On the socialist origins of International Women’s Day

8/7/2019 On the socialist origins of International Womens Day

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Dit is een overdruk van

Tem m a Ka p l a n On the soc ia l i s t o r ig ins o f In terna t iona l W omen s DayFeminist Studies 11, No. 1 (1985), pp. 163-171.


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162 COMMENTARYON THE SOCIALIST ORIGINS OFINTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S DAY

TEMMA KAPLAN

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[Each March 8, I relate tomy women's studies classes the story of Inter-national Women's Day. l t's a story I have had recounted to me nume-rous times and therefore know weil. A spontaneous demonstrationstaged by New York Oty women garment and textile workers in 1857,protest ing low wages, the twelve-hour workday, and increasing workloods, was dispersed by the police, rather brutally. Many women werearrested; some were trampled by the rowds. Fifty years later, on theanniversary of that demonstration, International Women's Day wasestablished in their memory. My students respond to this story with anemotion best described as gratitude. March 8 usually coincides withthat moment in the semester when they feel most the weight of women'soppression: theyare hungry for knowiedge of women's resistance. Thewamen garment workers of New York Oty fill their needs for heroicforemothers.Sa it was with ambivalence-scholarlyinterest but politicalmis- -givings-that I read in the French feminist periodical La Revue d'enface (see no. 12, Fall1982, pp. 67-80) an article by Lil iane Kandel andFranoise Picq, "Le Mythe des origines, A propos de lajourne interna-tionale des femmes. " The myth of the origins? Had there never beensuch an event as our 1857 demonstration? Indeed, Kandel and Picqreport, the New York City garment workers' demonstration of 1857was a legend born in 1955. In their quite il luminating article, theyspeculate on the origins of " the 1857 legend," on the likel ihood that, in1955, it was opportune "to detach International Women's Day {rom itsSoviet history in ordf!r to give i t a more international origin, more an-cient than Bolshevism, more spontaneous than a decision of a Congressor the initiative of women affiliated to the Party, land that] the date,1857, was chosen as a tribute to Clara Zetkin, born that year. . . ."

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164 Temma Kaplan Temma Kaplan 165

lntrigued by this revision of our historical record, the editors ofFeminist Studies asked Temma Kaplan, whose researchon socialistrituals and holidayswas familiar to us, to furnish us a truer recordofthe origins of lnternational Womens Day. Kaplans thoroughanalysisof the riseof lnternational Womens Day demolishesa myth that manyof us have reliedupon to interestourstudents in the past. My students,who drew inspiration {rom the idea of a spontaneous demonstration,will surely miss the 1857 legend. But for the 1980s, when we need tounderstand better the effectivenessof organized resistance, is it not fit-ting that we draw inspirationnotonly{romspontaneousdemonstrators,but also (rom wamen who engaged in long-term struggle and whocreated rituals that sustained their struggle in the face of unrelentingopposition? -Claire G. Moses]

One way late-nineteenth-century social ists and anarchists at-tempted to establish secular communal traditi,ons was throughholidays. Even in Spain, leftists held festivals on July 14, FrenchBastille Day, because that was the most revolutionary date on theEuropean calendar until the Russian Revolution. Socialists chosethat date to meet in Paris in 1889 to organize the Second Interna-tional Working Man's Association, an assembly of socialist parties,trade unions, and political clubs. aften, as with the commemora-tion of the Paris Commune on any day between March 18 andMarch 28, the date of the holiday varied. Ultimately, it was thesolidification of a sense of community rather than the date thatreally mattered. 1The first International Woman's Day (singular)was held onFebruary 23, 1909,inthe United States.LikeMayDay, the historyof which it resembles,Woman's Day started as a means by whichto unite the popular community around a set of common goals.Bath holidays originally took place on Sundays 50 that peoplewould not miss a day of work. Both holidays became fixed onspecific dates because historical events overtook demonstrators.1In a curious development, an apocryphal story surfaced inFrench Communist circles in the 1950s.Allegedlya brutally re-pressed New York strike of female textile workers on March 8,1857, had led to a rally in commemoration of its fiftieth anniver-sary in 1907.Neither event seems to have taken place, but many

