Clara Zetkin: A Proletarian Model of Civic Virtue

[My own translation of the text in "Die Gleichheit. Zeitschrift für die Interessen der Arbeiterinnen", 21st volume No. 7, 2 January 1911, p. 99 f. Corrections by English native speakers would be extremely welcome]

Elsewhere our readers will find a brief account of the events which in France have provided the bourgeois class justice with the pretext for an outrageous blood sentence which has hardly any equal. This verdict reveals the deliberate infamy, the cold cruelty of which the exploiting and ruling classes are capable in the struggle for their profit and power. But it has also given rise to the manifestation of the highest civic virtue on the part of the proletariat. The widow of the scab Dongé, slain in the strike, has raised her voice in protest against the conviction of the trade union secretary Durand, whom the bourgeois courts have branded a murderer by falsifying the facts and ignoring all legal guarantees. This simple proletarian addressed the following letter to the defence counsel of the strike leader condemned to death, which may claim the value of a historical document for judging the conception, the moral ideals that are alive in the struggling working class:

"After the conclusion of the assize trial, I feel urged to join those who protest against the verdict. During the trial, I confined myself as a private party to defending the right of my children, the victims of the manslaughter committed against my unfortunate husband, and I refused to make even the slightest accusation against anyone. But I do not wish to have any part in Durand's sentence of death, which is all the more incomprehensible because, like others who have gone unpunished, he may have uttered thoughtless words, but did not use violence himself. I am a worker myself and wish to sign the petition for clemency for Durand. It would be a comfort to me in my misfortune to hope that everyone will understand that in dutifully claiming compensation for my little daughters in court, I nevertheless also felt a duty not to forget that I myself belong to the world of workers who struggle so laboriously for a little more bread and a little less harsh treatment."

In her capacity as International Secretary of Socialist Women, Comrade Zetkin sent the following letter to Mrs. Dongé:

"Dear Citizen Dongé!

The letter in which you protest against the condemnation of Durand has found a loud echo in the struggling working class of all countries. It is especially the proletarian women everywhere, in so far as they have been awakened to class consciousness by socialism, who pay tribute to the cast of mind which dictated it.

Deeply hit in your personal feelings, wounded as a wife and mother, you have not allowed your judgement to be misled. You reject community with the contemptible comedy of bourgeois class justice, which, under the momentary direction of the traitorous careerist Briand and in accordance with his instructions, turns its full fury against the organised workers and does not shrink from wanting to stain itself with the blood of an innocent man. Is it to atone for the death of a proletarian? Not at all, merely to take revenge for the fact that a small capitalist clique has trembled for the amount of its profit, and to make an example which, in the interests of the whole exploiting minority, is to frighten the slaves of capital who are struggling for bread and freedom.

The greatest personal pain has not blinded you for a moment to these connections, has not blinded you to the fact that the real culprit in the tragic events that took place on the occasion of the strike in Havre is the capitalist order, which not only sets the business community in merciless greed for profit against the proletariat, but also in the proletariat itself, in the struggle for bread, all too often still does not allow the solidarity to sprout that unites all the exploited with each other, so that brother confronts brother. Thus, out of the clarity and strength of your class feeling as a proletarian, you have grown the moral strength to self-denyingly silence all personal feelings and, out of your great grief, to raise the voice of noble, unclouded humanity and protest against the solemnly decided crime of judicial murder. You have thus shown what abyss of feeling and conception separates the world of the struggling proletarians striving for the noblest human ideals and the unscrupulous, bloodthirsty world of the exploiting capitalists and their political instruments of rule in the state. You have shown by your example what moral elevation, what heroism of humanity blossom on the trunk of proletarian class consciousness.

I know that I am in agreement with the socialist women of the 16 different nationalities, who are united by the International Women's Secretariat, when I express to you the most sincere and warmest sympathy. All of us who stand in the ranks of the proletarian army of emancipation as fighters against the oppressive power of capital thank you for this proof of high civic virtue. It honours the class which today is the champion of the liberation of humanity and the elevation of humanity, the class with which we feel at one; it honours our sex, which we call to conscious action for this mighty goal. We salute in you the citizen who is flesh of the flesh and bone of the bone of the glorious women of the Commune who suffered and fought for freedom and knew how to die for it as heroines. We are in complete solidarity with your protest and, like you, raise our voice with the class-conscious workers of all countries against the fact that the capitalist class justice of the Third Republic, which has been cemented with the blood of the heroic fighters of the Commune, completes and trumps the habitual slaughter of strikers and demonstrators by the cold-blooded judicial murder of a champion of organised workers.

Long live the international solidarity of the struggling proletariat! Long live international socialism!

Klara Zetkin,

International Secretary of Socialist Women.”