100
Years of March 8: Recalling Its Socialist Origins
Brinda Karat
ONE hundred years
ago, on August 27 1910, the revolutionary leader Clara Zetkin
along with her comrades Alexandra Kollantai and
others, moved a resolution at the International Socialist Women’s Conference in
Copenhagen to observe an “ International Women’s Day.”
THE HISTORIC
RESOLUTION
The resolution read “ In
agreement with the class conscious, political and trade union organisations of the proletariat of their respective
countries, the Socialist women of all countries will hold each year a Women’s
Day, whose foremost purpose it must be to aid the attainment of women’s
suffrage. This demand must be held in conjunction with the entire women’s
question according to socialist precepts. The Women’s Day must have an
international character and is to be prepared carefully.” The slogan
accepted was ‘The vote for women will unite our strength in the struggle for
Socialism.’ At that time no specific date for the observance was decided.
The hundred
women delegates from 17 countries representing trade unions, socialist parties,
working women’s clubs and including the first three women elected to the
Finnish parliament, unanimously adopted the resolution. The following year,
1911, as a result of the Copenhagen initiative a million men and women
marched in Germany, Austria, Denmark, Switzerland and some other European countries. The
date chosen was March 19 to commemorate the 1848 revolution when there was an
armed uprising against the Prussian king. Describing the demonstrations
Alexandra Kollantai later elected the first woman
member of the Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party wrote “...(the
demonstrations) exceeded all expectations. Germany and Austria... was one seething trembling sea of
women. Meetings were organised everywhere... In the
small towns and even in the villages, halls were packed so full that they had
to ask male workers to give up their places for women….During the largest
demonstration in which 30,000 were taking part, the police decided to remove
the demonstrators banners: the women workers made a
stand. In the scuffle that followed, bloodshed was averted only with the help
of Socialist deputies...”
In Tsarist
Russia, women observed the day on the last Sunday of February (according to the Julian calendar but according to the Gregorian calendar
used in the rest of the world the date was March 8. ) In America, Socialist women had already observed a
National Women’s Day in 1908, the first of its kind in the world, when large
demonstrations took place calling for the vote and for economic rights of
women. Women workers in garment factories were staging militant strikes facing
police repression and their cause was taken up as part of Women’s day
celebrations. The imperialist preparations for war added a new dimension to an
international day cutting across national boundaries. Women across countries
called for peace against war. It was in 1913 that International Women’s day was
transferred to March 8.
But the
following year the world war broke out. In 1915 and 1916 although efforts were
made to observe the day, the warmongers in all countries hounded those who
dared to call for peace and public demonstrations were banned. According to Kollantai, the only open demonstration for March 8 that
could be held in that period was in Norway when some women delegates could assemble
and courageously adopt a resolution for peace.
WOMEN’S
DAY, 1917
Then came the reat
year of 1917. In Russia, the storm against the hated Tsarist rule
started from the workers quarters in Petrograd when women workers started mobilising
for March 8. Women workers, wives of soldiers, working class housewives,
victims of hunger and the trials of war poured out on to the streets of
Petrograd. They denounced the war, they demanded an end to their humiliation, they called for peace and bread. Gathering strength and
passion they swept through the streets joined by workers and soldiers. It was
those women demonstrations on March 8 that triggered the historic people’s
upsurge heralding the beginning of the tumultuous and revolutionary events
which led to the establishment of the first Socialist State in the world. The women of Petrograd and elsewhere in Tsarist Russia through
their actions substantiated the comments made by Karl Marx in a 12
December 1868 letter to Ludwig Kudelmann “Everyone who knows
anything of history also knows that great social revolutions are impossible
without the feminine ferment.”
SUBSEQUENT DEVELOPMENTS
In 1922, the
first Workers State declared a holiday on March 8 to mark
Women’s Day. That was also the year when it was first celebrated in China. The observance of the day gained
momentum. In India the first time it was observed was in
1931 on the occasion of the Lahore Conference of Asian Women for Equality. A
resolution demanding women’s equality and linking women’s equality to the
freedom of nations was adopted.
