Clara Zetkin: Our rally for women's suffrage

[My own translation of the text in "Die Gleichheit. Zeitschrift für die Interessen der Arbeiterinnen", 21st Volume No. 11, 27 February 1911, p. 161 f. Corrections by English native speakers would be extremely welcome]

It is an important and proud rally for which the Social Democracy of Germany and Austria is preparing. On 19 March, it will rally the masses in both countries to declare their conviction: "Women deserve the right to vote!"; to declare their will: "we will carry this demand of true democracy to victory". The hundreds of meetings which serve this purpose are preceded by an agitation in speech and writing for the full citizen's rights of the female sex, such as has never taken place in Germany in a more thoughtful and generous manner.

How feeble, how dwarfed, in comparison with the whole event is everything that the German [bourgeois] women's rights campaign has hitherto undertaken to propagate the demand which must be the be-all and end-all of every bourgeois women's movement. Is it through the fault of the leading ladies and groups? Not at all! Many of them have really not lacked indomitable energy and enthusiastic sacrifice in the service of political equality for the female sex. What turns against them, what robs their aspirations of far-reaching success, their actions of greatness, is the historical fate of their class. The weakness of the German bourgeois women's suffrage movement, which has increased to the point of impotence, and the disunity and discord of its fundamental creed and tactics, reflect the senility of liberalism. But this in turn expresses the political, the historical decay of bourgeois strata, which tremble before the onslaught of the disinherited masses for their social prerogatives, for the very foundations of their power of exploitation and domination. No matter how serious the bourgeois women's movement may be in its struggle for full women's rights, it is unable to detach itself from the community of its class and therefore participates in its historical decline. In this respect, doesn't it speak volumes that the bourgeois women's suffrage movement up to the hour lacks almost any reliable support and base in the liberal parties? Not even the united Fortschrittliche Volkspartei [Progressive People's Party] has managed to declare in its programme that it is fundamentally in favour of women's suffrage, and quite a few of its most outstanding leaders are still fighting this demand with platitudes that any philistine's regular's table does not hear in a more banal manner. And this, although the bourgeois women's rights activists, in downright genuflecting humility, plead for the recognition of their political equality, have left no doubt about the fidelity of their liberal sentiments and have substantiated them by their behaviour, thus giving proof of a political maturity as liberalism understands it.

Certainly: the liberal politicians can be under no illusion that the bourgeois women - if they attain their political emancipation today - will and must turn the edge of their rights against the men of their own class. What they strive for is, in the last analysis, the unrestricted enjoyment of the advantages which thanks to the capitalist order accrue to their class at the expense of the exploited masses. The social and legal mastery of the male denies them this enjoyment, and the political rights of the female sex are tools to break them. It is undoubtedly the class egoism of the possessing male world that hides behind the declamations of the petty-bourgeois narrow idyll of the "home as woman's world", for the harsh winds of capitalist production and its concomitants are blowing this idyll apart more and more.

However heavy such class egoism may weigh in the balance, it alone is not sufficient to explain liberalism's indifference, even hostility, to women's suffrage in these times of rapidly increasing female occupation and the external and internal hardships of bourgeois women. Something different comes in and gives it tenacity and strength. This is German liberalism's trembling fear of any further democratisation of suffrage in general. This weak and treacherous fellow hates the political right of the masses with such conviction that it prefers to kiss the cuirassier boot of the Junker regiment and personal governance before it sees fit to make a concession to the demands of the working class. The history of the three-class suffrage and the suffrage movement in Prussia is the great textbook example of this. In the age of intensified class struggles between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, in the age of the rising "red" tidal wave crashing against the walls of bourgeois society, German liberalism is transforming itself more and more from a fighter for the consistent democratisation of public life into its enemy.

It is shrinking back even from the mere platonic recognition of women's suffrage: after all, it must stimulate the appetite of all the politically disenfranchised and under-privileged! At best, it would be willing to discuss a limited women's suffrage, since such a suffrage has the effect of a plural suffrage for the propertied, for which liberal politicians are beginning to rave with fervour. But, yes, but! In Germany, with its trained proletariat, with its 9½ million women toilers, with its hundreds of thousands of proletarian women who, organised in trade unions and fighting politically, put their political maturity into practice every day, a limited women's suffrage must seem like a monstrous provocation of the working people without distinction of sex. It could only temporarily erect a dam against the current of the mass demand for equal, full political rights and at the price that the tide would a short time later roar forward all the more furiously and swallow up the piled-up obstacles. But how could liberalism advocate universal female suffrage! Certainly, this democratic innovation will also bring all the bourgeois parties an increase in votes, that is, in power. Even more: we must reckon with the fact that at first it will strengthen precisely the most reactionary parties, the conservatives who keep spirits in dependence with the whip, the [catholic] Centre Party which fogs them with incense. But only initially and only temporarily! In time, most of the proletarian women's vote will fall dead surely to Social Democracy. In the long run, universal women's suffrage cannot have any other effect than universal men's suffrage. The same realisation of the class situation of all the exploited, without distinction of sex, must also have the same consequences for political activity. But it is social democracy that will see to it that this realisation takes strong, powerful roots in the female proletariat. It will therefore reap the richest harvest from the political equality of women. For the reasons given the right to vote, as a possession of the entire female sex, will never ever be won by German women thanks to liberalism; they must conquer it in the struggle against it. The more closely the bourgeois women's movement becomes politically wedded to liberalism, the less resolutely it will stand up for this demand. Instead of breathing new life into its senility, it will be paralysed by it.

