Click on the headline to link to a Leon Trotsky Internet Archives online copy of his 1921 Speech Delivered at the Second World Conference of Communist Women from Volume One of The First Five Years Of The Communist International.
Markin comment:
The following is an article from the Spring 1981 issue of
Women and Revolution that may have some historical interest for old "new leftists", perhaps, and well as for younger militants interested in various cultural and social questions that intersect the class struggle. Or for those just interested in a Marxist position on a series of social questions that are thrust upon us by the vagaries of bourgeois society. I will be posting more such articles from the back issues of
Women and Revolution during Women's History Month and periodically throughout the year.
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Markin comment on this article:
Over the past couple of years I have placed as many still relevant social, political, literary, and cultural articles from the journal
Women and Revolution as I have been able to find as a source for leftist militants to think about these questions that are not always directly related to our day to day tasks in the class struggle today. I have made some effort into trying to get as many articles about the experiences of the Soviet Union as possible because that experience is, in some senses, our only example of what could have been had things turned out a bit differently back in the early days of the Russian revolution.
A couple of general observations about the tenor of the Soviet-centered articles. First, each article starts with items and ideas that spoke to the promise of the revolution, the things that could or should have been done and that the Bolsheviks raised holy hell to try to accomplish. Second, each article notes that turning inward of the revolution and the erasing of institutions, movements, and currents that surfaced in the revolutionary period and that were slammed in the period of Stalinist degeneration of the late 1920s. Those observations should be etched in the memory or every leftist militant who wants to fight for our communist future so we do better when our chance comes.
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The Comintern Theses on Work Among Women
The Third Congress of the Communist International, meeting in Moscow from 22 June to 12 July 1921, adopted the following theses on the woman question. The Second International Congress of Communist Women, including delegates from as far away as Mexico and India, had met just prior to the Congress and also adopted this document. We are reprinting the Comintern - approved English-language edition, published by the Contemporary Publishing Association, New York City, 1921. (For a discussion of certain flaws in this translation, see "On the Comintern Theses on Work Among Women—I.S. Slander Refuted," W&R No. 4, Fall 1973). For space reasons, we are printing excerpts. The "Propaganda and Agitation Methods" section, which deals with tactical implementation, and the one-sentence conclusion, "Work on an International Basis," which directs the Women's Secretariat of the Comintern to oversee the work, have been dropped entirely.
The Theses set forth the Communists' determination to find effective means of propaganda and agitation-among women to win them to the cause of proletarian socialism. To the feminist notion of an "autonomous" women's movement, the Theses forthrightly counter-pose the need for class-conscious women's organizations led by the Communist vanguard in a united struggle against capitalism.
1. The Third Congress of the Comintern in conjunction with the Second International Women’s' Congress confirms the decision of the First and Second Congresses on the necessity for increasing the work of all the Communist Parties of the East and West among proletarian women. The masses of women workers must be educated in the spirit of Communism and so drawn into the struggle for Soviet Power and into the construction of the Soviet Labor Republic. In all countries the working classes, and consequently the
women workers, are faced with the problem of the dictatorship of the proletariat.
The capitalist economic system has got into a blind alley, for there is no room for the further development of industrial forces within that system. The general impoverishment of the workers, the impotence of the bourgeoisie to revive production, the development of speculative enterprises, the decay in the production system, unemployment, the fluctuation of prices out of keeping with wages,— all this leads inevitably to the deepening of the class struggle in all countries. This struggle is to decide who shall conduct, administer, and organize production, and upon what system that should be done,—whether it should be in the hands of a clique of bourgeois exploiters, and be carried on upon the principles of capitalism and private property; or in the hands of the producing class and carried on upon a Communist basis.
The newly rising class, the class of producers, must in accordance with the laws of economic production, take the productive apparatus into its own hands, and set up new forms of public economy. Only in such a way will it be possible to create the necessary impetus for the development of the economic forces to the maximum and for the removal of the anarchy of capitalist production.
