What is the purpose ...? abolish all types of privileges derived from birth or wealth. A working woman does not care if your employer is male or female. - A. Kollontai (1913)
What is Women's Day? Is it really necessary? Is it not a concession to bourgeois class women, feminists and suffragettes? Is not harmful to the unity of the labor movement? These issues are still heard in Russia, although not abroad. Life itself has given a clear and eloquent response to these questions.
Women's Day is a link in the long and strong chain of women in the labor movement.
organized army of women workers is growing every day. Twenty years ago the labor organizations had only scattered groups of women at the grassroots level workers ... British unions now have more than 292,000 unionized women, in Germany are around 200,000 to 150,000 unionized workers in the match in Austria there are 47,000 in the unions and 20,000 in the game. Everywhere in Italy, Hungary, Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Switzerland, working-class women are organizing themselves.
The socialist women's army has nearly a million members. A powerful force! A force that powers the world must have when you put on the table the issue of cost of living, maternity insurance, child labor or legislation to protect workers.
There was a time when working men thought that they alone should bear the brunt of the struggle against capital, they thought that they alone must face the 'old world' without the support of their partners . However, as working-class women entered the ranks of those who sold their labor in exchange for wages, forced into in the labor market by necessity, because their husband or father was unemployed, workers began to realize that women leave behind the ranks of "non-conscious" was damaging their cause and prevent advance.
What level of awareness has a woman sitting on the stove, which has no rights in society, in the state or the family? She has no ideas of your own! Everything is done as ordered by her father or husband ...
The delay and lack of rights suffered by women, dependence and indifference are not beneficial for the working class, and in fact are a direct injury to the workers' struggle. But how come the women in this struggle, as the wake?
foreign social democracy did not find the correct solution immediately. The labor organizations were open to women, but only a few came. Why? Because the working class at first did not realize that women workers is the most degraded member, both legally and socially, of the working class, that she has been beaten, intimidated, harassed over the centuries, and that to stimulate their minds and hearts need a special approach, words that she, as a woman, understand. The workers did not realize immediately that in this world of lack of rights and exploitation of women are oppressed not only as workers, but also as mother and wife. However, when the Socialist Workers Party members understand it, took up the struggle for the defense of workers as employees, as mothers, as women.
Socialists in every country began to demand special protection for working women, safe for mothers and their children, political rights for women and defending their interests.
Cuanto más claramente el partido obrero percibía esta dicotomía mujer/trabajadora, más ansiosamente las mujeres se unían al partido, más apreciaban el rol del partido como su verdadero defensor y más decididamente sentían que la clase trabajadora también luchaba por sus necesidades.
Las mujeres trabajadoras, organizadas y conscientes, han hecho muchísimo para elucidar este objetivo. Ahora el peso del trabajo para atraer a las trabajadoras al movimiento socialista reside en las mismas trabajadoras. Los partidos en cada país tienen sus comités de mujeres, con sus secretariados and bureaus for women. These committees of women work in the large population of women still do not know, raising the consciousness of the workers around them.
also examine the claims and issues that most directly affect women, protection and provision for pregnant and parenting mothers, female labor legislation, campaign against child prostitution and child labor, the demand for political rights for women the campaign against the rising cost of living ...
Thus, as party members, working women are fighting for the common cause of the class, while at the same time outlining and call into question those needs and demands that affect them most directly and women, housewives and mothers. The party supports these demands and fight for them ... These needs of working women are part of the cause of workers as a class.
The Women's Day organized women demonstrate against their lack of rights. But some say why is separation of the struggles of women? Why is a Women's Day, special pamphlets, conferences and meetings? Is it not, in short, a concession to bourgeois feminists and suffragettes? Only aquellos que no comprendan la diferencia radical entre el movimiento de mujeres socialistas y las sufraguistas burguesas pueden pensar de esa manera.
¿Cuál es el objetivo de las feministas burguesas? Conseguir las mismas ventajas, el mismo poder, los mismos derechos en la sociedad capitalista que poseen ahora sus maridos, padres y hermanos. ¿Cuál es el objetivo de las obreras socialistas? Abolir todo tipo de privilegios que deriven del nacimiento o de la riqueza. A la mujer obrera le es indiferente si su patrono es hombre o mujer.
Las feministas burguesas demandan la igualdad de derechos siempre y en cualquier lugar.
Las mujeres trabajadoras responden:
Demandamos derechos para todos los ciudadanos, hombres y mujeres, pero nosotras no sólo somos mujeres y trabajadoras, también somos madres. Y como madres, como mujeres que tendremos hijos en el futuro, demandamos un cuidado especial del gobierno, protección especial del estado y de la sociedad.
Las feministas burguesas están luchando para conseguir derechos políticos: también aquí nuestros caminos split-to upper-class women, political rights are simply a means to achieve their goals more comfortably and more safely in this world based on the exploitation of workers. For working women, political rights are a step in the paved and hard that leads to the desired realm of work.
The paths taken by women workers and bourgeois suffragettes have been separated for some time. There is a difference between their goals. There is also a major contradiction between the interests of working women and women own between the servant and his wife ... Thus, workers should not fear there is a day set aside and designated as Women's Day, or to have special lectures and pamphlets or special news for women.
Each special award to women in the work of a labor organization is a way of raising consciousness of women workers and bring them to the ranks of those who are fighting for a better future. Women's Day and the slow, painstaking work led to increase self-awareness of working women are serving the cause, not divisive, but the union of the working class.
