The Second Congress of the Communist International had agreed that the Executive Committee of the International, (the ECCI) should - alongside the ‘Women's section of the International’ also agreed at that Congress - develop policy on work amongst women.
Clara Zetkin, who had been elected the International Secretary of the Women's Section, alongside others like Kollontai and Krupskaya, took the lead on carrying out what had been agreed. A first women’s conference of the International had been held in the summer of 1920, and the second was held to coincide with the Third Congress of the whole International, taking place in Moscow in 1921.
As a result of these discussions, three resolutions were tabled at the Third Congress, on 8 July 1921:
1) On Strengthening International Contact and on the Tasks of the Comintern's International Secretariat on Work among Women;
2) On Forms and Methods of Communist Work among Women;
3) Theses on Methods and Forms of Work among Communist Party Women.
I have summarised these three resolutions below, summaries which can hopefully be of benefit to comrades leading this key area of revolutionary work today.
On Strengthening International Contact and on the Tasks of the Comintern's International Secretariat on Work among Women
This resolution informed Congress of the proposals made at the “Second International Conference of Communist women”, which were then agreed by the Congress:
In summary, these were:
1 For all individual national Communist Parties to appoint leading women comrades as ‘international correspondents’;
2 For these correspondents to seek to regularly inform the Secretariat of the ECCI, ultimately responsible for all the work of the International;
3 For national parties to make available to the appointed correspondents all their technical and other resources, and for the correspondents to make wide use of them;
4 For the International Women's Secretariat (IWS), based in Moscow like the ECCI, to organise regular meetings for correspondents twice a year - more frequently if necessary.
5 For the IWS to maintain close ties with both the ECCI, to whom it is accountable, and with the appointed correspondents, and pay The particular attention to: “1) the activity of departments for work among proletarian women in the Communist Parties where insufficient work is being carried out and the basic principles and positions of the III International are being disregarded, 2) giving the women's Communist movement of all countries a single direction and 3) organising working women' campaigns on an international scale that can draw the revolutionary movement of the whole proletariat into the struggle for its dictatorship”.
A further three points (6/7/8) proposed that the ECCI and IWS set up of a “West European auxiliary-technical body” to prepare resolutions in line with the decisions of the IWS and ECCI, and then to ensure that they were carried out.
On Forms and Methods of Communist Work among Women
This resolution also informed Congress of the political declaration agreed at the ‘Second International Conference of Communist women', as also then endorsed by the Congress.
Again in summary, the resolution stressed that:
Successful revolutionary struggle “can only be achieved If the broadest masses of working women are consciously and resolutely involved”.
Similarly, “in countries such as Soviet Russia where the proletariat has already won state power and, by introducing the Soviet system, has established the dictatorship”, the struggle to oppose counter-revolution and to organise a new society “cannot be carried out unless the broad masses of working women are absolutely and unshakably convinced that the struggle for and building up of a new society concerns them as well”.
All Communist Parties must take seriously the decision of the Conference - to agitate, engage and organise the “broad masses of working women” in revolutionary struggle and in Communist ideas, and “to draw these women into the Communist Party, thereby deepening and developing their will and ability to be active and to fight”.
That every Party must organise sections for work amongst women to carry out these aims that “carry out all their work under the leadership of the Party, but their forms and methods of work have to be sufficiently flexible to adapt themselves to the specificities of the position of women in the family and in society. The work of these departments is described in detail in the theses passed by the conference [see below]”.
The resolution noted that the sections/departments had a dual task - both “to inspire in the female proletarian masses a high level of class consciousness and a firm commitment to engage in the revolutionary class struggle, the struggle of all humiliated and oppressed people against the bourgeoisie, and the struggle for communism”, and, “after the victory of the proletarian revolution, to involve them in a conscious and dedicated way in the joint work needed to build a Communist society”.
