Clara Zetkin: Report on the Women's Movement

(Third World Congress of the Communist International, 20th Session , 8 July 1921)

[My own translation from the Minutes of the III. World Congress of the Communist International, Protokoll des III. Weltkongresses der Kommunistischen Internationale, Moskau 22. Juni bis 12. Juli 1921. Hamburg 1921, pp. 909-923. Corrections by English native speakers would be extremely welcome]

Comrades! On behalf of the International Secretariat of the Executive for Communist Work among Women, I will give a brief overview of the Communist women's movement and the Communist Women's Conference.

There is no doubt that in the last year we have made very gratifying progress, both in the development of the communist women's movement in the individual countries, where ever greater masses of women comrades are purposefully uniting in the Communist Party, and in the international consolidation of efforts to place the broadest political masses of women at the service of the proletarian revolution. This applies to the struggles for the conquest of political power and the establishment of the dictatorship by the proletariat, as well as to the defence of these achievements and to communist construction in those countries where – as in Russia – the proletariat has already won power. But there is a bitter drop in the joy of the progress made. In most countries, the progress of the communist women's movement has been achieved without the support of the Communist Party, and here and there even against the open or clandestine resistance of the Communist Party. There is still a lack of understanding of the fact that without the conscious, purposeful, path-secure, self-sacrificing participation of women in the revolutionary struggle, neither can the proletariat gain its power in the civil war, nor can it begin the construction of communist society after the establishment of its dictatorship.

Even before the war, it was considered a truism within the socialist workers' movement that the proletariat could not carry out its economic and political struggles without the participation of the masses of women. Certainly, the practice of the old social democratic parties, the practice of the trade unions has fallen far short of the lip service. Women's activity was more or less considered as a political and trade union servant work and not according to its real importance as an essential factor of the proletarian liberation struggle.

But comrades, how different are things now for the proletariat. Now the economic struggles of the proletariat are taking place under the sign of the increasing decay of capitalism. What does this mean? That they are more bitter, more self-sacrificing, more difficult than ever before. And another thing. That they are ultimately striving towards a higher goal, too. Not merely the alleviation of hardship through the reduction of working hours, through a few pennies more in wages, through more favourable working conditions! No, all the economic struggles are, in the final analysis, currently tapered towards one goal: the taking over of the control of production and then of the ownership of the means of production by the revolutionary proletariat. The political struggles of the proletariat are no longer about small reforms and concessions, not about begging soups and formal political rights. In a word, they are not about the reform of bourgeois society, but about the smashing of bourgeois society. They are about the to be or not to be of capitalism, about the to be or not to be of communism. They are taking place in the red-hot atmosphere of the disintegration of the capitalist economy and of civil war. In view of this importance of the struggles of the proletariat, it is quite impossible that it can do without the participation of women. In addition, there is another fact. It is now a question of throwing larger masses of women than ever before into the revolutionary struggle to overthrow capitalism, the bourgeois state, of mobilising and training them, of making them ready and capable for the communist construction. (Loud approval.)

Even before the war, Europe had a surplus of 5-6 million women. Now this surplus is calculated to be around 15 million. Whereas in the past there was only a surplus of women in the large industrialised countries, the Balkan countries had a surplus of male population, in the larger industrialised countries the surplus of women has grown considerably, and even the Balkan countries no longer have a surplus of male population, but the reverse phenomenon is becoming more and more striking even here. How can one imagine the struggle for the conquest of political power, how can one imagine the building of the communist order, without the conscious and joyful, insightful participation of women? The figures I have quoted tell us one thing: that ever larger masses of proletarian women are coming directly under the thumb of capitalist exploitation and are therefore driven by their immediate necessities of life to fight against the bourgeois order. But they show another thing, too. Namely, that the number of bourgeois women who seem to possess a little garden of paradise, full of peace and joy, in the home is decreasing. No, nowadays even bourgeois women can no longer remain in passivity and indifference to public life, to the struggle of our time. Millions of them have become professionals who, as long as capitalism prevails, are being deprived of their livelihood and purpose in life by men under the sting of the competition between the sexes. And the civil war with its consequences is also intervening so hard in bourgeois family life that its old walls of indifference and political stupor are beginning to crumble.