Let a happy feeling serve the common cause of the working class and fighting for women's emancipation simultaneously inspire the workers to join the celebration of International Women's Day.
-Alexandra Kollontai. Notable Russian political economist and revolutionary. The only female member of the Central Committee of Lenin.
Alexandra Kollontai was one of the leading figures of revolutionary feminism. Was among the first Bolshevik government, with Lenin and Trotsky and wrote extensively on women, among which are: The social foundations of women's issues (1909), Society and motherhood (1921) and Autobiography of a sexually emancipated (1926).
was born into an aristocratic family in St. Petersburg. His father was a Russian imperial army general and his mother the daughter of a lumber merchant. Maid mostly for the easement, had private tutors at home during the year and spent the summer reading on the family farm of Karelia in Finland, under Russian domination at that time. Thus, Kollontai was internalized in the life of the tenants of land and agricultural workers. Victor Ostrogorskii studied literature, he graduated as a teacher and began writing.
Against the wishes of their parents, in 1893 married his cousin Vladimir Kollontai Ludvigovich, army officer. After the birth of his son Mikhail, married life was a great disappointment, feeling trapped at home without time to write. During an inspection of a textile factory, Kollontai a child found dead in a crowded housing in poor neighborhoods, which marked his life and became a revolutionary. Still in love with her husband in 1898 Kollontai left his married life and your child to study political economy in Zurich.
Russian theorist who is articulated in a more rational and systematic feminism and Marxism. Kollontai not limited to include women in the socialist revolution, but rather defines the kind of revolution that women need. Not just the abolition of private property and the women into production, it is necessary a revolution of everyday life and customs, to forge a new outlook and, especially, a new relationship between the sexes. Without these changes, effectively contributing to the emancipation of women, you can not really talk of socialist revolution, much as the proletariat has conquered political power. So in theory there is no question of a "postponement" of women's liberation, in any case, we should speak of a postponement of the revolution.
The most original theoretical contribution Kollontai, and was to stimulate a wide debate in history of female emancipation, even outside Europe, has to do with the idea of \u200b\u200bsexual freedom. In the traditional line of Marx and Engels, Origins of the Family , Kollontai argued that equality, mutual recognition of rights and fraternal understanding should be the guiding principle of relations between men and women. He argued, therefore, the right of women to full equality with men in social life, family and sex.
In fact, Kollontai had numerous confrontations with his fellow men and all that, from a hostile indifference, denied the need for a particular struggle and argued that the changes concerning the emancipation of women was a simple matter of superstructure. As noted Ann Foremann, Kollontai "was the only of the Bolshevik leaders to integrate theoretically the problems of sexuality and the oppression of women within the revolutionary struggle." (Kollonta, A., The new woman and sexual morality , Madrid, Ayuso, 1977, p. 70. )
Lenin Upon arrival to Russia, it sided with Kollontai and claimed all power for soviets in his April Theses, and managed to convince the leadership of the Bolshevik Party.
In July, the Sixth Party Congress which chose Central Committee members, including Kollontai. On 10 October the Central Committee voted in favor of the insurrection and 25 saw the seizure of the Winter Palace which established the basis for a workers' state. In the new government, Kollontai was elected People's Commissar for Public Assistance. With the Russian revolution was achieved political equality, economic and sexual women and men and with it, provided the basis for real equality between sexes. The women got full voting rights, civil laws made marriage a voluntary relationship, eliminated the distinction between legitimate and illegitimate children, matched the labor rights of women to those of men, gave women the same wage and salary universal motherhood.
Thus, Soviet Russia was the first country which established full freedom of divorce and where abortion was free. To eliminate the economic basis of the traditional family established a series of decrees which abolished the right of inheritance, so that the properties of the rich deceased went to the state and invested domestic workers to transfer to public institutions, maternity homes, nurseries, kindergartens, schools, soup kitchens, laundries popular clothing repair centers, etc., who helped women get rid of the tasks traditionally assigned to it.
Once the legal status of women was matched to that of men, it was necessary to achieve real equality and daily. For this reason, the Bolsheviks launched a campaign of political mobilization of women, as most traditional roles were still developing. In November 1917 the first conference held women driven by the party in November 1918 and held its first Congress of Women Workers in Russia. The conference was organized, among other partners, by Alexandra Kollontai, who performed some of the most important speeches.
From the twenties, became one of the representatives more convinced of the "Workers' Opposition "a very remarkable power of the workers movements, expressing a clear discrepancy to management Party, accusing him of excessive centralization and to limit freedom of discussion. The program and the trend line inspired workers are the new role was going to take the union, the control and management of the industry.
In 1921, the various trends that characterized the internal debate of the party was dissolved. Kollontai joined the "Declaration of 22", which drew some ideas from the Workers' Opposition. She was accused of sectarianism and threatened with expulsion from the party. Kollontai, explicitly criticizing the policy of Stalin, was removed from the country and sent on a diplomatic mission to Norway, Mexico and Sweden. It was the first woman to hold the post of ambassador.
wrote the novel 'The Bolshevik love', the only novel by Alexandra Kollontai who, before and after that literary experience, began to write almost exclusively, with the exception of some short stories, articles and pamphlets of propaganda. Perhaps a little path that was responsible for the harsh tone of their dialogues, the austerity of resources in the description of characters and environments and lack of pretension of his style.
Bibliographic:
Document of Alexandra Kollontai (in English and includes earphones tapes of Kollontai):
http://www.marxists.org/archive/kollonta/index.htm
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