It also instructed Parties and their ‘departments’ to remember that “their job involves more than just verbal and written agitation and propaganda. Their main concern is to carry out agitation through action - the most effective method at their disposal - and, in all the capitalist countries, to encourage working women to take an active part in all the actions and struggles of the revolutionary proletariat, in strikes, street demonstrations and armed uprisings, while in Soviet countries they must give working women an active part to play in all spheres of Communist construction”.
Theses on Methods and Forms of Work among Communist Party Women
These more detailed theses expanded on the points in the two briefer resolutions summarised above.
Basic Principles
This opening section of the Theses sets out a succinct summary of the position of revolutionary Marxism - a summary well worth re-reading and re-discussing today.
It started by clearly stating that all the Parties of the Third International “need to increase work amongst the female proletariat, educating the broad mass of working women in Communist ideas and drawing them into the struggle for Soviet power, for the construction of the Soviet workers' republic”.
It restated the general political analysis of the International, including that: “the sharp decline in living standards of the working people, the inability of the bourgeoisie to restore production, the rise of speculation, the disintegration of production, unemployment, price fluctuations and the gap between prices and wages, lead everywhere to the inevitable sharpening of the class struggle. This struggle decides who and which system is to lead, administer and organise production - either a small group of bourgeois or the working class basing itself on the principles of Communism”.
It explained how events in the Soviet Union had proved in practice the importance of involving working and peasant women in the struggle - with women playing such a vital role in the civil war, combating desertion and sabotage, for example.
On the other hand, as the defeat of the Hungarian Revolution had shown, the resolution it also raised the particular danger to the movement posed by “the masses of passive working women who are outside the movement - the housewives, office workers and peasant women who are still under the influence of the bourgeois world-view, the church and tradition, and have no links with the great liberation movement for communism. Women that stand outside this movement are inevitably a stronghold of bourgeois ideas and a target for counter revolutionary propaganda, both in the West and in the East”.
The resolution therefore proposed, again in line with the earlier resolutions, that Communist Parties organise “special apparatuses inside the Party … establishing special methods of approaching women, with the aim of liberating them from the influence of the bourgeois world-view or the influence of the compromising parties, and of educating them to be resolute fighters for Communism and consequently for the full development of women”.
The section of the resolution also stressed the importance to the whole working class of the “active, conscious and determined participation” of women in the struggle, and in the organisations of the class. It restated the point made in the previous resolution, that “the Third Congress of the Communist International maintains that without the active participation of the broad masses of the female proletariat and the semi-proletarian women, the proletariat can neither seize power nor realise communism”.
But it also raised an important corollary for all women fighting against their oppression, namely that “without Communist Party support for all the projects leading to the liberation of women, the recognition of women's rights as equal human beings and their real emancipation cannot in practice be won”.
The resolution explained this point more fully a few paragraphs later in this section. Given that these points continued to be central to debates around ‘socialist feminism’ today, I have quoted them almost in full here:
“The Third Congress of the Communist International … points out to the working women of the whole that their liberation from centuries of enslavement, lack of rights and inequality is possible only through the victory of Communism, and that the bourgeois women's movement is completely incapable of guaranteeing women that which Communism gives. So long as the power of capital and private property exists, the liberation of woman from dependence on a husband can go no further than the right to dispose of her own property and her own wage and decide on equal terms with her husband the future of her children.
The most radical feminist demand - the extension of the suffrage to women in the framework of bourgeois parliamentarianism - does not solve the question of real equality for women, especially those of the propertyless classes. The experience of working women in all those capitalist countries in which, over recent years, the bourgeoisie has introduced formal equality of the sexes makes this clear. The vote does not destroy the prime cause of women's enslavement in the family and society. Some bourgeois states have substituted civil marriage for indissoluble marriage. But as long as the proletarian woman remains economically dependent upon the capitalist boss and her husband, the breadwinner, and in the absence of comprehensive measures to protect motherhood and childhood and provide socialised child-care and education, this cannot equalise the position of women in marriage or solve the problem of relationships between the sexes.
