Clara Zetkin: Speech
Clara Zetkin:Third Congress of the Communist International
Report on Communist Women’s Movement
July 8, 1921
Comrades, on behalf of the International Secretariat of the Executive for Communist Work among Women, I am going to give a short overview of the Communist Women’s Movement and the Communist women’s conference.
Beyond any doubt, we have registered gratifying progress during the last year. This is evident in the development of the Communist Women’s Movement in individual countries, where increasing masses of women comrades are resolutely joining the Communist Party. There has also been progress in international coordination of efforts to place the broadest masses of women at the service of proletarian revolution. This applies to the struggles to win political power and establish the dictatorship of the proletariat, and also to defense of these achievements and Communist construction in countries like Russia, where the proletariat has already taken power.
But mixed into our pleasure regarding these steps forward is a measure of bitterness. In most countries, the gains of the Communist Women’s Movement have been achieved without support from the Communist Party, indeed in some instances against its open or hidden opposition. There is still insufficient understanding of the fact that without the participation in revolutionary struggles of women who are conscious, clear on their goal, certain regarding the path, and prepared to make sacrifices, the proletariat will be able neither to seize power in civil war nor, after establishing its dictatorship, to begin constructing a communist society.
Let us take a quick look at the International Conference of Communist Women itself. The goals and tasks of what we call the Communist Women’s Movement are identical with the goals, tasks, principles, and policies of the Third International, to which we are proud to belong. The task of the conference was to create the weapons needed to defend these principles and these policies in struggle against the capitalist world and all its supporters. For this reason, the conference devoted a large part of its deliberations to two questions: the forms and the methods that Communist parties will utilize for Communist work among women; and the close and firm international ties that can be established between Communist women of each country and their parties, with the Communist Women’s International in Moscow, and through its intermediary with the common unified leadership: the Executive of the Third International.
Comrades, in discussing and making decisions on these questions the conference was guided by an overriding principle: There is no special Communist women’s organization. There is only a movement, an organization of Communist women inside the Communist Party, together with the Communist men. The tasks and goals of Communists are our tasks and goals. Here there is no spirit of faction or of particularism that would tend in any way to divide and divert the revolutionary forces from their great goals of winning proletarian political power and building a communist society. The Communist Women’s Movement signifies simply the systematic deployment and systematic organization of our forces, both women and men, in the Communist Party in order to win the broadest masses of women for the proletariat’s revolutionary class struggle, for the struggle to vanquish capitalism and achieve the construction of communism.
However, comrades, this principle of common organization and work was also acknowledged by the old Social Democratic parties. Nonetheless, it was carried out so narrowmindedly, so pettily, with such a mechanical application of the principle of equality, that it did not unleash and fully engage women’s energies in the service of the revolution. We Communists are revolutionaries of the deed, of action. We do not in the slightest lose sight of the common interests and struggle of proletarian men and women. However, we are alert to the given, specific conditions that Communist work among women must deal with. We do not forget the social conditions that still hinder women’s activity, political awakening, and political struggle in many ways—acting through social institutions, family life, and existing social prejudices. We recognize the impact that thousands of years of servitude have left in women’s soul and psychology. That is why, in addition to all that the organization has in common, it needs special structures, special measures, to link up with the masses of women, bring them together, and educate them as Communists.
We propose that such bodies be created by the leading and governing party committees: committees or commissions for agitation among women, or whatever the parties want to call them. These committees should exist from the leadership of a small local group right up to the top central leadership.
We call these bodies women’s committees, because they carry out work among women, but not because we consider it important that they consist only of women. On the contrary, we welcome it when the women’s committees include men, with their greater political experience and knowledge.
What concerns us is that these committees be systematically and continually active among the masses of women, that they take a stand on all the needs and interests that bear on women’s lives, and that they intervene in every field of social life, with practical knowledge and energy, for the welfare of millions and millions of proletarian and semiproletarian women. These women’s committees can and should work, of course, only in close organizational and ideological partnership with the bodies of the party as a whole. But for them to carry out their tasks, it is also obvious that they must enjoy freedom to take initiatives and have some scope for their activity. The Communist parties of Russia, Germany, and Bulgaria have acted in this spirit, to the best of my knowledge, or are striving to do so. And they certainly have not had a bad experience.
