International Women's Day
March 8th Charlotte Maxeke, 1874-1939 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlotte_Maxeke> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Women's_Day> International Woman's Day (8th of March each year) was proposed by Clara Zetkin <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clara_Zetkin> , a contemporary and comrade of Alexandra Kollontai <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kollontai> and Rosa Luxemburg <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosa_Luxemburg> , at the Second International Women's Conference in Copenhagen, Denmark in 1910. The first International Women's day was observed in 1911. Who were the founders of the international revolutionary women's movement? Some of them were: Clara Zetkin 1857-1933 Vladimir Ilyich Lenin 1870-1924 Rosa Luxemburg 1871-1919 Alexandra Kollontai 1872-1952 Charlotte Maxeke 1874-1939 Not one of these is mentioned on the long "History of Feminism" page of Wikipedia, and Wikipedia is quite correct in this regard, because none of the above were feminists in the modern sense, or in their own understanding. It is therefore not appropriate to treat International Women's Day as a celebration of feminism, because it was initiated by women who were opposed to feminism. International Women's Day was initiated by women who understood the struggle for emancipation of women as being "classed" as well as "gendered". They understood that women would only be fully free under communism. They understood that the oppression of women and the subordination of the working class could only be resolved together, not separately. Lenin understood that the liberation of the working class could not be achieved without the simultaneous liberation of the women. Clara Zetkin understood that the liberation struggle of the proletarian women must be a joint struggle with the males of their class against the entire class of capitalists, including the female capitalists. Clara Zetkin, 1857-1933 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clara_Zetkin> For socialist victory, with and for the working-class women Extracts from Clara Zetkin's speech at the Party Congress of the Social Democratic Party of Germany at Gotha on 16 October 1896 "The granting of political equality to women does not change the actual balance of power. The proletarian woman ends up in the proletarian, the bourgeois woman in the bourgeois camp. We must not let ourselves be fooled by Socialist trends in the bourgeois women's movement which last only as long as bourgeois women feel oppressed." "We must not conduct special women's propaganda, but Socialist agitation among women." "Therefore the liberation struggle of the proletarian woman cannot be similar to the struggle that the bourgeois woman wages against the male of her class. On the contrary, it must be a joint struggle with the male of her class against the entire class of capitalists. She does not need to fight against the men of her class in order to tear down the barriers which have been raised against her participation in the free competition of the market place. "Capitalism's need to exploit and the development of the modern mode of production totally relieves her of having to fight such a struggle. On the contrary, new barriers need to be erected against the exploitation of the proletarian woman. Her rights as wife and mother need to be restored and permanently secured. Her final aim is not the free competition with the man, but the achievement of the political rule of the proletariat. The proletarian woman fights hand in hand with the man of her class against capitalist society." -- -- You are subscribed. This footer can help you. Please POST your comments to [email protected] or reply to this message. You can visit the group WEB SITE at http://groups.google.com/group/yclsa-eom-forum for different delivery options, pages, files and membership. To UNSUBSCRIBE, please email [email protected] . You don't have to put anything in the "Subject:" field. You don't have to put anything in the message part. All you have to do is to send an e-mail to this address (repeat): [email protected] . --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "YCLSA Discussion Forum" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