Europeans think March 8, 1907, inaugurated International

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Woman'sDay. $omeFrench feministsview this myth as a chapterin ,along-standingconflictbetween feministsand communistsoverwhether women have rights beyond those they hold as workers.3The real history of International Woman's Day cannot beseparated from the politicallife of Clara Zetkin. Sheattended the1889BastilleDay Paris meeting that created the Second Interna-tional. At that time, the assembied leftists agreed on a May Daydemonstration calling for the eight-hour day and limitations onfemale and child labor, the plank Zetkin promoted. As the editorbetween 1890and 1915of the Gennan SocialDemocraticparty'swomen's newspaper Gleichheit,she promoted the interests ofworking-classwomen. AlthoughZetkinwas a virulent opponentof feminists inside and outside her party, she tried to familiarizesocialistswith the conditionsof femaleworkers. After the war shebecame a Communist and brought International Woman's Day

with her into the Third International in 1922.4From this time on,International Women's Day lit seems to have becomeplural after1945) became a Communist holiday. Since the late sixties,feministshave revitalizedthe celebrationand have infused itwithnew meaning.Many socialist women in Europe and America strengthenedtheir commitment to internationalism in the years before WorldWar One. On August 17, 1907-just before the meeting ofthe Se-cond International in Stuttgart, Germany - women associated withsocialismmet together. Under the leadership of Clara Zetkin andLouiseZietz,these socialistwomen pledged to fightfor equality ineveryaspect of life,and discusseddemonstrating topublicizetheirgoals. 'In both the United States and Europe, socialists had taken abackseat to suffragistsin fightingfor the vote becausethey viewedwomen's politicalrights as subordinate to the economicadvance-ment ofthe maleworkingclass.Throughout the world,leftistshadassociated women's votes with conservatives, and the Americanswere no exception. Nevertheless, women in the Second Interna-tional fmally won the support of their comrades for the suffragecampaignbefore the FirstWorldWar. In 1908,the Socialistpartyof the United Statesappointed the Women's NationalCommitteeto Campaign for the Suffrage, and asked them to organizedemonstrations.Eagertogetstarted, BranchNumber 3 ofthe NewYork City Social Democratie Women's Society held a mass


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meeting on woman suffrage on March 8, 1908.6The AmericanSodalists declared the last Sundayin February asNational Woman's Day. In New York on February 23, 1909,theprincipal meetingwas at the Murray HiliLyceumat Thirty-fourthand Third Avenue. Two thousand people heard Leonora O'Reillyand others explain the principles ofequal rightsand demand votesfor women. At the BrooklynLaborLyceummeeting, there was arecitation of 'Tbe God of Gold," followed by rousing singing.Cbarlotte Perkins Gilman addressed the congregation of theParkside Church in Brooklyn along with the secretary of theCbristian SocialistFellowship. "lt is true that a woman's duty iscentered in her home and motherhood," Gilman said, but "homeshould mean the whole country and not be confined to three orfour rooms or a city or a state.'"The New York rally the following year was on February 27,1910, and opened with a Carnegie Hall meeting. The audiencesang the Marseillaise before Rose Schneiderman, CharlottePerkins Gilman, and Metta 1.Stem explained how the Germansocialist women had led the way at Stuttgartin 1907by cal1ingforwomen's economie equality and then for the vote.8The American socialistsbegan InternationalWoman'sDay witha National Woman'sDay in 1909,while the Europeans followedin1911. A similar pattern had developed with May Day, which theKnights of Labor had introduced in 1886, but which the Euro-peans did not adopt until 1890. At the International SocialistWomen'sMeetingthat preceded the generalmeetingof the SecondInternational in Copenhagen inAugust 1910,LuiseZietzsuggestedholding an International Woman's Day the following year, andClara Zetkin seconded the request, but they never specified adate. 9On March 18, 1911, on the fortieth anniversary of the ParisCommune, the first International Woman's Day was held inEurope to publicize the need for women's rights and the suffrage.However, the Americans continued to rally on the last Sunday inFebruary.In a rare show of solidarity,socialistwomen in Bostonproposedto the suffragists that they march together to local governmenthearings on suffrage on February 23, 1911.Thewomen organizedan outdoor rally and a meeting at Ford Hall. Mter gathering atPark Square, they reached the hearing room only to find that it