So long as the power of government is in the hands of the bourgeois class, the proletariat has no power to organize production. No reforms, no measure, carried out by the democratic or socialistic governments of the bourgeois countries, are able to save the situation. They cannot alleviate the unbearable sufferings of the working women and working men, sufferings which are due to the disorganization of the capitalist system of production, and which are going to last as long as the power is in the hands of the bourgeoisie. Only by seizing the power of government will the proletariat be able to take hold of the means of production, and thus secure the possibility of directing the economic development in the interests of the toilers.
In order to hasten the hour of the decisive conflict between the proletariat and the degenerating bourgeois world, the working class must adhere to the firm and unhesitating
tactics outlined by the Third International. The most fundamental and immediate goal determining the methods of work and the line of struggle for the proletariat of both sexes must be the dictatorship of labor.
As the struggle for the dictatorship of the proletariat is the vital question before the proletariat of all the capitalist countries, and the construction of Communism is the important task of those countries where the dictatorship is already in the hands of the workers, the Third Congress of the Communist International maintains that the conquest of power by the proletariat, as well as the achievement of Communism in those countries where the capitalist state has already been overthrown, can be realized only with the active participation of the wide masses of the proletarian and semi-proletarian women.
On the other hand the Congress once more calls the attention of all women to the fact that without the support of the Communist parties in all the tasks and undertakings leading to the liberation and enfranchisement of the women, this task is practically impossible of achievement.
2. The interest of the working class, especially at the present moment, imperatively demands the recruiting of women into the organized ranks of the proletariat, fighting for Communism.
The economic ruin throughout the world is becoming more acute and more unbearable to the entire city and country poor. Before the working class of the bourgeois-capitalist countries the question of the social revolution rises more and more clearly, and before the working class of Soviet Russia the question of reconstructing the public economy of the land on a new communist basis, becomes more and more vital. Both these tasks will be more easily realized, the more active and the more conscious and willing the participation of the women.
3. Wherever the question of the conquest of power arises, the Communist Parties must consider the great danger to the revolution represented by the inert, uninformed masses of women workers, housewives, employees, peasant women, not liberated from the influence of the bourgeois church and bourgeois superstitions, and not connected in some way or other with the great liberating movement of Communism. Unless the masses of women of the East and West are drawn into this movement, they inevitably become the stronghold of the bourgeoisie and the object of counter-revolutionary propaganda. The experience of the revolution in Hungary, where the ignorance of the masses of women played such a pitiful part, should serve, in this case, as a warning for the proletariat of all other countries entering upon the road of social revolution.
On the other hand, the experience of the Soviet Republic showed in practice how important the participation of the women workers and peasants has been in the civil war in the defence of the Republic, as well as in all other activities of the Soviet construction. Facts have proven the importance of the part which the women workers and peasants have already played in the Soviet Republic in the organization of defence, strengthening the rear; the struggle against desertion, and against all sorts of counter-revolution, sabotage, etc. The experience of the Workers Republic must serve as a lesson to all other countries.
Hence, the direct task of the Communist Parties: to spread the influence of the Communist Party to the widest circles of the women population of their countries; organizing a special party body and applying special methods; appealing to the women outside of it, to free them from the influence of the bourgeoisie and the compromising parties, and educating them to be real fighters for Communism, and therefore for the complete enfranchisement of the women.
4. Putting before the Communist Parties of the East and West the direct task of extending the activity of the Party among the women proletariat the Third Congress of the Comintern declares also to the women of the entire world, that their emancipation from age-long slavery and inequality depend upon the victory of communism.
What Communism offers to the women, the bourgeois women's movement will never afford her. So long as the power of capitalism and private property continue to exist, the emancipation of woman from subservience to her husband cannot proceed further than her right to dispose of her property and earnings, as she sees fit, and also to decide on equal terms with her husband, the destiny of their children.
