Review Article

Remembering Clara Zetkin
Anirban Biswas

Clara Zetkin (1857-1933), the famous woman leader of the European working class in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries is now an almost forgotten name, although her writings and speeches on the position of women and society, and man-woman contradictions have not possibly lost their relevance. Hence the publication of an Indian edition of her ‘Selected Writings’ by the noted publishing concern Aakar Books is a most welcome event. The women's question has for a long time plagued socialists and non-socialists as well. In India too people have witnessed reservation for women in the seats of the three-tier village administrative system. But the moot question is whether such steps are adequate to remove women's inferior position in society compared with men, or to an advancement of the cause of a radical transformation of society.

In capitalist countries too the man-woman contradiction is very much real, and it can be argued that post-revolutionary societies too could not resolve these questions satisfactorily. But the point is how the question should be approached, and it’s precisely here that Zetkin’s speeches and writings are relevant.

Zetkin was not a feminist, but, like Rosa Luxemburg, a revolutionary dedicated to the cause of transformation of the bourgeois society in a revolutionary way, although her socialist conviction grew through a protracted process.

This *book has two introductions, one specifically meant for the Indian edition, by Tripti Wahi, and the other by Phillips S Poner. Poner's article is important in so far as it provides the leader with a graphic sketch of Zetkin's life, the history of her long association with the German Social Democratic Party (SPD), her activities and evolution of views during that period, her break with the SPD following the latter's support to their own ruling classes in the imperialist war, and her role in founding the German Communist Party (KPD) in 1918. This collection of writings and speeches reflects Zetkin's views on the women's question, war and socialism at different points of her lifetime.

Zetkin understood that the development of capitalism had led to the disappearance of 'housekeepers of good old times', and hence could not approve of the notion, then prevalent in many socialist circles, that woman should not enter the profession of industrial workers, because the entry of women into the labour force would lower the wages of male workers. In her speech at the International Workers Congress, held in July 1889, Zetkin argued forcefully that the wages of workers, both male and female were low because of capitalist exploitation. Here was revealed a mind distinguished itself from bourgeois feminism.

One interesting aspect of Zetkin's thought was embodied in the resolution on women's right to vote, presented by her to the International Socialist Congress held in 1907. One interesting remark may be quoted here, "The obtainment of suffrage aids the bourgeois women to tear down the barriers in the form of male prerogatives, which tend to limit their educational and professional opportunities. It arms the female proletarians in their battle against class exploitation and class rule, in their effort to acquire their full humanity." To Zetkin, therefore, women's suffrage was not an end in itself, but an instrument of class struggle aimed at the destruction of capitalism.

The way she elaborates Marx's standpoint, given in the form of hints only, on the women's question in her article "What the Women Owe to Karl Marx" (1903), only betrays her firm, unwavering class outlook. She argues forcefully that although Marx never dealt with the women's question 'per se' or 'as such', his, and Engels's analysis of the growth of the institution of the family and his study of the class contradictions in the bourgeois society is relevant to the women's question. In Clara Zetkin one finds both modernity and proletarianism.

The outbreak of the First World War created a line of demarcation among socialists on whether to support their respective governments or whether to oppose the war firmly. Those who are familiar with the history of the Russian Revolution know that Lenin and his fellow Bolsheviks firmly opposed the war and turned it into a revolutionary civil war. German socialist leaders like Zetkin, Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht were less fortunate, because the dominant leadership of the German Social Democratic Party turned traitors and supported the German Government in the Reichstag. Lenin had already succeeded in freeing his party from such opportunists, but German leaders dedicated to the cause of the working class and socialism could not build up such a party. But their principled stand continued. One writing, written by Zetkin as a manifesto issued by the International Socialist Women's Conference (Bern, March 1915)and addressed to the working women of the belligerent nations, starts with these words:

Where are your husbands?
Where are your sons?

For eight months now, they have been at the front. …All of them are wearing military uniforms, are vegetating in trenches and are ordered to destroy what diligent labor created. …The shoulders of the weak women now have to bear a double burden. Bereft of protection, you are exposed to grief and hardships. Your children are hungry and cold. ...The state claims impoverishment and the bourgeois welfare authorities cook a meager soup for you and urge you to be thrifty".

This manifesto also exposes how the urge for imperial expansion creates the War and how the capitalists, particularly the producers of armaments reap benefits from it. Any sensible observer of the current international scenario should not fail to realize that these words are relevant in today's situation also. This manifesto was secretly circulated in Germany and led to the arrest of Zetkin, and for this manifesto and other writings, she was removed from the editorship of Die Gleichheit (Equality), the social democratic women's journal by the ideologically degenerate German SDP. Zetkin, however, refused to budge an inch from her principles and the glowing tribute she paid to Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Leinknecht bear testimony of her uncompromising attitude regrding war and peace.

Zetkin, after the War and the victory of the Russian Revolution, spent many years in the Soviet Union and became a prominent functionary of the Comintern. She also acted as a valiant soldier against the rise of fascism in Germany because she clearly perceived the danger that was looming large (Her last public appearance in Germany was on the occasion of the opening of the Reichstag when the Nazis were trying to assume power, and she used this occasion to explain the danger of fascism and Nazism), but she and her associates were unable to prevent it, because the forces of revolution were not strong and the social-democrats were too cowardly. Zetkin's speech advocating the release of Scottsborough black youths—eight were condemned to death and one was given life imprisonment on charge of raping two white prostitutes— is an exposure of how black people were treated in the profoundly democratic USA. Although one of the prostitutes admiitted that the rape story was a false one, it was ignored. Zetkin's effort was not entirely successful, because although the accused black young men escaped execution, they were given various terms of sentence.

Frontier
Vol. 45, No. 30, February 3- 9, 2013

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