The Daily Worker Newspaper, July 30, 1927, Page 10

OMRADE Clara Zetkin whose 70th birthday we shall celebrate on*the 5th of July, is one of the old guard of the international workingclass move- ment. She is one of those who have passed through the “heroic age,” through that time when it re- quired much greater courage and heroism to cham- pion the cause of socialism than it does today, for then there was nothing but persecution and per- sonal sacrifices for the upholders of socialism. Clara Zetkin was one of that small group of per- sonalities including Bebel and Wilhelm Liebknecht, which set its stamp upon the social-democratie par- ty or at any international congress and who repre- sented a part of the tradition of the international workingclass movement. And, most important of all, she was one of those few who, when the Ger- man social-democratic party developed into a petty bourgeois party of reformism, never sacrificed her revolutionary principles. In this respect her name is bracketed with the names of Karl Liebknecht, Rose Luxemburg and Franz Mehring. When in these days we honor the life work of Clara Zetkin therefore, it is'a considerable part of the history of the international workingclass movement which passes before our eyes. The work of Clara Zetkin in the proletarian wo- men’s. movement shows us more clearly than any- thing else, the great possibilities of a leading per- sonality inside a mass movement. Mass movements do not grow from thin air; they develop more or less quickly under the direct influence of economic transformations. But the task of a leading person- ality is to assist that which lies in the sub-conscious- ness of a mass movement to give itself conscious expression and thus to ensure that the movement itself, which might otherwise expend its forces in & disorganized and wasteful manner, expresses itself in a united and consolidated form. Assuming, as was the case with Clara Zetkin, that the leader is perfectly clear with regard to the idea expressed in the mass movement and with this clarity com- bines a passionate devotion and a prodigious will. The work of women in industry in Germay had already taken on a very considerable extent in the eighties of the last century. In 1882 there were four and a quarter millions of women apart from female servants, earning their own living. There were at this time, it is true, only a million and a half directly engaged in industry and commerce. But in the textile industry alone, over 300,000 women were working, and great numbers in the tailoring, dressmaking, tobaeen and paper industries. The objective conditions for 2 growth of class consciousness amongst women were therefore pres- workers was petty-bourgesi n bound te the churches. women who were com- pelled to go out into the world, clung nevertheless to the idea cf the past, and abcve alt to the prin- ciple that the women belonged in the home. They regarded women’s work as a temporary phenomenon both for the individual and for secie'y as a whole. No worder! The men who had become class-con- scious, were nevertheless still hackword and reac- tionary in this respect. Added to + i if was very difficult to approach the women with socialist agi- tation. Many of them worked in small-scale work- shops or 2b home and further, the application of the laws relating to coalition and organizationgas kaleidoscopic as the map of the German federal states—imade it difficult to organize the women in trade unions and rendered their political organiza- tion impossible almost everywhere. All these circumstances together prevented the speedy growth of 2 consc proletarian w movement. Small grouns which might act a: {- lecting points for the rest of the country formed themselves only in a few industrial @istricts, such as Berlin, the textile cistriets ef Saxomy, in Mgnn- heim, etc. On the other hand the bovrees! wemen’s movement had already attained a very considerable growth and did not leck intelligent leaders and elo- quent speakers. In its first flush this movement even felt itself to be the representative ef al! wo- men irrespective of class distinctions. It commenced to make propaganda for its ideas and its orenniza- tions amongst the petty bourgeois-proletariant sec- tions, amongst the women working at home, amongst the tailoresses, washerwomen, ete. It was therefore of very great importance that the proletarian women had a leader in Clara Zetkin, Marxistically schooled, manysided, elogeut in speech and writings, to or- ganize the isolated small groups of proletarian wo- men under the banner of the international working class moyement. In the eighties of the last century Clara Zetkin lived abroad, first in Switzerland and then in Paris. She was active in the workingelass movement both in speech and in writing, together with her husband, Ossip Zetkin, a Russian refugee expelled from Ger- many. After her husband’s death and the abolition of the anti-socialist laws, Clara Zetkin returned to Germany where she found employment in the pub- lishing house of Dietz in Stuttgart. In 1892 she twok over the social democratic women’s newspaper “Gleichheit” (“Equality”) which had béen founded _ @ year previously by Emma Ihrer under the name “Arbeiterin” (Woman Worker). Clara Zetkin devoted her chief activity as editor and speaker in numerous meetings, to making the & Clara Zetkin and Her Life Work prole!zrian women class-conscious. She taught them to realize that women’s werk in industry and com- merce was an economic necessity which, despite the dangers for health and the family which it brought with it, was nevertheless calculated to free the wo- men from their economic and spiritual subordina- tion. The women should fight not the necessity for then to take part in industry and commerce, she taught, but the accompanying evils. Comrade Zet- kin did everything possible to save the proletarian women from falling into the tow of the bourgeois women’s movement. It was of very great assist- ance to her that she was exactly acquainted with the bourgeois movement for the rights of women, for she had been as a student a follower of Auguste Schmidt, one of the leading pioneers of this move- ment, She was exactly acquainted with the whole complex of phrases with which the bourgeois wo- men’s movement habitually transformed the eco- nomic and class conditions into a struggle for “Free- dom, Equality and Fraternity!” With great clearness, Clara Zetkin defined that which separated the proletarian women from the bourgeois women’s movement. This is shown in many articles. which appeared in “Gleichheit,” and in her speech upon the “Agitation Amongst the Women” held at the Congress of the Social Demo- cratic Party in Gotha in 1896, and also her speech upon “Women’s Suffrage” made before the Women’s Conference in Mannheim in 1906: She showed how the bourgeois women were being condemned by. the economic circumstances ever more and more to spinsterhood and thus, being faced with the ques- tion