The real equality of women, as opposed to formal and superficial equality, will be achieved only under Communism, when women and all the other members of the labouring class will become co-owners of the means of production and distribution and will take part in administering them, and women will share on an equal footing with all the members of the labour society the duty to work; in other words, it will be achieved by overthrowing the capitalist system of production and exploitation which is based on the exploitation of human labour, and by organizing a Communist economy.
Only Communism creates conditions whereby the conflict between the natural function of woman - maternity - and her social obligations, which hinder her creative work for the collective, will disappear and the harmonious and many sided development of a healthy and balanced personality, firmly and closely in tune with the life and goals of the labour-collective, will be completed. All women who fight for the emancipation of woman and the recognition of her rights must have as their aim the creation of a Communist society.
But Communism is also the final aim of the proletariat as a whole and therefore, in the interests of both sides, the two struggles must be fought as 'a single and indivisible' struggle”.
Based on this class analysis, the resolution stressed, therefore, “the basic position of revolutionary Marxism that there is no 'special' women's question, nor should there be a special women's movement” in the sense that “any alliance between working women and bourgeois feminism or support for the vacillating or clearly right-wing tactics of the social compromisers and opportunists will lead to the weakening of the forces of the proletariat, thereby delaying the great hour of the full emancipation of women. A Communist society will be won not by the united efforts of women of different classes, but by the united struggle of all the exploited”.
The Theses added that “at its highest stage, the struggle of women against their dual oppression (by capitalism and by their own domestic family dependence) must take on an international character, developing into a struggle … by the proletariat of both sexes for their dictatorship and for the Soviet system”.
The Theses also called on women workers “in factories, offices and fields” to show their support for the Communist International, remembering the serious and detailed approach it had always taken towards the question of women’s oppression, ensuring that resolutions addressing the need to draw women into the struggle for socialism were present from its very first Congress agenda onwards. In contrast, “women must remember that the Second International has never tried to set up any kind of organisation to further the struggle for the liberation of women”. [An international gathering of women socialists had been held in Berne in 1915, but organised under the independent initiative of the women themselves - including Zetkin, not by the Second International]
Methods and Forms of Work among Women
This section of the Theses set out a series of points for all Communist Parties to follow, quoted, largely in full, below. It might be useful to discuss what parts of the language used, forms of oppression highlighted and methods proposed perhaps need amending to be fully applicable for today, and/or whether the points outlined still generally retain their validity:
“Women must be included in all the militant class organisations - the Party, the trade unions, the co-operatives, Soviets of factory representatives etc., with equal rights and equal responsibilities”.
“The importance must be recognised of drawing women into all of the active struggle of the proletariat (including the military defence of the proletariat) and of constructing in all areas the foundations of a new society and organising production and everyday life on Communist lines”.
“The maternal function must be recognised as a social function and the appropriate measures to defend and protect women as child-bearers must be taken or fought for”.
“Congress … is firmly opposed to any kind of separate women's associations in the Parties and trade unions or special women's organisations, but it accepts that special methods of work among women are necessary and that every Communist Party should set up a special apparatus for this work. In adopting this position, the Congress takes into consideration the following:
a) the oppression women suffer in everyday life, not only in the bourgeois-capitalist countries, but in countries with a Soviet structure, in transition from capitalism to communism;
b) the great passivity and political backwardness of the female masses, which is to be explained by the fact that for centuries women have been excluded from social life and enslaved in the family;
c) the special function - childbirth - which nature assigns to women, and the specificities connected with this function, call for the greater protection of their energies and health in the interests of the whole collective”.