was too small to hold all of them. With all the women dressed inwhite, inspired by the British suffragists, they carried their dif-ferent banners depending upon their political beliefs, but thesocialists outnumbered the suffragists. The journalist for theWomen:SJoumal (the official organ of the National AmericanWoman's Suffrage Associationl was afraid that "the socialistwomen seemto be the only onesearnest enoughto parade for thecause."IOIn New York, the meeting for International Woman's Day in1911was held on February 25 on a Saturday night at CarnegieHall. The keynote speech by Bertha Fraser praised women's in-ability to fight as a positive quality for citizenship."Anotherargu.ment againstwomen isthat they cannot be soldiers. And what ismore, when they get the ballot, they will use it to make war im-possible."11In Vienna, in the first European celebration of InternationalWomen's Day on March 18, 1911,women marched around theRingstrasse,carrying banners including red flagscommemoratingthe martyrs of the Paris Commune. The women stopped in frontofthe flowermarket in that civiccenter and demonstrated in favor

of female suffrage. Throughout the Austro-Hungarian Empire,therewere 300women'sdemonstrations. On that day in 1911,theSocialistdelegatesto the Austrian parliament openly championedwomen's equality and the suffrage for the first time,IZ thereby giv-ing up in word if not deed, long-standingsocialistopposition towomen's votes. But just as some socialistmen were beginningtosupport votes for women, the war ended all possibility for sodalreform for five years.During the first winter and spring of World War I in 1915,women began to take action. They proclaimed their rights aswives andmothers or as housekeepers in public asweUas privaterealms to intereede where the usual politicalleaders seemed in-competent. International Woman's Day provided such an oppor-tunity. In New York, there were many International Woman'sDay celebrations, such as the one in the Bronxwhere the 1907Barnard graduate and adjunct professor of economicsJuliet StuartPoyntzspoke." SocialistMarian CraigWentworth wrote a play inwhich the women wenton strikeagainst childbirth until they wereadmitted to the councils of war. A picture in the New York Callshowed a mother and child against a wartorn background. Tbe


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caption asked whether women would vote for this ifthey had thevote.14In Berne, Switzerland, Clara Zetkin gathered socialist womenfrom neutral and warring countries to demonstrate against thewar. For protesters from belligerent nations, this meant treasonagainst their countriesand their parties.Thewomen whomarchedon March 7, 1915,did not support their countries East or West.They called for the "reconstitution of the Second International,"which had collapsedunder the weight of nationalismin 1914,butthey did not demand a new, Third International, as the RussianBolshevik exiles in Switzerland wanted them to do. The Bolshe-

viks organizedanother meeting for that in early September1915atZimmerwald, not far from Berne,where the embryo ofthe ThirdInternational was formed.15The socialist women of Berne carried back a manifesto theydistributed clandestinely in their countries. It was addressed 'Tothe women of the proletariat," and asked, "Where are yourhusbands? Where are your sons?' It declared that the .workershave nothing to gain from the w.ar.They have everything to lose,everything, everything that isdear to them."It exhortedwomen totake action to win peace.When the French socialist Louise Saumoneau returned fromtwo months in jail in November 1915 after her arrest fordistributing the manifesto in France, she discovered that herfavorite nephew, a leftist,hd been killedin the war. She alwaysresponded to griefwith action, and she wrote her tractas a way of

mourning. It cried out that "sixteenmonths ago,we the mothers,the wives,the sistersofthose who left. . .despiteour grief,kept thehope that the being who was so dear to us would return able-bodied. Not one ofus could admit that the young robust man shetook to the station would not come back again. Sincethen, Alas!how many women lare) in mourning. . . ."16The war went on despite all the effortsof women, but sodid thesocialist celebration of International Woman's Day. Socialistwomen in New York applauded the Anti-High Price League,which forced municipal officials to establish price controls onKosher butchers. They commemorated International Woman'sDay at the end of February by callingfor support for women'srights to feed their families.'Thp war r.a11!';Pn fRr wnro;p ~hnrtsHJPS Rmnno thp hPlli oprpnt s in

