For International Working Women’s Day, we share the following translation, which comes from a speech that the German revolutionary socialist and working women’s advocate Clara Zetkin gave at the International Workers’ Congress in Paris on July 19, 1889. Although we think it is worth republishing, we do have some points of disagreement where the speech shows that it is a product of its time. Zetkin mentions how men’s wages have been reduced and now they must rely on the wages of their wives to support a family, but she neglects to mention that proletarian women have not been completely freed from their dependency on men in marriage by entering the workforce. Due to a woman’s wages only being enough to (barely) support herself and not an entire family, this means that a double dependency now exists where women are both dependent on their own scanty wages and those of their husbands, thus often remaining trapped in a marriage they do not wish to be in. This topic is something we have spoken about more in-depth in our collaborative series Malignant Ulcers of Capitalism: The Proletarian Struggle for Reproductive Freedom.
League of Internationalist Communists
8 March 2024
For the Liberation of Women
It is not surprising that the reactionary elements have a reactionary view of women’s work. However, it is extremely surprising that even in the socialist camp one encounters an erroneous view by demanding the abolition of women’s work. The question of women’s emancipation, that is, in the last resort, the question of women’s work, is an economic one, and one rightly expects the socialists to have a higher understanding of economic questions than that which is manifested in the demand just mentioned.
Socialists must know that in the present economic development women’s labor is a necessity; that the natural tendency of women’s labor is either to diminish the labor-time that each individual must devote to society, or to increase the wealth of society; that it is not women’s labor as such which depresses wages by competing with male labor, but the exploitation of women’s labor by the capitalist who appropriates it.
Above all, socialists must know that social slavery or freedom is based on economic dependence or independence.
Those who have written on their banner the liberation of humanity must not condemn a whole half of the human race to political and social slavery through economic dependence. As the laborer is subjugated by the capitalist, so is the woman by the man; and she will remain subjugated as long as she is not economically independent. The indispensable condition for this economic independence is work. If women are to be made free human beings, equal members of society like men, there is no need to abolish or restrict women’s labor, except in certain very exceptional cases.
The women workers who strive for social equality expect nothing for their emancipation from the bourgeois women’s movement, which supposedly fights for women’s rights. This edifice is built on sand and has no real foundation. The women workers are absolutely convinced that the question of women’s emancipation is not an isolated one, but a part of the great social question. They are absolutely clear about the fact that this question will never be solved in today’s society, but only after a thorough transformation of society. The question of women’s emancipation is a child of modern times, and the machine has given birth to it.
The emancipation of women means a complete change in their social position from the ground up, a revolution in their role in economic life. The old form of production with its imperfect means of labor tied women to the family and limited their sphere of activity to the home. In the bosom of the family, the woman represented an extraordinarily productive labor force. She produced almost all the family’s articles of daily use. Given the state of production and trade in the past, it would have been very difficult, if not impossible, to produce these articles outside the family. As long as these older relations of production were in force, the woman was economically productive.
Machine production has killed the economic activity of women in the family. Large-scale industry produces all articles more cheaply, faster and on a larger scale than was possible with individual industry, which only worked with the imperfect tools of miniature production. The woman often had to pay more for the raw material she bought in the shop than for the finished product of the large-scale machine industry. In addition to the purchase price (of the raw material), she had to contribute her time and labor. As a result, productive activity within the family became economic nonsense, a waste of energy and time. Although the woman producing in the bosom of the family may be of use to individuals, this kind of activity nevertheless means a loss for society.
This is the reason why the good homemaker has almost completely disappeared from the good old days. Large-scale industry has made the production of goods in the home and for the family useless, it has taken away the basis for women’s domestic activities. At the same time, it has also created the basis for women’s work in society. Mechanical production, which can dispense with muscle power and skilled labor, made it possible to employ women in a large field of work. Women entered industry with the desire to increase the family’s income. Women’s work in industry became a necessity with the development of modern industry. With every improvement in modern times, male labor became superfluous in this way, thousands of workers were thrown on the pavement, a reserve army of the poor was created, and wages continued to fall lower and lower.
In the past, the husband’s earnings were sufficient to secure the family’s existence, while the wife was productive in the home; now they are barely enough to support the unmarried worker. The married worker must necessarily count on the woman’s paid work.
This fact freed women from their economic dependence on men. The woman working in industry, who could not possibly be exclusively in the family as a mere economic appendage of the man – she learned to be self-sufficient as an economic force independent of the man. But if the woman is no longer economically dependent on the man, there is no reasonable reason for her social dependence on him. Nevertheless, this economic independence does not benefit the woman herself at the moment, but the capitalist. By virtue of his monopoly of the means of production, the capitalist seized the new economic factor and made it work to his exclusive advantage. The woman, freed from her economic dependence on the man, was subjected to the economic domination of the capitalist; from a slave of the man she became that of the employer: she had only changed masters. At least she gained from this change; she is no longer economically inferior to the man and subordinate to him, but his equal. The capitalist, however, is not content with exploiting the woman himself; he also makes use of her by exploiting the male workers even more thoroughly with her help.
