Clara Zetkin: Selected Writings

"Clara Zetkin's arguments in support of women workers contain a logic which can be effectively employed today in defense of strong affirmative action programs, not only for women but for the racially and nationally oppressed as well … [her] analysis of the relationship between the woman suffrage campaign and the struggle of working women … is significant not only because of its important historical value, but all .. with respect to the class nature of such contemporary women's struggles as the campaign for the Equal Rights Amendment in the United States." —From the Foreword to the 1984 edition by Angela Y. Davis "In January, 1915, the British journal Labour Woman wrote of Clara Zetkin: 'She is Socialist in her very fibre, and she is a fighter ready to face death rather than give way in any issue of import in the people's struggle.' [Zetkin] displayed these qualities in leading the largest women's socialist movement in Europe, in editing the most important woman's journal in Europe for over twenty-five years, in organizing working women into trade unions, in battling for women's suffrage and equal rights … in the battle against revisionism, and in her militant opposition to militarism, imperialism and the first World War…[She] was able to exert a powerful influence in the formation of socialist and communist policy on the woman question, and on the policy of a number of trade unions toward women workers…Clara Zetkin's writings and speeches are still too little known in the United States. With the publication of the present volume, there will finally be available a representative selection of the thoughts of the leading woman of European socialism." —From the introduction by Philip Foner
"Clara Zetkin's arguments in support of women workers contain a logic which can be effectively employed today in defense of strong affirmative action programs, not only for women but for the racially and nationally oppressed as well … [her] analysis of the relationship between the woman suffrage campaign and the struggle of working women … is significant not only because of its important historical value, but all .. with respect to the class nature of such contemporary women's struggles as the campaign for the Equal Rights Amendment in the United States." —From the Foreword to the 1984 edition by Angela Y. Davis "In January, 1915, the British journal Labour Woman wrote of Clara Zetkin: 'She is Socialist in her very fibre, and she is a fighter ready to face death rather than give way in any issue of import in the people's struggle.' [Zetkin] displayed these qualities in leading the largest women's socialist movement in Europe, in editing the most important woman's journal in Europe for over twenty-five years, in organizing working women into trade unions, in battling for women's suffrage and equal rights … in the battle against revisionism, and in her militant opposition to militarism, imperialism and the first World War…[She] was able to exert a powerful influence in the formation of socialist and communist policy on the woman question, and on the policy of a number of trade unions toward women workers…Clara Zetkin's writings and speeches are still too little known in the United States. With the publication of the present volume, there will finally be available a representative selection of the thoughts of the leading woman of European socialism." —From the introduction by Philip Foner