Europe. In ltaly, the price offIourhad risen 88percent, wine 144percent, and potatoes 131 percent over 1910prices by January1917.17On International Woman'sDay, February 23,1917, femalesocialists in Turin, Italy, hung posters addressed to womenthroughout the working-class neighborhoods. Tbe posters said,"Hasn'tthere been enough torment from this war?Now the foodnecessaryfor our children has begun to disappear. It is time for usto act in the name of suffering humanity. Our cry is 'Down witharmst'We are part of the same family.We want peace.Wemustshow that women can protect those who depend on them.""The most dramatic celebration of International Woman's Daywas in 1917in Russia. Led by feministAlexandraKollontai,Rus-sian women had begun celebrating the day American-style,marching the last Sundayin February in 1913.Centralto their pro-test in 1917were complaints over deteriorating livingconditions.Rents had more than doubled in St. Petersburg, renamed Petro-,grad, between 1905and 1915.Foodprices, particularly the cost offIour and bread, rose between 80 and 120 percent in most Euro-pean cities. The price per pound of rye bread, the staple ofworking-classdiets in Petrograd,rose fromthree kopeksin 1913toeighteen kopeks in 1916. Even soap rose 245 percent in 1917Petrograd.19Merchants speculated in grain, fuel, and meat, whilefactories closed for lack of energy to run the plants. Female andmale wage earners who faced layoffs often went on strike. Be-tween January and February 1917,more than halfa million Rus-sian workers, mostly in Petrograd, went out. 'Taking the occasion of International Woman'sDay IMarch 8thin the West, but February 23d on the Gregoriancalendar),womenled a demonstration from the factories and the breadlines. Metal-lurgicalworkers, mostlymen,joined them despite the factthat theBolsheviks regarded the women'smobilizationas precipitous.On February 25, two days after the women's insurrection hadbegun on International Woman's Day, the czar ordered GeneralKhabalovofthe PetrogradMilitaryDistrictto shootif necessary inorder to crush the women'srevolution. Khabalovsummarized theproblems authorities feel when confronted with women's con-sumer demands. He explained that when they said, "Give usbread!"we could givethem bread and that was the end ofit. Butwhen they said, "Downwith the autocracy!"we could no longerappeasethem with bread.20Thus beganthe February revolutionin


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Russia. By March 12 (Gregorian February 27), Czar Nicholas IIhad been forced to abdicate. The provisional government formedto rule until the election ofa constituent assembly became the firstgovernment of a major power to grant women the right to vote.21The events of 1917 in Russia set the date for the celebration ofInternational Woman's Day elsewhere in Europe beginning thefollowing year. Toward the end of the war, on March 8, 1918, theAustrian women celebrated International Woman's Day. Threethousand women, despite the ban on demonstrating, marched insmall groups, along the Ringstrasse past the parliament and thePalace ofjustice. There were also demonstrations elsewhere in theempire. AsAdelheid Popp, leader of Austrian socialist women, ex-plained, the women attempted as wives and mothers to show theirdisgust for the war and their demand for peace.22With Clara Zetkin's help, Lenin established InternationalWomen's Day as a Communist holiday in 1922,when the ChineseCornmunists started to celebrate it. In Spain, fol1owing the victoryof the Popular Front slate in the February 1936 elections, La Pa-sionaria, one of the leaders of the Spanish Communist party, ledthousands of women to demonstrate in Madrid on InternationalWoman's Day, March 8, to demand protection of the republicagainst the growing fascist threat.After the Second World War, International Woman's Day re-mained a communist holiday until around 1967. According to onestory, it was revived in the United States bya women's group atthe University of Illinois, Chicago Circle, which includeddaughters of American Communists who remembered havingheard of the holiday. Since then, it has become the occasion for anew sense of female consciousness and a new sense offeminist in-ternationalism.

