It is out of the question that the task of socialist women's activity should be to alienate proletarian women from duties as wives and mothers; on the contrary, it must operate so this task is fulfilled better than before, precisely in the interests of the proletariat.
Interpretation
Socialist women's activities should enhance, not diminish, the roles of women in family and society.
Clara Zetkin emphasizes that the objective of socialist women's engagement in politics and social issues should not be to detach proletarian women from their traditional roles as wives and mothers. Instead, their efforts should aim to improve these roles, thereby benefiting both women and the working class as a whole. This reflects a belief that women's empowerment can be achieved without sacrificing familial responsibilities.
In practice
During a women's rights conference, this quote can be used to highlight the importance of balancing women's societal roles with their responsibilities at home.
In individual industries where female labour pays an important role, any movement advocating better wages, shorter working hours, etc., would not be doomed from the start because of the attitude of those women workers who are not organized.
When the men are silent, it is our duty to raise our voices in behalf of our ideals.
For reforms ameliorate the situation of the working class, they lighten the weight of the chains labour is burdened with by capitalism, but they are not sufficient to crush capitalism and to emancipate the workers from their tyranny.
When the men kill, it is up to us women to fight for the preservation of life.
Each reform, therefore, improving the economical and political situation of the workers proves to be an arm that increases the energy with which the proletarian struggle of classes is fought.
The socialist parties of all countries are duty bound to fight energetically for the implementation of universal women's suffrage which is to be vigorously advocated both by agitation and by parliamentary means. When a battle for suffrage is conducted, it should only be conducted according to socialist principles, and therefore with the demand of universal suffrage for women and men.
One of the many things I learned at the end of that Classics corridor down which I ventured at the age of 18, in search of something I could not then define, was this, written by the Greek author Plutarch: What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality. That is an astonishing statement and yet proven a thousand times every day of our lives. It expresses, in part, our inescapable connection with the outside world, the fact that we touch other people’s lives simply by existing.
I am I plus my surroundings; and if I do not preserve the latter, I do not preserve myself.
The life of faith is not a life of mounting up with wings, but a life of walking and not fainting.
Everyone finds justification for his or her views in logic and analysis, but a personal philosophy often emerges from some archaic part of the mind, an early idea of how the world should be.
I have suffered from being misunderstood, but I would have suffered a hell of a lot more if I had been understood.
Ultimately faith is the only key to the universe. The final meaning of human existence, and the answers to the questions on which all our happiness depends cannot be found in any other way.
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