The most definite aim of the feminists—to grant the vote to the women—under the regime of bourgeois parliamentarism, does not solve the question of the actual equalization of women, especially of those of the dispossessed classes. This has been clearly demonstrated by the experience of the working women in those capitalist countries where the bourgeoisie has formally recognized the equality of the sexes. The right to vote does not remove the prime cause of women's enslavement in the family and in society. The substitution of the church marriage by civil marriage does not in the least alleviate the situation. The dependence of the proletarian woman upon the capitalist and upon, her husband as the economic mainstay of the family remains just the same. The absence of adequate laws to safeguard motherhood and infancy and the lack of proper social education render entirely impossible the equalization of woman's position in matrimonial relations. As a matter of fact, nothing that can be done under the capitalist order will furnish the key to the solution of the problem of the relationship of the sexes.
Only under Communism, not merely the formal, but the actual equalization of women will be achieved. Then woman will be the rightful owner, on a par with all the members of the working class, of the means of production and distribution. She will participate in the management of industry and she will assume an equal responsibility for the well-being of society.
In other words, only by overthrowing the system of exploitation of man by man, and by supplanting the capitalist mode of production by the Communist organization of industry will the full emancipation of woman be achieved. Only Communism affords the conditions which are necessary in order that the natural functions of woman—motherhood—should not come into conflict with her social obligations and hinder her creative work for the benefit of society. On the contrary, Communism will facilitate the most harmonious and diversified development of a healthy and beautiful personality that is indissolubly bound together with the whole life and activities of entire society. Communism should be the aim of all women who are fighting for complete emancipation and real freedom.
But, Communism is also the final aim of the proletariat. Consequently, the struggle of the working women for this aim must be carried on in the interests of both, under a united leadership and control, as "one and indivisible" to the entire world movement of the revolutionary proletariat.
5. The Third Congress of the Comintern confirms the basic proposition of revolutionary Marxism, i.e., that there is no "specific woman question" and no "specific women's movement," and, that every sort of alliance of working women with bourgeois feminism, as well as any support by the women workers of the treacherous tactics of the social-compromisers and opportunists leads to the undermining of the forces of the proletariat, delaying thereby the triumph of the social revolution and the advent of Communism, and thus also postponing the great hour of women's ultimate liberation.
Communism will be achieved not by "united efforts of all women of different classes," but by the united struggle of all the exploited. In their own interests the masses of proletarian women should support the revolutionary tactics of the Communist Party and take a most active and direct part in all mass-actions and all forms of civil war on a national and international scope.
6. Woman's struggle against her double oppression(capitalism and her home and family subservience), at its highest stage of development assumes an international character, becoming identified with the struggle of the proletariat of both sexes under the banner of the Third International for the Dictatorship of the Proletariat and the Soviet System.
7. While warning the women workers against entering into any form of alliance and co-operation with the bourgeois feminists, the Third Congress of the Comintern, at the same time, points out to the workingwomen of all countries that to cherish any illusions of
the possibility for the proletarian women to support the Second International or any of the opportunistically inclined elements adhering to it without causing serious damage to the cause of women's emancipation—will prove infinitely detrimental for the liberating struggle of the proletariat. The women must constantly remember that woman's present-day slavery has grown out of the bourgeois order. In order to put an end to women's slavery it is necessary to inaugurate the new Communist organization of society.
Any support rendered to the Second and Second-and-a-half Internationals hampers the social revolution, delaying the advent of the new order. The more resolutely and uncompromisingly the women masses will turn away from the Second and the Second-and-a-half Internationals, the more certain will be the triumph of the Social Revolution. It is the sacred duty of all women Communists to condemn those who flinch from the revolutionary tactics of the Comintern and to Communist Party and take a most active and direct part in all mass-actions and all forms of civil war on a national and international scope.
8. The support of the Comintern by the women workers of all occupations should, first of all, express itself in their willingness to enter into the ranks of the Communist Party of their respective countries. In those countries and parties where the struggle between the Second and Third Internationals has not yet come to a head, it is the duty of the women workers to support, by all means, the Party and groups that stand for the Comintern and carry on a relentless warfare against all vacillating and avowedly treacherous elements, irrespective of any authorities holding a different view. The class-conscious women who are striving for emancipation should not remain in any parties which have not joined the Comintern. Those who are opposed to the Third International are the enemies of the emancipation of women.