The resolution then set out five different tasks that the “special apparatus for conducting work among women” that each Communist Party was instructed to develop. “This apparatus must consist of departments or commissions for work among women, attached to every Party committee at all levels, from the CC of the Party right down to the urban, district or local Party committee”. The tasks were:
“1 to educate women in Communist ideas and draw them into the ranks of the Party;
2 to fight the prejudices against women held by the mass of the male proletariat, and increase the awareness of working men and women that they have common interests;
3 to strengthen the will of working women by drawing them into all forms and types of civil conflict, encouraging women in the bourgeois countries to participate in the struggle against capitalist exploitation, in mass action against the high cost of living, against the housing shortage, unemployment and around other social problems, and women in the Soviet republics to take part in the formation of the Communist personality and the Communist way of life;
4 to put on the Party's agenda and to include in legislative proposals questions directly concerning the emancipation of women, confirming their liberation, defending their interests as child-bearers;
5 to conduct a well-planned struggle against the power of tradition, bourgeois customs and religious ideas, clearing the way for healthier and more harmonious relations between the sexes, guaranteeing the physical and moral vitality of working people”.
The resolution added some additional points about how the work of the departments or commissions should be led and organised. It stressed that “all local, regional and central organisations should have one woman comrade responsible for organising propaganda among women’ and that “in the modern epoch the trade unions, production unions and co-operatives must serve as the basis for Party work among women”.
It concluded with stressing the balance required to ensure that “work amongst women must be informed by an understanding of the unity of the Party movement and organisation, but at the same time show independent initiative and, proceeding independently from other Party commissions or sections, work towards the rapid and full emancipation of women”.
Party Work among Women in the Soviet Countries
This section of the resolution stressed the need to continue to prioritise drawing more women into the Party and work of constructing the new society in the Soviet republics themselves.
Amongst other points, it called for more women to be involved in the bodies administering workers' control of production, in factory delegate meetings, and elected to the Soviets and their executive committees. It also stressed the importance of improving technical education for women.
It called on the departments to help develop “the entire network of social institutions” in order to “help emancipate women's everyday lives, turning the slave of the home and family into a free member of the working class - the class which is its own boss and the creator of new forms of living”. The resolution highlighted “communal dining rooms, laundries, repair shops, institutions of social welfare, house-communes etc”, as the kind of network which could “transform everyday life along new, Communist lines and relieve women of the difficulties of the transitional period”.
As a key strategy for reaching out beyond the ranks of the Party to wider layers of both working and peasant women, the resolution proposed that departments organise women's delegate meetings, with representatives elected from local factories and offices, but also via elections for peasant and ‘housewife’ delegates as well.
Giving a useful glimpse into the wider attempts to forge a new workers' democracy, the resolution stressed that the elected delegates “must report on their activity to their shops or to their residential area meetings” and be “elected for a period of three months”.
They should also be encouraged to become ‘delegate-practitioners’ - i.e. given paid release from other duties to allow them to be involved in workers’ control and administration bodies.
These kind of initiatives - both in encouraging workers' democracy in general and the emancipation of women in particular - were sadly to be soon crushed by the coming Stalinist counter-revolution.
In Bourgeois-Capitalist Countries
This section of the resolution linked the general threats facing the whole working-class under capitalist crisis, detailed in other Congress resolutions, to the specific threats that crisis imposed on women workers, including the fall in demand for their labour, which also increased the numbers turning to prostitution, the high cost of living and the critical shortage of housing.
Again, the resolution re-emphasised the consequent need to recruit more women into the Party, and to bring them onto its leading bodies - and those of the unions and co-operatives - as well “on equal terms with men”, countering “any attempts to isolate or separate off working women”.
It stressed the need for involving working women - including office workers and peasant women - in campaigns for “equal pay for equal work” and for “free and universal vocational education which would help women workers increase their skills”.
In the Economically Backward Countries (The East)
The next section of the resolution highlighted the particular need to campaign for women to have equal rights within the Party and workers' organisations as a whole, and to “fight all prejudices and all religious and secular customs that oppress women” in “countries where industry is underdeveloped”, including Soviet republics as well as capitalist nations.
The Party and its departments should carry out its agitation on these issues amongst men, as well as women, and “take the principles of women's equality into the spheres of child education, family relations and public life”. Above all, it should seek support “from the broad layer of women exploited by capital, i.e., who work in the cottage industries and on the rice and cotton plantations” … drawing those plantation workers “into unions alongside the men”.