Comrades, I am the last one to overestimate what this process of development in the bourgeois women's world means. But we must not underestimate it either. Certainly, those masses of women who are being uprooted inside the bourgeoisie in the age of decaying capitalism and intensifying class struggle will hardly transform themselves into revolutionary advance troops. We cannot reckon with such development, we would be foolish to reckon with it. Nor will masses of bourgeois women ever help to strengthen the broad assault columns of the proletariat which will fight the decisive battles for the establishment of the dictatorship. But we do not want to overlook the fact that they are capable of performing skirmish services in the time of civil war. Furthermore, that they can bring unrest, fermentation, decomposition and thus weakening into the camp of the bourgeoisie, into the camp of our mortal enemy.

Therefore, to sum it all up, in my opinion, it is a tremendous damage to the revolution and to the activation of the masses for the revolution if the Communist Party of each country does not work with the same energy as for the revolutionary mobilisation of men also for the revolutionary inclusion, for the revolutionary training of women for the battles of the proletariat. I call conscious saboteurs of the revolution those comrades who do not also gather and educate women to be conscious co-supporters of the revolution.

Comrades, what the communist parties of almost all countries have sinned in this respect has become less palpable because the Executive has endeavoured to promote in word and deed the efforts to rally the broadest masses of women around the banner of the Third International. The Chairman of the Executive, Comrade Zinoviev, has shown full understanding of the fact that communist work among women means nothing other than half of communist work in general. And so, after the Second World Congress, the Executive has thrown its moral, political and financial weight behind the efforts to gather the women communists in the individual countries in the parties, and then to lead them into struggle in a concentrated way internationally. The Executive has thereby facilitated, promoted and made more successful the passionate struggle of the small vanguards of convinced and trained women communists in the various countries. What we have achieved has been the honour and happiness of the small ensembles of women communists who have gathered around the banner of the Third International in the various countries, often without any support, indeed against fierce resistance.

Thus, since last year, in a whole series of countries, planned work has been initiated by women communists for the revolutionary mobilisation and education of the broadest masses of proletarian women. The work of our Russian Communist Party has been groundbreaking and exemplary. The communists of Germany, too, in the old Spartacus League and later in the United Communist Party, have worked from the first day of their foundation systematically and assiduously to make the women within the organisations co-supporters of the struggle. In Bulgaria, too, we have a powerful, purposeful communist women's movement, a women's movement in the truly communist sense that it is a matter of joint work, of joint activity of men and women for the purpose of winning the broad masses of proletarian and peasant women for the revolutionary struggle. But in the other countries there are actually only beginnings, in some not even beginnings, of such planned work.

We hope that our International Women's Conference and this Congress will remind all those communist parties of their duty, which they are still neglecting or only fulfilling with a sweet and sour face in order to maintain outward decency. Our Second International Women's Conference was proof of the energy and success with which the women communists of the various countries and the Executive have worked together. The First International Conference of Communist Women in Moscow last year was attended by 16 countries, and only 20 delegates with a decision-making vote took part, plus a few consultative guests. This year, comrades, representatives from 28 countries came to the international meeting. 82 delegates took part, 61 of them with a decision-making vote and 21 with a consultative vote only. The efforts to bring about the international revolutionary advance of women under the sign of the Second International have never produced an equally successful meeting. Indeed, if we disregard the number of women representatives, if we look only at the large number of countries that have grouped themselves around the banner of the Third International, we can say that no single international bourgeois women's conference has been more comprehensive in terms of attendance and more far-reaching in terms of significance than this Moscow conference. And a particularly striking, historically significant feature: the representatives of the women of the Eastern peoples took part in this conference.

Comrades, it may be obvious and tempting that one or the other saw the arrival of the delegations from the Middle and Far East merely in the light of the aesthetic. But it was more than the foreign, the extraordinary, even the fairytale-like of the Orient that entered the conference embodied in the delegated women. It was a powerful historical moment of unforgettable, immortal significance that the conference experienced. What did the arrival of the women's delegation from the East mean? It meant that the Eastern peoples are beginning to awaken and to take up the struggle, that even the most oppressed of the oppressed, the women, who for centuries, for millennia, have lived under the spell of ancient religious and social beliefs, statutes, habits, customs, are taking up the revolutionary struggle. The arrival of women from the Middle and Far East at the conference was a sign of how far-reaching and how deep the revolutionisation of the East has progressed. And this is of utmost importance for us in the West, this is of utmost importance for the proletarians in all capitalist countries. For the battles of liberation of the English, of the French proletariat are not only being fought on home soil, they are also being fought in the burning hot regions of India and Persia, on the diverse soil of China and everywhere in the Middle and Far East. Comrades! The fact that the women of the Orient came to us proves the extraordinary, far-reaching significance of the revolutionary struggle of the Third International. It is the first and up to now the only organisation which really possesses the hope, the confidence of the peoples of the East and which, as the first International, embraces the whole of humanity. "The Internationale unites the human race", will be the whole of humanity. That was the meaning attached to the arrival of the representatives of the women of the East for the Conference.

