Clara Zetkin: On May Day

[My own translation of the text in "Die Gleichheit. Zeitschrift für die Interessen der Arbeiterinnen", 11th volume No. 9, 24 April 1901, p. 66. Corrections by English native speakers would be extremely welcome]

The May Day of labour is calling. Female worker bent by drudgery, worker's wife burdened by worries, have you heard its message? It sounds into your grey, heavy working-day misery, into your holidays, which are without joy and often also without rest. It looks for your ear in the hard wage slavery in factory and workshop, in the field and in the ironworks, as in the gruelling work in the poor home.

What does it bring to you? A message of relief from the manifold torments under which you groan, a promise that the chains can be loosened and must fall, which ensnare your existence and press body and mind to the ground. Just as a day of golden sunshine and lush blue skies in the midst of winter frost and bare trees foreshadows the warmth and splendour of spring, the sprouting of fresh green, the colourful splendour of flowers and the jubilation of larks, so May Day in the midst of the hundredfold cruel misfortunes that the capitalist order unleashes upon the creative people of the have-nots foreshadows the beckoning blessings of a culture of liberated, happy work.

Female worker, worker's wife, how could you close your heart and mind to this ancestor, this promise? Look around you and listen to yourself! Do not the circumstances, the facts - like the stones that speak when people want to be silent - preach the toil, joylessness and adversity to culture of your life? And does not your tortured soul stammer again and again at work and slave rest hot, longing desires for an ascent from misery, ignorance and servitude to prosperity, education and freedom?

Mighty, armed and forearmed with all kinds of power, not disdaining the most cunning tricks and whistles, the class of capitalist entrepreneurship stands before you, female worker, stands before yours, and thus also before yourself, worker's wife. The capital, which is at its disposal, forces the humanity and human right of the propertyless workers under the burdening yoke of property. A new god, Mammon, capital degrades the workers with hand or brain into wage slaves, to whom it prescribes its laws in unbending, unfeeling harshness and thunders its "you shall" and "you shall not". To increase the profit of the rich and very rich, that is the purpose it sets for the life and work of the people of labour.

If you are a female worker, proletarian woman, it therefore confiscates every minute of your time, every spark of your strength, which it is able to make subservient and interest-bearing. It squeezes from you the hours you need to strengthen your tired body in air and light. It deprives you of the enjoyment of nature and art that could delight and purify your senses, refresh your mind, refine and enrich your character. It seeks to deprive you of your Sundays and holidays, it diminishes your night's rest, and even cuts down on the breaks for your meals.

You need rest to recover from the gruelling day's work, to gather your strength for the work that awaits you tomorrow. Nonsense! replies the exploiting capital, the short sleep that heavily embraces the overtired woman must suffice. You desire leisure in order to educate yourself, you do not want to grope through nature and society as a blind woman, you want to learn in order to know, and you want to know in order to be able to act reasonably and well as a harmoniously developed, strong personality. Frippery! retorts the mammon that oppresses you. You do not need and should not call more knowledge your own than is necessary to make you a skilful and nimble "hand" to operate the machine. Your nature shall not rise above the dull lowlands of slave virtues in which my profit thrives so lavishly. You demand time and strength to fulfil your duties faithfully to yours, to do justice to the tasks which fall to you in the struggle of the working class for its right, which the state and society assign to you. Sentimentality and high treason! is the verdict of your almighty master. You shall give your family only the crumbs that my exploitation drops from its table. For your husband, instead of domestic comfort, the stupefaction that alcohol brings to him in the smoke-filled pub is good enough. As long as my need for human machine fodder is met by the influx of work mongers and bread mongers from the countryside and from beyond the borders, your little ones can die and spoil for lack of maternal care. Why should your agony torment me, since it increases my profit? Do not be tempted to rebel against my exploitation and domination! You shall not demand and exercise rights that shake my sovereign power and one day hurl it shattered to the ground.

If you are a worker's wife, proletarian woman, you are no more able to withdraw your existence from the exploiting, oppressive power of the money bag than is your sister, the female wage slave. If not your own body, spirit and character is crushed and crunshed in the capitalist profit mill, then the bodies of yours are. The fate that exploitation prepares for them, it is connected with a thousand threads to your own lot. Their poverty is your misery, their suffering is your torment, their bondage is your slavery.

Up, female worker, up, worker's wife, and fight against the brutal, insidous power that plunders and enslaves you and yours. All around you what a spectacle and what an example. Hundreds of thousands, exploited and dominated like you, have proudly raised their hitherto bowed heads. With a bold, clear gaze, with a hotly beating heart, with an iron will ready to sacrifice, they face their enemy, who is also your enemy, the enemy of your class. We have become aware of our deep need, they declare to exploitation, or as well of our duty to ward it off. For we are more than mere working machines, we are feeling, thinking, wanting human beings who desire to work humanly and live humanly. We demand bread, education, freedom. At present, we demand above all a legal restraint of the capitalist greed for profit, so that it does not, in its wild predatory instinct, snatch away from us everything that makes life worth living. We want to work in order to live, in order to live with dignity, but we do not want to live in order to work, in order to work with dignity. Let's have an effective, legal protection of work, the be-all and end-all of which is the eight-hour day! Bring on the legal right and the practical possibility of being able to protect ourselves through firm union and common struggle against the capitalist extortion of our labour power! Bring on all reforms which strengthen the power of the exploited in the struggle for their full social liberation! Down with militarism, which eats away the marrow of the peoples, deprives the most important cultural purposes of resources, incites to senseless adventures, constitutes a constant danger to peace, breeds crudeness and unleashes barbarism, and is a terrible instrument for the subjugation of the working people! Fight against capitalism, which heaps goods on social drones and condemns the creators of social wealth to starvation!

Female worker, worker's wife, do you hear the slogan of May Day? It also demands your happiness and your right, but it also calls you into the rank and file of fighters. An army of millions, they appear on the scene in a proud deployment. The exploited of all countries united into One People of Labour, which amidst the madness and atrocities of the capitalist order raises the ideal of culture for all, amidst the barbarity of capitalist world and loot politics pays homage to the ideal of peace and fraternisation among peoples. From beyond the border posts, the mountains and the seas, the hands of brothers and sisters from all countries where exploited labour has declared war on exploiting capital stretch out to you, German female proletarian. Remember that May Day is not merely a foreshadowing of the future blessings of liberated labour, but also a reminder of the duties of the suffering and struggling proletariat. Learn, organise yourself, so that one day you can act and be victorious for yourself. Freedom and culture beckon not to the patient, dull-witted female bearer of the cross, but to the intrepid, restless female fighter. Pity for the fainthearted moaning and lamenting, victory to the unerring daring and striking!