In terms of culture and education (a key interest for Krupskaya and some of the other leading women Bolsheviks), the resolution stayed that “in the Soviet countries of the East, the raising of the general cultural level of the population is the best method of overcoming backwardness and religious prejudices. The departments must encourage the development of schools for adults that are open to women. In the bourgeois countries the commissions must wage a direct struggle against the bourgeois influence in the schools”.
It also recommended that departments “organise clubs for working women” that “must be cultural centres and experimental model institutions that show how women can work towards their emancipation through self-activity (the organization of crêches, nurseries, literacy schools clubs, etc.)”. It added that mobile clubs should be organised to work amongst nomadic peoples.
It added that, in Soviet republics, the departments also had a role in “convincing working women by practical example that the domestic economy and the previous family form block their emancipation, while social labour liberates them”. They must also ensure that “the legislation which recognises the equal rights of women with men and defends the interests of women is observed among the Eastern peoples” and “encourage women to work as judges and juries in national courts of law”.
Finally, it stressed that a careful path needed to be struck, “avoiding tactless and crude attacks on religious beliefs or national traditions, the departments or commissions working among the women of the East must still struggle against nationalism and the power of religion over people's minds”.
Methods of Agitation and Propaganda
This section of the theses stressed that the guiding principle of work among women needed to be ‘agitation and propaganda through action’ … “above all encouraging working women to self-activity, dispelling the doubts they have about their own abilities and drawing them into practical work in the sphere of construction or struggle”.
It then added a phrase that could also be applied in many other fields of work too: “Firstly, practice and action, that lead to an understanding of Communist ideals and theoretical principles; and secondly, theory, that leads to practice and action - these are the methods of work the Communist Parties and their working women's departments must employ in approaching the mass of women”.
What should that ‘practice and action’ consist of? In the Soviet countries, it answered, it meant bringing women “into all branches of Soviet construction, ranging from the army and the police through to those which directly emancipate women by their organisation of communal eating, a network of institutions of social education, the protection of motherhood, etc”.
In the capitalist countries, “propaganda by deed means above all encouraging working women to participate in strikes, demonstrations and any type of struggle which strengthens and deepens their revolutionary will and consciousness”.
The resolution emphasised the importance of having dedicated women's organisers in the Party union caucuses and restarted the usefulness of holding the delegate meetings previously mentioned, as well as public meetings, meetings at individual workplaces and ‘house-to-house agitation’.
On the latter strategy, it stressed that it should be aimed at developing a close-knit network, rather than just random ‘door-knocking’: “The Communist women doing this work must each be responsible for no more than ten households, they must make visits at least once a week to do agitation among housewives, and call more frequently when the Communist Party is conducting a campaign or is preparing any kind of action”.
It also pointed out the importance of written material aimed specifically at working women, including having dedicated pages in the Party and trade union press.
Finally, “in order to strengthen comradeship between working women and working men”, it expressed a preference for encouraging more women to attend general Party courses and discussions, rather than ones “especially for working women” which “should be organised only where they are really necessary and expedient”. However, it added that “general Party schools must without fail include a course on the methods of work among women”.
The Structure of the Departments
This section of the resolution made a number of specific organisational points, including restating the point made earlier that departments/commissions of work among women should be “attached to every Party committee, at local and regional Party level and at CC level” although their size and the allocation of full-time workers to them was a decision for individual sections.
It also stressed that, to maintain a clear unified approach, the leader of each local department should also be a member of the local Party committee, or at least an observer to it with full voting rights on all matters concerning the work of the department.
The tasks of the central Party department were also described in some detail, including producing a regular journal for working women, calling at least an annual meeting of representatives from all local district departments, organising national speaking tours, and an annual International Working Women's Day.
On International Work
Very finally, the theses sets out that “the International women's Secretariat of the Communist International leads the women's work of the Communist Parties at the international level”.
---+++---
There is certainly still a host of ideas and approaches within these resolutions worth discussing and applying - as considered applicable - by revolutionaries today.
No comments:
Post a Comment