Let us now take a brief look back at the International Conference of Women Communists itself. The aims and the tasks of what is called the communist women's movement are given by the aims, by the tasks, by the principles and the tactics of the Third International, to which we are proud to belong. For the conference, it was a question of creating the tools to defend these principles, these tactics in the struggle against the capitalist world, in the struggle against everything that stands by it. Therefore, the Conference devoted a large part of its work to the two questions of what forms and methods must be used by the communist parties for the communist work among women, and how the closest and firm international relations can be established between the women communists of the individual countries and their parties, as well as with the Communist Women's International in Moscow and, through its mediation, with the Executive of the III. International as the common united leadership and guidance.

Comrades! The Conference, in discussing and deciding these questions, was guided by one supreme principle. There is no special communist women's organisation. There is only one movement, there is only one organisation of women communists within the Communist Party together with the male communists. The tasks and aims of the male communists are our tasks, our aims. There is no separatism, no maverickism, which would somehow be likely to fragment the revolutionary forces and divert them from their great aims of conquering political power by the proletariat and the building of the communist society. The communist women's movement means nothing else than a planned distribution, a planned organisation of the forces, of both women and men in the Communist Party, in order to win the broadest masses of women for the revolutionary class struggle of the proletariat, for the struggle to defeat capitalism and for communist construction.

But comrades, this principle of commonality of organisation and work has also been recognised by the old social democratic parties. However, it has been carried out by them with a narrow-mindedness and pettiness, with a mechanical application of the principle of equality, that it has not meant unleashing and making the strongest impact of the female half in the service of the revolution. We communists are revolutionaries of deed, of action. Without somehow losing sight of the supreme principle of the commonality of interests and struggle of proletarian men and proletarian women, we keep our eyes open to the given concrete conditions that must be reckoned with in communist work among women. We do not forget the social conditions which, as obstacles to women's activity, to their political awakening, to their political struggle, still exist in many cases in social institutions, in family life and also in social prejudices. We can clearly see the imprint that thousands of years of servitude have left on the soul, on the psyche of women. Therefore, despite the commonality of organisation, special organs, special measures are needed to approach the masses of women and to gather and educate them as women communists.

As such organs, we propose the establishment of women's agitation committees or commissions in the leading and administrative party bodies, or whatever else the parties want to call it. Such committees should exist from the leadership of the small local group up to the highest central leadership. We call these bodies women's committees because they are to carry on the work among women, but not because we attach importance to their being composed only of women. Conversely. We welcome it if the women's committees also include men with their greater political experience and skills. What matters to us is that these committees should be active in a planned and permanent way among the masses of women; that they should take a stand on all needs, on all interests that affect women's lives; that they should intervene with expertise and energy in all fields of social life for the good of millions and millions of proletarian and semi-proletarian women. These women's committees can and must, of course, work only in the closest organisational and ideological communion with the organs of the party as a whole. But it is also self-evident, if they are to fulfil their task successfully, that they need the right of initiative and a certain freedom of movement. The Communist Parties of Russia, Germany, Bulgaria have, as far as I know, complied with these requirements, or are making serious efforts to comply with them. And, truly, they have not had bad experiences.

The party organs for work among women should carry out planned agitation, organisation and education work. With words, with writing, with all the means at their disposal. In their work they must not forget that not only the spoken and written word, but above all work and struggle are the most important and indispensable means of gathering and educating the broadest masses. Therefore, the women's committees must direct their efforts towards drawing women into all the actions of the Communist Party, into all the struggles of the proletarian masses, as an independent and active element. The women, who are now often obstacles to the revolutionary struggle, must become the driving forces of the struggle. Because, comrades, let us not deceive ourselves: either the revolution will have the women masses or the counter-revolution will have them! Do not count on the fact that, as the civil war takes on sharper and sharper forms, women too will have to decide where they stand and what they fight for. If you communists do not see to it that the broadest masses of women stand in the camp of the revolution, the bourgeois parties will see to it that they gather in the camp of the counter-revolution, and the Scheidemanns and Dittmanns, all half, all quarter Internationals, will endeavour to keep women on that borderland between the revolution and the counter-revolution which is today the firmest rampart of the counter-revolution and bourgeois society.