3 . Lil iane Kande l and Franoi se P icq, "LeMythe des or ig ines propos de la journeinternationale des femmes." La Revue d'En Face, ~o. 12 jFall 19821:67.80.4 . Karen Honeycutt , "Clara Zetkin: A Left-Wing Socialist and Feminis t in WilhelmianGermany" (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1975!; Renate Pore, A Conflict of Interest:Women in German Social Democracy, 1919-1933 IWestport, Conn.: Greenwood Press,19811;and Jean H. Quataert, Reluctant Feminists in German Social Democracy, 1885-1917jPrinceton: Princeton University Press, 1979).5. Bericht der 1. Intemationalen Frauenkonferenz Stuttgart, 17Aug. 1907, Stuttgart, 1907,cited in Quataert, 249.6 . Men tioned in "New York Ci ty, " Socialist Woman, March 1908 , inc luded with a per-sonal le tt er f rom Rene Ct, 16 Feb. 1984. I t was omi tt ed by mis take f rom her hookedited with Sylvie Dupont, Lajourne internationale des femmes ou les vrais fai ts et lesvraies dates des mystrieuses origines de 8 mars jusqu'ici embroui/les, truques, oublies: laclef des nigmes la vrit historique (Montreal: 19841.7 . "The Suffragis ts and Socialists Demand Votes for Women," Cal/, 1Mal. 1909, 1.8 . "A.B.C A Day of Anticipation: ' Cal/, 27 Feb. 1910, Magazine , 13. I9 . Adelheid Popp, Der Weg zur Hohe: Die Sozialdemokratische Frauenbewegung Oster-reichs (Vienna: 1930), 99.10. Women's journaI. 56.11 . "Soc ia li sts Argue Strongly in Favo r of Women' s Su ff rage ," Call, 26 Feb. 1911,Magazine, 1-2.12. Popp, 100.13. "Great Socialist Meetings will Mark Woman's Day Tomorrow," Call, 27 Feb. 1915, 1 .14. Ibid.15. Charles Sowerwine, Sistersor Citizens?Women and SocialisminFrancesince 1876(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 151.16. Ibid. , 148, 152.17. Encarecimiento de la vida durante la Guerra: Precios de lasubsistencias en Espal.ay enel extranjero, 1914-1918 IMadrid , 19181,49.18. Paolo Spriano, Socialismo e classe operaia a Torino dal 1892 011913 (Turin, 19581,393. For other examples of pol it ica1movements in which women cla im right s toact inthe name of their community , see Temma Kaplan, "Female Consciousness and Collec-tive Action: The Case of Barcelona, 1910-1918:' Signs 7 (Spring 19821:545-66.19. Dale Ross, ' 'The Role of the Women in Petrograd in War, Revolution, and Counter-Revolution, 1914-1921" (Ph.D. diss., Rutgers University, 19731.28.20. Ibid. , 32.21. Bemice Glatzer Rosenthal , "Love on the Tractor: Women inthe Russian Revolutionand after," in Becoming Visible: Women in European History, ed. Renate Bridenthal andClaudia Koonz (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 19771,370-99, 377.22. Popp, 100.

NOTESMy thanks to Claudia Koonz, Ru th Milkman, and Robert MoelIer .1. For a discussionof holidayson the Left, see Temma Kaplan,"CivicRitualsand Pat.terns of Resistance in Barcelona, 1890-1930:'in ThePowerof the Past:EssaysforEricHobsbawm, ed. Pat Thane, Geoffrey Crossic, and Roderick Floud jCambridge: 1984),173-93.2. Michelle Perrot, 'The First of May 1890in France: The Birth ofa Working-ClassRitu~I,"in Thanp, ('rossk, ~nd Floud,Powerof thl' Past, 143.71.

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On the socialist origins of International Women’s Day