The place of conscious working women in Eastern and Western countries is under the flag of the Communist International and in the ranks of the Communist Parties of their own countries. All wavering on the part of the working women and the fear to sever connection with the parties of compromise, and the hitherto acknowledged authorities have a pernicious influence on the satisfactory progress of the great proletarian struggle which is assuming the nature of an open and relentless civil war on a World scale.
Methods and Form of Work Among Women
Owing to all the above mentioned reasons, the Third Congress of the Comintern holds that the work among the proletarian women should be carried on by the Communist Parties of all countries, on the following basis:
1. Women must be enlisted as full-fledged members of the Party, on the basis of equality and independence, in all militant class organizations, trade unions, co¬operatives, factory committees, etc.
2. To recognize the importance of recruiting women into all branches of the active struggle of the proletariat (including military service for the defence of the proletariat} and into the construction of new forms of society and the organization of industry and life on a communist basis.
3. To recognize the functions of motherhood as a social function, promoting and supporting appropriate measures to aid and protect women as the bearer of the human race.
Being earnestly opposed to the separate organization of women into all sorts*of parties, unions, or any other special women's organizations, the Third Congress, nevertheless, believes that in view of: a) the present conditions of subjection prevailing not only in the bourgeois-capitalist countries, but also in countries under the Soviet system, undergoing transition from capitalism to communism; b) the great inertness and political ignorance of the masses of women, due to the fact that they have been for centuries barred from social life and to age-long slavery in the family, and, c) the special functions imposed upon women by nature—childbirth, and the peculiarities attached to this, calling for the protection of her strength and health in the interests of the entire community, the Third Congress therefore considers it necessary to find special methods of work among the women of the Communist Parties and establishes a standard of special apparatus within the Communist Parties for the realization of this work. The apparatus for this work among the women in the Party should be the sections or committees for work among women, organized by all party committees commencing with the Executive Committee and ending with the city districts or village party committees. This decision is obligatory for all parties attached to the Comintern....
Work of the Party Amongst Women in Soviet Countries
It is the task of the Sections of the Soviet Labor Republics to educate the masses of working women in a spirit of communism, by attracting them to the Communist Party; to inspire and develop activity and self-reliance, by drawing them into the work of constructive Communism and bringing them up as staunch defenders of the Communist International.
It is the task of the Sections to attract the women to every form of Soviet construction, including questions of defense, as well as all the many economic plans of the
Republic. ,
In the Soviet Republics the Sections should see that all the regulations of the 8th Congress of Soviets regarding the attraction of working and peasant women to the work of building up and organizing public production, as well as their participation in the work of all those organs which direct, manage, control and organize production should be carried out. The Sections should participate through their representatives and through the Party organs in the elaboration of new laws and exercise an influence on the alteration of such as require much alteration in the interest of the enfranchisement of women. The Sections should take the greatest interest and show most initiative in the development of those laws which deal with the protection of the labor of women and children.
It is the duty of the Sections to attract the greatest possible number of working and peasant women to all election campaigns of Soviets, as also to see to it that working and peasant women are elected as members of Soviets and Executive Committees,
The Sections should make it their business to assist in every way possible in making a success of political and economic campaigns carried on by the Party.
It is the task of the Sections to assist the growth of skilled women labor by means of professional education, as well as to facilitate the admission of the working and peasant women to the corresponding educational establishments.
The Sections should facilitate the entrance of working women into the Commission for the Protection of Labor in various enterprises, and should also accelerate the activity of the auxiliary Committees for the Protection of Mother and Child.
The Sections should make it their business to assist the development of all social institutions, such as communal kitchens, laundries, repairing shops, institutions of social education, communal houses, etc. which, basing as they do, the conditions of life upon 2 new Communist principle, ameliorate the difficulties which women experience during the transition period; assist their rapid enfranchisement and transform the slave of the family and the home into a free co-worker in the great social renaissance, a fellow creator of new forms of life.
Through the organizers working among women elected by the Communist fraction of trade unions, the Sections should assist in the education of the women workers, members of the trade unions, in the spirit o Communism.
