Clara Zetkin Quotes

In the society of to-day the means of production are a monopoly of the capitalistic class; the dependence of the working classes which results from this is the cause of misery and of servitude in all its forms.

What made women's labour particularly attractive to the capitalists was not only its lower price but also the greater submissiveness of women.

Under capitalism the female half of the human race is doubly oppressed … firstly because the law does not give them equality with men; and secondly—and this is the main thing—they remain in ‘household bondage’; they continue to be ‘household slaves’, for they are overburdened with the drudgery if the most squalid, backbreaking and stultifying toil in the kitchen in the family household.

Around me I saw women overworked and underpaid, doing men's work at half men's wages, not because their work was inferior, but because they were women.

The life of men and women is so cheap and property is so sacred. There are so many of us for one job it matters little if 146 of us are burned to death.

Women's propaganda must touch upon all those questions which are of great importance to the general proletarian movement. The main task is, indeed, to awaken the women's class consciousness and to incorporate them into the class struggle.

... black women ... are trained from childhood to become workers, and expect to be financially self-supporting for most of their lives. They know they will have to work, whether they are married or single; work to them, unlike to white women, is not a liberating goal, but rather an imposed lifelong necessity.

We have only dented the fortress and the wage slaves are still locked in their cells.

The struggle against imperialism develops ever more into the decisive struggle between capital and labor.

For the laboring class there cannot exist a peace of compromise on the basis of a capitalist regime

Ever greater grows the mass of the proletariat, ever vaster the army of the unemployed, ever sharper the contrast between oppressors and oppressed, ever fiercer that war of classes between bourgeoisie and proletariat which divides modern society into two hostile camps and is the common characteristic of ever industrial country.

The contest will be between the capitalists and operatives; for into these two classes it must ultimately divide society.

The labor movement was ill-equipped to deal with the new inequalities arising almost inevitably from the less secure, part time and low paid nature of women’s occupations.

Political economy regards the proletarian like a horse, he must receive enough to enable him to work. It does not consider him, during the time when he is not working, as a human being. It leaves this to criminal law, doctors, religion, statistical tables, politics, and the beadle.

Nothing changes the gender equation more significantly than women's economic freedom.

The proletarian woman fights hand in hand with the man of her class against capitalist society.

The prolonged slavery of women is the darkest page in human history.

The worker is the slave of capitalist society, the female worker is the slave of that slave.

The implication that women work for pin money and can manage on a worse pension, presumably by relying on husbands, riles. But even more galling for women is that few government ministers seem to even appreciate the value of the work they do.

I confront the European elite's self-image as tolerant 'while under their noses women are living like slaves.

Sometimes our definitions fall short. Take, for example, the way we view income and labor. It simply doesn't cover enough of the work that women, and in particular poor women, are doing - especially in their own households and the vast 'informal' economy in which most of the world's poorest people work.

I promote revolution against the Capitalists and the Social Marxists.

Property is theft.

Because women of color were more likely to be in the paid labor force, they were more likely to recognize discrimination, so they were always leading the women's movement.

Those who invest in South Africa should not think they are doing us a favor; they are here for what they get out of our cheap and abundant labor, and they should know that they are buttressing one of the most vicious systems.