Happy Birthday Clara Zetkin, ( nee Eissner), pioneering German Marxist theorist, advocate for womens rights and universal suffrage.Born on July 5, 1857, Wiederau, Saxony [Germany,
Clara Eissner was educated at the Leipzig Teachers’ College for Women.
Perhaps influenced by her upbringing and social class, it was during her time there that she became involved with the women’s movement and in 1878 she joined the Socialist Workers’ Party (SAP), which changes its name to Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) in 1890. In 1878, German chancellor Otto von Bismarck banned all SPD activity in an attempt to curb the party’s power in the government. Following this act, Zetkin and other leading members of the SPD had to leave Germany to avoid persecution and prison. Zetkin migrated first to Zurich, and then to Paris. While in exile, she met her partner Ossip Zetkin. Though they never married, she took his name and together they had two sons.
She spent most of the 1880s in self-imposed exile in Switzerland and Paris, writing and distributing illegal literature and meeting many leading international Socialists. After participating in the founding congress of the Second Socialist International (1889), she returned to Germany and from Stuttgart edited the Socialist women’s paper Die Gleichheit (“Equality”) from 1892 to 1917.
In 1907 she was a cofounder of thegal literature and meeting many leading international Socialists. After participating in the founding congress of the Second Socialist International (1889), she returned to Germany and from Stuttgart edited the Socialist women’s paper Die Gleichheit (“Equality”) from 1892 to 1917.
Zetkin became the leading female theorist of socialist emancipation theory and as such helped to formulate the core ideas of socialist feminism. An important medium for her to spread socialist ideas in circles of working class was the socialist women’s journal of the SPD, Die Gleichheit (Equality). Here and elsewhere she argued that women could only become emancipated if they worked like men and earn their own income, which would made them independent from men and integrated them in society and politics. They should receive the same pay and privileges as men in the workplace. For her wage inequality hurt women and men. She strongly made this arguments in an article in Die Gleichheit published in December 1893, in which she addressed this issue.
The article served as a call to action. It framed women’s economic equality and social emancipation as a matter of class struggle between bourgeoisie and proletariat, only after a socialist revolution women could really become equal as women and as workers. Zetkin argued that wage inequality would hurt both, female workers because the poor wages made it incredibly difficult for women to afford adequate living conditions, and male workers because of the competition of cheap female labor.
As a result, Zetkin called equal wages and stronger attempts pf the SPD and the trade unions to organize women in the labor movement. Only when women became equal to men at work and, by extension, in the home could they begin working towards class reforms. In addition to promoting socialist feminism, Zetkin provided some much-needed leadership and structure in the German socialist women’s movement. In 1907 she was a cofounder of the International Socialist Women’s Congress.
During the First World War, Zetkin, along with Karl Liebknecht (1871-1919) and her friend Rosa Luxemburg (1871-1919), belonged to the small opposition in the SPD that rejected the party’s policy of Burgfrieden (a truce with the government, promising to refrain from any strikes during the war). Among other anti-war activities, Zetkin organized an International Socialist Women’s Conference against the war in Bern, in neutral Switzerland, from March 25-28, 1915, to which all other participants had to travel illegally.
Despite the danger of imprisonment, 25 women from, Britain, France Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Russia and Switzerland participated in this first international women’s conference for peace, which ended with a joint resolution. Because of her anti-war opinions, Zetkin was arrested several times during the war, and in 1916 taken into “protective custody” (from which she was later released on account of illness).
In 1916 Zetkin was one of the co-founders of the Spartacist League (Spartakusbund), which published illegal, anti-war pamphlets pseudonymously signed “Spartacus” (after the slave-liberating gladiator who had opposed the Romans). The Spartacus League vehemently rejected the SPD’s war policy and supported the growing number of riots and strikes against the war all over Germany.
In April 1917 Zetkin joined the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany (USPD) which had split off from the SPD, in protest at its pro-war stance. In January 1919, after the German Revolution in November 1918 she became a co-founder of the Communist Party of Germany becoming a member of the party’s central committee and got first elected to the Reichstag in 1920, and again in 1932, at the age of 75, where as the oldest member she was entitled to open the parliaments first session. She took this as her golden opportunity to bravely make a long speech, denouncing Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party .and to o struggle in unity against fascism.
She also held the view that still holds much resonance today, that the source of womens oppression was in capitalism, and that any form of liberation, could only be served with the self-emancipation of the working class.
Elected to the presidium of the Third International (1921), she spent more and more of her time in Moscow. Three volumes of collected works, Ausgewählte Reden und Schriften (“Selected Speeches and Writings”), were published in East Berlin from 1957 to 1960.] She died June 20, 1933, Arkhangelskoye, Russia, U.S.S.R.) aged nearly 76,
Long may this grandmother of revolution, be recognised and celebrated. Clara Zetkin remains an invaluable fixture in modern feminist movements. Even now, women are still fighting for equal pay in the workplace, and figures such as Zetkin remind modern women that cooperation is of utmost importance, and that perseverance is critical to making progress in the movement for women’s equality. Zetkin’s most lasting legacy however, is her reputation as an organizer and effective leader. It’s no secret that modern politics and social movements are deeply affected by partisanship, so Zetkin is most relevant in that she is an example of what can be achieved with organization and cooperation.