The Sections should look after the due attendance o the working women at all general factory delegate conferences.
The Sections should carry out a systematic distribution of auxiliary workers, for all the Soviet, economic and trade union work.
The Sections must first of all take deep and firm roots among the proletarian women, wage-earners, and organize propaganda among employees, housewives and peasant women.
To build up a firm connection between the Party and the mass of the people, and to spread its influence over the non-party members of society, and also, to develop the method of the education of the women folks in this spirit of Communism, by teaching self-activity am participation in practical work, the Women's Section are to organize delegate meetings of women workers
The delegate meetings are the best means to educate the women workers and peasants, and to spread the Party influence amongst the backward masses c women workers and peasants.
These delegates meetings are formed from factor and shop representatives of a certain region, city or volost. I n Soviet Russia, the women delegates are draw into all kinds of political and economic campaign They are sent into different committees in industry, are invited to control Soviet institutions, and used for regular work in the Soviet Departments, in the capacity of clerks, for two months (Law of 1921).
The women delegates should be elected at general meetings of the shop workers, of the housewives and employees, according to a certain rate of representation fixed by the Party. The Women's Sections are obliged to carry on propaganda and agitation among the delegates, for which purpose special meetings of women delegates are to be arranged not less than twice a month. The delegates are requested to make reports of their activities either in the shops where they work, or at meetings arranged in the city districts. The delegates should be elected for a period of three months.
Another form of agitation among the women is the organization of large non-party conferences of women workers and peasants. Representatives to conferences are to be elected at meetings held for women workers—at their place of work, and for peasant women—in the villages.
The Section for work among women is charged to call the conferences, as well as to supervise their work.
In order to make the best use of the experience that the women workers have secured by participating in the work and activities of the Party, the Branches and Committees carry on an elaborate campaign of propaganda by word of mouth and press. The Sections arrange meetings and discussions for the women workers at the shops and for the housewives at the city clubs. They exercise control over the delegates meetings and carry on house to house agitation.
To train active workers among the women, and to widen their understanding of communism, the party must organize with the help of the Sections, special courses for work among the women, at each Party school or school for Soviet work.
In Capitalist Countries
The current tasks of the Committees or Sections for work among women are initiated by the circumstances of the period. On the one hand, the ruin of world economy, the rampant growth of unemployment; especially effecting the women workers and tending to increase prostitution, the high cost of living, the acute housing question, and the threats of new imperialistic laws; on the other hand, the unceasing strikes in all countries, repeated outbursts of armed uprisings of the proletariat, and the ever more violent civil war throughout the world, are the prologue to the inevitable world social revolution.
The women's committees must put forward the most important tasks of the proletariat, fight for the unabridged slogans of the Communist Party, of the Communists against the bourgeoisie and social-compromisers. The committees must see to it that the women are not only registered as equal members of the Party, trade unions and other militant workers organizations, which are waging the fight against all injustice or inequality of the women workers, but also that the women should be allowed to occupy responsible positions in the Party, Union or Cooperative on an equal basis with the men.
The Committees or Sections must facilitate the work of the wide masses of the women proletarians and peasant women in utilizing their franchise in the interests of the Communist Parties during election to the parliament and to all the public institutions, explaining at the same time the limitations of those rights, in the sense of weakening the capitalist exploitation, promoting enfranchisement of women, and replacing parliamentarism by the Soviet system.
The Committees must also aid the women workers, employees and peasant women to take a most active part in the elections of revolutionary, economic and' political Soviets of workers deputies, obtaining representation in them; awakening the political activity of the housewives, and carrying on a propaganda of the Soviet idea among the peasant women. The special concern of the Committees must be the realization of the principle of equal pay for equal work. It is the task of the Committee to start a campaign, drawing men and women workers into it, for free, universal education, aiding the women to become highly qualified in their work.
The Committees should see to it that women Communists take part in the legislative, municipal and other legislative organizations, in fact, wherever women have the right to vote.