The party bodies for work among women should carry out systematic agitational, organizational, and educational work, speaking, writing, and using all means at their disposal. One thing they must not forget: It is not the spoken and written word, but above all work and struggle that is the most important and indispensible method of gathering and educating the broadest masses. For this reason, the women’s committees must direct their efforts to drawing women as an independent and active force into all the Communist Party’s actions and all the struggles of the proletarian masses.
Women, who are now often obstacles to revolutionary struggle, must become its driving force. For let us not be deceived, comrades: either the revolution will win the women or the counterrevolution will do it! Do not count on the fact that, as the civil war takes ever more intense forms, this will force women to decide where they stand and what they are fighting for. If you Communists do not see to it that the broadest masses of women are present in the revolutionary camp, the bourgeois parties will make sure they are in the camp of the counterrevolution. The Scheidemanns and Dittmanns—all the half and quarter Internationals9—will make every effort to keep women in the border area between revolution and counterrevolution, which is today the most secure defense of counterrevolution and bourgeois society.
In view of this fact, comrades, the Communist parties must strive through the women’s committees to draw women workers and women Communists into not only the legal work but also underground activity. That goes without saying. There are underground tasks, beginning with courier duties, which women are particularly well fitted to carry out ably and loyally. It is equally obvious that the Communist parties must strive to integrate the broadest masses of women as an active force into all the struggles of the proletariat: from a strike against lengthening the workday, to a street demonstration, to an uprising, to armed struggle. There is no aspect or form of revolutionary struggle and civil war that is not the business of women seeking their liberation through communism. The resolution we are submitting to you presents in detailed form the principles I have outlined to you here.
The conference also considered the duties and capacities of women in the struggle to establish and maintain the proletarian dictatorship, the Soviet order. We addressed this question first and above all in terms of its general, fundamental meaning for the revolutionary struggle of the proletariat and thus for the complete liberation of all women. As a result, we examined this in terms of the world economic and political situation, which leaves the proletariat with only the choice between a revolutionary conquest of power or acceptance of intensified exploitation and servitude. Freedom or descent into barbarism: that is the decision history has placed before the proletariat and also the broad masses of women.
We then discussed the question in terms of women’s participation in efforts and struggles to defend the [workers’] dictatorship, including their collaboration in reconstruction of economic and social life after the dictatorship has been established. Finally, we took up the question of the proletarian class struggle to win and maintain political power with regard to the struggle for political equality of the female sex before the law and in life.
The conference was unanimous in its conviction that all roads lead to Rome. In other words, all demands that women raise in their employment, as mothers, and as human beings; all demands they must raise in order to become, on the basis of their social labor, members of society fully equal in rights and responsibilities; all the pain and hardship of their lives; all their longing and striving—all this converges in a single call: for active, bold, and devoted participation in revolutionary struggle to win the dictatorship of the proletariat and establish the Soviet order. And after achieving this goal: working with self-sacrifice and to the last ounce of energy to defend the Soviet order, with not only weapons but shovels in hand, to construct a new social life, which not only justifies the dictatorship of the proletariat, the Soviet order, but provides the surest foundation to maintain it.
Comrades, in discussing these questions, we made clear, beyond any doubt, that the Communist Women’s Movement does not live and strive in a cloud of political neutrality. True, our conference did not take up all the principled and tactical questions posed for decision by the Third International now and in the past. But it is self-evident that every Communist woman has formed her general principled and tactical convictions along these lines and taken a stand on the problems whose impact on the women’s movement concerns us. And something else is obvious: your struggles for these principles and tactics, within every Communist Party, will and must be our struggles as well.
Comrades, as delegates to the International Conference of Communist Women, we want to go out to every country and show women there that Russia is a great historical example. It teaches that without winning political power and establishing a council dictatorship, there is no way to build communism and achieve liberation and women’s equality. But it also tells the Communist parties of every country that unless women join in collaboration and struggle, communism cannot be built. In its battles both to surmount capitalism and to achieve communism, the proletariat needs the collaboration of women, and not merely because of the quantitative factors I referred to earlier. No, we tell proletarians who long for freedom and who have achieved it that our collaboration is also indispensable because of the qualities contributed by our achievements. Thank heavens; we are not your ape-like imitators, not failed, inferior copies of yourselves. We inject our distinctive intellectual and moral values, in both revolutionary struggle and revolutionary construction. And that signifies not a threat or a lessening of the revolutionary struggle but rather its intensification and sharpening. It signifies not that life in the new society will be impoverished, or deformed, or superficial, but that it will be richer, more diverse, more profound, and more sophisticated.
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