From the outset, female labor was cheaper than male labor. The man’s wage was originally calculated to cover the maintenance of a whole family; the woman’s wage from the beginning represented only the cost of maintaining one person, and even this only in part, because it was expected that the woman would continue to work at home in addition to her work in the factory. Furthermore, the products made by women at home with primitive tools corresponded only to a small quantity of medium social labor compared to the products of large-scale industry. One was therefore led to conclude that women were less able to work, and this consideration meant that women were paid less for their labor. To these reasons for low pay was added the fact that, on the whole, women have fewer needs than men.
But what made female labor particularly valuable to the capitalist was not only the low price, but also the greater subservience of the woman. The capitalist speculated on these two factors: to pay the female worker as little as possible and to reduce the wages of men as much as possible through this competition. In the same way, he made use of child labor to drive down women’s wages; and of machine labor to drive down human labor in general. The capitalist system alone is the cause that women’s labor has the very opposite results to its natural tendency; that it leads to a longer duration of the working day instead of bringing about a substantial shortening; that it is not synonymous with an increase in the wealth of society, that is, with a greater prosperity of each individual member of society, but only with an increase in the profits of a handful of capitalists and at the same time with an ever greater impoverishment of the masses. The disastrous consequences of women’s work, which are so painfully noticeable today, will only disappear with the capitalist system of production.
In order not to succumb to competition, the capitalist must endeavor to make the difference between the purchase (production) price and the selling price of his goods as large as possible; he, therefore, seeks to produce as cheaply as possible and sell as dearly as possible. The capitalist therefore has every interest in extending the working day indefinitely and fobbing off the workers with wages that are as ridiculously low as possible. This endeavor is in direct opposition to the interests of the female workers, as well as those of the male workers. There is therefore no real opposition between the interests of men and women workers; but there is an irreconcilable opposition between the interests of capital and those of labour.
There are economic reasons against calling for a ban on women’s work. The present economic situation is such that neither the capitalist nor the man can do without women’s work. The capitalist must maintain it to remain competitive, and the man must count on it if he wants to start a family. If we were to legislate for the elimination of women’s labor, this would not improve men’s wages. The capitalist would very soon cover the loss of cheap labor by using perfected machinery on a larger scale – and in a short time, everything would be as before.
After great labor stoppages, the outcome of which was favorable to the workers, it has been seen that the capitalists, with the help of perfected machinery, have wiped out the gains made by the workers
If one demands the prohibition or restriction of women’s work due to the competition it creates, then it is just as logically justified to demand the abolition of machines and the restoration of the medieval guild law, which determined the number of workers to be employed in each trade.
However, apart from the economic reasons, there are above all reasons of principle that speak against a ban on women’s work. It is precisely because of the principled side of the question that women must be anxious to protest with all their might against any such attempt; they must oppose it most vigorously and at the same time most justifiably because they know that their social and political equality with men depends solely on their economic independence, which their work outside the family makes possible for them in society.
From the standpoint of principle, we women protest most emphatically against any restriction on women’s work. Since we do not want to separate our cause from the workers’ cause in general, we will not formulate any special demands; we demand no other protection than that which labor in general demands against capital.
We allow only one exception in favor of pregnant women whose condition requires special protective measures in the interest of the woman herself and her offspring. We do not recognize any special women’s question – we do not recognize any special workers’ question! We expect our full emancipation neither from the admission of women to what are called free trades nor from an education equal to that of men – although the demand for these two rights is only natural and just – nor from the granting of political rights. The countries in which the supposed universal, free, and direct suffrage exists show us how little value it really has. The right to vote without economic freedom is nothing more and nothing less than a bill of exchange that has no course. If social emancipation depended on political rights, there would be no social question in countries with universal suffrage. The emancipation of women, like that of the whole human race, will be exclusively the work of the emancipation of labor from capital. Only in a socialist society will women, like labor, attain full possession of their rights.
Given these facts, women who are serious about their desire for liberation have no choice but to join the Socialist Workers’ Party, the only party that strives for the emancipation of workers.
Without the help of men, indeed, often even against the will of men, women have come under the socialist banner; it must even be admitted that in certain cases they have been irresistibly driven to do so, even against their own intentions, simply by a clear grasp of the economic situation.
But they are now under this banner, and they will remain under it! They will fight under it for their emancipation, for their recognition as equal human beings.
If they go hand in hand with the socialist workers’ party, they are prepared to participate in all the efforts and sacrifices of the struggle, but they are also determined to demand all the rights they are entitled to with good reason after the victory. In terms of sacrifices and duties as well as rights, they want to be no more and no less than comrades in arms who have been accepted into the ranks of the fighters under the same conditions.
League of Internationalist Communists 