Whereas left
wing women’s organisations along with women in
Socialist countries continued the tradition of observing women’s day, from the
sixties onwards as the “feminist wave” hit the United States and much of
Europe, the observance of the day became more widespread and finally led the
United Nations to adopt a resolution in 1975, suggested by the President of Women’s International Democratic federation (WIDF),
officially declaring March 8 as International Women’s day. Today countries
across the world observe March 8. While this is welcome, it also provides the
ground for a dilution of the socialist origins of March 8, of its history as
the symbol of struggles of women particularly working women in challenging
exploitative capitalist structures. It is important to recall the socialist
origins of March 8 and to prevent its cooption into a market driven celebration
of frivolous femininity.
TWO ASPECTS
There are two aspects
to the history of March 8 both relevant for us today. The first and most
important is the early understanding of the importance of organising
women workers in particular and women belonging to the working classes in
general against capitalist exploitation and to fight for the Socialist
alternative. The recognition of the key role that proletarian women must play
in the development of women’s movements for emancipation was based on the
militant actions of working class women across Europe,
in Russia and in the United States. Drawn into industry in the worst possible
conditions, women and children’s labour was used to
make super profits. In the first volume of Capital Marx writes “The labour of women and children was therefore the first thing
sought for by capitalists who used machinery. That mighty substitute for labour and labourers was
forthwith changed into a means for increasing the number of wage-labourers by enrolling under the direct sway of capital,
every member of the workman’s family without distinction of age or sex.”
Socialist women activists were closely linked with efforts to build up organised resistance among working women against their
exploitation. The first International under the leadership of Marx and Engels gave specific directions to all its branches to
fight for workers rights including women workers and issued a detailed
questionnaire to gain proper information to formulate the demands. These
included an eight hour day for reforms in the slave like working conditions of
women and children. Marx’s daughter Eleanor played an active role in building organisations of working women in the factories of East London. In 1888 London match girls who made up the entire workforce in the
industry from young teenagers to grandmothers struck work. Trade unions
supported them and they won major concessions giving a big boost to women
workers organisations and movements. In the United States garment and textile workers similarly were organising themselves with the support of Socialist women
winning several struggles. These struggles intensified at the beginning of the
century and provided the backdrop to the March 8 observance. The core of the
observance was to highlight the fight against capitalism and the crucial role
of working women in that fight.
Writings of Socialist women
at the time also point to the Herculean efforts that they had to make to
convince their male comrades of the importance of a separate observance for
women which was often termed as a move which would divide the working class. In
the event they succeeded. Later in 1920, Lenin in his famous conversations with
Zetkin scathingly criticized those within the
socialist organisations and trade unions who did not recognise the importance of approaching women as women
within the working classes. Those lessons are equally relevant today.
In the neo-liberal
framework we know that women of the working classes and the working poor,
including in rural India, are the worst affected. The core ideology of retreat
of the State and reliance on the market has led to high inflation rates,
unemployment, retrenchments and low wages, all of which have hurt women badly
reflected in high levels of malnutrition among women and girl children. Where
women are organising themselves, resistance is
growing and indeed women make up a substantial number of the mobilisations of the poor for their rights in various
struggles. This requires focused and specific efforts.
A second equally
significant development was taking place. Under the leadership of liberal
bourgeois women’s organisations and groups a militant
women’s movement for the political vote for women was sweeping Britain and the United States and some European countries. Known as the suffragette
movement, educated women from the bourgeoisie took to the streets in militant
actions for the vote. What should be the Socialist women’s approach to the
movement? A hundred years later the answer seems obvious. But at that
time, Socialist women led by Clara Zetkin had to wage
a strong battle within the ranks of the Socialists to have a resolution adopted
to support women’s right to vote on equal terms as men. Voices at that time
within the second International opposed the demand saying it would lead to a
strong backlash from the Church and would unnecessarily hinder the movements of
the workers who were also fighting for the right to vote which was granted in
most countries only to the propertied classes. Others questioned the timing of
the demand saying it would divide the workers who would take time to recognise the legitimacy of the demand. Still others felt
it would be diversionary and falling into the trap of the ruling classes who
wanted to deflect attention from class struggle. All these differing opinions
came out in the open at the time of the first meeting in 1907 of Socialist
women in Stuttgart preceding the 1910 meeting in Copenhagen where the March 8 resolution was adopted. The 1907 Stuttgart meeting was attended by 58 women. They were expected
to adopt a resolution and then place it in the wider meeting of the Second
International which was being held at the same time attended by over 900
delegates. It was in this respect that the intervention of women leaders like
Clara Zetkin who clearly spelt out the links between
class struggle and taking that struggle forward through the exercise of the
vote and the direct participation of the masses of women in democratic
processes was so significant. Just because women of elite classes raise a demand does not mean that the demand has no relevance
to the working classes, on the contrary women with socialist consciousness must
intervene in the struggle and make the democratic right to vote an instrument
to turn against the ruling classes. This argument won the day and the
resolution for socialist support to the universal right to vote without
distinction was passed by 47 votes against 11.
