CLARA ZETKIN

Each reform, therefore, improving the economical and political situation of the workers proves to be an arm that increases the energy with which the proletarian struggle of classes is fought.

The capitalists speculate on the two following factors: the female worker must be paid as poorly as possible and the competition of female labour must be employed to lower the wages of male workers as much as possible.

When the men are silent, it is our duty to raise our voices in behalf of our ideals.

What practical conclusions may we now draw for our propaganda work among women? The task of this Party Congress must not be to issue detailed practical suggestions, but to draw up general directions for the proletarian women's movement.

We would, however, perform an injustice to the bourgeois women's rights movement if we would regard it as solely motivated by economics. No, this movement also contains a more profound spiritual and moral aspect.

The most disastrous phenomenon of the current situation is the factor that imperialism is employing for its own ends all the powers of the proletariat, all of its institutions and weapons, which its fighting vanguard has created for its war of liberation.

The proletarian woman fights hand in hand with the man of her class against capitalist society.

The machines, the modern mode of production, slowly undermined domestic production and not just for thousands but for millions of women the question arose: Where do we now find our livelihood?

For reforms ameliorate the situation of the working class, they lighten the weight of the chains labour is burdened with by capitalism, but they are not sufficient to crush capitalism and to emancipate the workers from their tyranny.

We are not making this demand for the sake of a principle, but in the interests of the proletarian class.

Bourgeois society is not fundamentally opposed to the bourgeois women's movement, which is proven by the fact that in various states reforms of private and public laws concerning women have been initiated.

In individual industries where female labour pays an important role, any movement advocating better wages, shorter working hours, etc., would not be doomed from the start because of the attitude of those women workers who are not organized.

Social Democratic and trade union organs have approved of the illegal invasion of Belgium, of the massacre of suspected guerrillas, as well as their wives and children, as well as the destruction of their homes in various towns and districts.

What made women's labour particularly attractive to the capitalists was not only its lower price but also the greater submissiveness of women.

These interests of the workers, as the exploited and oppressed, class of society, are the same in all countries.

When a battle for suffrage is conducted, it should only be conducted according to socialist principles, and therefore with the demand of universal suffrage for women and men.

The workers have nothing to gain from this war, but they stand to lose everything that is dear to them.

Women's propaganda must touch upon all those questions which are of great importance to the general proletarian movement. The main task is, indeed, to awaken the women's class consciousness and to incorporate them into the class struggle.

When the men kill, it is up to us women to fight for the preservation of life.

Men fear the battle of competition in the liberal professions

Our hope is that the dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry will maintain itself long enough to abolish itself when it has fulfilled its function and reached its goal. For whereas during the two opening periods of the revolution the path of the governments led from the fine ideal of democracy to the harsh and cruel reality of dictatorship, the path of the soviet dominion will lead from the harsh and cruel reality of dictatorship to the beautiful and realized dream of democracy.

The use of the strong hand is the essential characteristic of Bolshevist activity. This is not ideal, but unavoidable. It may be contrary to the prescriptions of democracy, and yet it subserves the interests of democracy. If, for all who live in Russia, democracy is to become an energy-diffusing socialistic reality, the Bolsheviks cannot escape the necessity of sacrificing, as a transient measure, the rights of certain individuals and of certain social groups. That this should happen is an inevitable feature of historic evolution …. The Bolshevist leaders of revolutionary Russia are engaged in a war of unparalleled significance. Here the moral and political standards of everyday life fail us. On this colossal stage, individual measures and individual phenomena are dwarfed into insignificance. The drama is one of overwhelming historic import, and it must be accepted or rejected as a whole

Who will deny that many of the workers, numbers of the peasants, and above all most of the intelligentsia, neither share the views nor endorse the policy of the Bolsheviks? None the less, a very large proportion, if not the majority, of those proletarians and peasants who take an active interest in political matters, support the Bolsheviks, and the same is true of the social revolutionaries of the left.

Who wills the ends must not shrink from the means.

Women constitute a cheap labor force and above all a submissive one that only in the rarest of cases dares to kick against the thorns of capitalist exploitation, the capitalists multiply the possibilities of women’s work in industry. As a result of all this, the proletarian woman has achieved her independence. But verily, the price was very high and for the moment they have gained very little.