This situation must be kept firmly and clearly in mind if one is to appreciate the full significance of Social Democratic Women's Day for the political equality of the female sex. Where once the banner of democracy waved, is [now] opposition and weakness when the demand for women's suffrage is heard, here, among the rising class, is alliance and strength. The position of the class-conscious, fighting proletariat on women's suffrage is one of the proofs that today the socially disinherited are the assault columns who carry the demands of democracy to victory. Among these demands, however, that of women's suffrage stands first and is of the greatest significance. Its realisation abolishes millennia of injustice and brings half of the adult members of the cultural world into public life with equal rights. With the ballot paper and the right to be elected to the legislative and administrative bodies, it puts the certificate of their social maturity into the hands of millions, but at the same time also the weapon to defend their vital interests in society as independently thinking and acting personalities. It makes numerous new forces available to political and public life which, according to their own nature, work for the general good. Above all, it allows the class antagonisms inside the female world to develop fully and consciously, it brings new and trained fighters to the proletarian liberation struggle and thus accelerates the hour of its victory. Social Democracy and the trade unions can boast of paving the way for an extraordinarily significant advance with their advocacy of women's suffrage.

As a rally for women's suffrage organised by Social Democracy and supported by the trade unions, Women's Day solemnly affirms by deed the seriousness of the fundamental conviction. The full equality of the female sex is not an empty word for the proletariat filled with the spirit of socialism, but rather a goal of struggle for which it uses its strength. It pays tribute to the inexorable process of historical development which, with revolutionised conditions of production, is overturning the outer and inner being of woman, transforming her from a nothing-but-housewife into an employed person, into a citizen of society, who demands the advantage of rights in addition to the burden of duties which she bears, and who therefore knocks at the door of the parliaments seeking entry. Out of the bondage of her own class situation grows a deep sense of justice which revolts against every servitude, every denial of rights. The ardent longing for the development of full humanity, for the exercise of one's powers in the service of all cultural work, makes it possible to understand the growing desire of women to participate in every area of social life in freely blossoming strength. The view appreciates without prejudice the necessity, the importance of unleashing all personal gifts for the benefit of the general public, for everywhere in the masses of toilers [is] a stirring and activity of valuable abilities which have been awakened and trained by work and struggle, the life expressions of the organisations of struggle, education and support which the proletariat has created in defiance of exploitation, of the paupers' school, of the social and political chains.

But even more irresistible than these idealistic reasons speaks a fact as solid as ore to the proletariat for the justification of women's suffrage. It is class interest. The longer, the less can the wage slaves fight their battles if women are not also conscious and sacrificial fighters. The increasing extension and severity of the economic and political struggle between the exploiting and exploited classes gives increased practical significance to this truism. The gathering storms of the future will demand the highest personal stakes from the have-nots, women and men alike. A precondition of future victories is therefore also an awakening and training of the female proletariat, which is seizing ever larger masses. There is no stronger incentive for this awakening and training than women's suffrage. With its introduction, the need of women themselves for enlightenment will meet Social-Democratic work.

Thus, if it is the well-understood advantage of Social Democracy and trade unions to carry the demand for women's suffrage among the working people, before the broadest public, by organising Women's Day with its all-round activities, it nevertheless also remains their honour. Undeterred by age-old prejudice, indignant against blatant injustice, full of historical insight, they raise the banner of true democracy that liberalism has abandoned. Aware of the social context, they champion women's rights as human rights. With fundamental clarity, they demand women's suffrage as a weapon that helps to accelerate the overthrow of the bourgeois order. Imbued with the realisation that freedom and justice are never to be given, that they must be conquered, they call the women themselves to the struggle. Female comrades, prepare eagerly for our Women's Day, so that its significance may burst out massively, so that its success may be far-reaching. Social Democratic Women's Day must become a landmark for the struggle for women's suffrage.