of existence, became ever more and more in- volved in contradictions to the men of their class. They were fighting for the right to take an equal part in public life, commercial activity and training, and their struggle was opposed by those who feared the competition of female labor in their own field. The proletarian women on the other hand, did not need to fight for the right to take part in indus- trial and commercial life, the needs of capitalism to exploit her removed the necessity. They were in the same front with the men, and their conditions were still more oppressive. For equal work they received less pay and were then forced to’ work at home when their day’s work outside was at an end, to fulfil their wifely and motherly duties. The struggle of the proletarian women for free- dom would therefore have to take 4 different direc- tion to that taken by the bourgeois women’s move- ment. There should be no competifion with the men of their class, but a fieht with the men of their elass against capitalist exploitation. The proletarian women would also struggle for political rights, but not for reasons based upon the natural position of women, but solely as a means to better their situa- tion. The slogan of the proletarian women’s move- ment was not a struggle of the sexes, but a struggle of the classes, That was what Clara Zetkin made clear to the proletarian women. It is thanks to Clara Zetkin that the proletarian women’s movement in Germany has kept itself free from the bourgeois suffrage agita- tion and acted from the very begiuning as part and parcel of the general workingclass movement. Whilst pointing out the general line to be fol- lowed, she also took pains to ensure that this ideo- logy should spread widely and deeply. As editor of “Gleichheit” she worked to create a school of cap- able agitators to work amongst the proletarian wo- men armed with good material and fully conscious of their aims. Therefore, “Gleichheit” dealt with every political question which arose and attempted to rouse the interest and understanding of the pro- letarian womer® for these questions. Clara Zetkin also sought to win capable collaborators for “Gleich- heit,” and she fulfilled her pedagogical tasks con- scientiously. Very often she worked threugh and thoroughly altered the contributions which arrived for “Gleichheit” and when the authors protested, she never failed to explain the reasons for the al- terations in long and detailed letters. Finally the authors were compelled to admit that she was right, and thus they learnt very rhuch. This was the work of Clara Zetkin amongst the women. She edited “Gelichheit” until 1916 when By KAETHE DUNCKER (Berlin) the war enthusiasts of the Central Committee of the Party took it out of her hands. She led the wo- men’s conferences which from 1900 on biannually preceded the Congress of the Social Democratic Par- ty. The pamphlets which she wrote during this pe- riod, have mostly had their origin from speeches made at such women’s conferences. But, with all this, we have-only touched upon a part of her work. Clara Zetkin was not only the leader of the proletarian women’s movement, but she took a prominent part in the general Party struggle. From 1892 onwards she attended the Party congresses first as a delegate and then from 1895 on as a member of the highest Party body, the Con- trol Commission, And, as has already been men- tioned, she belonged from the beginning to the rev- olutionary Marxist wing of the Party. In the nineties of the last century the develop- ment began in the social democratic party which was completed by the world war. The party of the proletarian revolution became a petty-bourgeois par- ty of reformism; the ideology of the class struggle was pressed to one side by the iddeology of indus- trial peace, coalition and industrial democracy. The international social democracy exposed itself as the national party for the defense of the fatherland. But this radical change of front took place slowly and at first imperceptibly. The right wing, Vollmar, Bernstein, David, Heine, Schippel, attempted to al- ter the attitude of the Party to the bourgeois state. Thus the criticism of militarism was weakened, the colonial policy was ratified, the ratification of the budget justified, ete. In short, the way was being prepared for the coalition policy to follow later. Unfortunately the Party did not realize how dan- gerous these beginnings were. At the end of the nineties, Bernstein was still opposed by the whole Party. At that time even Kautsky fought against the man who was trying to undermine revolutionary Marxism. But ten years later the reformist wing of the Party had grown tremendously in power. The worst thing of all was that the previous critics under the leadership of Kautsky took up a madiatory “centrist” policy. During the whole period Clara Zetkin fought tirelessly upon the extreme left wing of the Party. She opposed Bernstein in 1898, she condemned the deviation in the debate upon militar- ism, she attacked those who had voted for the bud- get, and declared herself in favor of the mass strike as a revolutionary weapon. When Kautsky became “tame,” Clara Zetkin belonged together with Rosa Luxemburg and Mehring to the little group of “in- corrigible” lefts who did not even hesitate on the 4th of August, 1914. After the outbreak of the world war, Comrade Clara Zetkin was the first to attempt to restore the broken connections with the comrades in other coun- tries. In March, 1915 she convened the Women’s Conference in Berne, at which she unfortunately could not be present as she was given no passport and was watched closely in her home in Stuttgart. The distribution of the manifesto of Berne cost her several months of preventative detention. Together with Rosa Luxemburg and Franz Mehring she is- sued the first and only number of the “International” which was able to appear in Germany during the war. Logically her way went over the Spartacus Bund to the Communist Party and the Third Inter- national. Ee We are glad that the brave old fighter has had the good fortune to be a witness and 2 collaborator in the work of building up Socialism in the Soviet Union, May she be a witness of the victory of Communism in Germany! | > THE SONS OF ESAU Oh, we are Esau’s shaggy sons, Our birthright we have sold ® For pottage—we the hungry ones Who wore the yoke of old. No blessing from ancestral hands Shall rest upon our head. We have no fruits, no flocks, no lands, Ours but a crust of bread. We shall not wail against our fate As did our ancient sire, But we shall toil both soon and late, Made strong by great desire. Our labors shall not be in vain As serfs of shop and soil, For we shall take what we shall gain By blood and sweat of toil. And we, the beaten ones, at last Shall wield our rightful powers— The sons of Jacob ruled the past, The future shall be ours! HENRY REICH, JR. seme merino ete amo tanner RETO RNNNERANe teen isonmstneraenel