UNDER Lenin’s guidance, the Communist International (CI) formulated detailed guidelines for communist work among women and held a number of “international conference(s) of communist women”. The “Methods and Forms of Work among Communist Party Women: Theses” adopted by the third Congress of CI — which comrade VM upheld as “the very programme of women’s liberation that determines your basic orientation even today” (The Question of Women’s Liberation in the Perspective of Marxism) — combines a pair of complementary approaches: (a) special attention, special initiatives on the women’s front on behalf of the entire party and (b) a fight against the separatist approach which tends to segregate this work from the general party work.

[A] Special apparatus for conducting work among women

The CI emphasised the need for “departments or commissions” comprising comrades specialised and skilled in this field, including tasks like issuing leaflets, bringing out magazines, contributing to general party magazines etc. Such departments, to work under the guidance of and be attached to party committees at various levels, were charged with the following duties:

“1) to educate women in Communist ideas and draw them into the ranks of the Party;

“2) to fight the prejudices against women held by the mass of the male proletariat, and increase the awareness of working men and women that they have common interests;

“3) to strengthen the will of working women by drawing them into all forms and types of civil conflict, encouraging women in the bourgeois countries to participate in the struggle against capitalist exploitation, in mass action against the high cost of living, against the housing shortage, unemployment and around other social problems, and women in the Soviet republics to take part in the formation of the Communist personality and the Communist way of life;

“4) to put on the Party’s agenda and to include in legislative proposals questions directly concerning the emancipation of women, confirming their liberation, defending their interests as child-bearers;

“5) to conduct a well-planned struggle against the power of tradition, bourgeois customs and religious ideas, clearing the way for healthier and more harmonious relations between the sexes, guaranteeing the physical and moral vitality of working people.”

The theses also held:

“The commissions of working women must make sure not only that women join the Party, the trade unions and other class organisations and have equal rights and equal obligations (they must counter any attempts to isolate or separate off working women), but that women are brought into the leading bodies of the Parties, unions and co-operatives on equal terms with men.

“The commissions must enable Communist women to make the most effective use of all political and educational institutions of the Party.”

At the Fourth Congress of the CI a brief balance sheet was drawn up, which observed:

“The necessity and value of special organisations for Communist work among women is also proved by the activity of the Women’s Secretariat in the East, which has carried out important and successful work under new and unusual conditions. Unfortunately, the Fourth World Congress of the Communist International has to admit that some sections have either completely failed to fulfil, or have only partially fulfilled, their responsibility to give consistent support to Communist work among women. To this day, they have either failed to take measures to organise women Communists within the Party, or failed to set up the Party organisations vital for work among the masses of women and for establishing links with them.

“The Fourth Congress urgently insists that the Parties concerned make up for all these omissions as quickly as possible.

[B] Fight against the separatist approach:

The CI stressed the need to integrate the work of women in the general Party work, and not segregate it as something separate:
“The Third Congress of the Communist International is firmly opposed to any kind of separate women’s associations in the Parties and trade unions or special women’s organizations....

“The commissions must work to strengthen the class consciousness and militancy of the young Communist women, involving them in general Party courses and discussion evenings. Special evenings of reading and discussion or a series of talks especially for working women should be organised only where they are really necessary and expedient.

“In order to strengthen comradeship between working women and working men, it is desirable not to organise special courses and schools for Communist women, but all general Party schools must without fail include a course on the methods of work among women. The departments must have the right to delegate a certain number of their representatives to the general Party courses. [in all quotations from the Theses, emphases added by us – A Sen]

Now obviously we cannot literally and mechanically follow everything that is written here. We must grasp the holistic approach – which we learnt from Engels in the previous issue of Liberation – in matters of organisation too and dialectically combine the two aspects according to our conditions. In view of the giant strides made by the women’s movement over the decades, it was obligatory on our part to form a women’s association with revolutionary orientation, and we have done that. We have not only formed a Women’s Department in the party as advised by the CI, but also considered it necessary to organise a special party school for women comrades at the highest level. We should continue to move ahead along this line, but simultaneously it is time we paid more attention to the other aspect: e.g., saw to it that topics like methods of work among women are included in party discussions and party schools with greater prominence.

Lenin had to fight for this anti-separatist approach within the CI. As he told Clara, the national sections of the Communist International “... regard agitation and propaganda among the women and the task of rousing and revolutionizing them as of secondary importance, as the job of just the women Communists. None but the latter are rebuked because the matter does not move ahead more quickly and strongly. This is wrong, fundamentally wrong! It is outright separatism. It is equality of women ... reversed … In the final analysis, it is an underestimation of women and of their accomplishments” – (Clara Zetkin, My Reflection of Lenin, p. 114)