In view of this fact, comrades, the Communist Parties must strive, through the women's committees, to draw women proletarians, women communists, not only to legal work, but also to illegal work. This is a matter of course. There is illegal work, beginning with courier service, which women are exceptionally suited to carry out with loyalty and skill. It is also self-evident that the communist parties must strive to incorporate the broadest masses of women as an active element in all the struggles of the proletariat. From the strike aimed at resisting the extension of working hours, to the street demonstration, to the insurrection, to the struggles with armed hands. There is no phase, there is no form of revolutionary struggle, of civil war, which is not also the cause of women who want their freedom through communism. The resolution that we are presenting to you contains in detail the principles that I have developed here before you.

As far as the international liaison of the women communists of the various countries with each other and with the Secretariat in Moscow is concerned, we demand the following from the Communist Parties: First, that they elect international correspondents in each individual country who will be in contact with each other and with the Secretariat in Moscow; second, that the International Women's Secretariat in Moscow be assisted by an auxiliary body in Western Europe.

In my appreciation of the work of our conference I had forgotten to point out one particularly important decision. We must draw the attention of the communist cells in the trade unions to the urgent task of including women workers in their activities. The women workers, as far as it concerns the trade union struggle against exploitation, but also as far as it concerns the struggle against the trade union bureaucracy. Especially as far as the representation of the interests of working women is concerned, there is a broad front on which the communist comrades in the trade unions can attack the trade union bureaucracy. This trade union bureaucracy has betrayed the interests of working women threefold. It has betrayed them by renouncing, for the benefit of capitalism, the struggle for the slogan: equal pay for equal work, without distinction whether man or woman. It betrayed it a second time by allowing it to happen, without resistance, even approving of it, that after the end of the war it was primarily women who were thrown out of the factories, out of the offices, Why? Because the starving woman is less feared than the man because of her political backwardness. Also because they pretend that she is taken care of, since the way to prostitution in the streets or in a haggling marriage is open to her. The trade union bureaucracy betrayed the interests of the working woman a third time by not taking up the fight against the blatant injustice that the unemployed woman is fobbed off with a smaller compensation than the unemployed man, or even goes empty-handed. In my opinion, these are moments that must be taken into account and taken advantage of by our communist cells in the trade unions in order to educate women in the factories to become revolutionary fighters. The great importance of the professional and trade union training of women for communist construction after the conquest of political power by the proletariat must also be recognised.

But let us continue with what the conference has decided, or more correctly, what it has decided to submit to the congress, for the purpose of better international connection of the women communists of the individual countries. I have already mentioned that the parties should elect international correspondents who will be in regular and permanent contact with each other and with the Communist Women's Secretariat in Moscow. But this Secretariat itself must be made more efficient. We want it to be not only an organ of information for the work and struggle of women communists, but a leading and guiding organ which unifies, intensifies and increases revolutionary activity and the participation of women proletarians in the struggles of the proletariat. For this purpose, an international auxiliary organ is to be created abroad. The Secretariat itself must stay in Moscow, not only because of the close organisational connection with the Executive. No, for the same factual-historical reason for which the Executive itself must have its seat in Moscow. Because Moscow is the heart of the revolution, because Moscow is the capital of revolutionary Russia, because here the experiences of the revolutionary struggle flow together and can be used for theoretical insights and practical guidance. Comrades! We are convinced that a modest auxiliary body in Western Europe can render valuable services to the Women's Secretariat of the Executive in Moscow, and we therefore ask you to vote in favour of our resolution on this matter.

The conference has also examined what is the duty, what is the possibility of performance of women in the struggle for the achievement and maintenance of the proletarian dictatorship, the Soviet order. We discussed this question first and foremost according to its general fundamental significance for the revolutionary struggle of the proletariat and thus for the full liberation of the female sex. We have therefore considered it in the context of the world economic and political situation, that situation in the face of which the proletariat has only one choice: either to conquer power in a revolutionary way or to submit to intensified exploitation and servitude. Freedom or relapse into barbarism, that is the choice that the proletariat and also the women of the broadest masses have been confronted with by history. We then discussed the question of women's participation in the work, in the struggle for the defence of the dictatorship, which includes their participation in the reconstruction of economic and social life after the conquest of the dictatorship. We have finally dealt with the question of the proletarian class struggle for the conquest and maintenance of political power in connection with the struggle for the political equality of the female sex before the law and in practice.