While participating in the legislative, municipal and other organizations of bourgeois States, Communist women should strictly adhere to the tactics of the party, not concerning themselves so much with the realization of reforms within the limits of the bourgeois world order, as taking advantage of every live question and demand of the working women, as watch-words by which to lead the women into the active mass struggle for these demands, through the dictatorship of the proletariat.
The Committees or Sections must explain the disadvantages and waste of the system of individual house keeping, the bad bringing up and education of the children by the bourgeoisie, rallying the women workers to the struggle for practical improvement of the conditions of the working class, waged or supported by the Party.
The Committees must aid in recruiting the women to the Communist Party from the Trade Unions, for which purpose the Communist fraction of the Trade Unions appoints an organizer for work among the women, under the direction of the Party and the local branch. The entire work of the Committee must be carried on with one purpose in view: the development of the revolutionary activity of the masses and the hastening of the social revolution.
In Economically Backward Countries (the East)
In conjunction with the Communist Party the Women's Section should do everything possible to achieve in industrially weak countries, the recognition of the legal equality, the equality both of rights and obligations, of women in the Parties, Unions and other organizations of the working class.
The Sections or Committees should carry on, in conjunction with the Party, a struggle against prejudice, religious customs and > habits which maintain an oppressive hold upon the women; to achieve this, it is also necessary to carry on propaganda among the men.
The Communist Party, together with the Sections or Commissions, should carry out the principle of the equality of women in matters of education of children, family relations and general social life.
The Sections should look for support in their work, first of all, among the large classes of women who are exploited by capitalism in the capacity of workers in home industries (Koustar), as laborers on rice, cotton and other plantations, and assist in the general establishment of communal workshops and home (Koustar) co-operatives; this applies especially to all Eastern peoples living within the borders of Soviet Russia; the Sections should also assist in the general organization of all women engaged in plantation work with the working men united in trade unions.
The raising of the general educational level of the population is one of the best means of fighting the general stagnation of the country as well as religious prejudices. The Committees or Sections should, therefore, assist in the opening of schools for grownups and children, such schools also to be accessible to the women. In bourgeois countries the Committees should carry on a direct agitation to counteract the influence of the bourgeois schools.
Wherever possible, the Sections or Committees should carry the agitation into the homes of the women and utilize the field work of the women for purposes of agitation. They should also organize clubs for working women, doing everything to attract to these clubs the most backward section of the women. These clubs should represent cultural and educational centers and model institutions, illustrating what can be achieved by women for their emancipation, through such means of self-activity, as the organization of creches, kindergartens, schools for adults and so forth.
Special clubs should be organized for nomadic peoples.
In Soviet lands the Sections, together with the Party, should assist in the transformation of the existing recapitalize forms of production and economics into a communal form of production. They should be practically propagated, in a manner to convince the working women that the former home-life and home-production oppressed and exploited them, while communal labor will emancipate them.
With regard to the peoples of the East who live within the borders of Soviet Russia, the Sections should take care that Soviet legislation should equalize men and women, and that the interests of the women should be properly protected. For this purpose, the Sections should assist in appointing women to the position of judges, and as members of juries in national Courts of law.
The Sections should also get the women to participate in Soviets, taking care that working and peasant women should be elected into the Soviets and Executive Committees. All work among the women proletariat of the East should be done on a class basis. It should be the task of the sections to expose the powerlessness of the Moslem feminists in the solution of the question of the enfranchisement of women. For enlightening purpose in all the Soviet countries of the East, the intelligent feminine forces should be utilized, as, for instance, women teachers and sympathizers, avoiding all tactless and vulgar treatment of religious faiths and national traditions. The Sections or Committees working among the women of the East should definitely fight against nationalism and the hold of religion on the women's minds.
All of the organizations of the workers should, in the East as well as in the West, be built not upon the basis of defending national interest, but upon the unity of the International proletariat of both sexes striving for the same class aims.
Notice: The work among the Eastern women being of great importance, and at the same time representing a new problem for the Communist Parties, the Conference deems it necessary to add to those theses special instructions on the methods of communist propaganda among the women of the Eastern countries, appropriate to their local habits and conditions.