The main conference also accepted the resolution and henceforth all Socialists
were bound to support women’s struggles for the vote. It was in this background
that we understand the significance of the slogan given at the time of the
adoption of the historic resolution for the observance of March 8 in 1910 “the
vote for women will unite our strength in the struggle for Socialism.’
Just ten years later, one of the first steps taken by the Constituent Assembly
which took power after the overthrow of the tsar was to grant women in Russia the unconditional right to vote, becoming the first
country to do so. At the present time when there is much discussion on the Women’s
reservation Bill and the increase of reservation from 33 per cent to 50 per
cent in panchayats and local bodies, the relevance of
being able to use these opportunities to highlight the utter bankruptcy of the
capitalist system in so many respects needs to be emphasised.
These two aspects of the
March 8 observance, namely the economic and the political intertwined to form a
solid platform for action which influenced large masses of women which went
beyond the times in which the call was given. The 100 women assembled in Copenhagen could hardly have imagined that their call for an
international women’s day would resonate through the world even 100 years
later. The relevance of the nature of the initiative remains as significant as
it was then.
CONTEMPORARY
SIGNIFICANCE
The struggle
against capitalism and in particular its relentless drive for super profits in
the neo-liberal framework is more urgent than ever. The drive for
militarization, the violence of war and aggression of the imperialist powers
recall the need for the kind of heroic mobilisations
of women across national boundaries against the first world
war. Unfortunately and deeply regrettably, the de-ideologisation
of contemporary women’s movements led by “feminist” groups in different
countries have played into capitalist driven cultures which denigrate organised resistance and women’s collective action as
outdated and unnecessary. An earlier initiative taken by some Canadian women’s
groups who had organised a platform of over 100
women’s organisations in many countries called the
World March of Women focussed against imperialism and
the impact of globalisation on the lives of women.
But it weakened with the focus shifting to issues connected with female
sexuality mainly on the rights of homosexual and lesbian groups. The right of a
woman over her own body and expression of her sexual preferences has become the
key issue, interpreted in a narrow way for a substantial section of women
activists including in India. They do not see these issues as part of
a wider social problem. Conversely, they present all other problems as
appendages to the issues concerning women’s sexuality which to them is the main
social contradiction through which all others are affected. They refuse to see
the class forces which subordinate women in new ways. Under imperialist globalisation we are seeing new forms of women’s
subordination and sexual oppression and exploitation. The
exponential increase in trafficking, in the sale of children for sex, in the
increasing number of women being forced into prostitution due to war,
displacement, poverty. This requires a concerted and united movement
against imperialist aggression, against the international powerful drug and
mafia lobbies which operate with political patronage. In India the most medieval forms of honour killings flourish within a continuing caste system.
Certainly Indian women’s movements will have to confront the caste system in
any strategy for women’s emancipation. In other words if we have to fight
against the most blatant and brutal forms of control over a woman’s body as
shown in the reactionary fatwas of caste panchayats against women (and men) who dare to challenge
caste boundaries in questions of personal relations, we have to take into
account the socio-economic conditions, such as the caste system. Unfortunately
those who see themselves as champions of women’s autonomy are unable to see
these crucial links and in their hostility to organised
leftwing women’s mobilisations prove themselves to be
on the side of the establishment.
CONCLUSION
International
Women’s day is a symbol of the struggle for women’s emancipation against the
shackles of capitalism and the patriarchal cultures it strengthens. We know
that in India at the stage of democratic demands and
struggles we need to mobilize the widest sections of women on a platform for
equality. At the same time we also know that such mobilizations can be
successful only if they have as their core the voices and demands of the
oppressed and exploited working women, the dalits, tribals, the crores of women in
the rural and urban unorganized sector who make up the mass of the Indian women
and who have the highest stakes in changing the present system of inequalities.
On this March 8, celebrating 100 years of its observance we must pledge to take
that struggle forward.
Long
Live March 8
Long
Live Clara Zetkin
Source:- PD/March-07-03-2010