The conference was unanimous in its conviction that all roads lead to Rome. In other words, all the demands that women have to make as working people, as mothers, as human beings, all the demands that they have to make in order to become fully entitled and fully committed members of society on the basis of social work, all the pains and hardships of their lives, all the longings of their aspirations, they converge in one exhortation: active, bold, devoted participation in the revolutionary struggles for the conquest of the dictatorship of the proletariat, for the establishment of the Soviet order. And after achieving this goal: sacrificial work to the last ounce of strength to defend the Soviet order, not only with the weapon in hand, but also with the trowel in the construction of the new social life, which is the justification, which is the firmest foundation for the maintenance of the dictatorship of the proletariat, for the rule of the Soviets.

Comrades, in discussing these questions we left no doubt that the communist women's movement does not live and weave in a cloud of political neutrality. Even if our meeting did not deal with the fundamental and tactical questions which at the given moment were and are before the Third International for decision, it is a matter of course that every woman communist has thought independently in accordance with her general fundamental and tactical convictions and has taken a stand on the problems which concern us in their repercussions on the women's movement. And another goes without saying. That within every Communist Party your struggles for principles and tactics will and must be our struggles.

Comrades! We delegates of the International Conference of Women Communists want to go out to all countries to show the women there that Russia is a great historical example. It teaches: without the conquest of political power, without the establishment of the Soviet dictatorship, there can be no communist construction, no liberation, no equal rights for women. But it also says to the Communist Parties of all countries: without the collaboration, without the co-struggle of women, no conquest of political power, no communist construction. For its battles to overcome capitalism, as for the realisation of communism, the proletariat needs the collaboration of women not only in terms of quantity, as the figures I quoted earlier show. No, you liberation-seeking, you liberated male proletarians, you cannot do without our cooperation, in the quality of our achievements as well. We are, thank heaven, not your monkeys, not your miserable, bad copies. We put our own mental and moral values into the revolutionary struggle as well as into the revolutionary construction. And this does not mean a threat, a weakening of the revolutionary struggle, no, it means its increase and intensification. And it does not mean an impoverishment and bungling, a flattening of the new social life, but its enrichment, its greater diversity, deepening and refinement.

Therefore, the women of the Soviet states into all decision-making, administrative, controlling, constructive, economic, political, cultural organs and organisations! Therefore, the unfree, oppressed women of the countries still languishing under capitalist rule into all the struggles, into all the battles of the proletariat with the proletarian women. Let us not forget what was written by one of the best experts of the former revolutionary movement of Russia. Stepniak said in his famous book: "The Underground Russia", that the revolutionary movement in this country owed its high ideal momentum, its almost religious enthusiasm and strength to the collaboration, the co-struggle, the co-living and co-dying of women. This is the great tradition that has remained alive in Russia, this must become the great tradition that guides the struggle of the proletariat in all capitalist countries, in all countries of the East.

Comrades, we have heard here at this Congress: be careful, be careful, be careful not to lose touch with the broad proletarian masses who are fighting the decisive battles of the proletarian revolution. And we know how true, how correct that is. But we have also learned another thing from the history of the revolution: boldness, boldness and again boldness, in order to make the masses, the revolutionary masses, rush forward. And I assure you: we women, who seek the land of communism with a fervent soul, we who must be the strongest, the most irreconcilable haters of capitalism, we want to strive to combine the cool weighing of concrete circumstances with the bold venture for the high goal, for victory. We know what a dangerous situation we are in. Not only where we are struggling for the conquest of power, but also where power has already been won and is threatened by foreign and domestic counter-revolution and all the difficulties of construction under the most difficult conditions imaginable. But we women are not discouraged by what lies behind us, we are not frightened by what is looming ahead of us. We have our eyes fixed steadfastly on the shining goal, communism that will liberate humanity. We see clearly the way to the goal: the civil war, the revolutionary struggle with its horrors and dangers. And despite all this, we have only one slogan: Through! (Prolonged, lively applause.)