QuoteProject
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.
Clara Zetkin
ShareWTF𝕏

Interpretation

What this quote means

Reforms that improve workers' conditions strengthen their resolve in class struggles.

Clara Zetkin's quote emphasizes the idea that any social or political reform aimed at bettering the conditions of workers not only helps them economically and politically but also empowers them in their ongoing struggle against class oppression. Such improvements serve as catalysts for increased energy and commitment to the fight for their rights.

Themes

ReformWorkersStruggleClassPoliticalEconomic

In practice

Example use cases

In a speech about labor rights, one might include this quote to emphasize the importance of reform in empowering workers.

More from Clara Zetkin

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.
Clara ZetkinRead
When the men are silent, it is our duty to raise our voices in behalf of our ideals.
Clara ZetkinRead
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.
Clara ZetkinRead
When the men kill, it is up to us women to fight for the preservation of life.
Clara ZetkinRead
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.
Clara ZetkinRead
In the women's world, as well as in the men's world, there exists the class law and the class struggle, and it appears as fully established that sometimes between the socialist working women and those belonging to the middle class, there may be antagonisms.
Clara ZetkinRead

Similar quotes

Life starts all over again when it gets crisp in the fall.
F. Scott FitzgeraldRead
For every reader who dies today, a viewer is born, and we seem to be witnessing . . . the final tipping balance.
Jonathan FranzenRead
'Me Too' became the way to succinctly and powerfully connect with other people and give people permission to start their journey to heal.
Tarana BurkeRead
I did say, at Chicago, in my speech there, that I do wish to see the spread of slavery arrested and to see it placed where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in course of ultimate extinction.
Abraham LincolnRead
The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born
Antonio GramsciRead
The well adjusted make poor prophets. A pleasant existence blinds us to the possibilities of drastic change. We cling to what we call our common sense, our practical point of view. Actually, these are names for an all-absorbing familiarity with things as they are. . . . Thus it happens that when the times become unhinged, it is the practical people who are caught unaware . . . still clinging to things that no longer exist.
Eric HofferRead

A little wisdom, now and then

Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.