‘The self-assertion of the workers vis-à-vis fascism is the next indispensable prerequisite for the United Front in the battle against crises and imperialist wars and their cause, the capitalist means of production’
Clara Zetkin
Labour Outlook’s Sam Browse reports from Tuesday’s discussion of the German socialist, Clara Zetkin.
Tuesday saw Labour Outlook and Arise Festival host a discussion on the revolutionary ideas and life of Clara Zetkin – a leader of the German left, key figure in the socialist feminist movement (indeed, one of the founders of International Women’s Day), and prominent antifascist.
The discussion, Chaired by Logan Williams, was led by the UK historian and activist, Katherine Connelly, and the Toronto-based writer and activist, John Riddell.
Riddell began the discussion, hailing Zetkin as a ‘central figure in the thought and strategy of socialism a century ago’. Offering a characterful vignette of her antifascist politics, he quoted from a speech she gave in the German Parliament in August 1930. At 74, as the oldest member of the Reichstag and therefore its Honorary President, she was entitled to open the session. Despite a deluge of abuse in the press and threats of violence from the ascendant Nazi Party – who sat on the benches opposite – she launched into an impassioned excoriation –
‘The most important immediate task is the formation of a United Front of all workers in order to turn back fascism, in order to preserve for the enslaved and exploited, the force and power of their organisation as well as to maintain their own physical existence.’
‘All those who feel themselves threatened, all those who suffer and all those who long for liberation must belong to the United Front against fascism and its representatives in government.’
‘The self-assertion of the workers vis-à-vis fascism is the next indispensable prerequisite for the United Front in the battle against crises and imperialist wars and their cause – the capitalist means of production.’
‘The revolt of millions of labouring men and women in Germany against hunger, slavery, fascist murder and imperialist wars is an expression of the indestructible destiny of the workers of the entire world.’
‘Strikes and revolts in various countries are flaming signs which tell the fighters in Germany that they do not stand alone. Everywhere the disinherited and oppressed people are beginning to move towards a seizure of power.’
She concluded defiantly, ‘I am opening this Congress in the fulfilment of my duties as honorary president and in the hope that despite my current infirmities, I may yet have the fortune to open as honorary president of the first Soviet Congress of a Soviet Germany.’
Katherine Connelly was next to speak, highlighting that, through her friendship with the much younger Rosa Luxemburg, ‘Zetkin connected socialists across the generations and carried the lessons of revolutionary socialist thought for a century.’
As part of that thread of consistency, Zetkin defended the revolutionary core of Marx and Engels work against the leadership of the German Social Democratic Party, represented by characters such as Eduard Bernstein. Bernstein and others concluded that the contradictions of capitalism might be transcended by factors apart from revolutionary change – for example, they suggested that the interdependence of European states would mitigate against future wars.
Of course, the outbreak of the First World War proved this perspective decisively wrong. And whereas Bernstein and others would side with the chauvinism of their own ruling class, Zetkin and Luxemburg notably called for peace.
Connelly also emphasised the distinctive theoretical and practical contribution Zetkin made to the women’s movement, noting the German revolutionary’s role in founding International Women’s Day. She observed that ‘the main way we encounter International Women’s Day today is that it is drained of political meaning’, and the events associated with it are often ‘self-congratulatory reflections of society as it is’. But the day, she argued, was established for the opposite purpose.
Zetkin argued that women’s rights should not be approached a-historically or abstractly – the problems faced by women were products of the same capitalist society which presented the principle challenge to the whole socialist movement. While working class women often suffered more at the hands of the capitalist class, it was therefore ‘inconsistent idealism’ to treat their problems as entirely separate – women’s freedom was not possible without overturning the capitalist system. Zetkin said, the proletarian woman’s ‘final aim is not the free competition with men, but the political rule of the whole proletariat’.
Zetkin’s defiant antifascism, class-based feminism, and consistent anti-imperialism are inspirations. To find out more, watch the video below – and bring these ideas into your own organising and the struggle for a better world today!
- You can follow Katherine Connelly on Twitter.
- Read more about John Riddell’s work here.
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