however, that it would not be squashed by the tricks and wiles of the state of siege and the censorship. Besides this, and above all, it would certainly have been significant if the protest was from the start issued in the name of a goodly number of familiar Social-Democratic fighters. We therefore tried to put it into such a form that as many as possible of the leading comrades should declare their solidarity with its ideas who had uttered sharp, even absolutely destructive criticism on the policy of August 4th, in the Reichstag faction or within small groups. A consideration which cost much hard thinking, paper, letters, telegrams, and valuable time – and the result of which, despite all that, was nil. Of all the critics of the Social-Democratic majority who had expressed themselves in vigorous speech, only Karl Liebknecht dared, together with Rosa Luxemburg, Franz Mehring and me to defy the idol of Party discipline upon whose altars were sacrificed character and convictions.
Beyond accelerating the rush to war, that position also irrevocably split the Socialist Parties, both between countries and internally. Zetkin, along with the younger leaders Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, stayed true to the internationalist position, most prominently defended in the international socialist movement at that time by Lenin. Certain fateful alliances arose in that set of circumstances.
Thus it was, that when the Revolutionary movement in Germany of 1918-1919 was crushed and betrayed by the leaders of the official Social Democracy, with Luxemburg and Liebknecht turned over to the tender mercies of the Freikorps, it made sense for Zetkin to high-tail it to where her partners in the struggle against the war, the Russian party, had successfully carried out a revolution.
However, in 1932, with Germany on the doorstep of fascism, Zetkin chose to return to Berlin. Faced with death threats that in the circumstances had to be taken seriously, she nonetheless returned to active German politics for that season, and was elected to the Reichstag on the list of the German Communists. Due to a particular tradition of the Reichstag, Zetkin had the opportunity to make her voice heard one last timein a most conspicuous way.
In accordance with the tradition that each new Reichstag be convened by its oldest member, Zetkin was entitled to open its first session on August 30, 1932. Although Nazi terror was already enveloping the country, she came out of hiding and made a dramatic appearance on the rostrum.
In her speech, which lasted over an hour, she vehemently denounced fascism, and appealed for "the formation of a united front of all workers in order to turn back fascism".
I don't speak German, so I may be mistaken, but I think this YouTube may be recorded excerpts at that final magisterial address: